Elon Musk praised the co-leader of the German party Alternative for Germany (AfD) as “very reasonable” on Thursday, urging Germans to vote for the far-right party in what is the latest high-profile sign of the tech billionaire’s involvement in European politics.

“Only AfD can save Germany, end of story, and people really need to get behind AfD, and otherwise things are going to get very, very much worse in Germany,” Musk said during an audio livestream alongside party co-leader Alice Weidel on X.

Musk, a close ally of US President-elect Donald Trump, compared the political climate in Germany to that in the United States, saying that people were unhappy and demanded change when voting for Trump in November. Germany holds its own election February 23.

“If you are unhappy with the situation, you must vote for change, and that is why I’m really strongly recommending that people vote for AfD,” Musk said.

He went on to claim the president-elect will solve Russia’s war in Ukraine “very quickly,” prompting Weidel to say she wishes the incoming Trump administration will “end that terrible war” because “Europeans – they cannot.”

“They completely depend on the US, in the sense of – ‘oh the USA need(s) to do the entire job. We don’t need to do anything. We just escalate the entire conflict against Russia.’ It’s very dangerous, what’s going on here, and only you can basically stop it,” Weidel told Musk.

Weidel also said that it was “unbelievable” how Germany treated Trump while he was campaigning for president, saying that it caused her “physical pain” to see him “disparaged.”

In the same conversation, Weidel said that Germany needs to protect both the existence of Israel but also to “take our responsibility as a German nation state to protect Jewish life,” which she said was threatened by “Muslim crime.”

AfD is the “only protector of the Jewish people” in Germany, she claimed.

How did we get here?

Musk has run into hot water among European leaders – particularly in the UK and Germany – for playing politics abroad as the world braces for Trump’s imminent return to the White House.

The US billionaire has been increasingly vocal in his support for Europe’s far-right and seems keen to strengthen ties between such parties and Trump’s camp.

Another example of this is the burgeoning relationship between Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and Trump’s cohort, with Meloni hosted in Mar-a-Lago over the weekend and hailed as a “fantastic woman” by the President-elect.

Musk has publicly endorsed the AfD ahead of Germany’s snap election on February 23, in which it is expected to come in second behind the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU), the party of former Chancellor Angela Merkel.

“Only the AfD can save Germany,” Musk wrote on X on December 20 after the German government collapsed that week, prompting Weidel to respond at the time, “Yes! You are perfectly right!”

Musk also called German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier “an anti-democratic tyrant” after he spoke out against foreign interference during his speech on the dissolution of the country’s parliament, and called for Chancellor Olaf Scholz to resign following a deadly car-ramming attack in Magdeburg, describing him as an “incompetent fool” in a post on X.

Germany’s mainstream politicians were not happy with Musk’s public support for the AfD, with the Social Democrats (SPD) co-leader Lars Klingbeil drawing comparisons between him and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Scholz even stated during his New Year’s address that it was up to German citizens to decide the fate of the country, not “the owners of social media platforms.”

What could come next?

As Musk has already stirred angst in Germany over election meddling, Thursday’s livestream could be perceived as another example of that.

The recent heightened tensions come amid an ongoing probe by the European Commission into Musk’s platform X and possible violations of its Digital Services Act (DSA).

Thierry Breton, the EU’s former internal market chief who oversaw the introduction of the DSA, took to X ahead of Thursday’s livestream to write to Weidel “as a European citizen concerned with the proper use of systemic platforms authorized to operate in the EU under the strict respect of our (EU) law (#DSA), especially to protect our democratic rules against illegal or misbehavior during election times.”

“I believe it’s crucial to remind you… that your counterpart (Musk) should, once again, fully respect all its obligations under our EU law,” he added.

At the same time, the administration of Germany’s lower chamber of parliament said it was examining whether Musk’s live chat could amount to illegal interference in the election campaign, according to Reuters.

The number of people killed in Gaza is significantly higher than the figure reported by authorities in the enclave, a peer-reviewed study by researchers from a leading health research university in the UK has found.

According to findings announced by the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) and published in The Lancet journal, there were an estimated 64,260 “traumatic injury deaths” in Gaza between October 7, 2023 and June 30, 2024. The Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza put the figure at 37,877 at the time.

This means the ministry has underreported the death toll due to violence by approximately 41%, the researchers found. As of October, the number of Gazans killed by violence was thought to exceed 70,000, the study said, based on the estimated underreporting rate.

