Taiwan detects 16 Chinese warships around island/node/2582784/world
Taiwan detects 16 Chinese warships around island
Above, a Taiwanese fighter jet takes off at an air base in Hsinchu on Dec. 10, 2024. Taiwan lives under the constant threat of invasion by China, which has not ruled out using force to bring the island under its control. (AP)
Beijing has been holding its biggest maritime drills in years
Around 90 Chinese warships and coast guard vessels involved
Updated 11 sec ago
AFP
TAIPEI: Taiwan said Thursday it detected 16 Chinese warships in waters around the island, one of the highest numbers this year, as Beijing intensifies military pressure on Taipei.
The navy vessels, along with 34 Chinese aircraft, were spotted near Taiwan in the 24 hours to 6:00 a.m. Thursday, according to the defense ministry’s daily tally.
Beijing has been holding its biggest maritime drills in years from near the southern islands of Japan to the South China Sea, Taiwan authorities said this week.
Around 90 Chinese warships and coast guard vessels have been involved in the exercises that include simulating attacks on foreign ships and practicing blockading sea routes, a Taiwan security official said Wednesday.
There has been no announcement by Beijing’s army or Chinese state media about increased military activity in the East China Sea, Taiwan Strait, South China Sea or Western Pacific Ocean.
However, a recent Pacific tour by Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te that included two stops in US territory drew fury from Beijing, which claims the democratic island as part of China’s territory.
The security official said that China began planning the massive maritime operation in October and aimed to demonstrate it could choke off Taiwan and draw a “red line” ahead of the next US administration.
The sea drills were “significantly larger” than Beijing’s maritime response to then-US House speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taipei in 2022, the security official said. Those war games were China’s largest-ever around Taiwan.
Taiwan’s foreign ministry said Wednesday that China’s increased military activity around the island was evidence that Beijing was a “troublemaker.”
But China’s foreign ministry – whose spokesperson neither confirmed nor denied that drills were taking place – directed blame at Taiwan.
James Char, an expert on China’s military at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University, said Beijing’s silence “serves as a way of demonstrating that the Taiwan Strait as well as the waters and airspace around the island falls under Chinese sovereignty – hence unnecessary to announce (the drills) to the world.”
“This is another means by the mainland to force its position upon others,” Char said, though he did not rule out Chinese confirmation at a later date.
Taiwan said Monday that Beijing’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) had reserved airspace off the Chinese coast until Wednesday.
Vietnam-based maritime security analyst Duan Dang said Thursday that aviation data showed the airspace zones had “fully returned to normal.”
Taiwan lives under the constant threat of invasion by China, which has not ruled out using force to bring the island under its control.
Beijing has ramped up the deployment of fighter jets and warships around the island in recent years, and also opposes any international recognition of self-ruled Taiwan – especially when it comes to official contact between Taipei and Washington.
Lai spoke last week with Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson in addition to his two recent stopovers on US soil.
The defense ministry’s tally of Chinese warships on Thursday was the highest since May 25, when 27 navy vessels were detected during Chinese military drills held days after Lai’s inauguration.
Suspense mounts as Macron prepares to unveil new French PM
Updated 27 sec ago
PARIS: French politics was on hold Thursday during a day trip to Poland by President Emmanuel Macron, who is expected to name a new prime minister a week after MPs toppled the government. Macron had promised to name a replacement government chief within 48 hours after meeting party leaders at his Elysee Palace office Tuesday, participants said. But he remains confronted with the complex political equation that emerged from July’s snap parliamentary poll: how to secure a government against no-confidence votes in a lower house split three ways between a leftist alliance, centrists and conservatives, and the far-right National Rally (RN). Greens leader Marine Tondelier urged Macron on Thursday to “get out of his comfort zone” as he casts around for a name. “The French public want a bit of enthusiasm, momentum, fresh wind, something new,” she told France 2 television. Former prime minister Michel Barnier, whose government had support only from Macron’s centrist camp and his own conservative political family, was felled last week in a confidence vote over his cost-cutting budget. His caretaker administration on Wednesday reviewed a bill designed to keep the lights of government on without a formal financial plan for 2025, allowing tax collection and borrowing to continue. Lawmakers are expected to widely support the draft law when it comes before parliament on Monday.
