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Japan's new Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi (C, first row) poses during a photo session with members of her cabinet at the prime minister's office in Tokyo, Japan October 21, 2025.
Hard Numbers: Japan elects first female prime minister, Former French president goes to jail, The Netherlands to start deporting migrants to Uganda, US army courts private equity
1: As anticipated, Japan’s Parliament elected Liberal Democratic Party leader Sanae Takichi to be the 104th prime minister – and the first female PM in the country’s history. The 64-year-old is an arch conservative, and has long admired the late UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Her main priority going forward: putting a lid on rising prices. The Japanese yen fell, though, over concerns about Takichi’s potential approach to monetary policy and spending.
5: Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy began his five-year jail sentence in Paris today for soliciting funds from fallen Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi during his 2007 campaign. The 70-year-old, who becomes the first former leader of a European Union state to go to jail, still maintains his innocence.
4,200: The Netherlands – which ordered 19,000 asylum seekers to leave the country last year, but only returned 4,200 – plans to deport rejected asylum seekers to a “transit hub” in Uganda starting next year, under a deal modeled on the US arrangement with Kampala. The move faces legal and human rights concerns, though Dutch officials insist it complies with international law.
$150 billion: The US Army is courting major private equity firms—including Apollo, Carlyle, KKR, and Cerberus—to help fund a $150 billion infrastructure overhaul. As the FT reported exclusively, Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll is seeking proposals on ambitious projects like data centers or rare earth facilities, offering financing as part of a broader Trump administration push to integrate private capital into national security.
Chancellor-designate Friedrich Merz (CDU) is standing in the Bundestag election for Chancellor. CDU leader Friedrich Merz has failed the first round of voting in the Bundestag election for Chancellor.
Friedrich Merz fails to secure chancellorship in shock vote
Christian Democratic Union leader Friedrich Merz did not become Germany’s chancellor as planned on Tuesday after at least 18 members of his coalition either abstained or voted against him. His centrist coalition holds 328 out of 630 seats in the Bundestag, Germany’s parliament, but he won just 310 of the 316 votes needed to confirm him as the next leader.
Merz isn’t kaput yet. The Bundestag will hold a second round of voting, possibly as soon as tomorrow, and if six of the lawmakers who withheld their support come around, Merz will take over from lame duck Olaf Scholz. That said, this is the first time since Germany reestablished democratic control after World War II that a leader has failed to win the parliament’s backing on the first round.
The culprits? Likely coalition lawmakers who disagree with Merz’s plan to take on significant debt to boost defense capacity and revitalize economic growth.
Merz’s far-right rivals pounced on him. Alternative for Germany leader Alice Weidel said the failure shows the incoming coalition’s “weak foundations” and called for fresh elections. Her party came in second place in February and some polls now show that she would win a new contest.
Looking forward: Ultimately, experts still expect Merz to prevail in becoming chancellor, but Tuesday’s stunning loss will damage his political credibility and mandate to govern. If, however, the Bundestag fails to elect a new chancellor within 14 days, Germany could be on the road to another election.
Workers' Party (WP) supporters wave party flags as they cheer their candidates at the nomination center ahead of the general election in Singapore, on April 23, 2025.
Singapore’s opposition hopes to make major gains as election campaign begins
Singapore kicked off a lightning-fast, nine-day campaign on Wednesday for its May 3 election. The vote promises to be the most contested since independence, as the ruling People’s Action Party sweats a strong challenge amid weak economic forecasts.
Elections in Singapore are usually dull affairs: The PAP has utterly dominated all contests since 1965, with members of the founding Lee family serving as PM for 45 years combined, and as recently as 2024. During one of its worst performances in 2020, the PAP won 89% of seats in parliament – even though it won just 61% of the vote. Such disproportionate electoral results, along with systematic repression of opposition figures, have led to accusations that Singapore is a de facto one-party state.
What’s different this time? First off, the Lion City is facing grim economic prospects. Growth projections have been revised to 0-2% for the year, down from 1-3%, and the heavily trade-dependent economy is reeling from global 10% tariffs imposed by the United States.
Secondly, the PAP’s long time in office contrasts sharply with a slate of newer candidates from the opposition Worker’s Party. PM Lawrence Wong has introduced 32 new candidates in an effort to shed the old guard image, casting off many long-serving stalwarts. A YouGov survey showed that only about 40% of voters would support the PAP if the election were held today, while a 43% plurality either don’t know or wouldn’t say who they will support.
The WP is still fighting uphill. Its leaders hope to take a third of seats in parliament, far from a majority – but perhaps enough to change the political dynamic permanently.Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau speaks at a meeting of the Calgary Chamber of Commerce in Calgary, Alberta, Canada December 21, 2016.
Trudeau on the brink? More MPs demand resignation
Bad news for embattled Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau: On Saturday, 51 members of his Liberal Party’s powerful Ontario caucus reportedly agreed that he should resign, citing their plummeting fortunes under his leadership. Over half the Liberal caucus now want him to quit, as well as numerous party advisors, strategists and commentators.
The fresh calls come after NDP leader Jagmeet Singh, whose party had been propping up Trudeau’s minority government, pledged on Friday to bring a “clear motion of non-confidence” at the earliest opportunity. With Parliament out for winter break until Jan. 27, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre urged Canada’s titular head of State, Governor General Mary Simon, to recall MPs early to hold such a vote. That’s a constitutional non-starter, but it symbolically amps up the pressure nonetheless.
What are Trudeau’s options? Unless he asks the Governor General to prorogue the House and delay its return, the opposition would plunge the country into an election - a race his party is likely to lose. One of the justifications for prorogation would be to allow the Liberals to hold a leadership race - but that would mean Trudeau would have to resign.
