World
S. Korea's births keep falling in March
South Korea's births kept falling for the 88th straight month in March, boosting concerns about a so-called demographic cliff, statistical office data showed Wednesday.
The number of newborn babies was 21,138 in March, down 8.1 percent from the same month of last year, according to Statistics Korea. It marked the lowest March figure since relevant data began to be compiled in 1981.
The newborns have been on the decline since December 2015 as more young people delayed or gave up on having children due to economic difficulties such as high housing prices and education costs.
The low birth rate fueled worry about the demographic cliff, which refers to a sharp fall in the heads of households eventually leading to a consumption cliff.
The number of marriages advanced 18.8 percent from a year earlier to 18,192 in March due to the lifting of measures against the COVID-19 pandemic.
The number of divorces gained 4.7 percent to 8,255 in the cited month.
The number of deaths tumbled 35.2 percent to 28,922 due to the weakened pandemic effect.
Affected by the still high deaths and the births slide, the country's population kept skidding for the 41st successive month since November 2019.
EU defense ministers fail to agree on new military aid to Ukraine
The defense ministers of the European Union (EU) member states have failed to reach an agreement on new military aid to Ukraine, the bloc's foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said here on Tuesday.
Borrell said after Tuesday's EU defense ministers' meeting that the overwhelming majority of member states had backed a proposal to increase the European Peace Facility budget by 3.5 billion euros (3.77 billion U.S. dollars), although he stressed that not all of it will be used to assist Ukraine.
"I still don't have unanimity on this, and it's still being discussed," he said, adding that he expected the remaining "hurdles" to be surmounted soon. He recalled that more than 10 billion euros in military support have already been provided to Ukraine.
Borrell said EU countries had already provided Ukraine with 220,000 artillery shells and 1,300 missiles since March. These alone were worth 800 million euros and the EU was on track to provide 1 billion euros worth of ammunition.
"Our aim is to provide one million projectiles over the next 12 months," Borrell said, adding that the EU had already trained 20,000 Ukrainian soldiers and was on track to train 30,000 by the end of the year.
He explained that as part of a three-pronged strategy, member states are being asked to provide ammunition from their own stocks. There is also an effort for the joint procurement of 155 mm caliber ammunition and to boost the capability of European industry to manufacture the necessary ammunition.
Jens Stoltenberg, secretary general of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, attended the meeting and briefed ministers on the latest developments in the conflict in Ukraine.
Borrell welcomed the decision to initiate training programs for Ukrainian pilots on F-16 fighter jets. He said the training created a positive momentum that will eventually lead to the deployment of these jets in Ukraine.
"I am glad that pilot training has already started, and I hope that soon we will be able to provide this weapon to Ukraine," he said prior to the start of the meeting in Brussels.
Typhoon Mawar closes in on Guam as residents shelter, military sends away ships
Residents stockpiled supplies, battened down windows and abandoned wood and tin homes for emergency shelters as Guam was buffeted by rains and winds Wednesday from Typhoon Mawar, the strongest storm to approach the U.S. Pacific territory in decades.
The U.S. military sent away ships, President Joe Biden approved an emergency declaration and anyone not living in a concrete house was urged to seek safety elsewhere ahead of the typhoon, which was forecast to arrive as a Category 4 storm but could possibly strengthen to a Category 5. The last Category 5 to make a direct hit in Guam was Super Typhoon Karen in 1962.
Guam Gov. Lou Leon Guerrero said on social media that the emergency declaration will support the mobilization of resources into Guam, which is “especially crucial given our distance from the continental U.S.” Guerrero ordered residents of coastal, low-lying and flood-prone areas of the territory of over 150,000 people to evacuate to higher elevations.
Federal assistance will be needed to save lives and property and "mitigate the effects of this imminent catastrophe,” Guerrero said in a letter to the president requesting a “pre-landfall emergency” for Guam. Officials warned residents who aren’t in fully concrete structures — some homes on the far-flung island are made of wood and tin — to relocate.
Also read: Guam braces for hit from Typhoon Mawar as storm heads toward Pacific US territory
Guam is a crucial hub for U.S. forces in the Pacific, and the Department of Defense controls about a third of the island. Rear Adm. Benjamin Nicholson, Joint Region Marianas commander, authorized the evacuation of defense personnel, dependents and employees in areas expected to be affected
All ships were moved out to sea as a standard precaution, according to the Navy, and any personnel remaining on the island were sheltering in place. About 6,800 U.S. service members are assigned to Guam, according to the Pentagon.
With rain from the storm's outer bands already falling over the island as of late morning local time, the typhoon had maximum sustained winds of 140 mph (225 kph) with gusts peaking at 170 mph (274 kph), said Landon Aydlett, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Guam. Its center was about 75 miles (120 kilometers) southeast of the island and was moving to the north-northwest.
That was a slight downgrade from earlier when Mawar was reported to be a Category 4 “super typhoon,” meaning maximum sustained winds of 150 mph (241 kph) or greater. But it still posed extreme danger to life and property.
The weather service warned of “considerable damage” from a “triple threat” of winds, torrential rains and life-threatening storm surge of 4 to 6 feet (1.2 to 2 meters), with dangerous surf of 20 to 30 feet (6 to 9 meters). It said the storm could hit Wednesday afternoon in the southern part of Guam, which lies west of the International Date Line and is a day ahead of the U.S. mainland and Hawaii.
“This is going to be a rough afternoon for us across the island,” Aydlett said. “So watch out.”
If Guam doesn’t take a direct hit, it will be very close, said Patrick Doll, the lead weather service meteorologist in Guam. Mawar is a Malaysian word that means “rose,” he noted.
Shool buses picked up residents at island community centers and transported them to 11 elementary schools outfitted as shelters. Civic workers in various villages warned residents to secure loose objects in their yards and seek shelter immediately. Some spread the word by megaphone, while others turned to social media. Power flickered off and on as the rain and wind intensified, and officials said nearly 900 people were in shelters.
Guerrero urged residents in a YouTube message to remain calm and ordered the National Guard to help those in low-lying areas evacuate, saying, “We are at the crosshairs of Typhoon Mawar. Take action now.”
The storm was moving at 6 mph (10 kph) but had an eye 17 miles (27 kilometers) wide, meaning people at the typhoon's center could see calm conditions for over three hours and conclude, far too soon, that the worst is over, Doll said. As the eye leaves, the winds could rise to 150 mph (241 kph) in minutes, so people should remain sheltered until the government gives the all-clear.
“Folks may say, ‘Hey it’s over, we could go outside and start cleaning up,’” Doll said. “That is totally wrong.
In low-lying Agat along the southern coast, resident Reuel Drilon began preparing Friday and spent the weekend tying down patio furniture and trash containers. Nearly every home in the village, he said, has a mango tree — which officials warned could be ripped from the ground and become roadblocks and deadly flying projectiles.
“A lot of folks are keeping their eyes on trees,” he told The Associated Press. "Down south, we have a lot of coconut trees and mango trees.”
Joshua Paulino, a client manager at Xerox Guam, was sheltering at home in the central village of Chalan Pago with his wife, two sons and mother after the family closed the shutters and secured outdoor objects. He worried that the storm could dump rain on the island for a long time, since it was forecast to pass by gradually.
“This storm is moving very slowly so that is making me really uneasy,” Paulino said by text message.
And an ocean away in Los Angeles, Marichelle Tanag was fretting from afar after her parents, who are in their 70s and have survived many typhoons in their decades on the island. They boarded up windows, stocked up on a couple of weeks of food, prepared the generator and filled bathtubs with water. Their home in Tamuning, also in central Guam, is made of concrete, but she worried about it nevertheless.
“Will the house stand? ... If not, will they be able to go to another place of safety if needed, as fast as possible, and not get in the way of any of the flying debris?” Tanag said by phone.
Rota, an island in the U.S. Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, was also under a typhoon warning, Doll said. Tinian and Saipan, in the Northern Marianas, were under tropical storm warnings. Some people in those areas are still in temporary shelters or tents after Category 5 Super Typhoon Yutu in 2018, Doll noted.
The western Pacific is “a notorious breeding ground for intense tropical cyclones,’’ said Yale Climate Connections meteorologist Jeff Masters. “They’ve got a much bigger area to romp around in and more time to intensify.”
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has warned that in a warmer world, the number of Category 4 or stronger storms will increase by 10% — and Mawar “could well be a harbinger of the type of battering that the U.S. could expect to see,” Masters said
How Turkey's president maintains popularity despite economic turmoil
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has remained in power for 20 years by repeatedly surmounting political crises: mass protests, corruption allegations, an attempted military coup and a huge influx of refugees fleeing Syria's civil war.
Now the Turkish people and economy are being pummeled by sky-high inflation, and many are still recovering from a devastating earthquake in February made worse by the government's slow response.
