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.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema