A nuclear Trident missile estimated to have firepower rivalling Hiroshima misfired and crashed into the Atlantic Ocean.
In what is the second flop for Britain after the last trial launch in 2016 failed, the test was carried out from the HMS Vanguard off the coast of Florida.
The 60-tonne dud missile’s boosters failed as it was propelled from the Royal Navy submarine before ‘plopping’ into the sea just near the sub.
The Ministry of Defence (MoD) confirmed Tuesday night that an ‘anomaly’ occurred during a routine drill of the Trident II missile on January 30.
Adding to the embarrassment, First Sea Lord Admiral Sir Ben Key and defence secretary Grant Shapps were onboard the 150-metre vessel to witness the test.
Defence officials stressed, however, that Britain’s nuclear deterrent remains ‘safe, secure and effective’.
The submarine crew fired off the Trident II missile, which was packed with dummy warheads, into the air using compressed gas in the test tubes.
However according to The Sun, which first reported the story, the weapon’s first-stage boosters did not ignite and ended up in the seabed off Port Canaveral.
‘It left the submarine but it just went plop, right next to them,’ a source told the tabloid.
It’s understood that if the same exercise was carried out for a real mission, it would have been successful.
Ministers are expected to make a statement on the incident to the House of Commons today, according to Wednesday’s order paper.
The Defence Secretary will want to reassure Parliament that this test has no impact on the effectiveness of the UK’s deterrent operations.’
The HMS Vanguard is one of four of the so-called Vanguard-class nuclear submarines that have been patrolling the seas since 1994.
Britain has launched a dozen Trident II missiles. But in 2016, one missile fired from HMS Vengeance veered off course due to a problem with the ‘data acquisition system’ and automatically self-destructed.
What is a Trident missile? A Trident missile is a strategic nuclear weapon launched out of a submarine – it’s effectively the UK’s last resort against enemy attacks.
Towering at 44 feet and weighing 58,500kg, each ballistic missile can strike targets up to 4,000 miles away (accurate to within 90 metres) as they rip through the air at about 13,000 miles an hour.
They cost nearly £17,000,000 to make.
The standard model used since the 1990s, the Trident II D5, will likely be the go-to nuclear warhead for US and British navies for the next decade.
Who makes Trident missiles? Lockheed Martin is the major American defence contractor that makes the missiles.
How powerful is a Trident missile? A Trident submarine carries enough nuclear firepower that it could cause more than 10,000,000 civilian casualties, packed with about 40 nuclear warheads rammed into eight missiles.
That’s a lot of firepower, according to experts. One sub’s worth of nuclear arms alone is greater than the explosive power of bombs dropped in World War II – including the two atomic bombs that shattered Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan.
To give you an idea, there are about 100,000 tonnes (100 kilotonnes or 100kt) of TNT in a single Trident nuclear warhead.
The nuclear bomb that devastated Hiroshima had 15kt – by modern-day standards, that’s considered a ‘low-yield’ weapon.
According to NukeMap, if a 100kT Trident missile landed right on the Houses of Parliament, everything within a 1,390 foot radius would be vaporised. Most of Westminster would be flooded with cancer-inducing radiation.
Central London would be flattened by the miles-wide ‘moderate’ blast. ‘Injuries are universal, fatalities are widespread’, the website says.
The effects of the blast would stretch roughly nearly six miles outwards, shattering windows in areas as far out as Tooting, Lewisham and Hackney.
Who tests Trident missiles? For the most part, the US Navy carries out any practice launches of the weapons.
Approximately 191 test runs have been successful since design completion in 1989, according to Lockheed Martin in September, making it ‘the most reliable test record for a large ballistic missile’.
Britain only conducts practice missile launches every three to five years due to – you guessed it money worries.
Both countries on either side of the Atlantic have two good reasons to test a missile already well-known for doing its job well: to double-check that the submarine can fire it and remind potential foes that they have nuclear arms to hand.
Have launches failed in the past like this one? Not really. One expert told the BBC in 2017 that there have been fewer than 10 failures in the weapon’s history – at least those that have been made public.
Nigeria’s Super Eagles strikers Victor Osimhen and Victor Boniface have been ranked above Cristiano Ronaldo and Robert Lewandowski in the world's latest top 10 best strikers. Norwegian and Manchester City superstar Erling Haaland leads the list, followed by England skipper Harry Kane. The third slot went to Kylian Mbappe. Are there other great African football players that were not ranked but deserve recognition?
