Struggling to raise funds for the restoration of his cathedral’s antique organ, a priest from St.-Flour, a small town in France’s heartland, came up with a creative solution. He turned one of the bell towers into a curing workshop where farmers could hang their hams to dry.

For nearly two years, after being blessed by a local bishop, pork legs swayed in peace in the dry air of the cathedral’s north tower, bringing in much-needed funds and delighting charcuterie lovers. Then an inspector for the organization that oversees France’s architectural heritage stepped in.

After noticing a grease stain on the floor of the bell tower, as well as other infractions, the inspector ordered that the hams be taken down. They were a fire hazard, he said in a report in December 2023, according to cathedral officials. When the cathedral refused to remove the hams, the dispute escalated all the way to the country’s minister of culture, Rachida Dati.

The battle over the St.-Flour hams was widely derided as an example of how overzealous officials can quash innovative local initiatives. It also spoke to a larger issue that aging churches across France have been grappling with as they face costly reparations: Who is going to pay to maintain the country’s vast religious heritage?

After the French Revolution, church properties were seized by the state, which eventually took responsibility for overseeing most of them. But the central government and local municipalities have struggled to fund the maintenance of the country’s cathedrals and churches.

The restoration of Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris, which was ravaged by a devastating fire in 2019, was funded by about $900 million in donations. But religious buildings in the rest of the country have been largely left to fend for themselves.

Across France, an estimated 15,000 religious buildings out of 45,000 are classified as historical monuments, according to the Culture Ministry. More than 2,300 of them are in poor condition, and 363 are considered endangered, the ministry said.

“The situation is alarming,” said Hadrien Lacoste, the vice president of the Religious Heritage Observatory, an independent nonprofit group. “There’s a drop in religious practice,” he added, “and there’s a drop in demographics in rural areas.”

Despite a decline in church attendance, towns like St.-Flour, which has a population of about 6,400, see their cathedrals and churches as defining elements of their identities and feel a strong need to maintain them.

“We’ve realized that each of our churches is a little Notre-Dame, that the village without the church is like Paris without Notre-Dame,” said Mathieu Lours, a French historian who specializes in religious architecture.

In France — as has been the case elsewhere in Europe — decaying churches are often transformed into gyms, restaurants, hotels or housing.

In St.-Flour, a renaissance church adjacent to the cathedral was deconsecrated and is now a market and a cultural venue.

Maintaining the cathedral itself was seen as an essential, if costly, town effort. St.-Flour is at the heart of Cantal, an area of France known for its green hilly landscapes and its local cheese. From a distance, the cathedral, at the top of rocky outcrop, looms over the town like a fortress.

“You know the saying, all roads lead to Rome?” said Patrice Boulard, the meat producer in charge of climbing the tower’s 145 steps to suspend the hams there. “Well here in St.-Flour, all roads lead to the cathedral.”

The idea for the curing workshop in the bell tower was the brainchild of Gilles Boyer, who was at the time the cathedral’s rector, after funds that were supposed to be provided by the authorities for repairing the church’s 19th-century choir organ never materialized.

A food lover who had once managed a restaurant in Paris, Mr. Boyer had already set up beehives on an unused terrace of the cathedral to produce honey for sale. The bell tower was also unused space. Why not use it for hanging hams, a specialty of the region, he wondered?

“It all started as a joke,” he said, “but it wasn’t so dumb after all.”

Altitude, a local charcuterie cooperative made up of some 40 pig breeders, loved the idea, partly for the marketing potential, but also for what they believed to be the special quality of the air and conditions in the tower for curing hams.

“It creates a link between business and heritage, between a product and its terroir,” said Thierry Bousseau, the company’s communication manager.

The project was approved by both state and church authorities, and the first batch of hams was put on sale in markets, in the church and online in the spring of 2022, for about $150 each, about $50 more than what an average local artisanal ham would fetch. The profits, once Altitude recouped its costs, were given to the cathedral.

Overall, about 300 hams have been sold and more than $12,000 was spent to finally restore the organ, Mr. Bousseau said.

The project was called “Florus Solatium,” a tribute to the town’s supposed founder, a fifth-century saint called Florus whose relics are kept in the cathedral. According to legend, the saint miraculously escaped bandits by reaching the top of the cliff, where residents welcomed him with a traditional local ham. “Quid solatium!” he was said to have exclaimed. “What a solace!”

