Crypto News: Embracing a winner

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If much of the democratic world is witnessing a splintering of established politics as the global order undergoes upheaval, Japan didn't appear to get the memo.

A stunning vote of confidence for Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi in yesterday's national election positions her as one of the most popular leaders among major economies. It also serves as a strong message of support for Tokyo's alliance with the US under Donald Trump.

It's hard to overstate the scale of Takaichi's electoral success. Her Liberal Democratic Party won so many proportional representation seats in parliament that it ran out of candidates to fill them. The margin of victory was the biggest for any party since World War II.

The shifting global trends laid out most eloquently by Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney last month were part of the reason, even if the conclusions for Tokyo are different.

Japan isn't oblivious to an ever-growing geopolitical struggle, but its voters opted to double down on ties to Washington by backing a leader who will invest in the relationship and has the credentials to fight Tokyo's corner.

As one senior Japanese government official put it, Canada has the luxury of imagining a world without the US as a security backstop because it doesn't face any threats. Not so Japan, which has to deal with increasing Chinese military activity on its doorstep and possible war over Taiwan.

Trump congratulated Takaichi on her landslide win, posting on his Truth Social platform that he will always lend his support to "the wonderful people of Japan."

Trump's planned April meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping is a potential flashpoint for Tokyo. But Takaichi has a chance to get ahead of it with her own Trump summit on March 19.

She'll go into it with the confidence of becoming Japan's most popular prime minister in decades. — Alastair Gale

Sanae Takaichi at the Liberal Democratic Party headquarters in Tokyo, Japan, on Feb. 8. — Sanae Takaichi.

Global Must Reads

Keir Starmer's future as UK prime minister is in the balance after a crisis over the appointment of Peter Mandelson as ambassador to Washington forced his chief of staff to quit, saying he took "full responsibility" for his advice to hire the Labour veteran despite known ties to pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. Downing Street officials are bracing for cabinet ministers to privately tell the premier to stand aside, sources say.

Thailand's ruling conservative party clinched a surprisingly solid election win yesterday, marking the first victory this century for a party aligned with the country's royalist establishment and leaving many young supporters of the pro-democracy movement disillusioned. Bhumjaithai's win means that after years of strong results for reformers, the establishment has finally backed a winner and that may bring more stability.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will visit Washington on Wednesday to discuss US-Iran diplomacy with Trump after Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian described the talks as "a step forward," even as he pushed back against any attempts at intimidation. The indirect US-Iranian negotiations launched in Oman Friday followed Trump's buildup of US forces in the Persian Gulf in response to Tehran's deadly crackdown against domestic protests.

One of India's largest farmer groups will proceed with a planned nationwide protest this week, as concerns persist over whether New Delhi has made too many concessions in an interim trade deal with the US. India has proposed opening up parts of its agriculture industry to cheaper imports from the US, a move that may lower food and feed costs in the world's most populous nation but intensify pressure on some domestic farmers.

A Hong Kong court sentenced former media mogul Jimmy Lai to 20 years in prison, handing the pro-democracy activist the heaviest penalty yet meted out under a 2020 Beijing-imposed national-security law. The landmark case, which prompted intense international scrutiny as a symbol of Beijing's crackdown on dissent in the once-freewheeling financial hub, will test Western governments' willingness to press for the British citizen's release even as they seek to stabilize relations with China.

Jimmy Lai Photographer: Anthony Wallace/Getty Images — Jimmy Lai.

Socialist António José Seguro won the race to be Portugal's president, defeating far-right challenger André Ventura yesterday after running on a platform of institutional stability and respect for democratic norms.

The UK's top spies warned political parties of the dangers posed by foreign interference ranging from financial donations to honey traps, according to a statement from the Cabinet Office.

Support for Australia's opposition center-right parties has slumped to a fresh low in a new opinion poll, setting the scene for a potential challenge to Liberal leader Sussan Ley after only nine months in the role.

United Arab Emirates artificial-intelligence champion G42 is leading a project with commitments of as much as $1 billion to build data centers and cloud-computing services in Vietnam, part of its effort to expand beyond the Gulf nation.

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Chart of the Day

For years, Russia relied on migrants from Central Asia to fill gaps in its workforce. As demographics and the war in Ukraine drive the sharpest labor crisis in decades, recruiters are now turning to countries including India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and China to help fill a shortfall estimated at 11 million by 2030. Workers from India and other South Asian countries have begun filling municipal jobs like clearing snow in Russian cities, and foreign laborers are also winding up at construction sites, restaurants and other city services.

And Finally

After the fall of the Soviet Union and during a brief Washington-Havana détente a decade ago, Miami's Cuban business elites hired analysts and economists to draft plans to rebuild their island in the event of regime change. Now that an emboldened US president has pushed Cuba to the brink, it seems tantalizingly close again. But the dilemma facing both the private sector and the Trump administration alike is that Cuba's needs are now so staggering and its politics so entrenched that it's hard to see how it could attract the investment required to recover from the worst economic crisis in the island's modern history.

Havana in January 2026. Water pipes, sewers, roads, ports, schools and hospitals across Cuba are all in desperate need of repair. Photographer: YAMIL LAGE/AFP — Havana in January.

Thanks to everyone who answered Friday's quiz question, and congratulations to Marc Weinberg, who was first to identify Colombia as the nation whose president swung from "sick" to "terrific" in Trump's opinion after a meeting in the Oval Office.