1. Erling Halaand 2. Harry Kane 3. Kylian Mbappe 4. Victor Osimhen(NIGERIAN) 5. Lauaro Martinez 6. Heung Ming Song 7. Victor Boniface(NIGERIAN) 8. Julian Alvarez 9. Cristiano Ronaldo 10. Robert Lewandoski.
Reprimanding ambassador at Yad Vashem, foreign minister says president will have to apologize before being welcomed to Israel
Foreign Minister Israel Katz declared Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva persona non grata on Monday over his comparison of Israel’s war against Hamas to the Holocaust.
Standing at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem, Katz, the son of Holocaust survivors, told Brazil’s Ambassador Federico Mayer that Israel “will not forget and we will not forgive.”
“In my name, and in the name of all Israeli citizens,” said Katz, “tell President Lula that he is persona non grata in Israel until he retracts his statements.”
I brought you to a place that testifies more than anything else to what the Nazis and Hitler did to the Jews, including members of my family,” he continued. “The comparison between Israel’s just war against Hamas and the atrocities of Hitler and the Nazis is a disgrace and a severe antisemitic attack.”
Unusually for a diplomatic reprimand, the two also toured Yad Vashem together, and Katz showed Mayer the names of his grandparents who were killed in the Holocaust in the Book of Names.
Lula went on to assert that “what is happening in the Gaza Strip with the Palestinian people hasn’t happened at any other moment in history” except one: “When Hitler decided to kill the Jews.”
Israel is fighting a heavily armed terror group in the enclave in response to the deadliest attack on its population in its history. It says civilian casualties are the result of combatants operating from behind the cover of innocents, and that it makes efforts to minimize the deaths of Gazan civilians, including through evacuations of combat zones.
Hamas’s unverified figures, which do not distinguish between combatants and civilians, point to around 29,000 Gazans killed in the war, or slightly over 1% of the Strip’s total estimated population. Israel says at least 10,000 of those were terror operatives, and that the war would end if Hamas were to release the Israeli hostages it took during its October 7 onslaught, and surrender.
The words of the President of Brazil are shameful and alarming,” he said in a statement. “This is a trivialization of the Holocaust and an attempt to harm the Jewish people and Israel’s right to defend itself.”
“Israel is fighting for its defense and securing its future until complete victory and it does so while upholding international law,” he continued.
Dani Dayan, the chairman of Yad Vashem, said the comments represented blatant antisemitism and were “an outrageous combination of hatred and ignorance.”
“Comparing a country fighting against a murderous terror organization to the actions of the Nazis in the Holocaust is worthy of all condemnation,” he added. “It is sad that the president of Brazil has stooped to such a level of extreme distortion of the Holocaust.”
Major Jewish organizations in Brazil also condemned Lula’s statements.
The Jewish state’s war with Hamas broke out on October 7, when the organization’s terrorists launched an unprecedented attack on Israel’s south, murdering some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapping 253 amid acts of brutality including sexual violence.
It is believed that 134 hostages are being held in Gaza not all of them alive — after 105 civilians were released from Hamas captivity during a weeklong truce in late November, and four hostages were released prior to that. Three hostages have been rescued by troops alive, and the bodies of 11 hostages have also been recovered, including three mistakenly killed by the military. The number of hostages includes two civilians and two fallen soldiers who have been held by Hamas for nearly a decade.
Israel declared war on Hamas with the proclaimed objectives of dismantling the terrorist organization and getting the hostages back.
Opposition Leader Yair Lapid said Lula’s comments “show ignorance and antisemitism” and that Israel was “broken-hearted and shocked by the massacre of its citizens” on October 7.
“I wonder what Lula would have said if a terrorist organization had harmed Brazil that way,” he added. “Shame.”
Last month, the International Court of Justice held a hearing in the Hague after South Africa filed an application accusing Israel of genocide in Gaza and demanded the court order Israel to stop the fighting.
The case is expected to last years. The court refused South Africa’s request to take immediate measures to order Israel to halt its campaign, but said there was “plausibility” to Pretoria’s claim that Israel was in breach of certain elements of the Genocide Convention amid the war and said Jerusalem must make efforts to prevent harm to civilians.
Israel’s former Supreme Court president Aharon Barak, who served on the panel as Israel’s representative, argued that the ruling was based on “scant evidence.”
More than 400 people were detained in Russia while paying tribute to opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who died at a remote Arctic penal colony, a prominent rights group reported.
