Volcanic material from the eruption of Mount Barujari is seen Tuesday from Bayan, Lombok Island, Indonesia. Photo: Denda Wiyana Putri / Associated Press
JAKARTA, Indonesia — Indonesian authorities say they have evacuated most tourists from Mount Barujari on Lombok island after it spewed a massive column of ash into the atmosphere.
The volcano, a popular attraction that is known as the Child of Rinjani because it sits within the Mount Rinjani caldera, erupted without warning on Tuesday afternoon, delaying flights from the international airport on nearby Bali. The ash column reached 2,000 meters (6,560 feet).
Heronimus Guru, deputy operations chief at Indonesia’s Search and Rescue Agency, said Wednesday that the remaining tourists, about 50 people who are mostly foreigners, were heading down the mountain.
Disaster Mitigation Agency spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho said more than 1,100 tourists left the Mount Rinjani area on Tuesday. A similar number left Wednesday.
There have been no reports of injuries from the eruption.
Nugroho said government scientists have declared a danger zone of 3 kilometers (1.6 miles) around the crater and raised the volcano’s alert to the third highest level, but some tourists did not immediately heed warnings to leave because they wanted to take photos or videos of the eruption.
The eruption interrupted flights for several hours at Ngurah Rai International Airport in Bali, airport officials said.
Farms and trees around the 3,726-meter (12,224-foot) -high volcano were coated in a thin layer of gray ash, but nearby towns and villages were not in danger, Nugroho said.
Rinjani is among about 130 active volcanoes in Indonesia. The archipelago is prone to volcanic eruptions and earthquakes because of its location on the Pacific “Ring of Fire.”
SUPHAN BURI— Pikachu and Captain America assumed their places among the divine on the walls of a temple in Suphan Buri city.
Wat Wang Yai Hoon invited university art students to break from tradition for a recent renovation project. The students from Rajamangala University of Technology Thanyaburi updated the Buddha’s biography with with what’s going on these days by painting in references to Pokemon on the the comic book superhero.
The temple showed off its new art Wednesday and will reopen with its more youth-friendly art in November.
CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida — On a personal quest to settle Mars, SpaceX founder Elon Musk envisions 1,000 passenger ships flying en masse to the red planet well within the next century, “Battlestar Galactica” style.
Musk outlined his zealous plan Tuesday to establish a self-sustaining city on Mars, complete with iron foundries and even pizzerias. He wants to make humans a multiplanetary species, and says the best way to do that is to colonize the red planet.
“I think Earth will be a good place for a long time, but the probable lifespan of human civilization will be much greater if we’re a multiplanetary species,” he said.
SpaceX founder Elon Musk speaks Tuesday during the 67th International Astronautical Congress in Guadalajara, Mexico. Photo: Refugio Ruiz / Associated Press
Musk, who also runs electric car maker Tesla Motors, received a wildly warm reception at the International Astronautical Congress in Guadalajara, Mexico. Many in the crowd were avid space buffs.
For now, the aerospace company he founded in 2002 is focusing on satellite deliveries, as well as space station cargo runs for NASA and a future crew capsule for U.S. astronauts. Its Falcon rocket, though, is grounded for the second time in a year because of devastating accidents.
During his address, Musk did not mention the Sept. 1 launch pad explosion that destroyed a Falcon rocket and its satellite.
Instead, he noted that SpaceX already has begun work on the Mars Colonial fleet, recently test-firing a powerful new rocket engine named Raptor. The system ultimately could take people to the moons of Jupiter and beyond, he said.
Musk said it would be a “super-exciting” adventure to Mars but also dangerous, at least for the first few trips. His goal is to get the price down so anyone could afford to go, with a ticket costing no more than a house on Earth. He’s shooting for 1 million Martians.
Would he go, someone asked? Perhaps ultimately, but it would depend on whether he had a good succession plan in place. As for being the first Martian, the risk of fatalities will be high – “there’s just no way around it” – and he wants to see his five young sons grow up.
“It would be basically, are you prepared to die? If that’s OK, then you’re a candidate for going,” he told the audience.
