Why Erdogan is still blocking Sweden's NATO bid

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Why Erdogan of Turkey is still blocking Sweden's NATO bid

Turkey's president says NATO should NOT bet on him approving Swedish membership of the military alliance before July's summit. Recep Tayyip Erdogan said his country's attitude to Sweden's accession was "not positive," as Sweden hadn't yet fully addressed his security concerns. Turkey accuses Sweden of being too lenient toward militant Kurdish groups. His comments come as officials from NATO, Sweden, Finland and Ankara meet in Ankara to address Turkey's concerns. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg says some progress has been made. 

At the present time, NATO has 31 member countries. These countries, called NATO Allies, are sovereign states that come together through NATO to discuss political and security issues and make collective decisions by consensus.

NATO was created by 12 countries from Europe and North America on 4 April 1949.

Since then, 19 more countries have joined NATO through nine rounds of enlargement (in 1952, 1955, 1982, 1999, 2004, 2009, 2017, 2020 and 2023).

Article 10 of the North Atlantic Treaty sets out how countries can join the Alliance. It states that membership is open to any "European State in a position to further the principles of this Treaty and to contribute to the security of the North Atlantic area".

Any decision to invite a country to join the Alliance is taken by the North Atlantic Council, NATO's principal political decision-making body, on the basis of consensus among all Allies.

Alphabetical list of NATO member countries:

Albania 2009

Belgium 1949

Bulgaria 2004

Canada 1949

Croatia 2009

Czechia 1999

Denmark 1949

Estonia 2004

Finland 2023

France 1949

Germany 1955

Greece 1952

Hungary 1999

Iceland 1949

Italy 1949

Latvia 2004

Lithuania 2004

Luxembourg 1949

Montenegro 2017

Netherlands 1949

North Macedonia 2020

Norway 1949

Poland 1999

Portugal 1949

Romania 2004

Slovakia 2004

Slovenia 2004

Spain 1982

Türkiye 1952

United Kingdom 1949

United States of North America 1949

Greece launches massive search for survivors of shipwreck that killed at least 79 migrants

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The death toll from a capsized fishing boat carrying migrants off the coast of southern Greece has risen to 79, the Greek coast guard has announced.

A large-scale search and rescue operation was underway on Wednesday morning after the boat, which is believed to have been transporting up to 400 people from near the Libyan port of Tobruk to Italy, capsized during the night in strong winds some 75 kilometers (46 miles) southwest of Greece's southern Peloponnese region.

So far, 104 people have been confirmed rescued and taken to the Greek town of Kalamata. They received dry clothes and medical attention in shelters set up by ambulance services and the United Nations Refugee Agency.

NATO ministers meet as Ukraine embarks on its counteroffensive

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NATO defense ministers are meeting in Brussels to talk about Ukraine, as Kyiv embarks on its counteroffensive against Russia's invasion. During the two-day event, ministers will also discuss efforts to step up their countries' own military supplies. NATO secretary general Jens Stoltenberg say he's expecting commitments on defence production.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO, French: Organisation du traité de l'Atlantique nord, OTAN), also called the North Atlantic Alliance, is an intergovernmental military alliance between 31 member states - 29 European and two North American.

Also see: Defence expenditure of NATO countries (2014-2022)

https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/news_212891.htm

See the full document in PDF or see the tables in Excel format

NATO certainly collects defence expenditure data from Allies and publishes it on a regular basis. Each Ally’s Ministry of Defence reports current and estimated future defence expenditure according to an agreed definition of defence expenditure. The amounts represent payments by a national government actually made, or to be made, during the course of the fiscal year to meet the needs of its armed forces, those of Allies or of the Alliance.

Cyclone Biparjoy: India and Pakistan on alert before landfall

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The coastal regions of India and Pakistan are on high alert as Cyclone Biparjoy is expected to make landfall by Thursday evening.

The Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) said that the cyclone is moving at a speed of 145 kilometers per hour (90 miles per hour) and is projected to make landfall near Jakhau port in the Kutch district of Gujarat on Thursday.

Evacuation drives, disaster preparedness, closing of ports, suspension of fishing activities and diversion and cancellation of flights and trains have been ongoing in both nations.

The so-called Extremely Severe Cyclonic Storm Biparjoy is a long-lived, powerful tropical cyclone that formed over the east-central Arabian Sea and made landfall near the India-Pakistan border. The third depression and the second cyclonic storm of the 2023 North Indian Ocean cyclone season, Biparjoy originated from a depression that was first noted by the India Meteorological Department (IMD) on 6 June, before intensifying into a cyclonic storm. The cyclone steadily weakened due to deep flaring convection. Biparjoy accelerated northeastward, strengthening to a Category 3-equivalent tropical cyclone and to a extremely severe cyclonic storm.

