Asia
North Korea conducts artillery firing drills in likely response to South Korea-US military training
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un supervised artillery firing drills aimed at boosting combat readiness, state media reported Friday, days after his country vowed to take corresponding military steps against the ongoing South Korean-U.S military trainin g that it regards as an invasion rehearsal.
Thursday's drills involved frontline artillery units, whose weapons place Seoul, the South Korean capital, in their striking range, the North’s official Korean Central News Agency said.
Kim said artillery units must “take the initiative with merciless and rapid strikes at the moment of their entry into an actual war,” KCNA said.
North Korea's forward-deployed long-range artillery guns pose a serious security threat to Seoul, a city with 10 million people which is about 40 to 50 kilometers (25 to 30 miles) from the border with North Korea.
North Korea's Defense Ministry said Tuesday it would conduct unspecified ”responsible military activities” in response to the annual South Korea-U.S. military drills that are to end on March 14. Kim visited a western operational training ground on Wednesday and called for stronger war fighting capabilities.
The South Korean-U.S. drills began on Monday and involve a computer-simulated command post training and 48 kinds of field exercises, twice the number conducted last year.
North Korea views South Korea-U.S. military exercises as a major security threat, calling them a preparation to launch attacks on the North. Seoul and Washington officials have said their drills are defensive in nature.
North Korea has sharply accelerated its missile testing activities since 2022 in part of efforts to develop more powerful nuclear-capable weapons targeting the U.S. mainland and South Korea. The South Korean and U.S. militaries have expanded their drills in response.
Experts say North Korea likely aims to use a modernized arsenal to win sanctions relief from the United States when diplomacy restarts. They say North Korea could increase its weapons tests and dial up warlike rhetoric this year as the United States and South Korea hold major elections.
Gang rape of a tourist in India highlights its struggle to curb sexual violence against women
The woman in the Instagram video appeared shaken. Her face was swollen and bruised. Sitting beside her husband, she began recounting her ordeal.
“Something happened to us that we wouldn’t wish on anyone," she said in Spanish, with captions in English. “Seven men raped me, and they have beaten us and robbed us.”
In the video that has since been deleted, the woman said the assault on her and her Brazilian partner — both travel bloggers — took place in a forest late Friday in eastern Jharkhand state’s Dumka district where they were camping on their way to neighboring Nepal. She said seven men held knives to their throats and took turns sexually assaulting her.
The couple, who had been documenting their trip for more than 200,000 followers on an Instagram account, were found by a police patrol van which took them to a hospital, where the woman told the doctor she had been raped.
Shehbaz Sharif sworn in as Pakistan’s prime minister after contentious vote
Police in Jharkhand confirmed the incident and arrested three men over the weekend. On Monday, police said they were searching for four more suspects.
The Associated Press generally doesn’t identify victims of sexual assault.
The case triggered a nationwide outcry over one of India’s rampant problems: a decades-long struggle to curb rising sexual violence against women.
Reports of horrific sexual assaults on women have become familiar in India, where police recorded 31,516 rape cases in 2022, a 20% increase from 2021, according to the National Crime Records Bureau.
The real figure is believed to be far higher due to the stigma surrounding sexual violence and victims' lack of faith in police. Women's rights activists say the problem is particularly acute in rural areas, where victims of sexual assault are sometimes shamed by the community and families worry about their social standing.
“Often, the victims are victimized further with insults, and it makes it very difficult for them to report the crime to the police. In such cases, women think it is best to keep quiet,” said Mariam Dhawale, a women's rights activist and general secretary of the All India Democratic Women’s Association.
Rape and sexual violence have been under the spotlight since the brutal 2012 gang rape and killing of a 23-year-old student on a New Delhi bus. The attack galvanized massive protests and inspired lawmakers to order the creation of fast-track courts dedicated to rape cases and stiffen penalties.
China and Myanmar likely to be high on the agenda when Southeast Asian leaders meet in Australia
The rape law was amended in 2013, criminalizing stalking and voyeurism and lowering the age at which a person can be tried as an adult from 18 to 16.
Despite stringent laws, rights activists say the government is still not doing enough to protect women and punish attackers.
“Often, investigations in rape cases are messed up by the police and timely evidence is not collected. These cases get dragged on without any convictions and the culprits walk free,” Dhawale said. She said convictions remain rare and cases often remain stuck for years in India’s clogged criminal justice system.
In the last few years, the conviction rate in rape cases has hovered below 30%, according to several government reports.
