A stretch of uninhabited, low-lying reefs in the South China Sea is fast becoming a dangerous new flashpoint between China and the Philippines, dealing a blow to recent efforts to de-escalate tensions in one of the world’s most vital waterways.

Over the past week, Chinese and Philippine vessels have engaged in multiple collisions and face-offs near Sabina Shoal, a disputed atoll lying just 86 miles from the Philippines’ west coast and 745 miles from China, which claims almost all of the South China Sea as its sovereign territory despite an international ruling to the contrary.

The violent confrontations came just weeks after Beijing and Manila struck a temporary deal to lower tensions that had been rising all summer at another nearby reef, where China’s increasingly aggressive tactics had raised alarm across the region as well as in Washington, a mutual defense ally of the Philippines.

Renewed tension in the South China Sea is expected to be on the agenda of meetings between US national security adviser Jake Sullivan and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi during Sullivan’s visit to China this week.

Following a particularly violent encounter at the Second Thomas Shoal in June, which saw Chinese coast guard personnel brandishing axes at Filipino soldiers and slashing their rubber boats, Chinese and Philippine officials sat down for talks and agreed to de-escalate.

For a while, tensions appeared to be cooling, but the detente proved short lived.

On August 19, in the middle of the night, coast guard ships from China and the Philippines collided near Sabina Shoal. Manila said the Chinese ships rammed into its vessels, tearing a 3.6-foot hole in one and a 3-foot-wide gap in another. Beijing blamed the Philippines for the collisions.

Then, last Sunday afternoon, another clash took place, with the Philippines accusing China of ramming and firing water cannons at a vessel from its fisheries bureau in an encounter with eight Chinese ships, including a warship from the People’s Liberation Army Navy. China said the Philippine ship “refused to accept control” by a Chinese coast guard vessel and “deliberately collided” with it.

The following day, in yet another tense encounter, the Philippines said China deployed “an excessive force” of 40 ships – including three PLA Navy warships – to block two Philippine Coast Guard vessels. Beijing said it took “control measures” against two Philippine ships that “intruded” into waters near Sabina Shoal.

Analysts say Sabina Shoal is fast becoming the latest confrontation zone in what is already a highly contested part of the world, where a mistake could quickly spiral into a conflict with hugely damaging consequences.

“All indications seem to point to the fact that this is an emerging third flashpoint” after the Second Thomas Shoal and another atoll to the north named the Scarborough Shoal, said Collin Koh, research fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore.

“Manila is trying to avoid what they call a repeat of the Scarborough Shoal,” which China seized in 2012 after a long standoff with the Philippines and on which it has maintained a permanent presence since, Koh added.

China, on the other hand, is trying to see off another Second Thomas Shoal, where the Philippines ran aground a World War II-era ship in 1999 to stake its claim over the reef and has stationed a small group of marines since.

The violent clashes around Second Thomas Shoal earlier this summer occurred during Beijing’s attempts to block Manila’s missions to resupply its soldiers stationed on the rusting BRP Sierra Madre.

Resupply missions

A similar blockade is playing out at Sabina Shoal, which is about 40 miles closer to the Philippine coast than the Second Thomas Shoal. Both lie within the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) of the Philippines.

Since April, the Philippines has deployed a coast guard vessel to Sabina Shoal to monitor what it said were signs of China’s illegal land reclamation activities, after Filipino scientists discovered piles of crushed corals on the sandbars amid an increased presence of Chinese ships in the area. China has denied the accusation.

Displacing 2,300 tons, the 318-foot-long BRP Teresa Magbanua anchored at Sabina Shoal is one of the two largest ships that the Philippine Coast Guard has and is its flagship. Acquired from Japan in 2022, it is also one of the newest ships in Manila’s fleet, carrying a crew of 67.

“This has really annoyed China and they want that (Philippine) vessel to go away,” said Ray Powell, director of SeaLight, a maritime transparency project at Stanford University’s Gordian Knot Center for National Security Innovation.

“China refers to it … as a ‘quasi-grounding,’ so they’re basically treating it like it’s the Sierra Madre all over again even though it is not grounded, it’s anchored.”

