World

Tokyo While not quite on the scale of Her Majesty’s service, Tuesday’s state funeral of Japan’s longest serving PM Shinzo Abe, gunned down while campaigning on the streets of Nara in July, will be an extravagant affair. The ceremony will take place at the Nippon Budokan in central Tokyo with approximately 6,000 attendees including the US Vice President Kamala Harris, Indian prime minister Narendra Modi, and Australian PM Anthony Albanese. Theresa May will represent the UK. It will cost 1.6 billion yen (10.5 million pounds). The event has become mired in controversy. Many in Japan are fiercely opposed to the decision, made by current PM Fumio Kishida, to grant a

Yerevan, Armenia It was getting dark outside Yerevan Airport when I arrived, but there were still a dozen flights from Russia yet to land. Groups of young men in their twenties and thirties were milling around the terminal building, stacking suitcases onto trolleys, changing money and working out what to do next. Armenia is one of the few countries they can still fly to since much of the western world closed its skies to Russian planes; it is almost alone in not requiring them to have visas. ‘I’m just here for a holiday,’ one weary traveller carrying four heavy bags insists, ‘everything is fine in Moscow.’ Others are more up front

Mario Draghi’s national unity government lost badly in yesterday’s Italian election – worse even than the polls predicted. Fratelli d’Italia, the main opposition party, was the big winner. Five Star, which pulled the plug on Draghi’s government, also gained. What we did not see is a big shift between left and right. The right coalition of Fratelli d’Italia, Lega, and Forza Italia, got 44 per cent. The really big movements occurred within the coalition. Giorgia Meloni’s FdI ended up with 26 per cent – way ahead of the published polls. Lega got only 9 per cent. The coalition is on course to secure a majority in both houses of parliament,

For the first time in Northern Ireland’s history, Catholics now outnumber Protestants. Census data on national identity and religious from 2021, which was published today, shows that Catholics born into or practising their religion make up 45.7 per cent of the population, with Protestants at 43.5 per cent. In the bleak zero-sum world of Irish confessional demographics, that translates into a headcount victory for those champing at the bit to end British rule there. There’s no denying the figures are momentous. They will be gleefully weaponised by those who have no interest in a truly shared or reconciled future. But the headline numbers don’t reveal everything about the state of

Brussels appeared to be finally getting serious with a rogue member state this week. A couple of days ago it announced that it would use its power – which it obtained last year – to withhold €7.5 billion (approximately £6.4 billion) from Hungary unless Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz government cleaned up its act on corruption. The EU, it is fair to say, has a point. Like a number of other eastern European countries, Hungary is not known for the trustworthiness of its officials, or for its scrupulous avoidance of nepotism and favouritism in awarding state contracts. Nevertheless, as is often the case with EU affairs, outward appearances can be misleading. The

Vladimir Putin’s decision to call up reservists is a sign of Russia’s desperation. It is also unlikely to do anything to address the real problem facing the country’s military: the woeful way in which its troops are organised. ‘No plan of operations,’ wrote Moltke the Elder in 1871, ‘extends with any certainty beyond the first encounter with the main enemy forces.’ The Russian military struggled from the outset in Ukraine, but particular structural issues within the army itself have exacerbated their woes. Sending more troops to Ukraine risks simply plugging gaps left by poor military structuring. The war in Ukraine has highlighted many weaknesses in the command of Russia’s armed