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China 'has deployed missiles in South China Sea' - Taiwan

Satellite images taken on 14 February appear to show two batteries of eight missile launchers and a radar system on Woody or Yongxing Island in the Paracels.

China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi said reports were a Western media invention.

real negotiations are often the very antithesis of thoughtful, systematic, rational and intellectually honest exercises. In fact, they’re driven and shaped by factors, such as luck, politics and personality, that are hard to quantify and more experiential than analytical.

Timing is Critical: Woody Allen was wrong. Ninety percent of life isn’t just showing up; it’s showing up at the right time. Ownership just doesn’t ripen like an orange on a tree; it’s driven by a sense of urgency, and that means the presence of sufficient pain and gain to change the locals’ calculations.

What you do try to do is to take each side’s unreasonableness and try to convert it to some common ground by showing both sides they might be able to have their needs met through this bridging idea or that. And if it works, objectivity—whatever that means—is not the relevant factor in any event; the sides’ owning the bridging mechanism and being able to sell it, is.

There are very few things as enjoyable as hating another soccer team and everything it stands for. Because it ends up being (mostly) harmless yet poignant, hate derived from soccer—be it from a legendary rivalry, a personal grudge or any other reason—is the best kind of hate. It might actually be the only acceptable kind of hate.

What I resent are teams who believe winning is their exclusive privilege before the referee (chinga tu madre!) has even started the game.Enter Brazil, kings of entitlement.

The elegant talent of Zico and Eder has been replaced by the robotic muteness of Hulk or the overestimated antics of Neymar, a sort of puffed up Woody-Woodpecker. Even Brazilian extravagance has lost its class: Where before roamed Romario—beautifully defined by Jorge Valdano as a “footballer straight out of an animated cartoon”—now one can find Fred, who has the charisma of a chloroform soaked rag. And there’s more. This Brazil can become violent in an instant. The rough game (the antifutbol) was never part of the Brazilian repertoire. It is now and it has been for a while (ask Tab Ramos if he remembers Leonardo’s elbow). In the 2014 squad, even Neymar carries an axe. This is far from a joyful team.

China to increase defence spending by '7-8%' in 2016 - official

China’s budget will rise to around around 980bn yuan ($150bn) as the Beijing regime increases its military heft and asserts its territorial claims in the South China Sea, raising tensions with its neighbours and with Washington.

“China’s military budget will continue to grow this year but the margin will be lower than last year and the previous years,” said Fu Ying, spokeswoman for the national people’s congress (NPC), the Communist-controlled parliament.

Long before Donald Trump was president of the United States, he was a real-estate mogul. So perhaps it’s fitting that, as president, he decided Friday to effectively cancel his long-anticipated visit to the United Kingdom over his displeasure with the location of the new U.S. embassy in London.

The president was expected to make his first official visit to London in early 2018  for the opening of the new American embassy, which had been moved from its previous location in Grosvenor Square in London’s Mayfair district to Nine Elms, just south of the River Thames. “I am not a big fan of the Obama administration having sold perhaps the best located and finest embassy in London for ‘peanuts,’ only to build a new one in an off location for 1.2 billion dollars,” Trump tweeted of the move, which in fact was initiated under the Bush administration, for both cost and security reasons, in 2008. “Bad deal. Wanted me to cut ribbon—NO!”

The tweet put the U.S. ambassador in the remarkable position of publicly defending the location of the American embassy against the American president. In an op-ed for the Evening Standard, Woody Johnson, a Trump appointee and long-time friend of the president’s, wrote: “I agree with President Trump that Grosvenor Square, in the heart of London, was a perfect location for our embassy.” But he highlighted the security considerations behind the move and added that the new location “is one of the most advanced embassies we have ever built.” He concluded with a paean to the special relationship: “President Trump has told me he views the U.K. as one of the closest friends and partners of the American people we serve. Our new embassy reflects not just America’s special history with the U.K. but the special future ahead of us as we advance the prosperity and security of both our nations.”

The repurposed Mavic drones, made in China for photography and videos, are controlled on radio frequencies that Ukraine’s anti-drone systems cannot block, and are too small, too numerous and fly too low for traditional air defences to pick up.

n August there were more than 2,500 attacks, or dozens each day, the vast majority of them inside Kherson city, said Oleksandr Tolokonnikov, a spokesperson for the Kherson military administration. In September there were more than 2,700.

Between 1 July and 11 October, drones injured more than 400 civilians, including seven children. Many of those injuries were life-changing, including some requiring amputations, Tolokonnikov said.