MANILA: The head of the Philippines’ powerful Catholic Church called Sunday for an end to the “waste of human lives” following a brutal week in President Rodrigo Duterte’s drug war in which a 17-year-old boy was among dozens killed.
Police raids dubbed “One Time Big Time” saw at least 76 people shot dead, authorities said, as rights groups and lawmakers condemned the operation as an alarming “killing spree” in Duterte’s flagship campaign.
On Sunday, the highest-ranking Church official in the predominantly Catholic nation expressed concern about the increase in the number of deaths.
“We knock on the consciences of those who kill even the helpless, especially those who cover their faces with bonnets, to stop wasting human lives,” Manila Cardinal Luis Tagle said in a statement read in Sunday Masses in the capital.
“The illegal drug problem should not be reduced to a political or criminal issue. It is a humanitarian concern that affects all of us.”
Duterte, 72, launched an unprecedented crackdown on illegal narcotics after winning the presidency last year on a promise to kill tens of thousands of criminals.
The Church, one of the nation’s oldest and most influential institutions, had been among the few voices denouncing the deaths as polls showed Duterte continued to enjoy widespread popularity.
During the 14 months Duterte has been in power, police have confirmed killing more than 3,500 people — insisting they acted in self-defense.
More than 2,000 other people have been killed in drug-related crimes and thousands more murdered in unexplained circumstances, according to police data.
The numbers saw a sudden increase this week, with Duterte praising officers who shot dead 32 people in a single province as he urged for more.
Following Duterte’s call, at least 44 people were killed in various cities, including a 17-year-old boy whose death on Thursday sparked a national furor.
Relatives of Kian Delos Santos released CCTV footage of the boy being dragged away by two officers as they questioned a police report that he shot at them first.
In Sunday’s statement, Tagle called for nine days of prayer for people who have died in the drug war.
“Those with sorrowful hearts and awakened consciences may come to your pastors to tell your stories and we will document them for the wider society,” he said.
The Catholic Church has been a central figure in some of the Philippines’ most tumultuous political events, including the 1986 “People Power” revolution that overthrew dictator Ferdinand Marcos.
The Church had initially declined to criticize Duterte’s drug war but as the death toll of mostly poor people mounted, it began last year a campaign to stop the killings.
Church groups have sheltered witnesses and provided financial and emotional support for families of those slain.
In response, Duterte had launched a broadside against priests and bishops whom he accused of “hypocrisy.”
On Sunday, the president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines joined Tagle in denouncing the deaths, calling on the faithful to ring church bells daily in solidarity with the victims.
“The sound of the bells is a wake-up call for a nation that no longer knows how to condole with the bereaved, that is cowardly to call out evil. The sound of the bells is a call to stop consenting to the killings!” Archbishop Socrates Villegas said in a statement.
Duterte’s spokesman said Saturday the government would investigate the deaths but added the president would “vigorously pursue” his drug war.
Philippine Church head urges end to drug killings
Philippine Church head urges end to drug killings
Global diabetes rate has doubled in last 30 years — study
- Diabetes affected around 14 percent of all adults worldwide in 2022, compared to seven percent in 1990
- More than 800 million people are now diabetic, compared to less than 200 million in 1990, Lancet study says
PARIS: The percentage of adults suffering from diabetes across the world has doubled over the past three decades, the biggest rises coming in developing countries, a study said Wednesday.
The serious health condition affected around 14 percent of all adults worldwide in 2022, compared to seven percent in 1990, according to the new analysis in The Lancet journal.
Taking into account the growing global population, the team of researchers estimated that more than 800 million people are now diabetic, compared to less than 200 million in 1990.
These figures include both main types of diabetes. Type 1 affects patients from a young age and is more difficult to treat because it is caused by an insulin deficiency.
Type 2 mainly affects middle-aged or older people who lose their sensitivity to insulin.
Behind the global numbers, national figures varied widely.
The rate of diabetes stayed the same or even fell in some wealthier countries, such as Japan, Canada or Western European nations such as France and Denmark, the study said.
“The burden of diabetes and untreated diabetes is increasingly borne by low-income and middle-income countries,” it added.
For example, nearly a third of women in Pakistan are now diabetic, compared to less than a tenth in 1990.
The researchers emphasized that obesity is an “important driver” of type 2 diabetes — as is an unhealthy diet.
The gap between how diabetes is treated in richer and poorer countries is also widening.
