Ship intruded,
Japan tells China
The Associated Press
TOKYO -- Japan has protested to Beijing over a Chinese survey ship that operated for 10 days inside the exclusive economic zone claimed by Japan around Okinotorishima, a tiny island in the Pacific Ocean, officials said Monday.
Japan says Okinotorishima -- two uninhabited rocky outcroppings about 1,060 miles southwest of Tokyo -- are islands. China says they are only rocks and do not qualify as a demarcation point for Japan's exclusive economic zone, as Japan claims under international law.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told reporters that coast guard officials spotted a Chinese ship using survey equipment in the waters beginning July 9 and ordered it to stop. The Chinese ship stayed in the area until Saturday and Japan protested to Beijing via diplomatic channels, Suga said.
"We have not given permission to the Chinese side to conduct a maritime scientific survey in the waters," Suga said. Japan says Okinotorishima anchors the country's exclusive economic zone under the United Nations Convention of the Law of the Sea, which requires foreign ships to gain prior consent to operate surveys or fishing.
Just the tips of the small outcroppings are visible at high tide. They have been heavily enhanced by concrete embankments to avoid further erosion. Japanese fisheries officials have planted corals around the outcroppings in an attempt to enlarge them.
China does not dispute Japan's control over Okinotorishima, but has repeatedly criticized Tokyo's claim that it is an island.
On Friday, Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying said Okinotorishima is a reef under the U.N. convention, not an island, so Japan cannot use it to claim an exclusive economic zone. Hua said the Chinese survey ship was exercising freedom of scientific research on the high seas and Japan's permission was not needed.
Japan and China have stepped up their territorial disputes recently.
Mexican killings
rise in pandemic
The Associated Press
MEXICO CITY -- The number of homicides in Mexico has grown during the new coronavirus pandemic, including a 9.2% spike in killings of women, according to government figures released Monday.
The data for the first half of 2020 showed homicides increased 1.9% to 17,982, as compared to 17,653 in the same period of 2019.
Activists have long worried that the increased confinement of families to their homes would increase killings of women, and they indeed grew from 448 in the first half of 2019 to 489 in the same period of 2020.
Some experts, meanwhile, had hoped the lockdown caused by the coronavirus would limit the drug gang activity that is a major cause of the violence, but on Monday the Defense Department released an analysis saying that a disturbing video of massed drug cartel gunmen posted online last week was indeed genuine and had received about 16 million views in a few days.
The department said the video showed a column of about 75 Jalisco cartel gunmen dressed in military-style fatigues with a dozen homemade armored pickup trucks, an anti-aircraft gun, nine belt-fed machine guns, ten .50-caliber sniper rifles, six grenade launchers and 54 assault rifles.
The department said the video showed "evidence of military-style training" and may have been timed to coincide with the July 17 birthday of Jalisco cartel leader Nemesio "El Mencho" Oseguera.
The department said the video was apparently filmed near the border of Jalisco and Guanajuato states and shows an "elite group" of cartel gunmen formed in 2019 who have been linked to an attack on police, but who have apparently not used the armored vehicles in combat or directly attacked federal forces.
Many of the trucks have welded steel-plate armor, turrets and firing slots.
The army said "the armament, the equipment and the vehicles used show an unlimited use of money earned from illegal activities."