SEOUL — South Korea plans to improve the structures housing the antenna that guide landings at its airports this year following December’s fatal crash of a Jeju Air plane, which skidded off the runway and burst into flames after hitting such a structure.

The transport ministry, which has been inspecting safety conditions at airlines and airports since the Boeing 737-800 jet crashed at the southwestern Muan airport, announced the move to change the so-called “localizer” structures on Monday.

Seven domestic airports, including Muan, were found to have embankments or foundations made of concrete or steel that needed to be changed, the ministry said in a statement.

It added that it would prepare measures to improve the structures by this month and aim to complete the improvements by the end of 2025.

The government has also finished its inspection of six domestic airlines flying Boeing 737-800s, and found violations at some operators including exceeding the period of inspection pre- and post-flight, and non-compliance with procedures to resolve plane defects or passenger boarding.

The transport ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment on whether Jeju Air089590.KSwas among the airlines where violations were found. A Jeju Air spokesperson could not be immediately reached.

A special safety inspection of the country’s major airport facilities will also take place between Jan 13-21, the ministry statement said. — Reuters

BEIJING — Tibet’s earthquake of magnitude 6.8 that killed 126 and damaged four water reservoirs this week highlights the risks from a hydropower building spree by Asian giants China and India in one of the world’s most remote, quake-prone regions, experts say.

Some 68 major dams in the Himalayan region exploit the enormous hydropower potential of high-altitude lakes and rivers — just a fifth of which has been tapped, researchers say, but face seismic risks.

Another 101 are in the stages of being planned or built.

Even before the quake centered on Tingri county, the northern gateway to the Mount Everest region, experts had voiced concern about both nations’ hydropower ambitions there, exemplified by China’s plan for the world’s largest hydropower dam.

The project, more than three times the size of the Three Gorges Dam, the world’s largest, is set to provide 34 gigawatts of clean energy vital to China’s aim of peak carbon emissions before 2030.

“A strong earthquake could cause direct damage,” Fan Xiao, a former chief engineer in the geology and mineral bureau of Sichuan in southwestern China, wrote in an article in October 2022 on the province’s Motuo project approved in late December.

Fan, who warned the project was in an area prone to strong earthquakes, did not respond to Reuters questions on messaging app Wechat about the article.

Hydropower projects in the remote mountainous area highlight the tension between the risks of building there and the enormous demand for clean power in China and India, the world’s No. 1 and No. 3 emitters of greenhouse gases respectively.

Earthquakes have damaged dams in the past, particularly by setting off landslides and rockfalls. A massive earthquake in Nepal in 2015 shuttered almost a fifth of its hydropower for more than a year, research published in 2018 showed.

Building more dams in the Himalayas is not sustainable, said C P Rajendran, a geologist at India’s National Institute of Advanced Studies, citing ecological concerns and the earthquake risk from the weight of gigantic reservoirs on faultlines.

AGEING RESERVOIRS
China’s water resources ministry has raised concerns about ageing reservoirs, more than 80% built between the 1950s and 1970s.

However, it did not respond to a faxed request for comment and has not detailed the reservoirs damaged in the Tibet quake.

The Motuo project has been rigorously tested for disaster prevention and mitigation, China’s foreign ministry has said.

Tectonic activity in the region could make the site hazardous though analysis is needed to determine specific risks at the site on the upper reaches of the Yarlung Zangbo river, said Wolfgang Schwanghart, a Potsdam University expert who studies the formation and changes of the earth’s surface.

His research in 2018 showed about a quarter of the region’s projects were at risk of moderate to severe damage in a future earthquake.

China says the dam will play a major role in reaching carbon peaking and neutrality goals and will stimulate the economy and create jobs.

Hydropower generation is more reliable and flexible than intermittent wind and solar, and helps with the urgent need to transition away from polluting coal.

But Fan said the project was unnecessary, given the low hydropower demand in sparsely populated Tibet and the high costs of transmitting it elsewhere.

