Lombok: 91 die as quake again hits Indonesian island
At least 91 people have been confirmed dead after a powerful earthquake hit the Indonesian island of Lombok.
Hundreds of people are said to be wounded by Sunday’s quake mostly in the north of the island.
The magnitude seven tremor was shallow, occurring only 10km (6.21 miles) underground. It damaged thousands of buildings and triggered power cuts, according to reports.
On the neighbouring island of Bali, video footage showed people running from their homes screaming.
There have been more than 130 aftershocks since the quake hit on Sunday morning.
A tsunami warning was issued but was lifted after a few hours.
It comes a week after another quake hit Lombok, popular with tourists who visit its beaches and hiking trails.
That quake killed at least 16 people.
Lombok is a roughly 4,500 sq km (1,700 sq miles) island west of the slightly larger island of Bali.
The two islands are home to about three and four million people respectively, but each year visited by millions of tourists from around the globe.
A spokesman for Indonesia’s disaster mitigation agency told the AFP news agency that many buildings had been affected in Lombok’s main city of Mataram.
Most of them had been built with weak construction materials.
Mataram residents described a powerful jolt that sent people fleeing into the streets.
“Everyone immediately ran out of their homes, everyone is panicking,” one resident named as Iman was quoted as saying.
In several parts of Mataram, there were electricity blackouts.
Patients at the city hospital, and also at Denpasar hospital in Bali, were evacuated and tended to by doctors in the streets.
Debris littered the streets of Lombok and Bali, which local people sought to clean up in the hours after the quake.
The quake was felt for several seconds in Bali. One worker in Denpasar described the scene to the BBC.
“They were initially just little shocks but then they started to get bigger and bigger and people started to shout ‘earthquake’, then all the staff panicked and rushed out of the building,” the unnamed man said.
Model and presenter Chrissy Teigen, who is on holiday in Bali, described 15 seconds of a tremor, followed by “so many aftershocks.”
Singapore’s Home Affairs Minister K. Shanmugam was in Lombok for a security conference when the earthquake struck.
He described on Facebook how his hotel room shook violently. “It was quite impossible to stand up,” he said.
Australian Minister for Home Affairs and Immigration Peter Dutton who was also at the conference said his delegation was safe and thanked the Indonesian police and authorities for their work.
He tweeted on Monday morning that so far there were no reports of Australian casualties.
The quake has also affected the Gili Islands, three tiny islands just off the coast of Lombok, which are particularly popular with divers.
A tweet from the head of the Disaster Mitigation Agency said 1,000 foreign tourists have been evacuated from the islands.
“Some of them are hurt and are in shock,” I Nyoman Sidakarya told TV One.
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Saudi Arabia freezes Canada trade ties, recalls envoy
Saudi Arabia has said it is freezing all new trade and investment with Canada over its “interference” in its internal affairs.
In a series of tweets, the Saudi foreign ministry said it was expelling the Canadian ambassador and recalling its own envoy in Canada.
The move comes after Canada said it was “gravely concerned” about the arrest of several human rights activists.
Among those arrested was Saudi-American women’s rights campaigner Samar Badawi.
Ms. Badawi had been calling for an end to Saudi Arabia’s male guardianship system.
The foreign ministry said it “will not accept any form of interfering” in its internal affairs.
It referred to last week’s statement by the Canadian foreign ministry, which urged Riyadh to “immediately release” civil society and women’s rights activists.
The Saudi ministry described Canada’s position as “an attack” on the kingdom, saying it would now:
*Freeze all new trade and investment transactions between the two countries
*Consider the Canadian ambassador persona non grata and order the envoy to leave within 24 hours
*Recall the Saudi envoy in Canada
*Reserve the right to take further action
Canada’s government has so far made no public comments on Saudi Arabia’s diplomatic measures.
The arrests are at odds with the progressive image the government has projected this year under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
He drew widespread praise last year when they announced that the decades-old ban on women driving would end on 24 June.
Saudi women’s rights activists, including those who have been imprisoned for defying the ban, had celebrated the decision.