Most of the maturation process for the hams takes place in Altitude warehouses in a nearby town. But Mr. Boyer, the former rector, is convinced that the three months they spend attached to the tower’s wooden beams, exposed to the wind and to the bell’s vibrations, is what gives the meat its special quality.

“Most hams are dried in places where the hygrometry is always the same, the ventilation is always the same,” said Aurélien Gransagne, the chef at Restaurant Serge Vieira, a nearby Michelin-starred restaurant, referring to the humidity in the air. In the bell tower, he added, “you have fluctuations, and that’s what makes a product special.”

The thick, rosy flesh, is as good as the best prosciutto from Italy or jamón from Spain, he said. Mr. Gransagne’s restaurant offers diners rose-shaped slices of the meat alongside other appetizers — and a bit of storytelling about its provenance.

Given the success of the tower-cured hams, Jean-Paul Rolland, who took over as rector from Mr. Boyer in 2022, said he decided to put his foot down when the heritage architect declared the project dangerous.

“The building is dedicated to religious practice,” he said, “so it’s not up to the administration to tell us what we can do or not inside.”

The grease stain probably appeared on the age-old parquet floor long before the hams were brought up, he said.

“It’s like the landlord telling a tenant that he is not allowed to change a painting’s place in the living room,” Mr. Rolland added.

He did make some small changes, like placing carpets on the floor of the towers and barring access to visitors. But the hams would continue to hang, he said.

In October, Ms. Dati, the culture minister, announced a decision: The hams will stay, provided a “detailed study” will have examined the “administrative, material and organizational conditions” for the hams to be matured safely, her office said in an email. That process is still continuing.

Whatever the eventual decision, the hams have become something of a cause célèbre in a country that values the gastronomic offerings of small producers as much as the country’s religious heritage. St.-Flour made national headlines, and sales of the hams have been brisk. The Élysée Palace in Paris has a standing order for hams every three months, and served slices of it at a buffet in June, Altitude says. (It is not clear if President Emmanuel Macron tried some, and the Elysée did not respond to requests for comment.)

Still, not everyone in St.-Flour is happy with the idea of turning the church into something of a marketplace.

“There were bees, now there’s hams. What’s next, cheese?” asked Roger Merle, 68, the owner of a clothing store in the town.

Firefighters rushed to contain the Los Angeles wildfires

Officials hoped that a drop in wind speeds yesterday would give firefighters a window to take control of the fast-moving blazes that have raged unchecked this week. At least five people have been killed, but that figure is expected to rise. Almost 180,000 people were under evacuation orders. Entire neighborhoods have been destroyed, along with landmarks, making the landscape unrecognizable. Follow our live coverage and our maps of fires.

The Santa Ana winds, dangerous gusts that have spread the flames, were expected to intensify overnight and through the weekend, and possibly continue into next week. Helicopters and planes dropped water from an ominous orange sky, and firefighters battled the blazes with a renewed supply of water after hydrants had gone dry in previous days.

The Hollywood Hills, home to celebrities and entertainment executives, also began to burn overnight. Paris Hilton, Billy Crystal and other celebrities lost their homes.

Twenty people had been arrested and accused of looting during the chaos, with that number expected to increase, law enforcement officials said.

Context: Los Angeles, which is about the same size as two small U.S. states, can be hard to picture. Disasters or riots might occur on one end of the city while those on the opposite end are far removed from the scene. These wildfires, though, have assaulted the metropolis as a whole.

Rescue: As one resident rushed to evacuate, she sent out a plea to her Instagram followers: Could someone help evacuate her roughly 300-pound pig?

Lebanon elected a president after two years of gridlock

Lebanon’s Parliament picked Gen. Joseph Aoun, the commander of the Lebanese military, to become the next president.

Aoun won by an overwhelming majority in the second round of voting, reflecting the changing power balances at an unnerving time for Lebanon. The nation has endured a series of disasters in recent years, including an economic collapse and a war between Israel and the militant group Hezbollah.

Context: The country’s international backers, including the U.S., have hinted that financial support after the war was contingent on a successful presidential election.

Background: Aoun is considered to have U.S. backing and is widely respected in Lebanon. Since 2017 he has led the military, which is the only national institution to have cross-sectarian support.

