ROVANIEMI, Finland: A fighter jet roaring through the grey sky breaks the tranquility of a boreal forest in northern Finland, one more sign of a growing military presence that is challenging the ability of reindeer herders to exercise their livelihood.
“Military activity has increased massively here since Finland joined NATO,” reindeer herder Kyosti Uutela said on a tour in Rovajarvi, the largest artillery practice range in western Europe, on a day when no ground exercises were underway.
Located 100 kilometers (60 miles) from the Russian border, Rovajarvi covers an area of 1,070 square kilometers on land that also makes up part of the reindeer husbandry district that Uutela heads.
Finland, which shares a 1,340-kilometer border with Russia, dropped decades of military non-alignment to join NATO in 2023 in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
And in 2024, a defense cooperation agreement between the United States and Finland came into force.
“Training activities and exercises have increased since the beginning of the war in Ukraine” because of the worsened security situation, the Finnish Defense Forces told AFP in a statement.
“This is naturally also reflected in Rovajarvi,” it said, saying the firing range provided unique training possibilities for international troops thanks to its size, terrain and seasonal changes.
Last year, Finland participated in 103 military exercises at home and abroad, up from 89 in 2023.
Ascending a small hill where the forest has been clear-cut and trenches dug for training purposes, Uutela said the spot “had been lost” as a grazing ground.
“The use of heavy army tanks and the presence of thousands of soldiers in the forest destroy the lichen pastures,” Uutela said, referring to the reindeer’s main source of food.
“Reindeer will not be able to live here anymore,” he said.
Finland has 4,305 reindeer owners and around 184,000 reindeer, living in 57 reindeer husbandry districts that cover 36 percent of the country’s total area.
A part of them belong to the indigenous Sami population that lives in Sapmi, which straddles northern regions of Finland, Sweden, Norway and Russia.
The non-Sami people such as Uutela who also practice reindeer husbandry include herders living near the Rovajarvi range, outside the Sapmi homeland.
Full-time herders sell reindeer meat, pelts and handicrafts as their main source of income, and husbandry has been an integral part of the indigenous Sami culture for generations.
Riikka Poropudas, another herder in Rovajarvi, said the military presence in the area had increased “radically” since Finland’s NATO accession, forcing herders to feed their reindeer in fenced areas more often than before.
Finland’s Defense Forces said the needs of reindeer husbandry were “taken into account in the planning of exercises, for example in terms of the times and locations,” adding that they were in daily contact with Rovajarvi herders.
But Poropudas worries that a large live-fire and combat exercise involving around 6,500 soldiers from Finland, Sweden and Britain this month would disturb her reindeer.
The calving season is at its busiest in mid-May.
“The activities stress both female reindeer and newborn calves, and drive them away from their natural pastures,” she said.
Tuomas Aslak Juuso, acting president of the Sami parliament in Finland, said climate change and land use changes – including the militarization of the Arctic – posed special challenges for the roughly 1,200 Sami reindeer herders in Finland.
“Our way of reindeer husbandry depends fully on the herding model and the reindeer being able to graze freely on natural pasture lands,” he said.
But the effects of climate change on winter conditions already mean that herders increasingly have to provide their reindeer with supplementary feed “in order to avoid mass deaths.”
A large international military exercise conducted in Finnish Sapmi in 2023 had been “quite a negative experience for the Sami people,” Juuso said.
“The local reindeer herders had not been informed beforehand, grazing conditions for that spring were damaged and tractors damaged the lichen cover, which may never grow back,” he said.
“When these things are planned, there should be early consultation with the Sami and responsibility for damage and harm.”
Growing Arctic military presence worries Finland’s reindeer herders
https://arab.news/vjn34
Growing Arctic military presence worries Finland’s reindeer herders
- Finland, which shares a 1,340-kilometer border with Russia, dropped decades of military non-alignment to join NATO in 2023
- Finland has 4,305 reindeer owners and around 184,000 reindeer, living in 57 reindeer husbandry districts
Trump praises Liberian leader on English — his native tongue
- “It’s beautiful English. I have people at this table can’t speak nearly as well,” Trump said after hearing Liberia's President Joseph Boakai speak
- Boakai, like most Liberians, speaks English — the country’s official tongue and lingua franca
WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump complimented the president of Liberia Wednesday on his English-speaking skills — despite English being the official language of the West African nation.
