Trump administration promises ‘ironclad’ support for Philippines’ security
New United States Secretary of State Marco Rubio assured Manila of Washington’s “ironclad” commitment to defending the Philippines in the face of Chinese provocation in the South China Sea, during his first call with Philippines Foreign Minister Enrique Manalo.
Rubio also criticised Beijing’s “dangerous and destabilising actions in the South China Sea” in the call on Wednesday with Manalo, which the US’s top diplomat said violated international law.
“Secretary Rubio conveyed that [China’s] behavior undermines regional peace and stability and is inconsistent with international law,” the State Department said in a statement.
“An armed attack in the Pacific, including anywhere in the South China Sea, on either of their public vessels, aircraft, or armed forces – which includes their Coast Guards – would invoke mutual defence commitments,” the State Department noted.
Washington and the Philippines, a former US colony, signed the Mutual Defense Treaty in 1951 stipulating that both countries would come to one another’s defence if they faced attack.
Rubio held the call with his Philippine counterpart a day after holding a four-way meeting with his Quadrilateral Security Dialogue counterparts from India, Japan and Australia.
In a veiled warning to Beijing, the four-country diplomatic and security grouping – known as the Quad – said they support a “free and open Indo-Pacific” region, “where the rule of law, democratic values, sovereignty and territorial integrity are upheld and defended”.
“We also strongly oppose any unilateral actions that seek to change the status quo by force or coercion,” they said in a statement.
China holds expansive claims covering most of the South China Sea, infringing on the maritime claims of several Southeast Asia nations, including the Philippines.
In 2016, in a dispute brought by Manila against Beijing, the Permanent Court of Arbitration tribunal in The Hague ruled that China’s territorial claims in the South China Sea lacked any legal basis.
The ruling, which Beijing has rejected, has had little bearing on China’s growing assertive actions in the disputed maritime area.
Chinese and Philippine vessels have engaged in increasingly tense confrontations over disputed islands, waters and reefs in the area over the past year.
On January 14, the Philippines criticised China for deploying a “monster ship” inside Manila’s exclusive maritime economic zone, calling the move by China’s coastguard alarming and intended to intimidate fishermen operating around a contested shoal.
“It is an escalation and provocative,” Philippines National Security Council spokesperson Jonathan Malaya said at the time, adding that the presence of the vessel was “illegal” and “unacceptable”.
In response, the Philippine navy held a “sovereignty patrol” with a live-fire exercise near the shoal, followed by joint military exercises with the US.
That week, China’s People’s Liberation Army also conducted military combat readiness drills in the contested waters.
The Scarborough Shoal is one of the hotly disputed chains of reefs in the South China Sea. While sitting inside the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone (EEZ), China holds de facto control over the shoal.
Source: Al Jazeera
South Korea’s anti-graft agency recommends insurrection charges for Yoon
South Korea’s anticorruption agency has recommended that President Yoon Suk-yeol be charged with insurrection and abuse of power following a probe into the impeached leader’s short-lived martial law declaration.
The Corruption Investigation Office for High-ranking Officials (CIO) said on Thursday that it requested prosecutors to file the charges after finding that Yoon had suspended civil rule with “the intent to exclude state authority or disrupt the constitutional order”.
Following the CIO’s transfer of the case, the Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office will have 11 days to decide whether to charge Yoon and send him to trial.
Yoon, who has been suspended from his duties since a December 14 impeachment vote by the National Assembly, was arrested at his residence in Seoul last week after refusing repeated summons to appear for questioning.
His arrest marked the first time in South Korean history that a sitting president was taken into custody.
Yoon’s lawyers have argued that the CIO, established in 2021 under Moon’s predecessor Moon Jae-in, does not have the authority to investigate the president for insurrection and that his arrest was illegal.
Under South Korean law, insurrection is one of the few crimes for which the president does not enjoy immunity.
The offence is punishable by life imprisonment or the death penalty, though the East Asian country has a longstanding moratorium on executions.
Yoon’s political fate is separately under consideration by the Constitutional Court, which has 180 days to decide whether to uphold his impeachment or restore his presidential authority.
During his first appearance before the nine-member court on Tuesday, Yoon denied ordering troops to forcibly remove lawmakers from the National Assembly so they would not be able to vote to overturn his brief martial law decree.
Yoon told the court that lawmakers could have gathered elsewhere to overturn his December 3 decree, which he rescinded within hours following a unanimous National Assembly vote.
Finance Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Choi Sang-mok has served as the country’s acting president since December 27, when lawmakers impeached Yoon’s initial successor, Han Duck-soo, for refusing to immediately fill three vacancies on the Constitutional Court.
Source: Al Jazeera
Minister says Israel applying ‘lessons’ from Gaza in West Bank operation
Israeli forces are applying methods learned during the war on Gaza to their ongoing “Iron Wall” military operation in the occupied West Bank, Israel’s defence minister said, where troops have killed at least 10 people in Jenin and ordered residents to flee the area’s refugee camp.
Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz said on Wednesday that the Jenin operation, which is entering its third day, marks a shift in Israel’s military plan in the occupied West Bank and was “the first lesson from the method of repeated raids in Gaza”.
An Israeli military spokesperson declined to give details of the Jenin operation, which began on Tuesday and is the third major incursion by the Israeli army in less than two years into Jenin, a longtime stronghold of resistance to Israel’s decades-old military occupation of Palestinian territory.