The sudden death of Navalny, 47, was a crushing blow to many Russians, who had pinned their hopes for the future on President Vladimir Putin's fiercest foe. Navalny remained vocal in his unrelenting criticism of the Kremlin even after surviving a nerve agent poisoning and receiving multiple prison terms.
The news reverberated across the globe, and hundreds of people in dozens of Russian cities streamed to ad-hoc memorials and monuments to victims of political repressions with flowers and candles on Friday and Saturday to pay a tribute to the politician. In more than a dozen cities, police detained 401 people by Saturday night, according to the OVD-Info rights group that tracks pol itical arrests and provides legal aid.
More than 200 arrests were made in St. Petersburg, Russia's second largest city, the group said. Among those detained there was Grigory Mikhnov-Voitenko, a priest of the Apostolic Orthodox Church a religious group independent of the Russian Orthodox Church who announced plans on social media to hold a memorial service for Navalny and was arrested on Saturday morning outside his home. He was charged with organising a rally and placed in a holding cell in a police precinct, but was later hospitalised with a stroke, OVD-Info reported.
Courts in St. Petersburg have ordered 42 of those detained on Friday to serve from one to six days in jail, while nine others were fined, court officials said late on Saturday. In Moscow, at least six people were ordered to serve 15 days in jail, according to OVD-Info. One person was also jailed in the southern city of Krasnodar and two more in the city of Bryansk, the group said.
The news of Navalny's death came a month before a presidential election in Russia that is widely expected to give President Vladimir Putin another six years in power. Questions about the cause of death lingered on Sunday, and it remained unclear when the authorities would release his body to his family.
Navalny's team said Saturday that the politician was "murdered" and accused the authorities of deliberately stalling the release of the body, with Navalny's mother and lawyers getting contradicting information from various institutions where they went in their quest to retrieve the body. "They're driving us around in circles and covering their tracks," Navalny's spokeswoman, Kira Yarmysh, said on Saturday.
Everything there is covered with cameras in the colony. Every step he took was filmed from all angles all these years. Each employee has a video recorder. In two days, there has been not a single video leaked or published. There is no room for uncertainty here," Navalny's closest ally and strategist Leonid Volkov said on Sunday.
A note handed to Navalny's mother stated that he died at 2.17pm on Friday, according to Yarmysh. Prison officials told his mother when she arrived at the penal colony Saturday that her son had perished from "sudden death syndrome," Ivan Zhdanov, the director of Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation, wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter.
Russia's Federal Penitentiary Service reported that Navalny felt sick after a walk Friday and became unconscious at the penal colony in the town of Kharp, in the Yamalo-Nenets region about 1900 kilometres northeast of Moscow. An ambulance arrived, but he couldn't be revived, the service said, adding that the cause of death is still "being established"
Navalny had been jailed since January 2021, when he returned to Moscow after recuperating in Germany from nerve agent poisoning he blamed on the Kremlin. He has received three prison terms since his arrest, on a number of charges he has rejected as politically motivated.
After the last verdict that handed him a 19-year term, Navalny said he understood he was "serving a life sentence, which is measured by the length of my life or the length of life of this regime".
Hours after Navalny's death was reported, his wife, Yulia Navalnaya, made a dramatic appearance at the Munich Security Conference.
She said she was unsure if she could believe the news from official Russian sources, "but if this is true, I want Putin and everyone around Putin, Putin's friends, his government to know that they will bear responsibility for what they did to our country, to my family and to my husband
Israeli special forces raided Nasser Hospital in Gaza, the largest functioning hospital in the enclave, after laying siege to the facility for days.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it had detained a number of suspects in Thursday’s raid, which it said was led by intelligence gathered in part from released hostages.
Israel said it believed the bodies of dead hostages were being held inside the hospital. Hamas denied the claims, saying the group had “no business” at the hospital
Israeli forces shelled the hospital early Thursday, killing and injuring an “undetermined number of people,” according to Doctors Without Borders, also known as Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF). Since the attack, one of their colleagues remains unaccounted for.
MSF staff were forced to flee the hospital through a checkpoint set up by the Israeli military, the agency said, adding that one employee “was detained” there.
The news came after doctors and medical officials in southern Gaza said Israeli snipers had shot dead a number of people as they tried to flee the Nasser hospital. An eyewitness to the shootings, who is a trauma surgeon at the hospital, said at least two people were killed by snipers on Tuesday, with more shot and injured.
