17/10/2025

FRIDAY | OCT 17, 2025

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China authorities seize 60,000 ‘problematic’ maps

New Zealand ex-PM dies

WELLINGTON: Jim Bolger, New Zealand’s prime minister from 1990 to 1997 who helped usher in a new era of reconciliation with indigenous Maori, died on Wednesday aged 90, his family said in a statement. Bolger suffered kidney failure last year and had been undergoing dialysis. The statement said he died surrounded by his wife Joan, nine children and 18 grandchildren. He entered parliament in 1972 and became leader of the National Party in 1986 before becoming prime minister in 1990 when the party took power. He retired from politics in 1998 and served as New Zealand’s ambassador to the United States from 1998 to 2002. “To those who worked alongside him, he was a principled and formidable colleague. To his political opponents, he was a worthy adversary who never allowed disagreement to become personal,“ New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said in a statement following his death. Bolger ushered in the Mixed Member Proportional electoral system that New Zealand still uses today. His government also concluded the first compensation payments between New Zealand Maori tribes and the government. – Reuters S. Korea partially overturns US$1b divorce ruling SEOUL: The South Korea Supreme Court yesterday partially overturned a previous ruling on SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won’s divorce and division of property after the businessman contested an order for him to pay the country’s largest divorce settlement. Last year, the Seoul High Court ruled that Chey must pay about USD$1 billion (RM4.23 billion) to his estranged wife Roh So-yeong as part of their planned divorce. The decision overturned the Appeals Court ruling ordering Chey to pay 1.38 trillion won (RM4.1 billion) to his estranged wife as part of their divorce settlement. SK Group is South Korea’s second-largest conglomerate according to Korea Fair Trade Commission data, with affiliates such as chipmaker SK Hynix. – Reuters

The statement did not specify when the maps were confiscated or where they were printed. It said some of the maps mislabelled Taiwan and omitted “important” islands as well as the “nine-dash line”, which China uses to justify its maritime claims in the South China Sea. Other maps seized did not contain the boundary line between the maritime islands of China and Japan. It also said the maps “endanger national unity, sovereignty, and territorial integrity” and are

prohibited from being imported or exported. Maps have long been a sensitive topic for China and other countries in the region due to competing territorial claims. Vietnamese police investigated in March Chinese tea brand Chagee over an online map featuring Beijing’s “nine-dash line”. That same month, Chinese-made “Baby Three dolls” were pulled from shops in Vietnam over a facial mark supposedly resembling the “nine-dash line”. – AFP

o Beijing says items ‘endanger national unity, sovereignty and territorial integrity’

BEIJING: Chinese authorities said its Customs agency has seized 60,000 maps it deemed “problematic” over the labelling of Taiwan and omission of territory claimed in the South China Sea. China claims the self-ruled island of Taiwan as part of its territory and has said it would not renounce using

force to bring it under its control. Beijing also lays claim to most of the South China Sea, despite an international ruling that its assertion has no legal basis. Customs authorities said the maps were seized during an inspection of a batch of export goods in the eastern province of Shandong.

Landmines in border dispute likely laid recently: Experts BANGKOK: Thai Army Second Lieutenant Baramee Sricha was on patrol near a disputed stretch of the border between Thailand and Cambodia on July 16 when a member of his team stepped on a land mine. The incident sparked

five days of hostilities between the neighbours, which ended with a ceasefire. It also incited a diplomatic row over PMN-2s, a Soviet-origin anti-personnel mine that litters parts of Cambodia and which Phnom Penh and Bangkok have pledged by treaty not to use. NGO Landmine Monitor spokesperson Yeshua Moser Puangsuwan said any use of anti personnel mines by Cambodia, that has caused tens of thousands to be killed or maimed since 1979, would mark a disappointing reversal in decades of public commitments. Thailand’s military provided Reuters with access to videos and photographs of what it said were subsequent PMN-2 demining operations carried out by its troops around the site of the July 16 incident, as well as another border-area mine blast on July 23. Four independent landmine experts, asked by Reuters to evaluate the material, said the images showed PMN-2s that had been freshly laid. However, the analysts were not able to determine who placed the ordnances. The Cambodia Mine Action and Victim Assistance Authority, a government agency that oversees demining activities, said a determination on the incidents could only be made after an impartial third-party investigation.

Landmine search and destroy team commander Lt-Col Supawat Nammong and Thai Army 3rd Humanitarian Mine Action Unit Sgt-Major First Class Charoen Srinongyang examine old and new PMN-2 landmines during an interview about incidents near the disputed border between Thailand and Cambodia, in Surin province, Thailand. – REUTERSPIC

It added that Cambodia’s military does not have stockpiles of live anti-personnel mines. A Thai foreign ministry spokesperson said Bangkok’s investigations had determined that the landmines that injured its soldiers were newly planted PMN-2s, adding that “they were found in new condition, still with clearly visible markings”. Bangkok is a longtime US ally that

does not have widespread access to Soviet-origin munitions and says it has never deployed PMN-2s. The Russian Defence Ministry, which previously said it stopped manufacturing PMN-2-type mines in the late 1990s, did not provide any comment. Meanwhile, independent expert Andrew Vian Smith said the condition of the mines in the visuals taken by the Thai military and Reuters indicates

A 2017 indictment in the US said Duggan’s alleged violation of an arms embargo imposed on China by the United States also included providing aviation services in China in 2010, and providing an assessment of China’s aircraft carrier training. Duggan, who has six children in Australia, has been held in prison since his arrest. The Australian government is expected to dispute the appeal as the hearing continues. – Reuters they had been in the ground for no longer than a few months. He said there are tell-tale signs on older PMN-2s – their pliant plastic casing becomes brittle over time and they also have a rubber disc that in most soil conditions quickly becomes dull, collecting dirt in the gaps. “The mines I was shown had nothing in those gaps,“ said Smith, who has worked on operations in Cambodia. – Reuters

Former US Marine pilot appeals extradition from Australia CANBERRA: Former US Marine Corps pilot Daniel Duggan appealed in an Australian court yesterday against extradition to the United States on charges of violating US arms control laws related to China, with his lawyer arguing his conduct was not an offence in Australia at the time. Chinese military pilots to land on aircraft carriers. Duggan, 57, a naturalised Australian citizen, was arrested by the Australian Federal Police in a rural town in the state of New South Wales in October 2022, shortly after returning from China, where he had lived since 2014. offence in Australia at the time, nor when the US requested extradition, so did not meet the requirement for dual criminality in Australia’s extradition treaty with the United States. “This is a fairly extraordinary case,“ Parkin said. someone in this country for something they did 10 years ago that was not an offence at the time”.

Duggan’s lawyers previously argued in court that there is no evidence the Chinese pilots he trained in South Africa between 2010 and 2012 were military, and he was no longer a US citizen at the time of the alleged offences. They added that he renounced his US citizenship in 2016 at the US embassy in Beijing, backdated to 2012 on a certificate.

In December 2024, Australia’s then attorney-general Mark Dreyfus approved a US extradition request for Duggan, who faces US charges, including that he trained

“The offences must be punishable under the laws of both parties at the time when the relevant conduct occurred,“ he said, adding that it should not be possible to “punish

His lawyer Christopher Parkin told the court the extradition was “uncharted territory” for Australia, arguing his conduct was not an