In April, Musk announced plans to send an unmanned Dragon capsule to land on Mars as early as 2018. NASA is offering technical support, but no money. The space agency has its own program to get astronauts to Mars in the 2030s, using its own hardware.
Musk invited industry to join the Mars effort, which will represent a USD$10 billion investment. SpaceX currently is spending a few tens of millions of dollars on the enterprise, and the amount will soon grow, he said.
Musk described in detail his plans to launch a monster-size rocket – larger than even NASA’s Saturn V moon rocket – from the same launch pad at Kennedy Space Center from which the Apollo astronauts departed for the lunar surface in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
The first-stage boosters would return to land vertically – just like his Falcon rocket boosters do now. Reusability, in fact, is essential to any plan for getting humans to Mars, as is refilling fuel tanks in Earth orbit and creating rocket fuel at Mars for return trips, he said.
The rocket would hoist a spaceship big enough to carry 100 to 200 people to Mars, a trip lasting several months, quicker with nuclear propulsion. Musk promised no one would be stuck there; spaceships would return regularly, and “you get a free return trip if you want.”
“Ultimately what I’m trying to achieve here is to make Mars seem possible, make it seem as though it’s something that we can do in our lifetimes,” he said.
A ravenous python with an appetite for poultry suffers a humiliating moment after his capture Wednesday morning in the Chai Prakan district of Chiang Mai province.
CHIANG MAI — A Chiang Mai community turned its loss into a gain Wednesday morning when it captured a python with a voracious appetite for their chickens.
When Nongkran Supha, 35, opened her chicken coop early this morning she was expecting a mess, as they had made a racket during the night. She thought someone had broken in to steal all her chickens.
Instead, she found a five-meter python weighing 12 kilograms whose belly was swollen with five of her former fowl and too fat to escape the way it came.
Hoping to make the most of Nongkran’s misfortune, her neighbors used a kind of superstitious science based on her Chai Prakan district street address (6/1), the number of chickens consumed (5) and the serpent’s own ample measurements (5 & 12) to deduce winning numbers for Saturday’s lottery.
As for the snake, its fortunes soon improved when rescue workers released it back into the forest.
Mendy Indigo in April performing live at Beam. Photo: Mendy Indigo / Facebook
BANGKOK — Take a break from testosterone-soaked bass drops for a night of girl-powered beats at Thonglor dance venue Beam.
Four female DJs – Korat-born DJ Mendy Indigo, bass pioneer Pichy, the swift-handed Praewa of Yellow Fang and tech-house newblood NT66 – will show what some homogametic lineage can dew on the decks.
Show and and pick your team or bounce around your condo while the event is livestreamed online. Admission is free. Electric Girls starts at 9:30pm on Thursday at Beam, the new nightlife venue in Thonglor.
Tempo Live streams live underground music events over the internet.
Pom Mahakan residents block an entrance to their community Wednesday morning in Bangkok.
BANGKOK — Mahakan Fort residents blocked three entrances of their community Wednesday morning to prevent further homes from being demolished.
The human blockade started at about 9am at Pom Mahakan and continued into the afternoon to stop the city from taking down the home of a family who agreed to leave. The family had to seek police help to leave with their possessions later in the afternoon.
Community leaders said they didn’t want them to leave while they were still negotiating with the city to save their homes.
Community leader Thawatchai Woramahakhun said the family was asked only to remove their possessions without abandoning their home for demolition.
“They want to leave, we let them leave,” Thawatchai said by phone Wednesday afternoon. “But no way we’re going to let them demolish the house. [The city] broke our agreement, and we can’t allow that happen.”
Under a compromise reached earlier this month, City Hall agreed to only dismantle 12 homes whose owners had agreed to leave while negotiations continued in the decades-running land dispute.
However 16 homes have been torn down since Sept. 4 and the city planned to demolish 10 more this week.
Community representatives and city officials will meet again Oct. 5.
A 2001 FBI bulletin seeking fugitive fraud suspect Herbert La Fon. Photo: U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation
BANGKOK — One was an oil exploration specialist who resigned from an executive-level position at a Texas-based energy firm and moved to Southeast Asia eight years ago. Another was settled here with a Thai wife and young child.
