PHILIPPINES
China maneuvers slammed
The Philippine Coast Guard (PCG) yesterday accused a Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) helicopter of performing dangerous flight maneuvers when it flew close to a Philippine aircraft patrolling a disputed shoal in the South China Sea. “This reckless action posed a serious risk to the safety of the pilots and passengers,” the PCG said in a statement. The government fisheries aircraft was conducting what it called a maritime domain awareness flight over the Scarborough Shoal (Huangyan Island, 黃岩島). The Chinese Ministry of National Defense did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The PLAN helicopter flew as close as 3m to the aircraft, which the PCG said was a “clear violation and blatant disregard” for aviation rules.
JAPAN
Emissions target revised
The nation will aim to cut greenhouse gas emissions 60 percent by 2035 from 2013 levels under a revised climate target, a policy seen as falling short of action required to meet Paris Agreement goals. The Cabinet has approved the new strategy and submitted it to the UN, the Ministry of the Environment said yesterday. The world’s fifth-biggest carbon dioxide polluter has an existing target to reduce emissions by 46 percent by 2030. “Achieving our next emissions reduction goals will require not only existing efforts, but innovative solutions that lead to deeper cuts in emissions,” Minister of the Environment Keiichiro Asao told a news conference. Japan, which remains heavily reliant on natural gas and coal, has struggled to shift to cleaner energy sources or to achieve major progress in industrial decarbonization. To reach net zero by 2050 and meet the Paris targets, it would have to cut emissions 73 percent by 2035, BloombergNEF said in November.
TURKEY
282 PKK suspects detained
Police detained 282 suspects accused of ties to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) militant group, Minister of the Interior Ali Yerlikaya said yesterday, among them journalists, politicians, and academics. The raids over the past five days came as the government continues to remove elected pro-Kurdish mayors from their posts over militant ties in a crackdown coinciding with hopes for an end to a 40-year conflict between the PKK and authorities. Jailed PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan is expected to make a statement on such efforts, four months after an ally of President Tayyip Erdogan urged him to call on the militants to lay down their arms. The Journalists’ Union of Turkey condemned the detention of three journalists. “We do not accept that they are detained through house raids instead of being summoned to the police station,” it said on social media.
THAILAND
Singers spur protest
The government has formally protested to Cambodia after a group of Cambodian women was filmed singing a nationalist song at a disputed Khmer temple in a sensitive border area. The clip, filmed at Prasat Ta Muen Thom in eastern Thailand, shows a group of Cambodian women in traditional dress singing “all Khmer people are happy to sacrifice their lives when the nation is at war and shedding blood.” Thai soldiers guarding the temple then usher the women away from the 11th-century temple, which lies right on the border, to the Cambodian side. “We are worried that history will repeat itself,” Deputy Prime Minister Phumtham Wechayachai told reporters on Monday, in an apparent reference to the bloody military clashes that erupted about 15 years ago between the two nations over the Preah Vihear temple.
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
‘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
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
CONFIDENT ON DEAL: ‘Ukraine wants a seat at the table, but wouldn’t the people of Ukraine have a say? It’s been a long time since an election, the US president said US President Donald Trump on Tuesday criticized Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and added that he was more confident of a deal to end the war after US-Russia talks. Trump increased pressure on Zelenskiy to hold elections and chided him for complaining about being frozen out of talks in Saudi Arabia. The US president also suggested that he could meet Russian President Vladimir Putin before the end of the month as Washington overhauls its stance toward Russia. “I’m very disappointed, I hear that they’re upset about not having a seat,” Trump told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida when asked about the Ukrainian
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