“Instead, it will follow the open and inclusive region with the aim to complement and achieve coordinated development with the existing cooperation mechanisms, “said Huang Xilian, deputy director-general of the Foreign Ministry’s Asian Department.

The LMC, which covers the six riparian states of the Mekong comprising China, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam, would play a role in promoting other regional and sub-regional cooperation mechanisms, he said.

Foreign ministers of LMC members are convening their third meeting today in the city of Dali to review the progress of cooperation regarding the five-year plan spanning 2018 to 2022.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and his Cambodian counterpart Prak Sokhon will co-chair the meeting, in which ministers will exchange views on cooperation in the future as well as prepare for the second summit of leaders in Phnom Penh in January.

Established in 2015, the LMC is the latest cooperation scheme in the Mekong basin.

A Chinese scholar said in Beijing earlier that the new scheme could replace the Greater Mekong Sub-region (GMS) effort, since the schemes had many similar functions and overlapping members and areas of cooperation.

While the GMS focuses on infrastructure development, the LMC identified three pillars of cooperation: politics and security; economics and sustainable development; and society, culture and people-to-people exchanges.

Although the LMC is relatively new, the scheme had made a lot of progress in many fields of cooperation, Huang said

Since Chinese Prime Minister Li Keqiang announced at the first summit in Sanya last year the establishment of a special LMC fund with US$300 million (Bt9.7 billion) provided over five years, there had been many applications and projects under review and implemented, Huang said.

China has proposed 75 early harvest projects to yield results over the past two years, he said, adding that many academic institutes in China were conducting studies and research in many aspects including environment protection in the Mekong basin.

Li also pledged an additional $5 billion in loans for production capacity building, allocated to support 11 projects in Mekong countries, he said. There was also a 10-million-yuan (Bt49-million) concession loan to support more than 10 projects, he added.

Of 5,000 training opportunities China was providing to develop human resources in Mekong countries, more than 3,000 have been filled, he said.

The LMC cooperation has generated growth in terms of economic and people-to-people exchanges with trade between China and the other five countries from January to October this year reaching $117.6 billion, an increase of 15.6 per cent year-on-year.

China’s investment in the five countries during the same period was $27 billion, increasing 22.2 per cent year-on-year, he said.

In the first nine months of this year, people-to-people exchanges amounted to 27.8 million trips, including border crossings by local residents who live along the border of China and the Mekong countries.

A total of 15.01 million first-time Chinese travellers chose the Mekong countries last year, which represented an increase of 22.7 per cent, while 12.8 million from the other countries visited China during the same period.

Since the first summit of the LMC in March last year, the number of flights between China and five Mekong countries has increased to 2,562 per week. A total of 332 new airlines opened routes between China and the five countries.

The kingdom is one of several Southeast Asian countries to host a North Korean embassy, and once enjoyed valuable economic ties with the reclusive regime.

But the commerce ministry said Thursday trade with Pyongyang had “plunged” and would soon be nonexistent as Thailand complies with UN resolutions to cut off North Korea in response to its increasingly powerful missile and nuclear tests.

“It’s expected that by late 2017 there will be no export or import of goods between Thailand and North Korea,” said Pimchanok Vonkorpon, director of the Thai Commerce Ministry’s Trade Policy and Strategy Office.

The announcement came as US Special Envoy for North Korea policy Joseph Yun arrived in Bangkok for talks with senior Thai officials, according to the US embassy, which declined to provide more details.

Yun’s visit is part of a December 11-15 trip to Asia — including a stop in Japan — “to discuss ways to strengthen the pressure campaign following the DPRK’s latest ballistic missile test,” the US State Department said in an earlier statement, referring to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, the North’s official name.

The US remains frustrated that international sanctions on North Korea have not resulted in Pyongyang halting its nuclear and long-range ballistic missile tests.

But sanctions against North Korea have started to bite.

The UN Security Council ordered countries to stop providing guest work permits to North Koreans after Pyongyang’s sixth nuclear test in September.

