Twenty-nine children could be facing the death penalty in Nigeria after they were arraigned Friday for participating in a protest against the country’s record cost-of-living crisis. Four of them collapsed in court due to exhaustion before they could enter a plea.

A total of 76 protesters were charged with 10 felony counts, including treason, destruction of property, public disturbance and mutiny, according to the charge sheet seen by The Associated Press.

According to the charge sheet, the minors ranged in age from 14 to 17 years old.

Frustration over the cost-of-living crisis has led to several mass protests in recent months. In August, at least 20 people were shot dead and hundreds more were arrested at a protest demanding better opportunities and jobs for young people.

The death sentence was introduced in the 1970s in Nigeria, but there have been no executions in the country since 2016.

Akintayo Balogun, a private lawyer based in Abuja, said the Child Rights Act does not allow any child to be subject to criminal proceedings and sentenced to death.

“So taking minors before a federal high court is wrong, ab initio, except if the government is able to prove that the boys are all above 19 years,” Balogun said.

The court eventually granted 10 million naira ($5,900) bail to each the defendants and imposed stringent conditions they are yet to meet, Marshal Abubakar, counsel to some of the boys, said.

“A country that has a duty to educate its children will decide to punish those children. These children have been in detention for 90 days without food,” Abubakar said.

Yemi Adamolekun, executive director of Enough is Enough, a civil society organization promoting good governance in Nigeria, said authorities have no business prosecuting children.

“The chief justice of Nigeria should be ashamed, she is a woman and a mother,” Adamolekun said.

Despite being one of the top crude oil producers in Africa, Nigeria remains one of the world’s poorest countries. Chronic corruption means the lifestyle of its public officials rarely mirrors that of the general population. Medical professionals often strike to protest meager wages.

The country’s politicians and lawmakers, often accused of corruption, are some of the best-paid in Africa. Even the president’s wife — her office nowhere in the constitution — is entitled to SUVs and other luxuries funded by taxpayers.

Nigeria’s population of over 210 million people — the continent’s largest — is also among the hungriest in the world and its government has struggled to create jobs. The inflation rate is also at 28-year high and the local naira currency at record lows against the dollar.

On Thursday, Nigeria was classified as a “hotspot of very high concern,” in a report from United Nations’ food agencies, as large numbers of people are facing or are projected to face critical levels of acute food insecurity in the West African country.

A 5.48 metre (18 ft) Australian crocodile that held the world record as the largest crocodile in captivity has died, a wildlife sanctuary said on Saturday. He was thought to be more than 110 years old.

Cassius, weighing in at more than one ton, had been in declining health since October 15, Marineland Melanesia Crocodile Habitat said on Facebook.

“He was very old and believed to be living beyond the years of a wild Croc,” according to a post by the organisation, based on Green Island near the Queensland tourist town of Cairns.

“Cassius will be deeply missed, but our love and memories of him will remain in our hearts forever.”

The group’s website said he had lived at the sanctuary since 1987 after being transported from the neighbouring Northern Territory, where crocodiles are a key part of the region’s tourist industry.

Cassius, a saltwater crocodile, held the Guinness World Records title as the world’s largest crocodile in captivity.

He took the title after the 2013 death of Philippines crocodile Lolong, who measured 6.17 m (20 ft 3 in) long, according to Guinness.

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has promised a “teeth-breaking” response to Israel and the United States after Israel targeted Iranian military sites in retaliatory strikes late last month.

“The enemies, both the US and the Zionist regime (Israel), should know that they will definitely receive a teeth-breaking response for what they are doing against Iran and the resistance front,” said Khamenei, referring to Iran-allied militant groups including Hamas and Hezbollah.

He was speaking during a meeting with students on Saturday, ahead of the anniversary of the 1979 seizure of the US embassy in Tehran, Iran’s state-run Press TV reported.

“We are certainly doing everything necessary to prepare the Iranian nation to stand against arrogance, whether in terms of military readiness, armaments, or political actions, and thank God, our officials are currently engaged in this,” he added.