The total death toll attributable to Israel’s military campaign is likely to be higher still, it said, as its analysis doesn’t account for deaths caused by disruption to health care, insufficient food, clean water and sanitation, and disease outbreaks.

The health ministry’s figure stood at 45,885 on January 7. A further 109,196 have been injured. In general, the ministry reaches its figures by counting the corpses of those killed.

LSHTM said the findings suggest that around 3% of the enclave’s population has died due to violence, 59% of whom were women, children, and the elderly.

The discrepancy with the ministry’s figures reflects the destruction of Gaza’s healthcare infrastructure and therefore its inability to accurately count the dead amid Israel’s ongoing bombardment of the enclave, the LSHTM said.

Researchers analyzed data from multiple sources, including the health ministry’s hospital morgue records, a respondent-driven online survey and obituaries on social media.

They arrived at estimated figures using a statistical method known as ‘capture-recapture analysis,’ which is used when not all of the relevant data is recorded.

Zeina Jamaluddine, lead author at LSHTM, said the results “underscore the urgent need for interventions to safeguard civilians and prevent further loss of life.”

Israel’s 14-month war in Gaza, launched in response to Hamas’ October 7 attack, has decimated large swathes of the enclave and destroyed key healthcare infrastructure while placing an enormous strain on hospitals that remain functional.

Last month, a report from Human Rights Watch (HRW) found that Israel had deliberately been depriving Palestinians in Gaza of access to clean water, which has fueled the spread of disease and caused deaths likely in the thousands.

The scale of the devastation caused by a lack of water may likely never be fully understood, HRW warned, due to the decimation of Gaza’s health care system including disease tracking.

HRW and Amnesty International have both accused Israel of committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, which Israel strongly denies. Israel has also been taken to the UN’s top court, the International Court of Justice, on allegations of genocide.

Earlier this week, a Palestinian newborn died from hypothermia in Gaza, bringing the total number of babies killed by low temperatures and a lack of access to warm shelters in recent weeks to at least six.

Eight people in total have died of hypothermia, according to health officials in the enclave, including a 2-year-old toddler and a nurse.

Aid group Médecins Sans Frontières said on Wednesday that three hospitals in Gaza, Nasser hospital, Al-Aqsa hospital and European Gaza hospital, are on the verge of closure due to a lack of fuel. “This situation is threatening the lives of hundreds of patients, including newborns, who depend on electricity to stay alive,” it said.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Thursday that President-elect Donald Trump’s comments about turning Canada into the United States’ 51st state are just a distraction from the consequences of Trump’s tariff threats.

Trudeau, who announced earlier this week he would resign as prime minister once his party had chosen his successor, told Tapper that Canada becoming another US state was “not going to happen.”

Trump in November promised massive hikes in tariffs on goods coming from Mexico, Canada and China starting on the first day of his administration.

“On January 20th, as one of my many first Executive Orders, I will sign all necessary documents to charge Mexico and Canada a 25% Tariff on ALL products coming into the United States, and its ridiculous Open Borders,” Trump posted on his Truth Social platform. “This Tariff will remain in effect until such time as Drugs, in particular Fentanyl, and all Illegal Aliens stop this Invasion of our Country!”

That policy that could sharply increase costs for American businesses and consumers, a fact Trudeau was quick to point out Thursday. Canada, Mexico and China are the US’s biggest trade partners.

“Everything the American consumers buy from Canada is suddenly going to get a lot more expensive if he moves forward on these tariffs,” Trudeau said.

Trudeau stressed that Canadians “are incredibly proud of being Canadian. One of the ways we define ourselves most easily is, well, we’re not American.”

Venezuelans are bracing for yet another wave of repression as strongman leader Nicolas Maduro prepares to be inaugurated for a third time on Friday – sealing an election outcome that opposition politicians and the US government say was stolen.

In recent days, the government has deployed a show of force ahead of the inauguration, increasing the number of policemen and security officers on the street and detaining dozens of people across the country, including a former presidential candidate, according to human rights advocates.

The climate of fear is palpable on social media, with the Instagram account of Venezuela’s military counterintelligence agency recently posting a video of a hand knocking on a door in the middle of the night – a message suggestive of the kinds of retaliation critics might encounter.

Maduro and his allies are “showing they are not going to tolerate any dissent, and people are scared,” the diplomat said, asking to speak anonymously to avoid possible repercussions.

