Foreign News
Hungary’s parliament clears path for Sweden’s Nato membership
Sweden has cleared its final obstacle to joining Nato after Hungary’s parliament voted to ratify the bid.
The Nordic nation applied to join the defence alliance after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Every member must approve a new joiner, and Hungary had delayed, accusing Sweden of being hostile to it. But last week Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban said the two countries were now “prepared to die for each other”.
All Nato members are expected to help an ally which comes under attack.
Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said it was a “historic day” and a “big step” for Sweden to abandon 200 years of neutrality. “Sweden is an outstanding country, but we are joining Nato to even better defend everything we are and everything we believe in,” he said.
Nato Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said the Hungarian decision made the alliance “stronger and safer”.
The parliament’s approval must now be signed by the president – after which a formal invitation is sent to Sweden to join the 31-member group.
The process usually lasts a few days.
Mr Orban is a nationalist politician with close ties to Russia’s President Vladimir Putin. He has often blocked EU efforts to send military aid to Ukraine. Sweden is one of the EU countries which have accused Hungary of backsliding on the EU’s democratic principles.
In turn, Mr Orban’s spokesman Zoltan Kovacs accused officials in Sweden of sitting on a “crumbling throne of moral superiority”. Last week, however, Mr Orban hosted his Swedish counterpart Ulf Kristersson and announced his support for Sweden’s membership.
Monday’s vote of Hungarian MPs was almost unanimous – 188 to 6.
In his speech, Mr Orban sharply criticised unnamed Nato allies for exerting pressure on his government to end the 21-month delay. “Hungary is a sovereign country and does not tolerate being dictated to by others, on the content or timing of decisions,” he said.
Turkey had been the other Nato country to withhold approval of Sweden’s application in a row over what it called Sweden’s support to Kurdish separatists. It eventually lifted its veto in January.
Sweden and its eastern neighbour Finland, both long considered militarily neutral, announced their intention to join Nato in May 2022.
Finland formally joined in April last year, doubling the length of the alliance’s border with Russia.
Russian President Vladimir Putin sent his army into Ukraine in 2022 in the expectation it would check Nato’s expansion and weaken Western collectivism.
In fact, with the addition of Sweden and Finland, the opposite has happened.
(BBC)
United States President-elect Donald Trump has threatened to demand control of the Panama Canal after accusing Panama of charging excessive rates on US ships passing through one of the busiest waterways in the world.
“Our Navy and Commerce have been treated in a very unfair and injudicious way. The fees being charged by Panama are ridiculous,” Trump posted on his Truth Social platform on Saturday.
He later doubled down during a speech in Arizona on Sunday, saying the US was “being ripped off at the Panama Canal like we’re being ripped off everywhere else”.
The US largely built the canal in 1914 and administrated territory surrounding the passage for decades. But Washington fully handed control of the canal to Panama in 1999 after a period of joint administration.
Trump also hinted at China’s growing influence around the canal, which connects the Atlantic to the Pacific oceans.
“It was solely for Panama to manage, not China, or anyone else,” he said in the original post. “We would and will NEVER let it fall into the wrong hands!”
“It was not given for the benefit of others, but merely as a token of cooperation with us and Panama. If the moral and legal principles of this magnanimous gesture of giving are not followed, then we will demand that the Panama Canal be returned to us, in full, and without question,” Trump said.
Panama’s President Jose Raul Mulino firmly responded to Trump on Sunday.
“Every square meter of the Panama canal and the surrounding area belongs to Panama and will continue belonging so,” Mulino said in a recorded message posted on social media.
He further denied that China or any other country has direct or indirect influence over the canal. He added that fees were not decided on a “whim”.
The canal is key to Panama’s economy and generates about one-fifth of the government’s annual revenue.
[Aljazeera]
At least 13 people, including four children, have been killed in two incidents in Nigeria as large crowds gathered to collect food and clothing distributed at annual Christmas events, police say.
In the capital, Abuja, at least 10 people died on Saturday and many more were injured in a scramble to receive gifts of charity being distributed by the Holy Trinity Catholic Church in Maitama district.
“This unfortunate event, which took place around 6:30am [05:30 GMT], resulted in a stampede that claimed the lives of 10 individuals, including four children, and left eight others with varying degrees of injuries,” said Josephine Adeh, a police spokesperson.
In a separate incident in Okija in Anambra State in southern Nigeria, three people were killed in a crush at a charity event organised by a philanthropist, state police said.
“The event had not even started when the rush began,” police spokesman Tochukwu Ikenga said. There could be more deaths recorded as officers investigate, he said.
In both incidents, the victims were mostly women and children who were trampled as crowds tried to reach the provisions being offered.
[Aljazeera]
A nine-year-old child and four adults have been killed, and more than 200 injured after a car drove into a crowd at a Christmas market in the eastern German city of Magdeburg on Friday, officials say.
At least 41 people were critically injured after the incident which lasted around three minutes, police said.
The arrested suspect has been named in local media as Taleb al-Abdulmohsen, a 50-year-old Saudi citizen who arrived in Germany in 2006 and had worked as a doctor.
Reiner Haseloff, the premier of Saxony-Anhalt state, said a preliminary investigation suggested the alleged attacker was acting alone.
He added that he could not rule out more deaths due to the number of injured.
The suspect is currently being questioned and prosecutors expect to charge him with murder and attempted murder in due course, the head of the local prosecutor’s office said on Saturday.
Prosecutor Horst Walter Nopens added that the investigation was ongoing but suggested the background to the crime “could have been disgruntlement with the way Saudi Arabian refugees are treated in Germany”.
The suspected attacker has no known links to Islamist extremism – social media and posts online appear to suggest he had been critical of Islam.
Footage from the scene showed numerous emergency services vehicles attending while people lay on the ground.
Further footage then emerged of armed police confronting and arresting a man who can be seen lying on the ground by a stationary vehicle.
Unverified video on social media purports to show a car ploughing into the crowd at the market.
City officials said around 100 police, medics and firefighters, as well as 50 rescue service personnel rushed to the scene.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who travelled to the city on Saturday, described the attack as a “dreadful tragedy” as “so many people were injured and killed with such brutality” in a place that is supposed to be “joyful”.
He told reporters that there were serious concerns for those who had been critically injured – which German media reports is in the dozens – and that “all resources” will be allocated to investigating the suspect behind the attack.
There would be a memorial service for the victims at the Magdeburg Cathedral later on Saturday, he added.
[BBC]
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