Synagogue Extremist Was Obsessed With Jewish Refugee Agency

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31 October 2018, 11:49

From left, President Donald Trump, accompanied by first lady Melania Trump, and Tree of Life Rabbi Jeffrey Myers, puts down a stone from the White House on Tuesday at a memorial for those killed at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh. Photo: Andrew Harnik / Associated Press

Just moments before the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting that left 11 people dead, the suspect is believed to have posted a final social media rant against a Jewish refugee settlement agency most people had never heard of, but which has increasingly become the target of right-wing rage and conspiracy theories.

“HIAS likes to bring invaders in that kill our people,” Robert Gregory Bowers wrote on the platform Gab early Saturday. “I can’t sit by and watch my people get slaughtered. Screw your optics, I’m going in.”

The group, formerly known as the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, was founded in 1881 in a Manhattan storefront to assist Jews persecuted in Russia and Eastern Europe. HIAS is now among nine groups that contract with the State Department to help refugees settle in the United States, and it has recently clashed with the Trump administration over policies that have throttled the flow of such newcomers.

Leaders of HIAS and the group’s Pittsburgh affiliate vowed to continue their work.

“We were the perfect target for this murderer, because we’re Jewish and we help refugees. So he gets to check off the two hate boxes,” Mark Hetfield, president and CEO of HIAS, told a news conference Tuesday in Pittsburgh.

Hetfield said HIAS is getting flooded with donations, with more coming in from non-Jews around the world than Jews for the first time in the organization’s history.

Analysts who follow the extreme right say the fixation some extremists have with HIAS appears to be fueled by a mix of anti-Semitism and the recent caustic rhetoric about an immigrant caravan trudging slowly toward the United States.

Specifically, they believe Bowers ascribed to the “white genocide” conspiracy, which holds that Jews are prominent among the forces seeking to destroy the “white race” by bringing in non-white people. The Gab.com account believed to be Bowers’ includes several recent postings or re-postings critical of HIAS.

Based in the Washington, D.C., suburb of Silver Spring, HIAS has an annual operating budget of USD$42 million and receives about half of its money from the federal government. It has resettled refugees of different faiths from Afghanistan, Vietnam, Iran and elsewhere. Among the thousands of people it has aided are Google co-founder Sergey Brin and singer Regina Spektor.

As the Trump administration restricted the number of refugees allowed into the U.S., HIAS and its local affiliates went from resettling 4,191 refugees in 2016 to 1,632 for the fiscal year that just ended.

Though HIAS strongly supports the rights of asylum seekers to a fair hearing, it has no connection to the immigrant caravan, said spokesman Bill Swersey.

“We’re the people who go to the airport, that bring the refugees home, that make sure there’s food in the fridge, make sure their kids know where the school is,” said Melanie Nezer, HIAS’s senior vice president for public affairs.

But right-wing extremists see HIAS in a more sinister light.

Heidi Beirich, who directs the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project, said HIAS’s name comes up on white-supremacist message boards whenever posters become angry about refugees or immigrants. She noted that other resettlement agencies, such as those associated with Christian religions, have not raised the same sort of ire.

It happened toward the end of the Obama administration during the debate over Syrian refugees. Attention ratcheted up recently as President Donald Trump and others started drawing attention to the migrant caravan slowly making its way through Mexico toward the U.S. border.

Trump intensified his warnings about the caravan Monday, tweeting, “This is an invasion of our Country and our Military is waiting for you!” as the Pentagon announced plans to deploy 5,200 troops to the Southwest border.

“White supremacists are ginned up right now,” Beirich said. “Their words are being echoed back to them by high-profile public figures.”

HIAS also has been public in its opposition to Trump’s immigration policies. It sued the administration in 2017 over the executive order halting refugee resettlement. In August, HIAS and the ADL led a delegation of national Jewish organizations to the U.S.-Mexico border.

Oren Segal, director of the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism, said the high-profile visit this summer could have drawn the attention of right-wing extremists.

As Bowers appeared in federal court in a wheelchair Monday, HIAS-affiliated offices across the country increased security.

Nezer said the group is still processing the tragedy.

“I think we need to redouble our efforts to stand up for these values and not cower and hide,” she said, “because to me that would be the most dangerous response.”

