Vietnam to chair virtual 53rd ASEAN foreign ministers' meeting

Vietnam to chair virtual 53rd ASEAN foreign ministers' meeting

The 53rd Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Foreign Ministers' Meeting and related meetings will take place from Wednesday to Saturday via video conference under the chair of Vietnamese Minister of Foreign Affairs Pham Binh Minh, a Vietnamese official said Monday.

Some 20 meetings will be organized within the framework of the event, including the China-ASEAN foreign ministers' meeting, the 21st ASEAN Plus Three Foreign Ministers' Meeting, and the 27th ASEAN Regional Forum, Vietnamese Deputy Foreign Minister Nguyen Quoc Dung said at a press briefing, adding that about 40 documents are expected to be noted, issued and adopted.

Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc is scheduled to attend and deliver remarks at the opening ceremony of the event on Wednesday, Dung said.

The meetings are expected to discuss issues including ASEAN cooperation and community building, in a particular implementation of priorities and initiatives for 2020, COVID-19 response cooperation, review of and future directions for the ASEAN's external relations, as well as regional and global issues of mutual concerns, said Dung.

A draft statement on economic and financial measures responding to emergency situations in the coming time will also be submitted to the ASEAN Plus Three foreign ministers, he said.

Founded in 1967, the ASEAN groups Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam. Vietnam is the ASEAN chair for 2020.

China says Indian troops fired warning shots in border dispute

China says Indian troops fired warning shots in a border dispute

China has said Indian troops violated a bilateral agreement and fired warning shots in the air during a confrontation with Chinese personnel on the disputed border on Monday, amid renewed tensions between the two countries.

Chinese border guards took “countermeasures” to stabilize the situation, Zhang Shuili, spokesman for the military’s western command theatre, said in a statement published by the military’s official news website early on Tuesday.

The statement did not make clear what those measures were or whether Chinese troops also fired warning shots.

Both sides have observed a long-held protocol to avoid using firearms on the sensitive, high altitude frontier running through the western Himalayas, though this agreement has not prevented casualties.

Twenty Indian soldiers were killed in hand-to-hand fighting in a clash in June, an incident that led to China and India deploying additional forces along the frontier.

“We request the Indian side to immediately stop dangerous actions...and strictly investigate and punish personnel who fired shots to ensure that similar incidents do not occur again,” Zhang said in the statement.

The Indian embassy in Beijing did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment outside of business hours.

The latest incident comes after India and China on Saturday agreed to work towards reducing tensions along their contested border, following a meeting of the defense ministers of the nuclear-armed Asian giants.

Both sides deployed additional forces along the frontier running through the western Himalayas after a clash in June. Both countries had agreed that “neither side should take any further action that could either complicate the situation or escalate matters in the border areas,” India’s defense ministry said in a statement.

China called on India to strengthen control of its frontline forces, refrain from provocative actions and “refrain from deliberately hyping and disseminating negative information”.

At least 11 dead in massacres in Colombia

At least 11 dead in massacres in Colombia

At least 11 people were killed in three separate group killings in Colombia, police said Monday, one of the deadliest days since FARC guerrillas signed a peace accord with the government in 2016.

The massacres -- homicides of three or more people in the same event -- took place in the past three days in the regions of Antioquia in the northwest, Bolivar in the north, and Cesar in the northeast of the country.

In a slaying Monday in Antioquia, five people were killed "presumably by an armed group" in the town of Zaragoza, Colonel Ever Gomez, the head of the region's police force, told reporters.

Also Monday, three men died in an attack in the area of Samiti, a town in the region of Bolivar. The victims had not immediately been identified, a police spokesperson told AFP. 

Police also reported that an attack occurred in the town of Aguachica, in the Cesar region. A Venezuelan couple was killed and a third victim died as a result of injuries sustained in the same incident. 

Experts warn that Colombia is undergoing a new cycle of violence that has been marked by an uptick in massacres just as the country hoped to have turned the page on the worst violence of the past when left-wing FARC guerillas agreed to lay down arms in 2016 after decades of conflict.

Between January 1 and August 17, the United Nations recorded 33 such group killings in different regions of the country, compared to 36 in 2019, 29 in 2018, and 11 in 2017.

Since then, the authorities have recorded an additional 12 massacres. 

The government blames these acts of violence on armed groups that finance their operations through narco-trafficking. 

While the accord with the FARC -- which was the main guerilla group operating in the country -- reduced political violence, Colombia has lived for almost six decades with a conflict that has pitted state law enforcement agencies against guerillas, paramilitaries, and narcotraffickers. 

Wildfires rage in California, stoked by extreme heat in US West

Wildfires rage in California, stoked by extreme heat in US West

Three large wildfires burned in California and a fourth was growing quickly on Monday as a weekend heatwave lingered across large swaths of the western United States.

