Hanoi – A Vietnamese court on Monday agreed to hand over to Malaysia eight Indonesians who were arrested last year on suspicion of hijacking a Malaysian-flagged oil tanker, according to reports.

The men washed up on Vietnam’s southwestern Tho Chu island on a lifeboat claiming to have encountered an accident at sea in June 2015.

They were taken into custody after officials discovered they were carrying large sums of cash, and were accused of hijacking the MT Orkim Harmony oil tanker.

The group spoke Indonesian, officials said, and both Jakarta and Kuala Lumpur requested to have the men extradited.

“The Hanoi people’s court has ruled out a request by the Indonesian embassy to bring back the suspects to its country for a trial,” state-run VNExpress news site said.

“The court accepted Malaysia’s proposal to extradite the men to Malaysia” based on Vietnam’s mutual legal support laws with Malaysia, the report added.

Court officials did not respond for a request to comment Monday, though the report said the suspects have 15 days to appeal the ruling.

MT Orkim Harmony was carrying around 6,000 tonnes of petrol worth an estimated US$5.6 million (S$7.6 million) when it was commandeered on June 11 last year en route from Malaysia’s western coast to the port of Kuantan on the east coast.

The eight suspected pirates eluded search crews by escaping in a lifeboat under cover of darkness, Malaysian authorities said at that time.

The tanker’s 22 crew members were mostly unscathed except for a slightly injured Indonesian sailor who was treated for a gunshot wound to the thigh.

The vessel was the latest ship targeted by increasingly bold pirates behind an upsurge of sea hijackings in Southeast Asia in recent years that have typically aimed at smaller tankers carrying valuable petrol, diesel or gas oil.

Seoul – A powerful 5.4-magnitude earthquake hit the southern region of South Korea Monday evening, the US Geological Survey (USGS) said, following an earlier quake of 4.9-magnitude.

The Korea Meteorological Administration (KMA) put the second tremor higher than USGS, at 5.8-magnitude, describing it as the “biggest ever”.

“It was the biggest quake ever to hit the country,” Yoo Yong-Gyu, a KMA official, told reporters, adding the tremor was “felt all across the country”.

Two people have been reported injured, he said, citing data from emergency rescue authorities.

The previous record in the South was a 5.2-magnitude quake that hit the sea off the southeastern port of Uljin in 2004 and a quake of equal magnitude in the eastern mountainous region of Sokri in 1978.

Monday’s second quake hit at around 8:30 pm (1130 GMT), with the epicentre near the southeastern city of Gyeongju, the KMA said.

On Friday USGS reported a 5.3-magnitude “artificial earthquake” in North Korea, that was in fact a nuclear test.

Emergency centres across the South were flooded by tens of thousands of calls seeking information, Yonhap news agency said, adding train services in some regions were temporarily delayed.

Local nuclear reactors were operating without disruption, it said, citing officials at Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power.

The country’s largest mobile app used by 40 million – KakaoTalk – partially went down with many unable to access the service, the company said, apparently due to heavy traffic.

The country’s social media was also flooded with images of shattered storefront windows and people rushing out of buildings and apartments in panic, some with children in arms.

TV stations showed video footage of computers violently shaking at a local Internet cafe, students rushing out of schools, and products falling off shelves at a store.

Bangkok – Civilians accused of royal defamation and other security offences will no longer be tried in military courts, the junta said Monday, rolling back a heavily-criticised practice introduced after their 2014 coup.

Since the coup, breaches of a tough royal defamation law and other national security crimes have been punishable in military courts, presided over by a bench of officers.

Those courts have imposed severe sentences including record jail terms for civilians of up to 30 years for alleged lese majeste.

But on Monday the junta said an August referendum vote endorsing their new constitution has allowed them to ease their grip on the legal system – in a sign of the junta’s increasing confidence that it has its political opponents under control.

“For the past two years, the country has been in peace. People have co-operated in … the steps to reform which saw the peaceful referendum,” according to the order signed by junta leader Prayut Chan-O-Cha and published in the Royal Gazette.

With the new charter to soon come into effect, the junta is repealing three orders allowing for the trial of civilians in military court, the statement added.

Among other crimes, those orders covered allegations of lese majeste, sedition and possession of war weapons.

The changes come into effect immediately, but do not apply to civilians currently being processed by martial courts or offences committed before Monday’s edict.

That means dozens of people still face military justice.