High-profile rape cases involving foreign visitors have drawn international attention to the issue. In 2022, a British tourist was raped in front of her partner in Goa. Earlier this year, an Indian-American woman said she was raped at a hotel in New Delhi.
In January, the Supreme Court restored life sentences for 11 Hindu men who raped a Muslim woman during deadly religious rioting two decades ago. They had been released in 2022, when they were garlanded with flowers by their families and a lawmaker from Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s governing Bharatiya Janata Party.
Last year, female wrestlers demonstrated against the head of the wrestling federation, accusing him of repeatedly groping women. After months of protests, Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, an influential lawmaker from Modi’s party, was charged in court with stalking, harassment and intimidation. Singh has denied the accusations.
Dhwale said even though high-profile rape cases get media attention, a culture of downplaying sexual harassment and violence against women remains prevalent in India.
“We are continuously on the road to protest, sometimes to get a single case registered. It shouldn’t be like that,” she said.
North Korea threatens to take military moves in response to US-South Korean drills
North Korea called the ongoing South Korean-U.S. military drills a plot to invade the country, as it threatened Tuesday to take unspecified “responsible” military steps in response.
The North's warning came a day after the South Korean and U.S. forces kicked off their annual computer-simulated command post training and a variety of field exercises for an 11-day run. This year’s drills were to involve 48 field exercises, twice the number conducted last year.
In a statement carried by state media, the North’s Defense Ministry said it “strongly denounces the reckless military drills of the U.S. and (South Korea) for getting more undisguised in their military threat to a sovereign state and attempt for invading it.”
An unidentified ministry spokesperson said North Korea’s military will “continue to watch the adventurist acts of the enemies and conduct responsible military activities to strongly control the unstable security environment on the Korean Peninsula.”
The spokesperson didn't say what measures North Korea would take, but observers say North Korea will likely carry out missile tests or other steps to bolster its war capability.
North Korea views its rivals' major military drills as invasion rehearsals, though South Korean and U.S. officials have repeatedly said their training are defensive in nature. North Korea has previously reacted to South Korean-U.S. exercises with launches of a barrage of missiles into the sea.
South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff said last week that this year's military drills with the United States were designed to neutralize North Korean nuclear threats and would involve live-firing, bombing, air assault and missile interception drills.
Concerns about North Korea's nuclear program have grown in the past two years, as the North has test-launched missiles at a record pace and openly threatened to use nuclear weapons preemptively. The U.S. and South Korea have expanded their military exercises and increased the deployment of powerful U.S. military assets like aircraft carriers and nuclear-capable bombers in response.
This year, North Korea performed six rounds of missile tests and artillery firing drills. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un also declared his country won't seek reconciliation with South Korea and vowed to scrap the country's long-running goal of peaceful unification with South Korea. Kim said North Korea would take a more aggressive military posture along the disputed sea boundary with South Korea.
Experts say North Korea could believe a bigger weapons arsenal would provide it with a greater leverage in future diplomacy with the United States. They say North Korea is desperate to win an international recognition as a nuclear state, a status that it would think helps it win relief of U.S.-led economic sanctions.
North Korea is expected to further dial up tensions with more missile tests and warlike rhetoric this year as the U.S. and South Korea head into major elections. North Korea may stage limited provocation near the tense border with South Korea this year, experts say.
China raises defense budget 7.2% as it pushes for global heft and regional tensions continue
China on Tuesday announced a 7.2% increase in its defense budget, which is already the world’s second-highest behind the United States at 1.6 trillion yuan ($222 billion), roughly mirroring the rise of the last year.
Tensions with the U.S., Taiwan, Japan and neighbors who share claims to the crucial South China Sea are seen as furthering growth in increasingly high-tech military technologies from stealth fighters to aircraft carriers and a growing arsenal of nuclear weapons.
The official budget figure announced Tuesday at the opening session of the rubber-stamp legislature's annual meeting is considered by many foreign experts to be only a fraction of spending by the People’s Liberation Army, the military wing of the ruling Communist Party, once spending on research and development and foreign weapons purchases are considered.
Shehbaz Sharif sworn in as Pakistan’s prime minister after contentious vote
Shehbaz Sharif was sworn in as Pakistan’s new prime minister on Monday after being elected a day earlier in a raucous parliamentary session.
He held the same position from April 2022 to August 2023, replacing archrival Imran Khan who was kicked out of the job after a no-confidence vote. Shehbaz is the younger brother of three-time premier Nawaz Sharif.
