Wochit
China: U.S. 'militarizing' South China Sea

BEIJING (Reuters) - China's Defence Ministry on Thursday accused the United States of "militarizing" the South China Sea by staging patrols and joint military drills there, ramping up the rhetoric ahead of a key regional security meeting in Malaysia next week.

China has repeatedly urged Washington not to take sides in the escalating maritime dispute over the area, where the Asian giant last year stepped up its creation of artificial islands, alarming neighbors and provoking U.S. criticism.

Washington has demanded China halt land reclamation and militarization of the disputed area and pursue a peaceful resolution according to international law.

China has been angered by U.S. navy and air force forays through waters it claims as its own, especially this month, when U.S. Navy Admiral Scott Swift said he joined a routine surveillance flight.

The United States has also stepped up military contacts, including drills, with regional allies such as the Philippines, which also has claims in the South China Sea.

The United States was hyping up the "China threat" and attempting to sow discord between China and other claimant countries, Defence Ministry spokesman Yang Yujun told a news briefing.

View gallery

Chinese dredging vessels are purportedly seen in the waters around Fiery Cross Reef in the disputed …

"China is extremely concerned at the United States' pushing of the militarization of the South China Sea region," he said.

"What they are doing can't help but make people wonder whether they want nothing better than chaos."

For a long time, the United States had carried out frequent, widespread, close-in surveillance of China, by sending ships and aircraft to the region, he added.

"Recently they have further increased military alliances and their military presence, frequently holding joint drills."

But if certain U.S. officials wanted to take civilian flights over the South China Sea to "enjoy its beauty", China had no problem with that, he said.

China's own drills there were a normal part of its routine military exercises and not aimed at any third party, Yang said.

But he expressed concern at reports that Filipino fishermen had found buoys with Chinese markings near the disputed Scarborough Shoal and towed them back to shore northwest of Manila.

"If these reports are correct, then certain people have elbowed their way into somebody else's home, and taken others' possessions."

On Thursday, the head of Philippine military, General Hernando Iriberri, told journalists in Manila it was investigating reports China had reclaimed three more reefs in the South China Sea as well as activities in Scarborough Shoal.

The South China Sea is likely to feature prominently at next week's security meeting in Malaysia, attended by Southeast Asia and Chinese foreign ministers and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry.

Beijing claims most of the South China Sea, but Malaysia, the Philippines, Vietnam and others have overlapping claims.

(Reporting by Ben Blanchard in BEIJING and Manuel Mogato in MANILA; Editing by Clarence Fernandez and Nick Macfie)

China says U.S. 'militarizing' South China Sea

Escalating maritime dispute over artificial islands has led to U.S. surveillance and drills.
Next week's security meeting

JERUSALEM (AP) — Israeli bulldozers began demolishing a contested housing complex in a West Bank settlement on Wednesday as the prime minister's office announced the "immediate construction" of some 300 new units at another location in the same settlement and advanced plans for about 500 new units in east Jerusalem.

The move, which is likely to draw international rebuke, comes amid a standoff in the Beit El settlement, to the north of Jerusalem in the West Bank.

The standoff escalated sharply Wednesday, after the Israeli Supreme Court rejected a petition to overturn its initial ruling to demolish a complex in Beit El and ordered the destruction completed no later than Thursday. The complex was deemed illegal because it was under construction without prior Israeli authorization.

The military moved in and removed protesters holed up inside, but hundreds of Jewish settlers gathered at the scene and some fought with Israeli forces, who responded by firing water cannons at the protesters.

Tempers are high among some in the settler community as it marks a decade since Israel's "disengagement" from the Gaza Strip, when Israel in the summer of 2005 withdrew all its civilians and soldiers from all of the settlements there and also from two in the West Bank.

Israel initially promised to build the 300 housing units in Beit El three years ago, when it ordered the removal of other buildings constructed on private Palestinian land.

View gallery

An Israeli settler sleeps in the Jewish settlement of Beit El after a night stand off with police, n …

The new units announced by Benjamin Netanyahu's office are both in Beit El and elsewhere, including areas in east Jerusalem, which Israeli leaders say are inseparable neighborhoods of Jerusalem.

They say these neighborhoods will remain a part of Israel under any future peace agreement, but the Palestinians consider them settlements and say construction there is illegal, a position backed by the international community.

In Washington, the U.S. State Department said it was deeply concerned by the new settlement activity and urged "the Israeli government to refrain from unhelpful actions that undercut possibility of a two-state solution."

"The United States continues to view settlements as illegitimate and we strongly oppose steps to advance construction in the West Bank and East Jerusalem," Deputy Spokesperson Mark Toner said in a statement.

At the United Nations, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon condemned the announcement of the construction of the new units, "as well as the planning and construction of nearly 500 housing units in a number of settlements in East Jerusalem," his spokesman's office said. Ban urged Israel's government to halt and reverse such decisions "in the interest of peace and a just final status agreement."

View gallery

Israeli settlers sleep in the Jewish settlement of Beit El after a night stand off with police, near …

Israel captured the West Bank and east Jerusalem in 1967, and annexed east Jerusalem in a move that is not recognized internationally.

Israeli Education Minister Naftali Bennett, head of a pro-settler party, welcomed the announcement of the new units even as he criticized the top court's decision.

"The court's role is to judge; the government's role is to build," he said in a written statement. "We will build up the land of Israel, but in a legal and appropriate way."

But Lior Amichai of Israeli settlement watchdog Peace Now criticized the announcement, saying it was intended to "appease the settlers."

Also Wednesday, Israel's Shin Bet security agency and the Israeli police said they filed indictments against two young Israeli activists in connection with last month's arson attack of the Church of the Multiplication of the Loaves and Fish, a famous Catholic church near the Sea of Galilee. Three additional activists are under arrest in connection with the arson attack.

The Shin Bet and police said the activists were part of an extremist group of Israeli settler youth seeking to bring about religious "redemption." The group vandalized a number of Christian religious sites in the past two years, tried to disrupt Pope Benedict XVI's 2014 visit to the Holy Land, and in the past year committed "more significant terrorist attacks of arson" against Palestinian homes in the West Bank, according to the Shin Bet and Israeli police.

A month before the attack on the church, the head of the extremist group, Meir Ettinger, called on his blog for more attacks on Christian religious sites, Israeli authorities said. Israeli authorities have banned him from the West Bank settlements and from Jerusalem for a year.

___

Associated Press writer Cara Anna at the United Nations contributed to this report.

(Rex Shutterstock)

Trains will be disrupted, power will go out, satellite signals will go wonky - that’s what we have to look forward to when the sun next has a melt down, and we’re unlikely to get more than 12 hours warning.

In a new government document, the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills has laid out its Space Weather Preparedness Strategy, outlining the risks of unsettled space weather as well as what it plans to do about them.

The document explains that the worst case scenario is a ‘coronal mass ejection’ - huge eruptions on the sun which cause parts of its corona to detach. The corona is the pearly glow around the sun that you can only usually see during a total solar eclipse, made up of plasma and rarefied gases.

The worst case scenario is based on the Carrington event of 1859, which caused solar-flare related x-rays and radiation storms. In 2015, a similar event could cause the national grid to fail, satellite operations to shut down, increased radiation on flights and upset to electronic systems.

The report suggests that there are three things the country needs to do to prepare for such an event: improve alerts and warnings, update power and communication infrastructure with failsafe backups and have a plan in place to deal with the effects should they come to pass.

As for you: the advice from the government is to prepare yourself for a solar event just as you would for any other natural hazards like floods and storms.