Australian Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd yesterday again urged South Korea to continue to restrain itself in the face of “massive provocations” from the North.
“We as South Korea’s friends and allies are constantly urging on them restraint, but we don’t see much restraint from the other side,” Rudd told Channel Nine.
As a major US-South Korean naval exercise began well south of the border yesterday, North Korea promised a “merciless military counterattack” against any intrusion into its territorial waters.
Rudd said Australia, which has a long-standing military alliance with the US, was watching developments with “razor-sharp eyes.”
He said as a signatory to the 1951 ANZUS treaty with the US, Australia was bound to support its most important ally if there were an attack on its US forces in the Pacific.
“Now, that does not dictate an immediate course of military action under those sorts of scenarios, but we need to be mindful of the fact that when our forebears laid down this alliance, these considerations were taken into account,” he said.
Rudd said given the situation, it was important to take a cautious and measured stance.
“I don’t think any of us should be in the business of unnecessarily stoking it up, but I do simply state the obvious, that under our alliance obligations with the United States, article 4 of the ANZUS treaty is clear about our requirements to act to meet the common danger,” he said.
JAN. 1 CLAUSE: As military service is voluntary, applications for permission to stay abroad for over three months for men up to age 45 must, in principle, be granted A little-noticed clause in sweeping changes to Germany’s military service policy has triggered an uproar after it emerged that the law requires men aged up to 45 to get permission from the armed forces before any significant stay abroad, even in peacetime. The legislation, which went into effect on Jan. 1 aims to bolster the military and demands all 18-year-old men fill out a questionnaire to gauge their suitability to serve in the armed forces, but stops short of conscription. If the “modernized” model fails to pull in enough recruits, parliament will be compelled to discuss the reintroduction of compulsory service, German
For two decades, researchers observed members of the Ngogo chimpanzee group of Kibale National Park in Uganda spend their days eating fruits and leaves, resting, traveling and grooming in their tropical rainforest abode, but this stable community then fractured and descended into years of deadly violence. The researchers are now describing the first clearly documented example of a group of wild chimpanzees splitting into two separate factions, with one launching a series of coordinated attacks against the other. Adult males and infants were targeted, with 28 deaths. “Biting, pounding the victim with their hands, dragging them, kicking them — mostly adult males,
Filipino farmers like Romeo Wagayan have been left with little choice but to let their vegetables rot in the field rather than sell them at a loss, as rising oil prices linked to the Iran war drive up the cost of harvesting, labor and transport. “There’s nothing we can do,” said Wagayan, a 57-year old vegetable farmer in the northern Philippine province of Benguet. “If we harvest it, our losses only increase because of labor, transportation and packing costs. We don’t earn anything from it. That’s why we decided not to harvest at all,” he said. Soaring costs caused by the Middle East
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