There can never be fairness if your loved one is not returning, and no amount of time served may bring Reeva back, according to a statement made by the Steenkamp family attorney on Friday. June Steenkamp added that her only wish was to be permitted to live in peace followingContinue Reading
ACTIVITIES IN PRESENCE The training this week come after a quarter of anxious skirmishes between China and the Philippines over disputed islands in the region, during which Chinese ships and Chinese vessels collided and fired water cannons at Philippine boats. According to one expert, Beijing wanted to make the SouthContinue Reading
AUKUS, a security alliance between the US, UK, and Australia, is speeding up its nuclear submarine software to fill in infrastructure, human resources, as well as technology-sharing practices.
The US Navy plans to teach 30 American sailors on how to fix its Virginia-class vessels using the submarine sweet Emory S Land in Australia this summer, according to a report by Defense News from soon December.
According to the report, the training will aid in the establishment of a nuclear-powered attack underwater maintenance capability at the American Australian naval base HMAS Stirling.
The AUKUS nuclear submarine program consists of three phases: first, the US and UK will operate submarines out of Stirling, Australia, then Australia will buy and use US-built and used Virginia-class submarines, and finally, it will build and operate its own nuclear attack submarine ( SSNs ).
At Pearl Harbor in Hawaii and Barrow in Furness in England, American soldiers, sailors, and government residents involved in AUKUS are already receiving training from the US Navy in nuclear submarine-related things.
A second group of American seafarers will be assigned to work on US submarines in 2024, and as part of their training, they will start performing repair at the Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard, according to the report.
The US and Australian military joined Royal Navy personnel in Faslane in October 2023 to receive training on maintaining nuclear-powered submarines, according to the UK Ministry of Defense ( MOD ).
The US and Australian Submarine Support teams formed an Advance Verification Team ( AVT ) to improve their understanding of the industrial and maintenance skills required to manage and maintain nuclear-powered submarines, according to a UK MOD announcement.
Additionally, the UK MOD announced that AUKUS would receive an additional 4 billion pounds ( US$ 5.1 billion ), with money set aside for the design, development, and purchase of main long-lead aspects of the partnership’s first UK boats.
In terms of physical and human system, AUKUS also has a long way to go despite these collaborative efforts.
According to an article written by John Bruni and Pat Tyrell for the Australian Institute for International Affairs ( AIIA ) in August 2022, the question of whether any of the AUKUS submarines will be built in Adelaide, Australia, has not received much attention.
However, the American government has stated that it will make the country’s first SSN-AUKUS submarine by the end of the decade, and that the Royal Australian Navy will receive two locally-built ships in the first 2040s. The American government added that it started approving development for the future Submarine Construction Yard in Osborne, South Australia, in 2023.
Bruni and Tyrell emphasize that Australia needs to develop significant nuclear engineering expertise, intensive support and maintenance groups, nuclear regulatory authorities, and specialized crisis team in order to speed up the SSN-AUKUS system.
They even claim that in order to provide the very competent skills required for nuclear submarine repair, Australia’s universities will need to set up nuclear engineering facilities and establish a center for the field. Additionally, the American government needs to create infrastructure for the safe transportation of radioactive materials there.
Flinders University in South Australia and US and UK universities have entered into agreements to create specialized skills for the development of AUKUS nuclear submarines, according to a report by World Nuclear News in March 2023.
According to World Nuclear News, Flinders will be able to provide South American students with undergraduate and graduate programs thanks to the contracts. It mentions that Flinders University will collaborate with the University of Manchester, the head universities of the UK’s Nuclear Technology Education Consortium, on its doctoral-level research training and nuclear masters programs.
AUKUS’ advancement in nuclear submarine development and other delicate military fields may also be hampered by ability shortages in the marine shipbuilding industry and technology-sharing problems.
Paul McCleary and Cristina Gallardo write in a March 2023 issue of Politico that it will be difficult to get AUKUS operational for the long term due to the intricate alterations required in trade control regulations and growing worries that overworked US and UK ships may handle the workload.
Yet the combined naval shipping programs of the US and the UK, according to McCleary and Gallardo, cannot compete with China’s output.
