Foreign News
Queen Margrethe II: Danish monarch announces abdication live on TV
Denmark’s Queen Margrethe II has announced her surprise abdication in a new year TV address.
She will formally step down on 14 January, which will be 52 years to the day since she became queen. “I will leave the throne to my son, Crown Prince Frederik,” she announced.
The 83-year-old is the world’s only reigning queen and the longest serving current monarch in Europe, taking the throne after the death of her father King Frederik IX in 1972.
She revealed the decision was made after a period of reflection following surgery on her back in early 2023. “The surgery naturally gave rise to thinking about the future – whether the time had come to leave the responsibility to the next generation,” she said. “I have decided that now is the right time,” she added, and offered her thanks to the Danish public for their support over the years.
Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen thanked the queen for her service. “On behalf of the entire population, I would like to extend a heartfelt thank you to Her Majesty The Queen for her lifelong dedication and tireless efforts for the Kingdom,” she said in a statement.
“Although the duty and position of regent has been handed down for more than 1,000 years, it is still difficult to understand that the time has now come for a change of throne,” the statement read. “Many of us have never known another regent. Queen Margrethe is the epitome of Denmark and throughout the years has put words and feelings into who we are as a people and as a nation.”
Unlike British royal tradition, there will be no formal crowning ceremony for Crown Prince Frederik, who is 55. Instead, his accession will be announced from Amalienborg Castle in Copenhagen on the day. He will take her place as King of Denmark and head of state in the country – which is a constitutional monarchy – as well as in Greenland and the Faroe Islands.
Queen Margrethe is a popular figure in Denmark, and many Danes had expected her to remain on the throne until her death. “She is to us what Queen Elizabeth was to you,” Danish journalist Tine Gotzsche told the BBC.
Queen Margrethe attended the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II in 2022, and they celebrated their respective jubilees in the same year. She had not been expected to become Queen when she was born. But when she was 13, Danish law changed to allow women to take the throne.
More than a decade ago, Queen Margrethe reflected that she was inspired by the late British Queen “that I must somehow understand that I must dedicate my life to my nation like she has done, and in that way she has been very important to me.”
The pair had been the world’s only remaining female sovereigns before Queen Elizabeth’s death. Elizabeth reigned for 70 years.
Some also consider her the world’s longest reigning monarch. The Sultan of Brunei has been on the throne for longer, but his country only gained independence in 1984.
She is also the longest-serving monarch in Danish history, after surpassing King Christian IV, of Denmark and Norway, earlier this year.
Affectionately known as Daisy, Queen Margrethe is known for her smoking habits and rejection of mobile phones and the internet – declaring herself “very happy” without them.
Gotzsche said the Danish royal transition is a moment of mixed celebration and sadness.
“She has always been there, she has been ageing with all of us,” she said, but added: “the Crown Prince is in a very good position to take over, the succession is laid out – it’s very logical, and it absolutely makes sense.”
Crown Prince Frederik, like Britain’s King Charles III, is known for his passion for the environment. He has vowed to “guide the ship” of Denmark into the future.
His wife, Princess Mary, grew up on the Australian island of Tasmania and was working as a lawyer when the pair met in 2000.
They are considered by some to represent modern values and have tried to give their four children as normal an upbringing as possible, sending them mainly to state schools.
During her time on the throne, Queen Margrethe continued to work as an artist and was well known for her love of the arts. She also has a passion for archaeology and has taken part in several excavations.
She studied in the UK, spending time at Cambridge’s Girton College and the London School of Economics.
In 1967, she married French diplomat Henri de Laborde de Monpezat, who served as her royal consort until his death in 2018.
Each year on New Year’s Eve, she delivers a speech broadcast on television. This year, aside from the announcement, she also spoke of the wars in the Middle East and Ukraine, as well as the importance of addressing climate change.
Facing similar challenges of modern society as other royal families across Europe, the Danish royal family has decided to slim down its number of royals. This led to a very public rift last year after Crown Prince Frederik’s younger brother Prince Joachim’s children were stripped of their royal titles.
(BBC)
US President Donald Trump’s administration has exempted smartphones, computers and some other electronic devices from “reciprocal” tariffs, including the 125% levies imposed on Chinese imports.