The Creek Fire, which has engulfed the Fresno area in central California and caused the emergency evacuation over the weekend of more than 200 people vacationing at a popular reservoir, was still not contained as of Monday afternoon, fire officials said.

The blaze, growing under “extreme weather conditions,” had devoured nearly 79,000 acres (32,000 hectares) of land, while a cause remained under investigation, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CalFire) said in a statement.

Officials in Madera County issued evacuation orders and urged the county’s 157,000 residents to leave if they felt unsafe.

A hiker who had just embarked on a multi-day trip when the Creek Fire broke out and had to find a way out of the blaze shared the harrowing experience on social media.

"We're safe and we're out, but wow, we hiked our way out of the #CreekFire yesterday," Asha Karim posted on Twitter.

The Oak Fire in Mendocino County started burning around 1:26 pm on Monday afternoon, according to CalFire, and three hours later it had already torched 1,000 acres (400 hectares) and destroyed one structure.

Videos on social media showed the fire consuming pick-up trucks as they spread along Highway 101 near Willits, California.

“If you’re trying to get out of an evacuation area please call 911 for help. Don’t delay!” the Mendocino Sheriff’s Office wrote on Twitter.

San Francisco-based power provider PG&E said late on Monday that it began turning off power in “high fire-threat” areas. The outages will impact 172,000 customers in 22 counties, mostly in the Sierra Foothills, PG&E said, adding the shutoff was a safety measure due to the extreme high and dry winds.

The California Independent Systems Operator, which runs most of the state’s power grid, again urged consumers to cut back on energy consumption and said it was monitoring wildfires throughout the state threatening power lines.

In Southern California, east of San Diego, more than 400 firefighters battled the Valley Fire, which burned more than 17,000 acres (6,900 hectares)in Cleveland National Forest. Video shared on social media showed firefighters dousing the flames, the air thick with ash and fire embers.

The blaze was 3% contained on Monday evening. Officials announced the deployment of military aircraft on Monday afternoon to help fight the flames.

A fire in San Bernardino County, southeast of Los Angeles, that officials said was caused by a pyrotechnic device used during a gender reveal party, kept burning through the night and was 7% contained as of Monday morning.

On Sunday, California Governor Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency in Fresno, Madera, Mariposa, San Bernardino, and San Diego counties due to the wildfires, which also prompted the U.S. Forest Service to temporarily close some national forests including the Sierra National Forest, the Angeles National Forest and the San Bernardino National Forest.

Trump calls Biden 'stupid,' demands apology for challenging him on vaccines

Trump calls Biden 'stupid,' demands apology for challenging him on vaccines

Republican President Donald Trump, accused by Joe Biden of putting lives at risk in his handling of the coronavirus, on Monday called his Democratic rival “stupid” and demanded an apology for what Trump called anti-vaccine rhetoric.

Trailing in national opinion polls as the U.S. death toll from the virus approaches 190,000, Trump unleashed a broad attack against both the former vice president, his opponent in the Nov. 3 election, and Biden’s running mate, U.S. Senator Kamala Harris.

Trump has said that a vaccine against the virus would be ready in record time, perhaps before the election, raising questions about whether political pressure might result in the deployment of a vaccine before it is safe.

Harris had said she would not trust Trump with a vaccine before the election and Biden, critical of Trump’s response to the virus, has urged Americans to heed the scientists. Critics accuse Trump of undermining scientists during the pandemic.

Speaking in front of the White House at a U.S. Labor Day news conference, Trump said: “Biden and his very liberal running mate, the most liberal person in Congress by the way - is not a competent person in my opinion, would destroy this country and would destroy this economy - should immediately apologize for the reckless anti-vaccine rhetoric that they are talking right now,” adding: “It undermines science.”

The president called Biden “stupid.”

Trump again dismissed a report in The Atlantic that he had referred to fallen U.S. soldiers as “suckers” and “losers” and highlighted a denial of the story by an aide to former White House chief of staff John Kelly, Zach Fuentes.

“The story is a hoax,” Trump said. “Who would say a thing like that? Only an animal would say a thing like that.”

In rambling remarks, the president also hailed the U.S. labor market’s recovery from the pandemic-fueled recession and suggested Biden would undo that progress.

Trump has sought to paint himself as best-placed to revive the economy, despite criticism that his initial dismissal of the virus threat led to both a health crisis as well as a recession.

Houthis say Saudi's Abha airport targeted with drones, disabled for hours

Houthis say Saudi's Abha airport targeted with drones, disabled for hours

A military spokesman for Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthis said that the group targeted Saudi Arabia’s Abha International Airport with a number of drones.

