Philippines
Eyes on threat from China
The threat of China invading Taiwan is something Manila is monitoring on a daily basis as part of its contingency plans for possible conflict in the region, Secretary of Defense Gilbert Teodoro told reporters yesterday. “We really have to make an assessment whether such is likely or not,” he said. “Nonetheless, we continue to plan on all contingencies not merely any flashpoint between China and Taiwan, but any contingency within the theatre.” Without providing specifics, Teodoro said the contingency measures being discussed were “a multiagency effort and not only a defense effort.”
RUSSIA
Wagner, Belarus hold drills
Wagner mercenaries are to help train Belarusian special forces during exercises at a military range near the border with NATO member Poland, the Belarusian Ministry of Defense said yesterday. Wagner head Yevgeny Prigozhin was shown in a video on Wednesday welcoming his fighters to Belarus, telling them they would take no further part in the Ukraine war for now, but ordering them to gather their strength for Africa. “The armed forces of Belarus continue joint training with the fighters of the Wagner,” the Belarusian ministry said.
UNITED STATES
US seeks soldier’s return
The government is actively engaged in ensuring the return of Private Travis King, who had crossed into North Korea, US Special Envoy for North Korea Sung Kim said at the opening of a trilateral meeting with Japan and South Korea on countering North Korean threats.
The government is working hard to ascertain information on the soldier’s wellbeing and engaged in “ensuring his safety and return,” Kim said. On Tuesday, King made an unauthorized crossing into North Korea, the same day a US nuclear-armed ballistic missile submarine visited South Korea for the first time since the 1980s. North Korea test launched two ballistic missiles into the sea early on Wednesday.
PAPUA NEW GUINEA
Bomb in Nauru defused
An “armed and dangerous” World War II bomb was yesterday dug up and defused on the small Pacific island of Nauru, the nation’s police force said. Schools were closed and Nauru’s 12,000 residents were urged to stay at home as Australian military specialists worked on the 227kg explosive, which was first discovered almost two weeks ago. Nauru yesterday morning declared a state of emergency across the island, evacuating all houses within 2km of the bomb. Police later said the device had been “disarmed and moved to a safe location for disposal.”
GERMANY
Lioness on the loose: police
Police yestereday urged residents of Berlin’s southern suburbs to stay indoors, as they scoured the area for a wild animal on the loose, apparently a lioness. Police first issued the alarm in the early morning hours, after two people saw what appeared to be a lioness chasing a wild boar down a street. “Around midnight, we received a message hard to imagine. Two passersby who saw one animal chasing another,” Brandenburg police spokesman Daniel Keip told RBB radio. “One was a wild boar and the other apparently a wild animal, a lioness. The two men recorded a video on their phones and even experienced policemen had to concede that it was probably a lioness,” he said. No details were immediately available on where the feline could have come from.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
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