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HAVELTE, Netherlands (AP) — Their faces daubed with camouflage, the troops emerge almost silently from a forest with Colt C7 rifles slung across their chests. They scan their surroundings for potential threats.

The soldiers are members of the 10th Infantry Battalion Guard Security Corps National Reserve on a weekend exercise to hone their skills as the Netherlands bolsters its military with new recruits and volunteers. The Dutch government and top brass have committed to raising military personnel from its current 80,000 to 120,000 by 2035 — plans that have broad political support.

The recent enlistment by the country’s queen and her eldest daughter as reservists look to be helping, with authorities now scrambling to arm and train new recruits.

The recruitment drive in the Netherlands reflects moves across Europe to expand and modernize militaries as leaders warily eye the grinding war launched by Russia against Ukraine and the disenchantment expressed by U.S. President Donald Trump with the NATO alliance that has been the cornerstone of the defense and security architecture of the continent since World War II laid ruin to much of it.

A corporal in the reserve battalion, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the nature of her service, said she’s seen a shift in priorities as the global security outlook has gotten more volatile and less predictable.

“When I first joined, there was almost no risk or almost no threat … and now it’s changing so we are more aware of it,” she said. That has meant a mindset shift toward “more what we call ‘green things,’ infantry things.”

She added: “We are here to defend our country and to make sure to keep the threat down.”

The threat is very real, according to European Union and NATO officials, who believe Russian President Vladimir Putin could be ready to launch an attack elsewhere in Europe in three to five years, especially if he wins the war in Ukraine.

New NATO plans aimed at countering that threat require allies to prepare their armies for big battles, focused on more mobile forces that can be quickly deployed.

Dutch recruitment got a significant boost when Queen Maxima and her eldest daughter and heir to the throne Amalia, Princess of Orange, enlisted as volunteer reservists. Photos of Maxima in training and aiming a pistol on a shooting range were published around the world.

That royal seal of approval, together with recruiting campaigns running everywhere from newspapers and billboards to social media, has proven so successful that the military is now working overtime to arm, train and accommodate all the newcomers.

At the Defense Ministry, it’s known as “the Amalia effect.”

“It’s really a thing, yes,” State Secretary for Defense Derk Boswijk told The Associated Press. “It’s very inspiring to see how members of our royal family inspired people to join our armed forces.”

Boswijk said there are about 9,000 reservists in the Netherlands, and recruiters aim to have at least 20,000 in 2030.

“We have more applications than we can handle,” Boswijk said. Now the military has to battle “a lack of training capacity, a lack of housing. You have to give them all uniforms, you have to give them weapons.”

But, he added: “It’s a luxury problem.”

German lawmakers are considering a government plan to offers better pay and conditions for people who join up on a short-term basis, along with better training and more flexibility on how long recruits must serve.

The aim is to draw sufficient recruits without reviving conscription that was suspended for men in 2011. The plan leaves the door open for limited compulsory recruitment if not enough people volunteer.

Like the Netherlands, France is leaning into voluntary service to boost the military. A program starting in September seeks to recruit 3,000 volunteers aged 18-25. They will serve in uniform for 10 months in France’s mainland and overseas territories only. The plan seeks to attract up to 50,000 volunteers per year by 2035.

In northern and eastern Europe, where the threat from Russia is felt most keenly, some nations still have some conscription.

Finland has a draft for all males and a voluntary system for women. Sweden reinstated a gender-neutral partial military service in 2017. If not enough people volunteer, a lottery is held to select people for the remain slots. Neighboring Denmark has a similar system, as does Latvia since it revived its draft in 2023 in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The Netherlands never fully abolished its draft, but call-ups have been suspended since 1997 and there are no immediate plans to reintroduce them. Instead, the Defense Ministry is seeking to make the military more attractive to a broad cross-section of society.

Threats have expanded from traditional battlefields into cyberspace and the digital world, he added, “so we need all kind of skills, to keep our society, our country, our allies safe. So, yes, we need also people wearing hoodies, having blue hair, who can game perfectly.”

For some among the new generation of answering their country’s call to arms, a bitter lesson from Dutch history is motivating them.

“When I was in primary school, we were taught that in the Second World War it took (German forces) five days to take over Holland,” Lisette den Heijer said at a recent information evening run by the Dutch military for reservist volunteers, adding that she doesn’t want history to repeat itself.

At the exercise in the eastern Netherlands, a private first class in the reserve battalion who also spoke on condition of anonymity because he works for a defense-related company, said he too has seen a shift in recent years.

