logo
China tracks U.S. Navy transit through Taiwan Strait

China tracks U.S. Navy transit through Taiwan Strait

Yahoo12-02-2025

Feb. 12 (UPI) -- The U.S. Navy sent two vessels to transit the Taiwan Strait for the first time since President Donald Trump took office, and China tracked their progress through the disputed seaway.
The two vessels are the destroyer USS Ralph Johnson and the survey ship USNS Bowditch, which sailed through the Taiwan Strait on a north-to-south voyage lasting from Monday through Wednesday, USNI News reported.
The Johnson is an Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer while the Bowditch is a Pathfinder-class survey vessel.
"Ships transit between the East China Sea and the South China Sea via the Taiwan Strait and have done so for many years," Navy Commander Matthew, a spokesman for the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, said Wednesday in a statement.
"The transit occurred through a corridor in the Taiwan Strait that is beyond any coastal state's territorial seas," Comer said. "Within this corridor, all nations enjoy high-seas freedom of navigation, overflight and other internationally lawful uses of the sea related to these freedoms."
The Chinese Army, Navy and Air Force tracked the two U.S. Navy vessels during their three-day voyage.
"The U.S.'s actions sent the wrong signals and increased security risks," China's People's Liberation Army spokesman Capt. Li Xi said in a statement.
"The troops of the Chinese PLA Eastern Theater Command remain on high alert and all times to resolutely safeguard China's sovereignty and security as well as regional peace and stability," Xi said.
China routinely tracks U.S. Navy transits through the Taiwan Strait, which last occurred in October when the USS Higgins and Canadian frigate HMCS Vancouver undertook the voyage.
China has laid claim to the Taiwan Strait and Taiwan, which it considers to be part of China's sovereign territory.
The Taiwan Strait spans 111 miles and is considered an international waterway.
The U.S. Navy and naval forces of allied nations commonly traverse the strait to challenge China's territorial claims and affirm its status as an international waterway controlled by no nation.
China also routinely conducts military drills and overflights near Taiwan, and Chinese officials have declared their intent to re-unify with Taiwan by 2047.
The United States and Taiwan are closely allied via the Taiwan Relations Act, which enables the United States to provide Taiwan with arms to defend the island nation and aggression from China or other nations.
Former President Joe Biden repeatedly said the United States would intervene militarily if China were to attack Taiwan.

Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

Ireland Needs Fiscal Rule as Economic Risk Grows, Watchdog Warns
Ireland Needs Fiscal Rule as Economic Risk Grows, Watchdog Warns

Bloomberg

time9 minutes ago

  • Bloomberg

Ireland Needs Fiscal Rule as Economic Risk Grows, Watchdog Warns

The Irish government should commit to a domestic fiscal rule so it can better plan spending as the economy enters uncertain territory, the state's fiscal watchdog warned. A global trade war stoked by US President Donald Trump is likely to have an outsized impact on Ireland, the strategic tax base for several multinational firms. Sticking to a fiscal rule would set a sustainable growth rate for spending net of tax changes, the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council said in its June fiscal assessment report.

