Japan following China's Taiwan drills with 'great interest'

A ship of Navy Force under the Eastern Theatre Command of China's People's Liberation Army (PLA) takes part in a combat readiness patrol and "Joint Sword" exercises around Taiwan, at an undisclosed location in this handout image released on April 8, 2023. Eastern Theatre Command/Handout via REUTERS

Japan has been following China's military drills around Taiwan consistently and "with great interest", a top government spokesperson said on Monday, on the last scheduled day for the exercises where Beijing has simulated striking the island.

China announced the three days of drills on Saturday, after Taiwan's President Tsai Ing-wen returned to Taipei following a meeting in Los Angeles with U.S. House of Representative Speaker Kevin McCarthy.

China claims democratically-governed Taiwan as its own territory and has never renounced the use of force to bring the island under Beijing's control.

Japan has long worried about China's military activities in the area given how close its southern islands are to Taiwan.

"The importance of peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait is not only important for the security of Japan, but also for the stability of the international community as a whole," Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno told reporters.

The southern Japanese island of Okinawa hosts a major U.S. air force base and last August when China staged war games to protest the visit of then-U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Taipei Chinese missiles landed within Japan's exclusive economic zone.

The United States has said it is also watching China's drills closely.

China's military simulated precision strikes against Taiwan in the second day of drills around the island on Sunday.

The People's Liberation Army's Eastern Theatre Command on Monday released a short video on its WeChat account showing a nuclear-capable H-6 bomber flying in what it said was the skies to the north of Taiwan.

"The missiles are in good condition," an unidentified voice says, as the video shows images from the cockpit.

"Start the fire control radar, lock on the target," another voice says, showing images of a missile under the aircraft's wing.

It then shows a pilot readying the fire control button for what it describes as a simulated attack, and then pressing the button, though it did not show any missiles being fired.

Taiwan's military has been scrambling fighters and sending warships to shadow China's forces, but said it would respond calmly and not provoke conflict.

On Monday morning, releasing a map of the previous 24 hours Chinese air force activities, it showed fighters again crossing the sensitive median line of the Taiwan Strait as well as four carrier-based Chinese J-15 fighters operating over the Pacific Ocean to Taiwan's east.

While the ministry did not provide details, Taiwan said last week it was tracking the Chinese carrier the Shandong to its east.

The ministry separately released pictures on Monday of mobile launchers for the Taiwan-made Hsiung Feng anti-ship missiles at an undisclosed location, as well as missile-armed fast attack boats at sea.

Four killed, nine injured in avalanche near Mont Blanc in French Alps

The aftermath of an avalanche at the Armancette glacier on Sunday. REUTERS

Four people have died and nine others have been injured in an avalanche southwest of Mont Blanc in the French Alps, interior minister Gerald Darmanin said on Sunday.

The avalanche occurred in the middle of the day on the Armancette glacier, he wrote on Twitter.

Those caught up in it were backcountry skiing in the mountains, said Emmanuel Coquand, spokesperson for the local authorities of Haute-Savoie, adding that they were still confirming the identity of the victims.

He said the avalanche was extensive, covering an area of one km by 500 metres (half a mile by 550 yards) at an altitude of 3,500 metres and that its causes are being investigated.

The glacier lies near the village and ski resort of Les Contamines-Montjoie.

It happened at the Armancette glacier near Mont Blanc in south-eastern France around midday on Sunday local time.

The local deputy mayor has confirmed that two of the dead were mountain guides.

Several injured people have been taken to hospital, and two people are still missing.

Jean-Luc Mattel, deputy mayor of the nearby Contamines-Montjoie village, said the avalanche was caused by a slab of snow detaching from the top of the mountain.

Search and rescue dogs and mountain-rescue teams worked all day to try to reach those who were caught, who are all thought to have been backcountry skiing.

The search for two missing people is expected to resume on Monday.

Mr Mattel said the risk level on Sunday morning was "reasonable" and the guides, both of them locals, were highly experienced.

"Today, we are mourning, and there is great sadness among all of us mountaineers, friends of Les Contamines, those who died are people we knew, and all our thoughts go out to their families," he said.

Mr Darmanin and French President Emmanuel Macron have also expressed their sympathy.

Before the incident, a nearby ski resort called Les Contamines-Montjoie posted a video on social media showing a huge wall of snow moving down from the Dômes de Miage, which the glacier is a part of.

It is not clear if the video shows the avalanche in which the people died.

One eyewitness told France Television that she was hiking just in front of the Armancette glacier when she saw the avalanche happening and took out her phone to film it.