Yet Erdogan — a populist with increasingly authoritarian instincts — enters a runoff election Sunday as the strong favorite against opposition leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu after falling just shy of victory in the first round of voting. So, even with a weak hand, what explains his longevity and wide appeal?
Erdogan, 69, has cultivated deep loyalty from conservative and religious supporters by elevating Islamic values in a country that has been defined by secularism for nearly a century.
He has tightened his grip on power by deploying government resources to his political advantage — lavishly spending on infrastructure to please constituents, and strictly controlling the media to silence criticism.
And he has swayed many Turks to his side by the way he navigates the world stage, showing that his country has an independent streak — and can flex its military — as it engages with the East and West.
Erdogan's popularity at a moment of economic crisis also seems to be derived from the mere fact of his endurance; many people seem to want some stability, not more change, according to interviews with voters and analysts.
"During times of national crises such as this one, people usually rally around the leader," said Gonul Tol, an analyst at the Middle East Institute in Washington. "The voters don't have enough faith in the opposition's ability to fix things."
Already Turkey's longest serving leader, Erdogan would stretch his rule into a third decade — until 2028 — if he were to secure a majority of votes in the runoff.
He received 49.5% of the votes in the first round — four percentage points ahead of Kilicdaroglu, a social democrat who has led the country's main opposition party since 2010. And on Monday Erdogan won the endorsement of the far-right candidate who finished in third place, giving him a boost heading into the runoff.
Kilicdaroglu, an economist and former member of parliament, is the joint candidate of a six-party coalition alliance. He has promised to undo Erdogan's economic policies, which experts say have stoked inflation, and to reverse Erdogan's increasingly authoritarian leanings, including crackdowns on free speech. But his campaign has struggled to entice Erdogan supporters.
"Look at the stage our country has arrived in the last 20 years. (The opposition) would take us back 50-60 years," said Bekir Ozcelik, a security guard in Ankara, who voted for Erdogan. "There is no other leader in the world that measures up to Erdogan."
What Ozcelik and many other supporters see in Erdogan is a leader who has shown that Turkey can be a major player in geopolitics.
Turkey is a key member of NATO because of its strategic location at the crossroads of Europe and Asia, and it controls the alliance's second-largest army. Under Erdogan's rule, Turkey has proven to be an indispensable and, at times, troublesome NATO ally.
It vetoed Sweden's entry into NATO and purchased Russian missile-defense systems, prompting the United States to oust Turkey from a U.S.-led fighter-jet project. Yet, together with the U.N., Turkey brokered a vital deal that has allowed Ukraine to ship grain through the Black Sea to parts of the world struggling with hunger.
After civil war broke out in Syria in 2011, Erdogan embroiled Turkey by backing opposition fighters seeking to depose President Bashar Assad. The fighting triggered a surge of Syrian refugees that Erdogan has used as leverage against European nations, by threatening to open up Turkey's borders and swamp them with migrants. And Turkey now controls large swaths of territory in northern Syria, after a succession of military attacks aimed at Kurdish groups there affiliated with rebels that Turkey has outlawed.
Erdogan has boasted about Turkey's military-industrial sector on the campaign trail citing homemade drones, aircraft and a warship touted as the world's first "drone carrier" — and the message appeared to resonate with voters on May 14, analysts say.
On the domestic front, Erdogan has raised Islam's profile in country whose secular roots are fraying.
He has curbed the powers of the once staunchly secularist military and lifted rules that barred conservative women from wearing headscarves in schools and government offices. To further rally his conservative supporters, Erdogan has disparaged Kilicdaroglu and the opposition as supporting what he called "deviant" LGBTQ rights.
The biggest threat Erdogan faces at the moment is the economy. His primary method of attacking families' diminishing purchasing power has been to unleash government spending, which — along with lowering interest rates — only makes inflation worse, according to economists.
Erdogan has increased public-sector wages, boosted pensions and allowed millions of people to retire early. He has also introduced electricity and gas subsidies and wiped out some household debt.
He has also promised to spend whatever is necessary to reconstruct the vast quake-stricken areas. At each ground-breaking ceremony he attends, Erdogan says only his government can rebuild lives following the disaster that leveled cities and killed more than 50,000 in Turkey.
Erdogan's party won 10 out of 11 provinces in the region affected by the quake, an area that has traditionally supported him — despite criticism that his government's initial response to the disaster was slow.
