Norway to add more than $11bn to defence budget over 10 years
Norway, as well as other NATO countries, has been under pressure from the US to boost defence spending. By AFP and Reuters Published On 27 Mar 202627 Mar 2026 Norway is set to raise defence spending by 3.5 percent of its gross domestic product to compensate for rising military equipment costs and to adjust to lessons learned from the Ukraine war, the government says. The proposed increase will amount to 115 billion kroner ($11.84bn) and will be spread over the next 10 years, aligning with the country’s NATO commitments. Recommended Stories list of 4 itemsend of list “We are … allocating a significant increase in resources to the long-term plan, while also carefully weighing the priorities needed to rapidly strengthen Norway’s defence capabilities,” Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere told reporters on Friday. Norway, like other NATO countries, is increasing defence spending as a result of Russia’s war on Ukraine. NATO countries have also come under increasing pressure from United States President Donald Trump, who accuses some members of failing to pay their dues and overly relying on the US. The increased spending will include support for Ukraine in its fight against Russia, authorities said. Norway borders Russia to its northeast. In a statement, the government outlined several priorities, including plans for new submarines and frigates, and upgrades of critical defence infrastructure. It said Norway would also seek to strengthen electronic warfare capabilities, short-range air defence and autonomous systems. Norway expects to receive the first of its German-ordered submarines in 2029. Two frigates bought from Britain are also expected to arrive in 2030 and 2032, respectively. Defence Minister Tore Sandvik said despite the increase in budget, Norway’s procurement of anti-ballistic air defences as well as of maritime surveillance drones will be delayed. Adblock test (Why?)
Lebanon faces ‘humanitarian catastrophe’ under Israeli assault: UN
Displaced Lebanese families ‘living in constant fear’ under Israeli bombardment, warns UN Refugee Agency official. Lebanon faces the threat of a “humanitarian catastrophe”, the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) has warned, as Israel expands its weeks-long bombardment and ground invasion of the country. UNHCR’s Lebanon representative Karolina Lindholm Billing said on Friday that Israeli strikes and forced displacement orders have affected people living across the country – from southern Lebanon to the Bekaa Valley, the capital Beirut, and further north. Recommended Stories list of 3 itemsend of list More than 1.2 million people have been forced from their homes since Israel’s intensified attacks against its northern neighbour began in early March, according to UN figures. “The situation remains extremely worrying and the risk of a humanitarian catastrophe … is real,” Lindholm Billing told reporters during a briefing in Geneva. She noted that, as displacement numbers continue to rise, Lebanon’s already overstretched shelter system is struggling to meet families’ needs. “Just last week, there were strikes that hit central Beirut, including in densely populated neighbourhoods … where many people had tried to find safety in collective shelters,” Lindholm Billing said. “The families are … living in constant fear, and the psychological toll, particularly on children, will last far beyond this current escalation.” Israel launched intensified attacks across Lebanon after Hezbollah fired rockets towards Israeli territory following the February 28 assassination of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in the US-Israel war on Iran. Advertisement The Israeli military has carried out aerial and ground attacks across the country while issuing mass forced displacement orders for residents of the country’s south, as well as several suburbs of Beirut. On Friday afternoon, the Israeli military said it had begun a wave of air strikes on Beirut. It also issued more forced displacement orders for several areas in the city’s southern suburbs, including the neighbourhoods of Haret Hreik and Burj al-Barajneh. Hezbollah has continued to fire rockets into northern Israel and confront Israeli troops in southern Lebanon, with leader Naim Qassem stressing this week that the group had no plans to stop fighting “an enemy that occupies land and continues daily aggression”. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also announced plans to expand the country’s ground invasion in southern Lebanon, saying the military would create “a larger buffer zone” in Lebanese territory. Rights groups have condemned the expanded operation and warned that preventing Lebanese civilians from returning to their homes in the south may amount to the war crime of forced displacement. “Israel’s tactics of mass expulsion in Lebanon raise serious risks of forced displacement,” Human Rights Watch said on Thursday. “Forced displacement and collective punishment are war crimes.” Displaced residents sit outside a tent in a local school in Beirut after fleeing their homes in southern Lebanon, on March 27, 2026 [Wael Hamzeh/EPA] The Israeli military’s destruction of civilian homes and several bridges linking southern Lebanon to the rest of the country has also fuelled concerns that Israel is trying to isolate the area. During Friday’s news briefing, UNHCR’s Lindholm Billing noted that the destruction of the bridges has made accessing southern Lebanon “increasingly difficult”. “The destruction of key bridges in the south has cut off entire districts … isolating over 150,000 people and severely limiting humanitarian access with essential items to reach them,” she said. Reporting from Tyre in southern Lebanon on Friday afternoon, Al Jazeera’s Obaida Hitto also stressed that Israel’s forced evacuation orders are “causing a lot of panic” among residents. “Evacuation orders are happening in areas that were previously thought to be safe,” he said, adding that the destruction and damage to bridges over the Litani River in the south has made the prospect of finding safety more difficult. “This is putting the government in Beirut in a very difficult situation to try and respond to the humanitarian crisis quickly growing in the south of the country,” Hitto said. Advertisement Adblock test (Why?)