Story: Michael Hill

Kepler Telescope Dead After Finding Thousands of Worlds

By

Associated Press

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31 October 2018, 11:33

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida — NASA’s elite planet-hunting spacecraft has been declared dead, just a few months shy of its 10th anniversary.

Officials announced the Kepler Space Telescope’s demise Tuesday.

Already well past its expected lifetime, the 9 1/2-year-old Kepler had been running low on fuel for months. Its ability to point at distant stars and identify possible alien worlds worsened dramatically at the beginning of October, but flight controllers still managed to retrieve its latest observations. The telescope has now gone silent, its fuel tank empty.

“Kepler opened the gate for mankind’s exploration of the cosmos,” said retired NASA scientist William Borucki, who led the original Kepler science team.

Kepler discovered 2,681 planets outside our solar system and even more potential candidates. It showed us rocky worlds the size of Earth that, like Earth, might harbor life. It also unveiled incredible super Earths: planets bigger than Earth but smaller than Neptune.

NASA’s astrophysics director Paul Hertz estimated that anywhere from two to a dozen of the planets discovered by Kepler are rocky and Earth-sized in the so-called Goldilocks zone. But Kepler’s overall planet census showed that 20 to 50 percent of the stars visible in the night sky could have planets like ours in the habitable zone for life, he said.

The USD$700 million mission even helped to uncover last year a solar system with eight planets, just like ours.

“It has revolutionized our understanding of our place in the cosmos,” Hertz said. “Now we know because of the Kepler Space Telescope and its science mission that planets are more common than stars in our galaxy.”

Almost lost in 2013 because of equipment failure, Kepler was salvaged by engineers and kept peering into the cosmos, thick with stars and galaxies, ever on the lookout for dips in in the brightness of stars that could indicate an orbiting planet.

“It was like trying to detect a flea crawling across a car headlight when the car was 100 miles away,” said Borucki said.

The resurrected mission became known as K2 and yielded 350 confirmed exoplanets, or planets orbiting other stars, on top of what the telescope had already uncovered since its March 7, 2009, launch from Cape Canaveral.

In all, close to 4,000 exoplanets have been confirmed over the past two decades, two-thirds of them thanks to Kepler.

Kepler focused on stars thousands of light-years away and, according to NASA, showed that statistically there’s at least one planet around every star in our Milky Way Galaxy.

Borucki, who dreamed up the mission decades ago, said one of his favorite discoveries was Kepler 22b, a water planet bigger than Earth but where it is not too warm and not too cold – the type “that could lead to life.”

A successor to Kepler launched in April, NASA’s Tess spacecraft, has its sights on stars closer to home. It’s already identified some possible planets.

Tess project scientist Padi Boyd called Kepler’s mission “stunningly successful.”

Kepler showed us that “we live in a galaxy that’s teeming with planets, and we’re ready to take the next step to explore those planets,” she said.

Another longtime spacecraft chasing strange worlds in our own solar system, meanwhile, is also close to death.

NASA’s 11-year-old Dawn spacecraft is pretty much out of fuel after orbiting the asteroid Vesta as well as the dwarf planet Ceres. It remains in orbit around Ceres, which, like Vesta, is in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

Two of NASA’s older telescopes have been hit with equipment trouble recently, but have recovered. The 28-year-old Hubble Space Telescope resumed science observations last weekend, following a three-week shutdown. The 19-year-old Chandra X-ray Telescope’s pointing system also ran into trouble briefly in October. Both cases involved critical gyroscopes, needed to point the telescopes.

Hertz said all the spacecraft problems were “completely independent” and coincidental in timing.

Now 94 million miles from Earth, Kepler should remain in a safe, stable orbit around the sun. Flight controllers will disable the spacecraft’s transmitters, before bidding a final “good night.”

Story: Marcia Dunn

Leicester to Return to Action Saturday After Death of Owner

By

Associated Press

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31 October 2018, 11:17

Buddhist Monks pay their respects at Leicester City soccer club Tuesday Oct. 30, 2018, after Leicester Chairman Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha, seen in poster, died along with four other people Saturday evening in a helicopter crash outside King Power Stadium. Photo: Mike Egerton / Associated Press

Leicester’s grieving players will take to the field for the first time since the death of the club’s owner in a helicopter crash when they visit Cardiff for a Premier League game on Saturday.