US Customs and Border Patrol published a notice late on Friday explaining the goods would be excluded from Trump’s 10% global tariff on most countries and the much larger Chinese import tax.
The move comes after concerns from US tech companies that the price of gadgets could skyrocket, as many of them are made in China.
This is the first significant reprieve of any kind in Trump’s tariffs on China, with one trade analyst describing it as a “game-changer scenario”.
[BBC]
A notorious bandit kingpin and 100 of his suspected followers have been killed in a joint military operation in north-west Nigeria, authorities say.
Gwaska Dankarami was said to have been a high-value target who reportedly served as second-in-command to an Islamic State-linked leader.
The alleged gang leader had been hiding in the Munumu Forest, with authorities reporting that several other criminal hideouts were also destroyed across the state on Friday.
His apparent death comes after bandits kidnapped 43 villagers and killed four others in a deadly attack on a village called Maigora in the northern Katsina State earlier this week.
The police had said that it deployed security forces in pursuit of the kidnappers.
However, this is not the first time Dankarami’s death has been reported.
In 2022, the Nigerian Airforce claimed to have killed him in a similar operation.
The Katsina State commissioner for internal security and home affairs, Nasir Mua’zu, said the killing was a significant milestone in the fight against banditry in the state.
“It is expedient to state that this successful mission has significantly disrupted the criminal networks that have long terrorised communities across Faskari, Kankara, Bakori, Malumfashi, and Kafur,” Mua’zu added.
Security forces said they had also recovered and destroyed two machine guns and locally fabricated shotguns.
In a separate operation on Thursday, security forces killed six bandits, including their commander, while several other bandits escaped with bullet wounds.
Seven motorcycles were also intercepted and recovered during the intelligence-led operation.
Katsina, the home state of former Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari, has witnessed sporadic attacks by bandits and kidnappers that have claimed many lives.
The state governor, Malam Dikko Umaru Radda, has expressed the government’s determination to eliminate criminals and ensure every forest is thoroughly monitored to protect residents.
The authorities said that the operations are part of a broader effort to restore stability in the state and the north-west region of Nigeria, which has witnessed repeated banditry attacks.
[BBC]
At least three suspected rebel fighters and one Indian soldier have been killed in separate firefights in Indian administered Kashmir less than a week after Interior Minister Amit Shah visited the disputed territory.
The Indian army said on Saturday that Indian soldiers killed three fighters in a gun battle that began on Wednesday in a remote forest in Kishtwar in southern Kashmir.
Senior Indian army official Brigadier JBS Rathi said troops had displayed “great tactical acumen”.
“In the gun battle, three terrorists were neutralised,” he told reporters on Saturday in a commonly used term for rebels opposed to Indian rule in Kashmir.
Weapons and “war-like stores” were recovered from the site, the army’s White Knight Corps posted on social media platform X.
A soldier was killed in a separate incident late on Friday night in Sunderbani district along the Line of Control (LoC), the de facto border that cuts Indian-administered Kashmir into two.
The White Knight Corps said on X troops had “foiled an infiltration attempt” there.
Muslim-majority Kashmir has been divided between nuclear-armed rivals India and Pakistan since their independence in 1947, with both claiming the territory in full but governing only part of it.
India has an estimated 500,000 soldiers deployed in the territory after an armed uprising against Indian rule in the late 1980s.
Thousands of people, most of them Kashmir civilians, have been killed as rebel groups have fought Indian forces, seeking independence for Kashmir or its merger with Pakistan.
In 2019, a report by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights accused India of human rights violations in Kashmir and called for a commission of inquiry into the allegations. The report came nearly a year after the then UN human rights chief Zeid Ra’ad Al Husseincalled for an international investigation into abuses in the Muslim-majority region.
Last month, four police officers and two suspected rebels were killed in the region in a clash that also wounded several police officers.
The territory has simmered in anger since 2019 when Prime Minister Narendra Modi ended the region’s semi-autonomy and drastically curbed dissent, civil liberties and media freedoms while intensifying military operations.
Thousands of additional troops, including special forces, were deployed across southern mountainous areas last year following a series of deadly rebel attacks that killed more than 50 soldiers over three years.
India regularly blames Pakistan for pushing rebels across the LoC to launch attacks on Indian forces.
[Aljazeera]
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