“So where we were just focused on peaceful operations in 2018, we’re now more focusing on protecting vital infrastructure,” he said. That included duty in the massive security operation to guard last year’s summit of NATO leaders in The Hague.

Reservists in the Netherlands commit to 300 hours of service each year, including regular weekend exercises. Traditionally they are deployed to secure and guard domestic sites and are not sent to combat missions overseas. They also can be used in national emergencies, such as piling up sandbags in cases of severe flooding.

Back in the forests of the eastern Netherlands, the reservists suddenly stop and point their weapons at an innocent-looking mound of earth covered in dry leaves and wood.

A soldier — a member of their unit — crawls out of the foxhole where he was hiding and surrenders. The volunteers exchange high-fives before preparing to break down their camp and return to their day jobs.

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Associated Press reporters across Europe contributed.

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LONDON (AP) — The Bank of England is expected to announce Thursday that it is keeping interest rates on hold as policymakers assess the economic impact of the Iran war and Tehran’s effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the world’s crude passes in peacetime.

Economists said the nine-member panel may hint that interest rates could increase in the months to come if the conflict in the Middle East — where a shaky ceasefire is for now holding — puts more upward pressure on U.K. inflation.

For now, the Monetary Policy Committee is expected to keep the bank’s main rate at 3.75%, with one or two members possibly voting for a quarter-point hike as a preemptive measure against higher inflation.

Before the war, there had been an expectation in financial markets that the bank would cut rates given that inflation was predicted to fall back toward its 2% target during the spring. The war has since upended the bank’s predictions as well as the wider global economic forecasts.

Sandra Horsfield, an economist at Investec, said the “repercussions of the conflict are still keenly felt and uncertainty about how the situation could evolve also remains high.”

Likely more important than the decision, will be the bank’s quarterly economic projections published at the same time and the subsequent news conference, led by Bank Gov. Andrew Bailey.

The forecasts will be the first since the United States and Israel launched the strikes on Iran that started the war on Feb. 28 — in general, inflation forecasts are likely to be raised and growth predictions lowered.

Last week, official figures showed inflation in the United Kingdom climbed in March after a sharp jump in prices at the pump in the wake of the disruption to energy supplies caused by the war. The annual consumer price inflation rate increased to a three-month high of 3.3%, from 3% the previous month.

Inflation is likely to rise further in the coming months, possibly to 4%, as higher energy prices impact household bills.

Economists do not expect inflation to get anywhere near the four-decade highs above 11% in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, partly because oil and gas prices have not spiked as much and partly because interest rates are higher.

But Bank of England policymakers will be keeping an eye on whether the evident inflation spike starts to spread through the economy, by way of higher wages, for example. They will also be alert to any upcoming action from the Britain’s Labour government to limit the inflation impact on households and businesses.

Treasury chief Rachel Reeves, whose hopes over the cost-of-living have been blown off course by the crisis in the Middle East, has said this is “not our war, but it is pushing up bills for families and businesses” as a result.

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BEIRUT (AP) — Lebanese authorities detained the former Palestinian ambassador to Lebanon on corruption charges shortly after he arrived in the country, officials said Wednesday.

The officials said Ashraf Dabbour was arrested upon arrival at Beirut’s Rafik Hariri International Airport late Tuesday. The two judicial and two security officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas relieved Dabbour of his post as Palestinian ambassador to Lebanon last year after the Palestinian Authority accused him of corruption.

The Lebanese officials said authorities detained Dabbour in Beirut based on a Red Notice issued by Interpol late last year.

Dabbour was reportedly involved in selling property in Lebanon that was owned by the Palestine Liberation Organization, which was based in the country until Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon.

The officials said Dabbour was being questioned by a judge at the prosecutor’s office in Beirut.

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BIKFAYA, Lebanon (AP) — The former Lebanese president who once signed a short-lived deal with Israel ending decades of a state of war now says the time is right to try again.

Amin Gemayel spoke with The Associated Press in an interview Wednesday after the first direct talks between Lebanon and Israel since the 1980s, as they explore what could lead to a security agreement or even the eventual normalization of relations. He is part of one of Lebanon’s strongest political dynasties that founded the Christian Phalange party, which held powerful positions for decades.

The 84-year-old Gemayel, who rarely speaks to international media, acknowledged that much has changed as Lebanese leaders again pursue talks with Israel and as a fragile ceasefire holds. The discussions in Washington have led to angry protests as the Israeli military invasion of southern Lebanon continues, and as parts of Beirut recover from a devastating Israeli bombardment early this month.