Trump was hosting a White House lunch with African leaders Wednesday, and — after brief remarks from President Joseph Boakai — asked the business graduate where he had picked up his linguistic know-how.
“Thank you, and such good English... Where did you learn to speak so beautifully? Where were you educated?” Trump said.
Boakai — who, like most Liberians, speaks English as a first language — indicated he had been educated in his native country.
He was facing away from the media, making his countenance hard to gauge — but his laconic, mumbled response hinted at awkwardness.
Trump, who was surrounded by French-speaking presidents from other West African nations, kept digging.
“It’s beautiful English. I have people at this table can’t speak nearly as well,” he said.
US engagement in Liberia began in the 1820s when the Congress- and slaveholder-funded American Colonization Society began sending freed slaves to its shores.
Thousands of “Americo-Liberian” settlers followed, declaring themselves independent in 1847 and setting up a government to rule over a native African majority.
The country has a diverse array of indigenous languages and a number of creolized dialects, while Kpelle-speakers are the largest single linguistic group.
Boakai himself can read and write in Mendi and Kissi but converses in Liberia’s official tongue and lingua franca — English.
Houses made from rice: Kyrgyzstan’s eco-friendly revolution
KYZYL-KIYA, Kyrgyzstan : It may look like an ordinary building site but Akmatbek Uraimov’s new house in Kyrgyzstan is being built with blocks of rice.
The eco-friendly alternative to conventional construction materials is booming in the Central Asian country, which is vulnerable to global warming and grapples with water shortages.
Before selecting the unorthodox material, Uraimov had researched other options, but concluded that the relatively cheap blocks made from rice husks were his best option.
“In terms of insulation, cost, as well as for builders, it turned out to be convenient,” said Uraimov, who lives in the village of Kyzyl-Kiya in southern Kyrgyzstan.
“People didn’t know about it. Now they see it, they are interested, they call,” he told AFP.
Nursultan Taabaldyev is one of the pioneers of the technology in Central Asia hailed as an environmentally friendly alternative to water-intensive concrete.
In a workshop in his home region of Batken, rice dust was billowing into the air from the husks, the rough outer shell of rice which is normally thrown away or burned.
Workers with protective masks over their faces were compressing the bricks before rushing to dry them, and helping clients load the finished blocks onto trucks.
They are “made of 60 percent rice husks. The rest is clay, cement and a chemical-free glue,” Taabaldyev told AFP.
When dry, they are as strong as cement thanks to silica naturally present inside the husks.
“This idea came to me as a child, while doing carpentry with my father,” said Taabaldyev.
The 27-year-old has already built “300 houses” in five years — first with sawdust, then with rice.
When he started, there was little robust research into the technology.
That is starting to change.
Several initial studies from various countries have highlighted the potential economic and environmental benefits of using rice blocks in construction.
Crucially, they require less cement, which is responsible for approximately eight percent of global carbon dioxide emissions, according to 2023 figures from the World Economic Forum.
In her village in a mountainous and arid region, Ykhval Boriyeva has also opted for rice blocks, praising their insulating qualities.
Her house remains “warm in winter and cool in spring” thanks to its low thermal conductivity.
“We save on coal. The walls retain heat and coolness well,” she said.
The material is also well within reach, with the Batken region producing a third of Kyrgyzstan’s rice crop.
“Rice waste is thrown into the fields, slowly burns, harms the environment, and is not used as fertilizer. So we decided to recycle it,” Taabaldyev said.
The problem of dealing with rice waste is even more acute in large rice producers like India.
There “31.4 million tons of rice husks fill landfills and cause environmental problems,” according to a study late last year published by Springer Nature.
“Farmers are happy for us to remove rice waste because its accumulation creates a fire risk” in barns if ventilation is poor, said Taabaldyev.
But as for the fire hazard to buildings made of rice, a regional official from Kyrgyzstan’s emergency situations ministry said there was “no particular danger.”
Farmer Abdimamat Saparov is another who has welcomed Taabaldyev’s innovative approach, pointing at the mounds of rice waste.
“After harvesting and drying the rice, about 40 percent of waste remains, which we have no way of processing,” said Saparov.
Such abundance makes the blocks cheaper than ordinary building bricks — another crucial factor in southern Kyrgyzstan, where the average monthly salary is around $230.
Cement is more expensive in Kyrgyzstan than anywhere else in Central Asia and the government is mulling adding it to a list of socially sensitive products, alongside bread and oil, that would allow it to dampen surging prices.
