MANILA: Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. on Saturday cut short the term of the military chief of staff he appointed five months ago and replaced him with a retiring general without explaining the surprise move.
Marcos’s office announced the replacement of Lt. Gen. Bartolome Bacarro, who had received the highest military award for combat bravery. A statement late Friday that did not specify any reason for the change in military leadership. Bacarro’s three-year term was supposed to end in August 2025.
The appointment of military chiefs is a sensitive issue. The military has a history of restiveness, failed coup attempts, corruption scandals and has faced accusations of human rights violations. Efforts have been made for years to instill professionalism in the military and insulate it from the country’s traditionally chaotic and corruption-tainted politics.
Lt. Gen. Andres Centino, the military chief of staff who Bacarro replaced in August last year, was installed by Marcos to the top post of the 144,000-strong armed forces. Centino, who was due to retire next month, was chosen over a dozen senior generals and will have a fresh three-year term.
Asked for reaction on his removal, Bacarro told reporters without elaborating Friday night in a text message that the military would support the new chief.
National police spokesperson Col. Jean Fajardo said police forces have been placed on “heightened alert” mainly to secure an annual religious gathering in Manila. He denied the move was linked to purported military restiveness that has been reported by social media.
A new law that took effect last year fixed the term of the military chief of staff to three years to allow a top general more time to initiate reforms and press a yearslong campaign to modernize an underfunded military confronting Muslim and communist insurgencies and increasingly aggressive actions by China in the disputed South China Sea, where the Philippines lays claim to contested islands, islets and reefs with other coastal states.
In a turnover ceremony at the main military camp in the capital on Saturday, Bacarro handed a saber symbolizing military leadership to Centino and thanked the military, his family and the president. Marcos did not attend but was represented by his close advisers, including Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin.
Bersamin stressed in a speech he was impressed by the smooth military leadership transition, which he said should be emulated by politicians to avoid disruptive post-election unrest like what has happened in America.
“Continue with this tradition, where you respect each other, where you give so much consideration to the qualifications of your fellow officers in order to enable your organization … to move forward instead of looking back,” Bersamin said.
Marcos, he said, had asked him and other key presidential advisers to show the “highest respect” to Bacarro for his battlefield exploits and hinted the general may be given another government post after the end of his military career.
In 1991, Bacarro received a medal of valor for thwarting an attack by about 150 communist guerrillas on a northern Philippine town despite his smaller force. Wounded in the thigh by rebel fire, he commandeered a dump truck and rammed a fence to allow government militiamen, who were pinned down, to escape.
His sudden removal follows a decision by the national police chief, Gen. Rodolfo Azurin Jr., to tender his resignation on Thursday after Marcos’s interior secretary appealed to nearly 1,000 police generals and colonels to quit and allow a committee to investigate and weed out top officials involved in illegal drugs.
Azurin asked top police officials to support Interior Secretary Benhur Abalos’s drastic move. But he added some generals opposed the call for them to resign within the month because they were not facing any criminal lawsuits and have not been linked to the drug trade.
Philippine president replaces military chief with retiring general
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Philippine president replaces military chief with retiring general
- The appointment of military chiefs is a sensitive issue in the Philippines, where the military has a history of restiveness, failed coup attempts, corruption scandals and has faced accusations of human rights violations
As Philippines picks up from Usagi, a fresh storm bears down
- Typhoon Usagi blew out of the Philippines early Friday as another dangerous storm drew closer
- Scores were killed by flash floods and landslides just weeks ago, the weather service said
As Usagi — the archipelago nation’s fifth storm in three weeks — headed north to Taiwan, rescuers worked to reach residents stranded on rooftops in northern Luzon island, where herds of livestock were devastated.
The recent wave of disasters has killed at least 159 people and prompted the United Nations to request $32.9 million in aid for the worst-affected regions.
On Thursday, flash floods driven by Usagi struck 10 largely evacuated villages around the town of Gonzaga in Cagayan province, local rescue official Edward Gaspar told AFP by phone.
“We rescued a number of people who had refused to move to the shelters and got trapped on their rooftops,” Gaspar added.
While the evacuation of more than 5,000 Gonzaga residents ahead of the typhoon saved lives, he said two houses were swept away and many others were damaged while the farming region’s livestock industry took a heavy blow.
“We have yet to account for the exact number of hogs, cattle and poultry lost from the floods, but I can say the losses were huge,” Gaspar said.
Trees uprooted by flooding damaged a major bridge in Gonzaga, isolating nearby Santa Ana, a coastal town of about 36,000 people, Cagayan officials said.
