MANILA: The United States has laid out in clear terms the extent of its defense treaty commitments to the Philippines, issuing new guidelines that refer specifically to attacks in the South China Sea, including on its coast guard.
The six-page “bilateral defense guidelines” agreed in Washington on Wednesday follow a renewed push under President Ferdinand Marcos Jr to update the Mutual Defense Treaty with the former colonial ruler, at a time of increased tension and maritime confrontation with China.
The guidelines were a first since the treaty was signed in 1951 and follow scores of Philippine diplomatic protests in the past year over what it calls China’s “aggressive” actions and threats against its coast guard.
The guidelines said the bilateral treaty commitments would be invoked if either is attacked specifically in the South China Sea and also if coast guard vessels were the target.
It was also updated to include references to modern forms of warfare, including “grey zone tactics,” which China is accused of using to assert its claims to sovereignty. The guidelines did not mention China specifically.
“Recognizing that threats may arise in several domains – including land, sea, air, space, and cyberspace – and take the form of asymmetric, hybrid, and irregular warfare and grey-zone tactics, the guidelines chart a way forward to build interoperability in both conventional and non-conventional domains,” according to the Pentagon.
The South China Sea, a waterway vital to global trade, has become a major flashpoint in the increasingly testy relationship between China and the United States.
The guidelines send a “warning” to China against targeting the Philippine coast guard said Rommel Ong, former vice commander of the Philippine navy and a professor at the Ateneo School of Government.
Julio Amador, head of the Foundation for the National Interest, a Manila-based think-tank focusing on strategic and security issues, said of the security guidelines “It’s clear that it will give China some pause.”
China’s foreign ministry on Thursday said it opposed the use of bilateral defense treaties to interfere in the South China Sea, which “should not be a hunting ground for external forces.”
The guidelines were released during visit to Washington this week by Marcos, which included talks with counterpart Joe Biden.
Marcos also met Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, who told him “we will always have your back, in the South China Sea or elsewhere in the region.”
Ties with the United States have deepened under Marcos, who in February granted its military access to more of his country’s bases, prompting accusations from China that the deal was “stoking the fire” of regional tension.
US issues guidelines on defending Philippines from South China Sea attack
https://arab.news/2y9g4
US issues guidelines on defending Philippines from South China Sea attack
- The South China Sea, a waterway vital to global trade, has become a major flashpoint in the increasingly testy relationship between China and the US
Five killed, two missing in Vietnam typhoon floods
Typhoon Wutip made landfall in southern China on Saturday with winds gusting up to 128 kilometers per hour (80 miles per hour) and was downgraded to a tropical storm after swooping up the Gulf of Tonkin on Vietnam’s flank.
Vietnam’s agriculture ministry said on Saturday evening that three people had been killed in central Quang Tri province, with two more fatalities and two people missing in Quang Binh province.
More than 70,000 hectares (172,000 acres) of cropland were flooded, the ministry said.
Chinese authorities on the southern island of Hainan evacuated thousands of people, closed schools and halted rail services on Friday ahead of the storm’s landfall.
However, the Joint Typhoon Warning Center forecast on Saturday that the storm would “weaken to dissipation” by the end of the weekend.
Natural disasters are becoming more severe and more frequent as a result of climate change. They claimed 514 lives in Vietnam last year, three times more than in 2023, according to the agriculture ministry.
In September, northern Vietnam was devastated by Typhoon Yagi, which killed 345 people and caused an estimated economic loss of $3.3 billion.
Macron to visit Greenland to show European support for the strategic Arctic island coveted by Trump
- The French president mentioned Greenland last week in his opening speech at the UN Ocean Conference, saying it isn’t “up for grabs” in remarks that appeared directed largely at Trump
NUUK: French President Emmanuel Macron’s first trip to Greenland, the strategic Arctic island coveted by US President Donald Trump, is aimed at shoring up Europe’s political backing for Denmark and its semiautonomous territory.
Macron’s visit on Sunday comes just ahead a meeting of the Group of Seven leading industrialized nations next week in Canada that will be attended by both Macron and Trump.
The French president’s office said the trip to Greenland is a reminder that Paris supports principles of sovereignty, territorial integrity and the inviolability of borders as enshrined in the UN charter.
Macron is also to meet with Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen and Greenlandic Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen.
Macron mentioned Greenland last week in his opening speech at the UN Ocean Conference, saying it isn’t “up for grabs” in remarks that appeared directed largely at Trump.
