INTERNATIONAL

Rape blossoms in full bloom are seen in front of Mount Fuji at Azumayama Park in Ninomiya, suburb of Tokyo on Jan 14. Visitors will enjoy some 60,000 rape blossoms until the middle of February. (Inset): A businessman does a stretch on a sunny bench in Hibiya Park in Tokyo on Jan 14. (AFP/AP)

Philippines

Bid clouds

Poe in ‘rustic’for blood linkKALIBO, Philippines, Jan 14, (RTRS): Philippines Senator Grace Poe returned this week to the rustic island where she was abandoned as an infant, forging ahead with her presidential campaign under a cloud of controversy as she strug-gles to prove she has Filipino blood.

Poe flew into Kalibo, one of the main towns on the island of Panay, for a whirlwind tour on Tuesday,

posing for self-ies with excited fans, meeting the local bish-op and doing radio inter-views to reach a wider rural audience.

“Part of the reason why I am really going around is to tell

the people that I am still very much in the race and I am not giving up,” Poe told Reuters before she embarked on her journey to Panay island.

Poe’s Dickensian life story has become one of the main narratives in the Philippines presidential elec-tion scheduled for May 9. Found in the Jaro Cathedral on Panay in 1968, she was eventually given to a Philippine couple who became prominent in cinema and politics in a country with a long history of political melodramas.

Her adoptive father, the late action movie hero Fernando Poe, would himself make an unsuccess-ful run for President in 2004, fend-ing off charges that he, too, did not have proper citizenship credentials for the presidency.

The first-term senator, moved to the United States during her univer-sity years and spent much of her adult life in Fairfax, Virginia, mar-rying an American of Philippine origin and working as a school teacher.

Legacy The 47-year-old mother of three

returned to the Philippines in late 2004 after Fernando Poe died and topped the Philippine Senatorial race in 2013, running on his legacy.

But last month, the Commission on Elections disqualified Poe on the grounds that she could not prove she has Filipino blood and failed to meet a 10-year residency require-ment. She has appealed that deci-sion to the Supreme Court.

“Loyalty to the country does not end with territory. Sometimes you are elsewhere but your heart is real-ly for the country,” Poe said in the interview.

To strengthen her case, she said she is awaiting the results of DNA tests involving three people who could be her relatives.

“It’s an emotional process to go through, especially when I consider my adoptive parents as my par-ents,” she said. “Although the DNA evidence is not necessarily a requirement of the law it will prob-ably make the process short for us.”

The Supreme Court will hear arguments next week before mak-ing a final judgment on whether she can stay in the election race.

Craving The controversy does not appear

to have dented Poe’s popularity among a public known for craving drama and putting more store in personality than policy. She remains in the lead in a December opinion poll for the presidential race.

Ramon Casiple, executive direc-tor of the Institute for political and electoral reform, said Poe’s deci-sion to stay on the campaign trail pending the court verdict would work in her favour.

“In the meantime, she will be an underdog. Filipinos love under-dogs,” he said.

Poe drew big crowds in Panay, an island in the Philippine archi-pelago that is home to Boracay Beach, one of the country’s most popular tourist destinations.

While she has been travelling on a borrowed private jet, Poe insists her pro-poor campaign is about inclusive growth and leaving no Filipino behind.

Dressed in her trademark white polo shirt, Poe promised to build on retiring President Benigno Aquino’s programmes of creat-ing jobs and building infrastruc-ture, which have helped propel one of Asia’s fastest growing economies.

Her support, she says, comes from recognition that she’s among a vast number of “new Filipinos” who have spent time overseas and shouldn’t be penalised for it.

“Your aspiration is really for the country to be better. I think that’s exactly what I’ve gone through -- a Filipino who may live elsewhere but who cares just as much for the country,” she said.

Remittances from Filipinos working overseas totalled almost $24 billion in 2014, and are one of the country’s biggest sources of foreign exchange.

Australia

A man was killed and a woman passen-ger suffered critical injuries when a falling tree crushed their car in the city’s west, which emergency services said took the initial brunt of the storm.

Photographs showed damaged shop fronts and roads left impassable by twisted metal and roofing panels. Authorities urged residents to stay indoors and keep away from windows.

“Substantial damage has been caused to

a number of homes, cars and power lines,” New South Wales state police said in a statement. (RTRS)

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Croc bites off woman’s arm: A crocodile has bitten off a woman’s arm in a “death roll” at a creek in a small north-western Australian town, sparking a hunt to trap and kill the animal on Thursday.

The woman, aged in her 60s, was at

Three Mile Creek in Wyndham, about 3,200 kilometres (2,000 miles) north of Perth, on Wednesday afternoon when the croc lunged, Western Australia’s Country Health Service told AFP.

