PHILIPPINES
China tensions irk Marcos
President Ferdinand Marcos Jr on Wednesday said that tension in the disputed South China Sea “keeps him up at night,” but his country was committed to peace despite Beijing’s territorial claims. Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Marcos said his nation was watching as a “bystander” whenever tensions rise after Chinese or US warships cross the region. “If something goes wrong here we are going to suffer,” he said. The situation “keeps you up at night, keeps you up in the day, keeps you up most of the time,” Marcos said. The comments came after Marcos discussed the issue with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) during a visit to Beijing earlier this month. “It’s very dynamic, it is constantly in flux. So you have to pay attention to it to make sure that you are you are at least aware of the present situation so that you’re able to respond,” Marcos said.
TIBET
Avalanche kills at least eight
An avalanche trapped vehicles outside a highway tunnel, and at least eight people have died. The falling snow and ice collapsed at the exit of the tunnel connecting the southwestern city of Nyingchi with Medog County on Tuesday evening. Authorities on Wednesday said that the search-and-rescue mission was ongoing, although it was not clear how many people remained missing. A total of 131 rescuers and 28 emergency vehicles were sent to the site, with the Chinese Ministry of Emergency Management sending a team to assist. Nyingchi lies at an elevation of about 3,040m, about five hours by vehicle from Lhasa along a highway opened in 2018.
CZECH REPUBLIC
No-confidence vote fails
The government late on Wednesday survived an opposition attempt to topple it in a no-confidence vote, a widely expected outcome of the motion, which the Cabinet had called a publicity stunt related to the upcoming presidential election. The Chamber of Deputies voted 102-81 against the no-confidence motion after more than 25 hours of debate over two days. The center-right, five-party coalition has 108 seats in the 200-seat lower house and has shown no cracks to make it vulnerable. The main opposition Action of Dissatisfied Citizens party of former prime minister Andrej Babis called the vote just days after Babis and retired general Petr Pavel won the top two spots in the first round of a presidential election, lining up a run-off between the two later this month. Babis has framed the election as an attempt to install a president that would pressure the Cabinet to provide more handouts to people affected by soaring living costs.
UNITED KINGDOM
Soho deploys anti-pee paint
A central London district famous for its nightlife, but also home to thousands of residents, is trying out a novel way to tackle the persistent problem of public urination: so-called anti-pee paint. Officials in Soho are treating walls at nearly a dozen problem sites with the special spray-on liquid. The industrial strength “surface protection” creates a transparent water-repellent layer that splashes back urine when it hits, providing instant payback for offenders. “It is very effective — the proof is in the pudding,” Westminster City Council Deputy Leader Aicha Less said, demonstrating the innovative invisible paint’s splash-back ability with a bottle of water. The council has launched the initiative following complaints from some of Soho’s approximately 3,000 residents, as well as from workers and business operators.
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
Le Tuan Binh keeps his Moroccan soldier father’s tombstone at his village home north of Hanoi, a treasured reminder of a man whose community in Vietnam has been largely forgotten. Mzid Ben Ali, or “Mohammed” as Binh calls him, was one of tens of thousands of North Africans who served in the French army as it battled to maintain its colonial rule of Indochina. He fought for France against the Viet Minh independence movement in the 1950s, before leaving the military — as either a defector or a captive — and making a life for himself in Vietnam. “It’s very emotional for me,”
UNDER INVESTIGATION: Members of the local Muslim community had raised concerns with the police about the boy, who officials said might have been radicalized online A 16-year-old boy armed with a knife was shot dead by police after he stabbed a man in the Australian west coast city of Perth, officials said yesterday. The incident occurred in the parking lot of a hardware store in suburban Willetton on Saturday night. The teen attacked the man and then rushed at police officers before he was shot, Western Australian Premier Roger Cook told reporters. “There are indications he had been radicalized online,” Cook told a news conference, adding that it appeared he acted alone. A man in his 30s was found at the scene with a stab wound to his back.