On Tuesday at the U.N. Security Council (UNSC), Turkey’s shelling of Syrian territory was taken up, at the request of Russia, and the Council unanimously urged Turkey to stop its attacks. At the closed-door session, Council members received a briefing on Turkey’s violations of Syrian sovereignty. Afterward, the UNSC Chairman, Venezuelan Ambassador Rafael Ramirez, told reporters, as cited by TASS, that, “All members of the Security Council…agreed to ask for Turkey to comply with international law.” The Council affirmed its commitment to the Munich agreement.

Ramirez said that, “UN Security Council members are concerned with the Turkish attacks on a number of Syrian regions…” He spoke specifically against attacks on the Kurds. “One of the issues expressed by some countries, including Venezuela, is that the Kurdish people have to be included in the discussion…Something that is important—the Kurds are fighting against the terrorist groups on the ground, and this is an important factor for everybody…”

Russian leadership in defending sovereignty and international law is evident in the UNSC process. Last week, the Syrian government had sent letters to the Council, reporting on Turkey’s attacks on Kurdish militia forces inside Syria, and charging that Turkey was violating Syria’s sovereignty. On Monday, Russia made the request for this matter to be put on the Council’s agenda.

The Russian Foreign Ministry released a statement Feb. 15, saying that Russia sees the Turkish action, “as direct support for international terrorism in violation of corresponding UN Security Council resolutions and the commitments that Turkey assumed as a member of the International Syria Support Group in Vienna, New York and Munich.” Therefore, “Russia will support the initiative to put this issue on the agenda of the UN Security Council, which should provide an unambiguous assessment of Turkey’s provocative policy that is threatening peace and security in the Middle East and beyond it.”

Obama brought leaders of the ten ASEAN nations to Sunnylands, California, for a two-day Summit starting Monday. The build-up for the event hyped the urgency that ASEAN speak with a common voice against China’s “bullying” and “aggression” in the South China Sea. As a Global Times editorial Tuesday reported: “Washington has reiterated that the summit is not targeted at China. It is perhaps not because it does not want to, but because it dares not, for it knows if it does so, many Southeast Asian leaders would not attend at all.”

Nonetheless, Obama’s National Security Advisor, Susan Rice, told reporters Monday: “We will be continuing to work with our ASEAN partners on a potential statement that we might issue together.”

Obama is also pushing for more members of the anti-China, self-destructive TPP, and some countries are considering it. On this, the Global Times editorial says: “The TPP is considered to be partly aimed at China. But if more ASEAN countries join the TPP, it will not help the TPP isolate China, but it will only complicate the issue. China has long been ASEAN’s largest trading partner.”

China trade with ASEAN was $480 billion in 2014 — more than twice ASEAN trade with the US. The Maritime Silk Road and the AIIB are offering both additional development and stability to the region.

Obama’s offer to ASEAN is pathetic. He will announce a plan to set up “innovation” centers within the US Embassies in Thailand, Singapore, and Indonesia, part of his ASEAN-US Connect program. Ben Rhodes, Obama’s Deputy National Security Advisor, told the Straits Times: “That’s what the US has to offer. I went to Laos in October. We are never going to invest as much in infrastructure in Laos as China or Japan, but we can bring a quality of investment and capacity building.”

Obama did manage to get in a round of golf at Sunnylands, Monday morning, “with three high school friends.” It was not reported whether or not they also got high, just like the good old days in Hawaii. 

Dr. Wu Ji, director-general of the National Space Science Center in Beijing, has led the effort to get China to invest in making ground-breaking contributions to space science. As reported in a comprehensive article by Andrew Jones, in the Finland-based gbtimes Tuesday, Wu explains that in China, “in GDP we are second in the world. [but] that’s only money. So we have to make some contribution to human beings and our knowledge.” He notes that there is strong public backing for space science missions, beyond the concerns about budgets. He said, “People are eager to see some breakthroughs, to say that China has [made] a fundamental contribution to fundamental science.”

Wu, himself, Jones reports, was in Europe’s Space Technology and Research Center in 1986, when Halley’s Comet visited our night sky. “That was very, very inspiring for a young engineer,” says Wu. He and his colleagues have created the plans for China’s space science missions for the current 12th Five Year Plan, and for the next plan, from 2016-2020. The first space science mission launched under the multi-year plan was the Dark Matter Particle Explorer (DAMPE) in December. Three more should be launched this year, including an X-ray telescope. Eight experiments in fluid physics will also be conducted in the Tiangong-2 module, to be launched this year. Longer-term, more complex and challenging missions are also being planned, out to 2030. They encompass nearly every field of astrophysics, cosmology, and include biological science.

On the prospects for international cooperation that are being offered by China, Wu says that a selection of a new round of priority missions has taken place, one of which is a joint solar wind explorer mission with the European Space Agency. (This is a joint space science project with young scientists that China and ESA have under way, to develop a joint satellite). The next round of space science missions will be launched around 2020, Wu said.

In November, Wu told the press, at a briefing on the up-coming science missions: “China should not only follow others in space exploration; it should set some challenging goals that have never been done by others, such as sending the Chang’e-4 lunar probe to land on the far side of the Moon.” And that is precisely what China is doing.