Trump vs. California
Trump vs. California

Yahoo

time14 minutes ago

  • Yahoo

Trump vs. California

The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. Under Donald Trump, the federal government is like a bad parent: never there when you need him but eager to stick his nose in your business when you don't want him to. The relationship between Trump and California has always been bad, but the past few days represent a new low. On Friday, CNN reported that the White House was seeking to cut off as much federal funding to the Golden State as possible, especially to state universities. That afternoon, protests broke out in Los Angeles as ICE agents sought to make arrests. By Saturday, Trump had announced that he was federalizing members of the National Guard and deploying them to L.A., over the objections of Governor Gavin Newsom, a Democrat. Americans have seen the National Guard called out to deal with the aftermath of riots in the past, but its involvement over the weekend represents a dramatic escalation. The National Guard was deployed to L.A. in 1992, during riots after the acquittal of four police officers in the beating of Rodney King. The scale of the destruction in that instance, compared with scattered violence in L.A. this weekend, helps show why Trump's order was disproportionate. (National Guard troops were also deployed in Minneapolis during protests after the murder of George Floyd, at the request of Governor Tim Walz. Trump has falsely claimed that he deployed the troops when Walz wouldn't.) In all of these recent cases, however, governors have made the call to bring out the National Guard. A president has not done so since 1965, when Lyndon Johnson took control of the Alabama National Guard from the arch-segregationist Governor George Wallace and ordered it to protect civil-rights leaders' third attempt to march from Selma to Montgomery. The situations aren't even closely analogous. Johnson acted only after local leaders had demonstrated that law enforcement would violently attack the peaceful marchers. By contrast, the Los Angeles Police Department and the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department have plenty of experience and sufficient man power to deal with protests of the weekend's size, and military forces are a riskier choice because they aren't trained as police. This morning, Newsom said he will sue the administration over the deployment. Elizabeth Goitein, a scholar at the Brennan Center for Justice who has written extensively in The Atlantic about the abuse of presidential emergency powers, told The Washington Post that Trump's order 'is completely unprecedented under any legal authority.' 'The use of the military to quell civil unrest is supposed to be an absolute last resort,' she added. Trump is doing this, as my colleague Tom Nichols writes, because he wants to provoke a confrontation with California. The president sees tough immigration enforcement as a political winner, but he also wants to use the face-off to expand the federal government's power to control states. Trump's vision is federalism as a one-way street: If states need help, they might be on their own, but if states believe that federal intervention is unnecessary or even harmful, too bad. If the president wants to shut off funds to states for nothing more than political retribution or personal animus, he believes that he can do that. (A White House spokesperson told CNN that decisions about potential cuts were not final but said that 'no taxpayer should be forced to fund the demise of our country,' a laughably vague and overheated rationale.) If states have been struck by major disasters, however, they'd better hope they voted for Trump, or that their governors have a good relationship with him. Some of these attempts to strong-arm states are likely illegal, and will be successfully challenged in court. Others are in gray areas, and still others are plainly legal—manifestations of what I call 'total politics,' in which officials wield powers that are legal but improper or unwise. This is a marked shift from the traditional American conservative defense of states' rights. Although that argument has often been deployed to defend racist policies, such as slavery and segregation, the right has also argued for the prerogative of local people to stave off an overweaning federal government. Conservatives also tended to view Lyndon Johnson as a boogeyman, not a role model. Kristi Noem, now the secretary of Homeland Security, bristled at the idea of federalizing the National Guard just last year, when she was serving as governor of South Dakota. But Trump's entire approach is to centralize control. He has pursued Project 2025's plan to seize new powers for the executive branch and to establish right-wing Big Government, flexing the coercive capacity of the federal government over citizens' lives. Tom Homan, Trump's border czar, has suggested that he wouldn't hesitate to arrest Newsom, and Trump endorsed the idea today. And Trump allies have proposed all sorts of other ways to force state governments to comply, such as cutting off Justice Department grants or FEMA assistance for states that don't sign up to enforce Trump's immigration policies, an issue where state governments do not traditionally have a role. This duress is not limited to blue states. Just last week, under pressure from the DOJ, Texas agreed to trash a 24-year-old law (signed by then-Governor Rick Perry, who later became Trump's secretary of energy) that gives in-state college tuition to some undocumented immigrants. If nothing else, the Trump era has given progressives a new appreciation for states' rights. Democrat attorneys general have become some of the most effective opponents of the Trump White House, just as Republican ones battled the Obama and Biden administrations. On Friday, Newsom mused about California withholding federal taxes. This is plainly illegal, but you can see where he's coming from: In fiscal year 2022, the state contributed $83 billion dollars more to the federal government than it received. If California is not getting disaster aid but is getting hostile deployments of federal troops, Californians might find it harder to see what's in it for them. No wonder one poll commissioned by an advocacy group earlier this year found that 61 percent of the state's residents thought California would be better off as a separate nation. Secession isn't going to happen: As journalists writing about aspiring red-state secessionists in recent years have noted, leaving the Union is unconstitutional. But the fact that these questions keep coming up is a testament to the fraying relationship between the federal government and the states. Trump's recent actions toward California show why tensions between Washington and the states are likely to get worse as long as he's president. Related: David Frum: For Trump, this is a dress rehearsal. Tom Nichols: Trump is using the National Guard as bait. Here are three new stories from The Atlantic: An uproar at the NIH The real problem with the Democrats' ground game Where is Barack Obama? Today's News President Donald Trump's travel ban is in effect, affecting nationals from 19 countries. Israel intercepted a high-profile aid ship en route to Gaza and detained those on board, including the activist Greta Thunberg. They have been brought to the Israeli port of Ashdod, according to Israel's foreign ministry. Officials from America and China met in London for a second round of trade-truce negotiations. Dispatches The Wonder Reader: Summer is heating up. Isabel Fattal compiles stories about an invention that changed the course of human life: the AC unit. Explore all of our newsletters here. Evening Read What's So Shocking About a Man Who Loves His Wife? By Jeremy Gordon The first time that someone called me a 'wife guy,' I wasn't sure how to react. If you are encountering this phrase for the first time and think wife guy surely must mean 'a guy who loves his wife,' you would be dead wrong. The term, which rose to popularity sometime during the first Trump administration, describes someone whose spousal affection is so ostentatious that it becomes inherently untrustworthy. 'The wife guy defines himself,' the critic Amanda Hess has written, 'through a kind of overreaction to being married.' The wife guy posts a photo of his wife to Instagram along with several emojis of a man smiling with hearts in place of his eyes. He will repeat this sort of action so many times that even his closest friends may think, Enough already. Read the full article. More From The Atlantic The Democrats have an authenticity gap. The Wyoming hospital upending the logic of private equity Helen Lewis: The Trump administration's nasty campaign against trans people Culture Break Read. These six books are great reads for anybody interested in the power of saying no. Examine. Money is ruining television, Sophie Gilbert writes. Depictions of extreme wealth are everywhere on the small screen, and, well, it's all quite boring. Play our daily crossword. P.S. My colleague Katherine J. Wu's latest wrenching dispatch from the dismantling of the federal scientific establishment was published today. Katherine writes about a letter from more than 300 National Institutes for Health officials criticizing the NIH's direction in the past few months. One official, who both signed the letter and spoke with Katherine anonymously, told her, 'We're just becoming a weapon of the state.' The official added, 'They're using grants as a lever to punish institutions and academia, and to censor and stifle science.' That quote struck me because it dovetails directly with the mindset that Trump demonstrates in his dealing with the states: Parts of the federal government are most valuable to him when they can be used not to provide services to citizens, but to serve as a cudgel. — David Stephanie Bai contributed to this newsletter. When you buy a book using a link in this newsletter, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting The Atlantic. Article originally published at The Atlantic