His appointment is controversial because of parliamentary elections last month that his opponents claimed were rigged in his favor.
Read: Lawmakers elect Shehbaz Sharif as Pakistan's new premier amid protests in parliament
Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party, the PTI, insists it did better in the poll but that electoral theft and other irregularities deprived it of a parliamentary majority.
Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League party, the PML-N, didn’t win enough seats to form a government but went into coalition with others to get a majority, clearing his path to a second premiership.
He secured 201 votes in parliament to become prime minister, defeating the PTI-backed candidate Omar Ayub, who got 92 votes.
Monday’s swearing-in ceremony was held in the capital, Islamabad. President Arif administered the oath of office.
Read: Heavy winter rains in Pakistan kill at least 29 as buildings collapse and landslides block roads
Sharif pledged to perform his duties and functions with honesty and loyalty and always for the country's independence, “integrity, stability, and for the sake of unity.”
But stability and unity are in short supply in Pakistani politics, and Sharif has a tough task of bringing lawmakers together to steer the country through challenging times.
The first two sessions of parliament have been chaotic and noisy, with the opposition shouting and jeering at the new government because of their election grievances.
Sharif is the 24th prime minister in Pakistan’s 77-year history.
Read more: Pakistan swears in new parliament amid chaotic scenes, as Imran Khan's party protests vote count
The US and South Korea begin large military drills to boost readiness against North's threats
South Korea and the United States began large annual military exercises Monday to bolster their readiness against North Korean nuclear threats after the North raised animosities with an extension of missile tests and belligerent rhetoric earlier this year.
The South Korean and U.S. forces began a computer-simulated command post training called the Freedom Shield exercise and a variety of field exercises for an 11-day run, the South Korean Defense Ministry said.
North Korea had no immediate response to the major annual drills it regards as a rehearsal for invasion. The North has staged provocative weapons tests in the past in reaction to its adversaries' joint drills.
South Korea’s military said last week that it would conduct 48 field exercises with the U.S. forces this spring, twice the number conducted last year, and that they would involve live-firing, bombing, air assault and missile interception drills.
Since early 2022, North Korea has conducted more than 100 rounds of missile tests to modernize its arsenal as talks with the United States and South Korea have been stalled for an extended period. In response, the United States and South Korea have expanded their training exercises and increased the deployment of powerful U.S military assets such as aircraft carriers and long-range nuclear-capable bombers.
This year, North Korea carried out six rounds of missile tests and barrage of artillery firing drills. Its leader Kim Jong Un also said North Korea would scrap its long-standing goal of peaceful unification with South Korea and take a more aggressive military posture along the disputed sea boundary with South Korea. He also vowed to “annihilate” South Korea and the United States if provoked, a threat that he had previously issued.
The North Korean steps raised worries that it might make provocations along the tense Korean sea and land borders. But experts say the prospect for a full-blown attack by North Korea is dim as the North knows its military is outmatched by U.S. and South Korean forces.
North Korea’s moves to raise tensions are likely because its rivals are holding elections this year – the U.S. presidential election in November and South Korea's parliament election in April. North Korea believes an advanced nuclear arsenal will increase its leverage in future diplomacy and it can win concessions like the easing of international sanctions, experts say.
China and Myanmar likely to be high on the agenda when Southeast Asian leaders meet in Australia
An increasingly assertive China and a humanitarian crisis in Myanmar are likely to be high on the agenda when Southeast Asian leaders meet in Australia for a rare summit this week.
The ASEAN-Australia Special Summit that starts in Melbourne on Monday marks 50 years since Australia became the first official partner of the Asian bloc.
Leaders of nine of the 10 Association of Southeast Asian Nations are expected to attend the three-day summit, with Myanmar excluded from political representation over its failure to stem violence in that country since a military junta seized control in 2021. East Timor’s leader has been invited as an official ASEAN observer and Australian Prime Anthony Albanese invited his New Zealand counterpart to Melbourne to meet regional leaders.
“Australia sees ASEAN at the center of a stable, peaceful and prosperous region,” Albanese said in a statement on Friday.
“Strengthening our relationship ensures our shared future prosperity and security,” he added.
Australia has hosted ASEAN leaders once before in Sydney in 2018. The leaders issued a statement with the host country then that called for a code of conduct covering the contested waters of the South China Sea, where China has become increasingly assertive over its competing territorial claims with a number of ASEAN countries.