Mustafa Ozturk, an Erdogan supporter in Ankara, said his standard of living has declined as a result of inflation. But the way he sees it, Turkey isn't the only country struggling with inflation since the pandemic.
"It isn't Erdogan's fault," he said. Ozturk said he would never vote against Erdogan, saying he felt "indebted" to him for bringing Islam more to the forefront of society.
Erdogan's message — and power — are amplified by his tight control over the media.
The state-owned broadcaster TRT Haber devoted more than 48 hours of airtime to Erdogan since April 1, compared with 32 minutes given to Kilicdaroglu, according to Ilhan Tasci, a member of Turkey's radio and television watchdog.
Kilicdaroglu's promise to repair the economy and uphold women's rights to wear Islamic headscarves in schools simply did not resonate in the country's conservative heartland.
"Kilicdaroglu changed the image of the (opposition) party, but Erdogan controls the narrative, so there is that fear factor" among conservative women who wear Islamic-style headscarves, Tol said. "They believe that if the opposition comes to power, they will be worse off."
After Turkey's pro-Kurdish party backed Kilicdaroglu, Erdogan portrayed the opposition as being supported by Kurdish "terrorists." The opposition's efforts to refute this were rarely broadcast by the mainstream media.
Erdogan "meticulously crafted a run for victory that included leaning on state institutions, leaning on information control and demonizing the opposition as terrorists or (having) beliefs interpreted as insufficiently Muslim," said Soner Cagaptay an expert on Turkey at the Washington Institute and an author of numerous books about Erdogan.
"The media switched the debate to how Turkey has become an industrial military giant under him. And it worked," Cagaptay said.
During the first round of voting on May 14, Turkey also held legislative elections, in which Erdogan's alliance of nationalist and Islamist parties won a majority in the 600-seat parliament. That gives him an additional advantage in the second round, analysts say, because many voters are likely to back him to avoid a splintered government.
"The parliament is overwhelmingly with us," Erdogan said last week in an interview with CNN-Turk. "If there is a stable administration, there will be peace and prosperity in the country."
The cyber gulag: How Russia tracks, censors and controls its citizens
When Yekaterina Maksimova can't afford to be late, the journalist and activist avoids taking the Moscow subway, even though it's probably the most efficient route.
That's because she's been detained five times in the past year, thanks to the system's pervasive security cameras with facial recognition. She says police would tell her the cameras "reacted" to her — although they often seemed not to understand why, and would let her go after a few hours.
"It seems like I'm in some kind of a database," says Maksimova, who was previously arrested twice: in 2019 after taking part in a demonstration in Moscow and in 2020 over her environmental activism.
For many Russians like her, it has become increasingly hard to evade the scrutiny of the authorities, with the government actively monitoring social media accounts and using surveillance cameras against activists.
Even an online platform once praised by users for easily navigating bureaucratic tasks is being used as a tool of control: Authorities plan to use it to serve military summonses, thus thwarting a popular tactic by draft evaders of avoiding being handed the military recruitment paperwork in person.
Rights advocates say that Russia under President Vladimir Putin has harnessed digital technology to track, censor and control the population, building what some call a "cyber gulag" — a dark reference to the labor camps that held political prisoners in Soviet times.
It's new territory, even for a nation with a long history of spying on its citizens.
"The Kremlin has indeed become the beneficiary of digitalization and is using all opportunities for state propaganda, for surveilling people, for de-anonymizing internet users," said Sarkis Darbinyan, head of legal practice at Roskomsvoboda, a Russian internet freedom group the Kremlin deems a "foreign agent."
RISING ONLINE CENSORSHIP AND PROSECUTIONS
The Kremlin's seeming indifference about digital monitoring appeared to change after 2011-12 mass protests were coordinated online, prompting authorities to tighten internet controls.
Some regulations allowed them to block websites; others mandated that cellphone operators and internet providers store call records and messages, sharing the information with security services if needed. Authorities pressured companies like Google, Apple and Facebook to store user data on Russian servers, to no avail, and announced plans to build a "sovereign internet" that could be cut off from the rest of the world.
Many experts initially dismissed these efforts as futile, and some still seem ineffective. Russia's measures might amount to a picket fence compared to China's Great Firewall, but the Kremlin online crackdown has gained momentum.
After Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, online censorship and prosecutions for social media posts and comments spiked so much that it broke all existing records.
According to Net Freedoms, a prominent internet rights group, more than 610,000 web pages were blocked or removed by authorities in 2022 -– the highest annual total in 15 years — and 779 people faced criminal charges over online comments and posts, also a record.