The third man, suspected of shooting a Thai cop and keeping a frozen body in a freezer, seems to have been on the run from the FBI for nearly four decades.
While officials continue piecing together information about the three foreign men arrested in a raid on a forgery ring that unexpectedly turned up a dismembered, frozen corpse, other details have emerged about the three men now confirmed to be Americans.
Police on Wednesday said the suspected shooter, whose identity eluded them the longest, was not the Briton or American named in passports he carried, but actually 63-year-old American Herbert Craig La Fon.
“We talked to FBI and confirmed that all of them are American nationals,” said Lt. Gen. Nutthorn Praosunthorn, chief of the Immigration Bureau.
He said his identity was confirmed with the help of his fingerprints and family back in the United States.
Police on Tuesday search the house in Phra Khanong’s Soi Sukhumvit 56 where a dead man was found in the refrigerator.
Police search the shophouse on Bangkok’s Soi Sukhumvit 56 Tuesday where the dismembered body was found inside a cold storage.
U.S. public records indicate La Fon, originally from Baltimore, went on the run after being accused of credit card fraud back in 1979. The charges were dismissed 20 years later after an important witness died, but he remained a wanted man. A 2001 FBI bulletin listed him as armed and dangerous and included an extensive list of aliases.
Police on Tuesday said a former neighbor of La Fon’s said he saw him move out some months back lugging the same freezer in which another older, Western man’s frozen remains were found Friday in the raid on a Phra Khanong shophouse.
Immigration Bureau chief Nutthorn said they were not yet able to confirm La Fon’s immigration status.
Another of the suspected forgers, 66-year-old James Eger, is listed on his LinkedIn profile as chief consultant with a Hong Kong-based New Times Energy Corp. A bulletin announcing his resignation from the position of CFO at Continental Energy Corp. of Dallas, Texas, was published in 2008. It said he was relocating to Southeast Asia to pursue business in “palm oil plantations and the conversion of crude palm oil to biodiesel.”
Nutthorn said Eger traveled in and out Thailand 148 times in the past three years and had applied for a permanent visa. He was in the country legally.
Police said the youngest of the three, 33-year-old Aaron Thomas Gabel, was married to a Thai woman named Sudarat Gabel. Attempts to reach Sudarat were unsuccessful.
None of the three had been wanted for arrest in Thailand, Nutthorn said.
The least is known about the man found in the freezer. Police suspect he was cut up with an electric saw but have been unable to ID the body beyond saying it was that of an older white man.
The three suspects were arrested Friday when police went to raid a suspected passport forgery ring on Soi Sukhumvit 56. That’s when La Fon allegedly shot a tourist police officer and the body was discovered. The officer survived and is recovering.
Police also found firearms and drugs.
The three suspects have been charged with concealing a corpse, possessing drugs and counterfeiting passports. La Fon is charged with attempted murder of a police officer.
Police are still investigating the case.
Additional writing and reporting Todd Ruiz
Two suspects identified as James Douglas Eger, at left, and Aaron Thomas Gabel, at middle, are taken Saturday from a police station to a Bangkok court.
Nuttawut Nuanjun, 33, rehabilitating yesterday after a swordsman attacked him Monday.
BANGKOK — Police were hunting Wednesday for an unidentified man suspected of trying to take another motorist’s head with a long blade earlier this week.
In an interview from his hospital bed Tuesday, Office worker Nattawut Nuanjun said he was driving in the leftmost lane on Ekamai-Ramindra Road to meet a client at about 10am on Monday when a gray Mitsubishi cut him off. As he was changing lanes to overtake the other driver, he accidentally clipped the car.
The other vehicle didn’t stop, he said, so he drove in front of it to make it stop so they could discuss the damage for insurance purposes.
Getting out of his car, 33-year-old Nattawut said that before he could get a word out, the other driver unsheathed a foot-long blade and lunged for his neck. Nattawaut said he believed the man intended to kill him.
He raised his left arm in self-defense, so the blade slashed into the arm and his cheek. He ran back to his own car, saying his assailant followed him and opened his door to challenge him.
“Are you gonna drive off or what?” Nattawut recounted him saying as he made to flee.
Nattawut was hospitalized with a slashed tendon in his arm.
