JAYAPURA: A plane with 48 people aboard skidded off the runway in Indonesia’s remote eastern region of Papua on Monday, police said, injuring several passengers.
The Southeast Asian archipelago has a poor aviation safety record, and Papua is covered in mountainous terrain where flying is hampered by frequent poor weather.
The ATR-42 aircraft belonging to Trigana Air was taking off from an airport in the remote Yapen Islands regency to Papuan capital Jayapura on Monday morning when it skidded off the runway.
The flight was carrying 42 passengers, including a baby, and six crew.
“Praise God everybody survived and has been taken to a hospital for a health checkup,” local police chief Ardyan Ukie Hercahyo said in a statement.
“We are investigating the incident and coordinating with related parties to ensure this will never happen again.”
The local search and rescue agency said in a statement that some passengers were injured and traumatized by the incident.
Indonesia relies heavily on air transport to connect its thousands of islands, but Papua is a particularly difficult area to reach.
In 2015, a Trigana Air plane crashed there, killing all 54 people on board.
Several passengers injured as plane skids off Indonesia runway
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Several passengers injured as plane skids off Indonesia runway
Russia launches biggest aerial attack on Ukraine since the start of the war
Russia fired a total of 537 aerial weapons at Ukraine, including 477 drones and decoys and 60 missiles, Ukraine’s air force said. Of these, 249 were shot down and 226 were lost, likely having been electronically jammed.
Yuriy Ihnat, head of communications for Ukraine’s air force, told the Associated Press that the overnight onslaught was “the most massive air strike,” on the country, taking into account both drones and various types of missiles. The attack targeted regions across Ukraine, including western Ukraine, far from the frontline.
Poland and allied countries scrambled aircraft to ensure the safety of Polish airspace, the Polish air force said Sunday.
Kherson regional Gov. Oleksandr Prokudin said one person died in a drone strike. Six people were wounded in Cherkasy, including a child, according to regional Gov. Ihor Taburets.
The war shows no signs of abating as US-led international peace efforts have so far produced no breakthrough. Two recent rounds of talks between the Russian and Ukrainian delegations in Istanbul were brief and yielded no progress on reaching a settlement.
Three killed, over a dozen hospitalized as crowd surges at eastern India Hindu festival
- Autopsies are planned for the deceased to determine the exact cause of death
- Coastal temple town of Puri comes alive each year with the grand ‘Rath Yatra’
NEW DELHI: Three people were killed and more than a dozen hospitalized Sunday following a sudden crowd surge at a popular Hindu festival in eastern India, a senior government official said.
“There was a sudden crowd surge of devotees for having a glimpse of the Hindu deities during which few people either fainted, felt suffocated or complained of breathlessness,” said Siddharth Shankar Swain, the top government official in Puri.
Swain said that 15 people were rushed to a local government hospital, where three people were pronounced dead and the other 12 were discharged. Autopsies are planned for the deceased to determine the exact cause of death.
Tens of thousands of devotees gathered in the coastal town early Sunday at Shree Gundicha Temple near the famous Jagannatha Temple to catch a glimpse of the deities onboard three chariots, Swain said.
The coastal temple town of Puri comes alive each year with the grand “Rath Yatra,” or chariot festival, in one of the world’s oldest and largest religious processions. The centuries-old festival involves Hindu deities being taken out of the temple and driven in colorfully decorated chariots.
The festival is one of Hinduism’s most revered events and draws hundreds of thousands of devotees annually from across India and the world.
El Salvador says Paris fashion show ‘glorifies’ criminals
SAN SALVADOR: El Salvador’s government on Saturday criticized a Paris Fashion Week show that made references to inmates at the country’s CECOT mega-prison, with President Nayib Bukele joking that he could send prisoners to France.
At Mexican American designer Willy Chavarria’s show in Paris on Friday, the white T-shirts and shorts worn by his models invoked the uniforms worn by inmates at the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT).
Bukele had the maximum-security prison built to hold gang members nabbed in his war against organized crime.
Also imprisoned at CECOT are 252 Venezuelans deported from the United States and accused of being members of the Tren de Aragua criminal gang.
“We’re ready to ship them all to Paris whenever we get the green light from the French government,” Bukele wrote in response to an X post that said Chavarria was paying tribute to CECOT prisoners.
The president’s press secretariat said Bukele’s post showed his “firm stance against the attempt to glorify criminality.”
