World
Dozens of soldiers freed in Russia-Ukraine prisoner swap
Dozens of Russian and Ukrainian prisoners of war have returned home following a prisoner swap, officials on both sides said Saturday.
Top Ukrainian presidential aide Andriy Yermak said in a Telegram post that 116 Ukrainians were freed.
He said the released POWs include troops who held out in Mariupol during Moscow’s monthslong siege that reduced the southern port city to ruins, as well as guerrilla fighters from the Kherson region and snipers captured during the ongoing fierce battles for the eastern city of Bakhmut.
Russian defense officials, meanwhile, announced that 63 Russian troops had returned from Ukraine following the swap, including some “special category” prisoners whose release was secured following mediation by the United Arab Emirates.
A statement issued Saturday by the Russian Defense Ministry did not provide details about these “special category” captives.
At least three civilians have been killed in Ukraine over the past 24 hours as Russian forces struck nine regions in the country’s south, north and east, according to reports on Ukrainian TV by regional governors on Saturday morning.
Two people were killed and 14 others wounded in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region by Russian shelling and missile strikes, local Gov. Pavlo Kyrylenko said in a Telegram update on Saturday morning.
The casualty toll included a man who was killed and seven others who were wounded Friday after Russian missiles slammed into Toretsk, a town in the Donetsk region. Kyrylenko said that 34 houses, two kindergartens, an outpatient clinic, a library, a cultural centre and other buildings were damaged in the strike.
Seven teenagers received shrapnel wounds after an anti-personnel mine exploded late on Friday in the northeastern city of Izium, local Gov. Oleh Syniehubov said on Telegram. He said they were all hospitalized but their lives were not in danger.
Elsewhere, regional Ukrainian officials reported overnight shelling by Russia of border settlements in the northern Sumy region, as well as the town of Marhanets, which neighbors the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. Kyiv has long accused Moscow of using the plant, which Russian forces seized early in the war, as a base for launching attacks on Ukrainian-held territory across the Dnieper river.
Elsewhere, Ukraine’s Black Sea port of Odesa and surrounding areas were plunged into the dark following a large-scale network failure, the country’s grid operator reported.
Ukrenergo said in a Telegram update that the failure involved equipment “repeatedly repaired” after Russia’s savage strikes on Ukraine’s energy grid, and that residents should brace themselves for lengthy blackouts.
“Unfortunately, the scale of the accident is quite significant, and this time, the power supply restrictions will be longer. It is not yet possible to determine a specific time when (power) will be fully restored,” the company said.
Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said that the energy ministry was sending “all the powerful generators it has in stock” to Odesa “within 24 hours" and that both the Ukrainian energy minister and the head of Ukrenergo were on their way to Odesa to oversee repair works.
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Joanne Kozlowska in London contributed to this report.
Qatar boosts influence in Lebanon amid multiple crises
Most wealthy Gulf Arab nations followed Saudi Arabia’s lead in recent years and ostracized crisis-hit Lebanon because of the growing influence of the Iranian-backed militant group Hezbollah. The exception was Qatar.
Doha has been silently expanding its influence in Lebanon. It continued receiving Lebanese leaders and pumped tens millions of dollars into helping the country’s armed forces amid a historic economic meltdown.
The small, gas-rich nation in late January began seeing the fruits of its investment, when state-owned Qatar Energy replaced a Russian firm in an international consortium that will search for gas in the Mediterranean Sea off Lebanon’s coast.
And on Monday, Qatar will for the first time join a meeting in Paris along with officials from France, Saudi Arabia and the U.S. for discussions focusing on Lebanon’s political and economic crises.
Qatar portrays itself as a more neutral force in a country where for decades outside powers have used Lebanon’s sectarian divisions to fight their proxy battles. Saudi Arabia long backed Lebanon’s Sunni Muslim factions and tried to push out Iran’s influence through Shiite Hezbollah. The rivalry repeatedly pushed Lebanon to the brink of armed conflict.
Qatar, which has good ties with Iran, has been trying to advance negotiations between Tehran and Gulf nations. Its inclusion in the upcoming talks “is a signal that Iran will not be completely left out of that meeting and a recognition of the influence that Tehran has over Lebanon,” said Mohamad Bazzi, a professor and director of the Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies at New York University.
“With Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states less heavily involved in Lebanon, Qatar is trying to revive its mediator role in the country,” he said.
Still, Qatar – one of the richest countries in the world with its natural gas wealth – so far “has shown little sign of being willing to bail out Lebanon on its own,” Bazzi said.