The ban impacts an estimated 100,000 North Koreans who send some $500 million in wages back to the authoritarian regime in Pyongyang, led by Kim Jong-Un.

The UN and the US have called on Southeast Asian leaders to do more to sever ties with North Korea.

In August, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson stopped Bangkok in August to put pressure on the government to crack down on North Korean shell companies that use the Thai capital as a trading hub.

But Washington has focused its efforts on Beijing, urging Pyongyang’s longtime ally and economic lifeline to rein in Kim and his nuclear programme.

China has accepted a series UN sanctions against the Pyongyang but so far resisted calls to shut a crude oil pipeline considered crucial to North Korea’s economy.

Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump’s administration has swung back-and-forth between contradicting approaches to the crisis on the Korean peninsula, with Tillerson adopting a more diplomatic attitude amid fiery rhetoric from the White House.

On Wednesday, the State Department said that the US position on North Korea has not changed despite Tillerson’s comments that he would be willing to talk to the regime without preconditions.//AFP

Simon Bramhall, 53, pleaded guilty to assault but not guilty to charges of assault causing actual bodily harm.

The case was “without legal precedent in criminal law,” prosecutor Tony Badenoch said of the offences that occurred at Birmingham’s Queen Elizabeth Hospital.

It was “not an isolated incident but rather a repeated act on two occasions, requiring some skill and concentration… done in the presence of colleagues,” he said, calling it a “highly unusual and complex” case.

Elizabeth Reid of the Crown Prosecution Service added in a statement: “Simon Bramhall was a respected surgeon who assaulted two of his patients while they were undergoing surgery.

“It was an intentional application of unlawful force to a patient while anaesthetized. Those assaults were wrong not just ethically, but also criminally. It was an abuse of the trust placed in him by the patients.” Bramhall was granted bail and will be sentenced on January 12.//AFP

As scheduled, the country’s most northern regions and the Svalbard archipelago in the Arctic switched to Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB) in the late morning, said Digitalradio Norge (DRN) which groups Norway’s public and commercial radio.

The transition, which began on January 11, allows for better sound quality, a greater number of channels and more functions, all at a cost eight times lower than FM radio, according to authorities.

The move has however been met with some criticism linked to technical incidents and claims that there is not sufficient DAB coverage across the country.

In addition, radio users have complained about the cost of having to buy new receivers or adapters, usually priced around 100 to 200 euros ($117 to $235).

Read also: Netizens alarmed over Jakarta radio temporary shutdown

Currently, fewer than half of motorists (49 percent) are able to listen to DAB in their cars, according to DRN figures.

According to a study cited by local media, the share of Norwegians who listen to the radio on a daily basis has dropped by 10 percent in one year, and public broadcaster NRK has lost 21 percent of its audience.

“It’s a big change and we have to give listeners time to adapt to digital radio,” the head of DRN, Ole Jorgen Torvmark, said in a statement.

“After each shutdown (in a region), we noticed that the audience first dropped but then rose again,” he added.

The transition concerns only national radio channels. Most local stations continue to broadcast in FM.

Other countries like Switzerland, Britain and Denmark are due to follow suit in the coming years.//AFP

Myanmar police have charged two Reuters reporters covering the Rohingya crisis with violating the Official Secrets Act,  Yangon-based Eleven Media reports.

Wa Lone, 31, and Kyaw Soe Oo, 27, are accused of sending classified information they gleaned from security officials in Yangon who had just returned from Rakhine state, where a military crackdown has sent more than 620,000 Rohingya Muslims fleeing into neighbouring Bangladesh. Foreign media have been barred from entering the conflict zones in northern Rakhine, where the UN and other international agencies say a campaign of ethnic cleansing is under way against the Rohingya involving rape and murder by Myanmar troops.

Eleven Media reports that in Yangon action will also be taken against Reuters’ contacts, Police Captain Moe Yan Naing and Police Sergeant Khin Maung Lin.