Iran and Israel have long been enemies, a rivalry that deepened following Hamas’ attacks of October 7 last year and the subsequent Israeli invasion of Gaza. Israel has been battling Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, and overnight at least 19 people were injured in the central Israeli city of Tira after projectiles were launched over the border.

Khamenei’s remarks come a week after Israel’s latest round of strikes on Iran in response to the Islamic Republic’s October 1 missile attack on the Jewish state, which itself was a response to the Israeli killing of leaders from Hamas and Hezbollah.

For the first time, Israeli officials admitted hitting targets on Iranian soil in a significant escalation of tensions, although Israel stopped short of hitting Iranian energy or nuclear facilities.

Khamenei’s remarks on Saturday signal a departure from Iran’s initial attempts to downplay the severity of the strikes carried out by Israel on October 25.

Following the strikes, Khamenei took a more measured tone, saying the attacks should “neither be exaggerated nor downplayed.”

White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre on Wednesday said Iran should not respond to Israel’s strikes on its territory, adding that “if Iran does choose to respond, however, the US will be standing by to assist Israel in its defense.”

Also this week, Iran said it could increase the range of its missiles, according to a report in state-run media. “If the Islamic Republic of Iran faces an existential threat, we will inevitably change the policy of our military doctrine,” the head of Iran’s Strategic Council on Foreign Relations, Kamal Kharrazi, told Lebanon’s al-Mayadeen TV on Friday, per Press TV.

He also said Iran is capable of producing nuclear weapons but remains curbed by a mandate by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei against weapons of mass destruction, Press TV reported.

Moldovans vote in the second round of a crucial presidential election on Sunday, which could determine whether the post-Soviet country stays its course toward Europe or lurches back into the Kremlin’s orbit.

Maia Sandu, the pro-Western president, is seeking reelection after guiding Moldova closer to the European Union than ever before while Russia’s war in Ukraine raged near its eastern border.

Sandu secured 42% of the first-round vote, held on the same day as a referendum on EU membership that passed by the thinnest of margins. Both votes were marred by a vast Kremlin-linked vote-buying scheme, which Sandu said amounted to an “unprecedented assault” on Moldova’s democracy.

She faces Alexandr Stoianoglo, a former prosecutor general running for the pro-Russian Party of Socialists. If other Kremlin-friendly parties swing their support behind him, the second round will be extremely close.

In last Sunday’s presidential debate, Sandu – a Harvard-educated former World Bank official who has cut ties with Moscow – called Stoianoglo a “Trojan Horse” seeking to infiltrate the country’s capital, Chisinau, on the Kremlin’s behalf.

Before last month’s votes, Ilan Shor, a Russian-backed oligarch, offered to pay people for working to elect a Russia-friendly candidate and stop the referendum passing. Sandu said the scheme sought to pay off some 300,000 voters – about 10% of the population.

Despite polling at just over 10% before the election, Stoianoglo won more than 26% of first-round votes. Both the Kremlin and Shor have denied interference, but Moldovan officials have warned the second vote could also be targeted by similar schemes.

Apart from vote-buying, analysts say the first round revealed genuine opposition to Sandu, whose first term has been wracked by successive crises.

Although Sandu has weaned Moldova off Russian gas, it came at a heavy cost to one of Europe’s poorest countries. Inflation briefly rocketed to more than 30%, causing poverty to tick up.

Some have also criticized Sandu’s “cynical” decision to hold the EU referendum on the same day as the presidential election, positioning herself as the only politician capable of bringing Moldova into Europe.

“The plan of the government was that the issue of European integration will drag up the support for Maia Sandu. It turned out the other way round: The discontent with Maia Sandu dragged down the support for European integration,” said Samurokov.

Stoianoglo is attempting to capitalize on discontent with Sandu by keeping one foot in both camps. He has called for a “reset” of relations with Moscow and said he would be willing to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin, while maintaining he is committed to joining the EU.

As a result, his platform is a mix of contradictory policies, said Samurokov: “You either support European integration, or you want to promote cooperation with Moscow. It’s very difficult to reconcile.”

