Category: Foreign

Agency Reporter

THE amphibious assault ship USS Bataan transited the Strait of Hormuz into the Persian Gulf on Wednesday, becoming the first U.S. Navy “big deck” to enter these strategic waters in 2020.

“Our passage through this important strait and continued presence in the area plays a critical role in maintaining the freedom of navigation key to regional security and stability here,” said Capt. Lance Lesher, the group’s commodore in a statement.

Bataan and its amphibious readiness group comprises 2,500 Marines from the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit, the transport dock ship USS New York and the dock landing ship USS Oak Hill, the statement said.

Also traveling with the group is the destroyer USS Carney and cargo ship USNS McLean.

The last big deck to transit the strait before the Bataan was the aircraft carrier USS Lincoln, which departed last November during its record-breaking 10-month deployment.

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The 96-mile-long Strait of Hormuz is bounded to the north by Iran and to the south by Oman and the United Arab Emirates. Around a fifth of the world’s oil passes through the strategic shipping route, which is only 21 miles wide at its narrowest point.

Bataan’s passage through the strait was to “reassure allies” and ensure “stability and security essential to maritime commerce,” skipper Capt. Greg LeLand said.

“Our continued commitment to our partner nations lends to the strength of nations here in the Gulf and elsewhere in the region,” LeLand said.

The transit comes after a month of tension in the region following the January killing by the U.S. of Iranian general Qassem Soleimani and retaliatory rocket attacks on an airbase in Iraq that left more than 100 U.S. service members with traumatic brain injuries.

Agency Reporter

UNITED Kingdom Prime Minister Boris Johnson forced the resignation of his finance minister yesterday for refusing to toe the line.

The move, according to reports, is a sign the prime minister was tightening his control in a government reshuffle designed to deliver his vision for Britain beyond Brexit.

Johnson, who had wanted to minimise any disruption from his long-planned cabinet revamp, quickly replaced Sajid Javid with his deputy Rishi Sunak, a loyal supporter of the prime minister who is often put before the media to sell government policy.

Johnson’s team had carefully choreographed the reshuffle, presenting it as an opportunity to foster new talent, particularly among women, while also rewarding loyalists.

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But the finance minister’s resignation – which some commentators said might have been sought by Johnson’s team all along – added to a sense that the prime minister would brook no dissent.

“He has turned down the job of Chancellor of the Exchequer (finance minister),” a source close to Javid said.

The source said Johnson had told Javid he would have to sack his advisers and replace them with advisers from the prime minister’s Downing Street office. “The Chancellor said no self-respecting minister would accept those terms.”

Sunak, a former Goldman Sachs banker who is married to the daughter of an Indian billionaire, is seen by many Conservatives as a safe pair of hands who will easily get on board with Johnson’s agenda for a post-Brexit Britain.

pline for Johnson’s predecessor, Theresa May, was the first minister to lose his job in the reshuffle. He was joined by business minister Andrea Leadsom and environment minister Theresa Villiers.

The United Nations human rights office has issued a report on companies it said have business ties to Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

The report has, however, drawn irk from Israel, but winning praise from Palestinians.

It said it had identified 112 business entities, which it has reasonable grounds to conclude have ties with Israeli settlements, 94 domiciled in Israel and 18 in six other countries including the U.S., Britain and France.

But, inclusion on the list has no immediate legal implications for the companies.

Though, Palestinians and much of the world view the settlements as illegal under international law, the U.S. and Israel dispute this.

Report said the issue is highly sensitive as companies named could be targeted for boycotts or divestment aimed at stepping up pressure on Israel over its West Bank settlements.

“I am conscious this issue has been, and will continue to be, highly contentious,” UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet said in a statement.

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Bachelet’s office said the report does not provide a legal characterisation of the activities in question, or of business enterprises’ involvement in them.

Her spokesman, Rupert Colville, said in videotaped remarks made available to newsmen that work on the report involved extensive cross-checking and use of company annual reports.

He said it was “not a blacklist, or does it qualify any companies’ activities as illegal”.

There was no immediate reaction by the U.S., Israel’s main ally, but Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz called the report a “shameful capitulation” to anti-Israel groups.

The European Union (EU) has approved a tough opening position for talks with the United Kingdom (UK) on its future relationship with the bloc.

MEPs called on the UK to follow EU policies in a host of areas as the price for an ambitious free trade deal.

These range from chemicals regulation to climate change, food labelling and subsidies for companies.

This should be with “a view to dynamic alignment” – code for the UK adopting European rules as they are introduced.

The wide-ranging resolution also called for measures to ensure that Brexit does not cause gender discrimination, for a crackdown on tax havens with links to the UK, and for a joint UK-EU position at the upcoming UN climate conference in Glasgow in November.

It’s an attempt to influence the detailed instructions for the EU’s chief negotiator Michel Barnier – “the mandate” – currently being discussed by the European Commission and the governments of the EU’s 27 member states.

It’s also the latest example of the mandate being toughened up as it passes from institution to institution in the EU.

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When Barnier published a first draft in early February, there was no mention of alignment and definitely not the automatic kind.

Then a new version emerged that had been tweaked by diplomats from national governments.

It had extra references to the need for a level playing field – commitments by the UK to fair economic competition to prevent European businesses being undercut by their British rivals. And those commitments would have to evolve over time.