For two years the junta had parried all calls by rights groups to end the trial of civilians in military courts, using them as a tool to control a restive country.

But Thailand’s junta has been pepped up by the referendum vote in favour of a charter they say will curb corruption and limit the power of greedy politicians.

Critics of the constitution say it hands the military long-term powers and will lead to greater division.

Thailand has been roiled by decades of political instability.

The latest chapter has unfolded since another coup in 2006 brought down billionaire ex-premier Thaksin Shinawatra.

His family and their parties have won all Thai general elections since 2001, angering the royalist military and their establishment allies who refuse to accept defeat at the polls.

The kingdom is beset by fears for the health of the ailing 88-year-old king Bhumibol Adulyadej, who is seen by many Thais as the only binding figure across a deeply divided country.

Experts believe the latest chapter of political upheaval is fired by competing elites desperate to secure their positions before the royal succession.

MANILA – Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte on Monday called for the withdrawal of U.S. military from a restive southern island, fearing an American troop presence could complicate offensives against Islamist militants notorious for beheading Westerners.

Duterte, who was in the spotlight last week over his televised tirade against the United States and President Barack Obama, said special forces now training Filipino troops were high-value targets for the Islamic State-linked Abu Sayyaf as counter-insurgency operations intensify.

“These special forces, they have to go,” Duterte said in a speech during an oath-taking ceremony for new officials. “I do not want a rift with America. But they have to go.”

He added: “Americans, they will really kill them, they will try to kidnap them to get ransom.”

The comment by Duterte, a former southern mayor known for his terse words and volatile temperament, adds to uncertainty about what impact his rise to the presidency will have on one of Washington’s best alliances in Asia.

Duterte wants an independent foreign policy and says close ties with the United States are crucial, but he has frequently accused the former colonial power of hypocrisy when criticised for his deadly drugs war. He denied on Friday calling Obama a”son of a bitch”.

Some U.S. special forces have been killed in the southern Philippines since 2002, when Washington deployed soldiers to train and advise local units fighting Abu Sayyaf in Operation Enduring Freedom, part of its global anti-terror strategy.

At the height of that, some 1,200 Americans were in Zamboanga City and on Jolo and Basilan islands, both strongholds of Abu Sayyaf, which is known for its brutality and for earning huge sums of money from hostage-taking.

The U.S. programme was discontinued in the Philippines in 2015 but a small troop presence has remained for logistics and technical support. Washington has shifted much of its security focus in the Philippines towards the South China Sea.

In his speech to officials on Monday, Duterte repeated comments from last week when he accused the United States of committing atrocities against Muslims over a century ago on Jolo island.

TAIPEI – About 10,000 Taiwan tourism operators and workers marched to a square in front of the presidential hall on Monday to demand that the government take steps to help their businesses, hard hit by worsening ties with mainland China.

Relations between the self-ruled island and the mainland, which regards Taiwan as a renegade province, have become strained since President Tsai Ing-wen took office in May.

The mainland does not trust Tsai and is fearful her Democratic Progressive Party will push for independence for the island, an idea that is anathema to Beijing.

Government figures show arrivals from China fell 15 percent year on year in July and fell again in August.

The sector was also hit by a fire on a bus in July that killed 24 mainland tourists on their way to the island’s main airport to fly home.

Investigators released a report on the cause of the disaster on the weekend that will only compound the damage the deaths have caused.

The inferno was not sparked by a crash but by the driver, who poured petrol inside the bus and locked its emergency exits before setting it alight in what prosecutors said was an act of suicide.

Representatives of hotels, travel agents and tour bus companies joined the rally to urge government action to reverse the fall in arrivals. “We want to survive”, “we ask for jobs”, “we need food and shelter,” and “no jobs, no life” read some of the signs protesters held up as they marched through rain to the square in the island’s capital of Taipei.

“God is weeping for us,” protest organiser Ringo Lee called out to the crowd, referring to the downpour. “He is weeping for hundreds of thousands of our families being affected.”

China has claimed sovereignty over Taiwan since 1949, when Mao Zedong’s forces won the Chinese civil war and Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists fled to the island.

Beijing has never renounced the use of force to bring the island under its control.

Beijing cut a communication mechanism with Taiwan in June as Tsai declined to accept a so-called 1992 Consensus, which holds there is only “one China”, with each side having its own interpretation of what that means.

Taiwan president-elect Tsai Ing-wen’s inauguration

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Reuters, AFP