She was flown to the Royal Darwin Hospital in neighbouring Northern Territory in a stable condition, and under-went surgery late Wednesday, St John Ambulance NT operations manager Craig Garraway said. (AFP)

Aussies resist US pressure: Australia said Thursday that it was among 40 countries urged by the United States to increase their military contributions in Iraq and Syria following the Paris attacks in November. But Australia told the US that its commitment would remain largely unchanged.

The news of Australian resistance comes as Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull pre-pares to make his first visit to Washington as Australia’s leader next week.

Defense Minister Marise Payne’s office said in a statement that the United States had asked 40 countries including European nations “to consider expanded contributions” to the US-led coalition fighting in the Middle East after the Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the Nov 13 attacks on Paris cafes, res-taurants, a sports stadium and a music hall that killed 130 people.

“Australia has considered the request from US Secretary of Defense Ash Carter in light of the substantial contributions we are already making to train Iraqi security forces and to the air campaign,” the state-ment said. (AP)

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Security scare at Opera House: Sydney’s iconic Opera House was cor-doned off Thursday in a security scare sparked by “information on social media” with people cleared from the harbour front precinct before police declared it safe.

Metal barriers were erected with onlookers kept about 150 metres (500 feet) away from the building, with police officers and security personnel guarding the area in a 90-minute lockdown.

Similar precautions were taken across the harbour at the suburb of Manly on Sydney’s northern beaches, which has a ferry linking it to Circular Quay where the Opera House is located.

“Following information on social media, police conducted an operation in the vicinity of the Opera House and Manly as a precautionary measure,” New South Wales police said in a statement (AFP)

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Severe weather kills 1: Severe thun-derstorms in Sydney on Thursday killed at least one person and injured another, police said, with winds of 122 kmph (76 mph) lashing Australia’s busiest airport, besides ripping down power lines and closing roads. Turnbull Payne

Poe

China

China military presence growing in South China Sea

Philippines urges patrol with USMANILA, Jan 14, (RTRS): The Philippines has asked the United States to hold joint naval patrols, a defence ministry spokesman said on Thursday, amid a territorial dispute with China in the South China Sea.

Foreign and defence ministers from the United States and the Philippines met in Washington this week for the second time in more than three years to discuss trade and security, focusing on the South China Sea.

“We are suggesting that we also patrol the area together,” Peter Paul Galvez told reporters in Manila. “There is a need for more collabora-tive presence in the South China Sea.”

China claims almost all the South China Sea, which is believed to have huge deposits of oil and gas, and has been building up facilities on islands it controls.

Brunei, Malaysia, Vietnam, Taiwan and the Philippines also have claims. Tension rose this month when China began test flights from Fiery Cross Reef, one of three artificial islands where Beijing has built airfields.

The Philippines has challenged Beijing at the arbitration court in The Hague, a case Beijing has not recog-nised.

China’s growing military presence in the South China Sea has drawn warnings from the United States that Beijing is seeking to exert control over one of the world’s most important sea lanes, but so far the shipping industry seems less concerned.

TradeBeijing has been increasingly asser-

tive in staking its claim to almost the whole of the sea, though which tril-lions of dollars of trade passes each year.

This month China landed its first test flights on a new 3,000 metre (10,000 ft) runway it has built on a reef in the Spratly Islands, drawing protests from Vietnam and the Philippines which have overlapping claims in the area.

Despite the diplomatic tensions, merchant shipping says operations are, as yet, unaffected.

“For ship owners, it’s business as usual,” said Captain Bjorn Hojgaard, chief executive officer at Anglo-Eastern Univan Group, one of the world’s biggest ship management companies.

“From our point of view, it’s just another military base. It’s only poli-tics, commercially it makes no differ-ence.”

The deep waters of the South China Basin between the Spratly and also-disputed Paracel Islands are the most direct shipping lane between northeast Asia’s industrial hubs of China, Japan and South Korea and Europe and the

China tells US not to interfere

Xinjiang to draft rules against extremismSHANGHAI, Jan 14, (RTRS): Legislators in China’s far-western region of Xinjiang will start drafting regulations this year against reli-gious extremism, which they blame for violent attacks in the country in recent years, the China Daily reported on Thursday.

Xinjiang’s legislature will also draft local implementation guide-lines for a new counterterrorism law, which the National People’s Congress passed in December, the newspaper said.

“Drafting local regulations on anti-terrorism and eliminating reli-gious extremism are the main focus of this year’s legislative work, which will provide solid legal sup-port for Xinjiang to combat terror-ism and religious extremism,” Nayim Yassen, director of the Standing Committee of Xinjiang’s regional People’s Congress, was quoted as saying.

He made the comments on the sidelines of the annual meeting of the congress in the region’s capital, Urumqi, the newspaper said.

Hundreds of people have been killed over the past few years in resource-rich Xinjiang, strategically located on the borders of central Asia, in violence between the Muslim Uighur people who call the region home and ethnic majority Han Chinese.