After a contested election, a security crackdown

Maduro’s re-election could hardly be more controversial. On July 28, he was proclaimed winner of the presidential election by electoral authorities under the tight control of the ruling Socialist Party.

When protests erupted over the vote, Maduro’s government detained over 2,000 people in less than a week to quash dissent.

Gonzalez is now on an international tour to sympathetic countries – such as the United States, whose government formally recognizes Gonzalez as Venezuela’s president-elect – to rally support for what he argues is his rightful presidency.

Likely at great personal risk, Gonzalez is also pledging to crash Maduro’s reelection party by returning to Caracas – where he is now accused of terrorism, with a $100,000 bounty on his head – ahead of the inauguration on Friday.

Several Latin American leaders, including nine former heads of state from around the region, have pledged to accompany him to Caracas, to which the Maduro government responded by banning the group from entering the country.

How exactly Gonzalez intends to do it is anyone’s guess: Maduro remains firmly in control of the country’s military, and security measures have been tightened as the government claims to be under constant threats of insurgencies and foreign plots.

On Tuesday, Maduro deployed Venezuela’s army to the streets to “guarantee the victory of peace.” He also announced that seven foreign mercenaries, including two US citizens and three Ukrainians, had been detained for terrorism in the country, without showing any proof but promising the group will soon confess their alleged crime.

“It’s really tense,” says Gerardo, a tourist guide who often travels outside Caracas and who believes the number of checkpoints and controls has increased in recent days.

“It’s not normal to have military counterintelligence, and not just the police, manning the checkpoints on the road to the airport… Driving around and you suddenly are stopped by men in balaclavas with an AK-47 asking to see your ID,” he said, asking to go only by his first name because of security concerns.

Arrests and ‘political beheading’

In quick succession, Tuesday also saw the alleged detentions of Gonzalez’s son-in-law, Rafael Tudares; Carlos Correa, a human rights activist and the director of the NGO Espacio Publico; and Enrique Marquez, who also ran for president in July, according to their families.

Such detentions have a clear strategy – “political beheading,” according to Gonzalo Himiob, the director of Foro Penal, a Venezuelan NGO that provides legal assistance to political prisoners.

“It means putting a leader in jail to scare off the entire movement, political or human rights,” Himiob said.

“Correa is a veteran of human rights activism in Venezuela, he’s a reference for the entire human rights movement. His reported detention and forced disappearance are very serious, because it foresees the repressive response the Government is mounting ahead of Friday’s inauguration,” said Laura Dib, Director of the Venezuelan Program at the Washington Office for Latin America, a think tank.

Meanwhile, Maduro has increased his public appearances. He maintains the show of force is necessary to prevent his country from falling into chaos and conspiracies, though the Venezuelan government has so far presented no proof of any destabilizing plot.

One high-profile case in recent weeks involves Nahuel Gallo, an Argentinian policeman detained in Venezuela late last year. Caracas accuses him of plotting to kill Maduro’s deputy Delcy Rodriguez, while Buenos Aires says Gallo was simply visiting his partner’s family for the holidays. Over the last six months, at least 125 people of 25 different nationalities have been detained on similar charges, according to interior minister Diosdado Cabello.

The first possible major confrontation between the government and its critics could come on Thursday, when Gonzalez’s ally in the country Maria Corina Machado has vowed to lead mass protests.

Her supporters are keenly aware of the risks .“One tries not to be paranoid, but you go to the streets, and you see so many policemen, so many of them looking for you, it’s hard to remain calm,” said an opposition leader in the central state of Aragua, who asked to speak anonymously for fears of retaliation.

“Personally, I haven’t decided if I’ll go out on Thursday or not, we need to see what happens,” he said.

In a video message on Tuesday, Machado told supporters to have courage and welcome defectors with open arms. Many security officials in uniform are actually ready to turn their backs on Maduro, she also said.

It’s not impossible, according to another diplomat in Caracas, who said the government’s actions could well be signaling that it also fears dissent in the uniformed ranks.

“The fact the government is sending out other security corps to integrate those already on the street indicates that they are suspicious of within their own ranks too,” the diplomat said.

‘They can do it again’

For many, this new wave of government muscle has a feeling of déjà-vu, as the country went through a similar cycle of expectations and repression in the summer after the presidential vote.