At issue in the search for a new prime minister are both policies and personalities. Mainstream parties invited by Macron on Tuesday, ranging from the conservative Republicans to Socialists, Greens and Communists on the left, disagree deeply. One totemic issue is whether to maintain Macron’s widely loathed 2023 pension reform that increased the official retirement age to 64, seen by centrists and the right as necessary to balance the budget but blasted by the left as unjust. On the personality front, Macron’s rumored top pick for a new PM, veteran centrist Francois Bayrou, raises hackles on both left and right. For the left he would embody a simple “continuation” of the president’s policies to date, Socialist Party leader Olivier Faure has said. Meanwhile Bayrou is personally disliked by former president Nicolas Sarkozy, still influential on the right and reported to have Macron’s ear. Other contenders include former Socialist interior minister and prime minister Bernard Cazeneuve, serving Defense Minister and Macron loyalist Sebastien Lecornu, or former foreign minister Jean-Yves Le Drian. But a name could still emerge from outside the pack, as happened with Barnier in September. Those in circulation “are names that have been around for years and haven’t seduced the French. It’s the past. I want us to look to the future,” Greens boss Tondelier said.
While the suspense over Macron’s choice endures, there has been infighting on the left over whether to play along in the search for stability or stick to maximalist demands. Once a PM is named, “we will then have to have a discussion with whoever is named,” Socialist chief Faure said, saying the left must “be able to grab some victories for the French public.” The Socialists’ openness to cooperation has been denounced by their nominal ally Jean-Luc Melenchon, figurehead of the hard-left France Unbowed (LFI). “No coalition deals! No deal not to vote no confidence! Return to reason and come home!” he urged on Tuesday. Hard-line attitudes are not necessarily vote-winners, with just over two-thirds of respondents to an Elabe poll published Wednesday saying they want politicians to reach a deal not to overthrow a new government. But confidence in the elite is limited, with around the same number saying they did not believe the political class could reach agreement. In a separate poll from Ifop, RN leader Marine Le Pen is credited with 35 percent support in the first round of a future presidential election — well ahead of any likely opponent. She has said she is “not unhappy” her far-right party has been left out of the horse-trading around government formation, appearing for now to benefit from the chaos rather than suffer blame for bringing last week’s no-confidence vote over the line.
Hardest-hit Nigeria is latest African country to provide malaria vaccine to young children
Experts say Nigeria’s population of more than 210 million people, as well as its climate, contribute to its high malaria burden
WHO report notes countries with malaria still grapple with fragile health systems, weak surveillance and drug and insecticide resistance
Updated 3 min 26 sec ago
AP
BAYELSA, Nigeria: Ominike Marvis has lost count of the number of times her 6-year-old son has had malaria. So when Nigeria started offering a malaria vaccine, she was eager to protect her youngest child.
She took the 6-month-old baby to get his first shot at a health center in hard-hit Bayelsa state, where the country’s vaccination campaign kicked off last week. The vaccine aims to prevent severe illnesses and deaths from the mosquito-borne disease.
“At least I know he’s safe from it now,” Marvis, 31, said.
Africa accounts for the vast majority of malaria in the world. Nigeria, the continent’s most populous country, has the biggest burden with about a quarter of the cases.
According to a World Health Organization report released Wednesday, there were an estimated 263 million cases of malaria and 597,000 deaths worldwide last year, mostly in children under 5. That is 11 million more malaria cases compared to 2022 with nearly the same number of deaths.
“No one should die of malaria, yet the disease continues to disproportionately harm people living in the African region, especially young children and pregnant women,” said WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, calling for more support.