Since late 2019, Lebanon’s economy has collapsed under the weight of widespread corruption and mismanagement. The currency has lost more than 90% of its value, throwing most of the population into poverty. International donors, including Qatar, have been demanding the government implement reforms to release some $11 billion in loans and grants. But Lebanon’s politicians have resisted because reforms would weaken their grip in the country.
Qatar’s involvement in Lebanon is not new.
After the 34-day war between Israel and Hezbollah in 2006, Qatar helped rebuild several towns and villages that suffered major destruction in southern Lebanon. Giant billboards with signs reading “Thank You Qatar” popped up around Lebanon.
In May 2008, after Hezbollah and its allies battled their Western-backed rivals in Beirut’s worst fighting since the 1975-90 civil war, Lebanese political leaders flew to Qatar, where they reached a deal known as the “Doha Agreement.” The deal ended an 18-month deadlock and brought the election of a new president and formation of a new government. In the calm that followed, massive foreign investment flowed in, and Lebanon’s economy grew at an average of 9% for three years.
In December 2018, then-President Michel Aoun inaugurated the newly rehabilitated Lebanese National Library in Beirut, funded by Qatar at a cost of $25 million. The current emir’s mother, Sheikha Moza bint Nasser al-Missned, had laid the foundation stone for the project in the heart of Beirut in 2009.
Saudi Arabia pulled back from Lebanon in recent years as Hezbollah’s power grew. Last year, the main Saudi ally in Lebanon, former Prime Minister Saad Hariri, a dual Lebanese-Saudi citizen, announced he is suspending his work in politics.
In 2020, Riyadh banned imports of Lebanese products after a Lebanese official derided the Saudi-led military intervention in Yemen. Several other Gulf countries followed suit, but Qatar did not.
Qatar doubled down on its investment as Lebanon’s economy melted down.
Qatari investors bought the famous Beirut Le Vendome hotel overlooking the Mediterranean in 2020. There are reports that Doha plans to pump money into Lebanon’s struggling banking sector to buy one of the country’s lenders.
In June, Qatar donated $60 million to support the salaries of members of the Lebanese army. It was already supporting the army with monthly supplies of food. Strengthening Lebanon’s military has long been a policy of the United States, which sees the force as a counterbalance to Hezbollah.
A week ago, three months after Lebanon and Israel signed a U.S.-mediated maritime border agreement, Qatari Energy Minister Saad Sherida al-Kaabi joined Lebanese officials in Beirut for a ceremony inking an agreement for Qatar to take a 30% share in a consortium for oil and gas exploration in Lebanese waters.
“For us in Qatar, this important agreement gives us an opportunity to support economic developments in Lebanon during this critical turn,” al-Kaabi said at the event. “Qatar is always present to support a better future for Lebanon and its people.”
According to the agreement, Qatar Energy will take over the 20% stake vacated by Russia’s Novatek in addition to 5% each from Italy’s giant ENI and France’s TotalEnergies leaving the Arab company with a stake of 30%. Total and ENI will have 35% stakes each.
“This is a win-win situation for Lebanon and Qatar,” said Lebanon’s former energy minister, Cesar Abi Khalil. Qatar gets a stake in the possible gas resources in Lebanese waters, while Lebanon gets the credibility of a Qatari company in the project.
In the political field, Qatar has not openly backed any party. But it reportedly supports the Lebanese Army commander, Gen. Joseph Aoun, to become the country’s next president. Aoun, who is not related to the outgoing president, was invited to visit Qatar in December and met with high-level officials. Hezbollah is believed to oppose him.
As it often does, Qatar is advancing its economic and political interests together, said Lebanese economist Antoine Farah. It is ensuring income from its investments while gaining a political role in the country where it invests.
But Ali Hamade, a journalist with the Lebanese daily An-Nahar, said Qatar, like other Gulf nations, will want to see Lebanon’s political leaders enact serious reforms.
“Lebanon should help itself in order for Arabs to help Lebanon. Lebanese politicians cannot sit and wait for money to rain from the sky,” Hamade said.
Chile wildfires spread amid heat wave as death toll rises
Chile extended an emergency declaration to yet another region on Saturday as firefighters struggled to control dozens of raging wildfires that have claimed at least 22 lives amid a scorching heat wave that has broken records.
The government declared a state of catastrophe in the La Araucanía region, which is south of Ñuble and Biobío, two central-southern regions where the emergency declaration had already been issued. The measure allows for greater cooperation with the military.
At least 22 people have died in connection to the fires and 554 have been injured, including 16 in serious condition, according to Interior Minister Carolina Tohá. The death toll is likely to rise as Tohá said there are unconfirmed reports of at least 10 people missing.