Nathaly’s teenage son was detained on August 2 as part of a widespread security crackdown on protests after the vote. He was held until December 20 when the government released hundreds of political prisoners in a gesture of leniency ahead of Christmas.

When she finally saw him walking out of jail, “it was like my soul came back to my body: every step we walked, I was feeling lighter,” Nathaly remembers.

“He did nothing wrong, he was just walking the streets… When he got out, he had lost 19 kilograms and from that moment I never lost sight of him… I’m just terrified if they did it once, they can do it again…” she said.

“Every mother in Venezuela holds the same fear: don’t take away our children,” she says.

A seaplane crashed during takeoff from an Australian tourist island, killing three people including Swiss and Danish tourists and injuring three others.

Only one of the seven people aboard the Cessna 208 Caravan was rescued without injury after the crash Tuesday afternoon on Rottnest Island, police said.

The plane owned by Swan River Seaplanes was returning to its base in Perth, the Western Australia state capital 30 kilometers (19 miles) east of Rottnest Island, which is also known by its Indigenous name Wadjemup.

The dead were a 65-year-old Swiss woman, a 60-year-old man from Denmark and the 34-year-old male pilot from Perth, Western Australian Premier Roger Cook said.

The dead tourists’ partners, a 63-year-old Swiss man and a 58-year-old Danish woman, survived. A Western Australian couple, a woman aged 65 and a 63-year-old man, also survived.

It is not clear which passenger was uninjured. Western Australian Police Commissioner Col Blanch said no survivor sustained life-threatening injuries.

The three injured people were flown to a Perth hospital.

Cook said the cause of the crash was not yet known. Reports that the plane had struck a rock at the entrance of a bay on the west side of the island could not be confirmed from video viewed so far, Cook said.

Rottnest Island is renowned for its sandy beaches and cat-sized hopping marsupials called quokkas which are rare on the Australian mainland. The island’s tourist accommodation is fully booked during the current Southern Hemisphere summer months.

“Every Western Australian knows that Rottnest is our premier tourism destination,” Cook told reporters.

“For something so tragic to happen in front of so many people, at a place that provides so much joy, especially at this time of the year, is deeply upsetting,” Cook added.

Blanch said police divers had recovered the bodies on Tuesday night from a depth of 8 meters (26 feet). Wreckage of the plane was still being recovered.

Australian Transport Safety Bureau, the aviation crash investigator, said specialist investigators were being sent to the scene.

“As reported to the ATSB, during take-off the floatplane collided with the water, before coming to rest partially submerged,” the bureau’s chief commissioner Angus Mitchell said in a statement.

Greg Quin, a tourist who was vacationing on Rottnest, said he saw the plane crash.

“We were watching the seaplane take off and just as it was beginning to get off the water, it just tipped over and it crashed,” Quin told Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio in Perth.

“A lot of people in the water on their boats rushed to the scene and I think got there really, really quickly,” he added.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese described the crash as “terrible news.”

“The pictures would have been seen by all Australians as they woke up this morning,” Albanese told ABC television. “My heart goes out to all those involved.”

An airstrike by Myanmar’s army on a village under the control of an armed ethnic minority group killed about 40 people and injured at least 20 others, officials of the group and a local charity said Thursday. They said hundreds of houses burned in a fire triggered by the bombing.

The attack occurred Wednesday in Kyauk Ni Maw village on Ramree island, an area controlled by the ethnic Arakan Army in western Rakhine state, they said. The military has not announced any attack in the area.

The situation in the village could not be independently confirmed, with access to the internet and cellphone service in the area mostly cut off.

Myanmar is wracked by violence that began when the army ousted the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi in February 2021. After the army used lethal force to suppress peaceful demonstrations, many opponents of military rule took up arms and large parts of the country are now embroiled in conflict.

Khaing Thukha, a spokesperson for the Arakan Army, told The Associated Press that a jet fighter bombed the village on Wednesday afternoon, killing 40 civilians and injuring more than 20 others.

“All the dead were civilians. Among the dead and injured are women and children,” Khaing Thukha said. A fire started by the airstrike spread through the village, destroying more than 500 houses, Khaing Thukha added.

It was unclear why the village was targeted. The leader of a local charity group and independent media also reported the airstrike and casualties.

The military government has stepped up airstrikes over the past three years on armed pro-democracy groups collectively known as the People’s Defense Force and on armed ethnic minority groups that have been fighting for decades for greater autonomy. The two groups sometimes carry out joint operations against the army.