“The deep seas are not for sale, nor is Greenland up for grabs, nor are the Arctic or the high seas for sale, nor are fishing licenses in developing countries up for grabs, nor are scientific data and the security of coastal populations to be sacrificed,″ Macron said at the summit in Nice, France.
Macron’s role in Europe
Macron in recent months has sought to reinvigorate France’s role as the diplomatic and economic heavyweight of the 27-nation European Union.
The French president has positioned himself as a leader in Europe amid Trump’s threats to pull support from Ukraine as it fights against Russia’s invasion. Macron hosted a summit in Paris with other European heads of state to discuss Kyiv, as well as security issues on the continent.
Sunday’s visit will also be the occasion to discuss how to further enhance relations between the EU and Greenland when it comes to economic development, low-carbon energy transition and critical minerals. The leaders will also have exchanges on efforts to curb global warming, according to Macron’s office.
A meeting between Macron, Frederiksen and Nielsen will take place on a Danish helicopter carrier, showing France’s concerns over security issues in the region, Macron’s office said.
Trump and Greenland
Last week, US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth appeared to acknowledge that the Pentagon has developed plans to take over Greenland and Panama by force if necessary but refused to answer repeated questions during a hotly combative congressional hearing Thursday about his use of Signal chats to discuss military operations.
Hegseth’s comments were the latest controversial remarks made by a member of the Trump administration about the Arctic island. The president himself has said he won’t rule out military force to take over Greenland, which he considers vital to American security in the high north.
The Wall Street Journal last month reported that several high-ranking officials under the US director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, had directed intelligence agency heads to learn more about Greenland’s independence movement and sentiment about US resource extraction there.
Nielsen in April said that US statements about the island have been disrespectful and that Greenland “will never, ever be a piece of property that can be bought by just anyone.”
Woman arrested over alleged links to Colombia presidential candidate shooting
- The alleged shooter, a 15-year-old boy, and an accomplice who was accused of participating in the “logistics” of the attack had already been arrested
BOGOTA: A woman arrested Saturday in southern Colombia was suspected of being involved in the attempted murder of presidential candidate Miguel Uribe, police said.
Uribe, a 39-year-old conservative senator, was shot twice in the head and once in the leg while giving a speech in a park on June 7 in western Bogota.
The alleged shooter, a 15-year-old boy, and an accomplice who was accused of participating in the “logistics” of the attack had already been arrested.
On Saturday, a police source informed AFP of a woman — suspected of having links to the attack — who was arrested in the Amazon region of Caqueta.
“In the next few hours, they will transfer her to Bogota,” the police source said, without providing further details.
The other two detainees, heavily guarded in a prosecutor’s bunker, are accused of homicide and carrying weapons.
The minor, identified as the alleged gunman, pleaded not guilty to the charges on Tuesday.
According to a report Saturday in Colombian magazine Semana, he said he was offered 20 million pesos (more than $4,800) to kill the politician.
The newspaper El Tiempo also reported that one of the accused named a criminal who lives in Ecuador and controls a drug dealing area in Bogota as the alleged mastermind.
Uribe remained hospitalized in intensive care, though he showed some signs of improvement this past week, doctors said Wednesday.
President Gustavo Petro said the senator’s improving health “cannot be explained by science.”
“He should be dead... and what’s happening is that he’s recovering,” Petro said Saturday.
Uribe’s party, the opposition Democratic Center, temporarily suspended its campaign events for the 2026 presidential elections on Friday.
Uribe has been a strong critic of Petro, Colombia’s first left-wing president, who sought in vain to make peace with the country’s various remaining armed groups.
Guinea’s military junta sets up up election body for December vote
- Guinea is one of several West African countries where the military has taken power and delayed a return to civilian rule
DAKAR, Senegal: Guinea’s military junta has created a new institution that will be responsible for managing elections, including a constitutional referendum in September and the general and presidential elections set for December.
Guinea is one of several West African countries where the military has taken power and delayed a return to civilian rule. Gen. Mamadi Doumbouya, in power since 2021, agreed in 2022 to launch a democratic transition after a Dec. 31, 2024, deadline.
The ruling junta’s failure to meet the deadline led to opposition protests that paralyzed Guinea’s capital Conakry in January.
The Directorate General of Elections, or DGE, will be responsible, among other duties, for organizing elections, managing the electoral register and ensuring electoral fairness, junta leader Doumbouya announced in a decree read on state television late Saturday.
