AUSTRALIA
South Korea joins exercises
The South Korean and Australian defense ministers signed an agreement yesterday to deepen military cooperation between the two countries through increased joint exercises. The move comes after the US announced last month that it would increase its military presence in Australia and conduct more joint exercises across the northern Australian Outback as it counters a growing China, as well as the threat posed by North Korea to security in the Asia-Pacific region. South Korean Defense Minister General Kim Kwan-jin and his Australian counterpart, Stephen Smith, agreed during yesterday’s inaugural bilateral meeting to stage a regular new naval exercise starting next year.
PHILIPPINES
Old cutter to protect waters
The Philippines has relaunched an old US Coast Guard cutter as its biggest and most modern warship to guard potentially oil-rich waters that are at the center of a dispute with China. President Benigno Aquino III witnessed the commissioning of the 3,390 tonne Philippine navy frigate BRP Gregorio del Pilar in an austere ceremony yesterday that he said symbolized his country’s struggle to modernize its underfunded military despite many obstacles. The newly repainted warship can carry a surveillance helicopter and is mounted with anti-aircraft guns.
CAMBODIA
No ‘Brother No. 2’
The former deputy leader of the Khmer Rouge told Cambodia’s UN-backed war crimes court yesterday that he was never called “Brother No. 2,” a nickname he said was “too big” for him. Giving evidence at his landmark atrocities trial, alongside two other senior members of the brutal 1970s regime, Nuon Chea said there “was no such thing” as a hierarchy numbering system within the Khmer Rouge. “I am not ‘Brother No. 2,’” the 85-year-old said, though he admitted he was the deputy secretary of the party and “one step below” leader Pol Pot — who died in 1998 and was widely known as “Brother No. 1.” “I have never used ‘Brother No. 2’ and in the party no one called me ‘Brother No. 2’ at all,” the elderly defendant said.
SRI LANKA
Traders protest baskets
Thousands of produce traders at Sri Lanka’s main market are protesting in the streets demanding that the government withdraw a new rule requiring all vegetables and fruits to be transported in plastic baskets instead of sacks. Business came to a standstill yesterday at the central market in Colombo, the capital, when the traders started a sit-in on a main road. They were protesting a rule that makes the use of plastic baskets in transporting vegetables and fruits compulsory. The government says the move was to stop colossal wastage through damage while transporting produce in sacks. The traders say the rule is not practical because the plastic baskets hold smaller quantities of vegetables and take up too much space in their shops.
PAPUA NEW GUINEA
Temblor rattles windows
A strong earthquake struck the South Pacific island nation yesterday. There were no immediate reports of damage or injuries and no tsunami alert has been issued. The US Geological Survey says the magnitude 7.3 quake struck yesterday 87km southwest of Lae, on the country’s northern coast. People inside the country’s parliament building in the capital, Port Moresby, saw windows rattling during the quake, but there was no apparent damage.
ISRAEL
Footbridge reopened
Police said a footbridge to a disputed Jerusalem holy site has been reopened, reducing the risk of a potential outbreak of unrest. The walkway’s closure earlier this week was to have been a prelude to its demolition. Jerusalem municipal authorities said it was a fire hazard and structurally unsound, but any Israeli activity around the contested Old City site known to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary and to Jews as the Temple Mount, provokes friction in Jordan, with the Palestinians and elsewhere in the Arab world.
MEXICO
Officials fired after clashes
The prosecutor and two top security officials of the southern Guerrero state were dismissed on Tuesday, a day after local police took part in a crackdown on a protest in which two students died. A third protester was in serious condition following the clash on the main highway between Mexico City and the Pacific resort of Acapulco during a protest by students seeking an increase in enrollment at a local school. Guerrero Governor Angel Aguirre dismissed the prosecutor, public security secretary and deputy public security secretary on Tuesday, a local official said. Aguirre, who has yet to comment on the clashes, gave no explanation.
CANADA
Gun debate may go to court
Quebec’s government on Tuesday said it was going to court to stop the nation’s federal authorities from scrapping a national database of long guns — shotguns and rifles — in the Francophone province. The conservative Ottawa government introduced a bill to abolish the requirement for Canadians to register their rifles and shotguns, and get rid of data collected since the registry was introduced in 1998. Critics of the registry complain it is an expensive intrusion on gun owners.
LIBYA
Ceasefire halts fighting
An outbreak of fighting south of the capital that killed at least four people stopped on Tuesday after local elders agreed a ceasefire, journalists in the area said. The conflict, a flare-up of an old rivalry between the provincial town of Zintan and the neighboring El-Mashasha tribe, underlined the tension and insecurity in the nation following the overthrow of former leader Muammar Qaddafi. Journalists in the town of Wamis, about 190km from Tripoli, on Monday saw damage to buildings caused by rocket or artillery fire, which local people said had been directed on their town from Zintan. On a visit to the town on Tuesday, there was no sign of any fighting.
UNITED STATES
Suspect tied to militants
A Lebanese man with alleged links to the militant group Hezbollah and a powerful Mexican drug cartel faces trafficking and money laundering charges in the US, authorities said on Tuesday. US federal prosecutors alleged that Ayman Joumaa, 47 and known as “Junior,” was running an international drug smuggling ring, involving Colombian suppliers and the Zetas drug gang in Mexico, to transport cocaine to the US. The Department of Justice and the Drug Enforcement Agency said that Joumaa had been indicted by a federal grand jury on Nov. 23 for “conspiring to distribute 5kg or more of cocaine and conspiring to commit money laundering.” They said Joumaa coordinated shipments of tonnes of cocaine from Colombia to the Zetas — with the US the intended final destination — and laundered millions of dollars in drug earnings back to Colombian suppliers.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in