All this is happening just weeks before US President Donald Trump’s return to the White House on January 20. With the threat of 25% tariffs in the air, observers say Canada’s government can ill afford to continue its current drama, and Trudeau must decide his future as soon as possible.
Graphic Truth: Diversity in US and Canada legislatures
Legislatures in both the US and Canada are increasingly more diverse.
The 118th Congress is the most racially and ethnically diverse in US history, with 133 lawmakers – about 25% – who identify as Black, Hispanic, Asian American, American Indian, Alaska Native, or multiracial.
In Canada, the House of Commons is also at its most diverse, and it elected its first Black speaker, Greg Fergus, in 2023.
Both chambers, however, still have a way to go to fully reflect the diversity of their respective populations. In the US, 75% of voting members in Congress are white, compared to their 59% share of the population. In Canada, where 20% of the population are immigrants, the number of immigrants elected to the House has slightly decreased since 2015, from 46 to 44 legislators.British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak speaks during Prime Minister's Questions, at the House of Commons in London, Britain, January 17, 2024.
Hard Numbers: UK House of Commons passes Rwanda bill, Trump interrupts Carroll trial, Colombia warns American tourists, Internet crowns hottest Houthi
320: British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak successfully pushed the Rwanda Bill through the lower house of Parliament on Wednesday. His signature immigration bill, which aims to send asylum-seekers to Rwanda as their claims are processed, had divided his party, resulting in a chaotic day of resignations and internal rebellion. But, against all odds, the 320 Tories united to pass the bill, which now heads to the House of Lords.
10 million: On Wednesday, the judge overseeing the defamation trial in which the writer E. Jean Carroll is suing Donald Trump for $10 million threatened to throw the former president out of the courtroom because he repeatedly made audible comments in court. During Carroll’s testimony about what happened after she accused him of raping her, Trump could be heard saying “witch hunt” and “it was a con job” loudly enough that jurors could hear.
8: In Colombia, the government is warning Americans to stay off dating apps while visiting the country after 8 tourists died in the last two months. The US embassy in Bogota said victims have been drugged and robbed after meeting people on dating apps. The announcement coincides with reports that the number of robberies of foreign visitors increased by 200% and deaths by 29% in the last three months of 2023.
13 million: A Yemeni militant turned influencer, dubbed online as “Timhouthi Chalamet” because of his resemblance to Hollywood heartthrob Timothée Chalamet, has gone viral on TikTok. In a video viewed 13 million times, he is seen sailing on the Galaxy Leader, a cargo ship seized by Yemen’s militant Houthis last year and exemplary of how much of the conflict in the Red Sea is playing out online.FILE PHOTO: Men run next to burning tires during a protest demanding an end to gang violence, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, August 14, 2023.
How long must Haitians wait for help?
On Wednesday, armed men surrounded the Fontaine Hospital Center in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, trapping scores of people for hours before police managed to evacuate at least 40 children and 70 other patients. This type of violence has become a daily occurrence in Haiti, where police have struggled to gain the upper hand against gangs since the July 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moïse. Haitian Prime Minister Ariel Henry has been urgently calling for international intervention for over a year to help crack down on the mayhem.
While most countries have opted not to jump into the fray, Kenya offered to lead a police force to quash Haiti’s gangs. The UN approved the plan last month, but it immediately hit a legal hurdle back in Kenya, where opponents say Kenya’s Constitution only permits military deployments overseas, not the dispatch of police officers. The court has yet to rule – a verdict is expected on Jan. 26, 2024 – but proponents of the mission got a boost this week when Kenya’s Parliament approved the mission. Lawmakers cited a committee report that found it constitutional on the grounds that Henry requested the police and because the government solicited public participation.
Kenya can’t go it alone: If the court greenlights the mission, the force consists of just 1,000 Kenyan officers, who would be joined by promised deployments from other nations, bringing the total to 2,500. Even combined with roughly 9,000 Haitian National Police officers, the proposed mission would still be outnumbered.
Haiti’s roughly 200 gangs – estimated to have had at least 100 members each in 2021, totaling 20,000-plus — have merged into two large coalitions, fighting both each other and the police for control.The Graphic Truth: French Parliamentary districts overseas
For citizens of most democracies, moving overseas usually means losing some political representation back home. For example, Americans abroad can still vote in their home states – but it’s not as though any senators or representatives feel particularly beholden to the expat constituency.
Not so for the 2.5 million French citizens living overseas: Article 24 of the French Constitution specifically mandates they be represented in the legislature. So the French National Assembly divides the world – save North Korea, the disputed territory of Western Sahara, and, somewhat inexplicably, Bhutan – into 11 constituencies that each send one fully empowered legislator back to Paris.
French expats are also represented in the Senate, albeit indirectly. Voters elect 442 “advisers to French citizens abroad” to serve six-year terms as a kind of community liaison between ordinary expats and the local French Embassy or consulate (you might recall one of these folks was recently kidnapped in Niger). Of that body, 90 are elected to sit on the Assembly of French Citizens Abroad, a long-standing committee that meets four times a year to advise the French government on foreign affairs. They then meet with 68 separately elected “consular delegates” to choose 12 senators with full lawmaking powers.
Complicated, sans doute, but it means that French citizens overseas have hundreds of elected representatives working on their behalf, whereas most other expats don’t have much of a voice back home. The graphic above illustrates where France draws the lines of its overseas legislative districts.
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GZERO's Ian Bremmer recently sat down with Eléonor Caroit, who represents French citizens in Latin America through one of the 11 National Assembly seats noted above, at the 2023 Paris Peace Forum. They discussed protecting democracy from some dangerous applications of artificial intelligence alongside Rappler CEO Maria Ressa and Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith. Check it out here.