A major factor was a law, adopted a week after the invasion, that effectively criminalizes antiwar sentiment, said Net Freedoms head Damir Gainutdinov. It outlaws "spreading false information" about or "discrediting" the army.
Human Rights Watch cited another 2022 law allowing authorities "to extrajudicially close mass media outlets and block online content for disseminating 'false information' about the conduct of Russian Armed Forces or other state bodies abroad or for disseminating calls for sanctions on Russia."
SOCIAL MEDIA USERS 'SHOULDN'T FEEL SAFE'
Harsher anti-extremism laws adopted in 2014 targeted social media users and online speech, leading to hundreds of criminal cases over posts, likes and shares. Most involved users of the popular Russian social media platform VKontakte, which reportedly cooperates with authorities.
As the crackdown widened, authorities also targeted Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Telegram. About a week after the invasion, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter were blocked in Russia, but users of the platforms were still prosecuted.
Marina Novikova, 65, was convicted this month in the Siberian city of Seversk of "spreading false information" about the army for antiwar Telegram posts, fining her the equivalent of over $12,400. A Moscow court last week sentenced opposition activist Mikhail Kriger to seven years in prison for Facebook comments in which he expressed a desire "to hang" Putin. Famous blogger Nika Belotserkovskaya, who lives in France, received a nine-year prison term in absentia for Instagram posts about the war that the authorities claimed spread "fakes" about the army.
"Users of any social media platform shouldn't feel safe," Gainutdinov said.
Rights advocates worry that online censorship is about to expand drastically via artificial intelligence systems to monitor social media and websites for content deemed illicit.
In February, the government's media regulator Roskomnadzor said it was launching Oculus — an AI system that looks for banned content in online photos and videos, and can analyze more than 200,000 images a day, compared with about 200 a day by humans. Two other AI systems in the works will search text materials.
In February, the newspaper Vedomosti quoted an unidentified Roskomnadzor official as lamenting the "unprecedented amounts and speed of spreading of fakes" about the war. The official also cited extremist remarks, calls for protests and "LGBT propaganda" to be among banned content the new systems will identify.
Activists say it's hard to know if the new systems are operating and their effectiveness. Darbinyan, of the internet freedom group, describes it as "horrible stuff," leading to "more censorship," amid a total lack of transparency as to how the systems would work and be regulated.
Authorities could also be working on a system of bots that collect information from social media pages, messenger apps and closed online communities, according to the Belarusian hacktivist group Cyberpartisans, which obtained documents of a subsidiary of Roskomnadzor.
Cyberpartisans coordinator Yuliana Shametavets told AP the bots are expected to infiltrate Russian-language social media groups for surveillance and propaganda.
"Now it's common to laugh at the Russians, to say that they have old weapons and don't know how to fight, but the Kremlin is great at disinformation campaigns and there are high-class IT experts who create extremely effective and very dangerous products," she said.
Government regulator Roskomnadzor did not respond to a request for comment.
EYES ON — AND UNDER — THE STREETS
In 2017-18, Moscow authorities rolled out street cameras enabled by facial recognition technology.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, authorities were able to trace and fine those violating lockdowns.
Vedomosti reported in 2020 that schools would get cameras linked to a facial recognition system dubbed "Orwell," for the British writer of the dystopian novel "1984," with his all-seeing character, "Big Brother."
When protests over the imprisonment of opposition leader Alexei Navalny erupted in 2021, the system was used to find and detain those attending demonstrations, sometimes weeks later. After Putin announced a partial mobilization for Ukraine last year, it apparently helped officials round up draft evaders.
A man who was stopped on the Moscow subway after failing to comply with a mobilization summons said police told him the facial recognition system tracked him down, according to his wife, who spoke to AP on condition of anonymity because she feared retaliation.
In 2022, "Russian authorities expanded their control over people's biometric data, including by collecting such data from banks, and using facial recognition technology to surveil and persecute activists," Human Rights Watch reported this year.
Maksimova, the activist who repeatedly gets stopped on the subway, filed a lawsuit contesting the detentions, but lost. Authorities argued that because she had prior arrests, police had the right to detain her for a "cautionary conversation" — in which officers explain a citizen's "moral and legal responsibilities."
Maksimova says officials refused to explain why she was in their surveillance databases, calling it a state secret. She and her lawyer are appealing the court ruling.
