30 2GM Monday August 3 2020 | the times
Wo r l d
Missing Marines feared
dead after vessel sinks
United States Seven Marines and
a sailor are presumed dead after
their amphibious assault vehicle
sank during a training exercise
off the California coast. A 40-
hour search involving a navy
destroyer and a coastguard cutter
failed to find the missing
personnel and vehicle, which
sank in several hundred feet of
water near San Clemente Island
on Thursday.
Seven other Marines were
rescued during the search. All the
Marines involved were from the
15th Marine Expeditionary Unit,
which is based at Camp
Pendleton, the largest Marine
base on the east coast of the
United States. (Reuters)Drug lord ‘The Mallet’
captured in army raid
Mexico A drug gang leader
blamed for a rise in violence has
been arrested by the army and
state security forces. José Antonio
Yépez, known as El Marro (The
Mallet), is said to be the boss of
the Santa Rosa de Lima cartel
based in Guanajuato. The local
attorney-general said four others
had been held and a kidnapped
businesswoman rescued. A cache
of weapons was seized. (Reuters)Terrorists tried to bomb
Golan fence, says IDF
Israel The Israeli Defence Forces
said that its troops and aircraft
had fired at and hit four
“terrorists” who had placed
explosives along the border fence
with Syria in the Golan Heights.
Last week Israeli troops and
Hezbollah clashed along a
different stretch of the disputed
territory’s border with Lebanon.
Hezbollah denied mounting that
attack. (Reuters)Witnesses film woman
engulfed in flames
Italy People who filmed a
psychiatric patient after she had
set fire to herself have been
condemned by the town’s mayor.
After the death of the woman in
Crema, near Milan, Stefania
Bonaldi, 49, said she was stunned
and saddened that 20 residents
had stood by. The woman doused
herself in a flammable liquid
before becoming engulfed in
flames. Two people tried to help.Future of scrotum frog
hangs in the balance
Bolivia A team of experts have
joined forces to save the scrotum
frog, named after its loose skin
with folds and flaps. Telmatobius
culeus can grow up to 20cm and
lives near Lake Titicaca, which
straddles the border of Peru and
Bolivia. Numbers of the species
have dropped because of human
consumption. Both governments
have now began a significant
conservation effort.Bootleg alcohol death
toll approaches 100
India Toxic bootleg alcohol has
killed at least 98 people in the
northern state of Punjab. Police
arrested 25 people during more
than 100 raids on Saturday as
opposition politicians urged the
state to “curb the liquor mafia”.
About 75 of the dead were in the
Tarn Taran district, where cheap,
illegal alcohol is rife. Families of
some victims refused to provide
details of their deaths. (AFP)filiated with a far-right group have as-
saulted demonstrators.
Israeli police said that five people
were taken into custody for allegedly
accosting those protesting against Mr
Netanyahu, and 12 people were de-
tained at the end of a protest after they
refused to vacate the area.
On Saturday crowds waved Israeli
flags and blew horns as they gathered
outside his official residence in Balfour
Street, central Jerusalem, while smaller
anti-government gatherings were held
in Tel Aviv, near Mr Netanyahu’s beach
house in central Israel, and at dozens of
busy intersections nationwide. Yester-day the prime minister continued to
protest against media coverage of the
events, saying: “I condemn the one-sid-
edness of most media outlets. They do
not report the demonstrations — they
participate in them. They add fuel.
“There has never been such a distort-
ed mobilisation [of protesters] — I
wanted to say Soviet but it has already
reached North Korean terms — of the
media in favour of the protests.”
An Israeli court ordered his son yes-
terday “to refrain from harassing”
several protest leaders after he tweeted
their addresses. Yair Netanyahu, 29,
was also ordered to delete the tweet.Binyamin Netanyahu accused large
crowds of protesters who gathered out-
side his official residence yesterday of
trying to “trample on democracy” and
claimed that they could be “incubating”
coronavirus.
An estimated 10,000 people attended
a march in central Jerusalem on Satur-
day which culminated at the prime
minister’s residence, and resulted in
some demonstrators having to be
dragged away by riot police or dis-
persed with water cannon.
