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LONDON — Even if the fighting in Gaza stopped now, about 8,000 more people could still die there over the next six months due to the public health crisis caused by the Israel-Hamas war, according to a report by independent researchers in the US and Britain.
THE Chinese Embassy in Manila yesterday said it welcomes the Senate inquiry on the alleged smear campaign initiated by Pentagon against Chinese COVID-19 vaccines at the height of the pandemic even as it also called on the Philippines to condemn such move by the United States.
MANILA: The Philippines is still seeking clarification from the Pentagon about a secret US propaganda operation that aimed to cast doubt among Filipinos about Chinese vaccines at the height of the COVID pandemic, a foreign ministry official said on tuesday. A Reuters investigation on June 14 detailed how the Pentagon ran a clandestine influence campaign in 2020 and 2021 to denigrate the Sinovac vaccine and other pandemic aid from China across the developing world. The effort was intended to counter what Washington then saw as China's growing geopolitical sway around the globe, including in Southeast Asia. It began under former President Donald Trump and ended months after President Joseph Biden took office. "We have not received an official and formal response yet on any confirmation, denial, or anything. We are waiting on that. We continue to monitor and ask for information," foreign affairs assistant Secretary Jose Victor Chan-Gonzaga told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which is investigating the US information campaign.
MANILA, Philippines — Sen. Imee Marcos is seeking an investiga- tion into the Pentagon’s alleged campaign to discredit the Chinese Sinovac vaccine at the height of the COVID pandemic.
MANILA/HONG KONG: Huddled in the presidential situation room in February last year, senior Philippines officials faced a stark choice. Military and intelligence leaders watched as coast guard officers showed photos of what the agency said was a military grade laser that China had pointed at a Philippines ship in disputed waters days earlier. Eduardo Ano, the national security adviser and chair of the South China Sea taskforce, had to decide whether to release the pictures and risk Beijing's ire, or refrain from aggravating his giant neighbour. "The public deserves to know," the retired general told the officials. "Publish the photographs."
THE Department of Health (DOH) yesterday said “appropriate” authorities should look into the alleged covert operation of the United States (US) to discredit the efficacy of Sinovac, the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) vaccine of China, at the height of the pandemic.
MANILA, Philippines — The Department of Health (DOH) is seeking an investigation on the alleged secret operation of the United States to discredit China’s COVID-19 vaccine Sinovac at the height of the pandemic.
JERUSALEM — An aide to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu confirmed on Sunday that Israel had accepted a framework deal for winding down the Gaza war now being advanced by US President Joe Biden, though he described it as flawed and in need of much more work. In an interview with Britain’s Sunday Times, Ophir Falk, chief foreign policy advisor to Netanyahu, said Biden’s proposal was “a deal we agreed to — it’s not a good deal but we dearly want the hostages released, all of them.” “There are a lot of details to be worked out,” he said, adding that Israeli conditions, including “the release of the hostages and the destruction of Hamas as a genocidal terrorist organization” have not changed. Biden, whose initial lockstep support for Israel’s offensive has given way to open censure of the operation’s high civilian death toll, on Friday aired what he described as a three-phase plan submitted by the Netanyahu government to end the war. The first phase entails a truce and the return of some hostages held by Hamas, after which the sides would negotiate on an open-ended cessation of hostilities for a second phase in which remaining live captives would go free, Biden said. That sequencing appears to imply that Hamas would continue to play a role in incremental arrangements mediated by Egypt and Qatar – a potential clash with Israel’s determination to resume the campaign to eliminate the Iranian-backed Islamist group. Biden has hailed several ceasefire proposals over the past several months, each with similar frameworks to the one he outlined on Friday, all of which collapsed. In February he said Israel had agreed to halt fighting by Ramadan, the Muslim holy month that began on March 10.
China's military closely monitored and "drove away" USS Halsey that entered the territorial waters of Paracel Islands in the South China Sea on May 10, the Southern Theater Command of the People's Liberation Army said in a statement on Friday.