There are 250,000 surveillance cameras in Moscow enabled by the software — at entrances to residential buildings, in public transportation and on the streets, Darbinyan said. Similar systems are in St. Petersburg and other large cities, like Novosibirsk and Kazan, he said.
He believed the authorities want to build "a web of cameras around the entire country. It sounds like a daunting task, but there are possibilities and funds there to do it."
'TOTAL DIGITAL SURVEILLANCE'
Russia's efforts often draw comparisons with China, where authorities use digital surveillance on a vast scale. Chinese cities are blanketed by millions of cameras that recognize faces, body shapes and how people walk to identify them. Sensitive individuals are routinely tracked, either by cameras or via their cellphones, email and social media accounts to stifle any dissent.
The Kremlin seems to want to pursue a similar path. In November, Putin ordered the government to create an online register of those eligible for military service after efforts to mobilize 300,000 men to fight in Ukraine revealed that enlistment records were in serious disarray.
The register, promised to be ready by fall, will collect all kinds of data, "from outpatient clinics to courts to tax offices and election commissions," political analyst Tatyana Stanovaya said in a commentary for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
That will let authorities serve draft summonses electronically via a government website used to apply for official documents, like passports or deeds. Once a summons appears online, recipients cannot leave Russia. Other restrictions -– like suspension of a driver's license or a ban on buying and selling property -– are imposed if they don't comply with the summons within 20 days, whether they saw it or not.
Stanovaya believes these restrictions could spread to other aspects of Russian life, with the government "building a state system of total digital surveillance, coercion and punishment." A December law mandates that taxi companies share their databases with the successor agency of the Soviet KGB, giving it access to travelers' dates, destinations and payment.
"The cyber gulag, which was actively talked about during the pandemic, is now taking its real shape," Stanovaya wrote.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi cheered by 20,000 fans at Sydney stadium
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi was welcomed by around 20,000 cheering fans, many chanting "Modi," at a Sydney stadium on Tuesday during his second visit to Australia as his country's leader.
Modi shared the stage with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who compared the reception by the primarily Indian crowd at Qudos Bank Arena to a concert by U.S. rock star Bruce Springsteen at the same venue.
"The last time I saw someone on the stage here was Bruce Springsteen and he didn't get the welcome that Prime Minister Modi has got," Albanese told the capacity crowd.
"Prime Minister Modi is the Boss," Albanese added, using Springsteen's nickname.
Modi told the audience he expected trade between the two countries will double in the next five years.
"Our positive cooperation is growing in areas like climate action, disaster management, strategic technologies, reliable supply chain, education and health security," Modi said.
"It hasn't grown through diplomacy. The real strength is the Indians living in Australia," he added.
A skywriter had earlier emblazoned the sky over Sydney with the message "Welcome Modi" in an indication of the city's enthusiasm about the 72-year-old Indian leader's visit.
The Indian diaspora accounts for only 3% of Australia's population but is the nation's fastest growing ethnic minority.
Modi is the only leader of the so-called Quad nations to continue with his scheduled visit to Australia after U.S. President Joe Biden pulled out of a planned meeting of the group in Sydney to return to Washington to focus on debt limit talks. Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, who hosted a Group of Seven summit last week, later canceled his Australia trip as well.
Modi told The Australian newspaper that he wants to take India's relationship with Australia to the "next level," including closer defense and security ties to help ensure a free and open Indo-Pacific region.
"As two democracies, India and Australia have shared interests in a free, open and inclusive Indo-Pacific. There is alignment of our strategic viewpoint," Modi told the newspaper.
"The high degree of mutual trust between us has naturally translated into greater cooperation on defense and security matters. Our navies are participating in joint naval exercises. I am confident that there is merit in working together to realize the true potential in closer defense and security cooperation," Modi added.
Albanese told Parliament that Australia will host naval exercises involving India, the United States and Japan called Malabar for the first time this year in another sign of a deepening commitment to the Quad.
"India is a key strategic partner," Albanese told Parliament. "We are both part of a growing and dynamic region and Prime Minister Modi is a very welcome visitor to our shores."
Albanese said he and Modi expect to complete negotiations on a free trade deal before the end of the year.
"That will create Australian jobs, helping our industries prosper, sparking growth in innovation," Albanese said.
Negotiations on the deal began in 2011. The Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement would increase the scope of a bilateral trade pact that came into force last December.
India is Australia's sixth largest trading partner, with the two-way exchange of goods and services valued at 46.5 billion Australian dollars ($31 billion) last year.