Sixteen of the deaths took place in Biobío, five in La Araucanía and one in Ñuble.
The deaths included a Bolivian pilot who died when a helicopter that was helping combat the flames crashed in La Araucanía. A Chilean mechanic also died in the crash.
Over the past week, fires have burned through an area equivalent to what is usually burned in an entire year, Tohá said in a news conference.
The fires come at a time of record high temperatures.
“The thermometer has reached points that we have never known until now,” Tohá said.
As of Saturday morning, there were 251 wildfires raging throughout Chile, 151 of which were under control, according to Chile’s Senapred disaster agency.
“Seventy-six new fires appeared yesterday,” Tohá said Saturday.
The minister also suggested the fires should serve as yet another wake up call about the effects of climate change.
“The evolution of climate change shows us again and again that this has a centrality and a capacity to cause an impact that we have to internalize much more,” Tohá said. “Chile is one of the countries with the highest vulnerability to climate change, and this isn’t theory but rather practical experience.”
Chile is requesting international cooperation to assist the firefighting efforts.
“We’re requesting support from several countries to address the emergency,” President Gabriel Boric wrote on social media.
US downs Chinese balloon over ocean, moves to recover debris
The United States on Saturday downed a suspected Chinese spy balloon off the Carolina coast after it traversed sensitive military sites across North America and became the latest flashpoint in tensions between Washington and Beijing.
An operation was underway in U.S. territorial waters in the Atlantic Ocean to recover debris from the balloon, which had been flying at about 60,000 feet and was estimated to be about the size of three school buses.
President Joe Biden had told reporters earlier Saturday that “we’re going to take care of it,” when asked about the balloon. The Federal Aviation Administration and Coast Guard worked to clear the airspace and water below the balloon as it reached the ocean.
Television footage showed a small explosion, followed by the balloon descending toward the water. U.S. military jets were seen flying in the vicinity and ships were deployed in the water to mount the recovery operation.
Officials were aiming to time the operation so they could recover as much of the debris as possible before it sinks into the ocean. The Pentagon had previously estimated that any debris field would be substantial.
The balloon was spotted Saturday morning over the Carolinas as it approached the coast. In preparation for the operation, the FAA Administration temporarily closed airspace over the Carolina coastline, including the airports in Charleston and Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, and Wilmington, North Carolina. The FAA rerouted air traffic from the area and warned of delays as a result of the flight restrictions.
The Coast Guard advised mariners to immediately leave the area because of U.S. military operations “that present a significant hazard.”
Biden had been inclined to down the balloon over land when he was first briefed on it on Tuesday, but Pentagon officials advised against it, warning that the potential risk to people on the ground outweighed the assessment of potential Chinese intelligence gains.
The public disclosure of the balloon this week prompted the cancellation of a visit by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken to Beijing scheduled for Sunday for talks aimed at reducing U.S.-China tensions. The Chinese government on Saturday sought to play down the cancellation.
“In actuality, the U.S. and China have never announced any visit, the U.S. making any such announcement is their own business, and we respect that,” China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement Saturday morning.
China has continued to claim that the balloon was merely a weather research “airship” that had been blown off course. The Pentagon rejected that out of hand — as well as China’s contention that it was not being used for surveillance and had only limited navigational ability.
The balloon was spotted over Montana, which is home to one of America’s three nuclear missile silo fields at Malmstrom Air Force Base.
The Pentagon also acknowledged reports of a second balloon flying over Latin America. “We now assess it is another Chinese surveillance balloon,” Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder, Pentagon press secretary, said in a statement.
China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not immediately respond to a question about the second balloon.
Blinken, who had been due to depart Washington for Beijing late Friday, said he had told senior Chinese diplomat Wang Yi in a phone call that sending the balloon over the U.S. was “an irresponsible act and that (China’s) decision to take this action on the eve of my visit is detrimental to the substantive discussions that we were prepared to have.”
Uncensored reactions on the Chinese internet mirrored the official government stance that the U.S. was hyping the situation. Some used it as a chance to poke fun at U.S. defenses, saying it couldn’t even defend against a balloon, and nationalist influencers leapt to use the news to mock the U.S.
China has denied any claims of spying and said it is a civilian-use balloon intended for meteorology research. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs emphasized that the balloon’s journey was out of its control and urged the U.S. not to “smear” it based on the balloon.
Read more: China plays down Blinken’s canceled visit over balloon
Who is Hindenburg, the firm targeting India’s Adani?
