Austin: UN states concerned China and Russia helping North Korea
Austin: UN states concerned China and Russia helping North Korea/node/2408316/world
Austin: UN states concerned China and Russia helping North Korea
U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, center left, and South Korean Defense Minister Shin Won-sik, center right, attend a welcome ceremony before their Defense Minister meeting of the South Korea-United Nations Command (UNC) Member nations at the Defense Ministry in Seoul, South Korea, on Tuesday, Nov. 14, 2023. (AP)
Austin: UN states concerned China and Russia helping North Korea
“We are deeply concerned that the PRC and Russia are helping the DPRK expand its capabilities by enabling it to evade sanctions from the UN Security council,” Austin said
Updated 14 November 2023
Reuters
SEOUL: US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said on Tuesday UN member countries enforcing the Korean War armistice are concerned that China and Russia are helping North Korea to expand its military capabilities by enabling it to evade UN sanctions.
Austin was speaking at a meeting in South Korea with defense minister and representatives from the 17 countries that make up the UN Command that oversees the armistice.
“We are deeply concerned that the PRC and Russia are helping the DPRK expand its capabilities by enabling it to evade sanctions from the UN Security council,” Austin said.
PRC refers to the People’s Republic of China and DPRK is short for North Korea’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
“We’re also troubled by the recent growth in military cooperation between Russia and the DPRK,” he said.
Gaza’s Hamas rulers say 3 journalists killed in Israeli raids
Gaza’s deadliest war began when Hamas militants on October 7 launched a shock attack on southern Israel, killing 1,200 people, mostly civilians, according to Israeli officials
Updated 5 sec ago
AFP
GAZA STRIP, Palestinian Territories: Gaza’s Hamas-run government said three journalists were killed in Israeli raids on Friday as fierce fighting resumed after a week-long truce.
The government press office identified the three as cameraman Muntassir Al-Sawwaf, who worked for Turkiye’s Anadolu state news agency, his brother Marwan, who worked as a soundman, and cameraman Abdullah Darwish.
It said their deaths brought to 73 the number of journalists killed since the war began on October 7.
The Turkish agency confirmed Friday the death of Sawwaf and two others who it did not name in southern Gaza.
“We are concerned about the lives of our colleagues, who fulfil their duties with great devotion under very difficult conditions,” Anadolu general director Serdar Karagoz said.
“We will continue our struggle to ensure that those who carried out these attacks are held to account.”
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said earlier Friday that at least 57 journalists and media workers had died since the start of the war.
Gaza’s deadliest war began when Hamas militants on October 7 launched a shock attack on southern Israel, killing 1,200 people, mostly civilians, according to Israeli officials.
Israel responded with an air and artillery assault on the Gaza Strip that it said aimed to topple Hamas and return more than 240 hostages.
The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza said at least 178 people had died in the territory since a seven-day pause in hostilities expired early Friday and ground battles and Israel air strikes resumed.
During the truce, Hamas freed 80 Israeli hostages in exchange for 240 Palestinian prisoners.
Hamas authorities say the Israeli campaign has killed more than 15,000 people, mostly civilians.
Protester in Atlanta sets self on fire outside Israeli consulate
The United States has seen an uptick in Anti-Semitic, anti-Arab and Islamophobic threats and violence since the start of Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza in October
Updated 02 December 2023
AFP
WASHINGTON: A protester outside the Israeli consulate in Atlanta was in critical condition Friday after setting themself on fire, in what police said was likely an “extreme” political statement.
“A Palestinian flag was reported at the location and was part of the protest,” said Darin Schierbaum, police chief of the southern US city.
He said the incident was “likely an extreme act of political protest.”
A security guard was also injured after trying to stop the protester, according to emergency first responders.
“Both individuals sustained burns,” Atlanta Fire Chief Roderick Smith told journalists.
He did not specify the age or gender of the protester.
“The security guard noticed that the individual was attempting to set themselves afire” shortly after the protester arrived outside the consulate building around noon (1700 GMT), Smith said.
