Manila, Philippines — Chinese coast guard vessels backed by navy ships fired powerful water cannons and blocked and sideswiped a Philippine patrol vessel on Wednesday in renewed aggression at a disputed shoal in the South China Sea, Philippine officials said.

U.S. Ambassador to the Philippines, MaryKay Carlson, condemned China’s “unlawful use of water cannons and dangerous maneuvers,” accusing Beijing in a social media post of putting “lives at risk” by disrupting a Philippine maritime operation.

“We condemn these actions and stand with our like-minded friends, partners, allies in support of a free and open Indo-Pacific,” Carlson said.

China claims virtually the entire South China Sea as its territory, but that claim overlaps with the territorial waters, exclusive economic zones and high seas claims of the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan. Indonesia has also had confrontations with the Chinese coast guard, which backs Beijing’s fishing fleets.

The long-simmering territorial disputes between China and America’s allies and other Asian nations are a delicate fault line in the regional rivalry between Washington and Beijing. The U.S. lays no claims in the South China Sea, which is a key global shipping route, but has declared that freedom of navigation and overflight, and the peaceful resolution of the conflicts, are among its core national interests.

The U.S. has warned that it’s obligated to defend the Philippines, a treaty ally, if Filipino forces come under attack in the South China Sea.

China and Philippines accuse each other of aggression at sea

Three Philippine coast guard and bureau of fisheries vessels were on routine patrol to protect Filipino fishermen at Scarborough Shoal when several Chinese coast guard and navy ships approached and staged “aggressive actions” after dawn, the Philippine coast guard said.

Liu Dejun, a spokesperson for China’s Coast Guard, said four Philippine ships had “dangerously approached” the coast guard’s “normal law enforcement patrol vessels,” forcing the Chinese forces to “exercise control” around the Scarborough Shoal, which China claims as its territory and calls Huangyan Island.

Liu said one of the Philippine craft ignored warnings, making maneuvers that “seriously threatened” the safety of a coast guard vessel.

“We warn the Philippines to immediately stop infringement, provocation and propaganda, otherwise it will be responsible for all consequences,” he said.

China has increasingly accused the Philippines and other Asian neighbors of violating its sovereignty in contested offshore regions. It has vowed to defend what Beijing considers its territory, despite a 2016 international arbitration decision that invalidated China’s historical claims to the waters around Scarborough Shaol.

Despite the Chinese ships’ “reckless” maneuvers, the Philippine coast guard and the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resource said they renewed their “commitment to protecting the rights and safety of our fishermen within our maritime jurisdiction.”

“We will continue to be vigilant in safeguarding our national interests in the West Philippine Sea,” the two Philippine law enforcement agencies said, using the Philippine name for the seas off the archipelago’s western coast.

The Chinese maritime maneuvers “are not standard law enforcement actions,” Philippine coast guard Commodore Jay Tarriela said, adding they “should be interpreted as unlawful aggression by international law violators.”

The latest clash in the South China Sea came after a respite of more than a month while back-to-back major storms prevented many Philippine fishing and commercial vessels from venturing into dangerously rough waters.

A disgraced 93-year-old New Orleans priest pleaded guilty Tuesday to charges involving the sexual assault of a teenage boy in 1975.

Lawrence Hecker, who left the ministry in 2002, had been scheduled to stand trial Tuesday. Hecker’s eyes were focused on the ground as a sheriff’s deputy pushed him toward Orleans Parish Criminal District Court Judge Nandi Campbell’s courtroom, The Times-Picayune/The New Orleans Advocate reported.

Hecker entered his plea to aggravated kidnapping, aggravated crime against nature, first-degree rape and theft before Campbell, moments before jury selection was scheduled to begin, multiple news outlets reported. Sentencing was set for Dec. 18. He faces life in prison.

The trial had been delayed for months over concerns about Hecker’s mental competency and because District Judge Ben Willard recused himself from the case, citing a conflict with prosecutors. The case was reassigned to Campbell, who ordered Hecker to undergo routine physical and psychological evaluations before the trial.

A doctor confirmed that Hecker has Alzheimer’s disease and dementia, but Hecker was found competent to stand trial, according to his attorney Bobby Hjortsberg, WDSU-TV reported.

A grand jury indicted Hecker last year following an investigation that revealed he had confessed to molesting multiple juveniles over his decades of service with the Archdiocese of New Orleans. But, the charges brought against him stem from a single alleged incident that happened between 1975 and 1976, prosecutors have said.

The indictment comes amid a years-old legal battle over a trove of secret church records that were shielded by a sweeping confidentiality order after the archdiocese sought Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2020 following a flood of abuse claims. The records are said to chronicle years of such claims, interviews with accused clergy and a pattern of church leaders transferring problem priests without reporting their crimes to law enforcement.

The alleged survivor in the criminal case against Hecker is among those who have filed abuse claims against the archdiocese in its long-running bankruptcy case. To date, more than 600 alleged abuse survivors have filed claims against the archdiocese.

“It is our hope and prayer that today’s court proceedings bring healing and peace to the survivor and all survivors of sexual abuse,” the Archdiocese of New Orleans said in a statement. “We continue to hold all survivors in prayer.”