Hindenburg Research, the financial research firm with an explosive name and a track record of sending the stock prices of its targets tumbling, is taking on one of the world’s richest men.
Hindenburg is back in the headlines after last week accusing Indian conglomerate Adani Group of “a brazen stock manipulation and accounting fraud scheme.” It cited two years of research, including talks with former Adani senior executives and reviews of thousands of documents.
The Adani Group has blasted the accusations, calling them “a malicious combination of selective misinformation and stale, baseless and discredited allegations that have been tested and rejected by India’s highest courts.”
Nevertheless, Hindenburg’s scorching allegations have caused the fortune of Adani Group’s founder, Gautam Adani, to slide by nearly $47 billion in just over a week, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires index. Here’s a look at the firm behind all the movement:
WHAT IS IT?
Hindenburg says it specializes in “forensic financial research.” In layman’s terms, it looks for corruption or fraud in the business world, such as accounting irregularities and bad actors in management.
Read: Adani cancels a $2.5 billion share offer after stock fraud allegations
Hindenburg has even come to be known as Ponzi hunters in some circles, according to the Washington Post, which detailed how it helped bring down an alleged $500 million scheme that targeted Mormons.
WHERE DID ITS NAME COME FROM?
The firm says it sees the Hindenburg, the airship that famously caught fire in the 1930s to the cry of “Oh, the humanity,” as the “epitome of a totally man-made, totally avoidable disaster.” It says it looks for similar disasters in financial markets “before they lure in more unsuspecting victims.”
WHO ELSE HAS HINDENBURG GONE AFTER?
It’s perhaps most famous for a 2020 report on Nikola, a company in the electric-vehicle industry whose founder Hindenburg said made misleading claims to ink partnerships with top auto companies hungry to catch up to Tesla.
Among its allegations, Hindenburg accused Nikola of staging a video to calm skepticism about its truck, one that showed the vehicle cruising on a road. Hindenburg said the video was actually just showing the truck rolling down a hill after getting towed to the top.
WHAT HAS COME OF SUCH ACCUSATIONS?
For Nikola, quick scrutiny from the government and investors.
The company and its founder, Trevor Milton, received grand jury subpoenas from the U.S Attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York and the N.Y. County District Attorney’s Office shortly after Hindenburg released its report.
The Securities and Exchange Commission also soon issued subpoenas to Nikola’s directors.
Milton was convicted this past October of charges he deceived investors with exaggerated claims about his company’s progress in producing zero-emission 18-wheel trucks fueled by electricity or hydrogen.
Read: Indian tycoon Adani hit by more losses, calls for probe
And Nikola in late 2021 agreed to pay $125 million to settle SEC charges that it defrauded investors by misleading them about its products, technical advancements, and commercial prospects.
WHAT DOES HINDENBURG GET OUT OF THIS?
It can make money. In its Adani report, it said that it had taken a “short position in Adani Group Companies” through bonds that trade in the U.S. and other investments that trade outside India.
It has made similar “short” bets against other companies it published unflattering reports on. A “short” trade is a way for someone to make money if an investment’s price falls. Afterward, if the price of a company’s stock or bonds falls because of the negative attention from the report, Hindenburg can profit.
Such short sellers have been criticized for unfairly pushing down prices of stocks with potentially unfounded allegations. But proponents also call them a healthy part of a stock market, keeping stock prices in check and preventing them from running too high.
China plays down Blinken’s canceled visit over balloon
China played down the cancellation of a visit by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken after a large Chinese balloon suspected of conducting surveillance on U.S. military sites roiled diplomatic relations, saying that neither side had formally announced any such plan.
“In actuality, the U.S. and China have never announced any visit, the U.S. making any such announcement is their own business, and we respect that,” China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement Saturday morning.
Blinken was due to visit Beijing on Sunday for talks aimed at reducing U.S.-China tensions, the first such high-profile trip after the countries’ leaders met last November in Indonesia. But the U.S. abruptly canceled the trip after the discovery of the huge balloon despite China’s claim that it was merely a weather research “airship” that had blown off course.
The Pentagon rejected that out of hand — as well as China’s contention that the balloon was not being used for surveillance and had only limited navigational ability.
Uncensored reactions on the Chinese internet mirrored the official government stance that the U.S. was hyping up the situation.
Many users made jokes about the balloon. Some said that since the U.S. had put restrictions on the technology that China is able to buy to weaken the Chinese tech industry, they couldn’t control the balloon.
Others called it the “wandering balloon” in a pun that refers to the newly released Chinese sci-fi film called “The Wandering Earth 2.”