Still, Moldovan officials are braced for a second round of voting marred by pro-Russian meddling. A defeat for Sandu would land a crushing blow for Moldova’s hopes of a European future.

A Russia-friendly government could also spell further trouble in Transnistria, a separatist sliver of territory where some 1,500 Russian troops are stationed. Officials have long questioned whether Transnistria could eventually become a second front in the war in Ukraine.

Moldova’s election will come a week after Georgia’s, another formerly Communist state where Russia is seeking to keep its influence alive.

After the increasingly autocratic Georgian Dream party claimed victory, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky claimed Russia has “won” in Georgia and is on its way to doing the same in Moldova. Sunday’s vote will determine whether he is right.

The ground shook, windows shattered, and the cries of patients filled the air. An Israeli bomb had just struck Beirut’s southern suburbs in yet another near-nightly attack – this time hitting a building across the street from Lebanon’s biggest public hospital.

“I was treating a patient when the bomb went off. I fell over him from the shock of it,” said Mohammad Fouani, an emergency room nurse at Rafik Hariri University Hospital, recalling the aftermath of the October 21 attack. “The smoke was so thick; I could barely see my fellow colleagues.”

Israel said the strike hit a Hezbollah target, though the area was not covered in Israeli military evacuation orders for locations with alleged links to the Iran-backed group in the south of Beirut. At least four people, including a child, were killed and 24 injured in the residential building some 70 meters away from the hospital, Lebanon’s health ministry said.

Lebanon’s health sector has been in the thick of a ferocious Israeli air assault as Israel and Hezbollah trade fire in an ongoing war, with the country’s south and Beirut’s southern suburbs hardest hit. In the first month of its all-out air offensive in Lebanon, which began on September 23, Israeli strikes damaged 34 hospitals, killed 111 emergency medical technicians (EMTs), and hit 107 ambulances, according to data compiled by the Lebanese health ministry.

Around 20% of all hospitals registered with the health ministry in Lebanon have been damaged in a month of attacks, with most strikes landing in their vicinity, according to data compiled by medical authorities.

“Health institutions are supposed to be sanctuaries,” said Abiad. “It’s clear that this is premeditated, that this is a state policy that Israel is following, whether in Gaza or in Lebanon.”

The UN special coordinator for Lebanon said on October 25 that “first responders heeding the call to help, including healthcare personnel and paramedics, have also been hard hit,” and called the number of attacks impacting healthcare facilities and personnel “alarming.”

The attacks on the first responders, said Abiad, has sent “a very chilling message: if you’re injured, you’re going to die.”

Since September 23, Israeli strikes have killed eight people inside the premises of four hospitals, and eight facilities have been forced to close, according to the health ministry.

Hospitals and other medical establishments are protected civilian objects under international humanitarian law. It is illegal, with few exceptions, to attack hospitals, ambulances or other health facilities, or to otherwise prevent them from providing care. In a report released on Wednesday, Human Rights Watch referred to Israeli attacks on healthcare workers in Lebanon as “apparent war crimes.”

The threat to Lebanon’s healthcare sector was felt most acutely on the night of October 21. As well as the strike that hit the Rafik Hariri University Hospital, Israel also claimed that another major hospital in the south of Beirut, Al Sahel General Hospital, was located above a Hezbollah bunker. Hours later, hospital staff and patients evacuated the facility for fear it would be hit. The next day, journalists toured the premises and said they found no evidence to support the claim.

Israel published a 3D graphic to show what they claimed was a Hezbollah underground facility storing cash and gold beneath the hospital. Officials at Sahel General Hospital vehemently denied the accusation, and Israel has not struck the hospital.

For the Lebanese, the graphic was reminiscent of imagery released by the Israeli military last year alleging the presence of a Hamas “command-and-control” center under Gaza City’s al-Shifa hospital. The hospital was later attacked by Israeli forces.

“For me, what’s really concerning is that the rhetoric from the Israelis is the same, especially when they talk about infrastructure beneath healthcare,” said Dr. Thaer Ahmad, an American physician who volunteered at Gaza’s Al Nasser hospital in Khan Younis earlier this year and is now working in Lebanon.