Three out of five people aged over 30 with diabetes — 445 million adults — did not receive treatment for diabetes in 2022, the researchers estimated.
India alone was home to almost a third of that number.
In sub-Saharan Africa, only five to 10 percent of adults with diabetes received treatment in 2022.
Some developing countries such as Mexico are doing well in treating their population — but overall the global gap is widening, they said.
“This is especially concerning as people with diabetes tend to be younger in low-income countries and, in the absence of effective treatment, are at risk of life-long complications,” said senior study author Majid Ezzati of Imperial College London.
Those complications include “amputation, heart disease, kidney damage or vision loss — or in some cases, premature death,” he said in a statement.
Indonesian president says he will safeguard sovereignty in South China Sea
- Indonesia's foreign ministry earlier stressed that Indonesia does not recognize China’s claims over the South China Sea despite signing a maritime deal with Beijing last weekend
JAKARTA: Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto said he would “always safeguard our sovereignty” when asked about the issue of the South China Sea, adding partnerships are better than conflicts and that “we respect all powers.”
Prabowo’s comments, made while he was in Washington on Wednesday, came after his foreign ministry stressed that Indonesia does not recognize China’s claims over the South China Sea despite signing a maritime deal with Beijing last weekend.
Beijing has long clashed with Southeast Asian nations over the South China Sea, which it claims almost in its entirety, based on a “nine-dash line” on its maps that cuts into the exclusive economic zones (EEZ) of several countries.
“We respect all powers, but we will always safeguard our sovereignty. But I choose to always find possibilities of a partnership,” said Prabowo, who has repeatedly said he will pursue a non-aligned foreign policy.
“Partnerships are better than conflicts,” he told reporters.
Prabowo, who is on his first trip since taking office last month, met with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing on the weekend. A maritime development deal signed by China and Indonesia said they had reached common understanding “on joint development in areas of overlapping claims.”
That wording sparked concern in Indonesia, with analysts saying it could be interpreted as a change in Jakarta’s long-held stance as a non-claimant state in the South China Sea, and risked compromising Indonesia’s sovereign rights to exploit resources in its EEZ.
Prabowo did not directly refer to the joint statement in his comments to reporters, but said he had discussed the South China Sea with US President Joe Biden in a meeting the day before.
Prabowo will also travel to Peru for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit and Brazil for the G20 summit.
Explosions kill 1 man outside Brazil’s Supreme Court and force justices to evacuate
- Local media reported that the blasts took place with 20 seconds between the first and the second explosions
SAO PAULO: Two explosions outside Brazil’s Supreme Court on Wednesday killed a man and forced the justices and staff to evacuate the building in the capital of Brasilia.
The court said in a statement that two very strong blasts were heard at about 7:30 p.m. local time, shortly after Wednesday’s session finished. It added that all the justices and staff left the building safely after the incident.
Local firefighters confirmed that one man died at the scene, but did not identify him.
Celina Leão, the lieutenant governor of Brazil’s federal district, recommended that Congress be closed on Thursday to avoid new risks. She said police believe the man who died caused the explosions.
“It could have been a lone wolf, like others we’ve seen around the world,” Leão said in a news conference. “We are considering it as a suicide because there was only one victim. But investigations will show if that was indeed the case.”
Leão added only forensics will be able to identify the body, which remained outside the Supreme Court for two hours after the incident.
Local media reported that the blasts took place with 20 seconds between the first and the second explosions.
The incident took place in Brasilia’s Three Powers Plaza, an area where Brazil’s main government buildings, including the Supreme Court, Congress and presidential palace, are located.
President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was not in the neighboring presidential palace at the time of the blasts, said spokesman José Chrispiniano.
Police blocked all access to the area and the presidential security bureau was conducting a sweep of the grounds around the presidential palace.
Brazil’s federal police said it is investigating and did not provide a motive.
The Supreme Court in recent years has become a target for threats by far-right groups and supporters of former President Jair Bolsonaro due to its crackdown on the spread of false information. In particular, Justice Alexandre de Moraes has been a focus for their ire.
Lula’s spokesman said the leftist leader is in a meeting at the presidential residence with federal police chief Andrei Rodrigues, and Supreme Court Justices de Moraes and Cristiano Zanin.
Earlier, another explosion was heard in the parking lot of Brazil’s Congress. Police said the blast apparently came out of a car, but no one was injured. Leão said authorities have already identified who is the owner of the car, but added the two incidents can only be linked after the investigations.
