03/08/2025

theSun on Sunday AUG 3, 2025

WORLD 7

Cyberwarriors battle on despite border truce

CANBERRA: New Zealand will make it easier to run businesses in conservation zones and charge foreign tourists to enter some areas in an effort to create jobs and increase economic growth, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said yesterday. The decision by the centre-right government, elected in 2023, is part of its efforts to boost New Zealand’s tourism industry and stimulate a limp economy. It also comes at a time when people around the world are protesting what they see as excessive numbers of tourists. “We’re going to fix the Conservation Act to unleash a fresh wave of concessions – like tourism, agriculture, and infrastructure, in locations where that makes sense,” Luxon said in a statement. Business activities from guided walks and skiing to livestock grazing and infrastructure construction already take place in conservation areas, but permission takes too much time and effort to obtain, he said. “Unleashing economic growth on one-third of New Zealand’s land will create jobs and increase wages across the country,” the statement said. Foreign visitors will also be charged between NZ$20 and NZ$40 (RM51 and RM101) to access some popular sites, while locals will continue to go free. “Tourists make a massive contribution to our economy, and no one wants that to change. But I have heard many times from friends visiting from overseas their shock that they can visit some of the most beautiful places in the world for free,” said Conservation Minister Tama Potaka. – Reuters Japan sweats through July TOKYO: Japan sweltered through its hottest July since records began in 1898, the weather agency has reported, warning of further “severe heat” in the month ahead. The average temperature in July was up a record 2.89ºC from the 1991-2020 average for the month, the Japan Meteorological Agency said on Friday. It was the third year in a row of record breaking average temperatures for July, it said. On July 30, Japan experienced its highest recorded temperature, a sizzling 41.2ºC in the western region of Hyogo. “The next month is expected to continue to bring severe heat throughout the country,” the weather agency said. Precipitation last month was low over wide areas of Japan, with northern regions facing the Sea of Japan experiencing record low rainfall, it added. The rainy season ended about three weeks earlier than usual in western regions of Japan, another record. Experts warn Japan’s beloved cherry trees are blooming earlier due to the warmer weather or sometimes not fully blossoming because autumns and winters are not cold enough to trigger flowering. The famous snowcap of Mount Fuji was absent for the longest recorded period last year, not appearing until early November, compared with the average of early October. – AFP New Zealand opens up conservation areas

mocking or offensive messages. One of the targets was NBT World, an English-language news site run by the Thai government’s public relations department. Headlines and captions on articles about acting Prime Minister Phumtham Wechayachai were replaced with obscenities. Thai hackers changed the login page of Sachak Asia Development Institute, a Cambodian education facility, to show an image of influential ex-leader Hun Sen edited to have a ludicrously exaggerated hairstyle. The image was a reference to a video, much mocked in Thailand, of Cambodian youths sporting the same hairstyle visiting one of the ancient temples that were the focus of the fighting. Online attacks – whether disinformation messaging or full-blown cyber strikes to disrupt an adversary’s infrastructure or services – are a standard feature of modern warfare. Jessada Salathong, a mass communications professor at Thailand’s Chulalongkorn University, said the border clashes had invoked the full spectrum of information disorder. “In an era when anyone can call themselves media, information warfare simply pulls in everyone,” he told AFP.

outlets themselves publish a lot of fake news.” Freshly created “avatar” accounts have targeted popular users or media accounts in Thailand. On July 24, a Facebook post by suspended Thai prime minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra condemning Cambodia’s use of force was bombarded with 16,000 comments, many of them repeating the same message in English: “Queen of drama in Thailand”. Another, similar post by Paetongtarn on July 26 was hit with 31,800 comments, many reading: “Best drama queen of 2025”, with snake and crocodile emojis. Government spokesman Jirayu said the attacks were aimed at “sowing division among Thais” as well as outright deception. Similarly, Cambodian government spokesman Pen Bona said fake news from Thailand aimed to divide Cambodia. Apparent bot accounts have also published and shared disinformation, adding to the confusion. Videos and images from a deadly Cambodian rocket attack on a petrol station in Thailand were shared with captions saying they showed an attack on Cambodian soil. Hackers from both sides have broken into state-run websites to deface pages with

Psy war plays out

BANGKOK: Thailand and Cambodia may have reached a ceasefire to halt their bloody border clashes, but cyber warriors are still battling online, daubing official websites with obscenities, deluging opponents with spam and taking pages down. The five-day conflict left more than 40 people dead and drove more than 300,000 from their homes. It also kicked off a disinformation blitz as Thai and Cambodian partisans alike sought to boost the narrative that the other was to blame. Thai officials recorded more than 500 million instances of online attacks in recent days, government spokesperson Jirayu Huangsab said on Wednesday. These included spamming reports to online platforms and distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks – halting access to a website by overloading its servers with traffic. “It’s a psychological war,” said Cambodian government spokesman Pen Bona. “There’s a lot of fake news and it wouldn’t be strange if it came from social media users, but even official Thai media HK harbour protection group disbands HONG KONG: An environmental group said it was disbanding on Friday, ending decades-long activism to protect the city’s Victoria Harbour from large reclamation projects. Hong Kong was once home to a vibrant civil society sector, but scores of groups have closed since Beijing imposed a sweeping national security law in 2020, with hundreds of activists arrested, jailed or in exile. Harbour protection was one of the city’s major activist causes following the former British colony’s handover to China in 1997. But the Society for Protection of the Harbour (SPH) said on Friday it stopped operations, citing a law passed this year that made it easier for the government to pursue land reclamation in Victoria Harbour. SPH said in legal advice offered to government leaders that the amendments violate the fundamental principle of public law “by placing the roles of proposer, evaluator and ultimate decision-maker all within the power of government decision-makers”. It received no response and the Bill passed in May, it said. Hong Kong Secretary for Development Bernadette Linn told pro-Beijing newspaper Wen Wei Po in June that when amending the law, the government had encountered “soft resistance” – a vague term often used by politicians to label anything seen as ideologically at odds with Beijing. The city’s Development Bureau said that it appreciated SPH’s contributions to harbourfront affairs over the years. SPH said it hopes the city’s harbourfront will one day be declared a “National Treasure of China” and “protected and preserved”. – AFP

AWESOME SIGHT ... A Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki eruption triggers volcanic lightning and spews lava and ash 10km high in East Flores on Friday. Dozens of flights to and from Bali have been cancelled. – AFPPIC/INDONESIA GEOLOGICAL AGENCY