🇦🇺⚡️🇨🇳 "Australia is beyond the reach of the DF-26, and to attack it with cruise missiles launched from bombers or submarines, Chinese forces would have to run the gauntlet of the first island chain with these capabilities."

📎 RUSI

🇨🇳🇺🇸 “In spite of mounting bilateral tensions and growing calls in the United States for “decoupling” from China’s economy, bilateral trade in goods hit a record in 2022, nearing $700 billion.”

📎 Yale

🇵🇭🇨🇳 “We want the marines and the coast guard here to protect the island. If it’s just us village officials, we cannot cover the entire area,” says Melchor Visario, the village chief on Fuga.

📎 The Guardian

🇯🇵 Okinawa simulates evacuating over 100,000 residents, tourists near Taiwan

Okinawa on Friday conducted its first-ever tabletop exercise on evacuating more than 100,000 people from Japanese islands near Taiwan, amid fears of a military crisis erupting in the region.

The drills, which focused on the Sakishima Islands and involved local and national authorities, assumed that Japan faced a growing threat of attack from a hostile nation.

📎 Nikkei Asia

🇲🇽🇺🇸 Mexico’s president blamed U.S. families for the fentanyl overdose crisis because "there is a lack of love, of brotherhood, of hugs and embraces,” capping a week of provocative statements. He has also denied that Mexico produces fentanyl.

📎 Associated Press

🇺🇸🇲🇽 U.S. and Mexico in a fentanyl-crisis blame game

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador harshly criticized Republican lawmakers introducing legislation to authorize the use of military force against Mexican drug cartels in an attempt to stem the flow of fentanyl into the U.S., Carmen reports.

“It’s very irresponsible for these lawmakers that, for propagandistic purposes — because it’s worrisome what’s happening in the U.S., because many young people are losing their lives due to fentanyl — but it’s scummy to use that to say that Mexico is guilty,” López Obrador told reporters Thursday.

The U.S.’ growing number of drug overdoses has quickly become a leading public health policy issue for lawmakers at the state and federal levels. More than 100,000 overdose deaths in 2021 — largely driven up by fentanyl overdoses — and over $100 billion in annual costs from opioid abuse have left the U.S. searching for policy solutions, including those that might address the problem’s global nature.

📎 Politico

🇲🇽 Mexican cartels are as dangerous as Al Qaeda and ISIS.

📎 Fox News

🇺🇸⚡️🇲🇽 All we hear in Washington is “war in Ukraine, war in Ukraine!” I’m not listening to the foreign war drums.

The only war we should be waging is against the Mexican cartels because they’re already at war with us, murdering Americans every single day.

📎 Rep Marjorie Taylor Greene

⚡️🇺🇸🇲🇽 NIKKI HALEY: "When it comes to the cartels...You tell the Mexican president, either you do it or we do it...We can do that by putting special ops in [Mexico]...just like we dealt with ISIS..."

📎 Town Hall

🇺🇸🇲🇽 Dan Crenshaw: ‘You Can Be Pretty Sure’ Mexican President ‘Bought Off’ By Drug Cartels

📎 MSN

🇺🇸🇲🇽 Drug war cooperation between the U.S. and Mexico is at its lowest point in decades.

“There’s really been minimal to nonexistent law enforcement cooperation,” said Vanda Felbab-Brown, a drug-trafficking expert and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. “The Mexican government has not been allowing joint raids or even observation by U.S. law enforcement. Now this blatantly false statement by Mexico’s president.”

Matthew Donahue, who retired last year after three decades with the Drug Enforcement Administration, agreed that cooperation was “nonexistent” and added that the biggest problem is corruption in Mexico “and how it has infiltrated many levels of their government.”

“This is the worst it has ever been in Mexico,” he said. “What is frustrating is that we know where the traffickers are,” but the U.S. government has been unable to persuade Mexico to act, “so all that operational intelligence gathering is wasted.”

