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Australia’s Foreign Minister Penny Wong speaks at the 57th ASEAN Foreign Ministers' Meeting at National Convention Center, in Vientiane, Laos

SYDNEY, July 27 (Reuters) - Australia said on Saturday it had signed a A$2.2 billion ($1.4 billion) four-year contract with state-owned submarine builder ASC to upgrade the navy's Collins class submarines.

The "sustainment contract" is part of a government pledge to keep the diesel-electric powered Collins-class fleet "a potent strike and deterrence capability", Defence Industry Minister Pat Conroy said in a statement.

The contract will be "directly ensuring job security for more than 1,100 highly skilled workers", with the work carried out in the towns of Henderson in Western Australia and Osborne in South Australia, Conroy said.

MANILA, July 27 (Reuters) - The Philippines on Saturday completed unimpeded a resupply trip to its troops at a disputed South China Sea shoal, its foreign ministry said, the first such mission under a new arrangement with China aimed at cooling tensions.

The Philippines and China last week announced a "provisional agreement" on Manila's resupply missions to its contingent of troops on a naval ship grounded on the Second Thomas Shoal, after repeated clashes between vessels that have caused regional concerns about an escalation of hostilities.

The Philippines intentionally immobilised the now rusty former U.S. vessel at the shoal in 1999 in an attempt to claim it as its territory and has since maintained a small rotational troop presence there, infuriating China, which has coast guard stationed in the area.

An “egregious” refusal by successive Canadian governments to honor a key treaty signed with Indigenous nations made a “mockery” of the deal and deprived generations of fair compensation for their resources, Canada’s top court has ruled.

But while the closely watched decision will likely yield billions in payouts, First Nation chiefs say the ruling adds yet another hurdle in the multi-decade battle for justice.

In a scathing and unanimous decision released on Friday, Canada’s supreme court sharply criticized both the federal and Ontario governments for their “dishonourable” conduct around a 174-year-old agreement, which left First Nations people to struggle in poverty while surrounding communities, industry and government exploited the abundant natural resources in order to enrich themselves.

“For almost a century and a half, the Anishinaabe have been left with an empty shell of a treaty promise,” the court wrote in the landmark ruling.

After weeks of Israeli bombardment left them with nowhere else to go, hundreds of Palestinians have ended up in a former Gaza prison built to hold murderers and thieves.

Yasmeen al-Dardasi said she and her family passed wounded people they were unable to help as they evacuated from a district in the southern city of Khan Younis towards its Central Correction and Rehabilitation Facility.

They spent a day under a tree before moving on to the former prison, where they now live in a prayer room. It offers protection from the blistering sun, but not much else.

Israel has said it goes out of its way to protect civilians in its war with the Palestinian militant group Hamas, which runs Gaza and led the attack on Israel on Oct. 7 that sparked the latest conflict.

Iranian-designed Shahed attack drones, which fly to their target and detonate on impact, have become a staple of Russian aerial attacks since they began being used in the first year of Russia's full-scale invasion launched in February 2022.

The new Russian drones with cameras do not carry explosives but closely resemble regular Shahed drones and fly with groups of them, Cherniak said.
The second new type of drone contains no explosive charge or only a small one and is being used as a decoy, Cherniak added.

A Russian vessel is suspected of a territorial violation of Finland’s marine area in the Gulf of Finland, an arm of the Baltic Sea, the Finnish defense ministry said on Friday.

The suspected violation, which the Finnish Border Guard is currently investigating, took place in the eastern part of the Gulf of Finland Friday afternoon, a brief government statement said.

The ministry didn’t disclose further details of the incident but the Finnish newspaper Helsingin Sanomat said, citing information from border officials, that the suspected vessel is the Russian Navy’s hydrographic survey ship, the Mikhail Kazansky.

The Russian vessel, used among other things for underwater topography and repair work, entered into Finnish territorial waters south of the town of Hamina without authorization just after noon Friday, and the violation lasted about seven minutes, the newspaper said.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/17975216

"Every day that we continue supplying weapons and munitions to Israel is another day that women are shredded by our bombs and children are murdered with our bullets."

Fires on French railway tracks have delayed journeys for 800,000 travelers in what the transport minister described as “coordinated attacks of malicious intent.”

A co-ordinated arson attack on the French rail system is turning the first weekend of the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris into a nightmare for hundreds of thousands of travelers. 

French rail company SNCF announced on Friday its high-speed train system had been hit by "deliberate arson attacks to damage [its] facilities" causing delays and cancellations which are expected to last all weekend.

The disruptions are affecting trains heading East, North and West of Paris, and travelers have been asked to postpone their plans.

Vice Admiral Eduardo Santos was in charge of the Philippine navy at a time of ‘creeping invasion’ by China. Then along came an unusual idea

More than 25 years ago, the BRP Sierra Madre was sent off for one final, secret voyage. In the darkness of night, the Philippine navy ship sailed from Manila Bay into the remote waters of the South China Sea. Then, to the surprise of many, it ran aground, and hasn’t moved since.

“I did it as quietly as I could, so I would not raise any hackles among anybody,” says retired Vice Adm Eduardo Santos, who was chief of the navy at the time. To him, it was a case of mission accomplished. His plan had been to run the ship on to a small reef known as Second Thomas Shoal, one of the world’s most fiercely contested maritime sites, without China knowing. The move would help the Philippines defend the area for decades to come.

“The first reaction was the Chinese ambassador knocking at my office early in the morning when they heard about it … I said, ‘well, it was supposed to be on the way [to a mission], and it ran aground’,” says Santos. With hindsight, Santos, who is now 80, can smile about it, though he, more than most, is keenly aware of how delicate the issue remains.

If the shoal had been left unoccupied, it would have been lost to Beijing, he says, because the Philippines was already facing a “creeping invasion” by China.

Beijing had already seized Mischief Reef, an atoll just 21 nautical miles away, despite being within the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone (EEZ) – an area that stretches 200 nautical miles from a state’s coast, giving it special rights to build or exploit resources in the area. Second Thomas Shoal is also with the Philippines’ EEZ.

Bangladesh’s prime minister Sheikh Hasina is under fire for “shedding crocodile tears” over damage caused to a railway station during a protest against her government that left more than 150 people dead.

Ms Hasina was seen wiping away tears in pictures taken during her visit to a metro station in Mirpur, as social media users lambasted her for what they saw as her apparent lack of empathy for the victims of violence.

Police fired rubber bullets, released teargas, and threw sound-grenades in an effort to disperse tens of thousands of protesters who came out onto the streets to rail against job quotas. The government denied that any live rounds had been fired, but hospital sources said dead and injured people had wounds from bullets and shotgun pellets.

Rights groups and critics accuse Ms Hasina of becoming increasingly autocratic during her 15 years in power. They say her time in office has been marked by mass arrests of political opponents and activists, forced disappearances, and extrajudicial killings. She denies all of these charges.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/18426493