BANGKOK (AP) — The United States and the Philippines are conducting joint air and maritime patrols in the South China Sea, which come as the two countries step up cooperation against China. The Philippine Air Force said Wednesday its aircraft had taken part in joint patrols the day before in the vicinity of Batanes, the northernmost province of the Philippines. The patrols run through Thursday and also include both the U.S. and Philippine navies. They come only days after Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. called the situation in the South China Sea increasingly “dire”.

 

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SILKYARA, India (Reuters) - Rescuers hope to drill through the last third of the debris blocking a collapsed tunnel in the Indian Himalayas by early on Thursday to reach 41 workers trapped for ten days, an official said, so long as there are no new hurdles. The men have been stuck in the 4.5-km (3-mile) tunnel in Uttarakhand state since it caved in early on Nov. 12 and are safe, authorities have said, with access to light, oxygen, food, water and medicines. Authorities have not said what caused the tunnel collapse, but the region is prone to landslides, earthquakes and floods. Efforts to bring the men out have been slowed by snags in drilling in the mountainous terrain. By Wednesday, rescuers drilled through 42 m (130 ft) of an estimated 60 m (197 ft) that need to be cleared in order to push through a pipe wide enough for the men to crawl out, said Mahmood Ahmed, an official of the firm building the tunnel.

 

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BEIJING (Reuters) - China is ready to work with Argentina to keep relations on a “steady” course, a foreign ministry spokesperson said, after the presidential election victory of a right-wing libertarian who said he will not deal with communists. Argentinian president-elect Javier Milei has criticized China and Brazil, which are among his country’s most important trading partners. A few months ago, Milei even likened the Chinese government to an “assassin” and said the people of China were “not free”. Milei’s tough talk on China stands in sharp contrast with a vow of cooperation by the outgoing president, Alberto Fernandez, who visited Beijing last month and hailed China as a “true friend” of Argentina. Fernandez also pledged coordination with China under frameworks such as the G20 and BRICS. “Bilateral relations between China and Argentina have shown sound momentum of growth,” said Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning.

 

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ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Pakistan’s Supreme Court accepted on Wednesday a bail application from detained former prime minister Imran Khan, his lawyer said, a day after another court declared illegal his trial on charges of leaking state secrets. The 71-year-old was jailed on Aug. 5 for three years jail for unlawfully selling state gifts during his tenure as prime minister from 2018 to 2022. His lawyer said the Supreme Court had accepted the bid for bail. “A decision will come in the next hearing after arguments from both sides,” lawyer Naeem Panjutha said in a post of the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter.

 

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WELLINGTON (Reuters) — Ozone levels above Antarctica may not be recovering and changes in the southern hemisphere atmosphere may be contributing to the persistence of the ozone hole, according to a study published on Wednesday. In a study published in Nature Communications, New Zealand scientists analyzed the monthly and daily ozone changes at different altitudes and latitudes within the Antarctic ozone hole from 2004 to 2022. Despite public perception, the Antarctic ozone hole has been remarkably massive and long-lived over the past four years, University of Otago researchers believe chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), the ozone-depleting substances, are not the only things to blame.There is much less ozone in the center of the ozone hole compared to 19 years ago, said the study’s lead author Hannah Kessenich, PhD candidate in the Department of Physics, University of Otago.