How the U.S. capitalized on supporting Ukraine

The Ukraine Defense Contact Group will meet this week for the last time under the Biden administration. The group was first formed after Russia’s invasion in 2022 to provide aid and ammunition to Ukraine. It also gave the U.S. a rare chance to undermine an old enemy.

The Biden administration turned first to U.S. allies for help, but also drew on relationships with non-NATO countries. The way the group was formed could serve as a blueprint for future administrations to use in case of major conflicts, U.S. officials said, such as a potential Chinese attack on Taiwan.

What’s next: The group’s fate is uncertain. President-elect Donald Trump is deeply skeptical of supporting Ukraine, and has openly curried favor with President Vladimir Putin. Should the U.S. back out, the Pentagon said, another nation could take over.

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Across China’s west, Communist Party leaders are separating hundreds of thousands of Tibetan children from their families and placing them in boarding schools, rights activists say. The schools teach in Mandarin, push party values of loyalty and patriotism, and replace the culture and Buddhist beliefs that are instilled in Tibetan homes.

Our colleagues analyzed hundreds of videos posted to social media and propaganda departments to learn how these schools operate.

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Restoring the (very) old, with a modern touch

The second floor of a 12th-century palazzo in Genoa was in total disrepair: The walls were pocked with holes and the windows rattled and leaked — it couldn’t even be classified as a residence anymore.

But two architects could still feel a palpable grandeur, and they paid 250,000 euros for the wreck. Two years and another 350,000 euros later, their efforts yielded a glorious, 1,000-square-foot one-bedroom apartment where they now live. They even found a few secrets in the walls. See more from the renovation.

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The Sudanese military recaptured a key city in Sudan’s breadbasket region on Saturday, chasing out a paramilitary group that the United States accused last week of genocide.

Sudan’s information minister said the army had “liberated” the city, Wad Madani, while the military said that its troops were working to “clear the remnants of the rebels” from the area.

If the army can hold on to the city, it would be its most significant victory since the war started nearly two years ago. Experts said it would most likely shift the focus of the war northward to Khartoum, the capital.

Videos circulating online showed the army entering Wad Madani, which lies about 100 miles south of the capital. Local media reported that fighters with the paramilitary group, known as the Rapid Support Forces, or R.S.F., were fleeing the city.

The group’s leader, Gen. Mohamed Hamdan, admitted defeat but vowed to soon recapture the city. “Today we lost a round; we did not lose the battle,” he said in an audio address to his fighters and the Sudanese people.

The victory brought joyous scenes in army-held parts of the country among Sudanese who hoped it might signal a turning point in a ruinous civil war that has led to massacres, ethnic cleansing and a spreading famine in one of Africa’s largest countries.

People massed on the battle-scarred streets of Khartoum, while church bells pealed in Port Sudan, the wartime de facto capital where many Sudanese have fled the fighting. Celebrations also erupted among exiled Sudanese in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

The R.S.F. defeat came just over a year after the group seized Wad Madani in a victory that forced tens of thousands of people to flee and sent shock waves across Sudan. The group’s fighters went on to capture swaths of the country, far from their stronghold in Darfur in western Sudan.

But much of the most brutal fighting was in Darfur, where R.S.F. fighters massacred members of rival ethnic groups, according to human rights groups and the United Nations. Last week the United States formally determined that those killings constituted genocide, and it imposed sanctions on the R.S.F.’s leader, General Hamdan, who is widely known as Hemeti.

The United States also imposed sanctions on seven companies in the United Arab Emirates that it accused of trading gold and buying weapons on behalf of the R.S.F.

In recent months, the tide of the fight appeared to turn as the R.S.F. ceded territory in Khartoum and in parts of the east of the country. The military launched a counteroffensive in the area around Wad Madani, culminating in the recapture of the city on Saturday.

Still, it was too early to say if the victory would fundamentally change the course of the conflict. Since the first shots were fired in April 2023, the momentum of the fighting has swung back and forth, sometimes wildly.

The army and the R.S.F. were once allies, and their leaders joined to mount a military coup in 2021. But in the war between them, they have enjoyed the backing of different foreign powers.

The R.S.F. is supported by the United Arab Emirates, a wealthy Gulf sponsor that has supplied it with weapons and powerful drones, mostly smuggled into Sudan from neighboring countries.