“Most evacuees have returned home, but we held back some of them. We have to check first if their houses are still safe for habitation,” Bonifacio Espiritu, operations chief of the civil defense office in Cagayan, told AFP.
By early Friday, Usagi was over the Luzon Strait with a reduced strength of 120 kilometers (75 miles) an hour as it headed toward southern Taiwan, where authorities had downgraded the typhoon to a tropical storm.
But the streak of violent weather was forecast to continue in the central Philippines, where Severe Tropical Storm Man-yi is set to reach coastal waters by Sunday.
The weather service said it could potentially strike at or near the heavily populated capital Manila.
A UN assessment said the past month’s storms damaged or destroyed 207,000 houses, with 700,000 people forced to seek temporary shelter.
Many families were without essentials like sleeping mats, hygiene kits and cooking supplies, and had limited access to safe drinking water.
Thousands of hectares of farmland were destroyed and persistent flooding was likely to delay replanting efforts and worsen food supply problems, the report added.
About 20 big storms and typhoons hit the Southeast Asian nation or its surrounding waters each year, killing scores of people and keeping millions in enduring poverty, but it is unusual for multiple such weather events to take place in a small window.
The weather service said this tends to happen during seasonal episodes of La Nina, a climatic phenomenon in the Pacific Ocean that pushes more warm water toward Asia, causing heavy rains and flooding in the region and drought in the southern United States.
North Korea tests exploding drones as Kim Jong Un calls for mass production
- Tensions in the region have escalated as Kim flaunts his advancing nuclear and missile program
The country’s latest military demonstration came as the United States, South Korea and Japan engaged in combined military exercises involving advanced fighter jets and a US aircraft carrier in nearby international waters, in a display of their defense posture against North Korea.
North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency published photos of Kim talking with officials near at least two different types of unmanned aerial vehicles. They included those with X-shaped tails and wings that look similar to the ones the country disclosed in August, when Kim inspected another demonstration of drones that explode on impact.
The drones flew various routes and accurately struck targets, KCNA said. Its images showed what appeared to be a BMW sedan being destroyed and old models of tanks being blown up.
Kim expressed satisfaction with the weapons’ development process and stressed the need to “build a serial production system as early as possible and go into full-scale mass production,” noting how drones are becoming crucial in modern warfare.
KCNA paraphrased Kim as saying drones were easy to make at low cost for a range of military activities. The report didn’t say if Kim spoke directly about rival South Korea, which the North Korean drones are apparently designed to target.
North Korea last month accused South Korea of sending its own drones to drop anti-North Korean propaganda leaflets over the North’s capital of Pyongyang, and threatened to respond with force if such flights occur again. South Korea’s military has refused to confirm whether or not the North’s claims were true.
Tensions in the region have escalated as Kim flaunts his advancing nuclear and missile program, which includes various nuclear-capable weapons targeting South Korea and intercontinental ballistic missiles that can potentially reach the US mainland.
Kim is also allegedly sending military equipment and troops to Russia to support President Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine, which raised concerns in Seoul that he would get Russian technology in return to further develop his arsenal.
In addition to his intensifying nuclear threats, Kim has also engaged in psychological and electronic warfare against South Korea, such as flying thousands of balloons to drop trash in the South and disrupting GPS signals from border areas near the South’s biggest airport.
South Korean officials say North Korea will be a key topic in a trilateral summit between South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, US President Joe Biden and Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba this week at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meetings in Peru.
South Korean Foreign Minister Cho Tae-yul and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken met on the margins of the APEC on Thursday and discussed “strong concerns” over deepening ties between Pyongyang and Moscow, particularly the deployment of North Korean troops to support Russia’s war against Ukraine, the US State Department said.
Rebel attacks blamed on Pakistan keep Indian-administered Kashmir on the boil
- India blames Pakistan for arming militants and helping them “infiltrate” across the militarzed border
- Pakistan denies it supports militants, says it only offers moral and diplomatic support to Kashmiri people
SRINAGAR, India: Ambushes, firefights and a market grenade blast: headline-grabbing attacks in Indian-administered Kashmir are designed to challenge New Delhi’s bid to portray normality in the disputed territory, Indian security officials say.
Kashmir has been divided between nuclear-armed rivals India and Pakistan since their partition at the chaotic end of British rule in 1947, and both countries claim the territory in full.
