EU approves €20 million in aid for Armenia as monitoring mission continues
The 27 European Union member states have approved €20 million (approximately $23.3 million) in assistance for Armenia from the European Peace Faci...
Sweden announced its largest military aid package to Ukraine worth $1.6 billion to help Kyiv strengthen its position in peace talks. The package includes new equipment and financial donations for Ukraine's defense industry, with Sweden's total support since 2022 reaching 80 billion crowns.
Sweden announced a new military aid package to Ukraine worth 16 billion crowns ($1.59 billion) on Monday, the biggest package to date from the Nordic country, saying it wanted to help Kyiv strengthen its position in talks on ending the war.
The bulk of the package, nine billion crowns, will consist of new equipment that will be purchased in processes led by the Swedish Defence Materiel Administration, Defence Minister Pal Jonson told a press conference.
Around five billion crowns will be financial donations for Ukraine's defence industry.
"We are now at a critical stage of the war. Our focus is now on supporting Ukraine as much as possible so that they can get into a position of strength during these negotiations," he said.
Jonson said all European countries now need to increase their support to Ukraine. "More need to do more."
Since taking office in January, U.S. President Donald Trump has sought to broker a ceasefire to end fighting in the three-year-old war in Ukraine.
Jonson, asked at the press conference if Europe has the financial and production capacity to take on more of the responsibility if the United States scales down, said: "I'm slightly more concerned with the defence industrial production than the financial resources."
"The EU alone has an economy eight times as big as Russia, so if there is a will, there is a way for extensive support. The limitation has been the defence industrial production in Europe which has been adapted to peacetime," he said.
The government has said Sweden will ramp up aid to Ukraine this year, boosting the 2025 budget allocation to 40 billion crowns from 25 billion projected earlier, to aid Kyiv's fight against Russian invasion.
Including the new package, Sweden's military support since 2022 totals 80 billion crowns.
The S&P 500 edged to a record closing high on Tuesday, marking its fifth consecutive day of gains, as strong advances in technology stocks offset a sharp selloff in healthcare shares and a mixed batch of corporate earnings.
Residents in Syria’s Kurdish-majority city of Qamishli have stepped up volunteer patrols amid growing pressure from the country’s Islamist-led government, expressing deep mistrust of Damascus despite a fragile U.S.-backed ceasefire.
Liverpool confirmed direct qualification to the UEFA Champions League round of 16 with a 6-0 win over Qarabağ at Anfield in their final league-phase match. Despite the setback, Qarabağ secured a play-off spot, with results elsewhere going in the Azerbaijani champions’ favour on the final matchday.
Iraq's former Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki said on Wednesday that he rejects U.S. interference in Iraq's internal affairs, after U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to cut off support to the country if Maliki was picked as prime minister.
Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa stressed to U.S. President Donald Trump in a phone call on Tuesday the importance of unifying international efforts to prevent the return of "terrorist groups", including Islamic State.
“For some weeks now, we have been seeing with increasing clarity the emergence of a world of great powers,” German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said on Thursday (29 January), declaring that Europe had found “self-respect” in standing up for a rules-based global order.
Colombian authorities on Wednesday (28 January) located a missing plane carrying 15 people in the northeast of the country, with no survivors found, an Air Force source and local media said.
Chinese authorities say they've carried out capital punishment against a group of individuals tied to notorious telecommunications fraud syndicates operating across the southern border, according to state news agency Xinhua.
Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi's Liberal Democratic Party is likely to increase its number of parliamentary seats and gain a majority in the lower house, a preliminary survey by the Nikkei newspaper showed on Thursday (29 January).
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