The country’s first female PM is the object of a personality cult revolving around everything from her outfits and snacks to her favourite pink pen

When the LDP’s conservative wing forced a leadership election to replace the embattled Ishiba in October last year, many expected his ally Shinjiro Koizumi – the young, telegenic son of a previous prime minister – to win.

Instead, Japan’s party of government for most of the past seven decades took a gamble on his ultra-conservative rival, Sanae Takaichi, installing her as the country’s first female prime minister. If opinion polls are correct, that gamble is about to pay off in ways even her strongest allies could not have imagined.

In an eventful four months, Takaichi has met Donald Trump – who this week offered an endorsement and an invitation to the White House in March – as well as Xi Jinping and South Korea’s president, Lee Jae Myung. She sparked an unresolved row with Beijing over the future of Taiwan, spooked bond markets with promises of sweeping tax cuts, and faced fresh scrutiny over her links with the disgraced Unification church.

Despite the ups and downs, she has emerged as the LDP’s most effective weapon, the object of a personality cult revolving around everything from her choice of outfits and train journey snacks to the pink pen she uses to take notes in parliament.

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Party says it will not back funding bill without reforms on – among other things – masks, ID and judicial warrants

Following the fatal shootings of American citizens Renee Good and Alex Pretti by federal agents in Minneapolis last month, Democrats have refused to support long-term funding for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) unless Republicans agree to reforms on the tactics of federal agents carrying out Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.

“The American people rightfully expect their elected representatives to take action to rein in ICE and ensure no more lives are lost,” the Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, and his House counterpart, Hakeem Jeffries, wrote on Wednesday night in a letter issuing 10 formal demands to GOP leadership in order to avert a 13 February lapse in funding for the department, which oversees Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the US Border Patrol.

Republicans, who control both chambers, have already ruled out many of the ideas Democrats have outlined, but Democrats are expected to put forward legislation to codify their proposals.

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Germany should build as many nuclear plants as possible, Fatih Birol proclaims.

Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s admission that Germany’s nuclear phase-out was a “serious strategic mistake” has won an emphatic endorsement from Fatih Birol, executive director of the International Energy Agency. In an interview with Axel Springer Global Reporters Network, of which POLITICO is part, Birol said he was “very pleased” to hear Merz’s words. To him, the chancellor's self-critique is a signal that German energy policy may be heading in “a safer and more sensible direction.”

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A new "white list" from SpaceX is shutting off Russia's illicit access to Starlink's satellite internet across the front line.

At shortly before 3:00 a.m. Kyiv time on Feb. 5, Elon Musk retweeted a new guide from Ukraine's Digital Transformation Ministry for registering a Starlink terminal within UkraSubsequently, a series of alarmed Russian social media posts indicate that Starlink terminals were disconnecting en masse along the front.

Three Ukrainian commanders, speaking to the Kyiv Independent on the condition of anonymity, reported intercepting messages from Russian forces complaining about Starlink terminals failing in large numbers.

Serhiy "Flash" Beskrestnov, a longtime commentator on electronic warfare more recently appointed as advisor to Defense Minister Mykhaylo Fedorov, said the "enemy at the front doesn't have a problem, the enemy has a catastrophe."

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Exclusive: Luxury aircraft owned by property tycoon close to US president’s family has twice flown Palestinian men from Arizona to Tel Aviv

A Guardian investigation has established the flight was part of a secretive and politically sensitive US government operation to deport Palestinians arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

One of those deported on the January flight was Maher Awad, a 24-year-old originally from the West Bank, who had lived in the US for nearly a decade. Speaking to the Guardian in the town of Rammun, Maher shared photos of his girlfriend and newborn son in Michigan.

Awad is one of several men onboard two recent flights who have been identified by the Guardian and the Israeli-Palestinian publication +972 Magazine. “I grew up in America,” he said. “America was heaven for me.”

On Monday this week, Dezer’s 16-passenger luxury jet was used a second time to transport another group of Palestinian deportees. They landed at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion airport and also appear to have been taken to the West Bank.

Former US officials and immigration lawyers said the flights – and Israel’s assistance in returning Palestinians to the occupied territory – marked a shift in policy driven by the Trump administration’s aggressive mass deportation campaign.

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Exclusive: David O’Sullivan says war-based economy may be nearing point of becoming ‘unsustainable’

Western sanctions are having a “significant impact” on the Russian economy, the EU’s sanctions envoy has said, ahead of the fourth anniversary of Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

David O’Sullivan, a veteran Irish official, said sanctions were “not a silver bullet” and would always face circumvention, but insisted that after four years he was confident they were having an effect.

