Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
‘Balikpapan Seven’ accused of promoting West Papua independence movement at Indonesia rallies
Seven Papuan activists have been found guilty of treason and sentenced to up to 11 months in prison for their involvement in anti-racism rallies in West Papua last year, a verdict that has been condemned by human rights groups.
The men, known as the “Balikpapan Seven”, were convicted over protests that were sparked last summer by a viral video in which Papuan students were called “monkeys” and subjected to other racist taunts. Thousands of people took part in the rallies, some of which turned violent.
The Black Lives Matter actions have given renewed impetus to the campaign against injustices in the Indonesian province
Student Eden Armando Bebari, 19, was allegedly shot and killed by Indonesian security forces while fishing in his home town in West Papua in April.
Indonesian media described Bebari as a member of an armed criminal group, a claim denied by his parents. Many residents in Papua, the eastern-most province of Indonesia, now fish and tend crops to ease food shortages brought about by coronavirus lockdowns.
France is to lift its state of emergency on 10 July, Denmark said opening its bars, restaurants and malls had not led to a rise in infections, and Austria will reopen its border with Italy next week as EU nations pursue their steady exits from lockdown.
However, Germany extended its coronavirus travel warnings for more than 160 countries outside Europe until the end of August and reports suggested that Moscow’s death toll may be twice as high as Russia’s official figures.
Moscow has partially lifted its lockdown despite Russia reporting thousands of new daily cases and Spain’s government said face masks would remain mandatory in public as Europe continued to emerge from the first phase of its struggle against Covid-19.
Concern mounted, however, over the spread of coronavirus in Africa and elsewhere, with Nigeria confirming 600 deaths from a previously undetected outbreak and South Africa warning its pandemic could last up to two years.
Jacob Roberts, 29, fell four metres into the pit after being chased by a dog, but was rescued when a farmer heard his cries for help
A British man who spent six days trapped in a well after being chased by a dog has been rescued on the Indonesian island of Bali, authorities said on Sunday.
A rescue team lifted 29-year-old Jacob Roberts from the four-metre-deep concrete pit after a farmer in Pecatu village raised the alarm.
The 102-year-old car rental firm Hertz has filed for bankruptcy protection in the US after its business all but vanished during the coronavirus pandemic, Reuters reports.
Hertz said in a US court filing on Friday that it had voluntarily filed for Chapter 11 reorganisation. Its international operating regions including Europe, Australia and New Zealand were not included in the US proceedings.
The 54 countries of the African Union were reporting a total of 103,933 cases of coronavirus on Saturday morning, according the Africa Centres for Disease Control.
So far African nations have reported 3,183 deaths from Covid-19, while 41,473 people have recovered since the virus was first detected on the continent 14 weeks ago.
Case numbers have not grown at the same exponential rate as in other regions and so far Africa has not experienced the high mortality seen in some parts of the world. Today, there are 3,100 confirmed deaths on the continent.
By comparison, when cases reached 100,000 in the World Health Organization (WHO) European region, deaths stood at more than 4,900. Early analysis by WHO suggests that Africa’s lower mortality rate may be the result of demography and other possible factors. Africa is the youngest continent demographically with more than 60% of the population under the age of 25. Older adults have a significantly increased risk of developing a severe illness. In Europe nearly 95% of deaths occurred in those older than 60 years.
Now that countries are starting to ease their confinement measures, there is a possibility that cases could increase significantly, and it is critical that governments remain vigilant and ready to adjust measures in line with epidemiological data and proper risk assessment.
Data breach included names, home addresses and national identification numbers
Indonesia is investigating how 2.3 million voters’ personal information was leaked online, the election commission said.
The data breach, which included names, home addresses and national identification numbers, appeared to be from the 2014 election voter list, the General Election Commission revealed on Friday.
India has reported more than 6,000 new Covid-19 cases, its biggest one-day increase, while Chinahas abandoned setting a GDP growth target because of the “great uncertainty” caused by the pandemic.
The sharp increase in new infections in India came after the government began easing lockdown restrictions and as airlines prepared to reopen selected domestic routes.
Madrid and Barcelona to ease lockdown as Spain’s death toll stays under 100 again; 660,000 people forced to flee homes during crisis despite UN global ceasefire call
Peru has extended its state of emergency until the end of June with only a very partial lifting of its lockdown as infections continue to climb despite more than two months of confinement.
Peru is the second-worst affected Latin American country, with more than 111,000 cases and a death toll of 3,148, according to official figures.
It’s not just an extension ... there is a strategy to combat the virus. This disease will not beaten in a short time. It’s not a 100m sprint, it’s a marathon.
Over the course of the last 60 days we have made great efforts but we have to make another qualitative jump in the health sector.
France regrets a British decision to impose a quarantine on people arriving from mainland Europe and stands ready to impose reciprocal measures, the Agence France-Presse news agency has quoted the country’s interior ministry as saying.
Indonesia has reported its highest number of daily coronavirus cases as millions of people in the world’s fourth most populous country prepared to mark the festival of Eid al-Fitr without the usual celebrations and gatherings.