The two teams said Tuesday the match will go ahead as planned in the Welsh capital, with a minute’s silence before kickoff and players wearing black armbands as a mark of respect for Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha and four other people who were killed in the tragedy.

Leicester’s players have been visibly affected by the incident and have spent Monday and Tuesday attending commemorative events to pay tribute to Vichai, the club’s popular Thai owner whose helicopter spiraled out of control as it left the King Power Stadium following a Premier League game against West Ham on Saturday.

“We will be offering our support to Leicester City in any way necessary in respect of this weekend’s fixture,” Cardiff chief executive Ken Choo said.

Leicester’s English League Cup match against Southampton, scheduled for Tuesday, had been canceled, while games involving the club’s women’s team were also called off in wake of the crash.

Leicester opened a book of condolence inside a specially erected marquee in memory of Vichai on Tuesday, as more supporters and people from the wider community arrived at the stadium to pay their respects.

Leicester striker Jamie Vardy and his wife, Rebekah, wept as they placed a wreath among an ever-growing shrine to Vichai that includes flowers, scarves and soccer jerseys. Leicester goalkeeper Kasper Schmeichel, who was present at the scene of the crash on Saturday, was in tears as floral tributes were laid inside and outside the King Power Stadium on Monday.

Former Leicester manager Nigel Pearson, who guided the team away from relegation trouble the season before it won the Premier League in improbable fashion in 2016, said Vichai’s “quiet yet authoritative aura, presence and personality have had an immeasurable influence on English football.”

“A manager could not have wished for a better boss,” Pearson wrote in a personal letter published on the website of Belgian team OH Leuven, where he has been coach since last year.

Story: Denise Lavoie, Alanna Durkin Richer

Possible Seabed Position of Crashed Lion Air Jet Located

By

Associated Press

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31 October 2018, 10:52

Rescuers Tuesday carry a body bag containing the remains of victims retrieved from the waters where Lion Air flight JT 610 is believed to have crashed at Tanjung Priok Port in Jakarta, Indonesia. Photo: Binsar Bakara / Associated Press

JAKARTA — A massive search effort has identified the possible seabed location of the crashed Lion Air jet, Indonesia’s military chief said Wednesday, as experts carried out the grim task of identifying dozens of body parts recovered from a 15 nautical mile search area.

The 2-month-old Boeing plane plunged into the Java Sea on Monday just minutes after takeoff from Jakarta, killing all 189 people on board.

“Based on the presentation of the head of the National Search and Rescue Agency, the coordinates of the suspected body of the aircraft have been found. We will send a team there to confirm,” said armed forces chief Hadi Tjahjanto.

The disaster has reignited concerns about safety in Indonesia’s fast-growing aviation industry, which was recently removed from European Union and U.S. blacklists, and also raised doubts about the safety of Boeing’s new generation 737 MAX 8 plane.

Boeing Co. experts are expected to arrive Indonesia on Wednesday and Lion Air has said an “intense” internal investigation is underway in addition to the probe by safety regulators.

Locating the fuselage will bring the search effort closer to finding the airplane’s flight recorders, which are crucial to the accident investigation.

Data from flight-tracking sites show the plane had erratic speed and altitude in the early minutes of a flight on Sunday and on its fatal flight Monday. Safety experts caution, however, that the data must be checked for accuracy against the plane’s “black boxes,” which officials are confident will be recovered.

Passengers on the Sunday flight from Bali to Jakarta have recounted problems that including a long-delayed takeoff for an engine check and terrifying descents in the first 10 minutes in the air.

Officials said the non-stop search effort has sent 48 body bags containing human remains to police identification experts.

Anguished family members have been providing samples for DNA tests and police say results are expected within 4-8 days.

Daniel Putut, a Lion Air managing director, said the airline and Boeing will meet Wednesday afternoon.

“Of course there are lots of things we will ask them, we all have question marks here, why? What’s the matter with this new plane,” he said.

Indonesia’s Transport Ministry has ordered all Boeing 737 MAX 8 planes operated by Lion Air and national carrier Garuda to be inspected.

Boeing declined to comment about potential inspections globally.

The aircraft manufacturer told airlines in a bulletin, “Boeing has no recommended operator action at this time,” according to two people familiar with the matter.