They claim that maintaining AUKUS over the ensuing decades is based on a strong presumption of political commitment, sustained financing, and cohesion until the first steel for the SSN-AUUS is cut in about ten years.
McCleary and Gallardo draw attention to the possibility that US defense export controls from the Cold War may be out of date because they were originally intended to keep sensitive military technologies from falling into Russian hands.
Since the SSN-AUKUS will definitely heavily rely on US-made parts, they claim that the US needs to reconsider its export restrictions in order to permit the transfer of delicate nuclear propulsion technology within a reasonable period.
They mention that AUKUS Pillar Two solutions like artificial intelligence ( AI), electronic warfare, fast, and quantum technologies are subject to US military trade restrictions.
At the same time, AUKUS has sparked worries about the security bloc’s effects on local surveillance and strategic stability from a number of Southeast Asian nations.
Ian Storey and William Choong acknowledge that Southeast Asian nations have expressed worries about outside intervention, hands races, aggressive actions by major powers, and underwater intrusions in inland sea lanes in a report published in March 2023 by the ISEAS Yusof Ishak Institute.
While AUKUS officials have gone to great lengths to explain the defense bloc’s motivations and allay concerns from local states, Storey and Choong point out that big players like Malaysia and Indonesia are likely to continue to voice their reservations.
ReutersNorth Korea plans to launch three more spy satellites next year as part of efforts to ramp up its military, the country’s state media has said.
Last month Pyongyang put a spy satellite into space – and claims it has since photographed major US and South Korean military sites.
Setting out his aims for 2024, Kim Jong Un also said his dealings with South Korea would see “fundamental change”.
And he said he had no option but to press ahead with his nuclear ambitions.
Speaking at an end-of-year meeting of the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea, Mr Kim said unification with South Korea was now no longer possible. He said Seoul treats his country as an enemy.
It appears to be the first time Mr Kim has said such a thing and marks an official change in policy – although in practice there has been little prospect of unification for some years, with no progress and little effort being made.
Relations between the two countries are in a poor state. Last month, following the spy satellite launch, Pyongyang ripped up a deal with the Seoul that was aimed at lowering military tensions.
North Korea also continued regular tests of its missiles throughout 2023 – and earlier this month fired its most advanced long-range missile, defying UN curbs.
The launch of the intercontinental ballistic missile – which has the range to reach the North American continent – drew immediate condemnation from the West.
Meanwhile North Korea is unhappy over South Korea ramping up defence cooperation with the US, after a US submarine armed with nuclear weapons arrived in its waters.
Speaking on Sunday, Mr Kim hit out at the US, saying, according to state media: “Because of reckless moves by the enemies to invade us, it is a fait accompli that a war can break out at any time on the Korean peninsula.”
He said South Korea had been transformed into a “forward military base and nuclear arsenal” of the US, and added: “If we look closely at the confrontational military actions by the enemy forces… the word ‘war’ has become a realistic reality and not an abstract concept.”
Mr Kim said 2024 would see more military development, including strengthening nuclear and missile forces and building drones.
“We must respond quickly to a possible nuclear crisis and continue to accelerate preparations to pacify the entire territory of South Korea by mobilising all physical means and forces, including nuclear force, in case of emergency,” he said.
SEOUL: North Korea plans to launch three more spy satellites in 2024 as part of efforts to ramp up its military, state media reported on Sunday (Dec 31). Pyongyang successfully put a spy satellite into orbit last month and has since claimed it was providing images of major United States andContinue Reading
BEIJING: China has expelled nine military officials from its parliament, including several generals of the army’s strategic missile unit, in a sweeping reshuffle following the appointment of a new defence minister. The decision, announced late on Friday (Dec 29) by the state news agency Xinhua came after a meeting ofContinue Reading
The large waves of foreign capital suddenly racing China’s way are raising a vital question for 2024: is sentiment toward Asia’s biggest economy swinging back toward positivity?
Investors will be and already are debating this very question now that China has racked up a nearly six-fold increase in foreign buying of bonds in November from October – 251 billion yuan (US$33 trillion) of inflows.