The guard “immediately attempted but failed to stop the individual.”
The guard was burned on his wrist and leg, Smith said, while the protester was in critical condition with “full thickness” burns to their body. Both were taken to the hospital, he added.
“We actually have dedicated patrols that are occurring at this location and other Jewish and Muslim communities in the city,” Schierbaum added.
The United States has seen an uptick in Anti-Semitic, anti-Arab and Islamophobic threats and violence since the start of Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza in October.
Earlier this week a US man was charged with attempted murder over the shooting of three men of Palestinian descent in Vermont, and a six-year-old Palestinian-American boy was stabbed to death in Illinois in October.
Philippines builds new coast guard station on island in South China Sea
Updated 01 December 2023
AP
THITU ISLAND: The Philippines inaugurated a new coast guard monitoring base Friday on an island occupied by Filipino forces in the disputed South China Sea and plans to expand joint patrols with the US and Australia to counter China’s “pure bullying” in the strategic waterway, a Philippine security official said.
High-seas faceoffs between Chinese and Philippine ships have intensified this year in the contested waters, fueling fears of a larger conflict that could involve the US. The US has repeatedly warned that it’s obligated to defend the Philippines, its oldest treaty ally in Asia, if Filipino forces come under an armed attack, including in the South China Sea.
China has accused the US of meddling in an Asian dispute and sowing discord in the region.
National Security Adviser Eduardo Ano and other Philippine officials flew to Thitu Island on an air force plane on Friday and led a ceremony to open the newly constructed, two-story center that will have radar, ship-tracking and other monitoring equipment to monitor China’s actions in the hotly disputed waters and other problems, including sea accidents.
“It’s no longer gray zone. It’s pure bullying,” Ano told reporters after the seaside ceremony, describing the actions of Chinese ships as openly flouting international law.
Dwarfed by China’s military might, the Philippines decided this year to allow an expansion of the US military presence in its local camps under a 2014 defense pact.
It also recently launched joint sea and air patrols with the United States and Australia in a new deterrence strategy that puts the two allied powers on a collision course with Beijing.
Ano said the separate joint patrols involving the US and Australia would continue and could expand to include other nations like Japan once a security agreement being negotiated by Tokyo and Manila was concluded.
“We’re open to like-minded countries to join as observers or participants,” Ano said.
How does climate change affect farming and food security?
As fossil fuel emissions heat the planet, they are driving extreme weather from heavy rains and droughts to heatwaves
Such events can affect crops, ruin farmland and make it harder for farmers to work, threatening everyone’s access to food
Updated 01 December 2023
REUTERS
LONDON: As impacts from prolonged droughts to extreme heat worsen, climate change is threatening the world’s ability to produce enough nutritious food and ensure everyone has access to it.
At COP28 in Dubai, more than 130 country leaders on Friday called for global and national food systems to be rethought to address climate change — the first such official recognition at a UN climate summit of growing worries about food security and planet-heating emissions from agriculture.
Here’s how global food systems and climate change affect each other, and what might be done about rising risks:
How is climate change threatening food security?
As fossil fuel emissions heat the planet, they are driving more extreme weather — from heavy rains and droughts to heatwaves — as well as gradual sea level rise. All can affect crops, ruin farmland and make it harder for farmers to work.
A warming climate also is bringing crop diseases and pests into new locations or making infestations more severe, ruining more harvests and reducing yields.
Such problems, combined with other pressures on food systems — from growing conflict to crop export restrictions by food-producing countries and speculation in markets — mean food is becoming less affordable and more people are going hungry.
The UN World Food Programme estimates that 333 million people face “acute” food insecurity in 2023 in the 78 countries where it works — a huge boost from about 200 million prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Alex Flores walks on a dry area of Lake Titicaca, Latin America's largest freshwater basin, as it is edging towards record low levels, on Cojata Island, Bolivia on October 26, 2023. (REUTERS/File)
Crop failures are not a new phenomenon, with surpluses in some regions long making up for shortfalls in others, but scientists fear stronger climate impacts could drive simultaneous failures across major global “breadbaskets,” resulting in a swift rise in global hunger.
