U.S. Navy, JMSDF ships pair for exercise in South China Sea China using closed civilian airport to launch Taiwan incursions Taiwan has no future other than reunification with mainland, no intl status other than being part of China: FM Wang Yi China’s Carrier-Capable Naval Stealth Fighter Has Flown Chinese military may have an edge over US on artificial intelligence research, report warns Russian Fleet Monitoring US Navy Destroyer in Black Sea Russia Suffers Deadliest September Since World War II With Covid Untamed WHO Chief Warns New Virus May Appear That Cannot Be Contained Iran Says New Sanctions Contradict US Claims About Seeking to Return to Nuclear Deal Myanmar military shells restive town, destroying dozens of homes Satellite images show China is likely using an unused civilian airport just across the Taiwan Strait to conduct its incursions into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone (ADIZ). Shantou-Waisha airport, west across the strait from Taiwan’s city of Tainan, has seen detachments of PLA aircraft since at least October last year, according to satellite imagery provided to by Planet Labs. The airport used to service the city of Shantou, but halted operations in 2011 when nearby Jieyang-Chaoshan airport opened.
The October 2020 imagery shows two Shaanxi KQ-200 anti-submarine warfare aircraft on what was once the civil parking apron. The aircraft’s distinctive tail- mounted anomaly detector boom is clearly visible in the photo. China’s KQ-200s have been the most common aircraft reported by Taiwan crossing into the ADIZ, per reports. Taking off from the base shortens the time it takes pilots to break into the ADIZ. It also positions them to conduct flight training over the southern part of the Taiwan Strait, the northern part of the South China Sea and the Bashi Channel, per reports. The Bashi channel sits between Taiwan and the Philippines. It is one of the several strategic choke points of the so-called First Island Chain.
The island of Taiwan has no future other than reunification with the Chinese mainland, and it has no international legal status other than being part of China, Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi said in response to US calling for "meaningful participation" of Taiwan in the UN. The US and some other countries could not stop the one-China principle 50 years ago, and they are much less likely to succeed in the 21st century. If they persist, they will pay the price, Wang said Friday in Rome, where he will attend the G20 summit.
Recently, the US and some other countries attempted to make breakthrough on the Taiwan question, which violates their political commitment made while establishing diplomatic ties with China and ignores the general will of UN members expressed in the Resolution 2758 The move also undermines the principles of the UN Charter and destructs the peace and stability in the Taiwan Straits, Wang said. In 1971, the General Assembly of the UN adopted with an overwhelming majority Resolution 2758, and the decision was made to restore the lawful seat of the People's Republic of China in the UN. The historical and legal facts of one China cannot be challenged, and the 1.4 billion Chinese people's pursuit of peaceful reunification of the country cannot be held back, Wang said. Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force (JMSDF) Murasame-class destroyer JS Yudachi (DD 103) and Independence-variant littoral combat ship USS Jackson (LCS 6) operated bilaterally in the South China Sea, Oct. 28-29.
Joining to form a surface action group (SAG) while transiting, the ships practiced a range of surface warfare tactics to include flight operations, communications drills and coordinated tactical maneuvering, all designed to enhance interoperability and enabling the ships to practice bilateral tactics in close proximity to one another. Coming together with partners and allies at sea allows the U.S. Navy to operate closely with other navies and in ways shore exercises do not allow. It further provides the crews with real-life situations to practice their everyday watchstanding and communication skills with foreignvessels. “On our way to the Gulf of Aden and Somali waters to engage counter piracy mission, we met with USS Jackson, and conducted various tactical training,” said Cmdr. WAKUSHIMA Hidetaka, JMSDF JS Yudachi commanding officer. “Despite COVID-19, Japan and U.S. naval forces are working closely in any sea area, making full use of the characteristics of the naval force.” The aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson and its strike group are now operating in the contested South China Sea alongside a Japanese helicopter destroyer, the Navy said Monday (26/10).