Australia and the Philippines, an ASEAN member, conducted joint sea and air patrols in the South China Sea for the first time in November last year.
Also in November, Australia proposed to ASEAN members that they declare in a joint statement at the end of the Melbourne summit their support for the 2016 arbitration ruling in The Hague in favor of the Philippines that invalidated Beijing’s vast territorial claims in the South China Sea, Australian Broadcasting Corp said in December. China has rejected that ruling.
Other ASEAN countries with territorial claims in conflict with China are Brunei, Malaysia and Vietnam.
China's increasingly assertive posture in the South China Sea and violence in Myanmar topped a meeting of ASEAN diplomats in January in Laos, the group's poorest nation, which has taken over the bloc's rotating leadership this year.
International Crisis Group's Asia program deputy director Huong Le Thu, who is attending the summit in Australia, said ASEAN has always been divided over how to approach China, with each member nation maintaining a unique bilateral relationship with the economic giant.
“I don’t see the commonality of one approach being feasible. They are working out the best way to manage this power asymmetry that they have with China,” Le Thu said.
The humanitarian crisis in Myanmar that hangs over the summit challenges ASEAN’s credibility as an organization, she said.
“It poses the question for its existence in the first place: why the countries’ governments in the region get together and what is the purpose of this intergovernmental institution if it cannot act on the internal crisis that effects its own organization and the region?” Le Thu said.
Around 200 protesters, mostly from the Myanmar diaspora, demonstrated outside the summit on Monday morning demanding the restoration of democracy in Myanmar and that ASEAN not engage with the country’s military leaders.
Australia, as the summit host, is focused on maritime cooperation, economic ties, climate change and clean energy.
Melissa Conley Tyler, executive director of the Asia-Pacific Development, Diplomacy and Defense Dialogue think tank, expects leaders will focus on what they share in common rather than their differences on issues such as China and Myanmar.
“The focus is very much going to be on how do Australia and the ASEAN countries work together to create a region where we want to live?” said Conley Tyler, who is attending the summit.
“Myanmar is a continuing issue, but I’m not sure it’ll be a focus. I feel the focus will be all positive, very future-oriented, talking about what we can do together and building that sense of excitement and momentum,” she added.
ASEAN members include Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam, and they have a combined population of more than 650 million and GDP of more than $3 trillion.
Heavy winter rains in Pakistan kill at least 29 as buildings collapse and landslides block roads
Pakistani authorities said Sunday at least 29 people died and 50 others injured due to heavy rains that swept across the country in the past 48 hours, causing several houses to collapse and landslides to block roads, particularly in the northwest.
This comes as Pakistan is also witnessing severe snowfall.
About 23 rain-related deaths were reported in various areas in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province bordering Afghanistan since Thursday night, the provincial disaster management authority said in a statement.
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Five people died in the southwestern Baluchistan province after the coastal town of Gwadar got flooded, forcing authorities to use boats to evacuate people.
Casualties and damages were also reported in Pakistan-administered Kashmir, the National Disaster Management Authority said in a separate statement.
Emergency relief was being provided to people in affected areas and heavy machinery used to remove debris blocking highways, the agency added.
The country's Karakoram Highway which links Pakistan with China is still blocked in some places due to landslides, according to the spokesman for the northern Gilgit Baltistan region, Faizullah Faraq.
Authorities advised tourists against traveling to the scenic north due to weather conditions. Last week, several visitors were stranded there because of the heavy rains.
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This year, Pakistan is witnessing an unusual delay in winter rains, starting in February instead of November.
Monsoon and winter rains cause damage in Pakistan every year.
In 2022, climate-induced unusual monsoon rains and flooding devastated most of the areas in impoverished Pakistan, killing more than 1,739 people, affecting around 33 million people and displacing nearly 8 million. The rains and floods in 2022 also caused billions of dollars of damages to the country's economy and some of the areas people who lost their homes are still living in makeshift homes.
Pakistan swears in new parliament amid chaotic scenes, as Imran Khan's party protests vote count
Pakistan's National Assembly swore in newly elected members on Thursday in a chaotic scene, as allies of jailed former Premier Imran Khan protested what they claim was a rigged election.
Lawmakers from Khan's Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party repeatedly chanted "Vote-thief!” as Shehbaz Sharif, who's expected to form the government, entered the lower house of parliament with his brother Nawaz Sharif. Both men are former premiers.
Outgoing National Assembly Speaker Raja Pervez Ashraf administered the oath to incoming legislators at noon.
