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TAIPEI/WASHINGTON: A delegation of US lawmakers arrived in Taiwan on Sunday for a two-day trip during which they will meet President Tsai Ing-wen, the second high-level group to visit while there are military tensions between the self-ruled island and China. Beijing, which claims democratically governed Taiwan as its own territory, has conducted military drills around the island after US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taipei in early August. China has long claimed sovereignty over the island. Taiwan’s government rejects China’s claims and says the island’s people should decide its future. The de facto US embassy in Taipei said the delegation is being led by Senator Ed Markey, who is being accompanied by four House lawmakers on what it described as part of a larger visit to the Indo-Pacific region. Taiwan’s presidential office said the group would meet Tsai on Monday morning. “Especially at a time when China is raising tensions in the Taiwan Strait and the region with military exercises, Markey leading a delegation to visit Taiwan once again demonstrates the United States Congress’ firm support for Taiwan,” it said in a statement. Markey chairs the Senate Foreign Relations East Asia, Pacific, and International Cybersecurity Subcommittee. The co-leaders of the visit are Representative John Garamendi of the congressional Nuclear Weapons and Arms Control Working Group and Representative Don Beyer, a spokesperson for Markey said. China’s embassy in Washington said on Sunday that “members of the US Congress should act in consistence with the US government’s one-China policy” and argued the latest congressional visit “once again proves that the US does not want to see stability across the Taiwan Straits and has spared no effort to stir up confrontation between the two sides and interfere in China’s internal affairs.” A spokesperson for the White House National Security Council said members of Congress have gone to Taiwan for decades and will continue to do so, adding that such visits were in accordance with the United States’ long-standing one-China policy. Under that policy, the United States has official diplomatic relations with Beijing, and not Taiwan. However, Washington does not take a position on whether Beijing has sovereignty over Taiwan, and is bound under US law to provide Taiwan with means to defend itself. Markey’s office said the lawmakers in Taiwan “will reaffirm the United States’ support for Taiwan as guided by the Taiwan Relations Act, US-China Joint Communiques, and Six Assurances, and will encourage stability and peace across the Taiwan Strait.”
’SHARED INTERESTS’ The group will meet “with elected leaders and members of the private sector to discuss shared interests including reducing tensions in the Taiwan Strait and expanding economic cooperation, including investments in semiconductors,” Markey’s office said. The delegation made a prior stop in South Korea, where Markey met South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol. Taiwan’s Foreign Ministry published pictures of four lawmakers being met at Taipei’s downtown Songshan airport having arrived on a US air force transport jet, while Markey arrived at the Taoyuan international airport. “The delegation will meet with senior Taiwan leaders to discuss US-Taiwan relations, regional security, trade and investment, global supply chains, climate change, and other significant issues of mutual interest,” the de facto USembassy said. While China’s drills around Taiwan have abated, it is still carrying out military activities. Eleven Chinese military aircraft crossed the Taiwan Strait’s median line or entered Taiwan’s air defense zone on Sunday, Taiwan’s Defense Ministry said. Thirteen planes crossed the strait on Saturday, the ministry said. US officials have said Beijing “overreacted” to Pelosi’s visit and used it as a pretext to try to change the status quo in the Taiwan Strait.
ISLAMABAD: United Nations chief Antonio Guterres on Saturday visited several areas of Pakistan ravaged by floods, as he rounded off a two-day trip aimed at raising awareness of the disaster. Record monsoon rains and glacier melt in northern mountains have triggered floods that have killed more than 1,391 people, sweeping away houses, roads, railway tracks, bridges, livestock and crops. Huge areas of the country are inundated, and hundreds of thousands of people have been forced from their homes. The government says the lives of nearly 33 million have been disrupted. Pakistan estimates the damage at $30 billion, and both the government and Guterres have blamed the flooding on climate change. The UN secretary-general landed in Sindh province on Saturday, before flying over some of the worst-affected areas en route to Balochistan, another badly hit province. “It is difficult not to feel deeply moved to hear such detailed descriptions of tragedy,” Guterres said after landing in Sindh, according to a video released by the office of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif. “Pakistan needs massive financial support. This is not a matter of generosity, it is a matter of justice.” A video released by Information Minister Marriyum Aurangzeb showed Guterres seated next to Sharif viewing flood-damaged areas from an aircraft window. “Unimaginable,” Guterres said, surveying the damage. In July and August, Pakistan got 391 mm (15.4 inches) of rain, or nearly 190 percent more than the 30-year average. The southern province of Sindh has seen 466 percent more rain than average. Guterres said on Saturday the world needed to understand the impact of climate change on low-income countries. “Humanity has been waging war on nature and nature strikes back,” he said. “Nature strikes back in Sindh, but it was not Sindh that has made the emissions of greenhouse gases that have accelerated climate change so dramatically,” Guterres said. “There is a very unfair situation relative to the level of destruction.”
