News in Brief
LONDON (Dispatches) – A Royal Air Force Typhoon based in Romania has been launched as a response to Russian nuclear bomber operating near NATO airspace over the Black Sea.
Operating from the Romanian Mihail Kogalniceanu Air Base near Constanta on the Black Sea coast, the RAF Typhoon responded to Russian Federation Air Force TU-22 Backfire strategic bombers heading south near NATO air space. The Russian military jets were flying over the western Black Sea and were monitored by the Typhoon. The Tupolevs - the first supersonic bomber to enter production in the Soviet Union - were tracked as they departed south but the jets did not come within visual range of each other.The NATO Combined Air Operations Centre (CAOC) at Torrejon Spain, ordered a RAF Typhoon jet to scramble and shadow the Russian jets flying in international airspace in the vicinity of NATO airspace.
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MANILA (AP) -- Human rights groups asked the Philippine president Wednesday to retract a threat to order airstrikes against tribal schools he accused of teaching students to become communist rebels, warning such an attack would constitute a war crime.
U.S.-based Human Rights Watch said international humanitarian law "prohibits attacks on schools and other civilian structures unless they are being used for military purposes," adding that deliberate attacks on civilians, including students and teachers, "is also a war crime." Left-wing Rep. Emmi de Jesus of the Gabriela Women's Party asked Duterte to retract the threat, saying government troops may use it as a pretext to attack indigenous, or Lumad, schools and communities in the country's south which have come under threat from pro-military militias in recent years.
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BEIJING / MOSCOW (Dispatches) -- China’s military is more nimble and technologically proficient following reforms to make it more compact and responsive, rather than just relying on strength of numbers, state media cited President Xi Jinping as saying.
China’s armed forces, the world’s largest, are in the midst of an ambitious modernization program, from restructuring to troop cuts and investment in technology and equipment upgrades, such as acquiring stealth fighters and aircraft carriers. Speaking to the ruling Communist Party’s elite Politburo, Xi called for all-out efforts to drive military reform, the official Xinhua news agency said. "After the reforms, our military’s scale is smaller, but it is more capable, its structure is more optimized, its formation more scientific,” the report paraphrased Xi, who is head of the military, as saying.
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BAUCHI, Nigeria (Dispatches) -- Suspected Boko Haram terrorists have kidnapped 10 members of a university research team prospecting for oil in northeast Nigeria, the state oil company, which contracted the work, said on Wednesday.
The Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) has been surveying for more than a year for what it says could be vast oil reserves in the Lake Chad Basin, a region wracked for eight years by a Takfiri militancy, which has killed at least 20,000 people and forced some 2.7 million to flee their homes. NNPC spokesman Ndu Ughamadu said contractors working as consultants were kidnapped near Jibi village in Borno state on Tuesday afternoon. The village is in Magumeri local government area, about 50 km from the state capital, Maiduguri.
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PARIS (MEE) -- The two main rivals in conflict-ridden Libya made a joint commitment to calling a ceasefire and holding elections that French President Emmanuel Macron said would take place in spring 2018.
Macron said Libya's UN-backed prime minister, Fayez al-Sarraj, and Khalifa Haftar, the military commander based in the remote east of the vast country, had shown "historic courage" in talks outside Paris. Sarraj and Haftar "struck an agreement to hold elections next spring", Macron said after hosting the meeting. A 10-point statement backed by the two leaders said: "We commit to a ceasefire and to refrain from any use of armed force for any purpose that does not strictly constitute counter-terrorism."
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COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) -- Sri Lanka's government deployed army troops on Wednesday to restore fuel distribution crippled during a strike launched by trade unions who want to stop leases of oil tanks to India and China.
Long lines have formed at gasoline stations across Sri Lanka since Monday evening due to the strike by workers at the state-run petroleum company. Military spokesman Brig. Roshan Seneviratne said troops entered the country's main distribution facility and refinery at Kolonnawa and Muthurajawela outside Colombo early Wednesday and they are now working in distribution facilities alongside the workers not on strike to resume the distribution of fuel.
