DENPASAR, Indonesia: Thousands of foreign tourists were leaving Bali by plane Thursday after an airport shutdown sparked by a rumbling volcano, but some visitors were irate at not being able to get off the Indonesian island paradise sooner.
The alert level on Mount Agung remains at maximum. But a change in wind direction blew towering columns of ash and smoke away from the airport, prompting authorities to re-open the island’s main international gateway Wednesday afternoon.
That opened an eagerly awaited window for some of the 120,000 tourists stranded after the surge in volcanic activity grounded hundreds of flights, sparking travel chaos and forcing the evacuation of villagers living in the mountain’s shadow.
Ash is dangerous for planes as it makes runways slippery and can be sucked into their engines.
“Things are gradually getting back to normal,” said Bali airport spokesman Israwadi, who like many Indonesians goes by one name.
But that wasn’t much comfort to some visitors who came to relax in one of the world’s top travel destinations but have instead faced repeated flight cancelations, battles over insurance and torrential rain that has lashed the island.
“I have been stranded since Monday night,” said Australian Donna Lay.
“We have travel insurance, but mine doesn’t cover volcano so I’m just living off my money. I’m covered for health (insurance) but not for accommodation.”
Indonesian visitor Yayan was running out of patience.
“I have been waiting since November 27 (Monday),” said the man, whose flight has been canceled multiple times.
“I got no email or notification from the airline...They should have told me. I am at loss because I have to postpone my business — I have jobs that I need to handle.”
More than 4,500 people have now flown out of Bali’s main airport, authorities said, with around 3,200 of them on international flights.
However, the airport on nearby Lombok island — also a popular tourist destination — closed again Thursday after ash and smoke drifted in its direction.
The shifting wind was being caused by cyclone Cempaka which is battering Indonesia’s main Java island — west of Bali — and has left at least 19 people dead in severe flooding and landslides.
Millions of tourists visit palm-fringed Bali annually. The majority are Chinese, followed by Australians, Indians, Britons and Japanese, according to the immigration office, which added that nearly 25,000 foreigners live on the small Hindu-majority island.
Tens of thousands of Balinese have already fled their homes around the volcano — which last erupted in 1963, killing around 1,600 people.
As many as 100,000 will likely be forced to leave in case of a full eruption, disaster agency officials have said.
While some have refused to leave a 10-kilometer radius danger zone, tens of thousands have filled up evacuation centers, some with respiratory problems linked to the volcanic ash.
“In an evacuation center there are a lot of people so there are problems such as poor sanitation and diseases can be easily contagious,” said Dwi Putra Sudewa, a doctor volunteering at one center.
“One gets a cough and others can get it too.”
While the volcano appeared to be belching less ash and smoke on Thursday, experts warned a major eruption could still happen at any moment. Agung has already experienced a series of mini eruptions.
“The potential for an eruption is still there, but we cannot predict how big it’s going to be,” said Devy Kamil from the Indonesian volcanology agency.
Agung rumbled back to life in September, forcing the evacuation of 140,000 people living nearby. Its activity decreased in late October and many returned to their homes.
However, on Saturday the mountain sent smoke into the air for the second time in a week in what volcanologists call a phreatic eruption — caused by the heating and expansion of groundwater.
So-called cold lava flows have also appeared — similar to mud flows and often a prelude to the blazing orange lava of popular imagination.
Indonesia, the world’s most active volcanic region, lies on the Pacific “Ring of Fire” where tectonic plates collide, causing frequent volcanic and seismic activities.
Last year seven people were killed after Mount Sinabung on the western island of Sumatra erupted. A 2014 eruption at Sinabung killed 16.
Tourists leave as Bali’s volcano-hit airport gets back to business
Tourists leave as Bali’s volcano-hit airport gets back to business
UK’s Met Police refers itself to watchdog over Al-Fayed probes
The complaints, referred to the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC), involve investigations from 2008 and 2013.
They revolve around the quality of the police response and, in the case of the 2013 probe, how details came to be disclosed publicly.