Still others used it as a chance to poke fun at U.S. defenses, saying it couldn’t even defend against a balloon, and nationalist influencers leapt to use the news to mock the U.S. One wrote wryly: “The U.S., because of the balloon incident, delays Blinken’s visit to China.”
Censorship was visible on the topic — the “wandering balloon” hashtag on Weibo was no longer searchable by Saturday evening.
“The U.S. is hyping this as a national security threat posed by China to the U.S. This type of military threat, in actuality, we haven’t done this. And compared with the U.S. military threat normally aimed at us, can you say it’s just little? Their surveillance planes, their submarines, their naval ships are all coming near our borders,” Chinese military expert Chen Haoyang of the Taihe Institute said on Phoenix TV, one of the major national TV outlets.
The balloon was spotted earlier over Montana, which is home to one of America’s three nuclear missile silo fields at Malmstrom Air Force Base, defense officials said.
President Joe Biden had declined to shoot down the balloon, following advice of defense officials who worried the debris could injure people below. Meanwhile, people with binoculars and telephoto lenses tried to find the “spy balloon” in the sky as it headed southeastward over Kansas and Missouri at 60,000 feet (18,300 meters).
The Pentagon also acknowledged reports of a second balloon flying over Latin America. “We now assess it is another Chinese surveillance balloon,” Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder, Pentagon press secretary, said in a statement.
China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not immediately respond to a question about the second balloon.
Blinken, who had been due to depart Washington for Beijing late Friday, said he had told senior Chinese diplomat Wang Yi in a phone call that sending the balloon over the U.S. was “an irresponsible act and that (China’s) decision to take this action on the eve of my visit is detrimental to the substantive discussions that we were prepared to have.”
China has denied any claims of spying, and said it is a civilian-use balloon intended for meteorology research. Experts have said that their response was feasible.
But analysts said the unexpected incident will not help the strained ties between the two countries, and particularly China’s initial response where it said they could not control the balloon and “regretted” that it unintentionally entered U.S. space.
On Saturday, China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs again emphasized that the balloon’s journey was out of its control and urged the U.S. to not “smear” it based on the balloon.
Wang said China “has always strictly followed international law, we do not accept any groundless speculation and hype. Faced with unexpected situations, both parties need to keep calm, communicate in a timely manner, avoid misjudgments and manage differences.”
Alfred Wu, an associate professor at the National University of Singapore, said China’s apology did not appear sincere.
“In the meantime, the relationship will not improve in the near future ... the gap is huge.”
Mexican actor Pablo Lyle gets prison for road rage death
Mexican actor Pablo Lyle was sentenced Friday to five years in prison for involuntary manslaughter after fatally punching a man during a road rage confrontation in Miami in 2019.
The sentence came almost four years after Lyle was charged with murder in the death of a man he struck during a traffic incident.
Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Marisa Tinkler Mendez announced the sentence two months after rejecting the actor's request for a new trial and upholding the guilty verdict reached by a jury in October.
The 36-year-old Mexican telenovela star, who appeared in the Netflix crime series “Yankee,” had faced a maximum sentence of up to 15 years in prison. The judge also ordered eight years of probation, conflict resolution management and 500 hours of community service for the actor.
The actor has 30 days to appeal the sentence.
Dressed in a red jail uniform, Lyle looked calm and expressed repentance during the more than three-hour hearing. He has been detained since his Oct. 4 conviction.
“I am very sorry,” Lyle said in Spanish, looking at some of the members of Hernández family who were in the court room, among them his son. “I always pray for him and for you, with all my heart.”
After a week-long trial, a six-member jury convicted Lyle of involuntary manslaughter in the death of Juan Ricardo Hernández, 63.
Hernández, who was unarmed, suffered a traumatic brain injury and died four days later while hospitalized.
Lyle's lawyers argued that he acted in self-defense. They also said that there were inconsistencies in the evidence during the trial.
Read more: Cinematographer Zahid Hossain killed in road accident
When handing down her sentence, the judge, however, said that Lyle made a “poor decision” and acted “out of anger.”
“The evidence shows that the action of Mr. Lyle was an act of violence,” Tinkler said. “Mr. Lyle has to be held responsible for those actions.”
The road confrontation was captured by security cameras.
Lyle’s brother-in-law was taking the actor, his wife and two children to the airport. Their car passed that of Hernández, who stopped at a red light, got out and approached the driver's window of Lyle’s vehicle to claim that they had blocked his way.
According to security video footage, Lyle and Hernández got into an argument, and the actor punched Hernández in the face. Lyle claimed he was defending himself. He said that his children were terrified and that he feared Hernández had a weapon.