Having proved the concept in the mountainous region, Taabaldyev dreams of industrialising production, expanding internationally and eyeing up even more potential materials.
“I want to go to Kazakhstan to make bricks from crushed reed and straw,” he said.
Turkiye’s youngest oil wrestlers keeping a 14th-century tradition alive
- The sport, which is on UNESCO’s intangible cultural heritage list, sees wrestlers cover themselves in olive oil and try to press their opponent’s back to the ground to win the bout
EDIRNE, Turkiye: On a grass field slick with olive oil and steeped in tradition, hundreds of boys as young as 11 joined the ranks of Turkiye’s most time-honored sporting event: the annual Kirkpinar Oil Wrestling Championship.
Held every summer in the northwestern city of Edirne, the event is said to date back to the 14th century as a way of keeping the Ottoman Empire’s fighting men fit and ready for battle.
The sport, which is on UNESCO’s intangible cultural heritage list, sees wrestlers cover themselves in olive oil and try to press their opponent’s back to the ground to win the bout.
Alongside the men contesting, youngsters also don the iconic “kispet” leather trousers to embark on a slippery test of strength, skill and stamina under the scorching sun.
The boys are ranked in divisions based on age, height and build, with the youngest generally placed in the “minik,” or tiny, category. Under strict safety regulations, their matches are shorter and closely supervised.
Most young wrestlers train year-round at local clubs, often in towns where oil wrestling is passed down through generations.
While the youngest competitors aren’t wrestling for titles like “baspehlivan,” the grand champion of the men’s matches, their participation is no less significant as it is key to the continuity of a sport that holds deep cultural importance across Turkiye.
This year’s contest – the 664th in its history – saw 36-year-old Orhan Okulu win his third men’s title.
“My goal was the golden belt in Kirkpinar and thanks to my God, I succeeded,” Okulu said of the coveted prize.
Pakistan confiscates 18 lions kept as pets in crackdown after attack
- The lion, which was kept without a license in a house in Lahore, was confiscated and sent to a local safari park
- Keeping exotic animals as pets has been fueled by social media, with owners often showing off their animals online as status symbols
LAHORE: Eighteen lions kept illegally as pets have been confiscated in Pakistan’s Punjab region, authorities said on Monday as they launched a crackdown after one escaped from a house and attacked a woman and two children.
The woman suffered scratches and bruises, and the two children, aged five and seven, were hospitalized after the attack last week but their injuries were not life-threatening, provincial wildlife officials said.
The lion, which was kept without a license in a house in Lahore, was confiscated and sent to a local safari park, said Mubeen Elahi, director general of the provincial Wildlife and Parks Department. The owner was later arrested, police said.
Keeping exotic animals as pets has been fueled by social media, with owners often showing off their animals online as status symbols.
“According to the new regulations for keeping big cats, no individual is allowed to keep a lion without a license, without adhering to the required cage size, and without following other standard operating procedures,” Elahi said.
The punishment is up to seven years in jail.
As well as confiscating the 18 animals, the department raided 38 lion and tiger breeding farms and arrested eight people for violating the rules, he said, adding that all farms will be inspected by the end of this week.
There are 584 lions and tigers in homes and breeding farms in Punjab, Pakistan’s most populous province, he said.
“I know plenty of people who keep big cats as pets,” said Qaim Ali, 30, who himself had a lion but sold it after it attacked his nephew.
“Most of them are not interested in breeding but keep them as a symbol of power and influence in society.”
Djokovic’s daughter steals the show at Wimbledon with her victory dance
- Tara Djokovic’s victory dance brought a smile to dad’s face. Everybody else’s, too
LONDON: Novak Djokovic won the match on Center Court on Saturday, but it was his 7-year-old daughter who really wowed Wimbledon.
Tara Djokovic’s victory dance brought a smile to dad’s face. Everybody else’s, too.
Djokovic had just clinched his 100th Wimbledon singles win and was asked during his on-court interview to shed light on the little dance he’s been doing recently.
He said it’s done to a song called “Pump It Up.”
“There’s a song with my kids — look my daughter’s doing it right now,” a smiling Djokovic said as he looked into the crowd. “You want to show it darling?”
The TV camera then panned to Tara, who then showed everyone how it’s done: pump your fists down, then left, right and overhead.
The crowd roared.
“She’s the master. It’s a little tradition we have right now. Hopefully we can keep going so we can keep pumping more in Wimbledon.”
