Sweden will step up insurance checks on foreign ships as worries about Russia rise
The government in Stockholm said that, starting July 1, the coast guard and the Swedish Maritime Administration will be tasked with collecting insurance information not just from ships that call at Swedish ports, but also those that pass through the country's territorial waters and exclusive economic zone.
'This underlines Sweden's clear presence in the Baltic Sea, which in itself has a deterrent effect,' Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said in a statement. 'It also provides Sweden and our allies with important information about vessels that can be used as a basis for sanctions listings of more vessels in the shadow fleet.'
Russia uses its shadow fleet to transport oil and gas, or to carry stolen Ukrainian grain. The European Union has now targeted almost 350 of the ships in total in sanctions packages, most recently on May 20.
Kristersson said that 'we are seeing more and more problematic events in the Baltic Sea and this requires us not only to hope for the best, but also to plan for the worst.'
The average age of the vessels is around 18 years, meaning they're near the end of their lifespan and are more vulnerable to accidents, especially if they're not well-maintained.
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Reuters
6 minutes ago
- Reuters
Exclusive: Ukraine eyes higher 2025 grain harvest, plans more winter wheat for 2026
KYIV, Aug 4 (Reuters) - The 2025 harvest of Ukraine's key commodities, wheat and corn, may be higher than expected if weather conditions are favourable, while stable export demand will encourage farmers to expand winter wheat sowings for the 2026 crop, a senior official said on Monday. Ukraine is a major global grain grower and exporter but its harvest fell sharply after Kyiv lost around a fifth of its territory due to the Russian invasion in 2022. Taras Vysotskiy, deputy economy minister, told Reuters in an interview that the 2025 wheat output forecast may be raised to 22 million tons from the current 21.2 million tons and to 28 million tons from 26.5 million tons for corn. The overall harvest could repeat the result of 2024, when 56 million tons of grain was threshed, with 22.7 million tons of wheat and 26 million tons of corn. In 2021, before the Russian invasion, Ukraine harvested 84 million tons of grain. It included 32 million tons of wheat and almost 42 million tons of corn. "Previously, the forecast was 26.5 million tons of corn for 2025, but there is potential for growth - optimistically speaking, we could see 28 million tons, provided there are no serious unforeseen circumstances," he told Reuters. The deputy minister said a higher output would allow the export of up to 40 million tons of various grains in the 2025/26 July-June season. He said that the export could include 15 to 16 million tons of wheat but some of the volume would be redirected as the European Union has imposed limits on wheat imports from Ukraine to address the concerns of its own farmers. The move cut imports to 1 million tons from 4 million which Ukraine supplied to the EU. "These three million tonnes (which Ukraine previously supplied to the EU) are not critical in terms of redirection to other markets," he said. In addition to the EU, Ukraine traditionally supplies wheat to North Africa, the Middle East and Southeast Asia. Vysotskiy said that the area under winter wheat, Ukraine's key grain crop, may rise by 6.4% to 5 million hectares in 2026 thanks to high external demand and an expected reduction in the area under soybeans. Winter wheat accounts for more than 95% of the total wheat harvest in Ukraine, which exports almost two-thirds of its output and before the war ranked fifth among wheat exporters. "Considering that wheat prices are currently good for both food and feed, 5 million hectares of sown area is possible," Taras Vysotskiy, deputy economy minister, said in the first official forecast for the 2025/26 winter wheat sowing area. Ukrainian wheat export prices traditionally fall during the mass harvest, but according to the largest Ukrainian farmers' union UAC, prices have remained stable this season, fluctuating around $222-$227 per ton carriage paid to (CPT), supported by demand. UAC said last week that 3.45 million tons of Ukrainian wheat were contracted for exports in July-August.
