Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi's governing party secured a two-thirds supermajority in parliamentary elections. The landslide victory was due, in large part, to the extraordinary popularity of Japan's first female prime minister, and allows her to pursue a significant conservative shift in Japan's security, immigration and other policies. Takaichi, in a televised interview with public television network NHK following her victory, said she will emphasize policies meant to make Japan strong and prosperous.

NHK, citing vote count results, said Takaichi's Liberal Democratic Party, or LDP, alone secured 316 seats by early Monday (Feb. 9), comfortably surpassing a 261-seat absolute majority in the 465-member lower house, the more powerful of Japan's two-chamber parliament. That marks a record since the party's foundation in 1955 and surpasses the previous record of 300 seats won in 1986 by late Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone. With 36 seats won by its new ally, Japan Innovation Party, Takaichi's ruling coalition has won 352 seats.

Thai Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul's Bhumjaithai Party won a clear victory in a general election, raising the prospect that a more stable coalition may now succeed in bringing an end to a period of prolonged political instability. Anutin set the stage for the snap election in mid-December during a border conflict between Thailand and Cambodia, a move political analysts said appeared to be timed by the conservative leader to cash in on surging nationalism. With nearly 95% of polling stations reporting, preliminary results released by the election commission showed the Bhumjaithai Party winning about 192 seats, compared to 117 for the progressive People's Party, and 74 for the once-dominant Pheu Thai party.

"This will be the first time in the 21st century that a conservative party has won the most seats in a general election, and it is a seismic shift in Thai politics," Ken Lohatepanont, a University of Michigan doctoral candidate, remarked in his online newsletter about Thai politics.

India introduced new rules that make it mandatory for social media companies to remove unlawful material within three hours of being notified, in a sharp tightening of the existing 36-hour deadline. The amended guidelines will take effect from 20 February and apply to major platforms including Meta, YouTube and X. They will also apply to AI-generated content. The government did not provide a reason for reducing the takedown window.

But critics worry the move is part of a broader tightening of oversight of online content and could lead to censorship in the world's largest democracy with more than a billion internet users. In recent years, Indian authorities have used existing Information Technology rules to order social media platforms to remove content deemed illegal under laws dealing with national security and public order. Experts say they give authorities wide-ranging power over social media content. According to transparency reports, more than 28,000 URLs or web links were blocked in 2024 following government requests.

A shooting at a school in remote northern British Columbia left seven people dead, while two more were found dead at a nearby home, Canadian authorities said Tuesday. A woman believed by police to be the shooter was also found dead, apparently from a self-inflicted wound. Royal Canadian Mounted Police said more than 25 people were wounded, including two who were airlifted to hospital with life-threatening injuries, after the shooting at Tumbler Ridge Secondary School.

Tumbler Ridge in the Canadian Rockies is more than 1,000 kilometers (600 miles) northeast of Vancouver, near the provincial border with Alberta. The provincial government website lists Tumbler Ridge Secondary School as having 175 students from Grades 7 to 12. British Columbia Premier David Eby told reporters that police officers reached the school within two minutes. A video showed students walking out of the school with their hands raised as police vehicles surrounded the building and a helicopter circled overhead.