PHILIPPINES
Three hurt in China standoff
Three navy personnel were injured in the latest China Coast Guard water cannon attack on a Filipino supply vessel near a South China Sea reef, National Security Adviser Eduardo Ano said yesterday. The government said that Saturday’s confrontation caused severe damage to the Unaizah May 4 vessel while it was on its way to deliver troops and provisions to a Philippine navy ship grounded atop the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙). The extent and nature of the injuries to the navy personnel was not disclosed, but the military said they were treated aboard a coast guard escort ship.
MEXICO
Search continues for missing
Authorities were on Saturday searching for two dozen people in Sinaloa state reported to have been kidnapped along with more than 40 others who have since been found alive. “In total, 66 people were allegedly deprived of their freedom ... of which 42 [24 adults and 18 children] have been located,” Sinaloa Governor Ruben Rocha Moya wrote on X. The local government has not reported any possible motives behind the kidnappings. On Friday, an emergency hotline received reports of abductions from several homes in a working-class neighborhood of Culiacan, Sinaloa Department of Public Security Secretary Gerardo Merida said in a brief statement. On Thursday, an armed clash left three people dead in Badiraguato, the birthplace of Sinaloa cartel leader Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, who is serving a life sentence in the US.
UNITED KINGDOM
China targets lawmakers
Deputy Prime Minister Oliver Dowden is today to report to parliament on a string of cyberattacks launched by China targeting a group of lawmakers, the Times reported. Meanwhile, members of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC) have been called on to attend a briefing from Parliament Director of Security Alison Giles, the newspaper said, without saying where it obtained the information. The attacks are part of a wave of state-backed interference aimed at undermining British democracy, the Times said. “About a year ago the Belgian and French foreign ministries publicly confirmed [Chinese state] sponsored cyberattacks against our members, IPAC executive director Luke de Pulford said on Friday. “Other countries have done the same privately. Beijing has made no secret of their desire to attack foreign politicians who dare to stand up to them.”
LAOS
Bear cubs found in home
Sixteen undernourished Asiatic black bear cubs have been found in a home in Vientiane by a conservation charity, the largest rescue of the year. Free the Bears said they found 17 cubs in the private home in Laos early last week, but that one of them had already died. “When we arrived at the house there were bear cubs everywhere,” said Fatong Yang, animal manager with the charity. The group found 10 males and six females, weighing between 1.3kg and 4kg and believed to be about two to four months old. “Cubs this small are extremely vulnerable. In the wild their mothers would never leave them and we suspect the mothers were killed by poachers,” Fatong said in a statement over the weekend. Police were alerted after a neighbor heard the cries of one of the cubs, the group said. Thousands of the animals are kept as pets or farmed to extract their bile for use in costly traditional medicine. “This is the most bears we’ve rescued in a single year and we’re only three months into 2024,” he said.
Two medieval fortresses face each other across the Narva River separating Estonia from Russia on Europe’s eastern edge. Once a symbol of cooperation, the “Friendship Bridge” connecting the two snow-covered banks has been reinforced with rows of razor wire and “dragon’s teeth” anti-tank obstacles on the Estonian side. “The name is kind of ironic,” regional border chief Eerik Purgel said. Some fear the border town of more than 50,0000 people — a mixture of Estonians, Russians and people left stateless after the fall of the Soviet Union — could be Russian President Vladimir Putin’s next target. On the Estonian side of the bridge,
Jeremiah Kithinji had never touched a computer before he finished high school. A decade later, he is teaching robotics, and even took a team of rural Kenyans to the World Robotics Olympiad in Singapore. In a classroom in Laikipia County — a sparsely populated grasslands region of northern Kenya known for its rhinos and cheetahs — pupils are busy snapping together wheels, motors and sensors to assemble a robot. Guiding them is Kithinji, 27, who runs a string of robotics clubs in the area that have taken some of his pupils far beyond the rural landscapes outside. In November, he took a team
Civil society leaders and members of a left-wing coalition yesterday filed impeachment complaints against Philippine Vice President Sara Duterte, restarting a process sidelined by the Supreme Court last year. Both cases accuse Duterte of misusing public funds during her term as education secretary, while one revives allegations that she threatened to assassinate former ally Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. The filings come on the same day that a committee in the House of Representatives was to begin hearings into impeachment complaints against Marcos, accused of corruption tied to a spiraling scandal over bogus flood control projects. Under the constitution, an impeachment by the
Exiled Tibetans began a unique global election yesterday for a government representing a homeland many have never seen, as part of a democratic exercise voters say carries great weight. From red-robed Buddhist monks in the snowy Himalayas, to political exiles in megacities across South Asia, to refugees in Australia, Europe and North America, voting takes place in 27 countries — but not China. “Elections ... show that the struggle for Tibet’s freedom and independence continues from generation to generation,” said candidate Gyaltsen Chokye, 33, who is based in the Indian hill-town of Dharamsala, headquarters of the government-in-exile, the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA). It
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