SYDNEY:  , China issued a warning on Friday ( Feb 21 ) of potential “live fire” naval drills in international waters off Australia’s eastern coast but gave little prior notice, disrupting commercial air flights, the Australian government said. Beijing did not comment on whether live ammunition was used, but insteadContinue Reading
Discussed: 20 Feb 2025 at 09: 38
Parliament presidentPale Muhamad Noor Mathawill meet whips from the government, opposition, and Senate to determine whether a motion seeking a judicial review of some controversial charter amendment bills is urgent.
The decision Pheu Thai Party ( Pheu Thai ) filed the issue, asking parliament to request a Constitutional Court ruling regarding whether parliament has the authority to completely amend the contract without conducting a first-ever election.
According to Mr. Wan, the whip ‘ scheduled conference is to discuss the joint sessions ‘ schedule and explain the chamber’s priorities in order to avoid any potential conflict or disturbance.
This is to avoid the political sessions from collapsing after the joint sessions to examine two constitutional amendment bills, which were aborted because there was no quorum present.
Wisut Chainaroon, a member of the Pheu Thai list and MP, said on Wednesday that the outcome of the whips meeting with Mr. Wan may determine when the action would be put up for a vote.
He stated that he anticipates the cabinet’s essential matters to be put on the plan after the combined conference has finished.
Before March 9, these issues need legislative approval.
He said,” I understand that the charter issues may not be ready for the upcoming joint sitting, and they must wait until after that.”
Following the collapse of the mutual meetings on February 13 and 14, due to divergent viewpoints among parliamentarians, Mr. Wisut proposed and signed the contract amendment-related motion.
Some argued that attempting to amend the contract to permit a full rewrite of the law could violate the 2021 decision, which requires a vote to determine whether voters wanted a new law first.
Others contend that the legislature’s role is to take into account and vote on both drafts of constitutional amendments in order to build the requirements for creating a Constitution Drafting Assembly by adding Section 15/1.
A referendum may be held to see if the community agrees with the constitutional amendment after parliament approves it.
Described: 20 Feb 2025 at 09: 38
Parliament presidentPale Muhamad Noor Mathawill meet whips from the government, opposition, and Senate to determine whether a motion seeking a judicial review of some controversial charter amendment bills is urgent.
The decision Pheu Thai Party asked parliament to ask for a Constitutional Court decision regarding whether congress has the authority to completely amend the contract without conducting a first-ever referendum.
According to Mr. Wan, the whip ‘ scheduled meeting is to discuss the joint sessions ‘ schedule and explain the chamber’s priorities in order to avoid any potential conflict or disturbance.
This is to stop the political sessions from collapsing after the joint sessions to examine two constitutional amendment bills, which were aborted because there was no quorum present.
Wisut Chainaroon, a member of the Pheu Thai list and MP, said on Wednesday that the outcome of the whip ‘ meeting with Mr. Wan did determine when the action would be put up for a vote.
He stated that he anticipates the cabinet’s essential matters to be put on the plan after the combined conference has finished.
Before March 9, these issues need political acceptance.
” I understand that the contract issues may not be ready for the upcoming shared sitting, and they must wait until after that,” he said.
Following the collapse of the combined meetings on February 13 and 14, according to divergent viewpoints among parliamentarians, Mr. Wisut proposed and signed the contract amendment-related motion.
Some argued that changing the charter to allow a complete update of the Constitutional Court’s 2021 decision, which requires a vote to determine whether voters wanted a new law first, was in violation.
Others contend that Part 15/1, which would make a Constitution Drafting Assembly, will be used to add Part 15/1 to establish the requirements for drafting a new constitution, making it the parliament’s responsibility to consider and voting on both legal amendment documents.
A vote should be held to find out whether the government agrees with the constitutional amendment once it has been approved by parliament.
Described: 20 Feb 2025 at 04: 00
Pale Muhamad Noor Matha, president of the parliament, will meet with whips from the government, the opposition, and the Senate to decide whether to request a judicial review of some contentious charter amendment bills is necessary.
The decision Pheu Thai Party ( Pheu Thai ) filed the issue, asking parliament to request a Constitutional Court ruling regarding whether parliament has the authority to completely amend the contract without conducting a first-ever vote.
According to Mr. Wan, the whip ‘ scheduled conference is to discuss the joint sessions ‘ schedule and explain the chamber’s priorities in order to avoid any potential conflict or disturbance.
This is to prevent the collapse of political meetings after the joint lessons to consider two constitutional amendment charges were postponed last Thursday and Friday because there was no consensus present.
According to Pheu Thai list-MP Wisut Chainaroon, the outcome of the whip ‘ meeting with Mr. Wan will determine when the activity will be put up for a ballot.
He stated that he anticipates the cabinet’s essential matters to be put on the plan after the combined conference has finished.