Commenting on Thursday’s raid, Israeli Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said, “Hamas terrorists are likely hiding behind injured civilians inside Nasser hospital right now.” One former hostage told CNN last month that she was held at Nasser Hospital – a claim CNN could not independently verify, and which Hamas denied.
Israeli military bulldozers dug up the mass graves inside the complex walls, Dr. Al-Qidra, spokesperson for the Ministry of Health, said earlier. On Thursday, the forces “stormed the maternity building and conducted a search operation inside,” he added.
CNN has asked the IDF for its response to those allegations on Thursday. The IDF has not so far responded to any allegations levied by the Ministry.
Later, Israeli forces forced hospital management staff to house nearly 200 patients, 95 medical workers, 11 of their families, and 165 companions and displaced people “under harsh and terrifying conditions without food, without infant formula, and with severe water shortages,” according to Dr. Al-Qidra.
Displaced patients and medical staff ‘are afraid’ The raid comes after hundreds of civilians were forced by Israeli forces to leave the hospital, which they had been using as a shelter. Video filmed on Tuesday showed columns of smoke at its perimeter, an Israeli bulldozer destroying a hospital perimeter wall, and an armored vehicle entering the hospital grounds. The sound of gunfire can be heard throughout.
At least eight people trying to escape along the route came under gunfire on Tuesday, the trauma surgeon at the hospital, who asked not to be named for security reasons, told CNN. Among those injured, according to the surgeon, was a 16-year-old boy shot with four bullets at the hospital gate.
In a series of voice notes, the surgeon said medical teams at the hospital have been under intense bombardment for at least three days. His testimony was shared with CNN by his colleague.
Israel has repeatedly said that its military forces do not target civilians.
In a video seen by CNN, men, women and young children carrying rucksacks frantically gather their belongings before evacuating the hospital. The sound of Israeli drones overhead can also be heard. Israeli forces “bombed” a warehouse containing medical supplies, the surgeon said Wednesday.
Early Thursday, after the shelling, the surgeon said he cannot leave Nasser because there are patients “who need care.” But he said those trapped are “afraid.”
“We could not imagine that at any time the Israeli army would bomb the hospital directly, and they would kill patients and medical personnel,” said the surgeon. Alongside his colleagues, he tried “to clarify (with the Israeli army) that we are doctors and this is a hospital facility that provides … health to patients.”
The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza also said Israeli sniper fire had killed civilians on Tuesday and said a further seven people were shot dead by Israeli snipers on Monday.
Early in the war, the Israeli military designated Khan Younis as a safer zone and told residents from northern Gaza to seek shelter there. But as the IDF pushed its ground offensive south, the city became its next focus.
The IDF says Khan Younis is a Hamas stronghold, and that a tunnel network underneath civilian buildings in the city was likely where Hamas planned the October 7 attacks, in which more than 1,200 people were killed – the deadliest such attacks in Israel’s history.
The destruction of the city of Khan Younis due to Israel’s military campaign is widespread, with many buildings completely destroyed and the rubble bulldozed away, CNN witnessed.
In the west of the city, where the hospital is located, the Israeli military said it was targeting Hamas outposts, infrastructure, and command and control centers.
Hamas has denied hiding in hospitals and other civilian structures and CNN cannot independently verify either claim.
Nigerians, especially those in the urban city of Lagos, are currently experiencing a heat wave.
Heat waves are abnormally hot weather with or without high humidity.
1. Overpopulation and building construction
As Nigeria's population grows, more vegetation is cleared for people to build houses and roads. In 2022, Statistic reports that roughly 15.4 million people lived in Lagos, Nigeria, making it the largest city in Africa
Heat waves are becoming more common as the number of concrete buildings, tarred roads, and heat-emitting cars increases. Burning fossil fuels from automobiles and factories traps carbon dioxide gas, changing the atmospheric temperature and producing heat waves.
2. Climate change
Climate change has led global temperatures to rise, primarily due to greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels. Heatwaves ravaged several regions of the world in 2023, making it the warmest year on record, according to a report by the EU-funded Copernicus Climate Change Service, which indicates that global average temperatures were 1.43 degrees Celsius from January to October.
According to the Nigerian Meteorological Agency, the current high temperatures in the country will last for some time.
NiMET announced this in a meteorological and climate update published on its official X page. In the message, the organisation also explained the weather's effects and advised the public on how to handle the situation.