"I had put the phone in front of me but then I was looking with my eyes more than in the lens and suddenly there was a huge, huge, huge cloud that came down to the bottom, it split into two," she said.

"I think of the families, I think of the people, of those who got out of it, who had the fright of their life, of those who are still there."

The nearby resort urged people to be careful if they were venturing off-piste - away from the prepared ski runs.

Officials have told the AFP news agency that a further avalanche could not be ruled out.

Two brothers died in an avalanche on the same glacier in 2014. They were both experienced mountaineers and had been properly equipped.

Tesla to build Shanghai factory to make Megapack batteries

A Tesla sign is seen at its factory in Shanghai, China, May 13, 2021. REUTERS/Aly Song

Tesla Inc (TSLA.O) is opening a factory in Shanghai, capable of producing ten thousand Megapack energy product per year, to supplement output of Megapack factory in California, the company said in a tweet on Sunday.

The news was first reported by Chinese state media outlet Xinhua.

Elon Musk's automaker will break ground on the plant in the third quarter and start production in the second quarter of 2024, Xinhua reported from a signing ceremony in Shanghai.

Complementing a huge existing Shanghai plant making electric vehicles, the new factory will initially produce 10,000 Megapack units a year, equal to around 40 gigawatt hours of energy storage, to be sold globally, Xinhua said.

With the new Shanghai plant, Tesla will take advantage of China's world leading battery supply chain to ramp up output and lower costs of its Megapack lithium-ion battery units to meet rising demand of energy storage globally as the world shifts to use more renewable energy.

Tesla generates most of its money from its electric car business, but Musk has committed to grow its solar energy and battery business to roughly the same size.

Chinese battery giant CATL (300750.SZ) has also been deepening its collaborations with clients including Tesla in energy storage battery supplies, which its Chairman Robin Zeng expected to have a larger market than batteries powering electric vehicles (EV).

Tesla currently has a Megafactory in Lathrop, California, capable of manufacturing 10,000 Megapacks per year.

The company began producing Model 3 cars in Shanghai in 2019 and now is capable of producing 22,000 units of cars per week.

Tesla planned to expand the Gigafactory Shanghai, its most productive automaking plant, to add an annual capacity of 450,000 units, Reuters reported last May.

The U.S. company, however, had grappled with rising inventory in Shanghai as demand started weakening in the third quarter, leading to aggressive price cuts in its major markets globally in January.

EV sales growth in China, the world's largest auto market, has slowed to 20.8% in the first two months of 2023, from 150% in the same period a year ago.

France: Marseille building collapses, fire stymies rescue

More than 100 firefighters worked against a ticking clock to extinguish flames deep within debris to save up to 10 people possibly buried after a building exploded and collapsed early Sunday in the French port city of Marseille.

Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said at least four people were known to live in the collapsed building and as many as 10 may have been there, though persistent flames and fears of further collapse prevented rescuers from being able to search for victims some 15 hours after the explosion.

“We cannot intervene in a very classic way,” Darmanin said during a visit to the site, about 11 hours after the five-story building collapsed shortly before 1 a.m. He said the fire was burning a few meters under the mounds of debris and that both water and foam represent a danger to victims’ survival.

It was not known if anyone was killed, or what triggered the blast, he said.

Firefighters, with the help of urban rescue experts, worked through the night and all day Sunday in a slow race against time. The delicate operation aimed to keep firefighters safe, prevent further harm to people potentially trapped in the rubble and not compromise vulnerable buildings nearby. Some 30 buildings in the area were evacuated, Darmanin said.

“We heard an explosion... a very strong explosion which made us jump, and that’s it,” said Marie Ciret, who was among those evacuated. “We looked outside the window at what was happening. We saw smoke, stones, and people running.”

The building that collapsed is located on a narrow street in the center of Marseille, adding to an array of difficulties for firefighters and rescue workers.

The intense heat made it impossible to send in dog teams to search. Robots were reportedly being deployed. A crane was brought in to clear rubble and firefighters were at one point seen in TV video hosing parts of the debris from a window in a nearby apartment as plumes of smoke rose skyward.

Marseille Mayor Benoit Payan said two buildings that share walls with the one that collapsed were partially brought down before one later caved in. It was among the evacuated structures. Six people were hospitalized.

A dog from the firefighters’ canine unit was seen sniffing debris, apparently at the neighboring building that caved in.

“We’re trying to drown the fire while preserving the lives of eventual victims under the rubble,” Lionel Mathieu, commander of the Marseille fire brigade, said during a televised briefing.

“Firefighters are gauging minute by minute the best way to put out the fire,” Payan, the mayor, said.