Yahya Sarea wrote on Twitter “the continuous attack of the drones on Abha International Airport led to disabling it for several hours”.

Over 200 U.N. Staff in Syria Infected With Covid-19 - Medics, U.N. Official

U.N. Staff in Syria Infected With Covid-19

More than 200 U.N. staff members have been infected by COVID-19 in Syria as the global body steps up its contingency plans to combat the fast spread of the pandemic in the country, medical workers, and U.N. officials said.

U.N. Resident Coordinator and Humanitarian Coordinator in Syria, Imran Riza, last Tuesday told U.N. heads of agencies in a letter to distribute to staff that the U.N. was in the final stages of securing a medical facility for treatment of cases.

“More than two hundred cases have been reported among U.N staff members, some of whom have been hospitalized and three who were medically evacuated,” the top U.N. official in Syria said in the letter, which was leaked to Reuters from an infected local staff member.

Humanitarian workers and medics said the real number of cases is considerably higher, including the hundreds of staff employed by NGO partners working for the dozen U.N. agencies that oversee the country’s largest humanitarian relief operations.

Riza said there had been a ten-fold spike in infections in Syria in the two months since he last briefed staff, referring to health ministry figures that say there have been 3,171 cases and 134 deaths since the first case was reported on March 23.

“The “epidemiological situation across the country has changed considerably,” Riza said.

Damascus-based medics and relief workers are skeptical of official figures, saying the authorities are covering up. The authorities deny that but admit testing is limited.

The United Nations has expressed concern about the spread of the coronavirus in a country where the health infrastructure has been shattered by war and medical supplies are limited.

Independent medics and relief workers say scores of doctors and medical workers have died in recent weeks.

Witnesses and cemetery officials say there had been a tripling of burials since July in a cemetery that lies south of the capital, where NGOs and medics say most cases are concentrated.

'Fire on all sides': California wildfires prompt evacuations

California wildfires prompt evacuations

More than 200 people were airlifted to safety overnight after a fast-moving wildfire cut off the only road out of the Mammoth Pool Reservoir, a popular recreational site in California’s Sierra National Forest.

Twenty evacuees were taken to hospitals, the Madera County Sheriff’s Department said on Twitter on Sunday, as the Creek Fire that started on Friday night rapidly grew to burn some 45,000 acres (18,210 hectares), forcing evacuations and road closures in the Fresno area in central California.

“We’re completely trapped. There’s fire on all sides, all around us,” said Jeremy Remington, as he stood on a beach surrounded by fire in the Mammoth Pool Reservoir in a video posted on Twitter. Remington was later airlifted to safety, local news reported.

The blaze was 0% contained on Sunday afternoon, while nearly 15,000 firefighters were battling some two dozen fires across the state, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CalFire).

Late on Sunday, California Governor Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency in the Fresno, Madera, Mariposa, San Bernardino, and San Diego counties due to the wildfires.

His office said that the declaration was prompted by the Creek Fire.

Eight people have been killed and some 3,300 structures have been destroyed over the past three weeks in wildfires across the state.

Three major fires, including the Creek Fire, were burning in Fresno, San Bernardino, and San Diego counties, CalFire said in a statement, adding it had increased staffing in preparation for “critical fire weather.”

The agency also said that the El Dorado Fire burning in San Bernardino County was caused by a smoke generating pyrotechnic device, used during “a gender reveal party”. The fire started on Saturday morning.

The San Diego County Sheriff’s Department issued a voluntary evacuation order on Sunday afternoon as the 5,350-square acre Valley Fire raged unchecked on the eastern edge of the metropolitan area of more than 3 million people.

“The sky is so thick by my house; the sky is a dirty brown cloud and I live about 25 minutes to the west of the fire,” Twitter user Cris Mel said in a post. “It’s kind of a struggle to breathe.”

A dangerous heat wave was baking swaths of the western United States through the weekend, and many locations in California registered record-high temperatures on Sunday.

The temperature reached 121 degrees F (49 C) on Sunday afternoon in Los Angeles County, a record for the National Weather Service office that covers the metropolitan area.

“This is a historic heatwave for southwestern CA and one that will be remembered for a long time,” the service said in a statement.

State officials on Sunday repeated calls to Californians to turn off appliances and lights to help avoid blackouts from an overwhelmed power grid.

Southern California Edison Co. (SCE), which services 5 million customer accounts in the region, was advising customers of potential rotating outages between 4 p.m. and 9 p.m. on Sunday.

Rotating outages in which utilities purposely cut power temporarily to avoid broader outages — are rare. The last occurred in the region in August. Before that, they had not occurred in 20 years, said SCE spokesmen Reggie Kumar.