But they also vowed to continue campaigning for the end of other laws they consider discriminatory.
Women must adhere to a strict dress code, be separated from unrelated men, and be accompanied by or receive written permission from a male guardian – usually a father, husband or brother – if they want to travel, work or access healthcare.
The Saudi crown prince has also spearheaded a sweeping anti-corruption drive which resulted in dozens of princes, government ministers and businessmen being detained in November and generated an estimated $107bn ($80bn) in settlements.
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Australia backlash over far-right figure’s TV interview
An Australian TV network has said it was “wrong” to interview a far-right figure with a criminal past, after the segment set off a widespread backlash.
Blair Cottrell appeared in a one-on-one studio interview on Sky News Australia on Sunday to speak about immigration.
Viewers pointed out that Cottrell was last year convicted of inciting contempt of Muslims, and that he has previously called for schools to display pictures of Adolf Hitler.
Sky News Australia responded on Sunday.
Cottrell is the former leader of anti-immigration group United Patriots Front.
He was interviewed by Adam Giles, a programme host and former chief minister of the Northern Territory.
Other presenters at the network were among those to criticise the interview.
“Blair Cottrell is a far right-wing fascist who’s a self confessed Hitler fan. He’s boasted about using ‘violence and terror’ to manipulate women,” tweeted one host, Laura Jayes.
A regular commentator and former Australian government minister, Craig Emerson, said it was “another step in a journey to normalising racism and bigotry in our country.”
He said he would not appear on the network again.
Cottrell used the interview to call on Australia to reduce immigration, protect itself from “foreign ideologies” and to “reclaim our traditional identity.”
He said later that Sky News Australia had succumbed to pressure to “silence” him.
Last year, Cottrell was one of three men found guilty by a magistrate of inciting contempt of Muslims, after the men staged a mock beheading to protest against the building of a mosque.
He was previously convicted of other offences, including arson and burglary.
Last year another broadcaster, Channel Seven, was also criticised for airing a live interview with Mr. Cottrell without disclosing his background.
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Switzerland crash: Twenty dead in WW2 plane crash
Twenty people have died after a World War Two vintage aircraft crashed into a mountainside in eastern Switzerland, police say.
The plane – a Junkers JU-52 HB-HOT – was carrying 17 passengers and three crew on a sightseeing flight when it took off on Saturday afternoon.
Operator JU-Air said it was saddened by the news and it had set up a helpline for relatives.
It has suspended all flights until further notice.
The cause of the crash is not known.
The passengers were returning to Zurich from a two-day excursion in Locarno near Switzerland’s southern border.
Although there were eyewitnesses to the crash, the BBC’s Imogen Foulkes says that the investigation into what happened will take time.
The plane had no black box, and the remote alpine location of the crash means there was little radar monitoring.
“Based on the situation at the crash site we can say that the aircraft smashed into ground almost vertically at relatively high speed,” said Daniel Knecht of the Swiss Transportation Safety Investigation Board.
“What we can rule out at this point is that there had been a collision before the crash, neither with another aircraft nor with some other obstacle such as a cable.”
A witness who was on the mountainside at the time of the crash told the 20 Minutes newspaper that “the plane turned 180 degrees to the south and fell to the ground like a stone.”
Of the 20 people on the flight, 11 were men and nine were women, police spokeswoman Anita Senti said at a news conference.
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Police say the passengers were aged between 42 and 84 years old and that the relatives of all but one of the victims had been contacted.
The bodies of the victims, 17 from Switzerland and three from Austria – believed to be an Austrian couple and their son – are still being recovered.
The aircraft crashed about 2,540m (8,333 ft) above sea level, on the western side of a 3,000m peak called Piz Segnas.
JU-Air runs sightseeing tours on its squadron of German-made vintage aircraft from Dübendorf military airfield near Zurich.
The company’s CEO Kurt Waldmeier told the AFP news agency the plane had undergone a maintenance inspection in July.
In another crash on Saturday, a family of four including two young children were killed when a small plane came down in central Switzerland.