Australia is eager to increase trade with India as a means of diversifying from China, Australia's biggest trading partner. Australian efforts to improve trade relations with India have gained urgency in recent years as Beijing has imposed restrictions on certain Australian products.
Modi last visited Australia in November 2014, just months after his government was first elected.
Australia pulled out of the original Quad security dialogue with India, the United States and Japan in 2008, fearing the grouping would provoke a Chinese military buildup. Since China took that course anyway, the Quad reformed in 2017 and Australia returned to joint Quad military exercises in 2020.
With the Quad summit in Sydney canceled, a substitute Quad meeting was convened on the sidelines of the G7 summit in Japan.
Modi arrived in Sydney on Monday night from Papua New Guinea, where he hosted a meeting with Pacific Island leaders to discuss ways to better cooperate.
Asked if Australia would raise the issue of Muslim and minority rights in India with the Hindu leader, Australian Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles said he expected Albanese and Modi would have a "full conversation."
"We have never had a greater strategic alignment with India than we do right now. Both countries are deeply invested in the collective security of the Indo-Pacific region," Marles said.
Sydney doctor Vani Arjunamani, one of the organizers of a rally near the stadium where Modi appeared, said the Indian leader was drawing bigger crowds than he did when he visited Australia in 2014.
"It's very interesting, isn't it? Is there another head of state that can pull this crowd? It is very unusual," Arjunamani said.
EU welcomes F-16 jet decision for Ukraine; pilots already being trained
The European Union's foreign policy chief said Tuesday that the U.S. green light to allow Ukrainian pilots get training to fly F-16s has created an inexorable momentum that will inevitably bring the fighter jets to the Ukrainian battlefield.
"You know, it's always the same thing, we discuss, at the beginning everybody is reluctant," said Josep Borrell, giving the example of the long debate and initial opposition to the dispatch of advanced Leopard battle tanks to Ukraine.
"And at the end — with the Leopards, with the F-16 at the end — the decision comes to provide this military support because it is absolutely needed."
He added that training for Ukrainian pilots had already begun in Poland and some other countries, though authorities in Warsaw could not immediately confirm the news. The Netherlands and Denmark, among others, are also making plans for such training.
No decision on actually delivering fourth-generation fighter jets has been taken yet, but training pilots now — a process that takes several months — will help speed up battle readiness once a formal decision is taken.
"We can continue and also finalize the plans that we're making with Denmark and other allies to start these these trainings. And of course, that is the first step that you have to take," said Dutch Defense Minister Kajsa Ollongren.
"We will continue discussing with our allies and with countries that might have F-16s available about that next step. But that's not on the table right now," Ollongren said.
Ukraine has long begged for the sophisticated fighter to give it a combat edge as it battles Russia's invasion, now in its second year. And this new plan opens the door for several nations to supply the aircraft and for the U.S. to help train the pilots.
With the decision, the Biden administration has made a sharp reversal after refusing to approve any transfer of the aircraft or conduct training for more than a year due to worries that it could escalate tensions with Russia. U.S. officials also have argued against the F-16 by saying that learning to fly and logistically support such an advanced aircraft would be difficult and take months.
Pakistan's Imran Khan presses legal fight, gets interim bail in multiple cases
Pakistan's former Prime Minister Imran Khan on Tuesday pressed his legal battle before a court in the capital, Islamabad, which granted him protection from arrest until early next month in several cases where he faces terrorism charges for inciting violence.
The development comes as the authorities have been cracking down on the supporters of Khan, now Pakistan's top opposition leader. Thousands staged violence protests, and attacked public property and military installations following Khan's arrest earlier this month.
The violence subsided only days later, after Khan was released on the orders of the country's Supreme Court. Ten people were killed in clashes with the police.
Khan, who was ousted in a no-confidence vote in Parliament in April last year, has campaigned against the government of his successor, Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif, claiming his ouster was illegal and demanding early elections.
Since then, the 70-year-old former cricket star turned Islamist politician has become embroiled in more than 100 legal cases against him. He faces charges of graft purportedly committed while he was in office and has been charged with terrorism in eight cases over the violent protests by his supporters and his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf opposition party.
After the Islamabad court on Tuesday granted Khan protection from arrest on terrorism charges until June 8, he and his wife travelled to the nearby city of Rawalpindi, to appear before the National Accountability Bureau to answer questions in a separate graft case.