“The attacks are not merely about killing, but also to set a narrative to counter the Indian narrative — that everything is fine,” said the former head of India’s Northern Command forces, retired general Deependra Singh Hooda.
Half a million Indian troops are deployed in the far northern region, battling a 35-year insurgency in which tens of thousands of civilians, soldiers and rebels have been killed, including at least 120 this year.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist government canceled the Muslim-majority region’s partial autonomy in 2019, a decision accompanied by mass arrests and a months-long communications blackout.
The territory of around 12 million people has since been ruled by a governor appointed by New Delhi, overseeing the local government that voters elected in October in opposition to Modi.
New Delhi insists it helped bring “peace, development and prosperity” to the region.
But military experts say that small bands of rebels — demanding either independence or Kashmir’s merger with Pakistan — use attacks to contradict the claims.
“The larger message being sent out is that the problem in Kashmir is alive,” Hooda said.
India blames Pakistan for arming militants and helping them “infiltrate” across the militarzed dividing line to launch attacks, an allegation Islamabad denies.
A “spurt in infiltration” this year by insurgents was “not possible without Pakistan’s army actively allowing it,” Hooda charged.
Many clashes take place in forested mountains far from larger settlements.
But the huge military presence visible in sprawling camps and roadblocks, roughly one in every 25 people in Kashmir is an Indian soldier, serves as a constant reminder.
Many are frustrated by traffic jams caused by military orders that civilian cars stay at least 500 meters (1,640 feet) away from army vehicles.
Yet those who have long lived under the shadow of the grinding insurgency seemingly shrug off the threat.
When an attacker this month hurled a grenade at security forces in a busy market — killing a woman and wounding 11 civilians — shoppers returned within a couple of hours.
This month, thousands attended an army recruitment drive, even as soldiers battled gunmen in a nearby district.
Attacks appear dramatic, including a gunbattle in downtown Srinagar in early November that police said killed a commander of the Pakistan-backed Lashkar-e-Taiba militant group.
Earlier this year, attacks in the Jammu area — a Hindu-majority region — prompted the army to supply thousands of militia forces, dubbed village defense guards, with rifles.
But the death toll of 120 civilians, soldiers and rebels killed this year is, so far, similar in intensity to 2023, when 130 people died, according to the South Asia Terrorism Portal, a New Delhi-based monitoring group.
“It will remain like this on low boil, as long as Kashmir is divided (between India and Pakistan),” a security official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to journalists.
“We control it here; they (Pakistan) will activate it from there.”
The Indian army says around 720 rebels have been killed in the past five years.
Regional army commander MV Suchindra Kumar said in October he believed fewer than 130 remained in the fight.
Another security official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said those include “highly trained and well-armed” fighters who had crossed from Pakistan.
“They are causing some damage by surprise attacks,” the official said. “But the situation is under control.”
Hooda, drawing on his long experience as a general, predicts little change as long as violence serves the agenda of India’s rival Islamabad.
“I don’t see this coming down immediately,” he said, referring to the number of attacks.
“Pakistan has always felt that ratcheting up attacks will bring the spotlight on Kashmir.”
Trump meets with Argentina’s president, the first foreign leader he’s met with since election
- Javier Milei, a self-described ‘anarcho-capitalist’, is a frequent recipient of Trump praise
- The Argentine president is known for his eccentric personality
The meeting was confirmed by a person who insisted on anonymity to discuss an event that hadn’t yet been announced publicly. The person said the meeting went well and said Milei also met with investors.
A short time later, Milei, a self-described “anarcho-capitalist” and frequent recipient of Trump praise, addressed the America First Policy Institute gala at Mar-a-Lago. He spoke briefly in English, then gave a longer speech in Spanish, pausing to allow an interpreter to translate, in which he slammed left-wing ideologies and saluted Elon Musk, the owner of X, saying his social media site is helping to “save humanity.”
Milei criticized a political ruling class that he said was responsible for a system that used unfair tax systems to force “the redistribution of wealth at gunpoint.”
The president of Argentina also congratulated Trump on his “resounding victory” in the election, saying, “Today the winds of freedom are blowing much stronger” and calling the victory “proof positive that the forces of heaven are on our side.”
Trump also spoke to the gala crowd, congratulating Milei “for the job you’ve done for Argentina” and saying it was an “honor” to have Argentina’s president at his club.
“The job you’ve done is incredible. Make Argentina Great Again, you know, MAGA. He’s a MAGA person,” Trump said to applause. “And you know, he’s doing that.”
