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.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not