Since March 2022, Bukele has run an offensive against gangs under a state of emergency that allows arrests without a warrant.
The Trump administration has paid Bukele’s government millions of dollars to lock up migrants it says are criminals and gang members.
US President Donald Trump invoked a rarely used wartime legislation in March to fly migrants to El Salvador without any court hearing.
Lawyers for the Venezuelans deported to CECOT say the charges are without basis and the inmates are victims of physical and emotional torture.
UK considers envoy for Britons held abroad
- The government has not specified the terms of the role but it could be similar to America’s Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs
LONDON: Britain is preparing to emulate the United States by appointing an envoy tasked with freeing citizens arbitrarily detained abroad, as it faces calls to do more to bring them home.
High-profile cases like jailed Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abdel Fattah and imprisoned Hong Kong media mogul Jimmy Lai have spotlighted the plight of Britons held in jails overseas.
The UK foreign ministry insists it continues to press such cases with governments, but relatives of detainees and human rights organizations complain of a lack of urgency and transparency.
“The government is committed to strengthening support for British nationals, including through the appointment of a new envoy,” a Foreign Office spokesperson told AFP.
Middle East Minister Hamish Falconer has said an “Envoy for Complex Consular Detentions” is expected to be appointed “before the summer.”
The government has not specified the terms of the role but it could be similar to America’s Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs, a position created in 2015.
Unlike the United States though, Britain does not take part in prisoner exchanges.
Professor Carla Ferstman, an expert on arbitrary detentions at the Human Rights Center at Essex Law School, said appointing someone would be the “clearest thing that the UK can do that it hasn’t done yet.”
“When you have someone at the highest level they command a certain level of respect,” she told AFP.
Abdel Fattah was arrested in September 2019 and sentenced to five years in prison on charges of “spreading false news” after sharing a Facebook post about police brutality.
He is still imprisoned despite a hunger strike by his mother and Britain’s foreign ministry saying it is pushing for his release “at the highest levels of the Egyptian government.”
His sister Sanaa Seif said an envoy would mean “a proper continued focus on” freeing detainees.
“It’s also important to have a focal point that can help coordinate between different government bodies so that they all work in synchronization,” she told AFP.
Seif believes the government should consider revising travel advice to Egypt too, a call also made by lawmakers who have suggested the government should sanction Egyptian officials as well.
“Is it not clear that words are no longer sufficient?” Conservative peer Guy Black asked in parliament’s House of Lords recently.
Ferstman said tightening travel guidance can be a powerful tool.
“It’s a big deal because all of a sudden tourists can’t get insurance and it’s harder for business travel to happen. There’s all kinds of implications,” she explained.
Amnesty International recently called for the government to develop a “clear strategy” to support arbitrarily detained Britons, including by demanding that UK officials attend trials.
The Labour government pledged in its general election-winning manifesto last year that it would introduce “a new right to consular assistance in cases of human rights violations.”
Amnesty also wants the government to call for a person’s “immediate release,” including publicly when it is requested by the family.
It said London took three years to publicly call for Lai to be freed, something his son Sebastian said “sends the wrong message” to “autocratic states.”
“The quicker we have the government speak out post-arrest, that’s the window of opportunity to have people released,” Eilidh Macpherson, Amnesty’s campaigns manager for individuals at risk told AFP.
UK officials say the government can be wary of accusations it is interfering in another country’s judicial system.
“Sometimes it may need to be quiet about what it’s doing, but this shouldn’t come at the expense of transparency,” said Ferstman.
Jagtar Singh Johal, a Sikh blogger from Scotland, was arrested in India in November 2017 while there for his wedding on accusations of being part of a terror plot against right-wing Hindu leaders.
He has not been convicted of a crime and in March was cleared in one of the nine charges against him.
The foreign ministry spokesperson said Foreign Secretary David Lammy “continues to raise concerns” about the detention with India’s government “at every appropriate opportunity.”
But his brother, Gurpreet Singh Johal complains of being kept in the dark.
“We don’t know what’s actually being said,” he told AFP.
Gurpreet said an envoy would be a “good thing” but until the position is in place, “We won’t know exactly what it means.”