Kabul to push for ceasefire in talks with Taliban: Afghan official

CeaseFire in talks with Taliban

Afghan government negotiators will push for a ceasefire when talks begin with the Taliban, a top official said Sunday, signaling that the two foes could parley for a long time.

A date for the opening round of talks to be hosted in Doha has not been set, but both sides indicated that negotiations could begin soon after they wrapped up a controversial and months-long prisoner exchange last week.

The Taliban’s seriousness about peace will be evident from the outset when Kabul’s negotiating team pushes for a permanent ceasefire, Vice President Amrullah Saleh said.

“The first test for the Taliban is (a) ceasefire,” Saleh told Tolo News, the country’s biggest private television network.

“If they accept the ceasefire, they are committed to peace. If not, they are not.”

Saleh said the Afghan delegation would go to Doha after all logistical issues are sorted.

“We will not go until everything is in place... like desks, our flag, and what to call each other,” he said.

“It is a war of symbols now and we are not going to give up on it. We have to be assured that we are respected. We will not give in to any pressure.”

Saleh said the start of the talks was delayed over opposition to the release of some militants.

“We had to reach an agreement with our allies about six blacklisted prisoners,” he said, referring to France and Australia.

Paris and Canberra objected because of their links to the murders of French and Australian civilians and troops in Afghanistan.

Saleh said it was agreed that these prisoners “will be sent to Qatar for a specific period.”

Did Indian intel just discredit Modi’s ‘no intrusion’ claim?

Indian Intel Just Discredit Modi's no Intrusion

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi claimed in June that “Nobody has intruded into our border, neither is anybody there now nor have our posts been captured”, which he made shortly after the deadly Galwan Incident with China earlier that month. That assertion, however, has just reportedly been discredited by none other than an Indian intelligence source according to a report earlier this week from The Hindu. They quoted the unnamed official as saying that “the scale of Chinese control of India’s perception of the LAC stood at about 900 sq km.”

It’s well known that most Indian media outlets are under some degree of government influence so it’s curious that a member of its “deep state” (permanent military, intelligence, and diplomatic bureaucracies) is contradicting the prime minister. That individual probably didn’t “go rogue” but likely received authorization from their superiors to “leak” this information to the press. This makes one wonder what this shadowy institution’s motivation might be to embarrass Modi in the manner that it did.

The most immediate hypothesis that comes to mind is that they want to exert pressure upon him to react more “muscularly” towards China. Incidents between the two along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) might therefore soon become the “new normal” in bilateral relations if this comes to pass. That would in turn advance the domestic and international interests that the author elaborated upon earlier this week in his analysis for CGTN about how there’s “More to India’s Latest Anti-China Provocation Than Just Territory”.

The second hypothesis that can be made about this curious report is that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) wants to rally support for such a policy that is already decided upon and isn’t being pressured by the “deep state” to implement against its will. This interpretation takes for granted that the government regards its targeted domestic audience as stupid for lack of a better description insofar as it assumes they’re largely incapable of remembering what Modi previously said. This, too, is also a plausible explanation.

Whichever of the two that it is, the intended effect is to agitate the masses by provoking their nationalist impulses in order to get them to support a more aggressive military policy towards China, albeit one that’s disguised as “defensive” under the pretext of “liberating occupied territory”. It’s not a coincidence that this report was released shortly after news of the latest LAC incident along the Pangong Lake began to circulate, suggesting that the mastermind of this “perception management” operation intended to connect the two.

The impression that one’s left with after reading the report in light of the latest incident is that India was reacting “defensively” despite Chinese claims to the contrary. An editorial in China’s Global Times pointed out that the word “preempt” which was included in India’s statement on the matter “shows it was the Indian troops that first took destructive actions, and the Indian troops initiated the standoff this time.” That’s a logical interpretation of what probably happened, though India is loath to admit it.

Acknowledging its military aggression against China might earn it some praise from America, which has officially been its “comprehensive global strategic partner” since Trump’s visit over half a year ago in February, but it would also bolster Beijing’s case that it’s a victim of India’s regional expansionism just like Pakistan, Nepal, and the Kashmiris are. New Delhi can’t afford to have such truths become widespread out of fear that it’ll rightly undermine the South Asian state’s soft power, hence why it’s claiming that China seized parts of the LAC first.

In other words, India’s attempting to gaslight the world by carrying out acts of military aggression against China under the cover of “defending its territorial integrity”. It hopes to earn more support for its new “muscular” policy of trying to “contain” the People’s Republic through these means than if it openly admitted what it’s up to. Nevertheless, China wields tremendous influence nowadays and is more than capable of exposing the truth about India’s regional expansionism, which will in turn strengthen Beijing’s standing in South Asia.