A MAN was reportedly killed in a rare confrontation in north-eastern Syria between U.S.-led coalition forces and pro-government militia fighters.

Syria’s state news agency, Sana, said a civilian died when U.S. troops fired at a crowd stopping them passing through a checkpoint east of Qamishli city.

A monitoring group said it was not clear if the dead man was armed or not.

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The coalition said a patrol came under fire from “unknown individuals” and returned fire in self-defence.

About 500 US troops are in north-eastern Syria to assist the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) alliance in the fight against the Islamic State (IS) group.

POPE Francis has dismissed a proposal to allow some married men to be ordained in remote areas, reaffirming the Roman Catholic Church’s centuries-old commitment to celibacy among priests.

The decision, one of the most significant of his papacy, appeared a victory for conservative senior clergy, who had feared a slippery slope towards a married priesthood throughout the church, if the recommendation was approved.

It was put forward by Latin American bishops as a means of easing an acute shortage of priests in the Amazon region, and passed by 128 votes to 41 at a contentious Vatican assembly, or synod, of Roman Catholic bishops.

Three months after that vote, Francis delivered his response, ignoring the proposal altogether in an Apostolic Exhortation, a mechanism used to instruct and encourage the Catholic faithful but not to define Church doctrine.

Cardinal Gerhard Mueller, the Vatican’s former chief doctrinal official and a leading conservative critic of the pope, called it “a document of reconciliation”.

He and others had branded as heretical synod documents that included the proposal, which sought to allow older married deacons who are proven leaders of remote Catholic communities and have stable families to be ordained as priests.

The issue of married priests has been a focus of deep divisions within the Church, and Vatican sources say it is now likely to languish for the rest of Francis’s papacy.

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That marks a setback for the progressives who have welcomed his reformist stance on some social issues, such as being more welcoming to divorced Catholics and homosexuals and – with caveats – his willingness to confront a legacy of sexual abuse within the Church.

In what some viewed as a strategically timed appeal to Francis not to approve the Amazon proposal, a book published last month by Church conservatives defended the tradition of priestly celibacy.

“From the Depths of Our Hearts” was co-authored by Cardinal Robert Sarah and former Pope Benedict, though Francis’ predecessor subsequently disassociated himself from the project.

Vatican officials said the pope completed the Exhortation on Dec. 27, before the book controversy, and handed it in for translations. They said no changes were made after that.

CHINA on Wednesday reported its lowest number of new coronavirus cases in two weeks, bolstering a forecast by Beijing’s senior medical adviser for the outbreak in the country to end by April – but fears of further international spread remained.

The 2,015 new confirmed cases took China’s total to 44,653. That was the lowest daily rise since Jan. 30 and came a day after epidemiologist Zhong Nanshan said the prevalent should peak in China this month before subsiding.

His comments gave some balm to public fears and to markets, where global stocks surged to record highs on hopes of an end to disruption in the world’s second largest economy.

But the World Health Organisation (WHO) has likened the epidemic’s threat to terrorism and one expert said while it may be peaking in China, this was not the case beyond.

“It has spread to other places where it’s the beginning of the outbreak,” Dale Fisher, head of the Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network coordinated by the WHO, said in an interview in Singapore. “In Singapore, we are at the beginning.”

Singapore has 50 cases, including one found at its biggest bank, DBS, yesterday that caused an evacuation at head office.

Hundreds of infections have been reported in dozens of other countries and territories, but only two people have died outside mainland China: one in Hong Kong and another in the Philippines.

China’s latest figures also showed that the number of deaths on the mainland rose by 97 to 1,113 by the end of Tuesday.

But doubts have been aired on social media about how reliable the data is, after the government last week amended guidelines on classification.

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The biggest cluster outside China is on a cruise ship quarantined off Japan’s Yokohama port, with about 3,700 people on board, of whom 175 have tested positive.

There was a happy ending in sight for another cruise ship, the MS Westerdam, which Thailand, Japan, Taiwan, Guam and the Philippines had refused to let dock over fears one of its 1,455 passengers and 802 crew may have the virus.

Cambodia finally agreed to let it land, the Holland America Line said. Passengers have been whiling away time playing chess and doing puzzles.

“The staff has tried to bolster spirits but you can only play so many games of trivia,” American passenger Angela Jones told Reuters in a video. “I’ve asked others who say they are napping a lot.”

China’s state news agency Xinhua called the epidemic a “battle that has no gunpowder smoke” and chided some officials for “dropping the ball” in some places.

There was no lack of zeal, however, in the city of Chongqing where prosecutors brought charges against a man who strapped on firecrackers, doused himself with gasoline and held up a lighter to defy a ban on public gatherings.

He had planned a birthday banquet, Xinhua said.

The disease caused by the virus has been named COVID-19 – CO for corona, VI for virus, D for disease and 19 for the year that it emerged. The virus itself, designated SARS-CoV-2, is suspected to have originated in a market illegally trading wildlife in Hubei province’s capital of Wuhan in December.

The city of 11 million people remains under virtual lockdown as part of China’s unprecedented measures to seal infected regions and limit transmission routes.

Moves by Washington and others to curb visitors from China have offended Beijing, which says they are an over-reaction.