At the hearing, Lyle's wife, his brother-in-law and his sister offered testimony before the judge made her decision public.
On Hernández’s side, his son described him as a very happy, attentive person, with good health and principles. Juan Ricardo Hernández Jr. asked the judge to sentence Lyle to the maximum of 15 years.
He said that the day before the altercation, he had been with his father.
“I didn’t want to believe it was him,” Hernández’s son said of going to the hospital to see his father after receiving news of the incident.
Sri Lanka marks independence anniversary amid economic woes
Sri Lanka marked its 75th independence anniversary on Saturday as a bankrupt nation, with many citizens angry, anxious and in no mood to celebrate.
Many Buddhists and Christian clergy had announced a boycott of the celebration in the capital, while activists and others expressed anger at what they see as a waste of money in a time of severe economic crisis.
Despite the criticism, armed troops paraded along the main esplanade in Colombo, showcasing military equipment as navy ships sailed in the sea and helicopters and aircraft flew over the city.
Catholic priest Rev. Cyril Gamini called this year's ceremony commemorating independence from British rule a “crime and waste” at a time when the country is experiencing such economic hardship.
“We ask the government what independence they are going to proudly celebrate by spending a sum of 200 million rupees ($548,000),” said Gamini, adding the Catholic Church does not condone spending public money on the celebration and that no priest would attend the ceremony.
About 7% of Sri Lanka’s 22 million people in this Buddhist-majority nation are Christians, most of them Catholics. Despite being a minority, the church’s views are respected.
Prominent Buddhist monk Rev. Omalpe Sobitha said there is no reason to celebrate and that the ceremony is just an exhibition of weapons made in other countries.
Sri Lanka is effectively bankrupt and has suspended repayment of nearly $7 billion in foreign debt due this year pending the outcome of talks with the International Monetary Fund.
The country’s total foreign debt exceeds $51 billion, of which $28 billion has to be repaid by 2027. Unsustainable debt and a severe balance of payment crisis, on top of lingering scars from the COVID-19 pandemic, have led to a severe shortage of essentials such as fuel, medicine and food.
The shortages led to protests last year that forced then-President Gotabaya Rajapaksa to flee the country and resign.
Read more: Sri Lanka’s government cuts expenses as economy tanks
There have been signs of improvement under President Ranil Wickremesinghe, but power cuts continue due to the fuel shortages, hospitals face medicine shortages and the treasury is struggling to raise money to pay government employees’ salaries.
The economic crisis has made people angry and apathetic toward political leaders.
To manage the country's expenses, the government has increased income taxes sharply and has announced a 6% cut in funds allocated to every ministry this year. Also, the military, which had swelled to more than 200,000 members amid a long civil war, will be downsized by nearly half by 2030.
A group of activists began a silent protest on Friday in the capital, condemning the government’s independence celebration and failure to ease the economic burden.
ASEAN vows to conclude pact with China on disputed territory
Southeast Asian foreign ministers vowed to finalize negotiations with China over a proposed pact aimed at preventing conflicts in the disputed South China Sea in their annual retreat on Saturday in Indonesia’s capital.
In the final session of their two-day meeting, the ministers from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations also agreed to unite in their approach to implement a five-step agreement made in 2021 between ASEAN leaders and Myanmar’s military leader, Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, that seeks to end that country’s worsening crisis.
China and the ASEAN member states, which include four rival claimants to territories in the South China Sea, have been holding sporadic talks for years on a “code of conduct,” a set of regional norms and rules aimed at preventing a clash the disputed waters.
Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi said that Indonesia, this year’s ASEAN chair, is ready to host more rounds of negotiations over the proposed pact, the first of which will be held in March. She said ASEAN members are committed to concluding the discussions “as soon as possible."
“Members are also committed to promote implementation of a declaration of conduct,” Marsudi added.
Marsudi did not elaborate, but in the past, China has accused Washington of meddling in what it calls an Asian dispute. The U.S. has deployed ships and jets to patrol the waters to promote freedom of navigation and overflight. It has often raised alarm over China’s assertive actions, including its construction of islands where it has placed weapons including surface-to-air missiles.
Sidharto Suryodipuro, head of ASEAN Cooperation at Indonesia’s Foreign Ministry, told reporters in Jakarta that ASEAN member states will push negotiations this year and explore new approaches.
“All of us agreed that it has to be an effective implementable in accordance with international law, and the code of conduct must fulfill this criteria,” Suryodipuro said, adding that Indonesia is going to involve more countries besides China in the negotiation process.