What is being done to address these threats?
Around the world, many farmers are adapting to climate extremes in a variety of ways, from digging irrigation ponds to trap floodwater and store it for dry times, to adopting new climate-smart seeds and bringing back hardy traditional crops.
But some challenges — such as more frequent and extreme heatwaves that can make it difficult for farmers to work outside — are harder to counter.
Money to help small-scale farmers — who supply about a third of the world’s food — adapt to climate risks is also falling dramatically short.
In 2021, they received only about $2 billion, or 0.3 percent of total international climate finance from public and private sources, according to Amsterdam-based think-tank Climate Focus.
With little outside help available, many such farmers — who have contributed little to the emissions heating up the planet — are paying the costs of climate adaptation themselves.
The Climate Focus survey of 13 countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America found nearly 440 million small-scale farmer households now spend about $368 billion annually on adaptation costs, or about $838 each per year.
Analysts say efforts to shore up global food security also need to reach well beyond farms, to try to rein in speculators in food markets, discourage export clampdowns and revamp increasingly overwhelmed humanitarian aid systems.
Can we find ways to grow more food to make up for the losses?
Expanding the amount of land being farmed — or boosting the use of fossil-fuel-based fertilizers and developing new crop varieties — have long been accepted ways to grow more food.
But agricultural land expansion often comes at the expense of forests and other natural ecosystems that are critical to conserve because their vegetation absorbs and stores climate-heating carbon dioxide emissions in order to grow, helping to curb climate change.
For example nearly 20 percent of the vast Amazon rainforest has now been lost, largely to soybean farming and cattle ranching.
Scientists fear additional deforestation could over time turn the forest into a dry savanna, imperiling rainfall for agriculture across South America — and sabotaging the world’s climate and biodiversity protection goals.
Efforts to intensify the amount of food grown on a set land area have shown some success but often require large amounts of expensive fossil fuel-based fertilizers.
In recent years, however, more environmentally friendly farming methods are gaining new adherents, from the United States to India.
But food analysts say the best way to increase global supplies is not to grow more but to reduce the huge amount of food wasted each year.
While the world produces enough food for everyone, about a third of it is lost or wasted along the supply chain from field to fork, according to the United Nations, which says the average person wastes 74 kg (163 lb) of food each year.
“We continue to work with Israel, Egypt, and Qatar on efforts to extend the humanitarian pause in Gaza,” a White House National Security Council spokesperson said
President Joe Biden and his national security team “will continue to remain deeply engaged as we look to free the remaining hostages"
Updated 01 December 2023
AFP
WASHINGTON: The United States will continue to press for extending a truce in Gaza, the White House said Friday, as intense fighting erupted once again in the Israel-Hamas war.
“We continue to work with Israel, Egypt, and Qatar on efforts to extend the humanitarian pause in Gaza,” a White House National Security Council spokesperson said.
Under the truce which lasted a week, Hamas militants released 80 Israeli hostages in exchange for 240 Palestinian prisoners. More humanitarian aid was also delivered into war-devastated Gaza.
But the prospects of reestablishing a truce were being stymied because “Hamas has so far failed to produce a list of hostages that would enable a further extension of the pause,” the NSC spokesperson said.
President Joe Biden and his national security team “will continue to remain deeply engaged as we look to free the remaining hostages,” the NSC spokesperson said.
On Thursday, Washington’s top diplomat, Antony Blinken, also called for a truce extension while meeting Israeli and Palestinian officials during a visit to the region.
The fighting began on October 7 when Hamas militants broke through Gaza’s militarized border into Israel.
During the unprecedented attack, Hamas killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapped around 240, according to Israeli authorities.
In response, Israel vowed to eliminate Hamas and unleashed an air and ground military campaign in Gaza that the Hamas authorities who run Gaza say has killed almost 15,000 people, also mostly civilians.