His colleagues took his case to social media after they said police refused to help, writing about it Monday night on the popular We Love Police Checkpoints page on Facebook.
Nattawut said he couldn’t file a complaint at the station because the hospital would not release him. His coworkers also tried to file a report at the Chokchai police station on his behalf but were told the victim had to be present.
In response to the delay, Col. Suphol Kumchoo said police were in the process of interviewing the victim in order to find his alleged attacker.
But he said calling attention to the case made solving it more difficult.
“Posting [on social media] without filing an arrest made the situation more complicated,” he said.
Cover image of 'Make Him Speak by Tomorrow,' a report on the use of torture by the military in Thailand released Wednesday by Amnesty International.
BANGKOK — When representatives of Amnesty International gathered at a Bangkok hotel Wednesday morning to talk about the military regime’s use of torture, plainclothes security forces told them they would be arrested if they so much as opened their mouths.
A panel discussion at the Four Wings Hotel of a new Amnesty International report on the use of torture since the 2014 coup was shut down when military officers warned foreign speakers would be arrested and prosecuted for violating labor laws if they spoke.
Omar Waraich, Amnesty regional spokesman, said all of the organization’s speakers had valid working business visas.
Waraich said that Amnesty had been “completely transparent” with the authorities about their work and reached out to senior officials, including the prime minister, about the report’s contents. He said they received no reply.
“Thai officials know about the content of our report, as we have sought engagement in recommendations with the authorities on the use of torture,” Waraich said.
The military regime has shut down or put pressure on a number of discussions in recent years, including those involving foreign speakers at places such as the Foreign Correspondents Club of Thailand.
Wednesday’s incident seemed the first time threat of arrest under labor law was used to silence an event. Waraich said that while officers did not directly shut down the panel, their threat of prosecution prompted Amnesty to comply and cancel the event.
All of the arranged speakers, including Laurent Meillan of the U.N. Human Rights Office, were foreign nationals.
“I regret I could not speak at this event today. This incident confirms a pattern of harassment of [human rights defenders] documenting torture in Thailand,” Meillan later tweeted, also saying the incident raised “serious questions about the ability of international organisations to stage public events in Thailand.”
Waraich said the report released today, “Make Him Speak by Tomorrow,” was the product of two years of thorough research into 74 cases of torture by 57 victims since the military seized power in 2014.
Though the use of torture has been documented in the past in the southernmost provinces, where a violent insurgency has ground on for years, Waraich said the report details a wider range of victims, including government opponents, suspected insurgents, migrants, and ethnic and religious minorities.
“Torture is wrong in every single case,” Waraich said.
In graphic detail it recounts harrowing accounts of torture, including suffocation and electrical shock to the genitals. It said the suspension of liberties and measures enacted by the junta contributed to the use of violence.
“There is an illegal framework that enables torture to take place,” Waraich said. “There are NCPO orders that allow impunity for torture by soldiers and police.”
In the report, Amnesty writes that many of the victims were “tortured during the first seven days of detention – the period when the military is allowed to hold them in unofficial places and without contact with the outside world or any other safeguards against ill-treatment.”
Waraich said Amnesty began compiling the report because “after the coup, numerous reports of torture increased” despite recent commitments made by the authorities against torture.
I regret I could not speak at this event today. This incident confirms a pattern of harassment of HRDs documenting torture in Thailand. https://t.co/UOxyLRwtFg
BANGKOK — Long before women became a regular sight in the booth, Nakadia broke into the boys club in Bangkok before migrating to that place all DJs go – Berlin.
But she’s no stranger to her roots and her orbit will bring her fierce mixing and energy back through the kingdom again next month for a series of shows.
Passing through Asia for an international music event in Shanghai, Nakadia will drop some drops at venues in Bangkok and Phuket on a petite tour of the region.
Born in Nakhon Ratchasima, Nakadia rose up through the ranks and went big in 2004 to live the life full-time as one of few globally successful female electronic music DJs at the time.
Get ready freak on with her beats starting at 11pm on Oct. 8 at Live RCA Bangkok on Royal City Avenue. The club can be reached by taxi from MRT Rama 9. Entry is 300 baht.
