Norwegian intelligence officials said Monday that the case of a 25-year-old unidentified foreign student, who was arrested in Norway on suspicion of illegally eavesdropping by using various technical devices, is “serious and complicated.”

The case was shrouded in secrecy.

The man, whose identity and nationality have not been disclosed, was arrested on Friday. A court in Oslo on Sunday ordered that he be held in pre-trial custody for four weeks, on suspicion of espionage and intelligence operations against the NATO-member Nordic country.

In an email to The Associated Press, a prosecutor for Norway’s domestic security agency, known by its acronym PST, said the investigation was in “a critical and initial phase” and would take time.

During the arrest, police seized from the man a number of data-carrying electronic devices. The suspect is a student — though not enrolled in an educational institution in Norway — and has been living in Norway for a relatively short time, Norwegian media said.

Norwegian broadcaster NRK said the suspect had allegedly been caught conducting illegal signal surveillance in a rental car near the Norwegian prime minister’s office and the defense ministry.

The suspect, who authorities say was not operating alone, was banned from receiving letters and visits. According to prosecutor Thomas Blom, the suspect “has not yet wanted to be questioned.”

Blom declined to comment further.

In previous assessments, the security agency has singled out Russia, China and North Korea as states that pose a significant intelligence threat to Norway, a nation of 5.4 million people.

In October, Norway detained a man who had entered the country as a Brazilian citizen but is suspected of being a Russian spy. He was detained in the Arctic city of Tromso, where he worked at the Arctic University of Norway.

Norwegian media have said the man called himself Jose Assis Giammaria. Norwegian authorities said he was 44, born in Russia in 1978 and was likely named Mikhail Mikushin.
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Rescuers pulled an American researcher out of a Turkish cave early Tuesday, more than a week after he became seriously ill 1,000 meters (more than 3,000 feet) below its entrance, the Speleological Federation of Turkey said.

Teams from across Europe had rushed to Morca cave in southern Turkey’s Taurus Mountains to aid Mark Dickey, a 40-year-old experienced caver who became seriously ill on Sept. 2 with stomach bleeding. He was on an expedition to map the cave, which is the country’s third deepest.

Dickey was too frail to climb out himself, so rescuers carried him with the help of a stretcher, making frequent stops at temporary camps set up along the way before he finally reached the surface early Tuesday.

“Mark Dickey is out of the Morca cave,” said a statement by the speleological federation. It said that Dickey was removed from the last exit of the cave at 12:37 a.m. local time Tuesday, or 9:37 p.m. GMT Monday.

“He is fine and is being tended to by emergency medical workers in the encampment above,” the statement said.

Lying on a stretcher surrounded by reporters following his rescue, Dickey described the ordeal as a “crazy, crazy adventure.”

“It is amazing to be above ground again,” he said, thanking the Turkish government for saving his life with its rapid response. He also thanked the international caving community, Turkish cavers and Hungarian Cave Rescue, among others.

The American was first treated inside the cave by a Hungarian doctor who went down the cave on Sept. 3. Doctors and rescuers then took turns caring for him. The cause of Dickey’s illness was not clear.

On Tuesday, Dickey said that in the cave he had started to throw up large quantities of blood.

“My consciousness started to get harder to hold on to, and I reached the point where I thought ‘I’m not going to live,'” he told reporters.

The biggest challenges for the rescuers getting him out of the cave were the steep vertical sections and navigating through mud and water at low temperatures in the horizontal sections. There was also the psychological toll of staying inside a dark, damp cave for extended periods of time.

Around 190 experts from Bulgaria, Croatia, Hungary, Italy, Poland and Turkey took part in the rescue, including doctors, paramedics and experienced cavers. Teams comprised of a doctor and three to four other rescuers took turns staying by his side at all times.

The rescue began on Saturday after doctors, who administered IV fluids and blood, determined that Dickey could make the arduous ascent.

Before the evacuation could begin, rescuers first had to widen some of the cave’s narrow passages, install ropes to pull him up vertical shafts on a stretcher and set up temporary camps along the way.

Dickey, who is from Croton-on-Hudson, New York, is a well-known cave researcher and a cave rescuer himself who had participated in many international expeditions.

He and several other people on the expedition were mapping the 1,276-meter (4,186-foot) deep Morca cave system for the Anatolian Speleology Group Association. Dickey became ill on Sept. 2, but it took until the next morning to notify people above ground.