Authorities seized reports on fighting in Rakhine’s Maungdaw Township from Wa Lone, and a sketch of a police outpost from Moe Aung.

The US Embassy in Myanmar said it was “deeply concerned” about the arrests.

“For a democracy to succeed, journalists need to be able to do their jobs freely,” it said in a statement.

Reuters said it was “outraged” by the arrests and accused authorities of attacking press freedoms, as the US voiced concern over the detentions.

Rights groups have recorded worsening freedom of expression since Aung San Suu Kyi came to power in 2016 after decades of military rule.

The number of online defamation cases has climbed steeply compared to the previous junta administration, with activists and journalists targeted.

Free Expression Myanmar reported on Monday that every case has so far has ended with a guilty verdict and a prison sentence.

Dublin councillors on Wednesday voted to revoke the Freedom of the City award given to Suu Kyi to protest her handling of violence against Rohingya Muslims, AFP reports. Suu Kyi has faced international criticism for her apparent failure to defend the Rohingya minority, in a dramatic fall from grace for the Nobel Peace laureate who spent years under house arrest in Myanmar.

Bangladesh and Myanmar last month reached a deal to repatriate Rohingya refugees, although the United Nations has said conditions are not safe for their return.

The International Committee of the Red Cross reports that life has stopped in its tracks in Rakhine state where an estimated 180,000 Rohingya remain, fearful of further violence.

Dominik Stillhart, ICRC director of operations told Reuters that continuing tensions in the Muslim and dominant Buddhist communities were preventing Muslim traders from reopening shops and markets. Stillhart was speaking after a three-day mission to the area with one of the only aid agencies still operating in northern Rakhine.

About 300 Muslims still flee daily, he added, citing UN figures.

The figure is the highest estimated death toll yet of violence that erupted on August 25 and triggered a massive refugee crisis, with more than 620,000 Rohingya fleeing Myanmar for Bangladesh in three months.

The UN and US have described the military operation as ethnic cleansing of the Muslim minority, but have not released specific estimations of a death toll.

“At least 6,700 Rohingya, in the most conservative estimations, are estimated to have been killed, including at least 730 children below the age of five,” MSF said Thursday.

The group’s findings come from six surveys of more than 2,434 households in Rohingya refugee camps and cover a period of one month.

“We met and spoke with survivors of violence in Myanmar, who are now sheltering in overcrowded and unsanitary camps in Bangladesh,” said the group’s medical director Sidney Wong.

“What we uncovered was staggering, both in terms of the numbers of people who reported a family member died as a result of violence, and the horrific ways in which they said they were killed or severely injured.”

Gunshot wounds were the cause of death in 69 percent of the cases, according to the survey.

Another nine percent were reported burned alive inside houses, while five percent died from fatal beatings.

For children under five, nearly 60 percent died after being shot, the survey found.

Myanmar’s army has denied any abuses and says only 400 people — including 376 Rohingya “terrorists” — died in the first few weeks of the crackdown.

But MSF said the peak in deaths coincided with the launch of “clearance operations” by the army and local militias in late August, and were evidence “that Rohingya have been targeted”.

All 10 members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations – Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam – have accepted Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s invite to attend the 69th Republic Day parade at the historic Rajpath, where India’s military prowess and cultural heritage will be on display.

This is the first time that leaders from a bloc, instead of an individual country, will be the chief guests at the parade. In the recent past, the signal honour has been accorded to leaders such as former US president Barack Obama and former French president Francois Hollande.

The acceptance of the invitation by all Asean members is an indication of the growing importance of their relations with India – both as as a bloc and bilaterally.

Since the adoption of the Constitution in 1950, this is the first time there will be more than one chief guest at the parade, during which an Asean-India tableau will be displayed. Artists from Asean nations will perform “Ramayana”, the epic that connects all these nations.

While addressing the 15th India-Asean summit in Manila last month, Modi had said that 1.25 billion people of India are keen to welcome the Asean leaders. India’s “Look East” policy, rechristened “Act East” after Modi became Prime Minister, is indicative of the country’s proactive approach towards Asean countries to checkmate China’s growing clout.

