India is the most vulnerable country to climate change, followed by Pakistan, the Philippines and Bangladesh, a ranking by HSBC showed on Monday....
Pakistan was ranked by HSBC among nations least well-equipped to respond to climate risks....Not that prior to the partition of India after independence, Pakistan and Bangladesh were part of India. This area of the subcontinent is most vulnerable.
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte ordered troops Thursday to occupy islands that are also claimed by China in the disputed South China Sea.The Hill
As long-needed economic reforms are taking off in the Philippines, regime change plans have been prepared in the US State Department against a democratically-elected president who enjoys very high popular support.
During the Philippine presidential campaigns in spring 2016, U.S. Ambassador Philip Goldberg sided visibly with anti-Duterte forces, which led to several high-profile confrontations. After the controversial Ambassador left the Philippines, he wrote a “blueprint to undermine Duterte within 18 months.” Last month, the plan was leaked to The Manila Times, the oldest English-language daily in the Philippines.
It is not the first time Goldberg is associated with regime change efforts. In 2008 President Evo Morales and the Bolivian government gave him three days to leave the country after declaring him persona non grata – following Goldberg’s efforts to fund the opposition leaders, separatists and think-tanks with millions of dollars.
Yet, President Obama rewarded Goldberg by appointing him assistant secretary of state for Intelligence and Research; one of the 16 elements of the US Intelligence Community (IC). Thereafter he was sent to the Philippines, which he left in less than three years after efforts to intervene with the elections.
The outspoken president of the Philippines has lashed out at the former US ambassador to the country, who reportedly left a ‘blueprint to destabilize’ the country’s government when leaving his post in November.
President Rodrigo Duterte said all ambassadors play a part in their respective countries' spying operations, but American ambassadors have a "forte" for undermining the government of their host countries.
"Most of the ambassadors of the United States, but not all, are not really professional ambassadors. At the same time they are spying, they are connected with the CIA," Duterte said in an interview with CNN Philippines.
Duterte was commenting on a Tuesday report in the Manila Times, which claimed that Philip Goldberg, who resigned in November his position as the US ambassador to the Pacific nation, has left behind a detailed plan on how to undermine the Philippines government and oust its president....
Duterte has been on bad terms with Goldberg for quite some time. On one occasion he infamously called the American envoy a "gay son of a bitch" for interfering with Philippines politics.…Harsh.
Then again, as the Filipino journalists Patricia Evangelista and Nicole Curato suggested on the eve of Monday’s election, Duterte’s foul-mouthed speaking style and reputation as a crime-fighter — he is accused of sanctioning hundreds of extrajudicial killings by vigilante death squads in his home city of Davao — appears to be exactly what appealed to voters fed up with a dysfunctional political system that seems to serve just the 40 families that reportedly control three-quarters of the nation’s wealth.…The Intercept
US military aircrafts and naval ships carried out these operations against China, India, Indonesia, Iran, Libya, Malaysia, the Maldives, Oman, the Philippines and Vietnam, the Pentagon report on Monday said. The purported aim of these assertive US missions are to demonstrate that Washington will not accept the claims of jurisdiction of these countries over disputed areas.…Not just picking on China.