“We must prepare ourselves to have victims,” he said grimly.

An explosion was the “probable” cause of the building collapse, Payan said, but later stressed that “no conclusions can be drawn” without an investigation.

The collapsed building is located in an old quarter in the center of France’s second-largest city. The noise from the explosion resounded in other neighborhoods. Nearby streets were blocked off.

French President Emmanuel Macron and Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne both tweeted their thoughts for people affected and thanks to the firefighters.

In 2018, two buildings in the center of Marseille collapsed, killing eight people. Those buildings were poorly maintained — not the case with the building that collapsed Sunday after an explosion, the interior minister said.

Macron says Europe should not follow U.S. or Chinese policy over Taiwan

Macron refuses to back US line on China

Chinese President Xi Jinping before a meeting with Emmanuel Macron at the G20 in Bali, Indonesia, on November 15, 2022. LUDOVIC MARIN / AFP

Western Europe must pursue “strategic autonomy” and avoid getting dragged into confrontations on behalf of the US, Emmanuel Macron told Politico on Sunday. The French president has made similar assertions before, but has nevertheless followed Washington’s lead on Ukraine.

In an interview while traveling within China this week, Macron told the news site that “Europe faces a great risk” if it “gets caught up in crises that are not ours.”

“The paradox would be that, overcome with panic, we believe we are just America’s followers,” Macron said. “The question Europeans need to answer… is it in our interest to accelerate [a crisis] on Taiwan? No. The worse thing would be to think that we Europeans must become followers on this topic and take our cue from the US agenda and a Chinese overreaction.”

French President Emmanuel Macron said in comments published on Sunday that Europe had no interest in an acceleration of the crisis over Taiwan and should pursue a strategy independent of both Washington and Beijing.

Macron has just returned from a three-day state visit to China, where he received a warm welcome from President Xi Jinping. China began drills around Taiwan on Saturday in anger at President Tsai Ing-wen's meeting with the speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Kevin McCarthy on Wednesday.

China views democratically governed Taiwan as its own territory and has never renounced the use of force to bring the island under its control. Taiwan's government strongly objects to China's claims.

Macron said Europe should not accelerate the conflict but take the time to build its position as a third pole between China and the United States in comments to French newspaper Les Echos and Politico made during his visit to China.

"The worst thing would be to think that we Europeans must become followers on this topic and adapt to the American rhythm or a Chinese overreaction," Politico quoted him as saying.

Europe must better fund its defence industry, develop nuclear and renewable energy and reduce dependence on the U.S. dollar to limit its reliance on the United States, both media outlets quoted him as saying.

The joint interview was given on a flight on Friday between Beijing and the city of Guangzhou.

On Friday, an adviser to Macron told reporters in Guangzhou that Xi and Macron had a "dense and frank" discussion on the issue of Taiwan during their meetings.

Macron met with Chinese President Xi Jinping prior to the interview, concluding afterwards that if “Europeans cannot resolve the crisis in Ukraine, how can we credibly say on Taiwan: ‘watch out, if you do something wrong we will be there’?

Hours after Macron left Chinese airspace, Beijing launched military exercises around Taiwan, a move widely perceived as a response to the island’s pro-independence leader Tsai Ing-Wen holding a meeting with US lawmakers in California on Wednesday.

Relations between China and the US are at an historic low point, with US President Joe Biden suggesting on several occasions last year that Washington would intervene militarily to prevent Beijing reunifying Taiwan with the mainland. While world leaders including Macron are seemingly content to stay out of the Taiwan standoff, their insistence on pushing China to denounce Russia over its military operation in Ukraine has angered Xi, according to media reports and comments from Chinese officials.

The conflict in Ukraine has also largely scuppered discussions of “strategic autonomy” in Europe. While Macron and former German Chancellor Angela Merkel had talked extensively about lessening their reliance on the US in recent years, a change in power in Berlin saw Olaf Scholz’ government reverse decades of pacifist foreign policy to arm Ukraine at Washington’s behest, while both France and Germany have supplied armored vehicles, ammunition, and in Germany’s case, tanks, to Kiev’s forces.

With rising energy costs and inflation contributing to domestic instability, Macron has nevertheless backed all 10 of the EU’s anti-Russian sanctions packages. Despite speaking to Russian President Vladimir Putin on several occasions since last February, Macron has not managed to push the Kremlin toward halting its operation in Ukraine.

The French president “is still talking about the strategic independence of the EU,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov remarked last summer, adding “I am certain they will not be allowed to have it.”

