Today we're discussing some of the biggest news stories, including Finland's new border wall and Putin's comments about the war in Ukraine, as well as discussing the latest leadership runners and riders in the UK, but first the sad news of the assassination of the former Japanese prime minister.

Japan has been rocked today by the assassination of its longest serving prime minister, Shinzo Abe. This morning, the former prime minister was shot during a speech in the Japanese city of Nara, where he was campaigning for a liberal Democratic Party candidate ahead of this Sunday's upper house elections. Abe, who was 67, sustained two deep wounds in his neck and was confirmed to be dead in the hospital at 5:03 pm local time. Abe was the country's longest-serving prime minister, having served in office from 2006 to 2007 and then again from 2012 to 2020. Police have arrested a 41-year-old suspect, and reports suggest that the weapon used in the shooting was a homemade gun. Abe's assassination has shocked Japan, a country where gun violence is incredibly rare, but also the rest of the world too, with current and former leaders expressing their shock and sorrow at his killing.

Let's now move to Russia, where today Putin has issued Ukraine with an ultimatum to accept Moscow's terms or brace for the worst. When talking to a group of leaders of the Russian parliament, Putin said that the west wants to fight us until the last Ukrainian. It's a tragedy for the Ukrainian people, but it looks like we're heading in that direction. This was a clear attempt to threaten the Ukrainians into sitting down and talking with him and to try and come up with some sort of negotiated peace settlement. Part of these negotiations, though, would likely include Ukraine ceding some land to Russia, such as Donbass and Crimea. With Russia wanting to end the war without being humiliated, which would necessitate some sort of land gain for them, and Ukraine refusing to hand over the land, it's hard to see how a negotiated peace settlement could really work, especially with Putin making claims like this.

As we've spoken about a lot this week, Boris Johnson has finally agreed to resign. In his speech outside number 10 yesterday, Johnson conceded that they're the breaks, something that's been memed quite a few times online already. The question is, though, while Johnson now accepts that the gig is up, how long will he remain in Downing Street, with Johnson suggesting that he'll be around until autumn. However, yesterday, former prime minister John Major urged Johnson to leave number 10 and allow Dominic Robb to take over as a caretaker until a successor is elected. And this is a suggestion that's garnered a lot of sympathy from other Tory back benches, who are frankly rather sick of Johnson at this point. That's at least partly because, as Johnson's effectively been ousted, he'll have little authority for the remainder of his time in office. As such, it's feared that for the remainder of his tenure, he'd be characterized as a lame-duck leader who's unable to actually lead anything. As it stands, there have been no clear attempts to actually take Johnson out, but many are suggesting that Rob could be in the office as soon as next week.

Next up, Finland has passed a new law which would see the construction of a much, much stronger board of offense along the country's border with Russia. Finland is concerned that Russia will use migrants and the threat of mass migration to exert pressure on the country during its NATO accession. Parts of the Finnish-Russian border are only separated by wooden fences, primarily designed to contain livestock. These new amendments to the border guard act will allow for the construction of a sturdy offense along the 1,300 kilometer long border. In a statement, Santa Paolo, the head of the finished border guards legal division, said that "what we're aiming to build now is a sturdy fence with a real barrier effect." In all likelihood, the fence will not cover the entire eastern border, but will be targeted at locations considered to be the most important.

Finally, let's move on from Finland to the world of football, where Set Blatter and Michelle Platini, once among football's most powerful men, have been acquitted of fraud by Switzerland's federal criminal court after a long-running dispute. That's because Blatter, then-president of FIFA, authorized a payment of two million Swiss francs to Platini, then-president of UEFA and vice president of FIFA. This payment was discovered during a 2015 investigation by the US Department of Justice into bribery, fraud, and money laundering at FIFA. Two men were subsequently charged with fraud and various other offences by Swiss prosecutors in November 2021, with prosecutors arguing that the payment damaged Fifa's assets and unlawfully enriched Platini. It was this payment that effectively ended both men's careers at the top of international football. FIFA's ethics committee banned both of them from football, despite both men consistently denying any wrongdoing.