STOCKHOLM, 30 January 2022, (TON): Swedish police have received about 200 signals of unidentified drone flights over protected sites, including several nuclear power plants (NPPs) and two airports.

Law enforcement officials say there is no evidence that a foreign power is behind any of these incidents, Dagens Nyheter reported.

Per Engström, head of the drone incident investigation depa-rtment, told media “of the approximately 200 incidents that we have investigated, we have not been able to see this drones belonging to a foreign country.”

Most of the cases did not have any continuation, since, as it turned out, they were either about authorized flights, or about some other objects mistaken for drones. Investigation of about 30 received signals is ongoing.

Those concerning the nuclear power plant have been handed over to the SEPO security police.

Deputy Chief Prosecutor Hans Irman, who is investigating at SEPO, told media “we deal with protected objects that are of particular importance for the infrastructure and, therefore, the security of the country. In some cases, power supply failures.”

PHNOM PENH, 30 January 2022, (TON): The Foreign Ministry said “Cambodia is considering rescheduling the annual ASEAN foreign ministers’ meeting for Feb. 16-17 following its postponement earlier this month.”

Sources close to the matter said “Cambodia, the rotating chair of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations for this year, is planning to exclude the foreign minister of Myanmar from the meeting as the country’s ruling military has not stopped violence against protesters.

The sources said “only a nonpolitical figure from Myanmar would be invited unless the junta shows some progress in implementing ASEAN’s so-called five-point consensus, which includes a call for an immediate end to violence and the dispatch of the group’s special envoy to meet with all stakeholders in the conflict in Myanmar.”

RIYADH, 30 January 2022, (TON): The Saudi foreign ministry condemned an attack that targeted Baghdad International Airport.

Iraq’s military said “six rockets struck the airport’s facility, damaging two commercial planes but causing no casualties.”

The Saudi foreign ministry statement said the Kingdom rejected threats to the stability of Iraq and its air navigation, adding that it stood with the Iraqi government and the measures it is taking to protect its security.

The statement also affirmed Saudi Arabia's position in rejecting terrorism in all its forms and forms, regardless of its motives.

The rockets fired in the early hours of the morning landed on planes parked in a waiting area of Iraqi Airways, the country’s national carrier.

One of the rockets fired on Friday created a gaping hole in the cockpit area of one of the planes.

ISTANBUL, 30 January 2022, (TON): Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has sacked the head of the state statistics agency, according to a decree published Saturday, after annual inflation figures angered both the pro-government and opposition camps.

The dismissed state statistic agency chief, Sait Erdal Dincer, came under fire after releasing data this month that put the annual inflation rate at a 19-year high of 36.1 percent.

The opposition said the figure was underreported, claiming that the real cost of living increases were at least twice as high.

But Erdogan reportedly criticised the statistics agency in private for publishing data that he felt overstated the scale of Turkey’s economic malaise.

Erdogan did not explain his decision to appoint Erhan Cetinkaya, who had served as vice-chair of Turkey’s banking regulator, as the new state statistics chief.

The Turkish leader also appointed a new justice minister, naming former deputy prime minister Bekir Bozdag to replace veteran ruling party member Abdulhamit Gul.

MOSCOW, 30 January 2022, (TON): Russia’s population declined by more than one million people in 2021, the statistics agency Rosstat reported, a historic drop not seen since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Ongoing demographic woes have been exacerbated by the pandemic with Rosstat figures showing more than 660,000 had died with coronavirus since health officials recorded the first case in the country.

The new figures continue a downward trend from the previous year when Russia’s population fell by more than half a million.

Russia has struggled to curb the pandemic due to a slow vaccination drive coupled with limited restrictive measures and rampant non-compliance with mask-wearing in public places.

The pandemic death toll exacerbates the demographic crisis, linked to low birth rates and a short life expectancy, that Russia has faced for the past 30 years.

DHAKA, 30 January 2022, (TON):  Youth activists said “Japan should stop funding the construction of a coal-fired power plant in Bangladesh as the emissions it produces will accelerate global warming and put the low-lying country at greater risk of climate-change impacts.”

Japanese trading house Sumitomo Corp, along with Toshiba and IHI Corporation, is building the Matarbari power plant in Maheshkhali near the southeastern coastal town of Cox's Bazar, funded by the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA).