Ahmad said all healthcare workers he’s interacted with are “pessimistic,” and fear the health system will suffer the same fate as it has in Gaza.

Fragmentation zones

Israel’s air, ground and naval assault on Hezbollah in Lebanon has decimated the Iran-backed group’s military leadership and dealt harsh blows to its rank-and-file, as well as to its arsenal of weaponry. It has also killed hundreds of civilians, according to health authorities, and destroyed large swathes of civilian infrastructure.

Israel has regularly dropped 1,000-pound and 2,000-pound bombs on Lebanon, according to analysis of aftermath imagery by weapons experts, inflicting catastrophic damage to neighborhoods and towns. The Israeli military has argued that it has deployed these bombs as bunker busters to destroy Hezbollah’s underground infrastructure.

The lethal fragmentation radius of these bombs puts nearby people and civilian structures, such as hospitals, at serious risk. When they are dropped, white-hot metal fragments can fly out in all directions, tearing through their surroundings. Known by experts as a “kill zone,” the area of exposure to injury or death around a target can range from 340 meters for small-diameter bombs, to 365 meters for 1,000 and 2,000 bombs, weapons experts say.

All eight hospitals in the southern suburbs of Beirut, known as Dahiyeh, fell within the lethal fragmentation zones of verified airstrikes. According to the health ministry, all of these healthcare facilities were damaged in the first month of Israel’s offensive since late September. Three hospitals on the edges of the area were also damaged, according to the ministry’s data.

Almost all of Hezbollah’s leadership were killed in Israeli strikes in Dahiyeh, the group’s seat of power. Several videos of attacks there have shown signs of secondary explosions – evidence that at least some of the targets were weapons depots.

Beirut’s southern suburbs, previously home to around a million people, were also a major flashpoint of Israeli attacks in the country’s last all-out war with Lebanon in 2006. Airstrikes there transformed large parts of the area into a seemingly endless stretch of rubble and detritus. Yet back then, the bombing campaign left hospitals in the south of Beirut comparatively unscathed.

Under international law, a hospital can lose its special protected status only if it is being used for military purposes. But the wounded and sick inside are still protected by the principle of proportionality, and time must be given for evacuation before an attack.

The analysis found that the weapon was likely a GBU-39.

The hardest-hit health facilities have been in the southernmost part of Lebanon, where the Israeli air assault has been the most intense and ground forces have been met with fierce resistance from Hezbollah fighters. It was in that region that the first of the country’s hospitals shuttered after the start of the all-out offensive.

In the town of Bint Jbeil, Israel struck a mosque which it described as a command center within the compound of the Salah Ghandour hospital on October 4. Ten people inside the hospital were injured, according to the health ministry, forcing it to close.

That day, an Israeli airstrike hit the premises of Marjayoun governmental hospital in a southern Christian town of the same name.

The night that a nearby strike rocked Beirut’s Rafik Hariri University Hospital there was panicked discussion among the staff about whether to evacuate. “Because of Gaza and what happened to the hospitals in the south and the rest of the country, our initial thought was that the hospital itself was hit,” said Rafik Hariri University Hospital director Jihad Saadeh. “But when we saw that it wasn’t a direct hit, we were reassured. We continued our work.”

For Nurse Foany, merely considering the evacuation was a terrifying thought. “Can you imagine what that was like? Imagine evacuating Lebanon’s largest public hospital, not just its staff but its sick and its injured in a single night,” he said. “It was a horrific thought.”

Adan Ortell Mor had a 7:30 p.m. appointment to cut a client’s hair at his salon in La Torre, Valencia, on Tuesday night. But when the client called to cancel because traffic was bad, it may have saved Mor’s life. Instead, he went home and saw reports of cars floating in floodwaters in a town upriver.

No warning. No alerts. That came about an hour later on his mobile phone. A blaring alarm sent to all residents in Valencia, telling them of heavy rains and to stay at home. Far too late for the many people already trapped in rising floodwaters.