Before March 9, these issues need to be approved by the legislative body.
He said,” I understand that the charter issues may not be ready for the upcoming joint sitting, and they must wait until after that.”
Following the collapse of the combined meetings on February 13 and 14, according to divergent opinions among parliamentarians regarding the possibility of the meeting continuing, Mr. Wisut proposed and signed the charter amendment-related motion.
Some argued that attempting to amend the contract to permit a full update of the law could violate the 2021 decision, which requires a vote to determine whether voters wanted a new law first.
Others contend that the legislature’s role is to take into account and vote on both drafts of constitutional amendments in order to create the requirements for creating a Constitution Drafting Assembly by adding Section 15/1.
A vote should be held to see if the community agrees with the constitutional amendment after parliament approves it.
The State Administration Council ( SAC ) junta reversing its downward spiral in the wake of Myanmar’s military coup’s fourth anniversary, decisive Chinese intervention to rescue the regime and its off-ramp election strategy, resistance factions, ethnic and Bamar, sour relations, and bizarre combinations of all the above.
If there’s one word that adequately sums up the war in 2025, it’s “fluidity,” the uncertainty of a fragile balance of common weaknesses and antagonisms that leaves no room for comfortable forecast. Save, that is, for the clarity of the region’s accelerating financial decline and humanitarian crisis.
However, two starkly contrasting floor realities stand out against this shifting landscape. How they communicate with one another in the upcoming months will almost certainly determine the outcome of the conflict, possibly quickly and in a way that will probably foil Beijing’s efforts to implement a Pax Sinica over Myanmar.
The success of racial armies, or so-called cultural revolution organizations, has been the first and most widely praised for using normal forces and manoeuvre warfare to largely secure their own homelands.
Since the beginning of” Operation 1027″ in late 2023, the Kokang army in northeastern Shan state, its ally and neighbor, theTa’ang National Liberation Army ( TNLA ), the Kachin Independence Army (KIA ) in Kachin state, and, most strikingly, the Arakan Army ( AA ) in Rakhine have all inflicted crushing defeats on SAC forces to carve out autonomous territories.
The ethnic Bamar resistance in Myanmar’s opposition to developing a unified strategy to move a four-year-old guerrilla conflict waged by a plethora of local Peoples Defense Forces ( PDFs ) to the next level of mobile warfare waged by regular forces that might defeat the national army has been a different reality.
The anti-coup National Unity Government’s Ministry of Defense ( MoD ), a blatantly bureaucratic rather than operational body hampered by a lack of resources ( waffen and money ) and by the near inapprehension of imposing top-down command-and-control on the spontaneous upsurge of popular revolt that characterized the Spring Revolution in 2021, is at the center of the fault.
However, a lack of military experience, tactical vision, and specific personality have also contributed to a floor circumstance that appears unlikely to change in the near future.
Army garrisons with weak morale but rich firepower are more or less firmly buried into urban centers in today’s situation. While somewhat well-armed PDFs are increasingly able to tactically defeat regime forces in freed but institutionally dispersed hinterlands, they remain fundamentally devoid of any overall force structure or corporate plan to remove and defeat them.
The transitional areas where liberated racial territories border the national periphery and border the Myanmar heartland are the key to unlocking this impasse are undoubtedly those keys. These regions have now started to serve as defense buffer zones for tribal borderlands in the face of a perilous future.
ERO buffer zone scheme, which was a natural extension of the temple and education offered to Bamar children fleeing SAC crime in 2021, has involved cultural forces arming, supplying, and directing Bamar PDFs in and out of their own territories. It has also seen ERO products fighting alongside allied PDFs in Myanmar’s plains.
The northern Sagaing place, where the KIA has built up PDFs and participated in the record of Kawlin and Pinlebu, has seen the most buffer zone operations since 2022.
The TNLA’s involvement in mentoring and supporting the Mandalay PDF and moving with it into northern townships of the Mandalay region has been even more impressive in terms of cultural support for a second, somewhat large PDF pressure operating under cultural command-and-control.
The Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA ) has since expanded operations northward on both sides of the river to Toungoo, the military’s Southern Regional Military Command ( RMC), to expand its reach beyond Karen state in the Sittaung valley of east Bago.
The most recent buffer zone established by the AA, first in the Arakan Yoma range’s hills bordering the Magwe and Bago regions with allied Chin PDFs, and then, since January this year, in townships inside the delta region of Ayeyarwady, is arguably the most crucial buffer zone to emerge.
The former area has a view of the Ayeyarwady River valley and Myanmar’s industrial heartland, where the military’s Directorate of Defense Industries ( better known by its Burmese acronym, Ka Pa Sa ), has long run a network of plants whose production of a wide range of munitions ultimately keeps the military on the ground.  ,
Abutting Yangon region, the delta zone constitutes the economically crucial rice basket of Myanmar, an ethnically mixed area where Bamar, Karen and Rakhine communities co-exist and where, in the past, the KNLA has had deep roots.