There are now 17 countries giving new malaria vaccines to young children, the WHO report said. Nigeria began its campaign last week, offering a vaccine developed by Oxford University.
Research suggests it is more than 75 percent effective at preventing severe disease and death in the first year and that protection is extended for at least another year with a booster.
Nigeria’s health minister, Muhammad Ali Pate, called the vaccination campaign a “monumental step” in the country’s efforts to eliminate malaria.
The disease is caused by a parasite that is spread through mosquito bites. Experts say other measures like bed nets and insecticide spraying remain essential to curb the disease.
Experts say Nigeria’s population of more than 210 million people, as well as its climate, contribute to its high malaria burden, but so do other factors like poor sanitation and limited tools like treated bed nets.
Besides the lack of funding, WHO report said countries with malaria still grapple with fragile health systems, weak surveillance and drug and insecticide resistance.
But progress has also been made on several fronts, the report said, including in the African region where countries have achieved a 16 percent reduction in malaria deaths since 2015. And in 83 countries where malaria is present, 25 of them now report fewer than 10 cases a year, the report said.
In the oil-rich but poor Bayelsa state, among the worst-hit in Nigeria, malaria is so common in riverside communities that mothers spoke of how no one in their family has been spared.
“Here, malaria is something we are used to,” said Claris Okah, a community health worker.
Among the challenges health workers like Okah face is hesitancy among parents, so they are educating families about the new vaccine and other steps to prevent malaria.
“The vaccine is a good thing,” Okah siad.
Khalil Ur-Rahman Haqqani was the brother of Jalaluddin Haqqani, founder of the feared Haqqani network responsible for some of the most violent attacks during the Taliban’s two-decade insurgency
Updated 57 min 3 sec ago
AFP
KABUL: The United Nations mission in Afghanistan on Thursday condemned an attack claimed by the Daesh group that killed the refugees minister and several others.
The Minister for Refugees and Repatriation, Khalil Ur-Rahman Haqqani, was killed on Wednesday afternoon in a suicide bombing at the ministry’s offices in the capital Kabul.
Tight security measures were in place Thursday for Haqqani’s funeral.
Cabinet member Khalil Haqqani was the most high-profile casualty of an assault in the country since the Taliban seized power three years ago.
“There can be no place for terrorism in the quest for stability,” the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) said on X, offering condolences to the victims’ families.
The European Union and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation also condemned the attack, along with Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Iran.
Haqqani — who is on US and UN sanctions lists and never appeared without an automatic weapon in his hand — was the brother of Jalaluddin Haqqani, founder of the feared Haqqani network responsible for some of the most violent attacks during the Taliban’s two-decade insurgency.
He was also the uncle of Sirajuddin Haqqani, the current interior minister.
The Daesh group claimed responsibility for the attack, saying a bomber detonated an explosive vest inside the ministry, according to a statement on its Amaq news agency, as translated by the SITE Intelligence Group.
Taliban authorities had already blamed Daesh for the “cowardly attack” — the first targeting a minister since the Taliban returned to power in 2021.
Violence has waned in Afghanistan since the Taliban forces took over the country in 2021, ending their war against US-led NATO coalition forces.
However, the regional chapter of Daesh, known as Islamic State Khorasan, is active in Afghanistan and has regularly targeted civilians, foreigners and Taliban officials with gun and bomb attacks.
In 2024, billions of people across the world faced climatic conditions that broke record after record: logging ever more highs for heat, floods, storms, fire and drought.
As the year drew to a close, the conclusion was both blatant and bleak: 2024 was the hottest year since records began, according to European climate scientists.
But it may not hold this dubious honor for long.
“This is life now and it’s not going to get easier. It’s only going to get harder. That’s what climate change means,” said Andrew Pershing, chief programs officer at Climate Central, a US-based non-profit climate advocacy group.
