Hi. I’m a bit of a news junkie.

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Cake day: June 12th, 2023

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  • From reading the article, it’s possible nuclear arms race, military tech transfer, and refugee crisis to name a few:

    But Kim’s increasingly aggressive rhetoric against Seoul has the South once again debating whether it should have its own nuclear arsenal. North Korean troops on a Ukrainian battlefield would only further unravel Beijing’s plans.

    Experts say Beijing is just as worried as the West about what military technology Putin might sell to Kim in exchange for troops.

    “Satellites, for sure,” Mr Foster-Carter says. “But Putin is bad – not mad. Russia knows just as China knows that North Korea is a loose cannon. Giving [Kim] more technology for nukes is not a good thing for anybody.”

    Experts believe Xi is unlikely to do anything drastic because China needs a stable North Korea – if he cuts off aid, he would likely have a refugee crisis at the border.








  • I don’t think so. There are other important parts in the article:

    For the first time, the annual event will also involve troops from the Australian and French military. Fourteen other countries in Asia and Europe will attend as observers. The exercises will run until May 10.

    The 2024 exercises are also the first to take place outside of Philippine territorial waters.

    “Some of the exercises will take place in the South China Sea in an area outside of the Philippines’ territorial sea. It’s a direct challenge to China’s expansive claims” in the region, Philippine political analyst Richard Heydarian told DW.

    He added that some of the exercises this year will also be close to Taiwan.

    This year’s exercises have a “dual orientation pushing against China’s aggressive intentions both in the South China Sea but also in Taiwan,” he added.







  • Agreed. Here’s some more context:

    Korea has the second-lowest number of physicians among members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, leading to some of the highest doctors’ wages among surveyed member nations.

    Doctors in Korea earn the most among 28 member countries that provided related data. Following Korea, the highest earners are in the Netherlands, Germany, Ireland and the UK. The US was among the countries for which data was not provided.

    Measured by PPP, which takes into account local living costs, salaried specialists earned an average of $192,749 annually in 2020, According to the 2023 OECD Health Statistics report. That was 60 percent more than the OECD average. Korean GP salaries ranked sixth.

    … The country also ranked low in the number of medical school graduates – 7.3 per 100,000 people, which is the third-lowest after Israel and Japan, and nearly half the OCED average of 14 graduates for every 100,000 people.

    https://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20230730000088


  • These doctors are not telling the whole story. More context from the article:

    Public surveys show that a majority of South Koreans support the government’s push to create more doctors, and critics say that doctors, one of the highest-paid professions in South Korea, worry about lower incomes due to a rise in the number of doctors.

    Officials say more doctors are required to address a long-standing shortage of physicians in rural areas and in essential but low-paying specialties. But doctors say newly recruited students would also try to work in the capital region and in high-paying fields like plastic surgery and dermatology. They say the government plan would also likely result in doctors performing unnecessary treatments due to increased competition.


  • From another article with a little more context:

    When 600 people die on a summer’s night in the Mediterranean, their journey known of, or witnessed for many hours and at various times by an EU agency, the maritime authorities of two EU countries, by civil society activists and by multiple private ships and boats – a journey and a drowning effectively in plain sight – there is one obvious question: “How did that happen?”

    Our inquiry found that for most of the period between the sighting of the Adriana and its capsizing, Frontex had to stand ineffectually by, due to the absence of authorisation by the Greek authorities to do more. The agency is legally obliged to follow the orders and directions of the coordinating national authority.

    According to documents inspected by my office, repeated calls offering assistance from the Warsaw-based agency [Frontex] to the Greek rescue and coordination centre went unanswered. A Frontex drone, on offer to assist with the Adriana, was diverted by the Greek authorities to another incident.

    When Frontex was finally allowed to return to the site of the Adriana, the boat had capsized, with many hundreds of people already dead.

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/feb/28/600-people-drowning-eu-deters-migrants-adriana-tragedy



  • Not sure if you’re aware of the city’s colonial history. An example from the article:

    The Aztecs chose this spot to build their city of Tenochtitlan in 1325, when it was a series of lakes. They built on an island, expanding the city outwards, constructing networks of canals and bridges to work with the water.

    But when the Spanish arrived in the early 16th century, they tore down much of the city, drained the lakebed, filled in canals and ripped out forests. They saw “water as an enemy to overcome for the city to thrive,” said Jose Alfredo Ramirez, an architect and co-director of Groundlab, a design and policy research organization.

    Their decision paved the way for many of Mexico City’s modern problems. Wetlands and rivers have been replaced with concrete and asphalt. In the rainy season, it floods. In the dry season, it’s parched.


  • Your comment seems to suggest that the boat was far away from Taiwan, which was not the case. For context, the boat was touring Taiwan’s Kinmen Islands, which are just a few kilometers/miles from the Chinese mainland (Wikipedia says 10 km/6.2 mi), and had to veer toward the Chinese side of the water to avoid shoals.

    According to the article, this seems like an escalation by the PRC:

    For years, sightseeing boat tours between Kinmen and Xiamen, the closest city on the Chinese mainland, have offered Taiwanese tourists a chance to gaze at China’s dazzling skyline without the hassle of border checks, with China operating similar tour boats for its citizens too.

    Ian Chong, a political scientist at the National University of Singapore, said the latest measures are part of China’s “gray zone” tactics, referring to coercive or aggressive state actions that stop short of open warfare – something Beijing has used increasingly in recent years in the East and South China Seas, as well as toward Taiwan.

    The inspection of a Taiwanese tour boat by China’s coast guard, which Chong said had not happened before, was meant to provoke Taiwan and see if it would either escalate or accept this sort of behavior as given.