Nixon to Trump: Pakistan’s long record as backchannel between rival powers
Islamabad, Pakistan – In the middle of 1971, at the height of the Cold War, a Pakistani government plane carrying US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger flew overnight from Islamabad to Beijing. The trip was secret, the facilitator was Pakistan, and the geopolitical consequences were generational. More than 50 years later, Pakistan is once again carrying messages. Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar confirmed on March 25 that Islamabad is relaying a US 15-point ceasefire proposal to Tehran, with Turkiye and Egypt providing additional diplomatic support, as the US-Israeli war against Iran stretches into its second month. On Thursday, chief US negotiator Steve Witkoff also confirmed that Pakistan was transferring messages between Washington and Tehran. Hours later, President Donald Trump announced on his social media platform, Truth Social, a 10-day pause on threatened strikes against Iranian power plants, citing, in his words, a request from the Iranian government. Iran has so far denied that direct negotiations are taking place, but Trump’s latest pause means that his initial threat to attack Iran’s power plants, delivered last weekend, has now been deferred twice, as Pakistan plays the part of a key diplomatic facilitator. The role is not new. Pakistan brokered the secret US-China backchannel in 1971 and was a key interlocutor in the Geneva Accords that helped end the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s. It also facilitated talks that led to the 2020 Doha Agreement and has, across successive governments, attempted to mediate between Saudi Arabia and Iran. Advertisement Since the launch of Operation Epic Fury, the US-Israeli air campaign that began in late February 2026 and killed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei within days, Islamabad has quietly but deeply inserted itself into the crisis, working the phones and holding meetings with key regional actors. Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has spoken repeatedly to Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian. Army Chief Field Marshal Asim Munir has held at least one direct call with President Donald Trump. Both Sharif and Munir have also travelled to Saudi Arabia, with whom Pakistan signed a mutual defence agreement in September last year, and which hosts a US base and has faced Iranian attacks in recent weeks. “Pakistan’s story is told most often through the prism of conflict,” says Naghmana Hashmi, a former Pakistani ambassador to China. “Yet beneath the headlines of coups, crises, and border skirmishes runs a quieter, more consistent thread: a state that has repeatedly tried to turn its geography and Muslim-world ties into diplomatic leverage for peace,” she told Al Jazeera. Whether this latest round of diplomacy produces anything durable remains uncertain. But it has once again raised a familiar question: How and why does Pakistan keep emerging as a diplomatic broker, and how effective has it been? Opening the China channel In August 1969, US President Richard Nixon visited Pakistan and quietly tasked the country’s military ruler, President Yahya Khan, with passing a message to Beijing: Washington wanted to open communication with the People’s Republic of China. At the time, the US treated Taiwan as China and did not recognise Beijing. Pakistan was chosen for the diplomatic role because it maintained working relations with both Washington and Beijing. Winston Lord, who served as Kissinger’s aide and was on the flight to Beijing, described the decision in a 1998 oral history interview conducted by the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training. “We finally settled on Pakistan. Pakistan had the advantage of being a friend to both sides,” he said. Two years of indirect exchanges followed, with Pakistani officials carrying messages between the two