WASHINGTON (CNBC) -— President Joe Biden has signed ratification documents bringing Finland and Sweden one step closer to joining the NATO alliance. “Russian President Vladimir Putin thought he could break us apart,” Biden said from the East Room of the White House. “Our alliance is closer than ever, it is more united than ever, and after Finland and Sweden join we will be stronger than ever.” Last week, the Senate voted 95 to 1 to ratify the entrance of Finland and Sweden into the world’s most powerful military alliance. Last week, the Senate voted 95 to 1 to ratify the entrance of Finland and Sweden into the world’s most powerful military alliance.

 

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PARIS (AFP) - The vessel foundered at dawn off the islands of Karpathos and Rhodes after setting sail on Tuesday from Antalya, southern Turkey, heading for Italy. “According to the statements of 29 rescued people, there were 80 people on the boat, so up to 50 people are missing,” a coastguard press office official told AFP. The rescue effort, ordered by merchant shipping minister Yannis Plakiotakis, according to a coastguard statement, included four vessels already sailing in the southern Aegean, two coastguard patrol boats and a Greek air force helicopter.

 

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TOKYO (Reuters) - Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida reshuffled his cabinet on Wednesday amid growing public anger about the ruling party’s ties to the controversial Unification Church, saying the group had held no sway over party policy. The Liberal Democratic Party’s longstanding links to the Unification Church, which critics call a cult, has become a major liability for Kishida in the month following the killing of former premier Shinzo Abe, helping send Kishida’s approval ratings to the lowest since he took office in October.

 

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PARIS (AFP) - A Tunisian administrative court suspended the dismissal of fifty judges who were fired by President Kais Saied in June, a lawyer told Reuters on Wednesday. Saied dismissed 57 judges on June 1, accusing them of corruption and protecting terrorists - charges that the Tunisian Judges’ Association said were mostly politically motivated. The lawyer, Kamel Ben Massoud, told Reuters that the court had rejected the appeals of at least seven other judges.

 

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BENI, DR Congo (Reuters) - Hundreds of prison inmates in the eastern Congolese city of Butembo have escaped after the facility was attacked by an armed group overnight, local authorities said. Two police officers were killed and part of the prison was damaged by a fire during the attack by Mai-Mai militiamen, said Antony Mwalushayi, a spokesperson for the army’s operations against armed groups in Democratic Republic of Congo’s North Kivu province. He did not say how many prisoners had escaped, but Butembo Mayor Mowa Baeki-Telly said it was in the hundreds and appealed to residents to help round them up.