A diminished Biden heads to APEC summit in Peru, overshadowed by China’s Xi
- With the US seemingly headed back toward isolationism under Trump, “China will be seen as the alternative,” says analyst
- President Xi’s first order of business in Peru is inaugurating a $1.3 billion megaport that will put China’s regional influence on stark display
LIMA, Peru: If things had gone differently last week, US President Joe Biden could have arrived at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Peru on Thursday projecting confidence and pledging his successor’s cooperation with eager Latin American partners. No longer.
Just as in 2016, the last time that Peru’s capital Lima hosted APEC, Donald Trump’s election victory has pulled the rug out from under a lame-duck Democrat at the high-profile summit attended by over a dozen world leaders.
The renewed prospect of Trump’s “America First” doctrine hampers Biden’s ability to reinforce the United States’ profile on his first presidential trip to South America, experts say, leaving China and its leader, Xi Jinping, to grab the limelight in America’s proverbial backyard.
President Xi’s first order of business in Peru is inaugurating a $1.3 billion megaport that will put China’s regional influence on stark display. Total investment is expected to top $3.5 billion over the next decade.
“This isn’t the way the US had hoped to participate in the summit,” said Margaret Myers, the director of the China and Latin America program at the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington policy group. “All eyes are going to be on the port, what Xi says about it and how he articulates relations across the Pacific.”
With the US seemingly headed back toward isolationism under Trump, “China will be seen as the alternative,” Myers added.
Sitting 60 kilometers (37 miles) northeast of Lima, the Chancay megaport — once a serene fishing village — is perhaps the clearest sign of Latin America’s reorientation. The Chinese shipping and logistics giant Cosco holds a 60 percent stake in the project it developed with Peruvian partner, Volcan.
“With this port, we’re looking at the entire Pacific coast, from the United States and Canada all the way to Chile,” Peruvian Foreign Minister Elmer Schialer told The Associated Press in his office on Monday. “The shipping business is being transformed.”
Peruvian Economy Minister José Arista said in June during a visit to China that the country’s neighbors — Brazil, Colombia, Chile — are “making constant trips to and from to see how they can modify their supply chain to use this port,” which will cut shipping time to Beijing by 10 days.
China’s trade with the region ballooned 35-fold from 2000 to 2022, reaching nearly $500 billion, according to data from the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean. Most of the region’s exports came from South America and were concentrated in five products: soybeans, copper and iron ore, oil and copper cathodes.
At the same time, China’s diplomatic engagement in the region has become more effective, with Xi visiting 11 Latin American countries since becoming president, according to Xinhua, China’s main state news agency. Brazil, host of the G20 summit, and Peru will bestow the rare honor of a full state visit to Xi this month, but not to Biden.
The misguided notion that Latin America must choose between its two largest trading partners is “a strategic defeat” for the US, said Eric Farnsworth, vice president at the Washington-based Council of the Americas.
“The idea that China is somehow a better partner is increasingly being heard around the region and I think Xi wants to solidify that and amplify that,” Farnsworth said.
Roughly a decade after China poured billions of dollars into building power plants, roads, airports and other infrastructure that saddled some developing countries with unserviceable debt, few expect Beijing to direct more massive loans to Latin America through its Belt and Road Initiative. But deeper cooperation on other infrastructure is possible, particularly renewable energy and telecommunications, said the Boston University Bulletin.
The US has appealed to Latin American governments to reject telecoms investment, particularly opposing Huawei, the Chinese tech giant that it argues could open the door to Chinese government spying. Similarly, US officials have raised concerns over the Chancay port’s possible dual-use by Beijing’s navy in the Pacific — a prospect dismissed by Chinese officials.
China “is working to exploit insecurity in our hemisphere,” said US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin at the Southern Command headquarters in Florida this week, adding that the Asian giant is leveraging the need for investment in the Americas to advance its “malign agenda.”
Despite its objections to Chinese influence, the US hasn’t shown the ability or willingness to build infrastructure like Chancay’s megaport, experts note.
Even when the US government has worked to ensure competitive bidding in Latin American massive public works projects, American companies have refrained from participating, said Benjamin Gedan, director of the Wilson Center’s Latin America Program.
A Kamala Harris administration wouldn’t have changed that, but a Democratic victory would have enabled Biden to speak in Lima with authority about US collaboration to come, such as building regional supply chains, Gedan said.