According to them, air temperatures will hit 41°C in the north and 39°C in the south, with model projections indicating temperatures will remain high in the coming days.
The implications of this hot weather include fainting, chickenpox, measles, heat rash, and even death. In 2002, 50 people died in Maiduguri from excessive heat.
Avoid excessive physical activity during high heat hours (if possible stay indoors between 12:00 noon and 4:00 pm).
They advised the people to drink plenty of water. To avoid being exposed to excessive heat, seek shade, take regular showers, use fans. Also, wear light, breathable clothing.
The Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2024 include 1,906 universities across 108 countries and regions.
The table is based on our new WUR 3.0 methodology, which includes 18 carefully calibrated performance indicators that measure an institution’s performance across five areas: teaching, research environment, research quality, industry, and international outlook.
This year’s ranking analysed more than 134 million citations across 16.5 million research publications and included survey responses from 68,402 scholars globally. Overall, we collected 411,789 datapoints from more than 2,673 institutions that submitted data.
Trusted worldwide by students, teachers, governments and industry experts, the 2024 league table reveals how the global higher education landscape is shifting.
View the World University Rankings 2024 methodology
The University of Oxford tops the ranking for the eighth year in a row, but others in the top five have seen shifts in their ranks. Stanford University moves up to second place, pushing Harvard University down to fourth.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) climbs up two places to third this year. The University of Cambridge slips to fifth place, after being in joint third place last year.
The highest new entry is Italy’s Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, ranked in the 301-350 bracket. However, the majority of the institutions joining the ranking for the first time this year are in Asia.
The US is the most-represented country overall, with 169 institutions, and also the most-represented in the top 200 (56). With 91 institutions, India is now the fourth most-represented nation, overtaking China (86).
Four countries enter the ranking for the first time – all of them in Europe. The addition of Kosovo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, North Macedonia and Armenia is in contrast to last year’s trend when all the new entrants were from Africa.
Stanford University leads the teaching pillar, while the universities of Oxford and Cambridge come top for research environment. The research quality pillar, which is the newly renamed citations pillar, sees MIT in first place.
The University of Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates scores highest in international outlook, while 28 institutions receive a top score of 100 for the industry pillar.
In addition to the 1,904 ranked institutions, a further 769 universities are listed with “reporter” status, meaning that they provided data but did not meet our eligibility criteria to receive a rank, and agreed to be displayed as a reporter in the final table.
Here are the top 100
1 University of Oxford United Kingdom
2 Stanford University United States
3 Massachusetts Institute of Technology United States
4 Harvard University United States
5 University of Cambridge United Kingdom
6 Princeton University United States
7 California Institute of Technology United States
8 Imperial College London United Kingdom
9 University of California, Berkeley United States
10 Yale University United States
11 ETH Zurich Switzerland
12 Tsinghua University China
13 The University of Chicago United States
14 Peking University China
15 Johns Hopkins University United States
16 University of Pennsylvania United States
17 Columbia University United States
18 University of California, Los Angeles United States
France’s decision comes on the back of similar sanctions by the US and the UK.
France has announced sanctions against 28 Israeli settlers whom it accused of committing human rights abuses against Palestinian civilians in the occupied West Bank.
The 28 individuals would be banned from entering France, the Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs said on Tuesday.
“These measures come as violence perpetrated by settlers against the Palestinian population has increased in recent months. France reaffirms its firm condemnation of this unacceptable violence,” the ministry said in a statement.
On Monday, the French, Polish and German foreign ministers issued a joint statement, saying violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank was unacceptable and “shall be sanctioned”.
France said it would also seek sanctions at the European level
“Colonisation is illegal under international law and must stop,” the ministry said.
“Its continuation is incompatible with the creation of a viable Palestinian state, which is the only solution so that Israelis and Palestinians can live, side by side, in peace and security.”
France’s decision comes on the back of similar sanctions by the United States and the United Kingdom, which have expressed concerns about settler violence and the rise of attacks on Palestinians.
On Monday, British Foreign Secretary David Cameron announced the sanctions on four Israeli nationals accused of attacking Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.
“Extremist Israeli settlers are threatening Palestinians, often at gunpoint, and forcing them off land that is rightfully theirs,” Cameron said.
This behaviour is illegal and unacceptable. Israel must also take stronger action and put a stop to settler violence. Too often, we see commitments made and undertakings given, but not followed through.”