But here’s the better question:
What can Chinese leader Xi Jinping do to lean into the trend and broaden it?
The obvious answer is for the People’s Bank of China to keep doing what it’s done in recent months. Governor Pan Gongsheng’s team has been a study in restraint as other top central banks took decidedly activist approaches to 2023’s economic and financial uncertainties.
Despite the wreckage of Xi’s Covid lockdowns and China’s property crisis this year, the PBOC only cut official rates twice. It prioritized targeted liquidity to money markets to boost growth.
Granted, Chinese borrowing costs are already at record lows. But Pan’s determination to put yuan stability ahead of Japan-like bursts of extreme stimulus – even as deflation stalked the economy – is now paying dividends in the form of big bond inflows.
Of course, Team Xi displayed its own restraint in 2023, foregoing the massive stimulus jolts investors everywhere expecting.
But as 2024 arrives, it is high time for Xi’s government to accelerate moves to build more international and robust capital markets. It is equally important to internalize and heed warnings from Moody’s Investors Service.
On December 5, Moody’s downgraded Beijing’s credit outlook to negative from stable, citing “structurally and persistently lower medium-term economic growth” and a cratering property sector.
The good news, as Moody’s pointed out, is the “economy’s vast size and robust, albeit slowing, potential growth rate, support its high shock-absorption capacity.” The bad news is that headwinds hitting cash-strapped local governments and state-owned enterprises are “posing broad downside risks to China’s fiscal, economic and institutional strength.”
China wasn’t happy. The Finance Ministry acknowledged it was “disappointed” with Moody’s outlook cut. “China’s economy,” the ministry retorted, “is shifting to high-quality development, new drivers of China’s economic growth are taking effect and China has the ability to continue to deepen reforms and respond to risks and challenges.”
As such, Beijing officials called concerns about the country’s growth, fiscal trajectory and economic prospects “unnecessary.”
Yet Xi’s reform team, led by Premier Li Qiang, would be wise to internalize what Moody’s is saying and heed its warnings. The reason is that, fair or not, Moody’s is highlighting the broader conventional wisdom about China’s 2024.
Clearly, the 251 billion yuan jump in foreign bond inflows in November is an important ray of hope. At a minimum, it raises the specter that China can recoup 2022’s record outflows of 616 billion yuan (US$86.3 billion).
“The bond market remains bullish, and market rates will trend lower,” analysts at Guotai Junan Futures write in a note to clients.
Yet sustaining inflows at this pace requires bold policy upgraded to increase transparency and competitiveness.
In recent months, another mainland milestone came into focus: the yuan’s fast-rising share of global payments to the 3.6% mark. Although China still lags behind America’s 47% share by a healthy margin, it would be at Washington’s peril if the US ignored the nearly 2% jump in yuan use in the first 11 months of 2023.
This year, the yuan overtook the euro to become the second-most-used currency in trade, according to data from the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, or SWIFT. As of September, the yuan’s share of SWIFT payments hit 5.8%.
Some of this increase reflects China’s rising economic status; some reflects concerns about the health of the dollar as Washington’s debt tops US$33 trillion. And some reflects the work Xi’s government has done to internationalize the currency since 2016.
That was the year when the PBOC, then under Governor Zhou Xiaochuan, secured a place for the yuan in the International Monetary Fund’s “special drawing-rights” program. The yuan’s inclusion in the IMF’s exclusive club of reserve currencies, joining the dollar, euro, yen and pound, was a pivotal moment for Beijing’s financial ambitions.
Over time, Xi’s reformists took it out for a ride by increasing the channels for foreign investors to tap mainland stock and bond markets. Shanghai stocks were added to the MSCI index, while government bonds were included in the FTSE Russell benchmark among others.
As demand for the yuan surges, Beijing is tolerating a stronger yuan as rarely before. Arguably no policy would jolt Chinese growth faster or more convincingly than a weaker exchange rate. Yet Xi’s Ministry of Finance has avoided engaging in a race to the bottom versus the yen, earning it points in market circles.