“It’s an exploratory stage. We don’t know what shape it will take, but as you know negotiation is a key process that is something we intend to intensify,” he said.
China has come under intense criticism for its militarization of the strategic waterway but says it has the right to build on its territories and defend them at all costs.
Vietnam, one of the four ASEAN claimant states, has been vocal in expressing concerns over China’s transformation of seven disputed reefs into man-made islands, including three with runways, which now resemble small cities armed with weapons systems.
Read more: MPs urge ASEAN to put strong pressure on Myanmar
ASEAN members Cambodia and Laos, both Chinese allies, have opposed the use of strong language against Beijing in the disputes.
Indonesia is not among the governments challenging China’s claim to virtually the entire South China Sea but expressed opposition after China claimed part of Indonesia’s exclusive economic zone in the northern region of the Natuna Islands.
The edge of the exclusive economic zone overlaps with Beijing’s unilaterally declared “nine-dash line” demarking its claims in the South China Sea.
On the Myanmar issue, Marsudi told a news conference Saturday that ASEAN foreign ministers reiterated the urgent need for Myanmar's military junta to implement the five-point consensus, saying it is “very important for ASEAN.”
On Friday, the ministers urged Myanmar’s military rulers to reduce violence and allow unhindered delivery of humanitarian aid to pave the way for a national dialogue aimed at ending the crisis.
Myanmar is also an ASEAN member, but its foreign minister was excluded from Friday’s annual ministers’ retreat because of his country’s failure to implement the five-step consensus.
Marsudi said the ministers agreed that an inclusive national dialogue “is key to finding a peaceful resolution to the situation in Myanmar,” and that reducing violence and providing humanitarian assistance are “paramount for building trust and confidence.”
She said the lack of progress in Myanmar “tests our credibility” as a group, and that ASEAN’s efforts toward peace would be coordinated with those of other countries and the United Nations.
Myanmar’s military leader promised in the five-point agreement to allow a special ASEAN envoy to meet with jailed ousted leader Aung San Suu Kyi and others to foster a dialogue aimed at easing the crisis, set off by the military’s seizure of power two years ago.
But Myanmar refused to let an ASEAN envoy meet with Suu Kyi last year, resulting in Min Aung Hlaing’s exclusion from an ASEAN summit last November.
"The public should expect that Indonesia could provide fresh air for finding a political solution to the worsening conflict in Myanmar,” said Dinna Prapto Raharja, an international relations analyst from Synergy Policies, an independent think tank.
“The fragmentation of power in Myanmar is worse and so managing the violence has become more complex,” she said.
China balloon: Many questions about suspected spy in the sky
What in the world is that thing?
A massive white orb sweeping across U.S. airspace has triggered a diplomatic maelstrom and is blowing up on social media.
China insists it’s just an errant civilian airship used mainly for meteorological research that went off course due to winds. With only limited “self-steering” capabilities.
However, the U.S. says it’s a Chinese spy balloon without a doubt. And its presence prompted Secretary of State Antony Blinken to cancel a weekend trip to China that was aimed at dialing down tensions that were already high between the countries.
The Pentagon says the balloon, which is carrying sensors and surveillance equipment, is maneuverable and has shown it can change course. It has loitered over sensitive areas of Montana where nuclear warheads are siloed, prompting the military to take actions to prevent it from collecting intelligence.
A Pentagon spokesman said it could remain aloft over the U.S. for “a few days,” extending uncertainty about where it will go or if the U.S. will try to safely take it down.
A look at what’s known about the balloon — and what isn’t.
IT'S A BIRD, IT'S A PLANE, IT'S A ... SPY BALLOON
The Pentagon and other U.S. officials say it's a Chinese spy balloon — about the size of three school buses — moving east over America at an altitude of about 60,000 feet (18,600 meters). The U.S. says it was being used for surveillance and intelligence collection, but officials have provided few details.
U.S. officials says the Biden administration was aware of it even before it crossed into American airspace in Alaska early this week. A number of officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive topic.
The White House said that President Joe Biden was first briefed on the balloon on Tuesday. And the State Department said Blinken and Deputy Secretary Wendy Sherman spoke with China's senior Washington-based official on Wednesday evening about the matter.
In the first public U.S. statement, Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder, Pentagon press secretary, said Thursday evening that the balloon was not a military or physical threat — an acknowledgement that it was not carrying weapons. And he said that "once the balloon was detected, the U.S. government acted immediately to protect against the collection of sensitive information.”