The couple is accused of accepting the gift of property to build a private university in exchange for providing benefits to a real estate tycoon. Khan denies the charge, saying he and his wife, Bushra Bibi, were not involved in any wrongdoing.
Aid agencies back UN's $7 billion appeal for Horn of Africa crisis
Humanitarian agencies are calling for full funding of the U.N.'s $7 billion appeal for the Horn of Africa during a pledging conference this week, citing a growing crisis and the need for urgent lifesaving intervention.
The U.N. says the region is facing the worst drought in 40 years, with more than 43.3 million people in need of assistance in Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya, and more than half of those lacking access to sufficient food, according to the U.N.
The International Rescue Committee said that until now the appeals have received less than a quarter of the donations they need.
"Efforts to combat food insecurity need to be urgently scaled up across a wider group of governments, international financial institutions and climate actors," said the IRC's chief executive, David Miliband.
The U.N on Wednesday is convening a high-level pledging event at its headquarters in New York, where member states and partners will be encouraged to commit financial support to the Horn of Africa crisis.
Humanitarian organizations say time is running out as affected communities have gone for months with little or no food.
"It's beyond urgent. … We have averted famine before, and we can do it again. … People are already dying and there's no time for declarations," Deepmala Mahla, CARE International's vice president for humanitarian affairs. told The Associated Press.
A famine is yet to be declared in Somalia, where more than 6 million people are going hungry, but some humanitarian and climate officials have warned that trends are worse than in the 2011 famine in Somalia in which a quarter-million people died.
Formal famine declarations are rare because data to meet the benchmarks often cannot be obtained because of conflict, poor infrastructure or politics. Governments can be wary of being associated with a term of such grim magnitude.
Local nongovernmental organizations like Somalia's Hormuud Salaam Foundation say there's need for sustained funding.
"For lasting change, we must equip local organizations and local people with the tools to face the inevitable climate shocks of tomorrow," the foundation's CEO, Abdullahi Nur Osman, told the AP.
Persistent conflict in some of the affected areas, combined with climate change effects, have contributed to the growing crisis.
Parts of Somalia and Ethiopia are currently experiencing flooding during the ongoing rainy season and millions of people have been displaced.
The affected areas, mostly occupied by herders, had seen prolonged dry seasons that left livestock, which are a source of livelihoods, dead.
Parts of Somalia are grappling with insecurity due to the al-Shabab extremist group that has carried out numerous large-scale attacks.
Northern Ethiopia experienced conflict for more than two years as regional forces clashed with national forces. Hundreds of thousands of people died and the situation remains fragile, seven months after a peace deal was signed.
Sherpa guide Kami Rita scales Mount Everest for a record 28th time
Veteran Sherpa guide Kami Rita has scaled Mount Everest for the 28th time Tuesday, beating his own record less than a week after setting it, as two guides compete with each other for the title of most climbs of the world's highest peak.
Kami Rita, considered one of the greatest mountain guides, reached the 8,849-meter (29,032-foot) summit at 9:20 a.m. local time Tuesday, according to expedition organizer Seven Summits Treks.
His latest climb comes a day after fellow Sherpa guide Pasang Dawa matched his record of 27 trips to the summit.
Also Read: Bad dream stopped Everest guide from climbing peak 26th time
The race for the title began with Pasang Dawa climbing the peak for the 26th time on May 14, equaling Kami Rita's previous record. Kami Rita went on to the peak three days later for the 27th time.
With a few more days left in the spring climbing season, both Sherpa guides were on the mountain helping their clients up the snowy peak. May is the busiest month to make the dangerous climb since it has the best weather conditions.
Also Read: Sherpa climbs Everest 26th time, matching record set by fellow Nepalese guide
Kami Rita first summitted Everest in 1994 and has been making the trip nearly every year since. He is one of many Sherpa guides whose expertise and skills are vital to the safety and success each year of foreign climbers who seek to stand on top of the mountain.
His father was among the first Sherpa guides. In addition to his Everest climbs, Rita has scaled several other peaks that are among the world's highest, including K2, Cho Oyu, Manaslu and Lhotse.
Also Read: Sherpa woman climbs Everest for 10th time, breaks own record
Hundreds of climbers have scaled Mount Everest, or plan to make their attempt, this month.
The Nepalese authorities have issued about 480 climbing permits to foreign climbers, which is the most issued for any year. At least as many local Sherpa guides would be accompanying them during the climbing season.
So far, 10 people have died during this year's spring climbing season on Everest.