📎 NBC News

🇺🇸🇲🇽 In the last two years, the Mexican states that border the RGV in Texas—Nuevo León and Taumalipas—have accounted for 1/3 of the Americans who go missing in Mexico, according to official numbers. These disappeared, largely Mexican Americans, rarely get national attention.

🧵 by Jack Herra

🇺🇸🇲🇽 The FBI is offering an up to $20,000 reward for information that leads to the rescue of an American woman who was kidnapped in Mexico last month. 

📎 The Hill

🇲🇽 A prosecutor in Mexico says there is evidence that some of the six women who went missing on March 7 have been found dead.

📎 ABC News

🇮🇱
Hundreds of elite IDF reservists say they will stop showing up beginning Sunday in response to the government’s plans to radically alter the judicial system.

Cientos de reservistas de élite de las FDI dicen que dejarán de presentarse a partir del domingo en respuesta a los planes del gobierno de alterar radicalmente el sistema judicial.

🇻🇳 Vietnam arrests Facebook user for attempt to overthrow the state

Police in Vietnam on Friday arrested a Facebook user whom the authorities accuse of “attempting to overthrow the state” by sharing content that defamed leaders of the ruling Communist Party.

Phan Thi Thanh Nha, 39, was accused of posting and sharing 25 articles and videos since 2018 seeking to distort the leaders of the state.

Nha was also accused by police of joining and recruiting members for the US-based Provisional National Government of Vietnam, a group listed by the Vietnam as a terrorist organization, though not by the United States.

#Vietnam

@asianomics

🇷🇴🌾⚠️ Antena3 | Romanian farmers through several associations are sending warnings again to the government that Romanian agriculture is facing bankruptcy.

Farmers are unhappy with the EU’s 10 million EUR recovery fund calling it “ridiculously low” adding that for the 2 million tons of grain still left inside grain silos, a 200 million EUR figure would be needed to cover the costs of 2022 and 2023.

“We have underlined constantly the problems generated by the mixing of middlemen of Ukrainian sourced produce with those in Romania and their sale without specifying the origin. This will have a long term effect on Romania’s image on the international markets and on the prices of goods. Deviations from the high quality standards are ruining the efforts of European farmers of producing clean and safe foods. We have solicited since May of 2022 the introduction of clauses to safeguard our grain and the grain of Ukrainian origin after commerce with Ukraine was liberalised. These clauses were never implemented, instead we were assured that EU officials will monitor and intervene if necessary. Cases began appearing immediately and farmers were hit but pushed through without support from the government and the EU with their own creativity and resources” said a representative of the Alliance for Agriculture and Cooperation.

“Solidarity cannot go in one way. The burden of the war cannot be carried only by the countries closest to the war zone. It must be equally shared by the member states. As we cannot change geography, we need equitable support. The efforts of farmers and their needs, those strictly related to the consequences produced by the war, were brought to the attention of Romanian and EU authorities. This lack of support can only be described as anti-competitive practices against Romania, against us farmers and our associations. Why can’t we cultivate GMO foods or through other modern techniques but we are allowed to import untraceable GMO foods from Ukraine? We firmly believe that Romania has a huge issue regarding its interests on an international level. The lack of solidarity among EU countries in solving this problem is unjust. We believe that without receiving 100 EUR/ton of agricultural produce left to rot in the silos of farmers, a sum equivalent to about 200 million EUR, we can safely begin discussing the bankruptcy of Romanian agriculture in 2023” added the representative.

Since March of 2022 Romanian agriculture came under pressure from Ukrainian exports. Transport tarifs grew fifth fold and this caused Romanian farmers to sell their products at way higher prices than the dumping prices made by Ukrainian farmers. Most of the logistics required for Romanian agriculture were diverted to the border crossings in order to transport Ukrainian cargo attracted by the high prices Ukrainians were willing to pay for the transport. The influx caused prices to drop from bread to eggs and meat which meant that Romanian farmers were selling mostly at a loss.

@Wallachian_Gazette | 🐦Wallachian_Gazette