MANILA: The Philippine government said Tuesday it has filed a diplomatic protest against Beijing after Chinese jets flew dangerously close and fired a volley of flares in the path of a Philippine air force patrol plane over a disputed shoal in the South China Sea.
The Chinese air force jets’ hostile actions against the Philippine military’s NC-212i light transport plane Thursday over the Scarborough Shoal was the first such aerial encounter since high-seas hostilities between Beijing and Manila in the busy seaway started to flare last year.
Philippine military chief Gen. Romeo Brawner Jr. did not report any injuries or damage but condemned the Chinese actions, which he said could have had tragic consequences.
“If the flares came into contact with our aircraft, these could have been blown into the propeller or the intake or burned our plane,” Brawner told reporters. “It was very dangerous.”
Department of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Teresita Daza said without elaborating that a diplomatic protest has been transmitted to China.
Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. said over the weekend that the actions by the Chinese air force jets were “unjustified, illegal and reckless.”
“We call on the government of the People’s Republic of China to cease all forms of provocative and hazardous acts that could undermine the safety of Filipino military and civilian personnel in the waters or in the skies, destabilize regional peace, and erode the trust and confidence of the international community in the PRC,” a Philippine government task force overseeing the South China Sea said Monday.
Despite the encounter, Philippine monitoring of its airspace would be intensified, the task force said.
The Southern Theater Command of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army said Saturday that a Philippine air force aircraft “illegally” entered the airspace above the shoal, which China claims, disrupting its combat training activities.
The command sent jets and ships to identify, track and drive away the Philippine aircraft, it added.
The command warned the Philippines to “stop its infringement, provocation, distortion and hyping-up.”
The United States, Australia and Canada have reported similar actions by Chinese air force aircraft in the past in the South China Sea, where those nations have deployed forces to promote freedom of navigation and overflight.
China has bristled at military deployments by the US and its allies in the disputed region, calling it a danger to regional security.
In 2013, China announced a new Air Defense Identification Zone over the East China Sea that covers a chain of disputed islands also claimed by Japan. Beijing said then that all aircraft entering the zone must notify Chinese authorities and they would be subject to emergency military measures if they did not identify themselves or obey orders from Beijing. However, Washington and its allies said the move was invalid and refused to recognize it.
Chinese officials had warned that Beijing could establish a similar air defense zone over the South China Sea if its sovereignty over the sea passage, a key global trade and security route, was threatened.
Jay Batongbacal, a law professor and director of the Institute for Maritime Affairs and Law of the Sea at the University of the Philippines, said the air defense zone is not an exercise of territorial rights over the area it covers.
“What is happening is that they are flexing their capabilities to intimidate the Philippines, to give the impression to non-Chinese audiences and countries that they have control of the air in the South China Sea,” Batongbacal said.
Aside from China and the Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia, Vietnam and Thailand have overlapping territorial claims in the busy sea passage,but hostilities have particularly flared between Chinese and Philippine coast guard and navy forces in the Scarborough Shoal and another hotly disputed atoll, the Second Thomas Shoal, since last year.
Washington has repeatedly warned that it’s obligated to defend the Philippines, its oldest treaty ally in Asia, if Filipino forces, ships and aircraft come under an armed attack, including in the South China Sea.
Philippines protests Chinese air force jets’ firing of flares in the path of patrol plane
https://arab.news/8vmd2
Philippines protests Chinese air force jets’ firing of flares in the path of patrol plane

- Chinese jets flew dangerously close and fired a volley of flares in the path of a Philippine air force patrol plane
New Delhi’s high-tech suburb drowns in trash as sanitation workers flee