Ramree – 340 kilometers (210 miles) northwest of Yangon, the country’s largest city – was captured by the Arakan Army in March last year.

The Arakan Army is the well-trained and well-armed military wing of the Rakhine ethnic minority movement which seeks autonomy from Myanmar’s central government. It is also a member of an alliance of armed ethnic groups that recently gained strategic territory in the country’s northeast on the border with China.

It began its offensive in Rakhine in November 2023 and has now gained control of a strategically important regional army headquarters and 14 of Rakhine’s 17 townships, leaving only the state’s capital, Sittwe, and two important townships near Ramree still in military government hands.

A leader of the charity group, which has been assisting residents of the village, told AP on Thursday that at least 41 people were killed and 50 others were injured in the airstrike, which targeted the village’s market.

The leader, who was away from the town at the time of the airstrike, spoke on condition of anonymity because of security concerns. He said he received the information from members of his group who were in the village and were facing a shortage of medicine to treat the injured people.

Rakhine-based news outlets including Arakan Princess Media also reported the attack and posted photos online showing people putting out fires at their homes.

Rakhine, formerly known as Arakan, was the site of a brutal army counterinsurgency operation in 2017 that drove about 740,000 minority Rohingya Muslims to seek safety across the border in Bangladesh.

When a Taiwanese telecoms company detected that an international undersea cable was damaged earlier this month, it worked to divert internet traffic from the broken line to keep customers on the island connected.

But the company, Chunghwa Telecom, also went to Taiwan’s Coast Guard to report the incident – and a “suspicious vessel” observed on the same route as the affected cable, according to a statement from the company, a major local internet provider.

Taiwan Coast Guard officials in the days since have said they suspect that the Shunxin39 – a Chinese-linked cargo vessel – could have cut the cable, in an incident that has spotlighted the island’s growing concerns about vulnerabilities that could be exploited by Beijing.

Taiwan officials have not cited direct evidence that the ship damaged the cable, and the Taiwan Coast Guard said in a statement Monday that it could not determine the vessel’s intentions. It called for South Korea, the ship’s destination, to help with further investigation.

But the situation has raised concerns among Taiwanese authorities of potential “gray zone operations,” or acts that fall below the threshold of war – in particular those that could hamper the island’s internet and communications with the outside world.

Those concerns come as Taiwan has faced increasing intimidation from Beijing, which claims the self-ruled democracy as its own territory and has vowed to take control of it, by force if necessary.

They also follow a string of incidents in recent years of damage to undersea infrastructure worldwide, including communications cables. Two high-profile incidents in the Baltic Sea involved Chinese ships and remain under investigation.

Taiwan’s Coast Guard said in a statement Monday that the ship suspected of damaging the cable off its northeastern coast last Friday was a Cameroon- and Tanzania-flagged vessel, crewed by seven Chinese nationals.

Such an act could be part of Beijing-backed efforts to use “ships with flags of convenience to cut Taiwan’s international communication as a form of preparation for future blockade and quarantine,” according to the official.

Beijing’s Taiwan Affairs Office said on Wednesday that submarine cable damage is a “common maritime incident,” and balked at Taipei’s “conjecturing” and “deliberate framing of gray zone threats.”

Chinese national Guo Wenjie, director of the company operating the vessel, denied in a statement to news agency Reuters on Wednesday that the ship was responsible for the damage.

A new ‘gray zone’ tactic?

In 2023, Taiwanese authorities blamed two Chinese ships for damaging two submarine internet cables linked to Taiwan’s outlying island of Matsu in incidents days apart causing an internet blackout, but stopped short of saying they were deliberate acts.

Su Tzu-yun, a military expert at Taiwan’s Institute for National Defense and Security Research, said more evidence is needed to say whether the latest incident was intentional.

But he said Taiwan needs to bolster maritime surveillance and defense of submarine cables.

“Once submarine cables are sabotaged, Taiwan’s connectivity to the international community will be severed; we can then only rely on bandwidth provided by satellites, which would then affect our digital economy, international trade and banking,” he said, calling such potential sabotage a form of “psychological warfare.”

Other observers have suggested the recent incident could be part of a trial of such tactics.

“While it doesn’t look to me like part of an effort to seriously impede Taiwan’s connectivity with the world … it could be consistent with either a campaign to apply low-level harassment, or as a test run for something that could be done at a larger scale at a later date in conjunction with other coercive operations,” said Tom Shugart, a retired US Navy captain and adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security think tank in Washington.