Climate campaigners said the project contradicts Japan's commitment, made with other wealthy G7 nations last May, to end funding for "unabated" coal power overseas by the end of 2021.

Coal is considered unabated when it is burned for power or heat without using technology to capture the resulting emissions, a system not yet widely used in power generation.

Activists said “the power plant under construction at Cox's Bazar, along the world's longest beach, puts the lives and livelihoods of locals at risk and will add to broader climate woes.”

Bangladeshi officials said all possible measures were being taken to reduce the negative consequences of the fossil-fuel power plant.

NEW DELHI, 30 January 2022, (TON): The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said “the seven Indian sailors on board a United Arab Emirates-flagged cargo vessel that was seized by the Houthis off the port of Hodeidah in Yemen are in good health and the government is in touch with multiple sources to reinforce its message to the Houthis that they be released at the earliest.”

Responding to a question at an online media briefing, MEA Spokesperson Arindam Bagchi said that as per the information received from the shipping company based in the UAE as well as from other sources, the seven Indian sailors are safe, in good health and are being provided regular meals.

However, their captors have not allowed them to communicate with their families, he said.

Bagchi said “the government of India is in touch with multiple sources, including the UN mission to support the Hodeidah Agreement, to enquire about the safety and well-being of the sailors as well as to reinforce its message to the Houthis that they be released at the earliest.”

KABUL, 30 January 2022, (TON): Citizens praised the proposal of the chargé d’affaires of the Afghanistan mission to the United Nations who called for the freezing of Afghan assets illegally transferred to the accounts of former government officials.

The citizens said that many former government officials were involved in corruption and that they are currently living a luxury life abroad while the country is struggling on the edge of catastrophe.

Talking to the UN Security Council meeting on Afghanistan, Naseer Ahmad Faiq, chargé d’affaires of Afghanistan’s mission at the United Nations, said that the former government officials involved in corruption must be held accountable.

He said “I would like to request freezing and confiscating of all Afghan assets illegally transferred to the accounts of former government officials who were involved in corruption and embezzlement of international aid to the Afghan people. “

He added “they must be held accountable and tried. It is not fair that 28 million people are starving and mothers sell their children to survive but these corrupt former government officials live in luxurious houses and villas in different countries in Europe and the US.”

KABUL, 30 January 2022, (TON): The former UN Deputy Special Representative for Afghanistan, Michael Keating, warned that if the international community abandons Afghanistan, there will not only be humanitarian consequences, but also security consequences.

Talking to UK Sky News from Brussels, Keating said “I think abandoning the people of Afghanistan and allowing them just to become a nation of beggars is neither in the interests of Afghans themselves or the region, nor is it in the interests of the international community.

That is likely to have not only humanitarian consequences, but security consequences. It will result in more displacement, migration, more illicit economic activity like narcotics, selling of organs and things.”

Keating says one of the biggest challenges is getting money into the country, paying salaries of civil servants, and enabling the central banks of Afghanistan to function.

He said “the issue is how to get the economy functioning, how to get that money circulating in the economy. Otherwise, this terrible, essentially acute crisis will turn into a chronic one.”

In the meantime, the UK announced that it has pledged £97 million of emergency aid to the people of Afghanistan to provide life-saving food and emergency health support. According to the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), the pledged aid will provide food, health services and water for 2.7 million people.

NEW DELHI, 30 January 2022, (TON): India supplied three tonnes of life-saving medicines to Afghanistan, the fourth tranche of aid since last month to help the Afghan people cope with a growing humanitarian crisis that has been compounded by a harsh winter.

The ministry said in a statement “the medicines were handed over to the Indira Gandhi Institute of Child Health in Kabul, the external affairs ministry said. “In the coming weeks, we would be supplying more batches of humanitarian assistance consisting of medicines and food grains for the people of Afghanistan.”

India had earlier supplied 3.6 tonnes of medicines and 500,000 doses of Covid-19 vaccines to Afghanistan.

An offer to provide 50,000 tonnes of wheat via land routes passing through Pakistan has been held up since October last year as Islamabad is yet to finalise the modalities for shipping the grains. India has also pledged to send another 500,000 doses of vaccines in the coming weeks.