- Local residents took to social media to show extent of garbage problem in Gurugram
- Photos and videos show garbage piling up in residential areas, sideroads covered in junk
NEW DELHI: One of India’s most modern, high-tech, and upscale urban centers, Gurugram, is sinking in municipal waste that has not been collected for months, residents say, as sanitation workers have fled fearing a police crackdown on undocumented migrants.
Formerly known as Gurgaon, the city of skyscrapers and luxury apartments is located about 30 km south of New Delhi and was transformed over the last two decades from farming fields into a major hub for technology and outsourcing companies.
While its poor waste management system has made local headlines over the years, the problem worsened recently with garbage piling up in residential areas, sideroads covered in junk and trash burning becoming increasingly commonplace, prompting mass complaints from residents who posted visuals across social media platforms.
“There is a serious crisis in Gurgaon on waste management. Wastes are lying everywhere and the administration does not have a clue how to handle that. This is the crisis created by the administration and its policies,” Saurabh Bardhan, owner of Gurugram-based waste management company Green Bandhu, told Arab News.
Indian authorities have detained hundreds of alleged illegal immigrants in recent months, with a Human Rights Watch report published on Wednesday saying that at least 1,500 ethnic Bengali Muslims were expelled to Bangladesh “without due process” between May and June, as expulsions continue.
As many of them are employed as informal garbage collectors in Gurugram, the crackdown has affected waste management in the city.
“The migrant workers have been collecting waste for years in this so-called millennium city and they have never bothered to regularize their jobs. These workers were carrying the load of managing the city waste to a great extent,” Bardhan said.
“I heard they are being detained and this has created panic among them. But if we think that only these migrant workers are affected we are wrong. It is the whole society that is suffering because of the government’s hasty and unmindful act.”
S.S. Rohilla, public relations officer at the Municipal Corp. of Gurugram, told Arab News on Saturday that the local government is “trying to resolve the problem,” adding that the situation was “not as bad” as reported by media outlets.
But for Kalyan Singh, the waste problem in his residential area in Gurugram was a crisis.
“For the last two to three days we have been facing an acute crisis of waste lying everywhere in my (area). Never before have we faced something like this,” Singh told Arab News.
“This problem has cropped up, we learnt, after the migrant Bengali-speaking laborers have left en masse after the government’s drive to detain suspected Bangladeshis and foreigners. I hope the situation is addressed soon.”
Meanwhile, other Gurugram residents took to social media to raise concerns over public health risks and express their frustrations with the government.
“Bad roads. Poor waste management. No drainage system. Yet what does the Gurugram gov’t. choose to act on? Not infrastructure. Not public welfare. (But) targeting the people who keep this city running — the migrant workers who clean our homes and city,” Aanchal Jauhari wrote on X.
“Health Danger! Sector 70 (of) Gurugram drowning in garbage. Breeding ground for diseases,” another X user, Gautam Dhar, said. “Please help. Citizen’s health (is) at severe risk.”
Hungary’s Orban to block EU budget unless funds released

- Nationalist leader has for years clashed with Brussels over migration, LGBTQ rights and what critics see as eroding democracy in Hungary
- The EU has suspended billions of euros earmarked for Hungary while a rule-of-law dispute drags on
BUDAPEST: Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban threatened on Saturday to torpedo the European Union’s new seven-year budget unless Brussels unlocks all suspended EU funds.
The nationalist leader has for years clashed with Brussels over migration, LGBTQ rights and what critics see as eroding democracy in Hungary. The EU has suspended billions of euros earmarked for Hungary while a rule-of-law dispute drags on.
“The approval of the new seven-year budget requires unanimity and until we get the remaining (frozen) funds, there won’t be a new EU budget either,” Orban said in a speech at a summer university in the Romanian town of Baile Tusnad.
The European Commission has proposed a €2 trillion ($2.35 trillion) EU budget for 2028 to 2034 with emphasis on economic competitiveness and defense.
Orban also criticized the EU for supporting Ukraine and accused Brussels of planning to install a “pro-Ukraine and pro-Brussels government” in Hungary at next year’s vote.
He also accused EU leaders of risking a trade war with US President Donald Trump’s administration that Europe “cannot win.”
“The current leadership of the EU will always be the last to sign deals with the United States and always the worst deals,” Orban added, urging a change in the bloc’s leadership.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen will meet Trump on Sunday in Scotland in search of a trade deal.
Orban, who swept the last four elections, faces a tough new opposition challenger Peter Maygar, whose center-right Tisza party has a firm lead over the ruling Fidesz in most polls at a time of economic stagnation.
Magyar told a rally on Saturday that Hungary must be firmly anchored in the EU and NATO military alliance, and Tisza would bring home all suspended EU funds if it wins in 2026.
“Hungary is an EU member and our relations as allies cannot be built on a political style of putting a spoke in the wheel,” Magyar said. He added that Tisza could not support the EU budget in current form but would be ready for talks on that.
“We need to make a clear and firm decision that our place has been and will be in Europe,” Magyar said, criticizing Orban’s close relations with Russia.
Russia seizes second village in central Ukraine