And Beijing has been gradually upping the pressure on Manila.

In July, China anchored one of its “monster” coast guard ships, the 12,000-ton CCG-5901, near Sabina Shoal. The CCG-5901 is more than five times the size of the Philippines’ Teresa Magbanua and larger than any other regular coast guard ship in the world.

“Initially the Chinese were trying to warn Manila to roll back at Sabina Shoal. That’s why they send the monster ship just to create an impression,” Koh said.

“But the Filipinos were sitting still and not moving at all. So I guess the Chinese likely have reached a point where they concluded that they need to up the pressure on the Filipinos, which is why we saw what’s happening recently.”

In recent weeks, Chinese state media have accused the Philippines of trying to establish a long-term presence at Sabina Shoal to occupy the reef and indicated that China will not allow any resupply missions to proceed.

“China will never be deceived by the Philippines again,” Chinese state news agency Xinhua said in a commentary about the Sunday faceoff, citing Manila’s grounding of the Sierra Madre at the Second Thomas Shoal back in 1999.

On Monday, the Philippine Coast Guard said it had deployed two ships on a “humanitarian mission” to deliver vital food and supplies to its personnel stationed abroad the Teresa Magbanua, including “a special ice cream treat” in honor of the country’s National Heroes’ Day.

(Teresa Magbanua, one of the heroes commemorated on the day, was one of the few women to lead Filipino troops in battles against Spanish colonizers during the Philippine Revolution and against American forces in the Philippine-American war.)

But the mission failed due to the obstruction of 40 Chinese ships, according to the Philippine Coast Guard.

If China continues to block the Philippines from resupplying the Teresa Magbanua with food, water and fuel or rotating its crew, the Philippine ship will have to sail away, Powell said.

‘High-stakes game’

For now, neither Beijing nor Malina appear willing to back down.

“It’s a high-stakes game for Manila,” Koh said. “The domestic circumstances all point to the very fact that now Sabina Shoal is where you could not yield an inch to the Chinese… Marcos Jr is definitely right on the chopping board for that,” he added, referring to Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.

Since coming to power in 2022, Marcos Jr has strengthened Manila’s alliance with the US and increasingly challenged China’s expansive claims in the South China Sea, which an international tribunal said had no legal basis in a landmark ruling in 2016.

His predecessor Rodrigo Duterte, a firebrand populist who launched a notoriously brutal anti-drug war, favored a much warmer relationship with Beijing and was much less willing to confront Beijing over the South China Sea.

Manila’s current “transparency initiative” to expose China’s growing assertiveness in the disputed waters has won it international support, especially from Western countries, but Beijing is not deterred by negative press, Powell said.

“China seems to be speeding up its agenda for taking control of West Philippine Sea features,” he said. “They have the capacity and they have the will, and they have not seen anything yet that says to them that the cost is going to be too high.”

Meanwhile, both Beijing and Manila are watching closely for how Washington will react.

American officials have repeatedly pledged to defend the Philippines from any armed attack in the disputed waters, stressing Washington’s “ironclad commitment” to a 1951 defense treaty between the two allies.

Samuel Paparo, commander of the US Indo-Pacific Command, said Tuesday that American ships could escort Philippine vessels on resupply missions in the South China Sea, describing what he called an “an entirely reasonable option” that required consultation between the treaty allies, according to Reuters.

But being dragged into another global conflict will not be in US interests, especially in the run-up to its presidential election, Koh said, adding that Washington is already occupied with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the raging war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.

“The Chinese know that Manila has very limited options if they could not depend on US help,” Koh said. “China is deliberately escalating the situation, with a likely intention to test how far Washington would support Manila.”

Ukraine’s military incursion into Russian territory in the Kursk region is covering some of the same territory on which the Soviet Union scored one of its most important victories over German invaders in World War II, one that some historians say turned the tide of the war in Europe almost a year before the D-Day invasion of Normandy.