India is also being encouraged by other nations such as Singapore to play an active role in the region, given China’s aggressive stance in the South China Sea and regional waters.

India and Asean are marking 25 years of dialogue partnership, 15 years of summit-level interaction, and five years of strategic partnership through a wide range of activities, both in India and through Indian missions in Asean member states, including a commemorative summit on the theme, “Shared Values, Common Destiny”, the Statesman reported.

Commerce, culture and connectivity will be three C’s of the India-Asean relationship during the high-profile commemorative summit to be held a day before Republic Day.

India and Asean are also discussing in Jakarta a joint declaration to be issued by Modi and Asean leaders at the end of their day-long summit. The fight against terrorism will be an important component of the declaration.

On Wednesday, the foreign secretaries of India, Japan and Australia met in New Delhi and underscored their “shared support for Asean centrality in the political and security architecture of the Indo-Pacific region”.

The two cooperative schemes have overlapping areas of cooperation in term of members and functions, said Su Hao, China Foreign Affairs University’s director of Department of Diplomacy.

Both schemes geographically cover the six riparian states of the Mekong comprising China, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam and have similar functions for development cooperation, he said.

Sponsored by the Asian Development Bank (ADB), the GMS was set up in 1992 to promote infrastructure development in mainland Southeast Asia.

Formed in 2015, the LMC has a wider focus to cover the political and security as well as economic, social and cultural sectors.

The two cooperative frameworks have similar functions, such as convening summits of leaders and ministerial meetings as well as workshops for officials. The head of the six governments gather for the GMS summit every three years and for the LMC every two years.

“I understand that in the future the LMC summit could take over the GMS summit because they are overlapping,” Su said. “It is not necessary for the leaders of the six countries to have the same summit with different names.

“But the other functions of the GMS will continue, since they are still useful. I don’t think the two schemes need to compete with each other,” he told journalists from Mekong basin countries.

The role of the ADB would continue, although countries in the basin under the LMC also had the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) for financial support, he said.

With influence from outsiders such as Japan and the United States, the ADB had its own agenda, such as political and human rights to promote development in the Mekong basin, while members had their own political problems such as different human rights practices, he said.

While the AIIB was more open and focused on economic and infrastructure investment, the ADB has emphasised humanitarian purposes and social issues, he said. The China-led AIIB could provide what the countries in the Mekong region really needed, he added. China will host a foreign ministers’ meeting of the Lancang-Mekong Cooperation tomorrow in the southwestern city of Dali to discuss future cooperation in light of the grouping’s Five Year Plan of Action 2018-2022.

Leaders of the six countries will have their second summit in Phnom Penh on January 10 and 11. The first summit was held in China’s city of Sanya last year.

Beijing gives importance to countries in the Mekong basin because they are China’s immediate neighbours and share the river, which is known in China as the Lancang, Su said.

The LMC cooperative mechanism allowed China and neighbouring counties in the Mekong to come together on an equal basis, he said. “While the GMS previously talked too much, the LMC will be more visible and practicable as well as functional to enhance our cooperation,” he said.

Unlike the GMS, the LMC could get involved in political and security issues, notably non-traditional security concerns such as trafficking and natural disasters, he said.

China’s opening of dam gates last year to allow more water to flow into the Mekong River to relieve drought in downstream countries last year was an example of the LMC role, he said.

Under the LMC framework, China could also take a greater role helping members solve internal security problems such as the ongoing Rohingya crisis, he said, adding that Beijing was working on the issue with the Myanmar government.

While the Army’s mission is generally to “attack and destroy,” the cyber troops have a slightly different goal, said Colonel Robert Ryan, who commands a Hawaii-based combat team.

“Not everything is destroy. How can I influence by non-kinetic means? How can I reach up and create confusion and gain control?” he told reporters.

