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.
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
Asian perspectives of the US have shifted from a country once perceived as a force of “moral legitimacy” to something akin to “a landlord seeking rent,” Singaporean Minister for Defence Ng Eng Hen (黃永宏) said on the sidelines of an international security meeting. Ng said in a round-table discussion at the Munich Security Conference in Germany that assumptions undertaken in the years after the end of World War II have fundamentally changed. One example is that from the time of former US president John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address more than 60 years ago, the image of the US was of a country
DEFENSE UPHEAVAL: Trump was also to remove the first woman to lead a military service, as well as the judge advocates general for the army, navy and air force US President Donald Trump on Friday fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General C.Q. Brown, and pushed out five other admirals and generals in an unprecedented shake-up of US military leadership. Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social that he would nominate former lieutenant general Dan “Razin” Caine to succeed Brown, breaking with tradition by pulling someone out of retirement for the first time to become the top military officer. The president would also replace the head of the US Navy, a position held by Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead a military service,
BLIND COST CUTTING: A DOGE push to lay off 2,000 energy department workers resulted in hundreds of staff at a nuclear security agency being fired — then ‘unfired’ US President Donald Trump’s administration has halted the firings of hundreds of federal employees who were tasked with working on the nation’s nuclear weapons programs, in an about-face that has left workers confused and experts cautioning that the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE’s) blind cost cutting would put communities at risk. Three US officials who spoke to The Associated Press said up to 350 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) were abruptly laid off late on Thursday, with some losing access to e-mail before they’d learned they were fired, only to try to enter their offices on Friday morning
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