The June 6, 1944, landings on the beaches of France are often thought of in the West as the turning point in Nazi leader Adolf Hitler’s conquest of Europe, but the die was cast for Germany’s defeat from July 5 to August 23, 1943, when millions of troops and thousands of tanks and armored guns did battle around Kursk, the historians say.

With victory in Kursk, “the Soviets seized the initiative in the east and never surrendered it until the end of the war,” said Michael Bell, executive director of the Jenny Craig Institute for the Study of War and Democracy at the National World War II Museum in New Orleans.

What was the Battle of Kursk?

In the spring of 1943, Hitler’s army in the east was badly wounded by the Battle of Stalingrad, where the Germans lost almost a million men in their attempt to take the city on the Volga River, rout a battered Soviet army, and capture oil fields in the southern Caucasus that could provide the fuel for Germany’s full conquest of Europe.

Soviet leader Josef Stalin ordered Stalingrad defended at all costs and German advances during the late summer and fall of 1942 were pushed back during the winter, and what was left of the German forces in the city surrendered by February 1943.

As German forces were pushed back along the Eastern Front after Stalingrad, Hitler’s generals looked for a way to regain the initiative in the east and settled on trying to pinch off a Soviet salient, a 150-mile, north-to-south bulge in the German lines, defended by more than a million men and centered on Kursk.

The generals wanted to attack in the spring, but Hitler pushed back the start of the operation, dubbed Operation Citadel, so some of Germany’s newest tanks could be dispatched to the battlefront.

This gave the Soviets ample time to prepare defenses for what was an obvious point for an attack, said Peter Mansoor, a professor of history at The Ohio State University and former US Army armored cavalry commander.

“It was pretty easy to tell that the Germans would have an interest in squeezing this bulge out of the front,” Mansoor said.

Germany would commit as many as 800,000 troops and around 3,000 tanks to take that salient.

But they faced formidable defenses.

Bell, from the World War II museum, said the Soviets prepared a series of defensive lines, dug 3,000 miles of anti-tank ditches and laid 400,000 land mines to defend the bulge, while putting 75% of its armor and 40% of its manpower on the Eastern Front in the Kursk salient or in reserve behind it.

While the new tanks Hitler wanted in the battle were more powerful than Soviet armor, Stalin’s forces had the numerical advantage, Bell said.

“The Germans have some superior equipment, but the superiority in numbers is clearly on the Soviet side,” Bell said.

Some estimates of Soviet strength in the Battle of Kursk surpass 2 million troops and more than 7,000 tanks.

The numerical advantage tipped even further to the Soviet side when on July 9, Allied forces landed on the Italian island of Sicily, opening a new front Hitler had to defend and prompting him to transfer some forces from the Eastern Front to Italy, the historians said.

The German forces that remained could not break the Soviet defenses, falling well short of objectives and never penetrating deep into rear areas.

The cost to Hitler’s forces was steep, with casualty figures ranging up to 200,000 or more killed and around 1,000 tanks lost, according to histories of the battle.

“The Germans were never able to mass forces again to the magnitude that they attempt with this battle,” Bell said.

“What Kursk did was eliminate the German armor reserves and thereby made it impossible for the Germans to successfully defend the Russian front for the rest of the war,” Mansoor said.

“After Kursk, the Germans could no longer replace their manpower losses and they lost the cream of their armored corps there,” he said.

The Kursk battlefield today

When Ukrainian forces crossed the border into the Kursk region on August 6, they had an advantage that the Germans didn’t have in 1943 – surprise.

The offensive was planned in complete secrecy, and troop movements were made to look like reinforcements of defensive positions or an exercise inside Ukraine.

And Russia was not prepared to defend that territory like it was in portions of Ukraine which it has taken, Mansoor said.

In fact, the defenses Russia set up – layers of trenches, mines, anti-tank weapons backed by artillery and armor – in parts of the Donbas region of Ukraine which it occupies are much like the Soviet defenses of Kursk in 1943, he said.

“The Russians have not changed their way of war all that much,” Mansoor said.

And that may play to Ukraine’s advantage today, said the former US Army armored cavalry officer.