The rapid response that the army command in Naypyidaw has responded to recent AA probing attacks reflects the strategic importance of both regions. A sizable tactical operations group, consisting of 360 members from the Meiktila-based 99th Light Infantry Division, was dispatched in mid-January to stop the AA’s advance across the Arakan Yoma, but by the first week of February, it had lost the majority of its workforce.
As the southwestern RMC attempted to stop AA advances along the Bay of Bengal coast and through the hills toward Thabaung township, reinforcements including a significant armored contingent from Hmawbi were rushed from the Yangon command in early January. Fighting is reportedly ongoing.
It seems unlikely that AA will attempt to storm large population centers in the Bamar heartland, such as Pathein in the Delta or Pyay in the Ayeyarwady valley, at this point in the conflict.
Other allied EROs are subject to similar restrictions. For instance, as part of Beijing’s wider plan to at least ensure the regime’s survival until it can hold the stage-managed elections it has touted since the coup, the TNLA is currently under heavy Chinese diplomatic pressure to reach a ceasefire with the SAC in the north.
However, in what might be referred to as a “buffer zone-plus” strategy, increased AA logistical support for allies reinforced by the insertion of tactical advisory teams and possibly even regular units is likely to result in defensive buffers being extended into areas of offensive guerrilla operations.  ,
Given the strikingly short distances between the Delta rice basket and the strategically important Ayeyarwady Valley industrial belt, which are both strategically and economically important, this development has the potential to significantly shorten the war.
It is still up for debate whether the regime could withstand the disruption, let alone the loss, of significant industrial and agricultural centers if it were occurring at the same time as the stepped-up pressure in and beyond the KIA, TNLA, and KNLA, without acknowledging the need for a change of course.
It’s impossible to say when such a turning point will occur, including the resignation of SAC supremo and commander of the armed forces, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, or the initiation of negotiations, or both.  ,
However, it might happen before the SAC’s electoral ploy tentatively scheduled for the end of this year as large-scale guerrilla operations led by powerful EROs are now threatened the core territories of a politically and economically bankrupt regime.  ,
SINGAPORE: Starting from Saturday ( Feb 15 ), more than 200 large companies and small and medium enterprises ( SMEs ) will participate in a phishing exercise for two weeks.
This phishing exercise, a first-time partnership between the Ministry of Defence ( MINDEF ) and the Singapore Business Federation ( SBF),  , is part of this year’s Exercise SG Ready.
In response to potential cyberattacks and other problems, it advises businesses to” develop their cyber endurance and to evaluate their business continuity plans,” MINDEF said on Saturday.  ,
The exercise , may involve organizations from various fields including manufacturing, wholesale and retail business, and building, it added.
Exercise SG Ready, a global Total Defence training, was launched last year in line with the 40th celebration of Singapore’s regional military strategy.
Overall defence in Singapore encompasses the military, legal, economic, social and psychological realms, with the newest, seventh pillar of electronic military added in 2019.
According to MINDEF, the goal of Exercise SG Ready is to get people, areas, and companies to consider whether they are prepared for problems and to implement plans for disruptions in response to them, according to a news release.  ,
This year’s exercise is co-led by MINDEF and the Energy Market Authority ( EMA ), with an emphasis on improving Singaporeans ‘ readiness for power outages.
More than 1, 000 organizations, including schools, communities, companies, and government agencies, will carry out various disturbance or preparedness activities over the course of two weeks. This is more than the 800 organizations that took part next month.
At the memorial celebration held at the SBF Center on Saturday, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Trade and Industry Gan Kim Yong kicked off the next version of Exercise SG Ready.  ,
Mr. Gan stated in his speech that Singapore must be on top of the threat landscapes both within the community and in the online world, and put in place strong measures to safeguard data, devices, and systems online.  ,
Businesses must also keep fighting economic force while also creating new business opportunities in the area, he said.
People in Singapore has even “make the work” to enhance their social network with those of other ethnicities, religions and countries, Mr Gan added.  ,
Singapore’s strong and capable armed forces ( SAF ) are still used as a deterrent to conventional war, but there is a pressing need to strengthen its defenses against the growing threat of AI-enabled cyberattacks, which could hiccup critical infrastructure, stifle vital services, and undermine public trust.
In this post-truth time, messages that appeal to emotion carry more influence than fact-based people. As AI resources evolve, propaganda campaigns that undermine social cohesion will become more complex.
Singapore has done nicely in maintaining social unity and confidence in public establishments, which are vital to national endurance. Through community organizations, it may continue to promote internet literacy among the general public and foster a sense of group.