Operating from the Romanian Mihail Kogalniceanu Air Base near Constanta on the Black Sea coast, the RAF Typhoon responded to Russian Federation Air Force TU-22 Backfire strategic bombers heading south near NATO air space. The Russian military jets were flying over the western Black Sea and were monitored by the Typhoon. The Tupolevs - the first supersonic bomber to enter production in the Soviet Union - were tracked as they departed south but the jets did not come within visual range of each other.The NATO Combined Air Operations Centre (CAOC) at Torrejon Spain, ordered a RAF Typhoon jet to scramble and shadow the Russian jets flying in international airspace in the vicinity of NATO airspace.
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MANILA (AP) -- Human rights groups asked the Philippine president Wednesday to retract a threat to order airstrikes against tribal schools he accused of teaching students to become communist rebels, warning such an attack would constitute a war crime.
U.S.-based Human Rights Watch said international humanitarian law "prohibits attacks on schools and other civilian structures unless they are being used for military purposes," adding that deliberate attacks on civilians, including students and teachers, "is also a war crime." Left-wing Rep. Emmi de Jesus of the Gabriela Women's Party asked Duterte to retract the threat, saying government troops may use it as a pretext to attack indigenous, or Lumad, schools and communities in the country's south which have come under threat from pro-military militias in recent years.
***
BEIJING / MOSCOW (Dispatches) -- China’s military is more nimble and technologically proficient following reforms to make it more compact and responsive, rather than just relying on strength of numbers, state media cited President Xi Jinping as saying.
China’s armed forces, the world’s largest, are in the midst of an ambitious modernization program, from restructuring to troop cuts and investment in technology and equipment upgrades, such as acquiring stealth fighters and aircraft carriers. Speaking to the ruling Communist Party’s elite Politburo, Xi called for all-out efforts to drive military reform, the official Xinhua news agency said. "After the reforms, our military’s scale is smaller, but it is more capable, its structure is more optimized, its formation more scientific,” the report paraphrased Xi, who is head of the military, as saying.
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BAUCHI, Nigeria (Dispatches) -- Suspected Boko Haram terrorists have kidnapped 10 members of a university research team prospecting for oil in northeast Nigeria, the state oil company, which contracted the work, said on Wednesday.
The Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) has been surveying for more than a year for what it says could be vast oil reserves in the Lake Chad Basin, a region wracked for eight years by a Takfiri militancy, which has killed at least 20,000 people and forced some 2.7 million to flee their homes. NNPC spokesman Ndu Ughamadu said contractors working as consultants were kidnapped near Jibi village in Borno state on Tuesday afternoon. The village is in Magumeri local government area, about 50 km from the state capital, Maiduguri.
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PARIS (MEE) -- The two main rivals in conflict-ridden Libya made a joint commitment to calling a ceasefire and holding elections that French President Emmanuel Macron said would take place in spring 2018.
Macron said Libya's UN-backed prime minister, Fayez al-Sarraj, and Khalifa Haftar, the military commander based in the remote east of the vast country, had shown "historic courage" in talks outside Paris. Sarraj and Haftar "struck an agreement to hold elections next spring", Macron said after hosting the meeting. A 10-point statement backed by the two leaders said: "We commit to a ceasefire and to refrain from any use of armed force for any purpose that does not strictly constitute counter-terrorism."
***
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) -- Sri Lanka's government deployed army troops on Wednesday to restore fuel distribution crippled during a strike launched by trade unions who want to stop leases of oil tanks to India and China.
Long lines have formed at gasoline stations across Sri Lanka since Monday evening due to the strike by workers at the state-run petroleum company. Military spokesman Brig. Roshan Seneviratne said troops entered the country's main distribution facility and refinery at Kolonnawa and Muthurajawela outside Colombo early Wednesday and they are now working in distribution facilities alongside the workers not on strike to resume the distribution of fuel.