"The president's feeling is that we should be careful there's no accident or an escalation of tensions (that could lead) to the Chinese going on the offensive," the Elysée adviser said.

Macron travelled to China with a 50-strong business delegation including Airbus and nuclear energy producer EDF, which signed deals during the visit.

50 years since flagship conservation project, India’s tiger population rises above 3,000

Tigers can be seen at the Ranthambore National Park in Sawai Madhopur, India. (File/AP)

India’s wild tiger population has risen above 3,000, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Sunday, as the country boosted conservation efforts and launched the International Big Cat Alliance to further protect the endangered species.

In 1973, India began a flagship conservation program known as Project Tiger to revive the country’s dwindling number of the big cats, after the wild population, estimated at around 40,000 at the time of independence from Britain in 1947, was found to have shrunk to about 1,800.

India’s tiger population has nearly doubled in the decades since to 3,167 as of Sunday, according to the 2022 tiger census released on the 50th anniversary of Project Tiger.

“India is the largest tiger range country in the world,” Modi said at a commemoration event in the southern Indian city of Mysuru. “The success of Project Tiger has been an achievement not only for India, but for the entire world.”

Modi, launching the International Big Cat Alliance, said conservation efforts of the tiger can be further strengthened through an international grouping.

“Wildlife protection is not a one-country issue but a universal one,” he said. “The focus of the International Big Cat Alliance will be on the conservation of the world’s seven major big cats, including (the) tiger, lion, leopard, snow leopard, puma, jaguar and cheetah.”

In India, years of extensive hunting and habitat loss had not only dwindled tiger numbers drastically, but led to local extinction of cheetahs in 1952.

In a related conservation effort, Project Cheetah was launched last September to reintroduce the world’s fastest land animal to the South Asian country. This began with the arrival of eight cheetahs from Namibia and then another 12 from South Africa.

“For decades, cheetahs had disappeared from India. We brought magnificent big cats from Namibia and South Africa,” Modi said. “Few days back in Kuno National Park, four beautiful cubs were born. After 75 years, cheetahs were born on Indian soil. That is a very auspicious start.”

Kota Ullas Karanth, a conservation zoologist and leading tiger expert based in the southern Indian state of Karnataka, said Project Tiger was “a unique conservation success globally, leading to a significant recovery of tigers until 2004.”

However, Karanth said there was a shift after 2004 due to poor quality science, changes in protection priorities and also misplaced funding across reserves. Project Tiger, he added, now must answer the challenge on how to shift the mission back to focus and “come up with a clear-headed, scientific action plan to meet a goal of 10,000 or more tigers.”

Twitter Dubs BBC as Government-Funded Media

The BBC has been labelled as 'government funded media' on Twitter (Image: Pa/Canva)

Tech billionaire Elon Musk's crusade for free speech firstly led him to initiate the series of "Twitter files" publications, where the mechanism of disinformation were unmasked. Now, he is branding multiple western media with a special for their ties to authorities.

Twitter has added a "Government Funded" tag on the BBC official account, predictably sparking criticism from the network.

"We are speaking to Twitter to resolve this issue as soon as possible. The BBC is, and always has been, independent. We are funded by the British public through the licence fee," a spokesman for the broadcaster said, as cited by media.

Previously, the same measure was applied to NPR, which is closely affiliated with US authorities and most infamous for trying to silence the Hunter Biden laptop saga, which shed some light on unpleasant details of the life of the POTUS' family.

Twitter identifies government-funded media as "outlets where the state exercises control over editorial content through financial resources, direct or indirect political pressures, and/or control over production and distribution." In other words, media that bandwagons a government agenda even without funding can be dubbed as state-controlled by the social media.

For its part, the BBC denied allegations of government funding, insisting it is an independent media and claiming that it is entirely funded by UK citizens via license fees included in taxes. However, it is the British government that sets the level of the fees, meaning that politicians can simply cut off the oxygen for "independent" journalists at any given moment.

Current BBC Chairman Richard Sharp is a former investment banker who built a successful career in JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs, but has nothing to do with journalism and media in general. Sharp previously acted as a private banker for former PM Boris Johnson, and even used to be the boss of incumbent Prime Minister Rishi Sunak at Goldman Sachs.

The BBC was established by Royal Charter back in 1927 and it is run by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, while the BBC's key donor is the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office - the British foreign ministry. The list of important sponsors also includes the United States Agency for International Development, European Union, NORAD - North American Aerospace Defense Command and even the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

The BBC has often been caught red-handed promoting Number 10's agenda, and enjoys vast support from the government in countering Russian soft power, including receiving a £34 million boost for the BBC World Service.