Philippines
Manila responds to Duterte
Secretary of Defense Gilberto Teodoro yesterday vowed to “strictly enforce” the country’s sovereignty, joining the chorus of security officials pledging to defend the nation following secessionist threats made by former president Rodrigo Duterte. Duterte on Tuesday last week called for the independence of his hometown island Mindanao as his alliance with President Ferdinand Marcos Jr disintegrated last week over disagreements around efforts to amend the constitution. “The mandate of the Department of National Defense is to secure the sovereignty of the state and integrity of the national territory as enshrined in the constitution,” Teodoro said in a statement. “We will strictly enforce this mandate whether externally or internally,” he added. Teodoro’s remarks echoed similar statements made by the national security adviser, who on Sunday said the government would not hesitate to “use its authority and forces to quell and stop any and all attempts to dismember the Republic.”
PHILIPPINES
China hackers target sites
Hackers operating in China attempted to break into Web sites and e-mail systems of the president and government agencies, one promoting maritime security, but failed, a Department of Information and Communications Technology official said yesterday. The mailboxes of the department, the Web site of National Coast Watch and the personal Web site of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr were among the targets of the unsuccessful hacking operations this month, department spokesperson Renato Paraiso told DWPM radio. “We are not attributing this to any state, but using the Internet protocol addresses, we pinpointed it to China,” Paraiso said, adding that the hackers were traced to be using the services of Chinese state-owned Unicom.
CHILE
Fire death toll rises
The death toll from wildfires climbed to at least 112 people on Sunday, after President Gabriel Boric warned that the number would rise “significantly” as teams search gutted neighborhoods. Responders continued to battle fires in the coastal tourist region of Valparaiso amid an intense summer heat wave, with temperatures soaring to 40°C over the weekend. The Ministry of the Interior late on Sunday said that the medical examiner’s office had received 112 dead victims, 32 of whom have been identified, and that there are 40 fires still active in the country.
HONG KONG
Firm scammed for US$26m
Scammers tricked a multinational firm out of about HK$200 million (US$26 million) via 15 transactions by impersonating senior executives using “deepfake” technology, police said on Sunday. An employee in the finance department of a company received “videoconference calls from someone posing as senior officers of the company requesting to transfer money to designated bank accounts,” police said. Police received a report of the incident on Monday last week. The scammers pretended to be the firm’s UK-based chief financial officer, media reports said. “Scammers found publicly available video and audio of the impersonation targets via YouTube, then used deepfake technology to emulate their voices ... to lure the victim to follow their instructions,” Acting Police Senior Superintendent Baron Chan (陳純青) told reporters. The videos were prerecorded and did not involve dialogue or interaction with the victim, he added.
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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