“In recent weeks, two victims-survivors have come forward with concerns about how their allegations were handled when first reported, and it is only appropriate that the IOPC assess these complaints,” said Stephen Clayman, from the Met’s Specialist Crime team.
“Although we cannot change the past, we are resolute in our goal to offer every individual who contacts us the highest standard of service and support,” he added.
More than 400 women and witnesses have come forward in the past six weeks alleging sexual misconduct by Fayed, who died in August last year aged 94.
The allegations follow the airing of a BBC documentary in September that detailed multiple claims of rape and sexual assault by the former owner of the upmarket London department store.
The Justice for Harrods Survivors group said it had received 421 inquiries, mainly related to the store but also regarding Fulham football club, the Ritz Hotel in Paris and other Fayed entities.
The Met said Friday that it was “actively reviewing 21 allegations reported to the Metropolitan Police prior to Mohamed Al-Fayed’s passing... to determine if any additional investigative steps are available or there are things we could have done better.”
India’s Naga separatists threaten to resume violence after decades-long truce
- “The violent confrontation between India and Nagalim shall be purely on account of the deliberate betrayal and breach of commitment by India and its leadership to honor the letter and spirit of Framework Agreement of 2015,” he said
GUWAHATI, India: An armed separatist group in a remote northeast Indian state on Friday threatened to “resume violent armed resistance” after nearly three decades of ceasefire, accusing New Delhi of failing to honor promises in earlier agreements.
The Naga insurgency, India’s oldest, is aimed at creating a separate homeland of Nagalim that unites parts of India’s mountainous northeast with areas of neighboring Myanmar for ethnic Naga people. About 20,000 people have died in the conflict since it began in 1947.
A ceasefire between the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (Isak-Muivah), a leading separatist group, and Indian security forces has held since it was enforced in 1997 and the group signed an agreement with New Delhi in 2015 toward striking a resolution on their demands.
BACKGROUND
A ceasefire between the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (Isak-Muivah), a leading separatist group, and Indian security forces has held since it was enforced in 1997.
But talks have stagnated since and in a statement Friday, the group’s chief, Thuingaleng Muivah, accused India of “betrayal of the letter and spirit” of the 2015 agreement.
India’s Interior Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Muivah’s remarks.
In a statement, Muivah urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s federal government to “respect and honor” the 2015 agreement, which he said “officially recognized and acknowledged” the right to a sovereign flag and constitution for the separatists.
Muivah proposed a “third party intervention” to resolve the impasse, threatening that it would resume violence if “such a political initiative was rejected.”
“The violent confrontation between India and Nagalim shall be purely on account of the deliberate betrayal and breach of commitment by India and its leadership to honor the letter and spirit of Framework Agreement of 2015,” he said.
“India and its leadership shall be held responsible for the catastrophic and adverse situation that will arise out of the violent armed conflict between India and Nagalim,” he said.
Comoros arrests suspected key smuggler
- The International Organization for Migration said on Monday that at least 25 people died after the boat was “deliberately capsized by traffickers”
MORONI, Comoros: Police in the Comoros said on Friday they had arrested the alleged leader of a smuggling network involved in the capsizing of a migrant boat that claimed around two dozen lives.
The boat sank on a well-known smuggling route between the Comoros island of Anjouan and the French Indian Ocean archipelago of Mayotte on Nov. 1.
“The smuggling ringleader who owned the capsized boat was arrested on Thursday in Anjouan,” Col. Tachfine Ahmed said.
“He admitted that he owned the boat and bought all the material needed for the trip,” he added, saying the 37-year-old suspect was a resident of Mayotte.
The International Organization for Migration said on Monday that at least 25 people died after the boat was “deliberately capsized by traffickers.”
The Comoros police said they knew of 17 deaths.
Fishermen rescued five survivors who said the boat was carrying around 30 people, including women and young children, the IOM said.
A survivor said the smugglers sank the vessel before fleeing on a speedboat.
