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Boosting NATO's defence capabilities means going beyond 3% target, says Rutte
The 32 NATO allies will likely decide to increase the defence spending benchmark from the current 2% of GDP during a summit in The Hague in June.
NATO member states will have to find ways to increase joint purchases and use existing infrastructure, or face a rise in defence spending of up to 3.7%. The transatlantic military alliance’s secretary general, Mark Rutte, told the European Parliament on Monday.
“If you do joint buying and use the NSPA (NATO Support and Procurement Agency) and everything else within NATO and the EU, then you can deduct joint buying, you can deduct innovation (from the overall 3.7% estimate),” Rutte told MEPs in Brussels.
For example, the former Dutch prime minister cited the Ukrainians, who are experimenting with new, cheaper radar systems to detect enemy missiles, as an example of how some overall defence costs could be reduced.
NATO’s 32 allies have pledged to meet the target of spending 2% of their GDP on defence, but so far, only 23 NATO members meet the threshold. Rutte has already stated that 2% will not be sufficient to ensure the alliance’s security in five years’ time.
“To be honest, 2% is not nearly enough to stay safe in the years to come. As parliamentarians, you know well that security does not come for free,” Rutte told MEPs in Brussels.
The head of the military alliance avoided referring to the 5% target that US President-elect Donald Trump has repeatedly called for but stressed that, based on the capability requirements emerging from NATO’s internal planning process, the new target will have to be above 3%.
US President-elect Donald Trump reiterated last week that members of the military alliance should spend 5% of gross domestic product on defence – and some EU countries, such as Germany, have already rejected the call as too expensive.
“That would only be possible with massive tax increases or massive cuts to many things that are important to us,” German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said at an election rally in the German city of Bielefeld earlier on Monday.
Last December, Rutte called on EU and Canadian citizens to make sacrifices, such as cuts to their pensions, health, and security systems, in order to boost defence spending and ensure long-term security in Europe. However, the 5% target would require hundreds of billions of dollars in additional funding, and some of the bloc’s largest economies, such as Spain, Belgium, and Italy, do not even meet the 2% target.
NATO allies are likely to decide on the new defence spending target at a summit in The Hague in June, driven by Trump’s calls for increased defence spending and fears that Russia could attack an EU member state.
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Someone was playing possum — or stuffed animal.
Among plush kangaroos, dingoes and Tasmanian devils ready to be bought by parents of antsy children, a live brushtail possum waited in a gift shop at an Australian airport this week.
The wild animal was first noticed by a shopper in the store on Wednesday, retail manager Liam Bloomfield of Hobart Airport in the state of Tasmania said.
“A passenger reported it to …. one of the staff members on shift who couldn’t quite believe what she was hearing,” Bloomfield told The Associated Press. “She then called the (airport) management and said we’ve got a possum in the store.”
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A live Australian brushtail possum sits on the display shelf at a terminal shop at Hobart Airport in Hobart, Australia, on Wednesday. (Melissa Oddie via AP)
Staff at the airport were able to remove the animal without harming it.
“I’m imaging it saw some of the plush animals that were for sale on the shelf and it decided to make its home with those,” Bloomfield joked of why the possum was hiding with the stuffed toys. “It wanted to blend in.”
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The arrivals area at Hobart Airport in Australia. (Steve Bell/Getty Images)
“Can you spot the imposter?” the airport wrote in a Facebook post Thursday that showed the possum curled up in a cubby with its stuffed counterparts.
“This cheeky lost possum found a clever hiding place among the Aussie plushies in our retail store,” the airport continued. “Luckily it was safely relocated out of the terminal area and the space was cleaned.”
Passengers boarding a plane at Hobart Airport in Australia. (William West/AFP via Getty Images)
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Bloomfield said the possum not only found a way into the airport but also their hearts.
“We’ll have a little shrine to the possum,” he revealed, according to The Independent. “There will be a nice little photo; once it gets a name, we will put a nice little post in front of the store to make sure it’s remembered.”