Ukraine: How important the German Gepard air defense system really is

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Ukraine continues its counteroffensive against Russian positions. Fighting appears to be concentrated in the region of Zaporizhzhia as well as further north around the town of Bakhmut - with some Ukrainian officials claiming steady gains. At the same time, Ukraine says renewed Russian air strikes have hit civilian targets in several Ukrainian cities. 

Officials say there was a drone attack on the Black Sea hub of Odesa on Thursday morning and Russian missiles targeted the heart of Kherson, damaging an office building there. While the mayor of the central city of Kryvyi Rih reports a drone attack hit two industrial buildings. 

Ukraine's upgraded air defense systems are proving essential as Russia has stepped up its aerial bombardment of critical infrastructure and civilian targets. But air defence is extremely expensive and the supply of ammunition is not endless. One of the pieces of military hardware that Ukraine has received from Western allies is the Gepard, or Cheetah air defense system. They are designed to destroy low-flying targets, and are much cheaper to operate than other air defense systems like the USA-made Patriot. Our correspondent Sonia Phalnikar took a closer look at some Gepards in action on the battlefield. 

Some History:

Ukraine ( Ukrainian: Україна ) is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the second-largest European country after Russia, which it borders to the east and northeast. Ukraine is also bordered by Belarus to the north; by Poland, Slovakia, and Hungary to the west; and by Romania and Moldova to the southwest; with a coastline along the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov to the south and southeast. Kyiv city is the nation's capital and largest city, followed by Dnipro, Kharkiv, and Odesa. Ukraine's official language is Ukrainian; Russian is also widely spoken, especially in the east and south.

How AI Will Change The Job Market

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How AI Will Change The Job Market: Mark Zandi

The biggest factors contributing to companies' bottom lines right now are high interest rates and artificial intelligence says Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Analytics. Artificial intelligence presents both challenges and opportunities for workers and employees, according to Zandi. 

"If you're able to harness the power of artificial intelligence in your work, you're more productive. You should be able to command a higher wage and benefit from the fact that AI is lifting everyone's productivity for businesses," said Zandi.

He also said AI will be implemented differently across various sectors of the economy.

In this episode of The Bottom Line, he discusses key risks for companies including climate change, inflation and whether the U.S. will remain the world's leading economy.

Chapters: 

00:00 - Introduction 

00:17 - Artificial Intelligence

02:38 - Interest Rates 

03:11 - Inflation

04:15 - Recession 

06:04 - Climate Change

07:33 - Will the USA remain on top? 

Produced, Shot and Edited by: Mark Licea

Additional Reporting by: Lindsey Jacobson

Supervising Producer: Lindsey Jacobson

So-called Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence-perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information - demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by humans or by other animals. Example tasks in which this is done include speech recognition, computer vision, translation between (natural) languages, as well as other mappings of inputs.

AI applications include advanced web search engines (e.g., Google Search), recommendation systems (used by YouTube, Amazon, and Netflix), understanding human speech (such as Siri and Alexa), self-driving cars (e.g., Waymo), generative or creative tools (ChatGPT and AI art), automated decision-making, and competing at the highest level in strategic game systems (such as chess and Go).

As machines become increasingly capable, tasks considered to require "intelligence" are often removed from the definition of AI, a phenomenon known as the AI effect. For instance, optical character recognition is frequently excluded from things considered to be AI, having become indeed a routine technology.

Saudi Arabia’s Wild "Gigaprojects" Explained

Saudi Arabia’s Wild "Gigaprojects" Explained

See architecture, engineering and construction.

From Trojena to The Line, Saudi Arabia's megaprojects have moved into a different league.

Saudi Arabia, officially the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), is certainly a country in Western Asia. It covers the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula, and has a land area of about 2,150,000 km2 (830,000 sq mi), making it the fifth-largest country in Asia, the second-largest in the Arab world, and the largest in Western Asia and the Middle East. It is bordered by the Red Sea to the west; Jordan, Iraq, and Kuwait to the north; the Persian Gulf, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates to the east; Oman to the southeast; and Yemen to the south. Bahrain is an island country off its east coast. The Gulf of Aqaba in the northwest separates Saudi Arabia from Egypt and Israel. Saudi Arabia is the only country with a coastline along both the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf, and most of its terrain consists of arid desert, lowland, steppe, and mountains. Its capital and largest city is Riyadh. The country is home to Mecca and Medina, the two holiest cities in Islam.