Nobel Peace Prize-winner Jose Ramos-Horta pledged to unite troubled East Timor on Thursday after the former resistance leader clinched the election as President of one of the world’s poorest nations. Ramos-Horta offered hope to a nervous electorate after a year of bloodshed and unrest that looked to tear the tiny country apart.
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/ 15 January 2007
Two weeks after an Indonesian plane vanished with 102 passengers and crew, investigators admitted on Monday they still did not know exactly where or why the aircraft apparently came down. All they have found in two frustrating weeks of searching is a fragment of tail-fin and a few pieces of cabin debris washed up on the shore.
Geologists warned on Tuesday that simmering Mount Merapi volcano could blow its top in the wake of the powerful quake that devastated swathes of Indonesia’s main island of Java. "There is a very large possibility that tectonic activities trigger or increase volcanic activities," said Syamsulrizal, who works at Indonesia’s national vulcanology office.
Rescue workers on Sunday searched frantically for survivors from the earthquake in central Indonesia that killed more than 3 300 people and left 200 000 homeless. A day after the earthquake rocked Java, grieving relatives buried their dead, hospitals overflowed with bloodied and bruised casualties, and aid workers rushed in food and medical supplies.
A powerful earthquake in Indonesia killed more than 3 000 people on Saturday, reducing whole villages to rubble in the nation’s worst catastrophe since the 2004 Asian tsunami. Countless victims were buried alive when the 6,2 magnitude quake struck at dawn, turning houses into tombs of stone and setting off panic in a country that has been plagued by natural disasters.
A powerful earthquake rocked Indonesia’s main island of Java on Saturday, killing at least 3 000 people, injuring thousands more and causing mass destruction. Many could not escape in time and were buried under the rubble of collapsed buildings or struck by flying rocks and debris as the temblor devastated towns and villages cities across the south of the island.
Indonesia’s Mount Merapi appeared calm again on Thursday as hundreds of evacuees drifted back home, unconvinced they were in danger from the simmering volcano. But scientists warned that despite an apparent slowdown in the growth of a magma-filled dome at its peak, the volcano remained temperamental.
Clouds of searing heat belched out of an Indonesian volcano early on Wednesday as scientists anxiously waited for a feared eruption that has forced thousands of villagers from their homes. Despite apparently reduced activity at Mount Merapi, which produced major clouds of gas and ash on Monday, experts warned that the volcano remained highly dangerous.
More than 22 000 people have been evacuated from the slopes of Indonesia’s smoke-belching Mount Merapi, but the volcano appeared to have temporarily calmed down early on Tuesday. Clear weather after dawn showed a relatively peaceful Merapi, with thin smoke streaming out of its peak and none of Monday’s impressive heat cloud torrents.
At deserted Sorake Beach on Indonesia’s earthquake-devastated island of Nias, a few local surfers paddle out at sea, looking back at a bay blighted by desolate, half-ruined buildings. After an 8,7-magnitude quake shook the island a year ago, killing more than 850 people, they are the only sign that Lagundri Bay was once a thriving destination for international surfers.