New Zealand backs Philippines on Spratly issue

About that $30 billion in US military aid to the Philippines...
Money can apparently buy you love.
After 'dialoging' with their counterparts in Manila earlier this month, the New Zealand Department of Defense has publicly backed their new BFFs on the issue of how to deal with territorial disputes in the Spratly region.
On Friday, the New Zealand Department of Defense has said that it is necessary for claimant countries to abide by the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and adhere to the 2002 ASEAN-China Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea.

The New Zealand government also agreed during a recent meeting with Filipino defense officials that the Spratly claimants—the Philippines, China, Vietnam, Brunei, Malaysia and Taiwan—should abide by the code of conduct they had signed in 2002 about settling territorial dispute peacefully, the defense department said in a statement.

The UNCLOS sets a country’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ)—an area where it has a right to explore for and exploit natural resources while allowing freedom of navigation and overflight to others— at 200 nautical miles from its coastline.

The Philippines has tussled with China over certain isles and reefs in the vicinity of the Spratly chain that fall within what Manila considers its EEZ as well as Beijing’s “nine-dash-line” claims over the West Philippine Sea (South China Sea).
-Inquirer

Trucker blows up like balloon

To celebrate the news from the IMF that "inflation is a non-issue for the US", I give you yet another NMA animation. Way too funny.

WHAKATANE, New Zealand, May 26 (UPI) -- A New Zealand truck driver said he is "lucky to be alive" after an air hose became lodged in his buttocks and blew him up "like a balloon."
Steven McCormack, 48, said he fell from the rigging between his truck and the trailer at Waiotahi Contractors in Whakatane and he landed on the hose connected to the vehicle's air brakes, the New York Daily News reported Wednesday.
McCormack said the nozzle pierced his left buttocks and began pumping air into his body at 100 pounds per square inch.
"I was blowing up like a football," he said. "I had no choice but just to lay there, blowing up like a balloon."
Doctors said the air separated fat from muscle, caused his lungs to fill with fluid and compressed his heart.
McCormack was rescued by coworkers and taken to an intensive care unit at a Whakatane hospital. He said it took nearly three days for his body to deflate to normal size.
"You just have to burp it out, or fart it out," he said.
-UPI