capitals. Then, in July 1971, Kissinger arrived in Islamabad on a public tour of Asia. According to historical records and accounts from key participants, he appeared to fall ill at a welcome dinner. In the early hours of July 9, Yahya Khan’s driver took Kissinger and three aides to a military airfield, where a Pakistani government plane was waiting with four Chinese representatives on board. The aircraft flew to Beijing overnight, while a decoy car headed to the hill resort of Nathia Gali, about three hours from Islamabad. Advertisement Kissinger spent 48 hours in meetings with Chinese leader Zhou Enlai before returning to Pakistan. The trip paved the way for Nixon’s visit to Beijing in February 1972, and the famous handshake with Chinese leader Mao Zedong that led to a detente between the two countries, and the US recognition of communist China. Kissinger later acknowledged in an interview with news magazine The Atlantic that the Nixon administration had declined to publicly condemn Pakistani army actions in East Pakistan, which contributed to the creation of Bangladesh in December 1971. According to him, doing so “would have destroyed the Pakistani channel, which would be needed for months to complete the opening to China, which indeed was launched from Pakistan”. Masood Khan, who served as Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States and later to the United Nations, says the episode reflected something structural. “In 1971, Pakistan was the only country that could be trusted simultaneously in Washington and Beijing with a very sensitive mission, which was kept secret even from the State Department,” he told Al Jazeera. “But beyond trust, Pakistan had also acquired the requisite strategic manoeuvrability and operational flexibility that suit interlocutors caught in an apparently irredeemable situation,” Khan added. Muhammad Faisal, a Sydney-based foreign policy analyst, called it Pakistan’s defining diplomatic moment. “Pakistan’s facilitation of the US-China backchannel is unambiguously the most consequential. It restructured Cold War geopolitics in ways that still define the international order. No other Pakistani facilitation comes close in scale or permanence,” he said. But he also points to its limits. “Pakistan couldn’t turn that support from both powers to its advantage in the 1971 civil conflict and the subsequent war with India. Despite being on good terms with both China and the US, Pakistan couldn’t deter India from taking advantage of the civil conflict,” he added. Pakistan’s role in Afghan diplomacy spans four decades and does not always fit neatly into the category of neutral brokering. An early instance
Mexico launches search for two missing aid boats bound for Cuba
NewsFeed Mexico’s navy has launched a search operation after two boats carrying humanitarian aid to Cuba went missing in the Caribbean. The vessels, carrying nine crew members, lost contact after departing Isla Mujeres and failed to reach Havana as scheduled. Published On 27 Mar 202627 Mar 2026 Click here to share on social media share2 Share googleAdd Al Jazeera on Googleinfo Adblock test (Why?)
Endangered monarch butterfly population surges 64 percent
NewsFeed Mexico’s monarch butterfly population surged 64 percent this winter, raising hopes for the endangered species’ spring migration to the United States and Canada. Published On 27 Mar 202627 Mar 2026 Click here to share on social media share2 Share googleAdd Al Jazeera on Googleinfo Adblock test (Why?)
Albanese says Australia playing “constructive” role in the war on Iran
NewsFeed Australia’s prime minister Anthony Albanese says his government has made a “constructive” contribution to the US-Israeli war on Iran. The comments follow criticism from US President Donald Trump who said Australia’s support “was not great”. Published On 27 Mar 202627 Mar 2026 Click here to share on social media share2 Share googleAdd Al Jazeera on Googleinfo Adblock test (Why?)