Russia’s ‘Mr Nobody’ gambles all with film on Kremlin propaganda
- Local officials banned Talankin's former colleagues from contacting him, he became a hate figure for supporters of the war
PARIS: When Moscow invaded Ukraine, Pavel Talankin, a staff member at a secondary school in Russia’s Ural Mountains, was ordered to film patriotic lessons, songs and morning drills.
Talankin, the school’s event organizer and also a keen videographer, found the propaganda work so depressing that he wanted to quit his job in the industrial town of Karabash.
Then he received what he says was the strangest message of his life.
A Europe-based filmmaker got in touch, offering to collaborate on a project to document the abrupt militarization of Talankin’s school in the wake of Russia’s February 2022 invasion of its neighbor.
Talankin had earlier seen a post from a Russian company looking for people whose jobs had been affected by the war. Talankin said he was ready to talk.
After receiving the foreigner’s offer Talankin did not sleep all night.
The project changed his life forever.
After teaming up with David Borenstein and shooting many hours of footage, Talankin last summer fled Russia with seven hard discs, leaving behind his mother, brothers and sisters and the town he loved.
Using the smuggled-out footage Borenstein, a Denmark-based US filmmaker, directed what became “Mr Nobody Against Putin,” an award-winning 90-minute documentary which exposes the intensity of the propaganda at Talankin’s school and throughout Karabash.
It premiered at the 2025 Sundance film festival in January.
The project cost Talankin dearly. Local officials banned his former colleagues from contacting him, he became a hate figure for supporters of the war and his school librarian mother was upset.
“I have become a persona non grata,” Talankin, 34, told AFP from Prague, where he is now based.
Russia outlawed all criticism of the Russian military and the Kremlin and Talankin knew he had taken huge risks.
But he has no regrets.
“I would do it all over again.”
He has been buoyed by the support of people featured in the film including those who lost their loved ones in the war.
One former colleague said she became ashamed that she, too, was “part of the system.”
The documentary reaped awards at festivals and the film crew hopes it will be available to wider audiences in Europe later this year. Borenstein said the film’s success had been a “relief” because the multi-national crew overcame numerous obstacles including communication and security.
But above all he was “really scared” that if the film flopped Talankin’s sacrifice would come to nothing.
“I knew the whole time that Pasha would have to leave Russia to make this project happen,” Borenstein told AFP, referring to his co-director by his diminutive.
“That is a huge sacrifice for him, because his mum is there, his whole life is there, he does not speak English, not at that time.”
Talankin has not been able to join the crew to present the film at the Sundance festival in Utah and elsewhere due to paperwork issues, but the team hopes this will soon change.
For now he is learning English and adjusting to his new life in Prague.
Talankin said he was heartened by the reactions at the screenings.
One viewer in the Czech Republic said he hated Russians but the film made him reconsider. “We knew nothing about what was happening to you,” Talankin quoted the Czech as saying.
“It is a powerful and poetic piece of cinema,” said producer Alexandra Fechner, who is promoting the film in France.
“This film shows the hidden side of propaganda in Russia, which targets the youngest members of society, children who are being taught a rewritten version of history and given guns!” she said.
With the war in its fourth year, Moscow has put society on a war footing and leveraged the educational system to raise a fiercely pro-Kremlin generation.
The film features Wagner mercenaries telling children about hand grenades and teachers calling Ukrainians “neo-Nazi,” and includes an audio recording of a wailing mother at her soldier son’s funeral.
But critics also point to the documentary’s empathy and light touch.
In one episode, a history teacher tells pupils that the spiralling prices could soon make gas unaffordable for Europeans.
“The French will soon be like musketeers, riding horses, and the rest of Europe too,” he said.
Borenstein said that by viewing the footage sent by Talankin nearly every day, he understood the effect of the dehumanizing war-time propaganda.
While at the beginning he found some of the clips shocking, months later his mind had become so used to the onslaught of the propaganda that he did not see the footage depicting the Wagner mercenaries as something abnormal.
“I was able to replicate among myself some of the feelings that maybe the students and people in the school felt,” he said. “Looking at this propaganda every single day was a lesson in how desensitised you can become to it.”
A lot of the footage had not made it into the film, including the school’s preparations for the possibility of a nuclear attack.
Karabash is located close to one of Russia’s most sensitive sites, the Mayak nuclear reprocessing plant.
Talankin said Borenstein did not want the viewers to “drown in the enormous amount of negative material.”
“I have plans for this footage,” Talankin said. “Sooner or later I will start slowly releasing it.”