BERLIN: German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock arrived in Kyiv on Saturday on a surprise visit, which she said was to demonstrate Berlin’s unwavering support for Ukraine in its battle against Russia. It is her second trip to Ukraine and comes a week after Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmygal’s trip to Berlin where he had repeated Kyiv’s call for weapons. “I have traveled to Kyiv today to show that they can continue to rely on us. That we will continue to stand by Ukraine for as long as necessary with deliveries of weapons, and with humanitarian and financial support,” Baerbock said in a statement. Over the last weeks, Germany has sent howitzers, rocket launchers and anti-aircraft missiles to Kyiv. Heavier weapons like anti-aircraft systems, rocket launchers mounted on pick-ups and anti-drone equipment are also due in a further military aid package worth over 500 million euros. Earlier this week, Berlin said it would also team up with the Netherlands to train Ukrainian soldiers on demining. Baerbock said it was “clear that (Russian President Vladimir) Putin is counting on us getting tired of sympathizing with the suffering in Ukraine.” “He thinks that he can divide our societies with lies and blackmail us with energy deliveries. “This calculation must not and will not work. Because all of Europe knows that Ukraine is defending our peace,” she said. Baerbock was the first senior German government figure to visit Kyiv in May, when she announced the reopening of Germany’s embassy in the country.
LONDON: King Charles III was officially announced as Britain’s monarch Saturday, in a ceremony steeped in ancient tradition and political symbolism — and, for the first time, broadcast live.
Charles automatically became king when his mother, Queen Elizabeth II, died on Thursday, but the accession ceremony is a key constitutional and ceremonial step in introducing the new monarch to the country.
The ceremony at St. James’s Palace, a royal residence in London, is attended by the Accession Council, made up of senior politicians and officials who advise the monarch. They met without Charles, officially confirming his title, King Charles III. The king will then join them to make a series of oaths and declarations.
It’s the first time the ceremony has been held since 1952, when Queen Elizabeth II took the throne.
Charles is accompanied at the ceremony by his wife Camilla, the Queen Consort, and his eldest son Prince William. William is now heir to the throne and known by the title Charles long held, Prince of Wales.
After the ceremony, an official will read the proclamation aloud from a balcony at St. James’s Palace. It will also be read out in the medieval City of London and at other locations across the UK
Two days after the 96-year-old queen died at Balmoral Castle in Scotland following an unprecedented 70 years on the throne, people still came in their thousands to pay their respects outside Buckingham Palace in London. The scene was repeated at other royal residences across the UK and at British embassies around the world.
The monarch set the tone for his reign on Friday, vowing in a televised address to carry on the queen’s “lifelong service,” with his own modernizing stamp.
Charles looked to both the past — noting his mother’s unwavering “dedication and devotion as sovereign” — and the future, seeking to strike a reassuring note of constancy while signaling that his will be a 21st-century monarchy.
He reflected on how the country had changed dramatically during the queen’s reign into a society “of many cultures and many faiths,” and pledged to serve people in Britain and the 14 other countries where he is king “whatever may be your background or beliefs.”
He also tried to overcome a reputation for aloofness in his first hours as monarch, spending time shaking hands with some of the thousands who came to leave flowers and pay tribute to the queen at the gates of Buckingham Palace. He was greeted with shouts of “Well done, Charlie!” and “God save the king!” One woman gave him a kiss on the cheek.
Britain is holding a period of mourning for the queen, with days of carefully choreographed ceremonies marking the death of the only monarch most people have ever known.
In the next few days the queen’s body will be brought from Balmoral, first to Edinburgh and then to London, where she will lie in state before a funeral at Westminster Abbey, expected around Sept. 19.
In his speech, Charles struck a personal note, speaking of his sorrow at the loss of “my darling Mama.”
“Thank you for your love and devotion to our family and to the family of nations you have served so diligently all these years,” he said, ending with a quote from Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” — “May flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.’”
JAKARTA: A strong 6.1-magnitude earthquake struck Indonesia’s Papua region Saturday morning and was followed by a 5.8-magnitude aftershock minutes later, the US Geological Survey said. Both quakes hit at a relatively shallow depth of 15 kilometers (9.3 miles), about 272 kilometers from the town of Abepura, according to the USGS. No casualties or damages were immediately reported by authorities but the Indonesian Meteorology and Geophysics Agency (BKMG) warned of moderate shaking and light damage in a tweet. Indonesia experiences frequent earthquakes due to its position on the Pacific “Ring of Fire,” an arc of intense seismic activity where tectonic plates collide, that stretches from Japan through Southeast Asia and across the Pacific basin. A 6.2-magnitude quake that shook Sulawesi island in January 2021 killed more than 100 people and left thousands homeless, reducing buildings to a tangled mass of twisted metal and chunks of concrete in the seaside city of Mamuju.