“Because we continue to pollute the atmosphere, we’re going to get, year after year, warmer and warmer oceans, warmer and warmer lands, bigger and badder storms.”
Others use still bolder language.
“We are on the brink of an irreversible climate disaster,” said the 2024 State of the Climate report.
Here’s how that looked this year, what 2025 holds, and why there are still reasons to be hopeful.
SOS
This was the first year when the planet was more than 1.5 degrees Celsius hotter than it was in the 1850-1900 pre-industrial period, a time when humans did not burn fossil fuels on a mass scale, according to the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service.
The sheer number of days of extreme heat endured by billions of people — from the desert town of Phoenix, Arizona to the desert town of Phalodi in India’s Rajasthan — was startling.
Sunday, July 21, was the hottest day ever.
Until Monday, July 22.
The day after dipped a smidgen cooler.
These consecutive records came during Earth’s hottest season on record — June to August — according to Climate Central.
Those three months exposed billions of people to extreme heat, heavy rain, deadly floods, storms and wildfires.
A woman wades through flood waters at an inundated residential area in Garissa, Kenya, on May 9, 2024. (AFP)
Friederike Otto of World Weather Attribution, a global team that examines the role of climate change in extreme weather, said heatwaves were a “game changer.”
The world has not caught up: many deaths go unrecorded while some African countries lack an official definition for a heatwave, meaning heat action plans don’t kick in, she said.
“There is a huge amount of awareness that needs to be had to even adapt to today’s heat extremes but, of course, we will see worse,” Otto told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
Between June 16-24, more than 60 percent of the world’s population suffered from climate change-driven extreme heat.
This included 619 million in India, where more than 40,000 people suffered heatstroke and 100+ died over the summer.
Birds fell from the sky as temperatures neared 50 C (122 F).
Millions were affected: from China to Nigeria, Bangladesh to Brazil, Ethiopia to Egypt, Americans and Europeans, too.
Climate Central said one in four people had no break from exceptional heat from June to August, the highs made at least three times more likely by climate change.
Smoke billows from the Airport Fire in Rancho Santa Margarita, California, US, on September 9, 2024. (AFP)
During those months, 180 cities in the Northern Hemisphere had at least one dangerous extreme heatwave — a phenomenon made 21 times more likely by human action, Climate Central said.
TOO HOT TO WORK
“The number of days where you are starting to push the physiological limits of human survival (are rising),” said Pershing, citing Pakistan and the Arabian Gulf as two areas that neared breaking point this year.
Hundreds died during the Hajj pilgrimage to Makkah as Saudi Arabia topped 50 C (122 F).
In the US Midwest and Northeast, Americans broiled under a heat dome when high pressure trapped hot air overhead.
NASA’s Earth Observatory said extreme heat was often exacerbated by hot nights, a dearth of green space or air con, or a surfeit of concrete, which absorbs heat.
Heat and drought fueled wildfires this year, with blazes in the Mediterranean, United States and Latin America. Fires burned from the Siberian Arctic to Brazil’s Pantanal wetlands.
“(The Pantanal) is a wet area that is not supposed to burn for months on end so that is probably something I would look out for next year where we see wildfires in ecosystems that are not traditionally burning ecosystems,” said Otto.
THE MOST VULNERABLE
The “new normal” hits the vulnerable hardest.
“The people who are succumbing to heat-related deaths are not the millionaires and billionaires,” said Pershing.
“If you are a reasonably well-to-do person you can afford air conditioning, you have a vehicle that can get you where you need to go, you have ways to keep yourself cool. If you don’t have access to these things or you lose them because of a power outage or another storm, that creates these additional vulnerabilities.”
This aerial photo shows a fisherman collecting dead fish, caused by renovation works and ongoing hot weather conditions, from a reservoir in southern Vietnam's Dong Nai province on April 30, 2024. (AFP)
In Africa, nearly 93 percent of the workforce faces extreme heat.