Story: Niniek Karmini, Stephen Wright

Louis Cha, Hong Kong Martial Arts Novelist, Dies at 94

By

Associated Press

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31 October 2018, 10:46

In this 2007 photo released by China's Xinhua News Agency, Louis Cha smiles during a speech at Peking University in Beijing. Photo: Luo Xiaoguang / Xinhua via AP

HONG KONG — Louis Cha, a Hong Kong journalist and best-selling Chinese martial arts novelist, has died at age 94 after a long illness.

The Hong Kong newspaper founded by Cha, Ming Pao Daily News, said he passed away Tuesday at a Hong Kong hospital.

Cha’s novels about ancient Chinese swordsmen have sold millions and are among the most widely read in the Chinese-speaking world. They inspired film adaptations, TV and radio dramas, comic books and videogames, and greatly influenced Hong Kong popular culture.

They include “The Heaven Sword and the Dragon Saber,” about a kindhearted hero who is indecisive but uses his kung fu skills to unify a divided gang and is elected its leader, and “The Eagle-Shooting Heroes,” about a tragic hero who sacrifices his life in guarding the country against invading Mongolians.

Cha was born in 1924 in Hangzhou in mainland China and graduated from the Law School of Suzhou in 1948, the South China Morning Post said. He had planned to become a diplomat, but began work as a journalist in 1947 to support his studies. The communist revolution in 1949 closed off his opportunities to enter diplomacy.

Cha’s first novel, “The Book and the Sword,” was published in 1955 and became an instant hit. He went on to write 14 martial arts novels, often under the pen name Jin Yong.

TWG Tea Pays Tribute to the Month of Earl Grey with Earl Grey Afternoon Tea Set (Sponsored)

By

Khaosod English

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31 October 2018, 10:40

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Hard Final Push on Medical Weed Pledged by Officials

By

Teeranai Charuvastra, News Chief

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31 October 2018, 09:26

BANGKOK — Less pain for cancer patients. Fewer seizures in young children. An economic boom for farmers. A more humane society.

These are some of the supposed benefits Thailand would gain if marijuana could be used for medical research and treatment, according to experts and activists who made impassioned pleas to lawmakers at a public hearing Tuesday at Parliament. The session was convened to explore what impacts would follow if cannabis were to be legalized.

One neurologist said he could have used cannabis to treat patients with chronic pain instead of the morphine which ravaged their health.

“Why do we have to wait for their pain to escalate until patients need morphine and develop an addiction to it?” Thiravat Hemachudha, who also teaches at Chulalongkorn University, told the lawmakers. “I’m tired of looking after my patients only to see them fail to recover.”

Read: February Elections Jeopardize Rollout of Thai Medical Weed

Another advocate, from the Medical Council of Thailand, implored lawmakers to stop dithering and speed up the legalization process for the sake of the country.

“We can turn Thailand into a medical hub of cannabis treatment. Think of the new employment opportunities and investment from overseas,” Oraphan Methadilokul said. “If you hesitate in your duty, you will be at fault.”

Thiravat and Oraphan were among physicians, drug enforcement agents, pharmacists, police officers and cannabis activists invited to brief junta-appointed lawmakers today following a proposal from some politicians to “fast-track” legalization of medical marijuana.

The audience even included a Thai woman who lives in California and identified herself as a vendor of cannabis medicine in the states.

“I want to sell it to Thai people. I can only sell to the Americans right now,” Gamhom Nalangchang said.

“It’s also not true that marijuana hinders sexual prowess,” she added, to the laughter in the room. “I can confirm it myself!”

To Beat the Ballots

At the beginning of the four-hour hearing, the National Legislative Assembly member who proposed a fast-track amendment that would be less ambitious in scope, said he hoped the parliament can pass the new law by New Year’s Day.

“It could be a New Year present to the Thai people,” Somchai Sawaengkarn said.

The session was part of a years-long effort by the current military regime to roll back the country’s draconian drug laws. The proposed overhauls include less severe penalties, more focus on rehabilitation and legalizing some substances – namely marijuana and kratom plants.

That it’s a priority to the government was clear from the moment the interim parliament chairman himself took the seat at the table’s end and opened the session with a supporting message.

“Both domestic and foreign research indicates that cannabis has qualities that can treat many diseases,” Pornpetch Wichitcholchai said. “Some [lawmakers] believe we can unlock the laws on cannabis. I think we can do it.”