Even if it's not armed, the balloon poses a risk to the U.S., says retired Army Gen. John Ferrari, a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. The flight itself, he said, can be used to test America's ability to detect incoming threats and to find holes in the country's air defense warning system. It may also allow the Chinese to sense electromagnetic emissions that higher-altitude satellites can't detect, such as low-power radio frequencies that could help them understand how different U.S. weapons systems communicate.
He also said the Chinese may have sent the balloon “to show us that they can do it, and maybe next time it could have a weapon. So now we have to spend money and time on it” developing defenses.
LET IT FLY? SHOOT IT DOWN?
According to senior administration officials, President Joe Biden initially wanted to shoot the balloon down. And some members of Congress have echoed that sentiment.
But top Pentagon leaders strongly advised Biden against that move because of risks to the safety of people on the ground, and Biden agreed.
One official said the sensor package the balloon is carrying weighs as much as 1,000 pounds. And the balloon is large enough and high enough in the air that the potential debris field could stretch for miles, with no control over where it would eventually land.
For now, officials said the U.S. will monitor it, using “a variety of methods” including aircraft. The Pentagon also has said the balloon isn't a military threat and doesn't give China any surveillance capabilities it doesn't already have with spy satellites.
But the U.S. is keeping its options open and will continue to monitor the flight.
Rep. Jim Himes, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, suggested that it could be valuable to try and capture the balloon to study it. “I would much rather own a Chinese surveillance balloon than be cleaning one up over a 100-square-mile debris field,” Himes said.
HOW DID IT GET HERE?
Deliberate or an accident? There’s also disagreement.
As far as wind patterns go, China’s account that global air currents — winds known as the Westerlies — carried the balloon from its territory to the western United States is plausible, said Dan Jaffe, a professor of atmospheric chemistry at the University of Washington. Jaffe has studied the role those same wind patterns play in carrying air pollution from Chinese cities, wildfire smoke from Siberia and dust from Gobi Desert sand storms to the U.S. for two decades.
“It’s entirely consistent with everything we know about the winds,” Jaffe said. “Transit time from China to the United States would be about a week.” “The higher it goes, the faster it goes,” Jaffe said. He said that weather and research balloons typically have a range of steering capability depending on their sophistication, from no steering at all to limited steering ability.
The U.S. is largely mum on this issue, but insists the balloon is maneuverable, suggesting that China in some way deliberately moved the balloon toward or into U.S. airspace.
Read more: Chinese balloon crosses the US; Blinken cancels trip to Beijing
SPY BALLOONS HAVE A HISTORY
Spy balloons aren't new — primitive ones date back centuries, but they came into greater use in World War II. Administration officials said Friday that there have been other similar incidents of Chinese spy balloons, with one saying it happened twice during the Trump administration but was never made public.
At the Pentagon, Ryder confirmed there have been other incidents where balloons came close to or crossed over the U.S. border, but he and others agree that what makes this different is the length of time it's been over U.S. territory and how far into the country it penetrated.
Craig Singleton, a senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, said Chinese surveillance balloons have been sighted on numerous occasions over the past five years in different parts of the Pacific, including near sensitive U.S. military installations in Hawaii. The high altitude inflatables, he said, serve as low-cost platforms to collect intelligence and some can reportedly be used to detect hypersonic missiles.
During World War II, Japan launched thousands of hydrogen balloons carrying bombs, and hundreds ended up in the U.S. and Canada. Most were ineffective, but one was lethal. In May 1945, six civilians died when they found one of the balloons on the ground in Oregon, and it exploded.
In the aftermath of the war, America's own balloon effort ignited the alien stories and lore linked to Roswell, New Mexico.
According to military research documents and studies, the U.S. began using giant trains of balloons and sensors that were strung together and stretching more than 600 feet as part of an early effort to detect Soviet missile launches during the post-World War II era. They called it Project Mogul.
One of the balloon trains crash-landed at the Roswell Army Airfield in 1947, and Air Force personnel who were not aware of the program found debris. The unusual experimental equipment made it difficult to identify, leaving the airmen with unanswered questions that over time —aided by UFO enthusiasts — took on a life of their own. The simple answer, according to the military reports, was just over the Sacramento Mountains at the Project Mogul launch site in Alamogordo.
In 2015, an unmanned Army surveillance blimp broke loose from its mooring at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland and floated over Pennsylvania for hours with two fighter jets on its tail, triggering blackouts as it dragged its tether across power lines. As residents gawked, the 240-foot blimp came down in pieces in the Muncy, Pennsylvania, countryside. It still had helium in its nose when it fell, and state police used shotguns — about 100 shots — to deflate it.