Tens of thousands take holy dip in India as Maha Kumbh festival begins

BEIJING/TAIPEI: Two US Navy ships sailed through the sensitive Taiwan Strait this week in the first such mission since President Donald Trump took office last month, drawing an angry reaction from China, which said the mission increased security risks.
The US Navy, occasionally accompanied by ships from allied countries, transits the strait about once a month. China, which claims Taiwan as its own territory, says the strategic waterway belongs to it.
The US Navy said the vessels were the Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Ralph Johnson and Pathfinder-class survey ship, USNS Bowditch. The ships carried out a north-to-south transit February 10-12, it said.
“The transit occurred through a corridor in the Taiwan Strait that is beyond any coastal state’s territorial seas,” said Navy Commander Matthew Comer, a spokesperson at the US military’s Indo-Pacific Command. “Within this corridor all nations enjoy high-seas freedom of navigation, overflight, and other internationally lawful uses of the sea related to these freedoms.”
China’s military said that Chinese forces had been dispatched to keep watch.
“The US action sends the wrong signals and increases security risks,” the Eastern Theatre Command of the People’s Liberation Army said in a statement early Wednesday.
China considers Taiwan its most important diplomatic issue and it is regularly a stumbling block in Sino-US relations.
China this week complained to Japan over “negative” references to China in a statement issued after a meeting between Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba.
That statement called for “maintaining peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait,” and voiced support for “Taiwan’s meaningful participation in international organizations.”
Asked in Beijing on Wednesday about the US warships, Zhu Fenglian, spokesperson for China’s Taiwan Affairs Office, said that Taiwan was a “core interest” for the country and that the United States should act with caution.
“We are resolutely opposed to this and will never allow any outside interference, and have the firm will, full confidence and capability to uphold the country’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,” she said.
Taiwan’s defense ministry said its forces had also kept watch but noted the “situation was as normal.”
The last publicly acknowledged US Navy mission in the strait was in late November, when a P-8A Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft flew over the waterway.
The last time a US Navy ship was confirmed to have sailed through the strait was in October, a joint mission with a Canadian warship.
China’s military operates daily in the strait as part of what Taiwan’s government views as part of Beijing’s pressure campaign.
On Wednesday, Taiwan’s defense ministry said that it had detected 30 Chinese military aircraft and seven navy ships operating around the island in the previous 24 hour period.
“I really don’t need to explain further who is the so-called troublemaker around the Taiwan Strait. All other countries in the neighborhood have a deep appreciation of this,” ministry spokesperson Sun Li-fang told reporters in Taipei.
Taiwan President Lai Ching-te rejects Beijing’s sovereignty claims, saying only Taiwan’s people can decide their future.

WASHINGTON: The White House Correspondents’ Association protested a decision by the White House on Tuesday to bar an Associated Press reporter from an event with President Donald Trump over the news agency’s decision to continue referring to the Gulf of Mexico.
Trump signed an executive order in January directing the Interior Secretary to change the name to the Gulf of America.
“The White House cannot dictate how news organizations report the news, nor should it penalize working journalists because it is unhappy with their editors’ decisions,” Eugene Daniels, president of the association, said on Tuesday in a statement posted on X.
“The move by the administration to bar a reporter from the Associated Press from an official event open to news coverage today is unacceptable,” Daniels said.
AP Executive Editor Julie Pace said in a statement earlier that its reporter had been blocked from attending an Oval Office event after being informed by the White House it would be barred unless it aligned its editorial standards with Trump’s order.
“It is alarming that the Trump administration would punish AP for its independent journalism,” Pace said, adding that limiting access violated the First Amendment of the US Constitution guaranteeing freedom of the press.
The AP says in its stylebook that the Gulf of Mexico has carried that name for more than 400 years and, as a global news agency, the AP will refer to it by its original name while acknowledging the new name Trump has chosen.
The White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the statements by the WHCA and the AP. Mexico’s foreign ministry also did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday.
Like the US, Mexico has a long coastline circling the body of water. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum in January jokingly suggested North America, including the United States, be renamed “Mexican America” — a historic name used on an early map of the region.
Most news organizations, including Reuters, call it the Gulf of Mexico although, where relevant, Reuters style is to include the context about Trump’s executive order.