The United Nations has recorded more than 516 settler attacks against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank since October 7, when Israel launched an assault on Gaza after the Palestinian group Hamas carried out attacks on southern Israel.
At least 1,139 people were killed in the Hamas attack, according to an Al Jazeera tally based on official Israeli figures.
At least 28,473 people have been killed in Israel’s intense bombardments and ground offensive in Gaza, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health.
Raids by Israeli soldiers and settlers on West Bank towns and villages have increased since the outbreak of the war on Gaza, killing hundreds of Palestinians.
Settler attacks often take place with Israeli security forces standing by or joining in.
White House blasts the former president’s comments as “appalling and unhinged.”
Former U.S. President Donald Trump on Saturday said he would "encourage" Russia to attack any NATO member country that didn’t meet its financial obligations to the defense alliance, in remarks that the White House repudiated as "appalling and unhinged."
There have been growing worries in Europe over the reliability of the decades-old U.S. commitment to European security — highlighted by the partisan gridlock in Washington over a crucial aid package to U.S. ally Ukraine — but Trump's words are forcing Europeans to seriously consider an end to the transatlantic alliance.
"These are the words of a serious candidate for president so they should be treated seriously," Polish Deputy Foreign Minister Paweł Zalewski told POLITICO. "If we do that, then it means a change to the logic of the U.S. presence in NATO. It is very worrying. He correctly calls on member countries to spend more on defense, but he also calls on Russia to attack. This is completely incomprehensible.
Speaking at a campaign rally in South Carolina, Trump said that while president he told NATO leaders that he would “encourage [Russia] to do whatever the hell they want” to alliance members that are "delinquent" in meeting the group’s spending targets.
“One of the presidents of a big country stood up and said, ‘Well, sir, if we don’t pay and we’re attacked by Russia, will you protect us?'” Trump recalled during the rally. “I said, ‘You didn’t pay. You’re delinquent.’ He said, ‘Yes, let’s say that happened.’ No, I would not protect you. In fact, I would encourage them to do whatever the hell they want.”
The remarks seem to suggest that Trump, the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination, might not abide by NATO’s collective-defense clause for members that haven't paid enough.
Trump's comments were roundly criticized by officials across Europe.
"Any suggestion that allies will not defend each other undermines all of our security, including that of the U.S., and puts American and European soldiers at increased risk," NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said. "I expect the U.S. to remain a strong and devoted ally of NATO, whoever wins the presidential election."
European Council President Charles Michel called Trump's remarks "reckless" and said they "serve only Putin’s interest." Germany's foreign ministry said: "‘One for all and all for one’ — This NATO creed keeps more than 950 million people safe."
The White House also blasted the comments as endangering security and stability. “Encouraging invasions of our closest allies by murderous regimes is appalling and unhinged and it endangers American national security, global stability, and our economy at home,” White House spokesperson Andrew Bates said in a statement.
A POLITICO report last month revealed that Trump had told European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in 2020 that the U.S. wouldn’t come to Europe’s defense if it was attacked. Trump alleged NATO countries subsequently spent “billions and billions” of dollars on their defenses in the wake of his threat — a claim that has not been substantiated.
Trump's remarks come as the Biden administration and Republicans in the U.S. Congress remain at odds over a $95.3 billion military aid package, $60 billion of which is for Ukraine in its defense against Russia's invasion.
Stoltenberg on Saturday warned about Russian President Vladimir Putin's belligerence and its implications for the Continent. "If Putin wins in Ukraine, there is no guarantee that Russian aggression will not spread to other countries," Stoltenberg said in an interview with German newspaper Welt Am Sonntag.
"We have to prepare ourselves for a confrontation that could last decades," Stoltenberg said.
Trump's comments also show a misunderstanding of how NATO functions, There is no centralized budget that countries pay into. Rather, each country pays for its own defense; with an alliance-wide commitment to spend at least 2 percent of GDP by this year.
You must be mad and daft to think a man will leave his sweet wife and kids based in Yankee to settle with local fowl in ogbomoso with 4 children like you.
Amotolongbo: Sincerely, any woman who left her home on the ground of spousal fidelity has no moral ground to date or get married to another married man.
exactly, she's planning to marry another married man that is cheating on his wife
Foreign Affairs › Re: UK Nuclear Missile Test Fails Again After Trident Weapon Belly Flops Into Ocean by Fineman2(op): 2:53pm On Feb 21, 2024