In sharp contrast to Biden’s alliance-building approach, Trump has vowed to protect American interests and promised more of the same unilateralist action the world saw in his first term when he staked out a combative stance against foreign competitors and deepened the US trade war with China.
In 2022, Biden launched the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework to help integrate the economies of the region and enable the US to counterbalance China. But last year, on the campaign trail, Trump said he would kill the trade pact if he were to win the 2024 election and return to the White House — in the same way, he pulled the US from the Trans-Pacific Partnership immediately after taking office in 2017.
In the years since, US clout in South America has diminished while China’s has grown, said Farnsworth, recalling how the last time Lima hosted APEC in 2016, the shock of Trump’s victory sucked the energy out of then-President Barack Obama’s delegation.
Peru’s top diplomat insists that the US hasn’t ceded its dominant voice guiding discussions about trade at gatherings such as APEC — and doubted that it will, even under Trump.
“I’m not sure that Trump will go against these types of multilateral contexts just because he is worried about the American people,” Schialer said. “He knows that the US is too important for the world. We have to sit down and have a nice dialogue and see how we can face these challenges together.”
Biden will hold talks Saturday with Xi on the sidelines of APEC, according to the US president’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan. The White House has been working for months to arrange a final meeting between Xi and Biden before the Democrat leaves office in January.
Meantime, in the wake of Trump’s win and China’s port opening in Peru, analysts expect the hard-nosed competition between the US and China to overshadow APEC.
“The Chinese love the idea of outmaneuvering the US in its near-abroad,” Gedan said. “Xi will luxuriate in this dynamic of being able to arrive with a big delegation, (...) to inaugurate this transformational port and suck all the air out of the room when his American counterpart is very weak politically. That is significant to China.”
Protests erupt in Paris over pro-Israel gala organized by far-right figures
- On Wednesday night, several hundred protesters marched through central Paris, denouncing the event as a “gala of hatred and shame”
PARIS: Protests erupted in Paris on Wednesday against a controversial gala organized by far-right figures in support of Israel. The event, intended to raise funds for the Israeli military, included Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich among its invited guests.
The demonstrations came on the eve of a high-stakes soccer match at France’s national stadium against the Israeli national team, overshadowed by tensions around the wars in the Middle East. Authorities in Paris announced that more than 4,000 police officers and 1,600 stadium staff will be deployed for the game.
Smotrich, a vocal advocate of Israeli settlements, had been expected to attend Wednesday’s gala, dubbed “Israel is Forever,” which was planned by an association of the same name. The group’s stated goal is to “mobilize French-speaking Zionist forces.”
After days of growing criticism of the event, Smotrich’s office confirmed Wednesday that the minister would not travel to Paris to participate.
But the invitation to Smotrich drew sharp criticism from local associations, unions and left-wing political parties, prompting two protests in the French capital. The minister, a hard-line settler leader, has been accused of inflaming tensions in the West Bank and drew international condemnations this week by saying he hopes the election of Donald Trump will clear the way for Israeli annexation of the West Bank — a step that would extinguish Palestinian statehood dreams.
The French Foreign Ministry called Smotrich’s remarks “contrary to international law” and counterproductive to efforts to reduce regional tensions.
“France reiterates its commitment to the implementation of the two-state solution, with Israel and Palestine living side by side in peace and security, which is the only prospect for a just and lasting settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” the ministry said in a statement.
Critics also pointed at Nili Kupfer-Naouri, president of the “Israel is Forever” association, who sparked outrage in 2023, after the Israel-Hamas war started, when she tweeted that “no civilian in Gaza was innocent.”
On Wednesday night, several hundred protesters marched through central Paris, denouncing the event as a “gala of hatred and shame.”
“Imagine if an association were hosting a gala for Hezbollah or Hamas — there’s no way the police would allow that,” said Melkir Saib, a 30-year-old protester. “The situation is just unfair.”
The march was largely peaceful, but some demonstrators broke windows at a McDonald’s along the route.
A separate group, including Jewish leftist organizations opposed to racism and antisemitism, gathered near the Arc de Triomphe chanting slogans against the gala and Smotrich.
French authorities defended the event, with Paris police chief Laurent Nunez stating that the gala posed “no major threat to public order.”
The protests came days after tensions flared in Paris and Amsterdam related to the conflicts in the Mideast. A massive “Free Palestine” banner was displayed during a Paris Saint-Germain Champions League match against Atletico Madrid, while violence broke out in Amsterdam last week targeting fans of an Israeli soccer club.