Some mega-dam building in China may be motivated more by economics than energy needs, he said.

“The gross domestic product brought by huge hydropower projects, as well as the increase in investment and tax revenue, is a great temptation for the government and related interest groups,” Fan added. — Reuters

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida – Jeff Bezos said he does not think SpaceX CEO Elon Musk will use his close ties with U.S. President-elect Donald Trump to undercut his space company Blue Origin, adding he feels “very optimistic” about the incoming administration’s space agenda.

“Elon has been very clear that he’s doing this for the public interest and not for his personal gain. And I take him at face value,” Bezos, founder of Blue Origin which rivals SpaceX in the space industry, told Reuters in an interview on Sunday.

Bezos spoke with Reuters in Cape Canaveral, Florida where he will watch the debut launch of Blue Origin’s New Glenn, a 30 story-tall rocket that is expected to chip away at SpaceX’s market dominance and kick start Blue Origin’s long-delayed entrance in the satellite launch business.

Musk, who spent more than a quarter billion dollars to help elect Trump, has had the president-elect’s ear on space matters.

Last month he said the U.S. should send missions straight to Mars instead of going to the moon first, fueling industry concerns of a major shakeup to NASA’s space exploration program.

“My own opinion is that we should do both – we need to go to the moon and we should go to Mars,” Bezos said, when asked if he was concerned about changes to NASA’s moon program.

“What we shouldn’t do is start and stop things. We should continue with the lunar program for sure,” Bezos said.

Trump in his second term as president is expected to make sweeping changes to NASA’s moon program and focus heavily on sending missions to Mars.

Amazon has donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund and will stream the event on its Prime Video service. Bezos, Amazon’s founder and executive chairman, has met with Trump but told Reuters “we really haven’t talked about space.”

Blue Origin, founded by Bezos in 2000, has a $3 billion contract with NASA to land humans on the moon later this decade after missions by SpaceX’s Starship, Musk’s fully reusable rocket in development that is designed to put humans and cargo on both the moon and Mars. — Reuters

SHANGHAI – China stepped up its policy measures on Monday to defend a weakening yuan by relaxing rules to allow more offshore borrowing and sending verbal warnings as the Chinese currency hovered around 16-month lows against a strong dollar.

The yuan has faced renewed depreciation pressures, weighed down by a triple-whammy of a broadly stronger greenback, falling Chinese yields and rising trade tensions with other economies.

The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) announced on Monday that borrowing limits would be raised to allow corporates to borrow more from abroad.

The ratio under its macro-prudential assessments (MPA) – determining the maximum a company can borrow relative to its net assets – would be raised to 1.75 from 1.5, with immediate effect.

The move was to “further improve the macro-prudential management of cross-border financing, continue to increase the sources of cross-border funds for enterprises and financial institutions, and guide them to optimise their asset-liability,” the PBOC said in a statement jointly issued with the foreign exchange regulator.

Separately, the China Foreign Exchange Committee planned to resolutely keep the yuan exchange rate basically stable at reasonable and balanced levels, the central bank said in another statement.

The committee is a forum under the sponsorship of the central bank and the foreign exchange regulator.

The committee also said that monetary authorities will increase FX market resilience and strengthen market management. They will also correct pro-cyclical market activities, deal with behaviours that disrupt market orders and prevent exchange rate overshooting risks.

And in Hong Kong, PBOC Governor Pan Gongsheng told the Asia Financial Forum on the same day that “China has the confidence, conditions and ability to maintain stable operation of the foreign exchange market.”

China will keep the yuan exchange rate basically stable at reasonable and balanced levels,” Pan reiterated.

These measures are “sending a signal to stabilise the yuan,” said Ken Cheung, chief Asian FX strategist at Mizuho Bank.

“But the actual impact on capital flows and exchange rate is relatively limited, due to the low cost of domestic financing.”

Cheung said regulators will continue to mainly use the daily midpoint fixing to stabilise the currency and guide market expectations.

