The authors noted that low diet quality scores were present among all groups in the study, which reflects an urgent need for widespread improvement.
First the Baltics, now Taiwan. This month saw the latest in a spate of incidents in which crucial undersea cables connecting U.S. allies have been damaged or severed.
Some have been cast as acts of sabotage, pinning blame on Russia and China amid heightened geopolitical tensions.
Early this month, Taiwan’s coast guard said it had intercepted the Xing Shun 39 — a Hong Kong-owned freighter carrying the Cameroonian and Tanzanian flags — after the Beijing-claimed island’s biggest telecom company, Chunghwa Telecom, alerted authorities that an international undersea cable had been damaged on Jan. 3.
A “preliminary assessment” suggested the damage might have been caused by the freighter, which “transited the area at the time of the incident,” the coast guard said.
With an average of about 200 cable faults a year, according to the International Cable Protection Committee, damage to undersea communications infrastructure is not uncommon. The majority is caused by ship anchors or fishing activity such as trawling, where heavy equipment is dragged across the seafloor.
But the Taiwanese government says this may have been an example of Chinese “gray-zone interference,” irregular military and non-military tactics that aim to wear down an opponent without engaging in an actual shooting war.
It also comes amid an uproar in Europe, where NATO is stepping up patrols of Baltic Sea cables that provide power and enable almost all intercontinental communication, including the internet.
In Helsinki on Tuesday, members of the defense bloc with access to the Baltic Sea agreed at a summit discussing regional security threats — including Russian cable sabotage — to deploy frigates, patrol aircraft and naval drones in the Baltic Sea to help protect critical infrastructure.
NATO members said they reserved the right to take action against ships suspected of posing a security threat as part of a broader action, dubbed “Baltic Sentry”, in response to a string of incidents in which power cables, telecom links and gas pipelines have been damaged in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
The damage from the Jan. 3 incident did not disrupt communications in Taiwan, as the data was routed to other cables.
However, “if enough cables were cut you can potentially cause something as severe as an internet blackout,” said Ian Li Huiyuan, an associate research fellow at the Institute of Defense and Strategic Studies at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore. “Especially for Taiwan’s case, since it’s an island and there’s no overland alternatives.”
index index index index index index index index index index index
China’s Taiwan Affairs Office said last week that undersea cables were damaged by “common maritime accidents” and that Taiwan was making accusations “out of thin air” and intentionally hyping up the “so-called gray zone threat,” according to Reuters.
Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council, which makes China policy, responded that the investigation would proceed based on the evidence.
It said Chinese “flag-of-convenience” ships “have a bad reputation in the international community,” pointing to similar cases in Baltic states that are suspected to involve Chinese vessels.
The race to protect cables
It can be difficult to determine whether a cable was damaged by accident or deliberately, but heightened geopolitical tensions have raised suspicions that damage to some critical infrastructure may be sabotage.
Estonia said last month that it would deploy naval assets to protect cables connecting it with Finland after its Estlink 2 cable was damaged on Christmas Day. Finland is investigating a Russian oil tanker that was seized after the incident and may have been dragging its anchor along the seabed.
“Three cases in one year cannot be a coincidence,” Finnish President Alexander Stubb said last month.