The rallies, galvanised by corruption
charges against Mr Netanyahu, have
been the largest in Israel for at least
nine years but the prime minister has
previously dismissed the demonstra-
tors as “leftists” and “anarchists”.
He faces three corruption charges
and has denied wrongdoing.
Yesterday Mr Netanyahu accused
the media of inflaming the protests.
“Never have so few received such huge
coverage,” he said. “I see an attempt to
trample on democracy. There is a dis-
tortion of all the rules.”
In an apparent swipe at police and
public health officials, he added: “No-
body restricts the demonstrations. On
the contrary they are accommodating
toward them... [but] it’s a coronavirus
incubator, there are rules that are not
enforced, no one restricts it, and no one
has even tried to restrict it.”
No outbreaks have so far been
linked to the twice-weekly pro-
tests, which have grown in
momentum since Mr Net-
anyahu became the first
serving prime minister
to be indicted on cor-
ruption charges and
following a series of in-
decisive elections.
Many of the demon-
strators, including
young unemployed Isra-
elis, have since accused Mr
Netanyahu of mishandling
the coronavirus crisis by re-
opening the economy too quickly
after an early lockdown. The country is
now coping with record levels of cases,
while unemployment has increased to
more than 20 per cent.
Mr Netanyahu’s comments, at a
meeting of Israel’s cabinet, led to a clash
with his political rival Benny Gantz, the
defence minister and prime minister-
in-waiting in a power-sharing coalition,
who defended the right to demonstrate
as the “life-
blood of demo-
cracy” and con-
demned violence
against protesters.
“As a government,
we have a responsibility to
allow the demonstrations to take place
and to protect the demonstrators, who
were unfortunately attacked yester-
day,” Mr Gantz said.
While the demonstrations have
largely been peaceful, some protesters
have clashed with police, accusing
them of using excessive force. Small
gangs of Mr Netanyahu’s supporters af-Thousands join street protests to
demand Netanyahu’s resignation
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allow the demonstrations tAbout 10,000 people marched in central Jerusalem. The twice-weekly protests have grown in
size since Binyamin Netanyahu was indicted on corruption charges; he denies wrongdoingAMIR LEVY/GETTY IMAGESThe US military nearly doubled aerial
surveillance operations in the South
China Sea last month compared with
May, a Beijing think tank said yester-
day, warning that this made a confron-
tation much more likely.
The South China Sea strategic
situation-probing initiative, run by the
Institute of Ocean Research at Peking
University, said that US forces
conducted 67 operations by large
reconnaissance aircraft, compared
with 49 in June and 35 in May.
In one operation, a US reconnais-
sance aircraft flew 40 nautical miles
away from territory claimed by China,
the think tank said.
“The US side was turning to confron-
tational surveillance from defensive
surveillance, and it appeared to be
building up a battlefield,” the research-
ers said on Chinese social media.
The American activity “was increas-
ingly political and aimed at exerting
military pressure”, the think tank said.
“From the military perspective, thereUS doubles surveillance flights over contested sea
was no need for the US, which possess-
es all-round advanced reconnaissance
technology, to keep such high frequen-
cy in aerial surveillance and to ap-
proach China in such close proximi-
ty,”it continued.
The intensive reconnaissance by the
US follows a rapid deterioration in the
relationship between Beijing and
Washington.
The disputed South China Sea could
be a flashpoint. Last month, the US
rejected Beijing’s territorial claim over
almost the entirety of the waters, which
are rich in resources and include vital
international shipping lanes. At least
six other countries have rival claims.
As the US carried out exercises in-
volving the Ronald Reagan and Nimitz
carrier strike groups, Beijing revealed
that its forces had conducted drills in-volving H-6J bombers, marking the
first official acknowledgement of the
warplane, which can carry seven anti-
ship cruise missiles.
The exercises included attacks on
surface ships, long-distance strikes and
night landings, as Beijing demonstrated
its capability to counter an attack.
The think tank said that its tally of US
reconnaissance operations did not in-
clude small surveillance aircraft or
those that kept their tracking off.
“Given that not all military planes turn
on [position tracking], and that we do
not have information on carrier-based
reconnaissance aircraft, the actual
number was even higher,” it said.
Beijing has denounced Washington
for “breaking its promise not to take a
stance on the sovereignty issue of the
South China Sea”.China
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