News of the World

[kyonides]

US, Japan and S. Korea agree to reinforce economic
security ties at Camp David summit

Biden said the three nations would establish a communications hotline to discuss responses to threats. He announced the agreements, including what the keaders termed the "Camp David Principles," at the close of his talks with South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida.

"The purpose of our trilateral security cooperation is and will remain to promote and enhance peace and stability throughout the region," they said in a joint statement.

"Our countries are stronger and the world will be safer as we stand together. And I know this is a belief that all three share," Biden said as he opened the meeting.

Biden maintained, as have US, South Korean and Japanese officials, that the summit "was not about China" but was focused on broader security issues.

Yoon noted in particular the threat posed by North Korea, saying the three leaders had agreed to improve "our joint response capabilities to North Korea’s nuclear and missile threats, which have become sophisticated more than ever."

China launches military drills around Taiwan
as ‘stern warning’ after VP’s US visit

William Lai – the frontrunner in Taiwan's presidential election next year and a vocal opponent of Beijing's claims to the island – returned Friday from a trip to Paraguay, during which he stopped in New York and San Francisco.

China has reacted angrily to the US stops, and on Saturday reiterated that Lai was a "troublemaker" while vowing to take "resolute measures... to safeguard national sovereignty and territorial integrity".

The People's Liberation Army "launched joint air and sea patrols and military exercises of the navy and air force around the island of Taiwan" on Saturday, military spokesperson Shi Yi said, according to state media outlet Xinhua.

Taiwan said 42 warplanes had entered its air defence zone since 9 am (0100 GMT), and eight Chinese vessels cooperated in the exercises.

Twenty-six of the warplanes involved crossed the Taiwan Strait median line, the island's ministry of defence said in a statement.

Xinhua said the drills were carried out "in the waters and airspace to the north and southwest of Taiwan Island" to test the PLA's ability "to seize control of air and sea spaces" and fight "in real combat conditions".

Runway to be built by China
located in territory claimed by Taiwan and Vietnam

China is reportedly constructing an airstrip on disputed territory that is claimed by Taiwan and Vietnam, according to a Friday report by The Associated Press after analyzing satellite photos of the scene.

The land disputed in question is the South China Sea island. The new airstrip only started to appear last month.

Reports cite the satellite images which show the airstrip stretching across Triton Island, however, the runway itself is reportedly much shorter than others China has built on contested islands, according to the South China Morning Post.

Triton Island is the westernmost and southernmost of the Paracel Islands.

The United States chose not to take a stance on to whom the land is sovereign.

China claims the entire South China Sea as its own, according to the Press, and also reported that the entire runway would be over 2,000 feet (600 meters) long. The runway in question would be able to hold turboprop aircraft and drones but is not suited for bombers or fighter jets.

The island had some buildings and a small harbor belonging to China, but the country has refused to provide the construction work details that were done in the area, the Press reported.

Japan’s Fukushima water release plan fuels fear despite IAEA backing

Twelve years after the triple catastrophe – earthquake, tsunami, reactor meltdown – that struck the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station in 2011, Japan is preparing to release part of the treated wastewater from the stricken plant into the Pacific Ocean this month. A recent article from the daily Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun revealed the upcoming release without specifying a date.

The release of contaminated water by the Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) has been on the cards since 2018 but it was repeatedly postponed until it finally received endorsement from the International Atomic Energy Agency in early July. After a two-year review, five review missions to Japan, six technical reports and five missions on the ground, the international nuclear watchdog said the discharges of the treated water were consistent with the agency’s safety standards, with “negligible radiological impact to people and the environment”. The green light, which cleared the path for the completion of the project, was greeted with scepticism by some members of the scientific community and with animosity by many local fishermen who fear that consumers will shun their products.
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To avoid such an accident, the Japanese government has decided to gradually discharge millions of tonnes of water into the Pacific Ocean over the next 30 years. The process is simple: the water is set to be released one kilometre away from the coast of Fukushima Prefecture via underwater tunnel.

Releasing treated wastewater into the ocean is a routine practice for nuclear plants all over the world. Water is usually made to circulate around a nuclear reactor to absorb heat, making it possible to trigger turbines and produce electricity. In the process, the water becomes loaded with radioactive compounds, but it is then treated before being released into the sea or rivers.

ECOWAS delegation meets Niger’s President Bazoum
with military-appointed PM

Niger's new military ruler said Saturday a transition of power would not go beyond three years, and warned that any attack on the country would not be easy for those involved.

"Our ambition is not to confiscate power," General Abdourahamane Tiani said in a televised address, adding that an attack on Niger would not be "a walk in the park".

His warning came a day after ECOWAS declared its readiness for armed intervention to restore democratic order in Niger.