The Sudanese military has obtained or bought weapons from Iran, Russia and Turkey. Both sides mine the country’s vast reserves of gold to finance the fight.

For ordinary Sudanese, the war has brought only misery, death and destruction, killing tens of thousands of people, scattering 11 million from their homes and setting off one of the world’s worst famines in decades.

The global authority on hunger, known as the I.P.C., reported last month that famine had spread to five areas in Sudan and was expected to reach another five in the coming months. In all, 25 million Sudanese suffer from acute or chronic hunger.

Both sides have committed atrocities and war crimes, according to the United Nations and American officials, although only the R.S.F. has been accused of ethnic cleansing.

From above the raging flames, these planes can unleash immense tankfuls of bright pink fire retardant in just 20 seconds. They have long been considered vital in the battle against wildfires.

But emerging research has shown that the millions of gallons of retardant sprayed on the landscape to tame wildfires each year come with a toxic burden, because they contain heavy metals and other chemicals that are harmful to human health and the environment.

The toxicity presents a stark dilemma. These tankers and their cargo are a powerful tool for taming deadly blazes. Yet as wildfires intensify and become more frequent in an era of climate change, firefighters are using them more often, and in the process releasing more harmful chemicals into the environment.

Some environmental groups have questioned the retardants’ effectiveness and potential for harm. The efficiency of fire retardant has been hard to measure, because it’s one of a barrage of firefighting tactics deployed in a major fire. After the flames are doused, it’s difficult to assign credit.

The frequency and severity of wildfires has grown in recent years, particularly in the western United States. Scientists have also found that fires across the region have become faster moving in recent decades.

There are also the longer-term health effects of exposure to wildfire smoke, which can penetrate the lungs and heart, causing disease. A recent global survey of the health effects of air pollution caused by wildfires found that in the United States, exposure to wildfire smoke had increased by 77 percent since 2002. Globally, wildfire smoke has been estimated to be responsible for up to 675,000 premature deaths per year.

Fire retardants add to those health and environmental burdens because they present “a really, really thorny trade-off,” said Daniel McCurry, an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Southern California, who led the recent research on their heavy-metal content.

The United States Forest Service said on Thursday that nine large retardant-spraying planes, as well as 20 water-dropping helicopters, were being deployed to fight the Southern California fires, which have displaced tens of thousands of people. Several “water scooper” amphibious planes, capable of skimming the surface of the sea or other body of water to fill their tanks, are also being used.

Two large DC-10 aircraft, dubbed “Very Large Airtankers” and capable of delivering up to 9,400 gallons of retardant, were also set to join the fleet imminently, said Stanton Florea, a spokesman for the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho, which coordinates national wildland firefighting efforts across the West.

Sprayed ahead of the fire, the retardants coat vegetation and prevent oxygen from allowing it to burn, Mr. Florea said. (Red dye is added so firefighters can see the retardant against the landscape.) And the retardant, typically made of salts like ammonium polyphosphate, “lasts longer. It doesn’t evaporate, like dropping water,” he said.

The new research from Dr. McCurry and his colleagues found, however, that at least four different types of heavy metals, including chromium and cadmium, that were present in a common type of retardant used by firefighters exceeded California’s requirements for hazardous waste.

Federal data shows that more than 440 million gallons of retardant were applied to federal, state, and private land between 2009 and 2021. Using that figure, the researchers estimated that between 2009 and 2021, more than 400 tons of heavy metals were released into the environment from fire suppression, a third of that in Southern California.

Both the federal government and the retardant’s manufacturer, Perimeter Solutions, have disputed that analysis, saying the researchers had evaluated a different version of the retardant. Dan Green, a spokesman for Perimeter, said retardants used for aerial firefighting had passed “extensive testing to confirm they meet strict standards for aquatic and mammalian safety.”

Still, the findings help explain why concentrations of heavy metals tend to surge in rivers and streams after wildfires, sometimes by hundreds of times. And as scrutiny of fire suppressants has grown, the Forest Service has set buffer zones surrounding lakes and rivers, though its own data shows retardant still inadvertently drifts into those waters.

In 2022, the environmental nonprofit Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics sued the government in federal court in Montana, demanding that the Forest Service obtain a permit under the Clean Water Act to cover accidental spraying into waterways.

The judge ruled that the agency did indeed need to obtain a permit. But it allowed retardant use to continue to protect lives and property.