For one, the Iranian-backed Hezbollah had only been established during Gemayel’s presidency and was far from the powerful armed and political presence it has since become. Hezbollah opposes direct talks with Israel and believes Lebanon instead should support Iran in its talks with the United States, saying Tehran has more leverage.

But Hezbollah has taken major blows, Gemayel noted, and he supports its disarmament. The group’s military capabilities were significantly weakened by Israel’s strikes in Lebanon over the past two years. And the ouster of longtime backer Bashar Assad in Syria by Islamist-led armed opposition groups closed off much of the porous border used for transporting weapons.

Regional circumstances also have changed, Gemayel said.

“During my time, discussing a peace agreement with Israel was an unforgivable fatal crime,” he said.

Now he believes there is more openness in the region, and pointed to Syria’s direct talks with Israel as well as the Abraham Accords, where a handful of Arab countries, notably the United Arab Emirates, established diplomatic ties with Israel.

Gemayel was Lebanon’s youngest-ever president in 1982 when he was sworn in, at 40 years old. The country was in the middle of a devastating 15-year civil war, occupied by both Syrian and Israeli troops.

He decided to enter U.S.-brokered direct talks with Israel, via a foreign ministry official, and reached an agreement in May 1983 that included ending the state of war that had existed between the countries since Israel’s inception in 1948. Israeli troops would withdraw from southern Lebanon and Lebanese troops would deploy there.

Despite U.S. President Ronald Reagan’s backing at the time and the Lebanese parliament voting overwhelmingly in favor for the agreement, it never went into effect. Gemayel blamed Syria and its allies in Lebanon, which were critical of any talks with Israel from the start, as well as Israel itself.

“Israel, though we had finished the negotiations and reached the stage of signing, tried to impose an article outside of the framework of the agreement, which was the simultaneous withdrawal alongside the Syrian army in Lebanon. So the Israeli military wouldn’t withdraw unless the Syrians would,” Gemayel said.

“It gave the Syrian military a veto to the agreement … and a public atmosphere of doubt that (then-Syrian President Hafez) Assad and his crew created.”

But now, Gemayel said, Lebanon’s leaders should pursue a long-term peace deal. Even an armistice, like the one signed in 1949 to bring calm to tense frontier for 18 years, could be a good step forward, as long as it keeps the country in one piece.

President Joseph Aoun has said he is seeking a deal similar to the 1949 agreement, not a full normalization of relations with Israel.

The move by Aoun and Prime Minister Nawaf Salam to enter into direct talks with Israel was met with both wide support and criticism in the deeply divided country. The officials have said the negotiations are the only way to secure the withdrawal of Israeli troops and bring about long-term calm.

“There is an opportunity for the Lebanese government to go into negotiations to reach a solution that achieves peace, security, and stability in Lebanon,” Gemayel said.

“That would also satisfy the feelings of Lebanese who yearn for the bare minimum of calm, peace, stability, and an end to the war.”

During this latest round of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, which began two days after the U.S. and Israeli attacks on Iran on Feb. 28, over 2,500 people in Lebanon have been killed and over one million people displaced.

Israeli troops remain in large swaths of southern Lebanon and continue to clash with Hezbollah fighters despite a truce being nominally in place. Both sides accuse each other of violating the ceasefire.

Lebanese have largely been critical of Hezbollah’s decision to launch rockets into Israel on March 2, but they have also been horrified by Israel’s bombardment and ground invasion.

Gemayel said the situation remains complicated, especially in a “boiling region” suffering from serious security and economic repercussions from the Iran war.

“We have to see how far we can go,” he said. “We trust General Aoun to enter negotiations as far as they go while maintaining the interests of the country and the unity of Lebanon. And he knows exactly how far he can go in negotiations.”

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Associated Press senior producer Malak Harb in Bikfaya, Lebanon, contributed to this report.

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By Michael Holden

LONDON, April 29 (Reuters) – Three men with links to Ukraine carried out a series of arson attacks on property connected to British Prime Minister Keir Starmer on behalf of a mystery figure known as “El Money”, prosecutors told a London court on Wednesday.

Over five days last May, police were called to fires at a house in north London connected to Starmer, another at a property nearby where he used to live, and to a blaze involving a Toyota car that also used to belong to the British leader.

Prosecutor Duncan Atkinson said police had identified Roman Lavrynovych, 22, as being the man behind all the fires and that he had been offered money to do so by someone using the name “El Money”.

“It is no part of your considerations to decide who ‘El Money’ is and what reason he might have had to co-ordinate the actions of these defendants against these properties and this car associated with the prime minister,” Atkinson told the jury at London’s Old Bailey court.

Ukrainian Lavrynovych is charged with arson with intent to endanger life or being reckless as to whether life would be endangered.