Residents inside the Jenin refugee camp reported constant gunfire and explosions on Wednesday while the Palestinian health services reported at least four wounded in the camp.
The UN’s agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) said on Wednesday that Israeli forces have used “advanced weaponry and warfare methods, including air strikes” on the Jenin camp, which is now “nearly uninhabitable” with an estimated 2,000 families displaced from the area since December.
Israel’s “massive operation” in Jenin also “threatens to undermine the fragile ceasefire reached just days ago in Gaza”, said Roland Friedrich, UNRWA’s director of affairs for the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Israeli media also reported that two Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces on Wednesday in the Wadi Burqin area near the city of Jenin.
Jenin has resisted Israeli occupation for decades, earning its reputation as the “capital of Palestinian resistance.” Here’s why it still matters today. pic.twitter.com/Yu9nkRi12w
— AJ+ (@ajplus) January 22, 2025
Palestinian news agency Wafa reported that Israeli forces had surrounded a building in the town of Burqin and ordered the occupants to exit using a loudspeaker.
Air strikes from Israeli drones hit the house while soldiers on the ground fired antitank grenades at the building, which was then flattened by military bulldozers.
As the Israeli raid got under way on Tuesday, 10 Palestinians were killed and dozens wounded in the Jenin area, including children and medical workers.
Jenin’s governor, Kamal Abu al-Rub, told the AFP news agency that the situation was “very difficult” as Israeli military bulldozers had torn up all roads leading to the Jenin refugee camp and Jenin’s government hospital. Israeli forces had also detained about 20 people from villages around Jenin since the operation began on Tuesday, he said.
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called for “maximum restraint” from Israeli forces in Jenin and expressed deep concern, according to his deputy spokesman, Farhan Haq.
On Monday, Guterres told a UN Security Council meeting of his fears over “an existential threat to the integrity and contiguity” of Gaza and the occupied West Bank from Israel and amid the “unabated” expansion of illegal Israeli settlements.
The UN chief said that “senior Israeli officials openly speak of formally annexing all or part of the West Bank in the coming months”.
“Any such annexation would constitute a most serious violation of international law,” he said.
Source: Al Jazeera
Russia-Ukraine war: List of key events – day 1,064
A Russian missile strike on the southern Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia has killed a 47-year-old man, according to regional governor Ivan Fedorov. He said 16 others were injured including a two-month-old baby.
The Ukrainian air force said Russia launched 99 drones towards Ukraine overnight in what has become a daily volley of strikes. The air force said Kyiv’s troops destroyed 65 drones while 30 disappeared from radar. Six regions in Ukraine reported attacks as a result of the drones.
Russia’s Ministry of Defence confirmed Moscow’s forces captured the village of Zapadne in Ukraine’s northeastern Kharkiv region. The village is on the western bank of the Oskil River, which had formed the front line between the Kremlin and Kyiv’s armies for a long time.
Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko said Russia had attacked Kyiv’s energy facilities 1,200 times since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, including strikes targeting electricity generation facilities, distribution channels and gas facilities.
Russian courts upheld the life sentence of Alexander Permyakov, the man convicted of seriously injuring Zakhar Prilepin, a pro-Kremlin writer, by blowing up his car in 2023. Prilepin’s driver was killed in the bombing.
Russian media report that the relatives of some 3,000 Russian civilians trapped in the Sudzha district of the Ukraine-occupied Kursk region began a coordinated social media campaign appealing for help to find their loved ones.
Source: Al Jazeera
Bloomberg to fund UN climate body after Donald Trump’s Paris exit
The UN climate change body will receive funding from the foundation of billionaire Michael Bloomberg after President Donald Trump declared the United States would withdraw from the Paris Agreement for the second time.
In an announcement on Thursday, Bloomberg said the intervention aims to ensure the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) remains fully funded despite the US halting its contributions.
“From 2017 to 2020, during a period of federal inaction, cities, states, businesses, and the public rose to the challenge to uphold our nation’s commitments – and now, we are ready to do it again,” Bloomberg, who serves as the UN Special Envoy on Climate Ambition and Solutions, said in a statement.
The US typically provides 22 percent of the UNFCCC secretariat’s budget, with the body’s operating costs for 2024-2025 projected at an estimated $96.5m.
After taking oath on Monday, Trump signed one of his first executive orders withdrawing the US from the climate deal and ending all of the country’s international climate financial commitments.
Simon Stiell, the UNFCCC’s executive secretary, framed Trump’s decision as a lost opportunity for US clean energy business, saying it only sends “all the vast wealth to competitor economies” while making climate-related disasters worse.
European Commissioner for Climate Wopke Hoekstra described Trump’s withdrawal as “a truly unfortunate development” for the US and the rest of the world.
Bloomberg’s decision to step in marks the second time he did so to fill the gap left by US federal disengagement.
In 2017, following the Trump administration’s first withdrawal from the Paris accord, Bloomberg pledged up to $15m to support the UNFCCC.
He also launched “America’s Pledge”, an initiative to track and report US non-federal climate commitments, ensuring the world could monitor US progress as if it were still a fully committed party to the Paris Agreement.
Bloomberg had sought the Democratic nomination for US president in 2019 but ended his campaign four months later.
Source: Al Jazeera