On the Arabian Peninsula, it is more than 83 percent of workers.
European and Central Asian workers could be next in line.
For Otto, the answer to this fast-spreading risk lies in empathy, putting the poor and vulnerable — “the vast majority of the global population” — at the center of climate action.
“In Bangladesh, when you put the survival of the poorest in the center of the action, you actually have a society that is really well-equipped to deal with tropical cyclones,” she said.
“People know what to do and there are drills and practices.”
Silver linings, though, are rare.
“Empathy is in short supply,” said Otto.
BOILING SEAS
Ocean temperatures also hit alarming levels in 2024, wreaking havoc on land and sea.
Hurricane Milton came barely two weeks after Hurricane Helene, with abnormally warm waters in the Gulf of Mexico turbo-charging the twin storms that lashed the US Southeast.
“In that some places in the Gulf of Mexico ... temperatures were 400 times more likely because of climate change,” Pershing said.
Climate Central found a similar link between October’s floods in Spain and unusually warm waters in the Tropical Atlantic.
Human-driven climate change made these elevated sea surface temperatures up to 300 times more likely, Climate Central said.
“WE NEED DRILLS”
Otto said this year’s extremes, notably Europe’s floods, illustrated a “failure of imagination” and a refusal to adapt.
“We don’t just need the weather forecast or warnings. We need drills. We have to practice survival wherever heavy floods can happen and they can happen everywhere,” she said.
Infrastructure also failed.
“The way that we have canalized rivers and sealed all the surfaces ... will mean disastrous damages every time there is a flood ... There is always this short-termism that it’s expensive to fix it now but of course it will save lots of money and livelihoods later,” she said.
For Pershing, adaptation is “an exercise in imagination because we haven’t seen these kinds of events before ... That is the challenge of climate change: we’re going to be confronted year after year with conditions we’ve never experienced.”
SO WHAT NEXT?
Nobody expects a quick end to extreme weather but Otto is hopeful that humans may change their polluting ways.
“That is a reason for optimism ...clinging to fossil fuels (is) increasing inequality and destroying livelihoods but it increasingly makes less sense ...for national economies.”
In another upbeat note, Otto said better preparations in Europe meant fewer deaths in this year’s floods than previously.
But ocean temperatures are a key concern for 2025.
“The amount of heat stored in the ocean … really has my attention because we are not quite sure if there is something different going on in the climate system,” said Pershing.
Another risk — complacency.
“People do have a way of getting used to conditions and you can kinda get numb to it,” Pershing said.
And complacency can breed paralysis.
“This was the hottest year, last year was the hottest year — probably next year will be the hottest year again,” said Otto.
Fire danger diminishes in Southern California even as crews continue to battle Malibu blaze
Malibu is a community of about 10,000 people on the western edge of Los Angeles renowned for its stunning scenery of seaside bluffs and Zuma Beach featured in Hollywood films
Updated 12 December 2024
AP
MALIBU: As weather improved in Southern California, firefighters found some success Wednesday battling a wind-driven blaze burning in steep, nearly inaccessible areas that forced thousands, including celebrities, from their homes in Malibu, fire officials said.
With much of the coastal city under evacuation orders and warnings, residents waited anxiously to see whether their properties had been spared by the fire, which erupted late Monday and grew to more than 6 square miles (16 square kilometers). The blaze, dubbed the Franklin Fire, was just 7% contained.
About 20,000 residents remained under evacuation orders and warnings Wednesday evening, said Capt. Jennifer Seetoo of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department
Firefighters had “a lot of success” battling the blaze Wednesday thanks to the improving weather, but it continued to burn in an area of very steep terrain that is difficult to access, CalFire Assistant Chief Dusty Martin said.
The National Weather Service said the week's strongest Santa Ana winds, with gusts that reached 40 mph (64 kph), have passed. Forecasters said that all red flag warnings, which indicate conditions for high fire danger and Santa Ana winds, were discontinued.
