Finnish president wants admittance by summer

The Finnish president said in an interview published Saturday that he trusts that Finland and Sweden will be admitted into NATO by July, and hinted that he wants the United States to put pressure on Turkey to approve their membership bids.

If the issue drags on, the entire process of admitting new members into the military alliance will become questionable, President Sauli Niinistö said in an interview with the Finnish news agency STT.

“If it doesn’t happen by the Vilnius meeting, why should it happen afterwards?” Niinistö said.

Lithuania is set to host a NATO summit in the Baltic nation’s capital on July 11-12.

NATO requires unanimous approval from its existing members to admit new ones.

Turkey and Hungary are the only nations in the 30-member military alliance that haven’t formally endorsed Sweden and Finland’s accession.

While Hungary has pledged to do so in February, Turkey hasn’t indicated willingness to ratify the two countries’ accession any time soon.

Niinistö stressed that the final Turkish decision is up to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

“I think that under no circumstances will he allow himself to be influenced by any public pressure,” Niinistö said.

“But if something opens up during the bilateral talks between Turkey and the United States, it might have an impact.”

Turkey has been holding off approving Sweden and Finland’s membership into NATO as it has been infuriated, among other things, by a recent series of demonstrations in Stockholm by activists who have burned the Quran outside the Turkish Embassy and hanged an effigy of Erdogan.

In January, Ankara indefinitely postponed a key meeting in Brussels that would have discussed the two Nordic countries’ entry into NATO.

Niinistö said that Finland and Sweden heard many encouraging statements from NATO last spring — the Nordic duo had stated their intention to join NATO in May — about smooth and painless progress of membership.

He said that did not happen, adding that the delay isn’t only a headache for the two applicant countries.

“I can see that this has already become a problem for NATO. Clearly, NATO countries have also been surprised,” Niinistö said.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Saturday that on his order a U.S. fighter jet shot down an “unidentified object” that was flying high over the Yukon, acting a day after the U.S. took similar action over Alaska.

North American Aerospace Defense Command, the combined U.s.-canada organization that provides shared defense of airspace over the two nations, detected the object flying at a high altitude Friday evening over Alaska, U.S. officials said. It crossed into Canadian airspace on Saturday.

Trudeau spoke with President Joe Biden, who also ordered the object to be shot down. Canadian and U.S. jets operating as part of NORAD were scrambled and it was a U.S. jet that shot down the object.

F-22 fighter jets have now taken out three objects in the airspace above the U.S. and Canada over seven days, a stunning development that is raising questions on just what, exactly, is hovering overhead and who has sent them.

At least one of the objects downed was believed to be

An airline jet being towed on a taxiway collided with a shuttle bus at Los Angeles International Airport late Friday, injuring five people.

The Federal Aviation Administration said Saturday that it is investigating the incident involving an American Airlines Airbus A321 jet.

There were no passengers on board. a spy balloon from China, but the other two had not yet been publicly identified. While Trudeau described the object Saturday as “unidentified,” a NORAD spokesman, Maj. Olivier Gallant, said the military had determined what it was but would not reveal details.

Trudeau said Canadian forces would recover the wreckage for study. The Yukon is westernmost Canadian territory and the among the least populated part of Canada.

Just about a day earlier, White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said an object roughly the size of a small car was shot out of the skies above remote Alaska. Officials couldn’t say if it contained any surveillance equipment, where it came from or what purpose it had.

Kirby said it was shot down because it was flying at about 40,000 feet (13,000 meters) and posed a “reasonable threat” to the safety of civilian flights, not because of any knowledge that it was engaged in surveillance.

According to U.S. Northern Command, recovery operations continued Saturday on sea ice near Deadhorse, Alaska.

The airport said on Twitter that the jet was being towed from a gate to a parking area when it “made contact” with a shuttle bus that was transporting passengers between terminals.

The Los Angeles Fire Department said four people were taken to hospitals after the “low-speed collision,” which occurred around 10 p.m.

The driver of the tug pulling the plane was in moderate condition and the

In a statement, the Northern Command said there were no new details on what the object was. It said the Alaska Command and the Alaska National Guard, along with the FBI and local law enforcement, were conducting search and recovery.

“Arctic weather conditions, including wind chill, snow, and limited daylight, are a factor in this operation, and personnel will adjust recovery operations to maintain safety,” the statement said.

On Feb. 4, U.S. officials shot down a large white balloon off the coast of South Carolina. The balloon was part of a large surveillance program that China has been conducting for “several years,” the Pentagon has said. The U.S. has said Chinese balloons have flown over dozens of countries across five continents in recent years, and it learned more about the balloon program after closely monitoring the one shot down near South Carolina.

China responded that it reserved the right to “take further actions” and criticized the U.S. for “an obvious overreaction and a serious violation of international practice.” driver and two passengers on the bus were in fair condition, the department said.

The only person on the plane, a worker, was treated but declined to be taken to a hospital, according to the fire department.

There was no interruption to airport operations, the airport said.

A large skid mark from the jet’s tire was visible, and the windshield of the bus had extensive damage, according to Abc7.com.