Police confirmed the survivor’s account, saying the two smugglers escaped.
“We are actively looking for the two smugglers who got on another boat,” the colonel added.
In addition to homicide charges, the arrested suspect faces up to 10 years imprisonment for belonging to an organized criminal group as well as three years for illegal transport of passengers.
Anjouan is one of three islands in the nation of Comoros, located around 70 km northwest of Mayotte, which became a department of France in 2011.
Despite being France’s poorest department, Mayotte has French infrastructure and welfare, which makes it attractive to migrants from Comoros seeking a better life.
Many pay smugglers to make the dangerous sea crossing in rickety fishing boats known as “kwassa-kwassa.”
UK court awards Manchester bomb victims £45,000 over hoax claims
- Martin Hibbert and his daughter Eve sued Richard Hall over claims made in videos and a book that they were “crisis actors“
- Judge Karen Steyn called Hall’s behavior “a negligent, indeed reckless, abuse of media freedom”
LONDON: Two survivors of the 2017 bomb attack at an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, England, on Friday won £45,000 ($58,000) in damages from a former TV producer who claimed the attack was a hoax.
Martin Hibbert and his daughter Eve sued Richard Hall over claims made in videos and a book that they were “crisis actors” employed by the state as part of an elaborate deception.
Hibbert sustained a spinal cord injury in the attack, and his daughter suffered severe brain damage.
Hall argued that he was acting in the public interest by filming Hibbert’s daughter outside her home, but the High Court in London agreed with Hibbert’s claim for harassment.
Judge Karen Steyn called Hall’s behavior “a negligent, indeed reckless, abuse of media freedom” and on Friday ordered him to pay Hibbert and his daughter each £22,500 in damages.
Hall must also pay 90 percent of their legal costs, currently estimated at £260,000.
“The claimants are both vulnerable. The allegations are serious and distressing,” said the judge.
Jonathan Price, lawyer for the claimants, said that Hall “insisted that the terrorist attack in which the claimants were catastrophically injured did not happen and that the claimants were participants or ‘crisis actors’ in a state-orchestrated hoax, who had repeatedly, publicly and egregiously lied to the public for monetary gain.”
Hibbert welcomed the ruling, adding: “I want this case to open up the door for change, and for it to protect others from what we have been put through.
“It proves and has highlighted... that there is protection within the law, and it sends out a message to conspiracy theorists that you cannot ignore all acceptable evidence and harass innocent people.”
Islamic extremist Salman Abedi, aided by his brother, Hashem Abedi, killed 22 people and injured 1,017 during the suicide bombing at the end of the concert by the US singer.
US charges Iranian man in plot to kill Donald Trump
- Shakeri told the FBI he didn’t plan to propose a plan to murder Trump
- The plot reflects what federal officials have described as ongoing efforts by Iran to target US government officials
WASHINGTON: The Justice Department on Friday disclosed an Iranian murder-for-hire plot to kill Donald Trump, charging a man who said he had been tasked by a government official before this week’s election with assassinating the Republican president-elect.
Investigators learned of the plot to kill Trump while interviewing Farhad Shakeri, an Afghan national identified by officials as an Iranian government asset who was deported from the US after being imprisoned on robbery charges.
He told investigators that a contact in Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard instructed him this past September to put together a plan within seven days to surveil and ultimately kill Trump, according to a criminal complaint unsealed in federal court in Manhattan.
Two other men who the authorities say were recruited to participate in other assassinations, including a prominent Iranian American journalist, were also arrested Friday. Shakeri remains in Iran.
“There are few actors in the world that pose as grave a threat to the national security of the United States as does Iran,” Attorney General Merrick B. Garland said in a statement.
The plot, with the charges unsealed just days after Trump’s defeat of Democrat Kamala Harris, reflects what federal officials have described as ongoing efforts by Iran to target US government officials, including Trump, on US soil. Last summer, the Justice Department charged a Pakistani man with ties to Iran in a murder-for-hire plot.