Published on •Updated
From a start-up founded in Malaga in 2015 with a few thousand euros, Ly Company has become one of Europe’s fastest-growing multinationals, and a global leader in the sustainable water packaging sector.
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With ten factories located across Europe, Latin America and the Middle East, Ly Company produces about 10 million bottles of water in cardboard packaging per month.
Unlike most competitors, Ly Company doesn’t owe its success to mass retail firms.
It sells personalised products to more than 3,000 brands, ranging from airlines and hotel chains to private transport companies and major events organisers. “There is a lot of water in sectors where no one thinks it is consumed”, notes Rodríguez. “An airline, for example, can consume 50 million bottles per year.”
The company is now targeting China and, above all, the United States.
Its positioning is also based on sustainability: factories powered by green energy, cardboard from responsibly managed forest, bioplastic made from sugar cane and water guaranteed to be microplastics-free. Part of the profits fund his “Agua y Vida” Foundation, which is involved in environmental and humanitarian projects.
“I’ve gone through some very difficult times. Now that I’m doing well, I want to give something back to society”, explains Curro Rodríguez.
Behind this rise lies a chaotic journey. While working as a first-responder in emergency medical services for twenty years, he was simultaneously launching businesses, sometimes risky ones. Two successive bankruptcies saw him resort to food aid and doing odd jobs for a while, before he reinvented himself.
“My passion is bringing projects to life”, explains Curro Rodríguez, who has founded a total of 39 companies, 23 of which are currently active within his holding company. “When things are done out of emotion, and not for money, they create value. The money follows. But you have to look for value first”, he concludes, a big smile on his face.
new video loaded: What Tunnel Entrances Reveal About a Key Iranian Nuclear Site
transcript
transcript
What Tunnel Entrances Reveal About a Key Iranian Nuclear Site
Satellite images show how Iran has tried to bolster its defenses at parts of the Isfahan nuclear facility.
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What you’re seeing here are buried tunnel entrances at a nuclear facility in Iran. It’s one of the most important sites in the country for U.S. and Israeli forces. U.N. inspectors think that roughly half of Iran’s highly enriched uranium is buried here. And these three entrances are the only known ways to access it. If you think about nuclear sites in Iran, three main sites come to mind. They’re pretty well known: Fordo, Natanz and Isfahan. Natanz and Fordo, They were largely taken out in U.S. strikes last year. So I’ve been focusing on Isfahan. The uranium here is still relatively accessible. It’s actually a pretty large complex. This area here was very important for uranium processing, but it was heavily hit by the U.S. and Israel last June. If you go a little bit further north, that is underground and that requires tunnels to enter. In a terrain view, it gets quite interesting. There are three roads that lead to these tunnel entrances, and these tunnel entrances have become very important, both last year, but also right now. They lead to the underground facility where U.N. inspectors say uranium is stored and a new enrichment site could be located. If this falls into the wrong hands, that would be a problem in the long term. Here’s a great example of how very recent satellite imagery gives us new insights. This is from late January of this year, and what you see here is a line of trucks. And they’re filled with soil, and they’re lining up to go to some of these tunnel entrances. If you look a little bit closer here, you see another one of these trucks that’s just unloading some of the soil and some earthmoving equipment. Iran in preparation for any possible attacks at that point. They try to protect this facility a little bit more. So this is Jan. 29. And if you just look a few days later, we go to Feb. 2. This is the completely buried tunnel entrance, completely covered in soil to protect from any attack. And this is how it still looks in mid-March. The U.S. and Israel have basically two options here: The first one is to heavily bombard the entrances to this underground complex that would block any access, at least in the near future. They haven’t done that yet. So that’s very, very interesting — a little bit surprising. And it might point towards a second option: That would be to go in with ground forces and to extract the uranium. But that would require a really large amount of troops to secure the vast area, bringing in earthmoving equipment to clear the tunnels and a lot of time in hostile territory.
By Christoph Koettl and Alexander Cardia
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