This is the worst natural disaster Valencia has seen in decades. A year’s worth of rain dumped in less than 8 hours, according to Spain’s meteorological agency. The water came rushing down the rivers and tributaries towards the Mediterranean Sea, picking up cars and destroying bridges along the way. More than 200 people have been killed, with authorities warning the death toll is likely to rise.

But it is not unprecedented. Valencia suffered a similar deadly flood in October 1957 caused by the same seasonal weather phenomenon known as a Gota Fria or a Cold Drop. That disaster killed dozens of people when the Turia burst its banks in the crowded neighborhoods of Valencia city. It was so deadly that the city spent millions to reroute the river years later.

So, how did Valencia get caught unawares again?

Spain’s AEMET weather center in Valencia warned of heavy rainfall at 7:30 a.m. on Tuesday, raising the alert level to red in some areas and warning residents to stay off the roads in case of floods.

By 10:30 a.m., firefighters in interior towns like Llombai were rescuing people from the floods. AEMET warned residents to be vigilant, even if there was little rainfall in their areas, as ravines and gullies were quickly filling with water streaming down from the mountains toward the sea.

At noon, Valencia’s regional president, Carlos Mazon, seemed to downplay the crisis by saying the storm was subsiding, contradicting the warnings of emergency services. The statement was posted by his office on X but has since been deleted.

By 5 p.m., Valencia’s emergency services were swamped by hundreds of pleas for help throughout the region.

It was at 8 p.m. that cell phones finally buzzed with the public alert telling residents to stay indoors. Much too little, much too late, even for those downstream of the raging water who might otherwise have had time to prepare.

Politicians are pointing fingers at each other for the failure to act quickly enough. In the end, however, it’s residents like 70-year-old Valentín Manzaneque Fernández who are suffering the consequences. He is furious.

He spent two nights sleeping outdoors on a neighbor’s roof terrace before deciding to slog through hours of mud and debris from his home in the suburb of Sedavi to get food and water in Valencia city.

The waters have receded, but recovering from the destruction will take weeks and months. Valencia’s highways remain blocked or only partially usable, many choked by washed-up vehicles. Train tracks are so badly damaged that service is not likely to resume for weeks, according to Adif, Spain’s rail authority.

His salon business, he says, is completely ruined. But he counts himself lucky. His parents survived the 1957 flood and he managed to get them to safety during this disaster.

“It’s just material stuff that got ruined. The main thing is, my family is safe. We will get through it, my family is all right,” he said. “All we can do now is get to work and clean up.”

The full horror of the flash flooding in Spain began to emerge on Friday, just as new rainfall lashed southern parts of the country.

The storm has killed at least 205 people, with 202 of those in the hardest-hit region of Valencia, emergency services in the region said Friday.

It marks Spain’s deadliest natural disaster in decades.

The death toll is expected to rise as emergency workers fight to rescue those who are trapped and recover bodies. Authorities warned Friday that roads have collapsed in some areas, with emergency services unable to get access.

The Spanish Armed Forces have already rescued 4,607 people, Spain’s Minister of Territorial Policies Ángel Víctor Torres Pérez said on Friday.

SOS Desaparecidos, an association dedicated to sharing information about those missing through social media, said they have received reports of at least 1,300 people who remain unaccounted for.

The country has experienced significant autumn storms in recent years, but nothing comes close to the devastation wrought in the past few days.

More details are emerging of the devastation in the Valencia region, with residents reporting large amounts of damage and horrific encounters with the rapidly rising water. A courthouse was turned into a temporary morgue in the region’s capital, Valencia city.

In the city’s La Torre neighborhood, where the water rose to chest level, volunteers continue to search for more missing people.

Rescue teams discovered the bodies of seven people in an underground parking garage there on Thursday, according to national broadcaster RTVE, citing police.

The father of one of those who died in the parking garage, a local policeman, told Spain’s El Mundo newspaper that residents had rushed to move their cars, but the water rose faster than people were expecting, trapping them. Another woman was dragged into the parking lot by the moving water and died, he said.

The town of Paiporta, Valencia, where at least 62 people died, was described by Spanish public broadcaster RTVE as the “ground zero of the tragedy.”