But the ambitious project has fizzled. Of 180 sections of the new drug bill, lawmakers have only reviewed seven, NLA member Jate Sirathranont said.

With the new election – slated for Feb. 24 – looming, lawmakers realized there isn’t enough time to pass the entire bill, Jate said. So the reformers are now hurrying to salvage what they started by proposing a separate bill that only focuses on medical cannabis.

“If we don’t do it, the matter will be dropped, and we will have to wait for the new government to pick it up,” Jate said. “We will lose so many opportunities.”

Somchai and Jate had hoped junta chairman Prayuth Chan-ocha would invoke Section 44, a constitutional clause that grants him unlimited power, and enact the new bill into law. Prayuth demurred; now they must get there through normal parliamentary procedure.

Questions Unanswered

Proponents of the amendment are required by law to conduct public hearings to air the law’s positive and negative impacts, and how to best enforce the new policy.

Citing an online poll organized by the parliament, Somchai said an overwhelming majority of Thais are in favor of legalizing cannabis for medical use – of the 16,431 people surveyed, 16,288 said they agreed.

But that public endorsement doesn’t preclude deliberative vetting by experts, who voiced their cautious concerns at today’s hearing.

“Sometimes social media makes cannabis sound like a magical elixir for all diseases,” Jate, a physician by trade, told the panel.

For example, there’s no evidence cannabis cures cancer, a popular claim made by weed activists, the lawmaker said.

While Thiravat, the Chulalongkorn physician, touted cannabis as a cure for severe seizures in children and people with multiple sclerosis, he noted that claims of marijuana healing Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases are unproven.

Medical Council member Oraphan also warned that legalizing medical cannabis could allow minors to access it and damage their development.

“There are negative sides to this too, especially brain damage among young children,” Oraphan said, citing a US-based pediatric journal.

‘Please Don’t Arrest Me’

What was perhaps most surprising at the hearing was a rare display of rationale and sincere debate of a health issue in a country where moralism and fear-mongering usually trump science.

A wide range of topics were discussed frankly – to the point of bureaucratic mundanity. Which agency should oversee the regulations? The Office of Narcotics Control Board, the Ministry of Public Health or the Food and Drug Administration?

What kinds of cannabinoids, a non-psychotropic extract that doesn’t get one high, should be unlocked? How many farmers should be allowed to grow cannabis and in which provinces?

And, as whenever weed is discussed, there was even humor. The presence of stern-faced officials from the anti-narcotics agency – Thailand’s equivalent of the US’s DEA – offered a recurring theme, like a late-night comedy skit. A former senator said he recently checked out cannabis oil in Australia, before adding in a hurry that he didn’t buy any.

“Please don’t arrest me, okay?” Jarupong Jeenapan said, drawing laughter.

Vicha Mahakun, a former anti-graft commissioner affiliated with conservative factions, also confided to “being familiar” with marijuana since a young age.

“I lived on the Thonburi side. Many houses grew it in their backyard,” said Vicha, who’s serving as a lawmaker. “In fact, I think the parliament should serve us marijuana noodles today so we know what it does.”

“I can’t. The ONCB is here,” his colleague Somchai said matter of factly.

New Era

It’s a dramatic departure from the years of drug wars waged by populist prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra in the early 2000s, during which thousands were murdered in government-sanctioned “extrajudicial killings.”

“If you love your king and care for your children, unite against drugs,” was a slogan adopted by the Thaksin administration.

Several officials said today they changed their minds after overseas visits and seeing country after country end their wars on cannabis. For instance, Vicha said he was briefed by UN officials recently about the global narcotics situation. He was told that cocaine, opioids and methamphetamines were among the top dangers to look out for.

“There was no mention of marijuana at all,” Vicha said.

Medical cannabis advocate Saichol Sorathat pleaded with any lawmaker who has lost a loved one to cancer under immense pain to look back on their own experience.

“Not every cancer patient gets morphine around the clock. They were left to suffer in pain. Some patients even told their doctors, ‘If the pain was as bad as last night, I would rather be given a fatal shot,” Saichol said. “Some of us saw our friends suffer like this. Why do we let them suffer?”

Somchai said all opinions voiced today will be included in the parliament’s deliberation when the proposal is formally submitted. He said the junta chairman has communicated “informally” to him that he’s closely following the matter.

“He has asked us to proceed with this issue without creating possible legal violations,” Somchai said.

