13/07/2025

theSun on Sunday JULY 13, 2025

WORLD 7

Asean must double down on integration, says S’pore

MANILA: The Philippines, United States and Japan are focused on developing their trilateral economic partnership to complement their growing security ties, the US State Department said yesterday. Foreign Secretary Ma. Theresa Lazaro, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Japanese Foreign Minister Iwaya Takeshi discussed the plan and the need to unlock more private sector investments in their flagship Luzon Economic Corridor. They met on the sidelines of the Asean foreign ministers’ meeting in Malaysia. The State Department said Rubio highlighted Manila’s wealth in critical minerals and stressed the need to diversify critical mineral supply chains. The officials proposed advancing trilateral cooperation in the Philippines on cyber security, energy (including civil nuclear energy), and investments in reliable and secure telecommunications networks. They concluded with an agreement to hold trilateral discussions at the senior officials’ level in the coming months to advance their shared desire for peace and security in the region. The officials reaffirmed their interest in advancing a free and open Indo-Pacific and agreed to coordinate cooperation on maritime security, including through Maritime Cooperative Activities, trilateral military exercises, and capacity building and assistance for the Philippine Coast Guard and other Philippine maritime authorities. – Bernama Trilateral push to advance ties

sensitive through excessive publicity or public responses via media conferences or social media. “I am not in a position to reveal the sensitive nature of the discussions which went on here, but I would make this point. It calls for quiet, discreet, constructive, effective diplomacy. “Based on my interactions with all of them and my colleagues in Asean, everyone hopes for an amicable resolution,” he said, adding that it is very unfortunate that the dispute has led to loss of life. Thailand-Cambodia diplomatic relations were strained following the May 28 brief exchange of gunfire between soldiers stationed near the Preah Vihear province in northern Cambodia. – Bernama issues Boeing victims joined litigation charging the aviation giant with wrongful death and negligence. Boeing has accepted responsibility for the crash, blaming the design of the Manoeuvring Characteristics Augmentation System, a flight handling system. The system was also implicated in the Lion Air crash in 2018, when the 737 fell into the sea after taking off from Jakarta, killing all 189 on board. – AFP

ability. Balakrishnan noted that the Johor-Singapore Special Economic Zone (JS-SEZ) and the Johor Bahru-Singapore Rapid Transit System Link could serve as positive models for future bilateral or multilateral integration within Asean. “From an Asean perspective, this (JS-SEZ) also may have relevant lessons for how to do cross-border collaboration that provides competitive advantage by pooling complementary strengths,” he said. On the Thailand-Cambodia border issue, Balakrishnan said both parties need time and secure, quiet channels to allow diplomacy to work in resolving the issue. He said that, in his personal experience, it has never been effective to resolve difficult and

related meetings in Kuala Lumpur. Balakrishnan said the focus of the meetings in Kuala Lumpur was to increase resilience within Asean amid uncertainty, volatility and economic challenges by deepening Asean integration and strengthening external relations with its partners. “In a way, you can

SINGAPORE: Asean must double down on its integration against the backdrop of geopolitical uncertainty and US tariffs, said Singapore Foreign Minister Dr Vivian Balakrishnan (pic) . He said the grouping ‘Path of no regret’

must ensure that it truly removes every tariff and non-tariff barriers, and optimises its competitive position. “Because that is under our control. That is a path of no regret, and I would say the urgency and the salience of doing it now, it is so much more

think of this as an attempt to increase resilience by increasing the stability of Asean’s economic ties across the world,” he said. The minister noted that he was pleasantly surprised at the very high attendance at

senior levels from the external partners, which is a good reflection of Asean’s convening

obvious,” he told the media on the sidelines of the 58th Asean Foreign Ministers’ Meeting and

Boeing evades MAX trial with last-minute settlement NEW YORK: Boeing has reached a settlement with a man whose family died in a 737 MAX crash in 2019, a law firm told AFP on Friday, meaning the US aviation giant will avoid a federal trial slated for tomorrow. spokesperson for Clifford Law, the firm representing Njoroge, sometimes only hours before trials were set to begin. The crash of Ethiopian Airlines flight 302 on March 10, 2019 took place six minutes after departing Addis Ababa for Nairobi.

“The aviation team at Clifford Law Offices has been working round-the-clock in preparation for trial, but the mediator was able to help the parties come to an agreement on behalf of Njoroge,” said Robert Clifford, a senior partner at Clifford, in a statement. Boeing has succeeded in avoiding civil trials connected to the 737 MAX crashes of 2018 and 2019, reaching settlements,

Njoroge lost his wife Carolyne, who was 33, his mother-in-law Ann Karanja, and the couple’s three children: six-year-old Ryan; Kelli, who was four; and nine month-old Rubi. Between April 2019 and March 2021, family members of 155

Paul Njoroge, who lost his wife and three children in the Ethiopian Airlines disaster in which 157 people died, was to seek damages in a case in Chicago. “The case has settled for a confidential amount,” said a

Fuel to Air India jet engines cut off moments before crash: Probe

one of the pilots is heard asking the other why did he cutoff. The other pilot responded that he did not do so,” it said. The aircraft quickly began to lose altitude. The switches then returned to the “RUN” position and the engines appeared to be gathering power, but “one of the pilots transmitted ‘Mayday Mayday Mayday’”, the report said. Air traffic controllers asked the pilots what was wrong, but then saw the plane crashing and called emergency personnel to the scene. Earlier this week, specialist website The Air Current , citing sources familiar with the investigation, reported it had “narrowed its focus to the movement of the engine fuel switches”, while noting that full analysis will “take months – if not longer”. It added that “the focus of the investigators could change during that time”. The Indian agency’s report said that the US Federal Aviation Administration had issued an

NEW DELHI: Fuel control switches to the engines of an Air India flight that crashed shortly after takeoff, killing 260 people, were moved from the “run” to the “cutoff” position moments before impact, a preliminary investigation report said early yesterday. The report, issued by India’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau, did not offer any conclusions or apportion blame for the June 12 disaster, but indicated that one pilot asked the other why he cut off fuel, and the second pilot responded that he had not. The Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner was headed from Ahmedabad to London when it crashed, killing all but one of the 242 people on board as well as 19 people on the ground. In its 15-page report, the investigation bureau said that once the aircraft achieved its top recorded speed, “the Engine 1 and Engine 2 fuel cutoff switches transitioned from RUN to CUTOFF position one after another with a time gap of 01 sec”. “In the cockpit voice recording,

Participants at a memorial for the crash victims held in Mumbai yesterday. – REUTERSPIC

were

“advisory

and

not

considered an “unsafe condition” that would warrant a more serious directive, Air India told investigators it did not carry out suggested inspections as they

information bulletin in 2018 about “the potential disengagement of the fuel control switch locking feature”. Though the concern was not

mandatory”. Air India was compliant with all directives and alert service bulletins, the report said. – AFP