A witness who was caught in the flash flood there told RTVE that he saw multiple cars floating past him with people begging for help. Many drivers found themselves caught on a highway and were swept away in their cars, as the road appeared to merge with a nearby river. A bridge also collapsed in the area.

At least six people died in a nursing home on the outskirts of the town, Paiporta’s mayor told the Spanish national broadcaster. While staff managed to bring most of the elderly people to the first floor, they were unable to save everyone.

Mud still fills the streets in many areas, with the mayor of Valencia sharing images of community clean-up efforts on Friday. “Vehicles are being removed, the square is being cleaned and food and water are being collected,” Mayor María José Catalá said of La Torre.

The regional government of Valencia said power has been reestablished in 90% of places.

Carlos Mazon, the president of the Valencia’s regional government, defended his administration amid accusations that authorities failed to alert residents on time.

“The forecasts we received initially did not predict this (meteorological) revolution,” he said in a video posted on X.

Mazon said the regional government sent out “close to hundreds” of red alerts during the day of the storm, “including an SMS alert reserved for the worst possible scenario.”

Parts of Spain continue to see intense rainfall on Friday, and authorities issued a red warning overnight for the Huelva coast, in Andalusia, which had 140mm (5.5 inches) of precipitation in just 12 hours. Orange and yellow alerts also remain in place in isolated parts of Valencia.

An armed group has taken control of a military post in central Bolivia, the country’s armed forces said on Friday.

According to the Bolivian military’s statement, the “irregular armed group” kidnapped military personnel and seized weapons and ammunition from the base situated near the central Bolivian city of Cochabamba.

The armed forces’ statement urged the group to leave the barracks “immediately and peacefully,” emphasizing that these actions would be “considered treason to the country.”

The incident is the latest escalation in a period of unrest in the South American country as Morales and Arce clash ahead of the 2025 election.

In recent weeks, Morales’ supporters have set up blockades on major highways across the country, including in Cochabamba, in reaction to the government unveiling human trafficking charges against Morales. The blockades, which Bolivian police said involve “violent armed groups,” have led to food and fuel shortages in some cities.

Morales and the government have also traded accusations over an exchange that occurred in Cochabamba last weekend.

Bolivian Minister of Government Eduardo Del Castillo alleged that individuals in a car carrying Morales opened fire on police while trying to evade a checkpoint set up to deter drug trafficking. The former president denied the charge and accused the government of trying to orchestrate his assassination by firing at his vehicle.

China appears to have built a new and unusual aircraft carrier, intriguing experts with a potentially first-of-its-kind vessel that could further increase Beijing’s rapidly expanding maritime power.

Satellite imagery from Planet Labs shows a vessel with a large, open flat top under construction at Guangzhou Shipyard International on Longxue Island, in the southern province of Guangdong.

This potential new aircraft carrier “is of a somewhat unusual shape and size – much smaller than China’s previous naval aircraft carriers,” said Thomas Shugart, a former US Navy submarine commander and now a fellow at the Center for a New American Security.

But the vessel is even smaller than the Type 075 amphibious assault ships used by Beijing’s navy, suggesting that China may be building the world’s first “ostensibly civilian ‘aircraft carrier’ as an oceanographic research vessel of some sort,” Shugart added.

The existence of the new vessel was first reported by The War Zone.

China has been churning out increasingly advanced warships at a feverish pace, often matching US carrier technology.

The aircraft carrier Fujian – by far China’s biggest, most modern and most powerful carrier to date – headed to sea for its first trials earlier this year, with experts saying it could join the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) fleet by 2026.

The 80,000-ton carrier dwarfs the PLAN’s two active carriers, the 66,000-ton Shandong and the 60,000-ton Liaoning, putting it in the league of supercarriers. Only the United States Navy operates aircraft carriers bigger than the Fujian.

Naval fusion

China has also made rapid progress on the construction of the world’s largest amphibious assault ship, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank.

Dubbed Type 076, its flight deck spans approximately 260 meters (853 feet) by 52 meters (170 feet), which is over 13,500 square meters – nearly the area of three US football fields, the think tank said in its satellite imagery analysis.