Turkish authorities made a video message available that showed Dickey standing and moving around on Thursday. While alert and talking, he said he was not “healed on the inside” and needed a lot of help to get out of the cave.

After his rescue, the head of Turkey’s Disaster and Emergency Management Presidency, Okay Memis, told a news conference that the health of Dickey was “very good.”

The European Cave Rescue Association said many cave rescuers remained in the cave to remove rope and rescue equipment used during the operation.

The association expressed its “huge gratitude to the many cave rescuers from seven different countries who contributed to the success of this cave rescue operation.”

“The fact that our son, Mark Dickey, has been moved out of Morca Cave in stable condition is indescribably relieving and fills us with incredible joy,” Mark’s parents, Debbie and Andy Dickey, said in a statement.
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The arrival of 85  U.S. soldiers for a training mission in Armenia has sparked a strong negative reaction from the Russian government, which has long had a military alliance with that country through its Collective Security Treaty Organization.

The U.S. personnel are in Armenia for an exercise called Eagle Partner, during which they will train with 175 members of the Armenian 12th Peacekeeping Brigade. The objective is to prepare the Armenian soldiers for an assessment later this year of their ability to conform to NATO standards if deployed as peacekeepers.

The 10-day exercise will take place at training grounds near the Armenian capital, Yerevan. The American forces include members of both the 101st Airborne Division and the Kansas National Guard.

Tense moment

The arrival of U.S. troops in Armenia comes at a time when tensions are high in the region.

Armenia and Azerbaijan, its neighbor to the east, have fought two wars in the past several decades over the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, which is within the current internationally recognized borders of Azerbaijan, but which has a large Armenian population.

The most recent conflict took place in 2020, and was ended by a peace brokered by Russia, which required Armenia to return land it had previously seized from Azerbaijan. Despite the turnover, a large portion of Nagorno-Karabakh remains under the control of a breakaway ethnic Armenian government.

The cease-fire included the installation of 2,000 Russian troops in an area known as the Lachin corridor, which connects Armenia to Nagorno-Karabakh. The presence of Russian troops in the corridor was supposed to allow people in Nagorno-Karabakh access to Armenia, as well as keeping open a supply line to the outside world.

Last December, though, the Azerbaijani government closed the roads, severing the supply route and creating what Armenia describes as a humanitarian crisis in the region. With many aid convoys effectively barred from entering the region, Russian peacekeepers have not intervened, angering the Armenian government.

Azerbaijan has denied it is purposefully cutting off supplies to Nagorno-Karabakh, claiming that aid caravans have been carrying contraband and are meant as a “provocation.”

Fraying ties with Russia

Last week, with the arrival of American troops looming, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan criticized Russia in an interview with an Italian newspaper, saying Moscow had failed to assure Armenia’s security. He accused the Russian government of stepping away from its responsibilities in the South Caucasus region.

“Armenia’s security architecture was 99.999% linked to Russia, including when it came to the procurement of arms and ammunition,” Pashinyan told the newspaper La Repubblica. “But today, we see that Russia itself is in need of weapons, arms and ammunition. And in this situation, it’s understandable that even if it wishes so, the Russian Federation cannot meet Armenia’s security needs.”

Pashinyan added, “This example should demonstrate to us that dependence on just one partner in security matters is a strategic mistake.”

Moscow responds

Following Pashinyan’s comments, his government also took steps toward ratifying the treaty creating the International Criminal Court, a body that indicted Russian President Vladimir Putin on war crimes charges over actions taken during his country’s invasion of Ukraine.

The ICC was established in 2022, after being ratified by 60 countries. Since then, dozens of other countries have also ratified or acceded to the treaty on a rolling basis. If Armenia were to join, it would be the 124th country to join.

In addition, the prime minister’s wife visited the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, as part of an aid mission.

The Russian government summoned Armenia’s ambassador to the Kremlin to “strongly protest” the prime minister’s comments and his government’s action.

In a statement Friday, the Russian Foreign Ministry said, “The Armenian leadership has taken a series of unfriendly steps in recent days, including the launch of the process of ratification of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, the trip of the prime minister’s wife Anna Hakobyan to Kiev to deliver humanitarian aid to the Nazi regime, and the holding of military exercises on Armenian territory with the participation of the United States.”

In comments Sunday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov followed up by saying that it looks “strange” for Armenia to be hosting U.S. troops when for the past two years, it has declined to participate in drills with the five other members of Collective Security Treaty Organization.

“I do not believe it will be any good for anyone, including Armenia itself,” Lavrov said during a news briefing on Sunday. “Wherever the Americans arrive, it always means trouble.”