Increasing trust among global investors, though, requires a clear and bold commitment to structural reforms. Topping Xi’s to-do list are:
The more Xi develops dynamic capital markets, the more foreign investors will send waves of capital China’s way. And the more willing mainland households will be to invest in stocks and bonds over real estate.
Another top priority is devising a broader network of social safety nets to encourage households to spend more and save less. This step alone would help recalibrate growth engines from exports and excess investment to domestic demand.
These reforms would go a long way to reducing the frequency of the boom/bust cycles that all too many investors associate with China and to change the subject from the regulatory crackdowns of the last three-plus years that started with Alibaba Group’s Jack Ma.
Here, Xi’s government did itself no favors this month with controversial new gaming restrictions. Although Beijing has throttled back a bit, investors fear a crackdown on the world’s largest mobile arena.
“Although we think the short-term selloff is likely to continue in the coming days, given investor frustration and negative readthrough to internet and general China equity regulation risk, we believe the share price reaction to the exposure draft is overdone,” says JPMorgan Chase & Co. analyst Alex Yao. “We expect a negative but insignificant impact on Tencent and NetEase’s gaming monetization.”
All this shines a bright spotlight on the big China reform question: Does Xi’s government need more stimulus to create space to shake up China’s economic model?
“For the past year and more, investors have been waiting for a different type of pivot in China: when the government finally gets serious about growth again,” says economist Andrew Batson at Gavekal Research.
Still, recent signals from Beijing “showed an attempt to find a new balance between growth concerns and broader objectives that top leader Xi Jinping has laid down, such as technological self-sufficiency and national security.”
Barton adds that a “recalibration would be welcome to investors.” He notes that “arguably the major issue afflicting economic policy in 2023 has been the government’s conviction that it could have its cake and eat it too. The hope was that a long-term drive to build high-tech industries and bolster the country against external threats could double as a short-term stabilization plan.”
“But that strategy suffers from a time inconsistency problem,” Batson says. “The favored growth sectors of the future, even big ones like electric vehicles, are simply too small today to offset the damage from the rapid decline in the property sector.
Batson adds that “the government has shown it’s happy to throw vast sums of money at ‘good’ sectors through industrial policy, but real economic stabilization requires broad-based support of aggregate demand – allowing the ‘bad’ sectors to get money, too. On this front, the language from [recent deliberations in Beijing] showed more willingness to deploy the traditional levers of fiscal and monetary policy.”
Even more important, though, is creating conditions necessary to ensure today’s capital inflows lead to tomorrow’s prosperity.
BEIJING: China’s defence ministry on Thursday (Dec 28) urged the Asia-Pacific to be on high alert as the United States steps up forward military deployment in the region, after reports of a US plan to revive a Pacific airfield that launched atomic bombings of Japan. The Chinese military is payingContinue Reading
SEOUL: North Korean leader Kim Jong Un urged his party to “accelerate” war preparations including its nuclear programme, state media said on Thursday (Dec 28). The comments came just a week after Kim warned Pyongyang would not hesitate to launch a nuclear attack if “provoked” with nukes. Kim made theContinue Reading
Millane familyGrace Millane had dreamed of travelling the world since she was a little girl.
“I found a school project she did about New Zealand and it said ‘I’m going there one day’. And she did get there,” her mother Gillian says, proudly.
Growing up in Wickford in Essex, Grace was a livewire who made friends wherever she went.
“She was my best friend, we would always disappear to the pub for a quick drink and we would go away on holiday together,” Gillian says.
Five years ago, after graduating from the University of Lincoln, Grace set out on a year-long solo backpacking adventure across the world.
After a six-week tour of Peru, she arrived in New Zealand. Less than a fortnight later, on the eve of her 22nd birthday, she was strangled to death by a man she met on a dating app.
Grace was constantly in touch with her family but had not responded to their birthday messages on 2 December, so they reported her missing to the police.
Gillian was recovering from surgery for breast cancer and not able to join the search. Her husband, Grace’s father David, flew out to New Zealand but a week later, their daughter’s body was found in bushland on the outskirts of Auckland.