Previous Flight of Crashed Lion Air Jet Scared Passengers

By

Associated Press

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30 October 2018, 17:20

A Lion Air Boeing 737 Max 8 lands in January in Papua province, Indonesia. Image: Raja Video Id / YouTube

JAKARTA — Divers searched Tuesday for victims of the Lion Air plane crash in Indonesia that killed 189 people and high-tech equipment was deployed to find its data recorders as reports emerged of problems on the jet’s previous flight that had terrified passengers.

Search and rescue personnel worked through the night, sending 26 body bags to identification experts while the airline flew dozens of grieving relatives to the country’s capital, Jakarta.

The 2-month-old Boeing jet crashed into the Java Sea early Monday, just 13 minutes after taking off from Jakarta for an island off Sumatra. Its pilot had requested clearance to return to the airport just 2-3 minutes after takeoff, which aviation experts said indicated a problem, though its cause is still baffling.

The National Search and Rescue Agency said that 10 intact bodies as well as body parts have been recovered. Aircraft debris and personal belongings from ID cards to clothing and bags found scattered in seas northeast of Jakarta are being spread out on tarps at a port in north Jakarta.

The disaster has reignited concerns about safety in Indonesia’s fast-growing aviation industry, which was recently removed from European Union and U.S. blacklists.

Two passengers on the plane’s previous flight from Bali to Jakarta on Sunday have described issues that caused frustration and alarm.

Alon Soetanto told TVOne the plane dropped suddenly several times in the first few minutes of its flight.

“About three to eight minutes after it took off, I felt like the plane was losing power and unable to rise. That happened several times during the flight,” he said. “We felt like in a roller coaster. Some passengers began to panic and vomit.”

His account is consistent with data from flight-tracking sites that show erratic speed, altitude and direction in the minutes after the Boeing 737 MAX 8 jet took off. A similar pattern is also seen in data pinged from Monday’s fatal flight. Safety experts cautioned, however, that the data must be checked for accuracy against the plane’s so-called black boxes, which officials are confident will be recovered.

Lion Air’s president Edward Sirait said there were reports of technical problems with the flight from Bali but said it had been resolved in accordance with the procedures released by the plane manufacturer.

In a detailed post online, Indonesian TV presenter Conchita Caroline said boarding of Sunday’s flight was delayed by more than an hour and when the plane was being towed, a technical problem forced it to return to its parking space.

She said passengers sat in the cabin without air conditioning for at least 30 minutes listening to an “unusual” engine roar, while some children vomited from the overbearing heat, until staff faced with rising anger let them disembark.

After about 30 minutes of passengers waiting on the tarmac, they were told to board again while an engine was checked.

Caroline said she queried a staff member but was met with a defensive response.

“He just showed me the flight permit that he had signed and he said the problem had been settled,” she said. “He treated me like a passenger full of disturbing dramas even though what I was asking represented friends and confused tourists who didn’t understand Indonesian.”

Distraught family members struggled to comprehend the sudden loss of loved ones in the crash of a plane with experienced pilots in fine weather.

“This is a very difficult time for our family,” said Leo Sihombing, outside a crisis center set up for family members at Jakarta’s Soekarno-Hatta airport.

“We know that it is very unlikely that my cousin is still alive, but no one can provide any certainty or explanation,” he said as other family members wept and hugged each other.

“What we hope now is rescuers can find his body, so we can bury him properly, and authorities can reveal what caused the plane crash,” Sihombing said.

More than 800 people from multiple agencies are involved in the search, which was Tuesday expanded to a 10 nautical mile area. Specialist ships and remotely operated underwater vehicles have been deployed to search for the plane’s hull and flight recorders.

Search and Rescue Agency chief Muhammad Syaugi said search teams are going “all out” to locate the aircraft’s fuselage.

He has said he’s certain it won’t take long to locate the hull of the aircraft and its flight recorders due to the relatively shallow 30 meter (115 foot) depth of the waters where it crashed.

The crash is the worst airline disaster in Indonesia since an AirAsia flight from Surabaya to Singapore plunged into the sea in December 2014, killing all 162 on board.

Indonesian airlines were barred in 2007 from flying to Europe because of safety concerns, though several were allowed to resume services in the following decade. The ban was completely lifted in June. The U.S. lifted a decadelong ban in 2016.