Santa Anas are notorious seasonal winds that blow dry air from the interior toward the coast, pushing back moist ocean breezes.
Much of the devastation occurred in Malibu, a community of about 10,000 people on the western edge of Los Angeles known for its stunning bluffs and Zuma Beach, which features in many Hollywood films.
Flames burned near horse farms, celebrities’ seaside mansions, and Pepperdine University, where students were forced to shelter in place on campus for a second night Tuesday.
Faculty members are determining how best to complete the semester, which ends at Pepperdine this week. Final exams were postponed or canceled, depending on the class, university spokesperson Michael Friel said. An early analysis showed little to no damage to structures on campus, the university said.
It’s unclear how the blaze started. Officials said nine structures had been destroyed and at least six others had been damaged, though crews had only surveyed about 25% of the affected area, said Deputy Chief Albert Yanagisawa of the Los Angeles County Fire Department.
Lonnie Vidaurri’s four-bedroom home in the Malibu Knolls neighborhood is one of those destroyed. After evacuating to a hotel in Santa Monica with his wife and two young daughters, a neighbor called to tell Vidaurri that firefighters would need to break into his house.
“It’s pretty torched all around,” said Vidaurri, 53. He expects that the family’s pet bunnies did not survive the fire, and that they lost most of their things. “My girls cried, obviously, but it could have been worse.”
Mimi Teller, a Red Cross spokesperson who worked in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood, said many people arrived in their pajamas and were “definitely in shock.”
“Nobody even had a backpack, it was, ‘Get out now,’” Teller said. “One lady didn’t even have a leash for her dog, she just scooped them up.”
Shawn Smith said he was asleep early Tuesday when someone knocked on his RV at 3 a.m. to wake him up to evacuate the Malibu RV Park.
“You could see the fires rolling in, in over the canyon. It was like ‘Holy crap, this is real,'” he said.
He returned Wednesday to find that the RV park had been saved — firefighters stopped the flames just before they entered the area.
“We got lucky,” he said.
Van Dyke, one of many celebrities with homes in Malibu, said in a Facebook post that he and his wife, Arlene Silver, evacuated as the fire swept in. Although the couple and most of their animals evacuated safely, one of their cats, Bobo, escaped as they were leaving. “We’re praying he’ll be OK and that our community in Serra Retreat will survive these terrible fires," he wrote.
Cher evacuated from her Malibu home when ordered and is staying at a hotel, her publicist, Liz Rosenberg, said Tuesday.
The fire erupted shortly before 11 p.m. Monday and swiftly moved south, jumping over the famous Pacific Coast Highway and extending all the way to the ocean.
Alec Gellis, 31, stayed behind Monday night to save his home in Malibu’s Serra Retreat neighborhood from the flames. He used pumps in the home’s swimming pool to help spray water over the house and surrounding vegetation, turning the lush area “into a rainforest.”
Gellis said there were flames within 5 feet (1.5 meters) of the home on all sides. “The whole canyon was completely lit up.”
Utilities preemptively shut off power to tens of thousands of homes and businesses, starting Monday night, to mitigate the impacts of the Santa Ana winds, whose strong gusts can damage electrical equipment and spark wildfires.
As of Wednesday afternoon, electricity was still out for roughly 600 Southern California Edison customers, and the majority of those were in Los Angeles County, said utility spokesperson Gabriela Ornelas.
“We have been making significant progress,” she said.
But outages in Malibu were not included in that figure, Ornelas said. Some 3,300 customers in the Malibu area remained without power, due to safety shutoffs and for firefighter safety. Power was first shut off to most customers in Malibu on Monday evening.
The Woolsey Fire that roared through the area in 2018, killing three people and destroying 1,600 homes, was sparked by Edison equipment. Asked Wednesday if Edison equipment was involved in the Franklin Fire, Ornelas referred all questions regarding the cause to fire officials.