- Russian army said its forces ‘liberated the locality of Maliyevka’ in Dnipropetrovsk
- Deeper Russian advances could mean more attacks on one of Ukraine’s largest cities
MOSCOW: Russia on Saturday said it had wrested a second village in Ukraine’s central Dnipro region in a fresh advance in the industrial mining hub.
Overnight strikes between Ukraine and Russia meanwhile claimed five lives – three in central Ukraine and two in western Russia, according to officials.
The army said its forces “liberated the locality of Maliyevka” in Dnipro, a part of Ukraine’s mining heartland, particularly for coal that powers the electricity grid.
Further Russian advances could harm Ukraine’s economy and energy supplies.
Authorities have already been ordering civilians with children to flee a front line that is creeping closer.
Deeper Russian advances could mean more attacks on one of Ukraine’s largest cities, Dnipro – though Russian troops are around 200 kilometers (120 miles) away.
Dnipropetrovsk is not one of the five Ukrainian regions – Donetsk, Kherson, Lugansk, Zaporizhzhia and Crimea – that Moscow has publicly claimed as Russian territory.
Trump hits Scottish golf course as protesters set to rally

- His presence has turned the picturesque and normally quiet area of southwest Scotland into a virtual fortress
- US president professes a love of Scotland, where his mother was born, but has an uneasy relationship with the nation
TURNBERRY, United Kingdom: US President Donald Trump played golf on the first full day of his visit to Scotland Saturday, as protesters prepared to take to the streets across the country.
Trump emerged from his Turnberry resort with son Eric and waved to photographers following his arrival in Scotland on Friday evening.
His presence has turned the picturesque and normally quiet area of southwest Scotland into a virtual fortress, with roads closed and police checkpoints in place.
Officers on quad bikes or horses, others on foot with sniffer dogs, patrolled the famous course – which has hosted four men’s British Opens – and the sandy beaches and grass dunes that hug the course.
The 79-year-old touched down Friday at nearby Prestwick Airport, as hundreds of onlookers came out to see Air Force One and try to catch a glimpse of its famous passenger.
The president has professed a love of Scotland, where his mother was born, but his controversial politics and business investments in the country have made for an uneasy relationship.
Speaking to reporters on the tarmac, Trump immediately waded into the debate surrounding high levels of irregular migration.
“You better get your act together or you’re not going to have Europe anymore,” he said, adding that it was “killing” the continent.
Trump’s five-day visit has divided the local community.
“A lot of people don’t trust Trump and I’m one of them. I think the man is a megalomaniac,” retiree Graham Hodgson said.
“He’s so full of himself. I think he’s doing a lot of damage worldwide with his tariffs. And I think it’s all for the sake of America, but at the moment I think America is paying the price as well for his policies.”
But at Prestwick Airport a boy held a sign that read “Welcome Trump” while a man waved a flag emblazoned with Trump’s most famous slogan – “Make America Great Again.”
“I think the best thing about Trump is he’s not actually a politician yet he’s the most powerful man in the world and I think he’s looking at the best interests of his own country,” said 46-year-old Lee McLean, who had traveled from nearby Kilmarnock.
“Most politicians should really be looking at the best interests of their own country first before looking overseas,” he said.
As the police rolled out a massive security operation, the Stop Trump Coalition announced demonstrations on Saturday near the US consulate in Edinburgh and another in Aberdeen, where Trump owns another golf resort.
Police are also monitoring any other protests that might spring up near Turnberry.
Trump has no public meetings in the diary for Saturday, but he is due to discuss trade with EU chief Ursula von der Leyen on Sunday and meet UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
Italy’s Meloni: Recognizing Palestinian state before it is established may be ‘counterproductive’

- ‘I am very much in favor of the State of Palestine but I am not in favor of recognizing it prior to establishing it’
- France’s decision to recognize a Palestinian state at the UN General Assembly in September draws condemnation from Israel and the US
MILAN: Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said on Saturday that recognizing the State of Palestine before it is established could be counterproductive.
“I am very much in favor of the State of Palestine but I am not in favor of recognizing it prior to establishing it,” Meloni told Italian daily La Repubblica.
“If something that doesn’t exist is recognized on paper, the problem could appear to be solved when it isn’t,” Meloni added.
France’s decision to recognize a Palestinian state at the United Nations General Assembly in September drew condemnation from Israel and the United States, amid the war in Gaza between Israel and Palestinian militant group Hamas. On Friday, Italy’s foreign minister said recognition of a Palestinian state must occur simultaneously with recognition of Israel by the new Palestinian entity. A German government spokesperson said on Friday that Berlin was not planning to recognize a Palestinian state in the short term and said its priority now is to make “long-overdue progress” toward a two-state solution.