Ukraine has created maneuver space inside Russian territory using combined arms warfare – successfully synchronizing infantry, long-range artillery and aviation in support of each other – something Kyiv’s forces had not been able to do before.

“It really changes the nature of the war, at least in that area of the front line,” Mansoor said.

Israel launched a major military operation in multiple areas of the northern occupied West Bank early Wednesday, with Palestinian health authorities saying at least nine people have been killed.

The Israeli military confirmed Wednesday it had launched a large counter-terror operation overnight with the Israeli Security Agency (ISA) in the areas of Jenin and Tulkarem in the West Bank.

“The IDF (Israel Defense Forces) has been operating since tonight with great force in the refugee camps of Jenin and Tul Karm to thwart Islamic-Iranian terror infrastructures installed there,” Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz said in a post on X.

Additional footage released by Israel’s military showed what it said was a strike on a militant operations room in Nur Shams, a refugee camp near Tulkarem.

Katz accused Iran of operating in the West Bank by “funding and arming terrorists and smuggling advanced weapons via Jordan.”

“We must address this threat just like we’re handling the terror infrastructure in Gaza, including temporary evacuation of Palestinian residents and any step necessary. This is a war just like any other [war], and we must win it,” he wrote.

Palestinian deaths were reported in the towns of Tubas and Jenin, according to the Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS).

At least two of those killed in Jenin were as a result of Israeli military fire and three others were killed in a drone strike on a vehicle on the outskirts of Jenin, according to the PRCS. It added that one person was critically injured in the strike.

Earlier, a joint total from the PRCS and the ministry put the death toll at at least 10.

The Islamic Jihad militant group condemned the Israeli military’s “comprehensive aggression” on areas of the occupied West Bank, referring to it an “open and undeclared war.”

In a separate statement, the group’s military wing the Al-Quds Brigades, said it targeted and shot down an Israeli drone near Jenin. The group said its fighters are targeting Israeli forces with “heavy volleys of direct bullets.”

Israel has occupied the West Bank since seizing the territory from Jordanian military occupation in 1967. In the decades since, Israel has expanded Jewish settlements in the West Bank, considered illegal under international law, despite signing a series of peace agreements with the Palestinians in the 1990s.

Israel’s current war against Hamas in Gaza, which began after the October 7 attacks, has increasingly spilled over into the West Bank with Israeli military raids, settler attacks and clashes killing hundreds of Palestinians.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

American tourist Scott Stevens and his daughter Wylde, 10, believe they were moments away from being killed in Iceland’s cave collapse on Sunday.

Stevens, visiting from Austin, Texas, was taking photos of his daughter in the Breiðamerkurjökull ice cave and almost stayed a few extra minutes to take pictures with an additional lens.

About a minute after they left the cave, there was a loud “boom” and they heard the cave “break.”

“It felt like if you were to actually grab that other lens, then you’d 100% be dead right now … We’d be dead. We were standing in that exact spot,” Wylde Stevens said. “I’m trying not to – I don’t want to think about it.”

One American man was killed, and an American woman was injured in the cave collapse. A group of 23 tourists from several countries were exploring the attraction, located in the southeast of the country, when the incident occurred, according to public broadcaster RUV.

“She was very concerned that I would, I would have died taking her picture … I guess it felt like it could have very easily been us,” Scott Stevens said about his daughter. “And you know, I was thinking of that poor guy. He’s just here on his holiday, and I’m sure he thought he’d be going home today or tomorrow or the next day. And you know, he’s not going home.”

The elder Stevens said there were two separate groups visiting the cave. He was in the first group and the deceased and injured were in the second, he said.

The groups traveled together, but each had about a dozen people with separate tour guides.

When Scott Stevens heard the loud boom, he was talking to his group’s tour guide.

“He kind of looked at me. I looked at him. We kind of had that like ‘That’s not good’ look,” he said.

Stevens and his guide ran down into the ravine to see what was happening and saw a woman in pain.

“I saw the woman with my own eyes. I know she was hurt,” he said.

The tour guides and a doctor who happened to be on the tour were assisting her, he added.