Daily Mail
6 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
Rory Stewart explains why THERESA MAY is 'definitely' his hero - and admits he was wrong about Donald Trump
Alexander the Great, Lawrence of Arabia, Martin Luther King. With their respective feats in war, diplomacy and civil rights activism, they can all be described as heroes, former Tory leadership contender Rory Stewart says. But, while speaking to the Mail to promote his new BBC podcast on the 'long history' of heroism, Mr Stewart added one more unlikely hero to his list: Theresa May. Mr Stewart served under the former PM as prisons minister and international development secretary, before Mrs May was forced to resign after repeatedly failing to get her Brexit deal through Parliament. But, despite her defeats, which also included the loss of her majority in a snap election in 2017, Mr Stewart remains one of her staunch defenders. He told the Mail: 'Well of the Prime Ministers I served with, so out of David Cameron, Theresa May, Boris Johnson, Rishi Sunak, [and] Keir Starmer, [she] would definitely be my hero.' Mr Stewart, who stepped down as an MP at the 2019 election after losing to Boris Johnson in the race to replace Mrs May as Tory leader and PM, praised his former boss for her 'incredible sense of dignity' and for being 'very serious'. He also admitted that his opinion of Donald Trump has changed 'for better and worse' and described him as 'the most consequential President of our lifetime'. Ahead of the US election last November, Mr Stewart said Kamala Harris, Mr Trump's Democrat rival, would win the keys to the White House 'comfortably' and even placed a huge bet backing his prediction. The politician, who now hosts the popular Rest is Politics podcast with controversial former New Labour spin chief Alistair Campbell, then had to acknowledge he had been 'completely wrong' and said it was 'heartbreaking' that Mr Trump was to return as US President. In what was a wide-ranging interview, Mr Stewart also defended wartime PM Winston Churchill, saying he was a 'profound hero'; said Reform UK leader Nigel Farage is 'probably more moderate' than he is given credit for by critics; and likened himself to a 'fish that is six inches long'. Mr Stewart's new podcast, The Long History of Heroism, is set across five episodes. In the first, which aired on Radio 4 this morning, the politician waxes lyrical about Alexander the Great, who ruled Macedonia in the 4th Century BC and is widely regarded as one of the greatest military leaders in history. He says: 'I worshipped Alexander the Great and my fascination with him continued right into my 20s. 'I walked across what is now Iran, retracing his foot steps; an 18 months walk over 6,000 miles and I ended up where he finished on the edge of India. 'I stood at the place where he is supposed to have wept when he had no more land to conquer.' Mr Stewart had an extraordinary career before he entered Parliament in 2010 at the age of 37. The politician, whose father rose to become senior in intelligence service MI6, served in the British Army before becoming a diplomat and then a successful author. While working for the Foreign Office, he became a deputy governor of two Iraq provinces when he was only 30. He later chose to try his hand at politics and became the MP for Penrith and The Border in northern England. He first served as a junior minister under David Cameron before being promoted under Mrs May. Speaking to the Mail remotely from his home in Scotland, Mr Stewart recounts how, while snorkelling during a recent family holiday in Colombia, he wondered, 'what sort of fish am I?' He eventually concludes: 'I'm thinking about myself as a fish at about six inches, yeah, six inches long. It is a good analogy for how far he got in politics compared to fellow ex Etonians and Oxford graduates Lord Cameron and Mr Johnson. Mr Stewart admits that critics' view of him as having an almost messianic self-belief is partly correct. 'I think that's a perfectly valid criticism of me. 'I can see why that gets up people's noses, but it's but I think I just say in my defence that you'd probably find that almost everybody running to be Prime Minister would have similar views.' Another figure Mr Stewart adored when he was younger was British army officer T.E. Lawrence, better known by his famous nickname. He achieved notoriety for having led an Arab revolt against the Turks in the First World War. But he died in a motorbike accident in 1946, with his dream of Arab independence not having been realised. 'What I loved about someone like Lawrence is his sense of guilt and pain in later life, that he set off thinking he could be a knight in shining armour and that he could save the Middle East, and it basically broke him. 'He realized that trying to live out a life as a sort of classical hero in the modern age is impossible. 'And you end up feeling like a fraud. And so I felt incredible empathy with him.' Lawrence was, Mr Stewart says, an example of one of the last prominent figures to try to live as a 'classical hero'. The past 100 years have been an attempt to 'replace the hero after the hero has died'. This has ultimately led to the invention of superheroes and the increasing obsession with celebrities and sport stars, Mr Stewart argues. One hero to emerge from the 20th century for Mr Stewart is Churchill, who entered Downing Street in 1940 and then led the nation through the rest of the Second World War. He later became PM for a second time, from 1951 to 1955, after losing the 1945 election. But Churchill's vehement views on subjects including Indian independence mean there is plenty of ammunition for his critics. His statue in Westminster was targeted by Black Lives Matter protesters in 2020. 'The worst kind of British nationalism is one that imagines that what made Churchill was just a few kind of off colour remarks and a bit of bluster,' Mr Stewart says. 'What made him was the most intense intellectual seriousness and belief in Britain and its mission and incredible, not just physical but moral, courage throughout his career.' As a result, Churchill was a 'profound hero', Mr Stewart adds. But he also cautions: 'Now, understanding what a hero is is to understand that they all have incredible flaws. 'If you go right back to the very beginning of heroes, Achilles is obviously a man with extraordinary flaws, so is Alexander, so is Lawrence, so is Florence Nightingale, so is any of these people. 'We are human. And we are also citizens of our age and time. If you are born as Churchill was in the late 19th century, you will inherit a lot of views we will find very disturbing today. 