Singapore has returned to civility after the COVID-19 crisis, which was described by therefore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong as” the issue of a technology”. Singapore: Is it prepared for the upcoming problems?
The state has the “hardware” in the form of sensible policies, powerful corporations, and back-up strategies to cope with disturbance. The more difficult task is reviving the “heartware” in the form of maintaining public assistance and personal relationship with Total Defense.
By presenting participants with real-world challenges, initiatives like YouthxHack 2024 and Important Infrastructure Defence Exercise 2024 have helped to develop leaders in security. They are encouraging indicators that Overall Defence will continue to be important in its center years and beyond.
The North-South Line ( NSL), North East Line, and Circle Line MRT disruptions have been the focus of three major MRT disruptions in less than a week, according to the Land Transport Authority ( LTA ) and train operators SMRT and SBS Transit.
In a statement on Thursday ( Feb 13 ), LTA said it takes a serious view of the incidents, adding that the three disruptions were unrelated.
The company outages occurred on Feb 7, Feb 10 and Feb 11, affecting peak-hour rides.
An executive car broke down at a railroad crossing in Bishan Depot after performing routine maintenance work on the North-South Line at around 5.15 am.
This prevented the introduction of customer service for railways.
” When SMRT tried to move the stalled car using a recovery coach, some of the wheels of the executive car came off the wires”, LTA said on Thursday, detailing preliminary findings of investigations.
Some carriages from the East-West Line were redirected by SMRT to the NSL to allow the NSL to begin operating.
On both lines, this made it possible for train service to run daytime, with a longer break between carriages when it was most popular, according to LTA.
During the day, travellers were advised to add up to 10 days of train travel moment between Jurong East and Ang Mo Kio facilities in the direction of Jurong East.  ,
SMRT provided complimentary standard and crossing bus services along the route between Woodlands and Bishan to increase train power during the morning peak.
The disturbance lasted until the hour. By 5:30 p.m., the engineering vehicle that had stalled allowed SMRT to start trains from Bishan Depot and gradually restore evening top service.  ,
The organization stated that LTA and SMRT are conducting a thorough research into the source of this incident.
Additionally, it stated that the affair is” fully different” from the EWL disruption from September of last year when an empty coach derailed while returning to the station.
The September  , East-West Line disturbance went on for six weeks, affecting around half a million people each day.
A faulty coach part was dropped onto the songs, which caused extensive damage to the tracks and other gear. Service between nine channels from Boon Lay to Queenstown was affected by this.
To reduce flooding, there have also been big projects over time for as Marina Barrage, which Ms Siew said helps in certain low-lying places like Chinatown.
As Singapore’s people grows, however, less land is available for for equipment.
There are roughly 9, 000 people per square kilometer here, according to Professor Vladan Babovic of the National University of Singapore’s ( NUS) civil and environmental engineering department.
” We need land for streets, for houses, for schools. It will cost excessively to expand and build new drains and may take up valuable property space.
A comprehensive expansion of the drainage system, according to an expert panel that examined Singapore’s safety measures following the 2010 Orchard Road storms, may be problematic.
” The entire nation may change into something that is not always pleasant to live in.” Would you like to reside in a basement that is waterproof? said Prof Babovic.  ,
Instead of” total flood prevention,” according to Associate Professor Tay Zhi Yung of the Singapore Institute of Technology’s ( SIT ) engineering cluster, risk management should be the focus, to reduce damage and disruption.
” In metropolitan areas, constructing detention vehicles, increasing the level of engagement walls… might be more practical options”, he noted.
” In areas where area allows for innovative strategies, nature-based options integrated with architectural practices may be more responsible than relying solely on system, such as widening canals and drains”.
On Tuesday ( Feb 11 ), there were delays at the Paya Lebar and Marymount MRT stations on the Circle Line due to a signaling issue.
In a Twitter post at 10.20am, station operator SMRT said that the signal sin, which began at around 8.11am, affected teach operations at eight facilities.
According to the statement,” the problem caused trains to stop, and energy to the affected business was tripped,” adding that teach action resumed at 8.30am after the electricity was restored within five minutes.
SMRT also said a” sluggish”  , Central Automatic Train System affected controllers ‘ ability to manage train movements efficiently. The Circle Line all returned to normal company after about 30 days.
” During the day peak, important interchange facilities such as Serangoon, Buona Vista, Botanic Gardens, and Bishan usually require one to two carriages to clear masses”, said SMRT.
” Due to this delay, it took about three trains to ease congestion”.
The operator claimed that station staff was working to assist commuters and that the affected stations had made public announcements.
SMRT added that , French train maker ALSTOM , has developed a software patch to address this issue. The patch is scheduled to be installed on Saturday.
” We apologise for any inconvenience caused to commuters”, it said.