Six In The Morning Thursday March 13

US hits 'provocative' China move on Philippine ships

Washington (AFP) - The United States on Wednesday accused China of raising tensions by blocking two Philippines vessels as it urged freedom of navigation in the tense South China Sea.

The United States, a treaty-bound ally of Manila, said it was "troubled" by Sunday's incident in which China prevented movement of two ships contracted by the Philippine navy to deliver supplies and troops to the disputed Second Thomas Shoal.

"This is a provocative move that raises tensions. Pending resolution of competing claims in the South China Sea, there should be no interference with the efforts of claimants to maintain the status quo," State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said.

The Philippines on Tuesday summoned China's charge d'affaires, accusing Beijing of a "clear and urgent threat" to Manila's interests. Beijing countered that the ships "infringed China's territorial sovereignty" and violated a 2002 declaration of conduct in the South China Sea.

Google encrypts China searches, defying Great Firewall

March 13, 2014 - 1:35PM

Craig Timberg, Jia Lynn Yang

Google has begun routinely encrypting web searches conducted in China, posing a bold new challenge to that nation's powerful system for censoring the internet and tracking what individual users are viewing online.

The company says the move is part of a global expansion of privacy technology designed to thwart surveillance by government intelligence agencies, police and hackers who, with widely available tools, can view emails, search queries and video chats when that content is unprotected.

China's Great Firewall, as its censorship system is known, has long intercepted searches for information it deemed politically sensitive. Google's growing use of encryption there means that government monitors are unable to detect when users search for sensitive terms, such as "Dalai Lama" or "Tiananmen Square", because the encryption makes them appear as indecipherable strings of numbers and letters.

Somalia, peacekeepers launch offensive against militants: U.N.

BY DRAZEN JORGIC

NAIROBI 

(Reuters) - African Union peacekeepers and the Somali army have begun a major offensive against al Shabaab militants, the U.N.'s Special Representative to Somalia said on Wednesday, urging donors to fund logistical support.

U.N.-backed peacekeepers pushed the Islamist fighters out of Mogadishu in 2011, but the al Qaeda-linked group has continued to launch guerrilla-style attacks there and kept control of several towns and many rural areas.

A new offensive to capture the remaining territory had been expected ever since the U.N. Security Council in November authorized an increase of more than 4,000 peacekeepers for the African peacekeeping force known as AMISOM, from Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Burundi and Sierra Leone.

India's upstart party preaches anticorruption. What else does it stand for?

One of the founders of the Aam Aadmi Party resigned yesterday. The party's popularity has surged, but its candidates espouse an almost farcical range of policies.

By Raksha Kumar, Contributor

NEW DELHI

When Ashok Aggarwal yesterday quit India's newest political party, which he had helped set up in November 2012, he took a parting swipe at his erstwhile allies. 

“The movement seems to have become directionless, causing doubts in the minds of people and even in people like me,” he wrote in his resignation letter. The vision of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), or Common Man Party, founded on a staunch anticorruption platform, has “taken a back seat” to personal political ambitions, he charged. 

Mr. Aggarwal’s resignation showcases some of the difficulties the AAP faces in trying to channel popular frustration over political graft into success at India's upcoming national polls. The parliamentary elections in April and May are widely considered the most important in years and, given its surge in support, the AAP is expected to be in whichever coalition government emerges. But its slate of candidates is a grab bag of contradictions – leaving open the possibility that its pitch to voters may be undone by its differences. 

Southeast Asia

Mar 13, '14

Page 1 of 4
Election threatens democracy in Indonesia
By David Adam Stott 

Compared to its Asian neighbors, Indonesia was late to join the so-called third wave of democratization that began in southern Europe in the 1970s. After the fall of the authoritarian Suharto regime (1967-98) it successfully conducted free and fair elections in 1999, 2004 and 2009, becoming arguably the most politically free country in Southeast Asia. [1] 

A burgeoning civil society and a relatively open media have helped consolidate democracy but tensions remain between Suharto's legacy and the direction of Indonesia's democratic transition. In particular, Suharto-era oligarchs remain dominant and the armed forces retain significant influence even though their power appears to have declined and is less absolute than in much of Southeast Asia. 

The pluralism of Indonesia's national motto, Unity in Diversity, is also being jeopardized by the failure to safeguard religious



minorities against attacks from hardline Islamists. Against this backdrop Indonesia will administer its fourth round of post-Suharto elections in 2014, with legislative polls in April, followed by direct presidential elections in July. 

Urban explorers: Uncovering abandoned sex museums and decrepit amusement parks

By Kate Whitehead, for CNN

March 13, 2014 -- Updated 0230 GMT (1030 HKT)

Urban exploration is an edgy pastime.

But give it a Japanese name and this underground community, known for seeking out derelict and often inaccessible environments, sounds even more hardcore.

Haikyo is the Japanese word for ruins and is the term used to describe urban exploration ("urbex"), a growing trend for people to track down and often photograph society's crumbling edifices.

Urbex in Japan plays out in much the same way it does in the rest of the world -- explorers are recreational trespassers who seek out abandoned, man-made structures, where they have a good poke around as they soak up the atmosphere.

There are few hard and fast rules aside from the oft-quoted mantra -- "Take nothing but photographs, leave only footprints" -- but there are a few aspects that are unique to urban exploration in Japan.

Among these, abandoned amusement parks and sex museums.