The government has blamed

the unrest on Islamist militants, though rights groups and exiles say anger at Chinese controls on the religion and culture of the Uighurs is more to blame for the unrest. China denies any repres-sion in Xinjiang.

In a New Year’s address pub-lished in the Xinjiang Daily, Xinjiang’s Communist Party boss, Zhang Chunxian, said the religious atmosphere had become markedly less radical last year and the gov-ernment was broadly successful in maintaining stability.

Last year, the Xinjiang parlia-ment approved a ban in Urumqi on the wearing of Islamic veils in pub-lic, the China Daily said.

In late 2014, Xinjiang said it had banned the practice of religion in government buildings and people would be prohibited from wearing, or forcing others to wear, clothes or logos associated with religious extremism.

Also:BEIJING: China on Thursday criti-cised the United States for calling for the release of several detained human rights lawyers, asking it to refrain from interference, in the lat-est instance of friction over a thorny issue in relations.

China has arrested nine lawyers, most of them on subversion charg-es, in recent days, rights group

Chinese Human Rights Defenders says. Subversion charges are com-monly levelled against critics of one-party rule.

The United States is concerned about China’s ongoing crackdown on human rights lawyers, US State Department Deputy spokesman Mark Toner said on Wednesday.

“The United States urges China to drop these charges and immedi-ately release these lawyers, and others like them, detained for seek-ing to protect the rights of Chinese citizens,” Toner told a regular news briefing.

On Thursday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei told a daily briefing, “Foreign govern-ments should respect China’s judi-cial sovereignty and refrain from interfering”.

The issue of human rights has long been a source of tension between the world’s two largest economies.

Last July, Chinese police detained and questioned hundreds of human rights lawyers in an unprecedented nationwide sweep, rights groups say.

Separately, referring to a Swedish man China detained last week on suspicion of acts detri-mental to national security, Hong reiterated that China would facili-tate Swedish embassy officials in carrying out consular work.

Middle East.The geography of the region offers

few economically viable alternative routes for large oil tankers, dry-bulk ships and container vessels.

Reuters shipping data shows that, counting just Very Large Crude Carrier (VLCC) super-tankers, some 25 VLCCs are passing between the Spratly and Paracel islands at any time, with enough capacity to carry the equivalent of about 11 days’ worth of Japanese demand.

The US military, which remains by far the most powerful naval force in the region, has warned that Beijing is seeking to establish a level of de facto control over the South China Sea that threatens freedom of navigation for international shipping.

Speaking to reporters aboard a US aircraft carrier in Japan last week, Vice Admiral Joseph Aucoin, com-mander of the US Seventh Fleet, said that already “we are kind of using China national rules for international (navigation)” in the sea.

Admiral Scott Swift, commander of the US Pacific Fleet, had said in December that ships nearby these islands were now “subject to super-fluous warnings that threaten routine commercial and military opera-tions”.

Chinese President Xi Jinping said in November that freedom of navigation for shipping would never be a problem in the South China Sea.

Tensions in the South China Sea have risen over the last year as China has stepped up construction and recla-mation to create man-made islands on reefs and atolls it controls.

“It seems that the new strategically located islands reportedly constructed by China would give China more security leeway in the disputed waters and make it difficult for other forces to assert sea control,” said Jonathan Moss, head of transport at law firm DWF, who acts for insurers and ship-ping companies.

Michael Frodl, of the US-based consultancy C-Level Global Risks,

said China’s goal was to use “air power to project into the waters” around the artificial islands.

So far, however, there are few signs that the commercial shipping is being affected.

“Ships have the right of free pas-sage... and even if China does eventu-ally take over the South China Sea, this shouldn’t affect the passage of merchant ships,” said Arthur Bowring, managing director of the Hong Kong Shipowners’ Association, whose members operate or manage about 8 percent of the global merchant fleet.

Khalid Hashim, managing director of Precious Shipping , one of Thailand’s largest dry cargo ship own-ers, said that “despite all the sabre-rattling by the USA” shipping activity in the South China Sea remained nor-mal.

“I don’t think the current tensions will escalate any further,” he said, adding that the region’s shipping lanes were too important for China’s econo-my to be disrupted.

ARAB TIMES, FRIDAY, JANUARY 15, 2016

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Employees of a supermarket cover their heads with shopping baskets during an anti-disaster drill in Kobe, western Japan on Jan 14. About 290,000 people took part in the drill Thursday, three days ahead of Jan 17 to mark the 21st anniversary of the Great Hanshikin Earthquake that killed more than 6,400 people in 1995. On Thursday, A strong earth-quake struck just off the coast of Hokkaido in northern Japan. No tsu-nami warning was issued. There were no immediate reports of injuries

or damage. (AP)