Stevens said his tour guide was distraught.

“He was in tears. … He came back. He had blood on him, I think from the deceased gentleman. And the other tour guide was equally destroyed. … traumatized beyond belief, both of them,” Stevens said.

Stevens said he later learned from the news that the American tourists were a couple. A US State Department spokesperson confirmed the death of one US citizen and the injury of another, saying they were “ready to provide consular assistance.”

Ice caves are a popular destination for visitors to Iceland, an island nation in the north Atlantic that sits on the southern edge of the Arctic Circle. Glaciers cover about 11% of the country.

With the success of Beyoncé’s newest album, “Cowboy Carter,” and the rise of artists like Nigerian American singer Shaboozey, Black country music is having a moment. Tapping into that energy is Dusty & Stones.

Cousins Gazi “Dusty” Simelane and Linda “Stones” Msibi grew up working together on their grandparents’ farm in the rolling southern hills before forming their country music band. Theirs may sound like the archetypal country band origin story, but rather than the southern United States, this duo hails from Mooihoek, in the tiny African country of Eswatini (formerly called Swaziland).

The concerns of rural America might seem a world away from southern Africa, but when Dusty’s older brother introduced him to the music of Donny Williams and Dolly Parton, he recognized in their ballads about small-town life a story like his own. The duo’s grandfather was a pastor who played the harmonica in his youth and taught them the values of patience and hard work, key elements of a country star’s upbringing.

Dusty & Stones’ songs tell stories of their community and personal experiences. “Mooihoek Country Fever,” their debut album from 2022, touches on subjects ranging from family to faith.

“I also have stories, I also have experiences I’d like to share with people. I feel like I’m able to share those things way better through a country song,” Dusty said.

The pair play guitar and write their own songs, catering to local music tastes by making their music easy to dance to and singing in their native language of siSwati as well as English. Despite these differences, the duo insists their music is still firmly country.

International breakthrough

After getting their break at a local music festival, Dusty & Stones have gone on to receive international recognition, winning the Texas Sounds International Country Music Awards Duo of the Year award in 2017, the first Africans to claim that accolade.

Since their win, another artist from Eswatini, Cleopatra Methula, has gone on to claim three awards at the same event. More artists, including Zwelly Masuku, Sbutjas Dlamini, Cousinwhy and Alfred Gama have entered the Swazi country music scene in recent years.

Dusty & Stones reached new heights in 2023 when they performed at the Grand Ole Opry, in Nashville, Tennessee, the pinnacle of success for country musicians. Founded in 1925, the radio station and associated music venue has seen performances from scores of country legends.

The duo has been playing for years, but their recognition comes with country music at an inflection point. With the release of Beyoncé’s “Cowboy Carter” Black country artists are clamoring to be heard, and for their contributions to the genre to be acknowledged.

Black artists have influenced country music since its inception in the early 20^th century, emerging from a background of folk, blues and gospel. Artists like Charley Pride, whose career began in the 1960s, and Ray Charles with his hit country album “Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music,” are just two Black musicians who have influenced the genre.

Today, both African American and African musicians play country. The careers of artists like Willie Jones, Breland and Rvshvd from the United States, and Esther Konkara and Sir Elvis of Kenya and Ogak Jay Oke of Nigeria testify to the presence of Black artists in the genre.

Stones pointed out that country music existed in Eswatini before Dusty & Stones, too. They were inspired and guided by Zombodze Dlamini, the late president of their local country music association, which staged a country festival in 2018 and continues to support jamborees and country music shows.

Despite their historic and current contributions, Black country artists often say they face challenges in an industry that is predominantly White. A documentary about Dusty & Stones’ experience at the 2017 Texas Awards captured the hostility they faced from a member of the local backing band, and numerous Black country artists have come forward to share their experiences of racism in the industry.

Dusty & Stones want to see more opportunities for country artists in Eswatini. At the same time, they want people to know that country music already lives beyond the borders of the United States, especially in Africa, and that is nothing new.

“Country music is no longer an American genre. Yes, that’s where it started, but it’s a global genre right now,” Dusty said.