During a three-week trial, the family had to sit through her killer’s attempts to pass the murder off as “rough sex” gone wrong and his claims that Grace asked to be strangled.
“I felt like Grace was on trial and she couldn’t defend herself. As a parent, I didn’t want to listen to that. It was horrendous.
“You can’t ask for your own death. It is ludicrous this can be used as a defence.”
A jury unanimously convicted him of murder and he was sentenced to life in prison.
The family decided never to mention his name again. “We never say it. It’s a waste of energy. I don’t care about him, I don’t think about him,” Gillian says.
Gillian has since campaigned against the rough sex defence, with the charity We Can’t Consent To This, and has helped to change the law in England and Wales.
Two years after Grace’s murder, Gillian’s husband David died from cancer, which left her in a “really dark place”.
Gillian credits her family and friends, long walks and “lots of counselling” for her still being here today.
“I did contemplate suicide. That is a horrid place to be. But I couldn’t bring any more sadness to the family. Grace had such a bright future and it was taken away from her and us.
“I will never see Grace in a wedding dress or see her grandchildren. This is a life sentence I’ve got. This is me until the day I die. But there is a light and I found it. You have to find that inner strength.”
David died during Covid and they could not be together as a family but Gillian later threw a memorial party and it became a turning point.
“A friend dragged me up to dance. I wasn’t sure if it was the right thing to do but I laughed and I looked around the room and everyone was smiling.
“My toes stay in the darkness but the rest of me is facing the sun a bit. Sometimes it goes up to my waist and I do go into that black hole but I have people behind me who support me.”
Christmas is a very difficult time for Gillian, so last year she decided to spend it climbing Mount Kilimanjaro, which was “incredibly emotional”.
“I went from not wanting to leave the house to climbing a mountain on the other side of the world.
“I had to train and be focused. I didn’t realise the power it was giving me and how much it was helping me.
“Everything was aching but I knew Grace and David would be pushing me up there. They wanted to still be here, they didn’t want to go, so I thought ‘right get up there’.”
Gillian left a stone for Grace and David at the top, in tribute to them.
“Whenever I go somewhere special, I put the stones there, so they are travelling. If someone picks a stone up and moves it, they go somewhere else.”
Her efforts raised £33,000 for the White Ribbon charity, which aims to end male violence against women. Gillian received a thank you card from the charity, saying the money had been used to fund education programmes in 65 schools in the Hull area.
“I just want to raise awareness and get that message out there about violence against women so that no other family has to live this life I live,” Gillian says.
Four years ago, with her niece Hannah, Gillian started the charity initiative Love Grace. They collect donated handbags and fill them with toiletries for domestic abuse victims.
So far, they have filled 15,600 bags for women in the UK and across the world and they received an award from the prime minister.
Grace loved handbags, Gillian says, and each bag has a tag on it with her handwriting.
“It’s a simple idea but it has really taken off,” Gillian says. “We were just doing it for our grief so that Grace would never just be a number.
“They get this bag, they are not expecting it and they have gone through hell. We get hundreds of letters from people who have received the bags, it’s heartbreaking.”
Next year, Gillian is applying for Love Grace to become an official charity and she will be training for a trek to Everest basecamp in September, with a plan to place two more stones there.
One day she hopes to travel to New Zealand, a country which Gillian says has really taken Grace to their hearts.
“I still get loads of messages of support from there. It wasn’t New Zealand or travelling that killed Grace, or anything she did. It was that individual.”
Five years on from her daughter’s death, living without Grace has not got any easier. But Gillian is still trying hard to face the sun.
“I should never have buried my child and certainly she should never have died the way she did. People keep saying I’m really strong but I don’t think so, I’m just a mum.”
She adds: “I am more resilient than I ever thought I was. I do think David and Grace would be proud. I think Grace would laugh and say these treks are a mid-life crisis.
“I will never get over it but I just know I’ve got to make the world a better place. I want to change things so that no other family has to go through what we go through. That has got to be a good thing.”
If you, or someone you know, is feeling emotionally distressed, BBC Action Line has put together a list of organisations which can help.
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