On Monday, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said the Kremlin is in the process of trying to “make sense” of Armenia’s actions.

“Against the backdrop of Armenia’s reluctance to hold drills with the CSTO and its latest plan to host a joint exercise with the United States, for us, perhaps, these are decisions that will require our thorough analysis in order to understand why Armenia has decided to do this and what its goals are here,” Peskov said.

Concerns about conflict

Pashinyan’s government has also warned that Azerbaijani troops are massing on Armenia’s borders — which Azerbaijan denies — and has been seeking international assistance in an effort to reopen a dialogue between the two countries.

In recent days, Pashinyan has reached out to the leaders of multiple Western countries, including the United States, France and Germany, seeking assistance in brokering an agreement with Azerbaijan.

On Monday, Pashinyan spoke with Turkish President Recep Tayyep Erdigan, a close ally of Azerbaijan. Media reports suggested that the two had discussed ways of reducing tension in the region. The day before, Erdogan had denounced an election held by the separatist government in Nagorno-Karabakh.

Routine training

The U.S. Army characterized the Eagle Partner operation as a normal training exercise — one that expanded on a longstanding relationship the Armenian military has had with the Kansas National Guard.

“Eagle Partner is a vital opportunity for our soldiers from our two nations to build new relationships at the tactical level and to increase interoperability for peacekeeping operations,” Colonel Martin O’Donnell, a spokesperson for U.S. Army Europe and Africa, said in a statement. “It also builds upon the 20-year relationship that the Kansas National Guard has cultivated with Armenia.”
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Leaders of nine small island states turned to the U.N. maritime court on Monday to seek protection of the world’s oceans from catastrophic climate change that threatens the very existence of entire countries.

The island states are asking the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) to determine if carbon dioxide emissions absorbed by the oceans can be considered pollution, and if so, what obligations countries have to prevent it.

“This is the opening chapter in the struggle to change the conduct of the international community by clarifying the obligation of states to protect the marine environment,” said the prime minister of Antigua and Barbuda, Gaston Browne.

“The time has come to speak in terms of legally binding obligations rather than empty promises that go unfulfilled,” he told the court based in Hamburg, Germany.

The joint counsel representing the islands, Catherine Amirfar, said the point was to force countries to implement substantive measures against climate change.

“We’re here to discuss what are the necessary, concrete, specific steps that they must take as a matter of law, not political discretion. That’s key and… a big part of the answer,” she told journalists.

Ocean ecosystems create half the oxygen humans breathe and limit global warming by absorbing much of the carbon dioxide emitted by human activities.

But increasing emissions can warm and acidify seawaters, harming marine life.

At the heart of the case is the international treaty UNCLOS that binds countries to preventing pollution of the oceans.

The U.N. treaty defines pollution as the introduction by humans of “substances or energy into the marine environment” that harms marine life.

But it does not spell out carbon emissions as a specific pollutant, and the plaintiffs argue that these emissions should qualify.

Beyond ‘charity’

The push for climate justice won a big boost in March when the U.N. General Assembly adopted a resolution calling on the International Court of Justice to lay out nations’ obligations on protecting the Earth’s climate and the legal consequences they face for failing to do so.

The ICJ’s advice is still pending but the action has opened up a new front to bind countries to pledges on reducing emissions.

The move at the U.N. had been led by Vanuatu, one of the island nations that brought Monday’s case before the ITLOS.

Small islands like Vanuatu are particularly exposed to the impact of global warming, with seawater rises posing an existential threat.

“Just a few years — this is all we have before the ocean consumes everything my people built across centuries,” Tuvalu’s Prime Minister Kausea Natano told the court.

“If international law has nothing to say about an entire country going underwater… then what purpose does it serve?” he said, pleading for a clear direction from the court.

Browne also voiced frustration at the attitude of some major nations when it comes to funding climate change mitigation or prevention.

When “large polluters contribute towards various funds, they believe it’s an act of charity,” he said at a press conference, adding that a successful outcome would tell them that “they have legal obligations”.

Marine heatwave

Concrete measures, according to Vanuatu’s attorney-general Arnold Loughman, could include halting deep-sea drilling for oil.

“It’s time to come up with solutions and ways of stopping these countries from continuing to drill,” he said.