In a 12-minute televised speech, Tiani announced the launch of a "national dialogue" which has 30 days to formulate "concrete proposals" to lay "the foundations of a new constitutional life".

The announcement came after an ECOWAS delegation arrived in Niamey earlier Saturday for talks to try to defuse the political crisis in Niger.

Residents of western Canada race to evacuate as wildfires rage

The devastating fires in British Columbia and the Northwest Territories are just the latest in a summer of dramatic wildfires across the country that have left millions of acres scorched.

According to estimates, 19,000 people were evacuated from Yellowknife, the Northwest Territories' capital, over 48 hours, its environment minister Shane Thompson said late Friday.

The city, home to some 20,000, was largely a ghost town following the largest ever evacuation from the region.

More than 2,000 kilometers (1,200 miles) south in British Columbia, fire also bore down on Kelowna, a city of 150,000 people in the Okanagan Valley.

Blazes have already destroyed several properties in West Kelowna, separated by Okanagan Lake from its larger, eponymous neighbor.
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Overall, the number of people under evacuation order in British Columbia was 15,000, Emergency Management Minister Bowinn Ma said, according to Canadian media.

Thousands ordered to flee as heat
wind stoke fire on Spain’s Tenerife island

The regional government for the Canary Islands said that 4,000 more people were ordered to evacuate on Saturday. Those were in addition to the 4,500 people who on Friday were forced to move out of harm’s way on the Atlantic island that is home to around a million people and is also a popular tourist destination.

That figure of more than 8,000 evacuees is expected to rise, and perhaps sharply.

Emergency services for the Canary Islands said later that the number of evacuees “could surpass 26,000” according to provisional calculations based on the island’s census. The service added that all those people who needed somewhere to take refuge would be directed to shelters.

The regional government said that “the fire is beyond our capacity to extinguish it” due to hot and dry conditions and high winds that have fanned the huge flames. Firefighters have been unable to establish a perimeter around the blaze that has consumed at least 5,000 hectares (12,355 acres)
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Some 265 firefighters battled the blaze with the help of 19 aircraft, which included units from the mainland sent to help. More reinforcements are on the way, the central government said.

The fire is located in a steep and craggy mountain area with pine trees, with several municipalities on its flanks. Access for firefighters is extremely difficult.

French general in charge of Notre-Dame reconstruction
found dead in Pyrenees

General Jean-Louis Georgelin, 74, died on Friday in the Pyrenees mountain range straddling the France-Spain border, said the prosecutor's office in the southern French city of Foix.

A mountain rescue team deployed to the Mont-Valier peak "discovered the body of a man who has been formally identified as General Georgelin", a spokesman said, adding that an accident was the likely cause.

Notre-Dame has lost "the overseer of its rebirth" and France "one of its great servants", President Emmanuel Macron wrote on Twitter, now rebranded as "X".
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Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo hailed Georgelin on the same social media platform for creating "the human and organisational conditions for successfully completing the reconstruction of Notre-Dame".

A five-star general who was the French army's chief-of-staff between 2006 and 2010, Georgelin supervised operations in Ivory Coast, Afghanistan, the Balkans and Lebanon.

Iran’s IRGC boasts successes with Palestinians, Hezbollah

Iranian IRGC leaders bragged over the weekend about the increased strength of their proxies and the successes they believe they are having against the US and Israel.

Hossein Salami, the commander of the IRGC, and Ismail Qaani, the IRGC’s Quds Force commander, both made comments on Saturday that were reported in Iranian pro-regime media. The comments illustrate how Iran is positioning itself today in the region by seeking to support Palestinian attacks on Israel and also strengthening Hezbollah. 

Qaani said that Iran is witnessing to a “decline of the Zionist regime in the region” and that the Iranian-backed proxies' “axis of resistance has the upper hand over the Zionist regime.”

He then noted that Hezbollah had succeeded last year in threatening Israel and forcing a maritime agreement on Israel so that “Hezbollah was able to get its right to gas from the occupying regime of Jerusalem, and this would not have been possible without the resistance of Lebanon's Hezbollah.”

This is important because reports last year claimed that the gas deal between Israel and Lebanon was going to benefit Lebanon. Iran is now admitting that the gas deal was primarily executed to benefit Hezbollah and that Iran’s hand was likely behind Hezbollah escalating tensions before the deal was made. The deal was made before Israel’s elections last year and since then Hezbollah threats have increased.

That's the problem of helping countries that either support terrorism like Iran or are controlled by terrorist like Lebanon.  The current US administration should be blamed for this. Add the US$6 billion bribe the US is offering Iran for the release of 5 Americans imprisoned in that Asian country.