The cyber soldiers have been integrated for six months in infantry units, and will tailor operations according to commanders’ needs, said Colonel William Hartman of the Army’s Cyber Command.

The Army has for the past three years conducted training for such operations at a huge center in southern California.

Hartman didn’t give details on what the cyber troops can achieve, except to say that they would be scooping up information or intercepting planned attacks.

According to the New York Times, CYBERCOM has previously placed “implants” in Islamic State group networks that let experts monitor the group’s behavior and ultimately imitate or alter commanders’ messages so they unwittingly direct fighters to areas likely to be hit by drone or plane strikes.

Another technique likely being employed is a common type of cyber attack known as a denial of service.

Cyber Command had previously been a subordinate part of the US Strategic Command, but President Donald Trump in August ordered the Pentagon to elevate it to its own command, in a sign of its growing importance.

In a first for the Government, the Ministry of Defence (Mindef) will be inviting about 300 international and local hackers to hunt for vulnerabilities in its Internet-connected systems next year, in a bid to guard against ever-evolving cyber threats.

From Jan 15 to Feb 4, these selected experts will try to penetrate eight of Mindef’s Internet-facing systems, such as the Mindef website, the NS Portal and LearNet 2 Portal, a learning resource portal for trainees.

These registered hackers can earn cash rewards – or bounties – of between S$150 (US$111) and S$20,000 (US$15,000), depending on how critical the flaws discovered are. Called the Mindef Bug Bounty Programme, it will be the Government’s first crowdsourced hacking programme.

This follows an incident earlier this year when Mindef discovered that hackers had stolen the NRIC numbers, telephone numbers and birth dates of 854 personnel in a breach of its I-Net system.

One of the systems being tested, Defence Mail, uses the I-net system for Mindef and Singapore Armed Forces (SAF) personnel to connect to the Internet.

Yesterday (Dec 12), the new programme was announced by defence cyber chief David Koh after a visit to the Cyber Defence Test and Evaluation Centre – a cyber “live-firing range” where servicemen train against simulated cyber attacks – at Stagmont Camp in Choa Chu Kang.

On the significance of the “Hack Mindef” initiative, he told reporters: “The SAF is a highly networked force. How we conduct our military operations depends on networking across the army, navy, air force and the joint staff.

“Every day, we see new cyber attacks launched by malicious actors who are constantly seeking new ways to breach our systems… Clearly, this is a fast-evolving environment and, increasingly, you see that it is one that is of relevance to the defence and security domain.”

The bigger picture is that cyberspace is emerging as the next battlefield, said Mr Koh, who is also the deputy secretary for special projects at Mindef.

“Some countries have begun to recognise cyber as a domain similar to air, land and sea. Some have even gone so far as to say that the next major conflict will see cyber activity as the first activity of a major conflict,” he added.

While there will be some risks in inviting hackers to test the systems, such as an increase in website traffic and the chance that these “white-hat” hackers will turn over discovered vulnerabilities to the dark Web, measures will be put in place to guard against this.

White-hat hackers break into protected systems to improve security, while black-hat hackers have nefarious intentions to exploit flaws.

The programme, conducted by US-based bug bounty company HackerOne, is expected to cost about S$100,000 (US$74,000), depending on the bugs uncovered. But Mr Koh noted that this would be less than the expense of hiring a dedicated vulnerability assessment team, which might cost up to a million dollars.

In a statement, Mr Teo Chin Hock, deputy chief executive for development at the Cyber Security Agency, said the agency is currently in discussions with some of Singapore’s 11 designated critical information infrastructure sectors, which have expressed interest in exploring a similar programme for their public-facing systems.

Such bug bounty programmes have been used by large organisations elsewhere, such as Facebook and the United States Department of Defence, with some success.

The initiative caps a year in which Singapore has been gearing up for the battlefront in cyberspace.

In March, it was announced that the Defence Cyber Organisation will be set up to bolster Singapore’s cyber defence, with a force of cyber defenders trained to help in this fight.