The two heads of the institution will be appointed by presidential decree, he added. The DGE will also represent Guinea in sub-regional, regional, and international electoral bodies.
Last month, Prime Minister Amadou Oury Bah said the general and presidential elections will take place in December 2025. He also confirmed the organization of a referendum to adopt a new constitution on Sept. 21, as announced by the junta in April.
There are concerns about the credibility of the elections. The military regime dissolved more than 50 political parties last year in a move it claimed was to “clean up the political chessboard.”
It has also tightened the grip on independent media, rights groups say, with social networks and private radio stations often cut off and information sites interrupted or suspended for several months without explanation, while journalists face attacks and arrests.
‘This is a culture’: TikTok murder highlights Pakistan’s unease with women online
- Sana Yousaf was shot dead outside her house in the capital Islamabad by a man whose advances she had repeatedly rejected
- Violence against women is pervasive in Pakistan, according to the country’s Human Rights Commission
ISLAMABAD: Since seeing thousands of comments justifying the recent murder of a teenage TikTok star in Pakistan, Sunaina Bukhari is considering abandoning her 88,000 followers.
“In my family, it wasn’t an accepted profession at all, but I’d managed to convince them, and even ended up setting up my own business,” she said.
Then last week, Sana Yousaf was shot dead outside her house in the capital Islamabad by a man whose advances she had repeatedly rejected, police said.
News of the murder led to an outpouring of comments under her final post — her 17th birthday celebration where she blew out the candles on a cake.
In between condolence messages, some blamed her for her own death: “You reap what you sow” or “it’s deserved, she was tarnishing Islam.”
Yousaf had racked up more than a million followers on social media, where she shared her favorite cafes, skincare products and traditional shalwar kameez outfits.
TikTok is wildly popular in Pakistan, in part because of its accessibility to a population with low literacy levels. On it, women have found both audience and income, rare in a country where fewer than a quarter of the women participate in the formal economy.
But as TikTok’s views have surged, so have efforts to police the platform.
Pakistani telecommunications authorities have repeatedly blocked or threatened to block the app over what it calls “immoral behavior,” amid backlash against LGBTQ and sexual content.
TikTok has pledged to better moderate content and blocked millions of videos that do not meet its community guidelines as well as at the request of Pakistan authorities.
After Yousaf’s murder, Bukhari, 28, said her family no longer backs her involvement in the industry.
“I’m the first influencer in my family, and maybe the last,” she said.
Only 30 percent of women in Pakistan own a smartphone compared to twice as many men (58 percent), the largest gap in the world, according to the Mobile Gender Gap Report of 2025.
“Friends and family often discourage them from using social media for fear of being judged,” said a statement from the Digital Rights Foundation (DRF).
In southwestern Balochistan, where tribal law governs many rural areas, a man confessed to orchestrating the murder of his 14-year-old daughter earlier this year over TikTok videos that he said compromised her honor.
In October, police in Karachi, in the south, announced the arrest of a man who had killed four women relatives over “indecent” TikTok videos.
These murders each revive memories of Qandeel Baloch, dubbed Pakistan’s Kim Kardashian and one of the country’s first breakout social media stars whose videos shot her to fame.
After years in the spotlight, she was suffocated by her brother.
Violence against women is pervasive in Pakistan, according to the country’s Human Rights Commission, and cases of women being attacked after rejecting men are not uncommon.
“This isn’t one crazy man, this is a culture,” said Kanwal Ahmed, who leads a closed Facebook group of 300,000 women to share advice.
“Every woman in Pakistan knows this fear. Whether she’s on TikTok or has a private Instagram with 50 followers, men show up. In her DMs. In her comments. On her street,” she wrote in a post.
In the fifth-most-populous country in the world, where 60 percent of the population is under the age of 30, the director of digital rights organization Bolo Bhi, Usama Khilji, says “many women don’t post their profile picture, but a flower, an object, very rarely their face.”
“The misogyny and the patriarchy that is prevalent in this society is reflected on the online spaces,” he added.
A 22-year-old man was arrested over Yousaf’s murder and is due to appear in court next week.
At a vigil in the capital last week, around 80 men and women gathered, holding placards that read “no means no.”
“Social media has given us a voice, but the opposing voices are louder,” said Hira, a young woman who joined the gathering.
The capital’s police chief, Syed Ali Nasir Rizvi, used a press conference to send a “clear message” to the public.
“If our sisters or daughters want to become influencers, professionally or as amateurs, we must encourage them,” he said.