He and the other two defendants, fellow Ukrainian Petro Pochynok, 35, and Romanian national Stanislav Carpiuc, 27, who was born in Ukraine, are also accused of conspiracy to commit arson. They deny the accusations.

BEYOND COINCIDENCE

Atkinson said Pochynok had been recruited by Carpiuc to help Lavrynovych with the first fire, while Carpiuc’s role involved planning and receiving payment.

“Police recovered contact on the Telegram messaging app between Lavrynovych and ‘El Money’, which showed that Lavrynovych had been recruited, instructed and promised with payment for the fires that he was told to start,” Atkinson said.

“Police also recovered contact on the Telegram messaging app between Carpiuc and ‘El Money’. ‘El Money’ communicated in Russian, in contrast to the Ukrainian otherwise used by the defendants.”

He said three fires in the same area in five days would be unusual, but all involving property linked to one person was beyond coincidence.

Atkinson said the car had once belonged to Starmer, one house was managed by a company of which the prime minister had once been director and shareholder, and the other home was still owned by him.

“It does not matter whether they knew that the property they were targeting was connected to the prime minister or whether that formed part of their motivation,” Atkinson said.

The trial continues.

(Reporting by Michael Holden; editing by Sarah Young and Alex Richardson)

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LONDON (AP) — The U.K. on Wednesday expelled a Russian diplomat in retaliation for Moscow’s recent expulsion of a British official and the smear campaign that followed.

Britain’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office said it summoned the Russian ambassador to its offices in London to inform him of the “reciprocal action.” The tit-for tat moves reflect spiraling tensions between Moscow and the West.

“This behavior is wholly unacceptable, and we will not tolerate harassment or intimidation of our diplomatic staff,’’ the Foreign Office said in a statement.

The move came after Russia last month expelled a British diplomat over spying allegations that the U.K. rejected as “complete nonsense.”

Russia’s top domestic security and counterintelligence agency, the Federal Security Service, known as the FSB, said the British diplomat had sought to gather “sensitive information” about the Russian economy in “unofficial meetings” with Russian experts. The diplomat was ordered to leave Russia within two weeks.

Russia and NATO member states have carried out multiple rounds of mutual expulsions of diplomats since the Kremlin launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, sending diplomatic relations to their lowest ebb since the Cold War.

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April 28 (Reuters) – The United States, Bolivia, Costa Rica, Guyana, Paraguay, and Trinidad and Tobago released a joint statement in support of Panama’s sovereignty on Tuesday, saying recent actions by China are an attempt to politicize maritime trade and infringe on the sovereignty of nations in the hemisphere.

“We are monitoring with vigilance China’s targeted economic pressure and the recent actions that have affected Panama-flagged vessels,” the statement said. “Panama is a pillar of our maritime trading system, and as such must remain free from any undue external pressure.”

Panama’s Supreme Court in late January invalidated the legal framework supporting the 1997 concession granting CK Hutchison’s Panama Ports Company the right to operate the Balboa and Cristobal terminals on the Pacific and Atlantic sides of the Panama Canal.

The cancellation followed mounting U.S. pressure to curb Chinese influence around the strategic canal, which handles about 5% of global maritime trade.

CK Hutchison, which operated the ports for nearly 30 years, has rejected the court ruling, accused Panamanian authorities of unlawfully seizing property, and launched an international arbitration case against the country, claiming damages of more than $2 billion.

The Panamanian court ruling was followed by a surge in detentions and inspections of Panama-flagged vessels in China in apparent retaliation.

(Reporting by Christian Martinez in Los Angeles and Ryan Patrick Jones in Toronto)

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TAIPEI, April 29 (Reuters) – The Taiwanese minister in charge of the Coast Guard visited a second Taiwan-controlled islet deep in the South China Sea, she said on Wednesday, adding that complaints by Vietnam about her trip would not cause any regional tensions.

Taiwan and China claim sovereignty over most of the South China Sea and Taiwan has control of Itu Aba in the contested Spratly Islands in the southern part of the sea.

Writing on her Facebook page, Ocean Affairs Council Minister Kuan Bi-ling, whose department runs the Coast Guard, said that in addition to visiting Itu Aba she had also gone to the nearby and uninhabited Zhongzhou Reef to carry out a beach cleanup.

“There, I personally witnessed marine debris that had drifted in from surrounding countries and gained a deeper appreciation for the day-to-day life of our Coast Guard personnel stationed in the Nansha islands,” she added, using the name both Taiwan and China call the Spratlys.

Kuan posted two pictures of herself and her team on Zhongzhou; one staffer carried a large Taiwan flag.