The incident comes just days after China and Russia showed off their military might against Japan. During the mid-October drills, Russian and Chinese warships passed through the Tsugaru Strait, which lies between the Japanese islands of Honshu and Hokkaido. Later, China's Ministry of National Defense also said that 10 naval ships and 6 helicopters of the two countries had begun joint patrols in the Sea of Japan, Western Pacific and East China Sea for a week starting from 17 /10 Photos beginning to appear on social media apparently show, beyond little doubt, the carrier version of China’s Shenyang FC-31 stealth fighter, which is expected to play a vital role in the continued and impressive development of the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) carrier force. While we have previously seen an apparent mockup of the jet — the first stealthy carrier- capable fighter to be developed outside the United States — the new images show a prototype flying for what may well be the first time.
Wearing a blue-green primer finish, the new jet has the same twin canted tailfins, twin engines, and high-mounted cockpit of the FC-31, but adds a catapult launch bar and a wing-fold mechanism, confirming it’s intended for carrier operations. Other notable features are a chin-mounted sensor turret, apparently analogous to the F-35’s Electro-Optical Targeting System (EOTS), and what seems to be a remodeled cockpit canopy profile, with a shorter main transparency. Being equipped for catapult operations for the outset, the new fighter seems certain to be intended to operate from the forthcoming Type 003 carrier — the third for the PLAN, and the first to have a distinctly domestic design. The Type 003 design is expected to be equipped with an electromagnetic aircraft launch system (EMALS), rather than relying on the ski-jump ramps used on the PLAN’s previous two carriers, the Liaoning and Shandong. In a very busy week for Chinese tactical aviation developments, it’s once again clear that Beijing’s airpower ambitions are rapidly taking shape. Now it could very well be that the Type 003 carrier enters into service with a stealth fighter being tested aboard its deck.
The Chinese military could be spending as much or even more than the United States on artificial intelligence (AI) according to a new report. The analysis, by the Centre for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET) at Georgetown University in Washington, also found just 22 of the 273 companies known to supply the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) with AI equipment were not subject to US Commerce Department restrictions – meaning they may be able to access US technology and pass it on to the PLA. Given the secrecy surrounding the issue, it is difficult to calculate exactly how much each side spends on AI, but the researchers looked at more than 18,300 publicly available contracts awarded by the PLA and state-owned defence companies last year, and estimated that Chinese military spending on AI-related technologies amounted to between US$1.6 billion and $2.7 billion each year.
They also cited previous studies that calculated that the Pentagon spent between $800 million and $1.3 billion on AI last year, along with anywhere between $1.7 billion to $3.5 billion being spent on unmanned and autonomous systems. “Specifically, we find the PLA is buying AI systems designed to identify undersea vehicles, wargame Taiwan operations, track US navy ships, and deploy electronic countermeasures, among other tasks,” said Ryan Fedasiuk, a research analyst at CSET, wrote on Twitter on Thursday. “We find that China’s military-civil fusion development strategy is paying real dividends. Of the 273 AI equipment suppliers in our data set, 60 per cent are private companies. The overwhelming majority are quite small, established only in the last 10 years.” The military-civil strategy aims to help the Chinese military become the most technologically advanced in the world by removing barriers between the civilian and military sectors. The Georgetown University report comes at a time of heightened tensions in the Taiwan Strait and reports that China had tested a hypersonic weapon over the summer, a development that Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, described as “very concerning”.
“The Chinese military capabilities are much greater than that single test,” Milley told Bloomberg Television. “They’re expanding rapidly in space, in cyber and then in the traditional domains of land, sea and air.” On Friday, the US Sixth Fleet said that a destroyer, the USS Porter, was transiting to the Black Sea in order to operate with its NATO allies. The Russian Black Sea Fleet is monitoring the USS Porter, a guided missile destroyer, which entered the Black Sea, the national defence control centre said Saturday.