Built in Shanghai, carrier Fujian and the Type 076 are the crown jewels of a military expansion that has seen Beijing grow its navy into the world’s largest, with more than 340 warships to its name.

But the construction of a novel aircraft carrier-type vessel in southern China could signal another shift toward Beijing’s proclaimed “military-civil fusion strategy that employs things like dual-use civil-military vessels,” said Shugart, the former submarine commander.

The vessel potentially “provides a low-cost addition to the PLA Navy’s operational capabilities in a low-threat environment and its logistical capabilities,” said Carl Schuster, a former director of operations at the US Pacific Command’s Joint Intelligence Center.

Given its light construction, the ship might serve as a helicopter or drone carrier for the China Coast Guard, which is increasingly deployed as a quasi-military force, Schuster said.

“Possessing an aviation platform would expand (the Coast Guard’s) surveillance capability in the distant waters of the southern South China Sea and potentially east of Taiwan,” Schuster added.

China launched large-scale military drills around Taiwan earlier in October, flying a record number of fighter jets and other warplanes around the island. The one-day military exercises, the latest in a series of recent war games conducted by Beijing against its neighbor, displayed an unprecedented involvement of Coast Guard vessels that operated in areas around Taiwan and its outlying islands of Matsu and Dongyin, just off China’s southeastern coast.

“The new flattop would be a significant addition to any Coast Guard quarantine enforcement operation such as that potentially practiced two weeks ago and over the last two years,” Schuster said.

Beijing has become more assertive in its home region, using the military to press its claims in the South China Sea and intimidate Taiwan – a self-governing democracy that China’s ruling Communist Party has vowed to take, by force if necessary.

But the new vessel could also be very useful in a humanitarian capacity, providing quick and cost-effective relief and evacuation in non-combat situations, Schuster said.

“It could also serve as a logistics support and repair ship in an amphibious operation once the beach was secured,” the expert added.

“It is too frail to enter a contested beach area, but they might consider it in desperate situations.”

First two-carrier exercise

In another exhibition of China’s growing naval power, the Liaoning and the Shandong completed their first-ever dual-carrier exercises in late October, according to the state-run Xinhua news service.

An aerial photo of the exercise showed the two carriers steaming side by side, with fighter jets overhead and at least 11 support ships from their carrier strike groups trailing.

Conducted in the South China Sea, the exercise was “aiming to enhance the integrated combat capability of the aircraft carrier formations” and was “part of the Liaoning aircraft carrier formation’s regular real-combat training in the high seas,” Xinhua said.

Schuster, the former US Navy captain, called the exercise “yet another indicator of the PLA Navy’s growing maritime capabilities.”

“Twin carrier operations add another level of complexity to a fleet’s operations,” he said, with the exercise enabling the fleet to test logistical requirements and coordinate communications among the ships in the flotilla.

The state-run Global Times quoted a Chinese naval expert, Song Zhongping, as saying the exercise enabled the two carriers to “complement each other’s strengths and consolidate their advantages.”

“The Liaoning and the Shandong may have different numbers of aircraft carried, different escorting vessels, and thus distinct capabilities for air defense, anti-submarine warfare, and anti-ship operations,” Song said in the Global Times report.

Eight people were killed in the Serbian town of Novi Sad on Friday when the roof of a railway station collapsed, according to the country’s interior minister.

More than 30 people have been injured, according to local media reports. Two survivors pulled from under the rubble are currently in hospital, a statement from Serbia’s Interior Ministry said, and the condition of one of them is “quite serious.”

Rescuers are in contact with two others still stuck under the rubble, Interior Minister Ivica Dacic said. “We are in contact with two people under the rubble. We are working on getting them out,” he said.

Rescuers were at the scene of the accident within minutes of an emergency call being made, according to Dacic. Nearly 80 rescuers have been deployed to the scene, he said.

The rescue operation is expected to take several more hours.

Serbia’s Prime Minister, Milos Vucevic, offered his condolences to families of victims affected by the incident, while thanking first responders.

Vucevic added that those responsible for the collapse would be held accountable.

This is a developing story and will be updated.