BEIJING: China began military exercises in the East China sea to the north of Taiwan on Tuesday, including live-fire exercises from warships, as the US and its allies conduct their drills in the Western Pacific.
China routinely conducts exercises along its coast, though the ones near Chinese-claimed Taiwan often attract the most attention.
China’s Maritime Safety Administration issued a no sail zone warning from late morning to mid-afternoon on Tuesday for an area off Taizhou city in Zhejiang province for live fire exercises from warships.
Other drills around the same location will last until late Tuesday evening, it said.
The drills are near the Dachen islands, which Taiwan controlled until 1955 until being evacuated after other nearby islands were seized by Chinese forces in a bloody battle.
Taiwan still controls the Matsu and Kinmen islands, off the coast of China’s Fujian province, held since the defeated Republic of China government fled to Taipei after losing a civil war with Mao Zedong’s communists.
China will hold separate exercises in another northern part of the East China Sea until late Wednesday afternoon, the maritime safety agency said.
China’s East China Sea exercises coincide with a quadrilateral naval exercise in the Philippine Sea that started on Friday involving the United States, Japan, Canada and France.
That includes two carrier strike groups led by US aircraft carriers USS Nimitz and USS Ronald Reagan jointly operating for the first time since June 2020, the US 7th Fleet said in a statement.
China holds live-fire drills in East China Sea north of Taiwan
https://arab.news/bt234
China holds live-fire drills in East China Sea north of Taiwan
- China routinely conducts exercises along its coast, though the ones near Chinese-claimed Taiwan often attract the most attention
- China’s East China Sea exercises coincide with a quadrilateral naval exercise in the Philippine Sea
Lawsuit challenges Trump administration’s ending of protections for Somalis
- The lawsuit cites a series of statements Trump has made describing Somalis as “garbage” and “low IQ people” who “contribute nothing.”
BOSTON: Immigrant rights advocates filed a lawsuit on Monday seeking to stop US President Donald Trump’s administration from next week ending legal protections that allow nearly 1,100 Somalis to live and work in the United States. The lawsuit, brought by four Somalis and two advocacy groups, challenges the US Department of Homeland Security’s decision to end Temporary Protected Status for Somali immigrants, whom Trump has derided in public remarks. Outgoing Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem in January announced that TPS for Somalis would end on March 17, arguing that Somalia’s conditions had improved, despite fighting continuing between Somali forces and Al-Shabab militants. The plaintiffs, who include the groups African Communities Together and Partnership for the Advancement of New Americans, in the lawsuit filed in Boston federal court argue the move was procedurally flawed and driven by a discriminatory, predetermined agenda.
The lawsuit cites a series of statements Trump has made describing Somalis as “garbage” and “low IQ people” who “contribute nothing.”
The plaintiffs said the administration is ending TPS for Somalia and other countries due to unconstitutional bias against non-white immigrants, not based on objective assessments of country conditions.
“The termination of TPS for Somalia is racism masking as immigration policy,” Omar Farah, executive director at the legal group Muslim Advocates, said in a statement.
DHS did not respond to a request for comment. It has previously said TPS was “never intended to be a de facto amnesty program.”
TPS is a form of humanitarian immigration protection that shields eligible migrants from deportation and allows them to work. Under Noem, DHS has moved to end TPS for a dozen countries, sparking legal challenges. The administration on Saturday announced plans to pursue an appeal at the US Supreme Court in order to end TPS for over 350,000 Haitians. It also wants the high court to allow it to end TPS for about 6,000 Syrians.
SOMALI COMMUNITY TARGETED
Somalia was first designated for TPS in 1991, with its latest extension in 2024. About 1,082 Somalis currently hold TPS, and 1,383 more have pending applications, according to DHS. Somalis in Minnesota in recent months had become a target of Trump’s immigration crackdown, with officials pointing to a fraud scandal in which many people charged come from the state’s large Somali community. The Trump administration cited those fraud allegations as a basis for a months-long immigration enforcement surge in Democratic-led Minnesota, during which about 3,000 immigration agents were deployed, spurring protests and leading to the killing of two US citizens by federal agents.
In November, Trump announced he would end TPS for Somalis in Minnesota, and a month later said he wanted them sent “back to where they came from.”
The US Department of State advises against traveling to Somalia, citing crime and civil unrest among numerous factors.
