in hair-straightening chemicals.

“The greatest external threat actually is Chinese aggression, Chinese expansionism and the attempt by China to change the international law through the use of force or acquiescence … or its attempt to reshape the world order to one that it controls,” Teodoro told the AP.Bersamin, who serves as executive secretary to Marcos and the Cabinet, has not specified the reasons for each Cabinet change but said “the president has no patience for under performance.”

Bersamin said last week that Marcos decided to replace Foreign Secretary Enrique Manalo with Foreign Undersecretary Theresa Lazaro, who has relayed Philippine protests and led talks with Chinese officials concerning an alarming spike of confrontations between Chinese and Philippine coast guard and naval forces in recent years.China claims virtually the entire South China Sea, a key global trade and security route despite a 2016 international arbitration ruling initiated by the Philippines that invalidated those expansive claims based on the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan also are involved in the long-seething territorial standoffs regarded as a flashpoint in Asia.WASHINGTON (AP) — Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Wednesday the U.S. will begin revoking the visas of some Chinese students, including those studying in “critical fields.”

China is the second-largest country of origin for international students in the United States, behind only India. In the 2023-2024 school year, more than 270,000 international students were from China, making up roughly a quarter of all foreign students in the United States.“Under President Trump’s leadership, the U.S. State Department will work with the Department of Homeland Security to aggressively revoke visas for Chinese students, including those with connections to the Chinese Communist Party or studying in critical fields,” Rubio wrote.

The Chinese Embassy in Washington didn’t immediately respond to a message seeking comment Wednesday night.

The action comes at a time of intensifying scrutiny of the ties between U.S. higher education and China. House Republicans this month pressed Duke University to cut its ties with a Chinese university, saying it allowed Chinese students to gain access to federally funded research at Duke.The declarations “signified this might be us finally breaking through the noise that they haven’t been willing to hear,” said Ryan McClinton, who works at the nonprofit Public Health Advocates in Sacramento County, California. Marsha Guthrie, the senior director at the Government Alliance on Race and Equity, called 2020 a “catalytic moment for us to kind of reimagine social consciousness.”

“Think about the ... decades (and) decades of just fighting to get the conversation about race even centered in the American psyche,” she said. “Now people talk about it as a general course of fact.”Some places’ health departments took on the work of the declarations, creating improvement plans centered on

. Others turned the work over to task forces and consultants to look at internal work environments or make action plans and recommendations.Years after the declarations, community organizers and public health advocates in Milwaukee and Sacramento County say not much has changed. Officials counter that it’ll take more than a few years to undo centuries of structural and institutional racism.