The house echoed with chants of “Long Live Sharif!” when the brothers signed the register after taking their oaths of office. Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, the young chairman of the Pakistan People’s Party and a key Sharif ally, was met with similar chants.
The new government will face challenges including a surge in militant attacks and shortages of energy; as well as an ailing economy that will force Pakistan to seek another bailout from the International Monetary Fund.
Lawmakers from Khan's PTI told reporters that they will continue their campaign against the rigging in the elections in and outside the parliament.
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“Yes, the election has been rigged,” said Gohar Ali Khan, the current head of PTI.
PTI has called for nationwide rallies on Saturday. The party claims it results were changed in dozens of constituencies to prevent it from winning a majority, a charge the Election Commission of Pakistan denies.
After the Feb. 8 elections, observers from the Commonwealth praised election officials for holding the vote despite multiple militant attacks, but the U.S. State Department said that the vote was held under restrictions of freedoms of expression, association and peaceful assembly. The European Union also criticized the inability of some political actors to contest the elections. Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry has fired back at such criticism, saying the vote was held in a free, fair and transparent manner.
None of the foreign observers described widespread vote-stealing.
Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League party, or PML-N, and Pakistan People’s Party of former President Asif Ali Zardari, emerged from the vote as the largest presence in the 336-seat National Assembly, or lower house of the parliament.
Under a power-sharing formula, Sharif's party will support Zardari in next month's presidential elections. Outgoing President Arif Alvi is an ally of Khan and was a senior member of PTI before becoming president.
Khan is currently serving prison terms in multiple cases and has been barred from seeking or holding office. He has been convicted on charges of corruption, revealing official secrets and violating marriage laws in three separate verdicts and sentenced to concurrent prison terms of 10, 14 and 7 years. Khan is appealing all the convictions. He still faces some 170 legal cases on charges ranging from corruption to inciting violence and terrorism.
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On Wednesday, the PTI wrote a letter to the International Monetary Fund, urging it to link any talks with Islamabad to an audit of the country’s recent election, which his party alleges was rigged. The latest development came days before the IMF releases a key installment of a bailout loan to Pakistan.
Khan's move had drawn widespread criticism from his rivals, including Sharif, said Khan wanted to harm the country's economy. Sharif who replaced Khan after his ouster through a no-confidence vote in April 2022 had struggled hard to avoid a default on foreign payments last summer when the IMF approved the much-awaited $3 billion.
Sharif has said he wants a new bailout from the IMF after March when last year's IMF bailout expires.
Japan had the fewest babies it has ever recorded last year. Marriages dropped steeply, too
The number of babies born in Japan last year fell for an eighth straight year to a new low, government data showed Tuesday, and a top official said it was critical for the country to reverse the trend in the coming half-dozen years.
The 758,631 babies born in Japan in 2023 were a 5.1% decline from the previous year, according to the Health and Welfare Ministry. It was the lowest number of births since Japan started compiling the statistics in 1899.
The number of marriages fell by 5.9% to 489,281 couples, falling below a half-million for the first time in 90 years — one of the key reasons for the declining births. Out-of-wedlock births are rare in Japan because of family values based on a paternalistic tradition.
Surveys show that many younger Japanese balk at marrying or having families, discouraged by bleak job prospects, the high cost of living that rises at a faster pace than salaries and corporate cultures that are not compatible with having both parents work. Crying babies and children playing outside are increasingly considered a nuisance, and many young parents say they often feel isolated.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi told reporters Tuesday that the ongoing declining birth rate is at "critical state."
"The period over the next six years or so until 2030s, when the younger population will start declining rapidly, will be the last chance we may be able to reverse the trend," he said. "There is no time to waste."
Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has called the low births "the biggest crisis Japan faces," and put forward a package of measures that have included more support and subsidies mostly for childbirth, children and their families.
But experts say they doubt whether the government's efforts will be effective because so far they have largely focused on people who already are married or already are planning to have children, while not adequately addressing a growing population of young people who are reluctant to go that far.
The number of births has been falling since 50 years ago, when it peaked at about 2.1 million. The decline to an annual number below 760,000 has happened faster than earlier projections predicting that would happen by 2035.
Japan's population of more than 125 million is projected to fall by about 30% to 87 million by 2070, with four out of every 10 people at age 65 or older. A shrinking and aging population has big implications for the economy and for national security as the country seeks to fortify its military to counter China's increasingly assertive territorial ambitions.