'Racist views, imperialist views, all these kinds of things. But that doesn't detract in any way from the incredible nature of his insight, courage, seriousness.' On Mr Farage, who became well-known as leader of UKIP and in his vociferous campaigning to leave the European Union, Mr Stewart is similarly nuanced. Although he labels the MP an 'extremely able communicator', he feels he is lacking a 'sense of seriousness'. He says: 'The whole thing seems to be too much of a game. I'd like to know in the end, what really was his vision for Brexit? 'I mean, given that that was the biggest thing he did in his life, how was this thing really supposed to play through? What was a good Brexit? What was a bad Brexit?' But he adds: 'I'm not one of these people who has nightmares about Farage, I think he's probably more moderate than people give him credit for being. 'He would have been on the right of the Tory party I knew.' So why does he hold Mrs May in such high regard despite her political failures? 'I really admire Theresa May because I thought she was very serious, and I really valued being in her Cabinet,' he says. 'And I thought she had an incredible sense of dignity and a real attempt to do what she thought was the right thing.' This included her vision of a 'softer' Brexit that she believed was in the national interest, Mr Stewart adds. 'She fought tooth and nail for that, and ultimately sacrificed her political career to try to achieve that.' But he admits it is 'really difficult' to see her as a 'classical hero' because she failed to achieve her main aims. As for the US President, Mr Stewart is humble about what we got wrong. 'I think my opinion of Trump has definitely changed for for better and worse. 'I think the Trump we're seeing now is very different from the Trump in his first term. He clearly spent that four years really developing a very different idea of what it means to be a president. 'So he is certainly having a much more found impact on the world than he did first time round, for better and worse.' Mr Stewart admits he 'underestimated' one of Mr Trump's 'strengths', which he argues is his ability to quickly change his mind. He believes, that, in the coming days, Mr Trump could, 'go from being a very, very fervent supporter of Israel's policies in Gaza to changing to being a very fervent supporter of the interests of Palestinians in Gaza.' The President's public support for the Israeli government has softened in recent weeks, whilst Mr Trump has also expressed concern about mass hunger in Gaza, saying images of emaciated children in the region showed there was 'real starvation'. 'We could well see, over the next week or two, a complete transformation in American policy towards the Middle East, which almost no other president would have been able to do,' Mr Stewart says. But the former Tory leadership contender is also fiercely critical of the President, adding: 'I think in the end, the damage to his allies will be profound. 'I think that's the real sadness here, which is that the West, the UK, Europe, Japan, South Korea, these countries that have been American allies since the Second World War have been through this incredible roller coaster with his shift on his policy on Ukraine, his challenges to NATO, his tariffs. 'This stuff I don't think America will ever recover from because none of America's allies will be able to rely on America in the future in the way they did in the past.' He concludes: 'He's the most consequential, interesting president of our lifetime. 'But I'm afraid he's also a fundamentally flawed person who in the end history will conclude has done an incredible amount of damage to the global order and to the interest of American allies and democracies and to the global economy.'
BreakingNews.ie
36 minutes ago
- BreakingNews.ie
Tusla warns it will blow its budget by nearly €68m this year
Tusla has warned it will blow its budget by nearly €68 million this year as it struggles to deal with huge demand for its services. The child and family agency warned in an update in May that it had already overspent by €8.9 million, but this figure was likely to multiply by the end of the year. Advertisement Tusla said its expected overspend for 2025 was €67.8 million, which included €7.6 million for kids in the international protection process and refugees from Ukraine. In a monthly briefing, the agency said demand for its service was growing especially for residential care, fostering, legal bills, and separated children seeking asylum. It said they were trying to cut costs by expanding residential provision to replace special emergency arrangements that were a 'significant cost driver.' Tusla said some savings had been made in this area in 2024 through a 'strict pricing arrangement' and that this would continue this year. Advertisement However, the agency warned that costs remained 'unpredictable' due to the inflated cost of placements. The briefing explained: 'As the majority of Tusla's expenditure is on demand-led arrangements, it is not possible to reduce expenditure materially to meet the budget allocated, without adversely impacting on services for vulnerable children and families.' It said there was likely to be an overspend of €38.8 million on placements for special care, fostering, and private residential arrangements. Tusla also detailed the high cost of 'out-of-state placements' which involves a small number of children brought to the U.K. when services are not available in Ireland. Advertisement The briefing said: 'If the agency cannot place children into special care in the existing facilities in 2025, this has the potential to impact on this year's overspend.' It said costs for staff travel were also likely to be up by as much as €2.2 million despite on expenses being introduced. Tusla also detailed a sharp rise in the number of placements for separated children who had applied for international protection in Ireland. The overspend here was predicted to be around €6.1 million to offer 343 residential placements for vulnerable asylum seekers without parents. Advertisement Other areas of concern for Tusla were 'Guardian ad Litem' (GAL] arrangements where a person was appointed to represent the interests of a child in court. 'There is continued increased usage of GALs by the courts,' the document said, 'and this also has an increased legal cost.' The child and family agency also predicted an overspend for child refugees fleeing the war in Ukraine, according to records released under FOI. Asked about the budget difficulties, a spokesman said: 'Throughout 2025, the agency has experienced unprecedented demand for services, which was unpredictable in nature, and we have worked to prioritise cost saving initiatives around these contributing factors. 'Tusla has strong budget controls in place, however the projected overspend for 2025 is the result of demand-led pressures in the agency for the accommodation of children in the care of the state as well as costs for accommodating unaccompanied minors and associated legal and Guardian ad Litem (GAL) costs.'