"Troops and technical resources of the Black Sea Fleet are involved in monitoring the actions of the USS Porter, the US Navy's guided missile destroyer, that entered the Black Sea on 30 October 2021," the centre, which is part of the Russian Defenсe Ministry, said. In turn, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko said later that NATO is seeking to turn the region into a confrontation zone, and that this is very dangerous. Russia suffered its deadliest September since World War II, according to figures published Friday, even before the peak of its current wave of the Covid-19 pandemic forced authorities to order non-working days for the first week of November. There were 44,265 deaths associated with the virus last month, bringing the pandemic’s total to nearly half a million, according to Federal Statistics Service data published late Friday. That contributed to the highest number of September fatalities since the war, said Alexei Raksha, a demographer who left the agency last year after a dispute over its coronavirus numbers. “If the authorities’ approach to fighting Covid-19 doesn’t change radically, we can expect new waves of infections,” Raksha said. “The lockdown should be
real, strict and and several weeks, like in Latvia, and not ‘non-working days’ at the expense of employers.” Russia’s average life expectancy has fallen by five years in the last 18 months,to about 69, he estimates. The latest Covid surge has overloaded hospitals and made several regions, including Moscow, order tougher lockdowns. The crisis hasn’t significantly boosted demand for vaccines, despite widespread availability of a locally-developed Covid-19 inoculation that has been shown to be effective against the virus. Just 47% of Russians have immunity from a vaccine or recovering from the illness, according to data from the government’s coronavirus task force. “We are particularly worried about the growing death rates from Covid-19,” Deputy Prime Minister Tatyana Golikova told Putin at a government meeting last week. “We are seeing a gradual increase in the vaccination rates, but it is still insufficient.”
The increasing sense of alarm among officials has not reached the masses. Many Russians continue to flout mask mandates, and Golikova said Friday she was particularly concerned about people traveling to other regions for vacations during the non-working days, according to Tass. Raksha, the demographer, said he expects there will be nearly 100,000 excess deaths in October and that fatalities during the current wave will peak in November. “The non-working days may slightly speed up the decline,” Raksha said. “The saddest thing is that they were announced about a month and a half too late.” Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO) Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned that a new virus may emerge "at some point" that cannot be contained and appealed for strengthening the WHO. "It’s a biological certainty that at some point, another virus will emerge that we simply can’t contain," Ghebreyesus said during a meeting of the G20 health and finance ministers.
The WHO chief further urged the international community to learn from the current pandemic in order to prepare for the next one. For that, according to Ghebreyesus, the world needs a "strengthened, empowered and sustainably financed WHO," a new financial mechanism to ensure rapid response to pandemics and better governance. To this end, he urged the countries to support the establishment of a Health Threats Financing Board and the signing of a legally-binding international agreement on pandemic preparedness and response. Iran's Foreign Ministry has slammed the US over new sanctions targeting Tehran's drone industry, saying the restrictions contradict Washington's claims about seeking to return to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear deal. "The imposition of new sanctions reflects the completely contradictory behaviour of the White House, [which] speaks of its intention to return to the nuclear accord and continues to impose sanctions," Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said, speaking to local media on Friday. Earlier in the day, the US Treasury imposed new sanctions on Iran's drone programme, accusing the Islamic Republic of supplying its unmanned aerial vehicles to fighters in Yemen, insurgents in the Palestinian territories, Iraq, Lebanon's Hezbollah and Ethiopia. The Treasury further claimed that Tehran
was using its drones to attack US forces and international shipping lanes in the Persian Gulf. The new restrictions are the latest in over 1,000 sanctions issued by Washington against Iran in recent years, and come ahead of efforts by both countries to return to the JCPOA talks in Vienna. On Wednesday, top Iranian nuclear negotiator Ali Baqeri-Kani announced that Tehran would rejoin the Vienna talks before the end of November, with an exact date expected to be announced later in the coming week.
Myanmar troops have shelled a restive western town, destroying dozens of houses amid an ongoing crackdown against towns resisting the military coup. A Thantlang resident who had fled the town following earlier clashes told the AFP news agency that the shelling began after members of the local forces captured a soldier “Soon after it happened, heavy artilleries were fired,” he said, adding he had heard between 80 and 100 houses had been destroyed. Save the Children said in a statement that “at least 100 buildings are thought to have been destroyed so far by the fire … which reportedly broke out at around 11:00 am following the use of heavy weapons”.