How the News Networks Are Covering the L.A. Immigration Protests
How the News Networks Are Covering the L.A. Immigration Protests

Yahoo

time14 minutes ago

  • Yahoo

How the News Networks Are Covering the L.A. Immigration Protests

The Los Angeles metropolitan area became the focal point of President Donald Trump's immigration enforcement campaign over the weekend as protestors and law enforcement clashed. Events on the ground led Trump to call in the National Guard, a move that inspired criticism-and now a lawsuit-from California's governor, Gavin Newsom. Broadcast and cable news networks quickly deployed reporters on the ground to cover the unrest, and are making programming and reporting adjustments to keep pace with the rapidly developing situation. [Note: This post will be updated as new events and coverage reports occur.] ABC News The network's team in L.A. includes correspondents Matt Gutman, Trevor Ault, Alex Stone, and multiplatform reporter Melissa Adan. CNN Kyung Lah and Julia Vargas Jones reported from L.A. over the weekend and the network announced Erin Burnett will anchor her show, Erin Burnett OutFront, live on location beginning Monday at 7 p.m. ET. Additional reporters in the region include Josh Campbell, Jason Carroll, Marybell Gonzalez, as well as Michael Yoshida for CNN Newsource, and Gonzalo Alvarado for CNN en Español. MSNBC The network began its coverage on Saturday during the 3 p.m. ET edition of Alex Witt Reports. MSNBC continued its breaking news coverage into the evening and throughout the day on Sunday. NBC News Steve Patterson, Jacob Soboroff, and David Noriega provided reporting over the weekend. Additionally, NBC News Now simulcast coverage from the network's flagship West Coast station KNBC from Sunday afternoon into the evening. NBC News added Liz Kreutz, Camila Bernal, Morgan Chesky, and Gadi Schwartz to its presence on Monday. NewsNation Nancy Loo, Mills Hayes, and Alex Caprariello are reporting live on the ground with coverage assistance from sister station, KTLA-TV. NewsNation's border correspondent, Ali Bradley, is joining L.A. coverage as well. Spectrum News and Spectrum Noticias The network is utilizing L.A.-based affiliate Spectrum News 1 for ongoing coverage from the city. Over at Spectrum Noticias, reporters Annie Mapp and Tania Martin Carrillo have been providing updates and perspectives from protesters and officials. Telemundo The network's chief anchor Julio Vaqueiro will anchor his Monday evening show out of Los Angeles.

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into the world of global news and events? Download our app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store