Shortly after Milei’s election in November 2023, Trump posted on social media, “You will turn your country around and truly Make Argentina Great Again!”
Milei first met Trump in February at the Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, in the Washington area. He has openly declared his admiration for Trump and when he saw him, he rushed to him screaming “president!” and gave him a close hug before they posed for pictures.
The Argentine president is known for his eccentric personality and first made a name for himself by shouting against Argentina’s “political caste” on television. The right-wing populist campaigned with a chainsaw as his prop to symbolize his plans to slash public spending and scrap government ministries.
Ben & Jerry’s says parent Unilever silenced it over Gaza stance
- The ice cream maker has sued Unilever for selling its business in Israel to its licensee there
NEW YORK: Ice cream brand Ben & Jerry’s said in a lawsuit filed Wednesday that parent company Unilever has silenced its attempts to express support for Palestinian refugees and threatened to dismantle its board and sue its members over the issue.
The lawsuit is the latest sign of the long-simmering tensions between Ben & Jerry’s and consumer products maker Unilever, which is planning to spin out its ice cream business next year.
The spin-out would include the top-selling Vermont-based maker of Chubby Hubby, although experts on corporate governance said the brand’s board, a centerpiece of the new lawsuit, could present challenges to the deal.
A rift first erupted between Ben & Jerry’s and Unilever in 2021 after the ice cream maker said it would stop selling its products in the Israeli-occupied West Bank because it was inconsistent with its values, a move that led some investors to divest Unilever shares.
The ice cream maker then sued Unilever for selling its business in Israel to its licensee there, which allowed marketing in the West Bank and Israel to continue. That lawsuit was settled in 2022.
In its new lawsuit, Ben & Jerry’s says that Unilever has breached the terms of the 2022 settlement, which has remained confidential. As part of the agreement, however, Unilever is required to “respect and acknowledge the Ben & Jerry’s independent board’s primary responsibility over Ben & Jerry’s social mission,” according to the lawsuit.
But, according to the lawsuit, “Ben & Jerry’s has on four occasions attempted to publicly speak out in support of peace and human rights. Unilever has silenced each of these efforts.”
In response to Reuters’ story, Unilever said in an emailed statement: “Our heart goes out to all victims of the tragic events in the Middle East. We reject the claims made by B&J’s social mission board, and we will defend our case very strongly.”
“We would not comment further on this legal matter,” it added.
Ben & Jerry’s said in an email: “We are confident that these issues will ultimately be resolved. Due to the ongoing nature of the litigation, we are unable to comment on the specifics.”
The lawsuit was filed in New York federal court.
Minor Myers, a professor at the University of Connecticut School of Law, said the tension between Ben & Jerry’s and Unilever would be top of mind in a deal, particularly if Unilever’s ice cream brands are acquired by a private equity firm or competitor company.
“The Ben & Jerry’s situation would be front of mind of any possible buyer,” Myers said. “To the extent that Ben & Jerry’s or a subsidiary wants to be liberated to say (what they want, it) may impact the sales of the flagship ice cream brand.”
That would result in a lower valuation for Unilever’s ice cream brands, Myers said.
There are fewer concerns if the ice cream brands become a separate publicly traded company, Myers said.
Ben & Jerry’s said in the lawsuit it has tried to call for a ceasefire, support the safe passage of Palestinian refugees to Britain, back students protesting at US colleges against civilian deaths in Gaza, and advocate for a halt in US military aid to Israel, but has been blocked by Unilever.
The independent board separately spoke out on some of those topics, but the company was muzzled, the lawsuit says.
Ben & Jerry’s said that Peter ter Kulve, Unilever’s head of ice cream, said he was concerned about the “continued perception of anti-Semitism” regarding the ice cream brand voicing its opinions on Gazan refugees, according to the lawsuit.
Unilever was also required under the settlement agreement to make a total of $5 million in payments to Ben & Jerry’s for the brand to make donations to human rights groups of its choosing, according to the lawsuit.
Ben & Jerry’s selected the left-leaning Jewish Voice for Peace and the San Francisco Bay Area Chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, among others, the filing says.
Unilever in August objected to the selections, saying that Jewish Voice for Peace was “too critical of the Israeli government,” according to the lawsuit.
Ben & Jerry’s has positioned itself as socially conscious since Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield founded the company in a renovated gas station in 1978. It kept that mission after Unilever acquired it in 2000.
Unilever’s dozens of products include Dove soap, Hellmann’s mayonnaise, Knorr bouillon cubes, Surf detergent and Vaseline petroleum jelly.