“I am fairly bullish. I think that the sanctions have really had a significant impact on the Russian economy,” he told the Guardian in a rare interview.

“We may be, in the course of 2026, coming to a point where the whole thing becomes unsustainable, because so much of the Russian economy has been distorted so much by the building up of the war economy at the expense of the civil economy. I think defying the laws of economic gravity can only go on for so long.”

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U.S. President Donald Trump's claim that his Russian counterpart "kept his word" by not launching mass missile and drone strikes against Ukraine's energy infrastructure for a week has been met with bewilderment and dismay in Kyiv.

"I believe this is either a mockery of our misfortune, a lack of understanding of the situation, or wishful thinking," Volodymyr Ariev, a lawmaker from the opposition European Solidarity party, told the Kyiv Independent.

The confusing saga of a supposed truce on striking energy infrastructure began when Trump surprisingly announced on Jan. 29 that Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed not to strike Ukrainian cities for a week.

"(The pause) was for Sunday to Sunday," Trump said the same day. "It opened up and (Putin) hit them hard... He kept his word on that. One week is a lot — we will take anything."

. . .

In Ukraine, a week without a mass Russian missile and drone strike is not "a lot." In fact, it has been a regular occurrence since the Kremlin started bombing energy infrastructure way back in October 2022, and simply reflects the amount of time it takes for Russia to prepare such attacks.

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António Guterres urges two powers to quickly sign new deal as New Start expires

The UN secretary general, António Guterres, has urged the US and Russia to quickly sign a new nuclear arms control deal, as the existing treaty expired in what he called a “grave moment for international peace and security”.

The last nuclear treaty between the two powers, the New Start agreement, ended on Thursday, formally releasing both Moscow and Washington from a raft of restrictions on their nuclear arsenals and triggering fears of a global arms race.

“For the first time in more than half a century, we face a world without any binding limits on the strategic nuclear arsenals of … the two states that possess the overwhelming majority of the global stockpile of nuclear weapons,” Guterres said in a statement on Wednesday.

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https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/ice-canada-offices-9.7073273

Alberta MP calls on Canada to shut down U.S. immigration and customs operations north of border

As U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) continues to draw widespread criticism for its deportation crackdown in the States, there’s concern brewing about the agency's presence north of the border.

The U.S. government’s website lists ICE offices in five Canadian cities: Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary, Montreal and Ottawa.

In an emailed statement to CBC News, an ICE spokesperson confirmed its criminal investigative law enforcement component — Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) — conducts work at the U.S. embassy in the country’s capital, and at consulates in the other four cities.

HSI personnel are separate from the ICE arm at the forefront of the immigration crackdowns making headlines in cities like Minneapolis, known as Enforcement and Removal Operations.

According to the government website, HSI has over 93 offices in more than 50 countries, with a mandate to identify and stop crime “before it reaches the United States.”

Local politician says armed men rounded up residents, bound their hands behind their backs and shot them

More than 160 people have been killed in two villages in western Nigeria in the country’s deadliest armed assaults this year, as communities reel from repeated and widespread acts of violence perpetrated by jihadists and other armed groups.

The death toll from Tuesday’s attacks in Woro and Nuku in Kwara state stood at 162 on Wednesday afternoon, according to Mohammed Omar Bio, a member of parliament representing the area.

He told the Associated Press that the Lakurawa, an armed group affiliated with Islamic State, had carried out the attacks. No one has claimed responsibility.

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Moscow launched ‘terrorising’ attack on energy grid as temperatures reached -20C, Ukrainian president says

Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Russia on Tuesday of violating an agreement with Donald Trump to hold off from attacking Ukraine’s energy systems in the depths of a freezing winter, as its forces carried out large-scale airstrikes on Kyiv on the eve of three-way talks in Abu Dhabi.

Ukraine’s president said Moscow carried out a massive and “deliberate” attack overnight as temperatures in Kyiv plunged to -20C. It involved a record number of 71 ballistic missiles as well as 450 drones, he said, sent to destroy energy infrastructure.

More than 1,000 residential buildings in Kyiv were without heating on Tuesday.

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The U.S. Department of Justice on Jan. 31 published over 3 million documents in accordance with the Epstein Files Transparency Act.

Some of them had a direct connection to Ukraine.

The files linked to late financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein include email conversations with at least two modeling agencies in Ukraine, travel arrangements for women from Kyiv and Odesa, booking arrangements in the Hyatt hotel in downtown Kyiv allegedly involving the hotel's owner, a plan to purchase real estate in Lviv and the discussion of Ukraine's political scene during the 2019 presidential elections.

The Kyiv Independent continues to review the documents published by the Department of Justice. The first findings are provided below.

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