Across the two-thirds of the planet covered by seas, nearly 60% of surface waters experienced at least one marine heatwave in 2022, according to the annual State of the Climate report led by scientists from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

This is 50% more than pre-industrial levels and “the highest in the modern atmospheric record and in paleoclimate records dating back as far as 800,000 years,” according to the report, published this month.

The world’s oceans set a new temperature record in August, with average sea surface temperatures reaching 21°C (69.8°F) for over a week, according to the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service.

The other island states joining the ITLOS case are the Bahamas, Niue, Palau, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, while another 34 state parties will participate in the court hearing.
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More than 50 world sites hope for inclusion on the U.N.’s coveted heritage list at a meeting opening in Riyadh Sunday, while some incumbents, including Venice and Kyiv, face the risk of a downgrade.

UNESCO, the United Nation’s educational, scientific and cultural organization, keeps the world heritage list, which it says is a reflection of the planet’s cultural and natural diversity.

The agency meets once a year to update the list, the inclusion on which is seen by many countries as crucial for tourism and the ability to source funding for the preservation of sites.

Conversely, countries are eager to avoid being dropped from the list, including Australia which has recently made major efforts to avoid the exclusion of the Great Barrier Reef because of the government’s shortcomings in protecting the natural site from the impact of climate change and tourism.

At the meeting in Saudi Arabia some well-established sites, including Venice and Kyiv, will be in the spotlight for a possible “at risk” qualification, the first stop toward exclusion from the list that features 1,157 sites, of which 900 are cultural, 218 natural and 39 mixed.

Six sites could be declared “in danger” at the Riyadh meeting, joining the 55 already on that watchlist.

Venice is in danger from rising water levels, attributed to climate change, and excessive numbers of tourists, Lazare Eloundou Assomo, UNESCO’s Director of World Heritage, told AFP.

Ukrainian sites Kyiv and Lviv are “threatened by destruction” in the ongoing war with Russia. “We don’t know what will happen,” he said.

This year’s applicants for inclusion on the list — 53 including a backlog from last year when the meeting, scheduled in Russia, was canceled because of the war — features a large number of little-known venues, such as Koh Ker, a remote site in the northern Cambodian jungle with several archaeological sites dating back to the Khmer empire.

Turkey is hoping for recognition of its medieval mosques featuring wooden structures, while France has entered the Maison Carree (Square House) in the southwestern city of Nimes, a well-preserved ancient Roman temple.

Tunisia meanwhile hopes that the island of Djerba will get a listing, not for the mass tourism it is famous for, but for its “cultural landscape.”

Tadjikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan filed a joint application for the Zarafshan-Karakum Corridor, a 900-kilometer (600-mile) stretch along the ancient Silk Road.

Inclusion on the heritage list is a “recognition” that the countries concerned have sites that “are important and contribute to the development of our humanity,” Eloundou Assomo said.

This year’s applications reflect a trend towards more memorial sites, such as the application by Rwanda for four sites commemorating the genocide of the country’s Tutsi population.

Argentina is proposing a site commemorating the victims of the military dictatorship in the 1970s and 80s, and France and Belgium are proposing sites of World War I remembrance.

The World Heritage Committee meeting ends on Sept. 25.
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A 25-year-old foreign student has been arrested in Norway on suspicion of espionage, including illegal eavesdropping through various technical devices.

Norway’s domestic security agency, known by its acronym PST, told Norwegian media that the man, who was arrested on Friday, was charged in court on Sunday with espionage and intelligence operations against the Nordic country.

The man, whose identity and nationality haven’t been disclosed, has pleaded not guilty in initial police questioning. Norwegian authorities haven’t said which country the man was allegedly spying for.

“We don’t quite know what we’re facing. We are in a critical, initial and vulnerable phase of the investigation,” PST lawyer Thomas Blom was quoted as saying by Norwegian public broadcaster NRK. “He (the suspect) is charged with using technical installations for illegal signal intelligence.”

Police have seized from the man a number of data-carrying electronic devices, which the PST is now investigating. The suspect is a student, but he’s not enrolled at an educational institution in Norway, and he’s been living in Norway for a relatively short time, according to PST.

Citing the arrest order, NRK said the suspect had allegedly been caught conducting illegal signal surveillance in a rental car near the Norwegian prime minister’s office and the defense ministry.

According to a court decision, the man has been imprisoned in pretrial custody for four weeks with a ban on receiving letters and visits. Security officials said the suspect wasn’t operating alone.

In its previous assessments, PST has singled out neighboring Russia, China and North Korea as state actors that pose a significant intelligence threat to Norway, a nation of 5.4 million.
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