Speaking to reporters in parliament later on Wednesday about her South China Sea visit, Kuan said that “in the defence of sovereignty of course there is absolutely no backing down.”

Kuan was in the Spratly Islands to carry out what the Coast Guard said were environmental and humanitarian drills.

Zhongzhou and Itu Aba are also claimed by China and Vietnam.

Kuan said Vietnam had complained about her trip, the first time in seven years a Taiwanese minister has visited Taiwan’s holdings in the Spratly Islands, but that its protest “has not been notably more forceful than usual.”

“Our exercise has not caused, nor will it cause, any regional tension,” she said in her Facebook post.

Vietnam’s foreign ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Itu Aba has a runway long enough to take military re-supply flights from Taiwan and Taiwan opened a new wharf there in 2023 that is able to accommodate a 4,000-ton patrol ship.

But the island is lightly defended compared to nearby Chinese-controlled islands. Chinese forces generally leave Itu Aba and Zhongzhou alone.

(Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Thomas Derpinghaus)

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(Corrects second paragraph to say only one of the defendants was sentenced in absentia, not four)

TRIPOLI, April 28 (Reuters) – Libya’s Tripoli Criminal Court on Tuesday convicted four members of “a criminal gang” involved in human trafficking, abductions for ransom and torture, with sentences up to 22 years, the attorney general’s office said on its Facebook page.

The attorney general’s office did not disclose the names of the four defendants, who were sentenced to between 12 and 22 years in prison. One of the defendants was sentenced in absentia.

Libya has become a transit route for migrants ⁠fleeing conflict and poverty to Europe via dangerous routes across the desert and over ⁠the Mediterranean since the toppling of Muammar Gaddafi in a NATO-backed uprising in 2011.

Charges against the four defendants including smuggling illegal migrants from Zuwara, a coastal city west of Tripoli, the attorney general’s office said.

The gang also kidnapped migrants, forcing their families to pay ransom by sending them “videos documenting the victims’ torture”, it added.

At least 17 bodies believed to be migrants were recovered by a medical service centre two weeks ago from the shores of Zuwara. 

On Monday, the Public Prosecutor’s Office ordered the arrest of “a criminal gang” that sent migrants from the eastern Libyan city of Tobruk to the northern Mediterranean on a dilapidated and unsafe boat that capsized and resulted in the death of 38 Sudanese, Egyptian, and Ethiopian nationals.

In November, several states including Britain, Spain, Norway and Sierra Leone urged Libya at a U.N. meeting in Geneva to close detention centres where rights groups say migrants and refugees have been tortured, abused and sometimes killed.

(Reporting by Ahmed Elumami and Ayman al-Warfalli; writing by Ahmed Elumami; editing by Lincoln Feast)

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April 29 (Reuters) – Russia will mark victory over Nazi Germany next month with a military parade on Moscow’s Red Square, but with no military equipment displayed in view of the operational situation in the war in Ukraine, the Defence Ministry said late on Tuesday.

The parade, traditionally held on May 9, the day the Soviet Union signed Germany’s surrender, will this year mark the 81st anniversary of victory in what Russians call the Great Patriotic War.

One of the top holidays on the Russian calendar, it allows the dwindling number of veterans to gather in streets with medals on display and is accompanied by an outpouring of emotion marked by feature films, documentaries and wartime music.

But this year, the ministry said, no military hardware will pass through the square.

“Military personnel from the higher military educational institutions of all types and individual branches of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation will take part in the parade as part of the marching column,” the statement said.

The statement said representatives of certain educational institutions would not participate “and nor will a column of military equipment take part in the military parade in connection with the current operational situation”.

It said the parade would put on display the work of servicemen from all branches of the military taking part in the “special military operation” as the Kremlin calls the conflict.

It said this would include Russia’s Strategic Missile Forces, Aerospace Forces, and servicemen on naval ships. Air force planes, it said, would perform a flypast and, at the end of the parade, display the white, blue and red colours of the national flag.

More than four years into the war, Russian forces remain engaged in a slow-moving advance through eastern Ukraine.

Top military officials say that Moscow’s forces are advancing on all fronts and the Defence Ministry frequently announces the capture of villages, including two on Tuesday.

U.S.-brokered talks aimed at edging toward a settlement are stalled, with Washington focused on the Middle East conflict.

President Vladimir Putin says Moscow seeks the capture of the entire Donbas region, made up of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, including parts it has failed to capture. Ukraine rejects any notion of withdrawing from areas it still holds.    

(Reporting by Reuters; Editing by Stephen Coates)

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