Last year, Hecker admitted in an interview with CBS affiliate WWL-TV that he sexually molested or harassed several teenagers during his career.

The station reported that in 1988, reports of his actions reached New Orleans archbishop Philip Hannan. Hecker convinced Hannan he would never again “be in any such circumstances” and faced no consequences until 1999, when continued reports against Hecker led the archdiocese to send him to a psychiatric treatment facility outside of Louisiana. There, he was diagnosed as a pedophile, and the facility recommended he be prohibited from working with minors or other “particularly vulnerable people,” according to a personnel file reviewed by WWL-TV. 

The 1999 complaint also led to his statement, where Hecker acknowledged committing “overtly sexual acts” with three underage boys and said he had close relationships with four others that lasted until the 1980s. 

When asked if he had performed the acts laid out in the statement, Hecker told WWL-TV “Yes” twice. His admission was recorded on video. 

An eerie silence pervades the historic center of Culiacan, capital of the Mexican state of Sinaloa, where infighting among one of the world’s biggest drug cartels has left hundreds of people dead since September.

As night falls on Paseo del Angel, the city’s entertainment quarter, a popular restaurant offering Japanese-Mexican fusion cuisine that was booked out nightly just a few months ago is virtually empty.

A nail salon and a pastry shop on the same street have “for sale” signs in the window.

“Life in Culiacan has almost disappeared,” Miguel Taniyama, owner of the Clan Taniyama restaurant, lamented.

Years of relative quiet in Sinaloa, a predominantly agricultural state home to the notorious cartel of the same name, were shattered in September when two rival factions of the drug gang went to war.

Since then, each week has brought a grim litany of shootouts, abductions, bodies dumped in the street and vehicles and businesses set alight, sending Culiacan’s 800,000 residents scrambling for cover.

The bloodletting began on September 9 after details emerged of how the son of the cartel’s jailed founder Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman reportedly double-crossed the cartel’s other co-founder, Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada.

Zambada was arrested on U.S. soil on July 25 after allegedly being kidnapped in Mexico and delivered to U.S. authorities against his will.

Zambada claimed he was ambushed by Joaquin Guzman Lopez, one of “El Chapol”‘s sons, who he said lured him onto a plane that was headed for the United States, where “El Chapo” himself is serving a life sentence.

The ensuing war between the cartel’s “Mayos” and “Chapitos” has left more than 400 people dead and hundreds missing, according to the state prosecutor’s office. According to an indictment by the U.S. Justice Department, the Chapitos and their cartel associates have used corkscrews, electrocution and hot chiles to torture their rivals while some of their victims were “fed dead or alive to tigers.”

The local Noroeste newspaper said 519 people had been killed in an explosion of violence that shows no signs of abating. Bodies have appeared across the city, often left slung out on the streets or in cars with either sombreros on their heads or pizza slices or boxes pegged onto them with knives. The pizzas and sombreros have become informal symbols for the warring cartel factions, underscoring the brutality of their warfare.

At least 10 people were killed on Monday, the state prosecutor’s office said.

Last week, five bodies were found outside the Autonomous University of Sinaloa, which promptly suspended classes and switched to remote learning.

Cartel’s stranglehold on Culiacan

The Sinaloa Cartel, one of Mexico’s biggest drug trafficking organizations, was built on cocaine smuggling but over the past decade has changed focus to feeding the U.S. opioid addiction.

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration in June said the gang was “largely responsible for the massive influx of fentanyl” into the country over the past eight years.

The cartel’s stranglehold on Culiacan was evident in 2019, when Mexico’s security forces attempted to arrest another of El Chapo’s sons, Ovidio Guzman Lopez.

The operation ended in humiliation for the government, which was forced to free the drug lord after the cartel launched a massive assault on the city.

While Culiacan recovered quickly from that episode — and Ovidio was later recaptured — the succession war now raging within the cartel has brought the local economy to the brink of collapse.

At least 30,000 people have lost their jobs, representing about a third of all social welfare recipients, according to the city’s chamber of commerce.

The violence has affected all aspects of daily life.

With many people fearing going out into the street, some companies have reinstated pandemic-era remote working.

The second-division Dorados de Sinaloa football club, which had late Argentine legend Diego Maradona for a coach in 2018-2019, has temporarily relocated from Culiacan to Tijuana, some 1,500 kilometers away.

“I want my son back”

Around 11,000 soldiers backed with armored vehicles and planes have been deployed to Culiacan to try to quell the violence.

In October, the army said it had killed 19 suspected cartel members and arrested one local leader in its bloodiest clashes with narco-traffickers in years.

More than 450,000 people have been murdered in Mexico since the state launched a war on drugs in 2006.

Over 100,000 people are missing.

To try lure people back onto the streets, Taniyama, the chef, organized a giant festival on November 21, with live music and lashings of Sinaloa’s signature dish, aguachile, a shrimp ceviche.

“We’ve been locked up for 70 days and scared out of our wits…Today we’re starting to live again!” he told the gathering.

But there was no respite from the suffering for the families of those caught up in the violence.

Rosa Lidia Felix, 56, has not heard from her 28-year-old son Jose Tomas since he went missing on November 1.

“Please, I want my son back,” she wept.