Burmese warlord Naw Kham, hunted down in the Golden Triangle by elite Chinese forces, pleaded guilty before a court in Yunnan to a massacre of Chinese merchant crewmen.
Leon Panetta in Auckland announced that US naval cooperation with New Zealand will be resumed—cut off in 1985, when the Pacific nation declared itself a nuclear-free zone.
China and Japan are moving ahead with new Free Trade Agreements such as the ASEAN+6 pact and the Trans-Pacific Partnership, even amid escalated military tensions.
Leon Panetta warned that the latest escalation over islands disputed by China and Japan could lead to war—even as he arrived in Tokyo to inaugurate a new anti-missile system.
Campesinos in Peru’s northern Piura region pledge to resist announced plans by Chinese mining company Zijin to move ahead with the long-contested Río Blanco copper project.
The 67th anniversary of Japan's World War II surrender saw a confrontation with Chinese activists over the contested Senkaku Islands in the oil-rich East China Sea.
Beijing's move to set up a military garrison on disputed Yongxing Island—claimed by the Philippines as part of the Paracel chain—is escalating tension in the South China Sea.
A Chinese proposal for a pipeline route across northern Afghanistan for Caspian Basin gas could sabotage the US-backed Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) project.
Taiwan's Council of Indigenous Peoples signed an agreement with the Pacific Island state of the Marshall Islands aimed at increasing bilateral exchanges to promote Austronesian culture. The agreement seeks to promote cooperation between Taiwan's indigenous communities and the linguistically related people of the Marshall Islands, particularly in the fields of language and preservation of traditional wisdom. The agreement, signed last month, coincides with the opening of the UN International Year of Indigenous Languages, which acknowledges to the critical state of many indigenous tongues, and seeks to promote their protection and use, both at national and international levels. (Photo of Bunum people via Mata Taiwan)
Announcement of a joint Chinese-Argentine satellite production company comes amid growing concern within Argentina about activities at the Chinese-operated “spaceport” at Bajada del Agrio in Patagonia—and the apparent role of the People’s Liberation Army in the facility. The Bajada del Agrio facility played a part in tracking China’s recent lunar probe, but is overseen by companies that answer directly to the PLA’s General Armaments Department. Only personnel authorized by Beijing have access to the facility, arousing much suspicion about the site in Argentina’s news media. (Photo via InfoBae)
World oil prices remain depressed despite an uptick this month, driven by the Venezuela crisis and fear of US-China trade war. Yet this month also saw Zimbabwe explode into angry protests over fuel prices. The unrest was sparked when the government doubled prices, in an effort to crack down on "rampant" illegal trading. Simultaneously, long lines at gas stations are reported across Mexico—again due to a crackdown on illegal petrol trafficking. Despite all the talk in recent years about how low oil prices are now permanent (mirrored, of course, in the similar talk 10 years ago about how high prices were permanent), the crises in Zimbabwe and Mexico may be harbingers of a coming global shock. (Photo via Amnesty International)
A top US sportswear company announced that it has dropped a Chinese supplier over concerns that its products were made by forced labor in detention camps in Xinjiang. Reports have mounted that the hundreds of thousands of ethnic Uighurs believed to be held in a fast-expanding system of detention camps are being put to forced labor for Chinese commercial interests. An Associated Press investigation tracked recent shipments from one such detention-camp factory, run by privately-owned Hetian Taida Apparel, to Badger Sportswear of North Carolina. After long denying that the camps exist, Chinese authorities now say they are "vocational training centers" aimed at reducing "extremism." (Photo via Bitter Winter)