Lion Air, a discount carrier, is one Indonesia’s youngest and biggest airlines, flying to dozens of domestic and international destinations. Earlier this year it confirmed a deal to buy 50 new Boeing narrow-body aircraft worth an estimated USD$6.2 billion. It has been expanding aggressively in Southeast Asia, a fast-growing region of more than 600 million people.

Story: Niniek Karmini, Stephen Wright

Asian Stocks Rally as Weaker Yuan Eases Fear of More Tariffs

By

Associated Press

-

30 October 2018, 16:31

A man walks by an electronic stock board of a securities firm in July in Tokyo, Japan. Photo: Koji Sasahara / Associated Press

SINGAPORE — Asian shares were mostly higher on Tuesday as traders took the weaker yuan as a sign that Chinese exports can remain competitive even if a trade dispute with Washington heats up.

Keeping Score

Japan’s Nikkei 225 index jumped 1.4 percent to 21,434.38 after official data showed that its unemployment rate eased to 2.3 percent in September, from 2.4 percent a month earlier. The Shanghai Composite index rebounded 1.2 percent to 2,573.33 and South Korea’s Kospi picked up 1.3 percent to 2,021.82. Australia’s S&P-ASX 200 gained 1.3 percent to 5,805.10. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng bucked the trend, slipping 0.4 percent to 24,707.78. Shares were higher in Taiwan, Indonesia and Thailand but fell in Singapore.

Wall Street

A report the U.S. is preparing to impose tariffs on all imports from China weighed on sentiment. The S&P 500 index fell 0.7 percent to 2,641.25. The Dow Jones Industrial Average tumbled 1 percent to 24,442.92 and the Nasdaq composite gave up 1.6 percent to 7,050.29. The Russell 2000 index of smaller-company stocks dropped 0.4 percent to 1,447.31.

More Chinese Tariffs

On Monday, Bloomberg News reported that the Trump administration plans to announce a new wave of tariffs on Chinese goods in December, if upcoming talks between President Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping fail to substantially diffuse tensions. The report cited unnamed sources who said the tariffs could cover imports from China that have not already been hit by tariffs, amounting to up to USD$257 billion worth of imports. A weakening of the Chinese yuan, which can make exports more price competitive, lifted sentiment in Asia. The yuan had declined to 6.9644 per dollar by midday on Monday, the lowest level since May 2008. It fell to 6.9678 against the dollar on Tuesday afternoon.

Analyst’s Take

The optimism may be misplaced, said Jingyi Pan of IG. “Even a 10 percent depreciation of the yuan does not measure up to the expected impact from a lift in tariffs,” she said in a commentary. “This is not including the externalities … from damage to business confidence and upon the regional supply chain.”

Energy

Benchmark U.S. crude added 6 cents to $67.10 per barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract dropped 55 cents to settle at $67.04 a barrel in New York. Brent crude, used to price international oils, lost 19 cents to $77.18 per barrel. In the previous session, it dropped 29 cents to $77.37 a barrel.

Currencies

The dollar strengthened to 112.72 yen from 112.37 yen late Monday. The euro rose to $1.1377 from $1.1372.

Story: Annabelle Liang

‘Happy Endings’ Take a Grim Turn When Joan Cornella Returns

By

Chayanit Itthipongmaetee, Staff Reporter

-

30 October 2018, 16:27

A recent comic by Joan Cornella shows a man and a woman in Thai student uniforms.

BANGKOK — Find out what Thailand’s “happy endings” are for the king of dark, surreal comics.

Over a year after enjoying his own nights in Bangkok, Spanish cartoonist Joan Cornella will take on Thai culture in some of his work when he returns next week for his second show, Happy Endings (which fans already know ain’t so happy).

The exhibition will comprise more than 60 works, including some specifically created with Thailand in mind.

Tickets available online are 200 baht. The exhibition starts at 11am on Nov. 8 and runs through Dec. 3 at Woof Pack.

Cornella, 37, is best known for his pop art-style comics that portray cynical aspects of life and modern society. His first exhibition took place in March 2017 at Future Factory Bangkok.

Woof Pack is open 11am to 10pm every day on the same floor as the Bangkok Screening Room on Soi Sala Daeng 1. It is reachable from MRT Lumphini’s exit No. 2 or BTS Sala Daeng’s exit No. 4.

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