Taiwan has seen a surge of Chinese military activities in the Taiwan Strait and the Western Pacific in recent months, in line with a ramping up of intimidation over the past few years. Chinese naval and coast guard vessels have plied regional waters, and there has been an increase in Chinese aircraft operating around the island.

But Taiwan officials and defense experts have increasingly focused on the potential for Beijing to use gray zone tactics and non-military actors like China Coast Guard and various police and maritime safety agencies – as well as a so-called maritime militia of civilian ships – to quarantine the island or play a role in a blockade if it wanted to move to take control.

In a first-of-its kind “tabletop” exercise simulating military escalations by China late last month, multiple government agencies were tasked with responding to a broader base of threats than an armed invasion, including information warfare.

One official highlighted then how government agencies struggled to clarify falsehoods during electricity or internet outages, highlighting the need for Taiwan to have a backup mechanism to ensure the flow of information.

Taiwan’s Ministry of Digital Affairs earlier this week said it has been working on initiatives aimed at strengthening Taiwan’s communications by exploring alternative internet options including low-Earth-orbit satellites and adding new submarine cable stations.

Last month, Taiwan’s tech tzar Wu Cheng-wen told reporters in a briefing that in addition to working with LEO satellite company OneWeb, the island is also in talks with Amazon’s Project Kuiper for satellite collaborations.

A spate of sabotage?

Those efforts may only appear more urgent to observers amid a spate of incidents where Chinese and Russian vessels have come under scrutiny.

Swedish police have sought to investigate the Chinese bulk carrier Yi Peng 3 in relation to its possible role in the breach of two undersea fiber-optic cables in the Baltic Sea in November. The incident had echoes of a 2023 case in which Chinese ship NewNew Polar Bear was suspected of damaging undersea cables as well as a gas pipeline in the Baltic.

Finnish investigators late last month seized a tanker carrying Russian oil and said they suspected the vessel had damaged the Finnish-Estonian Estlink 2 power line and several internet cables by dragging its anchor across the seabed.

Damage to submarine cables in the Red Sea last March disrupted telecoms networks in the region weeks after the official Yemeni government warned of the possibility that Houthi rebels would target the cables, though the group denied involvement.

While damage to cables is not rare and is often seen as accidental, analysts warn that the recent cases also underscore vulnerabilities.

Shugart of CNAS said that there does seem to be a number of breakages recently that seem to have been deliberate, including those done “by or for Russian or Chinese interests.”

“This is going to be a quite challenging issue to police, as most of these cables run through international waters where traditional international law allows enforcement only in very narrow areas,” he said.

Hundreds of thousands of barefoot devotees joined an annual procession in the Philippines of a centuries-old statue of Jesus Christ on Thursday in one of the world’s grandest displays of Catholic devotion and expressions of faith.

Filipinos turned the streets of Manila to a sea of maroon and gold and swarmed the “Black Nazarene,” a life-sized image of Jesus Christ bearing down a cross, as devotees jostled for a chance to pull the thick rope towing the carriage across the Philippine capital.

The procession’s organizers have estimated about 220,000 people attended mass before the procession, while 94,500 were in the march as of 8 a.m. (0000 GMT). That number is expected to swell as it moves along its 5.8 km (3.6 mile) route.

Other devotees threw white towels at the image as marshals wiped them on its surface, believing that touching the statue would bless them and heal their illnesses.

Nearly 80% of Filipinos identify as Roman Catholic, a key legacy of more than 300 years of Spanish colonization in the Philippine archipelago.

The late Filipino priest and theologian Sabino Vengco said in 2019 the statue’s revered black color was due to the mesquite wood used in constructing the image, debunking a longstanding myth its blackened image was due to a fire that erupted on the ship that carried it to the Philippines from Mexico in the early 17th century.

The procession, called the “traslacion,” or translation, commemorates the transfer of the Black Nazarene from a church inside the old Spanish colonial capital of Intramuros, in present-day Manila, to its current location in Quiapo church.

Cardinal Jose Advincula, Manila’s archbishop, told devotees on Thursday to turn away from evil, greed and vices and follow the teachings of Jesus Christ.

“Let us live up to his commandments, embrace his teachings and follow his example. It is better to follow the Beloved Lord,” Advincula said in his homily ahead of the procession.