Author: Darrell Anderson

The Philippines said it carried out a resupply and rotation mission to troops on a South China Sea reef on Saturday without “untoward incidents”, more than a month after a violent clash with Chinese forces in the area. It said the mission to Second Thomas Shoal was the first since Manila and Beijing reached a “provisional arrangement” earlier this month for the delivery of daily necessities and rotation missions for Filipino troops based on a rusty warship grounded atop the reef. The shoal has been a focus of clashes between Chinese and Philippine ships in recent months as Beijing steps…

Kiev (15/5 – 60). Spokesperson for the Ukrainian Armed Forces did not comment of the formation of new tank brigades. The new brigades are equipped with Leopard 2 and Bradley personnel carriers. The exact strength is not disclosed but it will be envisioned the new brigades are deploying the various hotspot. Well informed sources within the ministry of defense did not comment on the deployment. “We want to avoid speculation”, said a Colonel of the HUR (the military intelligence department). In the NATO context, the Ukrainian army is a considerable force. Wedged in between the United States, Poland, Turkey (or…

ISTANBUL Türkiye on Saturday expressed concern over “escalation of fighting in Myanmar,” where the military seized power in 2021. “We have been following with great concern the escalation of fighting and the increasing civilian loss of life in Myanmar in recent months,” a Turkish Foreign Ministry statement said. “We are deeply troubled by the reports of atrocities against civilians in Rakhine State, particularly Rohingya Muslims, and the violations that have resulted in the forced displacement of tens of thousands of people.” Escalating violence in the conflict-torn country’s Rakhine State has forced another 45,000 minority Rohingya to flee to an area…

Russia may respond to any U.S. confiscation of its currency reserves frozen in the West by seizing the assets, including property and cash, of U.S. citizens and investors in Russia, Dmitry Medvedev, a senior security official, said on Saturday. The U.S. House of Representatives has passed a bill allowing the Biden administration to confiscate Russian assets held in American banks and transfer them to Ukraine, something the Kremlin has said would be illegal and trigger retaliation. In response to Russia’s war in Ukraine, the United States and its allies prohibited transactions with Russia’s central bank and finance ministry and blocked about…

Berlin (29/2 – 30) Ukrainian officials are concerned that Russian advances could gain significant momentum by the summer unless their allies can increase the supply of ammunition, according to a person familiar with their analysis. Internal assessments of the situation on the battlefield from Kyiv are growing increasingly bleak as Ukrainian forces struggle to hold off Russian attacks while rationing the number of shells they can fire. Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi said Thursday that mistakes by frontline commanders had compounded the problems facing Ukraine’s defense around Avdiivka, which was captured by Russian forces this month. Syrskyi said he’d sent in more…

The Soviet Union’s collapse 32 years ago led to rapid change, economic collapse, and violence. In Tajikistan, that violence slid rapidly into civil war. Reflecting on the Soviet Union’s collapse 32 years ago and attempting to draw any sort of conclusion is often a matter of perspective. In his new book, “Moscow’s Heavy Shadow: The Violent Collapse of the USSR,” Dr. Isaac McKean Scarborough, an assistant professor of Russian and Eurasian Studies at Leiden University, writes of the collapse from one of the Soviet Union’s most distant peripheries — Dushanbe. In doing so, he highlights a perspective not often taken…

‘Voracious predators’ threaten honey production and pose risk to biodiversity, says Salvatore De Meo Italian MEPs are calling on the European Commission to crack down on Asian hornets, which are spreading across some EU countries and killing off bees. The yellow-legged hornets, native to south-east Asia, were first identified on the continent two decades ago, arriving in France before spreading to Spain, Belgium, Holland, Portugal and Italy, where after first appearing in 2012 they are causing havoc in the country’s northern regions. There was also a sharp rise in sightings of the invasive species in the UK last year. Bees are vital for…

An uptick in resistance attacks against regime targets has been reported in Myanmar’s commercial hub Yangon over the past week, despite an increase display of miliary hardware of troops by the junta, according to urban revolutionary groups and residents. The attacks are occurring after junta troops retook positions at schools in several Yangon townships following the launch of coordinated anti-regime offensives, including Operation 1027, which began in late October in upper Myanmar. Several urban resistance groups have pledged to increase attacks on regime targets in Yangon and have urged the city’s residents to steer clear of military targets. They have also asked…

A total of 121 people, mostly Malaysians suspected of being victims of job scams, were evacuated from Myanmar on Friday (Dec 1) after being stranded by fighting between the military and rebel groups in the country’s north, Malaysia’s foreign ministry said. The group, which included an Indonesian national, arrived at Kuala Lumpur International Airport at 3.24am local time through a specially arranged flight from Kunming, China, the ministry said in a statement. The evacuation mission was carried out through the Myanmar-China border starting on Thursday morning with the cooperation and approval of the countries involved, the ministry said. The mission…

A month of intense fighting between Myanmar’s ruling military and an alliance of ethnic minority insurgents has displaced tens of thousands of people in the border region, according to the United Nations, with concern growing in Beijing about instability and an influx of refugees. The rebellion has presented the biggest battlefield challenge to Myanmar’s well-equipped military since it seized power in a coup in 2021. Emboldened by the northern offensive, pro-democracy militias increase attacks on security forces elsewhere in the country. The “Three Brotherhood Alliance”, as the insurgents call themselves, said they had conquered several towns and the Kyin-San-Kyawt border gate, one of five major…