China’s onshore yuan traded at 7.3315 per dollar as of 0247 GMT on Monday, not far from a 16-month low of 7.3328 hit on Friday. It has lost more than 3% to the dollar since U.S. President-elect Donald Trump won the election in November.

The central bank has been setting its official midpoint guidance on the firmer side of the key 7.2 level and stronger than market projections since mid-November. Traders and analysts widely interpret this as a sign of rising unease over recent yuan declines.

The PBOC said last week that it will sell 60 billion yuan worth of six-month yuan bills in Hong Kong on Jan. 15, the most since the central bank started such bill sales in the financial hub in 2018.

Selling these yuan bills will mop up liquidity in the market to reduce speculative bets against the yuan. — Reuters

WASHINGTON – U.S. President Joe Biden spoke on Sunday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the White House said, as U.S. officials race to reach a Gaza hostage and ceasefire deal before Biden leaves office on Jan. 20.

Biden and Netanyahu discussed efforts underway to reach a deal to halt the fighting in the Palestinian enclave and free the remaining hostages there, the White House said in a statement after the two leaders spoke by telephone.

Biden “stressed the immediate need for a ceasefire in Gaza and return of the hostages with a surge in humanitarian aid enabled by a stoppage in the fighting under the deal,” it said.

Netanyahu updated Biden on progress in the talks and on the mandate he has given his top-level security delegation now in Doha in order to advance a hostage deal, Netanyahu said in a statement.

The two leaders also discussed “the fundamentally changed regional circumstances following the ceasefire deal in Lebanon, the fall of the Assad regime in Syria, and the weakening of Iran’s power in the region,” the White House said.

Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan told CNN’s “State of the Union” program earlier on Sunday that the parties were “very, very close” to reaching a deal, but still had to get it across the finish line.

He said Biden was getting daily updates on the talks in Doha, where Israeli and Palestinian officials have said since Thursday that some progress has been made in the indirect talks between Israel and militant group Hamas.

“We are still determined to use every day we have in office to get this done,” Sullivan said, “and we are not, by any stretch of imagination, setting this aside.”

He said there was still a chance to reach an agreement before Biden leaves office, but that it was also possible “Hamas, in particular, remains intransigent.”

During their call, Netanyahu also thanked Biden for his lifelong support of Israel and “the extraordinary support from the United States for Israel’s security and national defense,” the White House said.

Israel launched its assault in Gaza after Hamas fighters stormed across its borders in October 2023, killing 1,200 people and taking more than 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.

Since then, more than 46,000 people have been killed in Gaza, according to Palestinian health officials, with much of the enclave laid to waste and gripped by a humanitarian crisis, and most of its population displaced.

Vice President-elect JD Vance told the “Fox News Sunday” program in an interview taped on Saturday that he expects a deal for the release of U.S. hostages in the Middle East to be announced in the final days of the Biden administration, maybe in the last day or two.

President-elect Donald Trump, a staunch supporter of Israel, has strongly backed Netanyahu’s goal of destroying Hamas. He has promised to bring peace to the Middle East, but has not said how he would accomplish that. — Reuters

ALTADENA, California – Flames were licking his fence, he was choking on smoke, and bullets were whizzing by his leg. Despite it all, Tristin Perez never left his Altadena home during the deadly Eaton fire.

The 34-year-old carpenter felt he had no choice but to stay despite the life-threatening conditions. A police officer told him and his neighbors to evacuate early on Wednesday morning as the fire raced down the hillside above them.

Instead, Perez insisted on trying to save his property and his neighbors’ homes along El Molino Avenue. But he didn’t even have a garden hose. He ripped the filters from two water pitchers and doused the ground, his wooden fence and every ember he could reach.

“Your front yard is on fire, palm trees lit up – it looked like something out of a movie,” Perez told Reuters in an interview in his driveway. “I did everything I could to stop the line and save my house, help save their houses.”

