PHILIPPINES
Soldier, rebels die in clash
Six guerrillas and a soldier were killed in a clash yesterday, officials said, as the government prepared to restart peace talks to end one of the world’s longest-running Maoist insurgencies. Government troops exchanged fire with New People’s Army guerrillas near the town of Balayan, about 68km south of the capital, Manila, an army statement said. The clash came three weeks after the government and the rebels agreed to resume negotiations aimed at ending the near 55-year insurgency that has claimed thousands of lives.
UKRAINE
Drone attack repelled
The government yesterday said that it had repelled two Russian missile and 20 drone attacks overnight, as Moscow reported downing 33 drones fired from Ukraine. “The Russian occupying forces attacked with the Iskander-K cruise missile, the Kh-59 guided air missile ... as well as 20 Shahed-type strike drones,” the air force said in a statement. The military shot down the drones and the Kh-59 missile, while the “Iskander-K cruise missile did not reach its goal,” the air force said, adding that the missiles were launched from Crimea and the occupied Kherson region.
UNITED KINGDOM
Grid removes China tech
The National Grid has started removing components supplied by a unit of China-backed Nari Technology from the electricity transmission network over cybersecurity fears, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The decision came in April after the utility sought advice from the National Cyber Security Centre, the newspaper quoted a Whitehall official as saying. An employee at the Nari subsidiary, NR Electric UK, said the company no longer had access to sites where the components were installed and that National Grid did not disclose a reason for terminating the contracts, the Financial Times said. It quoted another person it did not name as saying the decision was based on NR Electric UK components that help control and balance the grid and minimize the risk of blackouts.
UNITED STATES
Wine fraudster faces charges
A British man accused of allegedly defrauding investors of nearly US$100 million through a Ponzi-like scheme involving nonexistent luxury wines pleaded not guilty in a New York court on Saturday. Stephen Burton, 58, was extradited to New York from Morocco on Friday to face the charges, following his arrest last year, after entering that country using a fake Zimbabwean passport, authorities said. Federal prosecutors said that Burton, along with a codefendant, ran Bordeaux Cellars, a company they said brokered loans between investors and high-net-worth wine collectors.
AUSTRALIA
Original AC/DC drummer dies
Australian drummer Colin Burgess, an original member of the hard rock band AC/DC in the early 1970s, has died, the band confirmed on its social media accounts. He was 77. “Very sad to hear of the passing of Colin Burgess,” said an unsigned post on the band’s official Facebook page late Friday. “He was our first drummer and a very respected musician. Happy memories, rock in peace Colin.” No cause of death was given. Burgess was recruited in November 1973 to help form AC/DC with Malcolm Young on rhythm guitar and his brother Angus on lead guitar, lead vocalist Dave Evans and bassist Larry Van Kriedt. The band fired Burgess in February 1974, accusing him of being drunk on stage. He later said someone had spiked his drink.
‘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
RSS