This year’s festivities will be dampened by the economic hardship for many as Indonesian migrant workers, who usually send money back home to their families, have been left stranded and with no income.
Political activists wait to find out if they will be included in government pardon scheme to stop the spread of Covid-19
It has been two months since Andi Rizky last saw her uncle Jimmy, a drug offender in Cilegon Prison, Banten province, in person. Since the middle of March, the prison has banned visitors because of concerns about the spread of the coronavirus.
In 10-minute video calls to replace the visits, the pair have discussed the Indonesian government’s plan to release thousands of prisoners.
Accounts also linked to Honduras and Indonesia violated policy and were ‘targeted attempt to undermine the public conversation’
Twitter has deleted 20,000 fake accounts linked to the governments of Serbia, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Honduras and Indonesia, saying they violated company policy and were a “targeted attempt to undermine the public conversation”.
Yoel Roth, the head of site integrity, said the removal of the accounts was part of the company’s ongoing “work to detect and investigate state-backed information operations”.
Last Thursday morning Louisa Baillie drove down the five-kilometre dirt track that connects her jungle home in the Amazon rainforest to the main road. At the junction, she parked, hiking the rest of the way into Mera, a town of about 8,000 people.
After filling her backpack with fruit and vegetables from local sellers, she grabbed some leaves and set about plucking termites off trees along the roadside, stuffing them into a bucket containing small fragments of the insects’ nests. Baillie works as a veterinarian at Merazonia, a wildlife rescue centre in Ecuador. The termites were dinner for Andy the anteater, a baby recently confiscated at a police checkpoint.
From underground aqueducts to tree-bridges and fish that love sewage, indigenous customs could save the planet – but are under threat. Landscape architect Julia Watson shares her ‘lo-TEK’ vision
On the eastern edge of Kolkata, near the smoking mountain of the city’s garbage dump, the 15 million-strong metropolis dissolves into a watery landscape of channels and lagoons, ribboned by highways. This patchwork of ponds might seem like an unlikely place to find inspiration for the future of sustainable cities, but that’s exactly what Julia Watson sees in the marshy muddle.
The network of pools, she explains, are bheris, shallow, flat-bottomed fish ponds that are fed by 700m litres of raw sewage every day – half the city’s output. The ponds produce 13,000 tonnes of fish each year. But the system, which has been operating for a century, doesn’t just produce a huge amount of fish – it treats the city’s wastewater, fertilises nearby rice fields, and employs 80,000 fishermen within a cooperative.
Watson, a landscape architect, says it saves around $22m (£18m) a year on the cost of a conventional wastewater treatment plant, while cutting down on transport, as the fish are sold in local markets. “It is the perfect symbiotic solution,” she says. “It operates entirely without chemicals, seeing fish, algae and bacteria working together to form a sustainable, ecologically balanced engine for the city.”
Indonesian man forced to watch his father’s execution is among those who will get compensation
An Indonesian man forced to watch his father’s summary execution by a Dutch soldier when he was 10 years old has spoken of his gratitude after a court in The Hague ordered the Dutch state to pay compensation to victims of colonial massacres in the 1940s.
Andi Monji, 83, who travelled to the Netherlands to tell his story to the court, was awarded €10,000 (£9,000) while eight widows and three children of other executed men, mainly farmers, were awarded compensation of between €123.48 and €3,634 for loss of income.
It was just last month that Indonesia’s coronavirus cases stood at zero, with officials fiercely rejecting suggestions that infections were spreading undetected.
Weeks later, 78 fatalities have now been linked to the virus, the highest number in south-east Asia. Seven health workers are among those who have died.
British nationals stuck on the Indonesian holiday island of Bali are calling on the government to bring them home, saying they face the prospect of being trapped for months due to the Covid-19 outbreak.
Two travellers told the Guardian they had tried to follow Foreign Office advice to return home immediately due to the escalating seriousness of the Covid-19 outbreak, only to arrive at Bali’s Denpasar airport and be told they would not be able to board flights due to travel restrictions in countries through which they transit.
The husband of a British woman who died while on holiday in Bali after contracting coronavirus has spoken out about the care she received, saying he does not believe she would have died had she been in the UK.
Ken Finlayson said he was able to exchange goodbyes “for a few minutes” before his wife, Kimberley Finlayson, who had underlying health conditions, died on the Indonesian island on 11 March.
Discovery of secret memos led to two-year search for 19th-century cultural treasure
Forty-five years after the Netherlands promised its return, a gold-inlaid dagger surrendered by a “rebel prince” after his failed 1830 uprising against Dutch rule in Indonesia has been handed back to Jakarta.
The kris, a dagger with a waved blade, was among a number of Prince Diponegoro’s belongings that the Netherlands’ vowed in 1975 to return, only for the priceless cultural treasure to go missing.
Eruption of Mount Merapi coated nearby communities with grey dust and forced an airport closure
Indonesia’s most active volcano Mount Merapi erupted on Tuesday, shooting a massive ash cloud some 6,000m (20,000ft) in the air which coated nearby communities with grey dust and forced an airport closure.
Ash mixed with sand rained down on towns as far as 10km (six miles) from the belching crater near Indonesia’s cultural capital Yogyakarta.