His one-story yellow duplex survived. So did two more homes next door. Across the street, entire houses burned to the ground. A single brick chimney stood alone in the wreckage.

“When you look across the street… If I wasn’t here, that is what would have happened,” he said. “I felt so bad for them. It’s absolutely awful.”

Perez mourned the losses here. He moved to Altadena three years ago and rented his two-bedroom unit. He fell in love with the tranquil and tight-knit community of about 40,000 people north of Los Angeles, where neighbors are friendly and look out for each other.

As of late Saturday, officials said the Eaton fire was 15% contained, and that the fire threat remains high across the Los Angeles area. Overall, six simultaneous blazes that have ripped across Los Angeles County neighborhoods since Tuesday have killed at least 16 people and damaged or destroyed 12,000 structures.

Eleven of them were killed in the Eaton fire here. The death toll is expected to grow when firefighters are able to conduct house-to-house searches.

In Altadena, fire crews were walking house to house with shovels, looking for hot spots that were still burning. Sheriff’s deputies patrolled the streets and blocked residents from returning to their homes at checkpoints.

FAST-MOVING FLAMES
Perez provided a harrowing account of how the Eaton fire rapidly intensified early on Wednesday. The first indication something was wrong came on Tuesday evening. His neighbors were outside staring at a faint glow far in the distance.

“To be honest, I didn’t really consider it too much of a threat just because it was way out there,” he said.

Then the winds began to howl and blow toward them. The fire was coming right at them at alarming speed. “It looked like it was sprinting down a football field. It was flying,” Perez said.
Then he and his neighbors lost sight of the flames. Perez said that was the most nerve-wracking part of the night.

That soon changed. Looking up his street 200 yards away, entire homes and businesses were engulfed in flames. Perez told his neighbors to leave. “I was willing to go to the end. I saw the firefighters, everybody was already shorthanded, so I wanted to do my part,” he said.

Fire and law enforcement officials discourage people from staying at their homes during wildfires because it can put residents and first responders in danger.

But Perez felt he had a shot to fight off the flames because there was an empty, mostly dirt lot between him and the advancing fire. The downside was that his neighbors on the north side also stored boxes of ammunition on their property.

Soon explosions began erupting. Breathing became unbearable. Perez felt something whiz past his leg while standing in his yard. The fire had ignited the bullets stored next door, posing fresh danger.

“Bullets flying, gas tanks exploding, embers raining down, you can’t see anything,” Perez said.

He kept dousing his property for hours through the night. His home is still standing. Many others weren’t as fortunate as thousands of structures were destroyed around him.

‘HOW TO REBUILD’
Around the corner, Pablo Scarpellini stared at the burned ruins of his wife’s Spanish immersion preschool, Rayuela. The entire building had collapsed, and a small playground slide sat half-melted in the back.

“It’s devastating,” Scarpellini told Reuters. “But I’ve cried so much the last few days, now my vision is more of hope and trying to visualize how to rebuild it.”

He said his wife, Liliana Martinez, the preschool’s founder and director, was scrambling to find an alternative for her 15 students. “We’re doing as much as we can to relocate the kids,” he said.

Perez, wearing a black tank top and shorts, swept tree limbs and brush out of his driveway on Saturday while the front corner of his yard smoldered. His white picket fence had melted in several spots. Two palm trees in his front yard bore black scars at the top.

Perez has no power or running water. Firefighters stationed at a nearby hardware store let him use their equipment to charge his phone so he could tell a few family members and friends that he had survived. A downed power line was draped across his street as utility workers surveyed the widespread damage.

While firefighters made progress containing the Eaton fire through the weekend, Perez said he is preparing for the threat to return if the winds shift.

“Lord forbid anything happens, I will be ready,” he said. Perez also plans to volunteer for the community cleanup in the months ahead to help local restaurants and businesses reopen.
“This isn’t the end of Altadena. This is just turning the next chapter.” — Reuters