The Southeast Asian country has been in chaos since a coup in February, with more than 1,200 people killed in a crackdown on dissent, according to a local monitoring group. Self-defence forces have sprung up to take on the military, escalating attacks and bloody reprisals. UN Special Rapporteur on Myanmar Tom Andrews said he had received information that tens of thousands of troops and heavy weapons were being moved into restive regions in the north and northwest. The Chinese government says it has instructed four TV stations to make improvements to their programming, which it says has been too focused on entertainment. China's National Radio and Television Administration said Friday the directive went to broadcasters in Shanghai, Hunan Province and other places. The instruction says the networks have promoted entertainment personalities too much, which has fueled excessive behavior by fans. It reportedly urges the broadcasters to review the content of their programming and do more to spread socialist values.
In September, the Chinese government ordered TV stations to shun celebrities who were deemed to show a lack of commitment to the country and Communist Party. It said the order was aimed at eliminating vulgar programs and cultivating a patriotic atmosphere. Observers say the government appears to be intensifying its control over the showbiz industry with the aim of increasing public support for Communist Party values. NHK has learned that Komuro Kei, the husband of Japan's former Princess Mako, has failed the New York state bar exam and intends to try again. NHK interviewed lawyer Okuno Yoshihiko, who heads a law firm in Japan where Komuro once worked.
Okuno says he spoke with Komuro by phone on Saturday morning who informed him that he had failed to pass the bar exam. The lawyer says Komuro told him that he will continue studying and will rewrite the exam in February. Komuro has been working as a law clerk in New York state since September, after graduating from a law school there. Komuro and Mako were married on Tuesday. The couple are currently in Tokyo, but plan to leave for the United States once Mako completes preparations including obtaining a passport and visa.
A Japanese start-up is hoping it can harness energy from typhoons and tropical storms to generate power, and is testing the concept in the country's southwestern Okinawa prefecture and the Philippines. Ilan Rubens reports. Japanese start-up Challenergy has designed a turbine that works in harsh cyclonic conditions – an environment that typically shuts down most wind installations. Atsushi Shimizu founded Challenergy three years after the 2011 Fukushima nuclear accident sent him on a quest to find a sustainable source of energy. "If we can just partially leverage the vast energy brought by typhoons, we can in a way consider typhoons not just as disasters, but as a source of energy." Shimizu says the trick is to build vertical wind turbines, that can withstand strong winds and rains. "The vertical axis makes it possible to not be affected by wind direction. By using the Magnus system instead of a propeller, the system can be controlled
safely to a certain extent even in strong winds without going out of control, and also generate electricity. That is the basic concept of the vertical Magnus wind turbine." It's also aiming to incorporate solar power generation and storage batteries to provide more stable supplies of electricity in the area in the future. Tourists keen to help La Palma on Friday (October 29) enjoyed watching the spectacular sight of La Palma's volcano "Cumbre Vieja" spewing red-hot lava and smoke for the sixth week. Dozens of tourists gathered at Tajuya viewpoint as well as Tazacorte port to observe this natural phenomenon that has been going on for more than 40 days.
"People are suffering a lot because of it but this doesn't stop it from being a spectacle," said one tourist from Gran Canaria island, Mari Carmen Herrera. Canary Islands Volcanic Emergency Plan (Pevolca) called on the islands population on Friday to collaborate with security and emergency teams to guarantee road safety following the expected increase in visitors to La Palma for the All Saints' Day holiday weekend. Lava from the volcano has covered nearly 900 hectares (2,223 acres) of land, destroying 2,000 buildings and many banana plantations since the eruption started on September 19 More than 7,000 people have had to evacuate their homes. These are FBNC's morning International news Thanks for watching See you in the next FBNC's morning International news
2021-11-02