Russian officials meet US counterparts as Moscow denies aiding Iran
Kremlin spokesperson says talks are part of ‘necessary dialogue’ with Washington as war in Ukraine continues for a fifth year. Published On 26 Mar 202626 Mar 2026 A delegation of Russian officials has arrived in the United States for meetings with their American counterparts. The visit, which began on Thursday, marks the first such trip since relations strained over Moscow’s war in Ukraine. Recommended Stories list of 3 itemsend of list Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said, “We hope that these first tentative steps will, of course, make their contribution to the further revival of our bilateral engagement.” He said President Vladimir Putin had set the “main directives” for the trip and would be “thoroughly briefed” on the meeting. The visit comes as US-brokered talks seeking a deal to end the war in Ukraine are in effect frozen. Several rounds of negotiations since US President Donald Trump returned to the White House last year have failed to break the deadlock, with the Kremlin ruling out compromises to halt its years-long offensive. Russia, a close ally of Iran, has also been cited by Western intelligence officials as one of the backers of the Iranian government, as Tehran fights a war launched by the US and Israel. A report in the United Kingdom-based Financial Times newspaper on Wednesday alleged that Russia was close to completing a shipment of drones to Iran. Responding to questions about the report, Peskov said, “There are so many lies being spread by the media … Do not pay attention to them.” Russia this week carried out one of the largest aerial attacks since the start of its war on Ukraine, launching 948 drones in 24 hours as it moved troops and equipment to the front line. Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy issued a new appeal for allies to supply Kyiv with air defence munitions, warning that Kyiv, which relies on the US for air defence systems against ballistic missiles, will face a deficit of missiles while Washington is focused on the US-Israeli war on Iran. Advertisement Talks between Ukraine and the US that opened in the US state of Florida on Saturday again failed to produce a security guarantee that Kyiv has long sought from Washington. Adblock test (Why?)
WTO says world experiencing worst trade disruption in 80 years
WTO chief Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala says the global trade order has ‘irrevocably changed’, warning the system is facing its worst disruption in 80 years and the multilateral system will not return, as she calls on countries to reform global trade rules. Published On 26 Mar 202626 Mar 2026 Click here to share on social media share2 Share googleAdd Al Jazeera on Googleinfo Adblock test (Why?)
Pakistan says it is mediating US-Iran talks
NewsFeed Pakistan says it is mediating indirect talks between the US and Iran aimed at ending the war, with officials confirming negotiations are underway. Published On 26 Mar 202626 Mar 2026 Click here to share on social media share2 Share googleAdd Al Jazeera on Googleinfo Adblock test (Why?)
Mexico will continue accepting Cuban medical workers despite US pressure
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum praises services from Cuban doctors, who often work in underserved rural areas. Published On 25 Mar 202625 Mar 2026 Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has confirmed that her country will continue receiving Cuban medical workers, as part of a longstanding programme meant to build goodwill between the island and other Latin American countries. Her remarks on Wednesday come as the United States pressures Latin American countries to sever their ties to Cuba’s medical programme. Recommended Stories list of 3 itemsend of list Sheinbaum, however, told reporters during a news conference that the agreement was a benefit to Mexico. Thousands of Cuban medical workers have deployed there since 2022 to work largely in poor, rural areas. “We have a very good agreement that’s also been a great help to us. It’s a bilateral agreement that’s been very beneficial for Mexico,” said Sheinbaum. “It’s hard to get Mexican doctors and specialists to go out to many rural areas where we need medical specialists, and the Cubans are willing to work there.” In February, the US passed a law that opens the door to sanctions on countries that continue to participate in the programme. It called for the US secretary of state to issue a report within 90 days about which countries continue to pay the government of Cuba for the “coerced and trafficked labour of Cuban medical professionals”. The move comes amid a wider push to further isolate Cuba and topple the government in Havana, a longtime target of US ire. So far, countries including the Bahamas, Honduras, Guatemala, Jamaica and Guyana have ended their participation in the Cuban medical exchange programme. Cuba has long depicted the decades-old programme as a means of signalling solidarity with other countries. It has also become an important source of foreign revenue for the island nation, which has been under a restrictive US economic embargo since 1960. Advertisement The administration of US President Donald Trump, however, has depicted the programme as akin to forced labour. “Basically, it’s human trafficking,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters in February. “I mean, they’re barely even being paid. Their freedom of movement is tightly restricted. And we want these countries to understand that’s what they’re participating in.” Experts at the United Nations have also raised similar concerns, including about the confiscation of passports, which the Cuban government justifies as a means of preventing trained doctors from fleeing the country after their state-sponsored studies. The pressure on the Cuban medical missions is part of a broader push under Trump’s second term to seek regime change on the island. By threatening tariffs on Cuba’s trading partners, Trump has largely cut the island off from accessing the foreign oil necessary to power its electrical grid. Trump has also said that he hopes to “take” Cuba and install a new government that will be more pliant to US demands. The Mexican government has tried to balance its friendly relations with Cuba with the US’s demands. In the absence of energy shipments, Sheinbaum’s government has sent vessels with humanitarian aid to the island. Adblock test (Why?)