TOP NEWS

Xi Jinping's China  

The Minister of Defense disappeared in August - now he is being replaced  

 

Beijing has appointed a new defense minister to replace Li Shangfu, who has not been seen since August.  

 

Dong Jun, the incoming defense minister, is a 66-year-old former head of the navy. Unlike Li Shangfu, he is not on the US sanctions list, which will possibly make it easier for him to attend meetings with his US counterpart, according to the AP.  

 

Unlike many other countries, the defense minister in China has relatively little direct power over the military, which is governed by the Central Military Committee headed by Xi Jinping.  

 

Earlier this year, China's Foreign Minister Qin Gang was also replaced in a process in which the outside world was given very little insight.  

 

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Putin's Russia  

Russian spy chief: No one can meddle in Russian elections  

 

Russian spies will do their utmost to prevent the outside world from "meddling" in the Russian presidential election, according to a video broadcast speech by Sergei Naryshkin, head of the foreign intelligence service SVR.  

 

- We must take every conceivable step to prevent possible attempts at external interference, he says according to Reuters.  

 

Russian spies have previously been regularly accused of trying to influence election results in other countries.  

 

Vladimir Putin, who leads with 80 percent in some opinion polls, is expected to win a walk-off victory in the March election. 

 

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The future of defence  

He leads Sweden in war: Unpredictable outside world  

 

Carl-Johan Edström, head of the Armed Forces' operations management, is the one who will lead the Swedish forces in the event of war. At the moment, he sees no direct threat of war against Sweden, but that can change quickly, he says in an interview with GP and takes Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine as an example.  

 

- No one predicted that there would be war in Europe again half a year before it actually happened. It is an example of the unpredictable.  

 

As Sweden now prepares for NATO membership, the Swedish defense strategy is also changing, explains Edström. The defense no longer starts at Sweden's border, but at NATO's border with Russia, he says.  

 

In the event of war, he does not believe that Swedish territory would primarily become a battlefield, but rather be used as a base for air, naval and ground forces, as well as a transit area to Finland and the Baltics.

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The new space race  

The US postponed the "space plane" last night - the mission secret  

 

The United States has launched the "space plane" X-37B for the seventh time during the night of Friday, reports Reuters.  

 

The unmanned aircraft can, with the help of launch rockets, get into orbit around the Earth and stay in the air for years, but the exact mission of the craft is secret.  

 

The launch was successful after weeks of technical problems and delays. On December 14, China launched its corresponding vessel "Shenlong".  

 

- It is probably no coincidence that they are trying to match us in this, says General Chance Saltzman, a general in the US Space Force, according to Reuters.