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And Now Mount #Merapi erupted in Indonesia today https://twitter.com/rose_k01/status/1243631026188017669

I filmed this in a meditation cave at Dieng Plateau, Central Java, Indonesia.

The lizard species said to have inspired the iconic movie monster Godzilla frequently finds itself in a brutal battle for dominance. Four giant Komodo dragons standing up to 8 feet tall were recently caught in an epic brawl that ended with a dog pile of exhausted dragons at Komodo National Park on the island of Komodo, Indonesia. Remarkably, none were maimed or killed during the jungle rumble.

Two former executives of the Indonesian subsidiary of the French power and transportation company Alstom S.A. and a former executive of the Japanese trading company Marubeni Corporation have been charged in a superseding indictment unsealed today for their alleged participation in a scheme to pay bribes to foreign government officials in Indonesia.Assistant Attorney General Brian A. Benczkowski of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, U.S. Attorney John H. Durham of the District of Connecticut and Assistant Director in Charge Paul D. Delacout of the FBI’s Los Angeles Office made the announcement.Reza Moenaf, 63, the former president of Alstom’s subsidiary in...

The masked woman nervously approaches her target, shuffles into position and then unleashes a flurry of lashes -- proving herself as the newest member of the first female flogging squad in Indonesia's Aceh province. The new recruit initially needed some coaxing to punish the offender -- an unmarried woman caught in a hotel room with a man. Such behaviour constitutes a morality crime in Aceh, the only region in the world's biggest Muslim-majority nation that imposes Islamic law -- known as Sharia.

The release of a batch of internal messages has raised more questions about the safety of Boeing's 737 Max. In one of the communications, an employee said the plane was "designed by clowns". The planemaker described the communications as "completely unacceptable". The 737 Max was grounded in March 2019 after two fatal crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia, which killed almost 350 people in total. Boeing said it had released the hundreds of redacted messages as part of its commitment to transparency. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and US Congress were given unredacted versions of the communications last month. "These communications...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Boeing Co has released hundreds of internal messages that contained harshly critical comments about the development of the 737 MAX, including one that said the plane was “designed by clowns who in turn are supervised by monkeys”. The messages, disclosed on Thursday, show attempts to duck regulatory scrutiny with employees disparaging the plane, the company, the Federal Aviation Administration and foreign aviation regulators. In an instant messaging exchange on Feb. 8, 2018 - when the plane was in the air and eight months before the first of two fatal crashes, an employee asks another: “Would you put...

Indonesia will mobilise fishermen to join warships in the South China Sea to help defend against Chinese vessels, the government said on Monday, as the biggest stand-off with China for years escalated off Southeast Asia’s largest country. In an unusually strong statement, President Joko Widodo told reporters: “There is no negotiation when it comes to our sovereignty.” The stand-off since last month in the northern Natuna islands, where a Chinese coastguard vessel has accompanied Chinese fishing vessels, has soured the generally friendly relationship between Jakarta and Beijing. Indonesia’s chief security minister, Mahfud MD, told reporters that around 120 fishermen from...

JAKARTA, Indonesia — Agree or disagree, the exam asked: “I would feel uncomfortable knowing my daughter’s or son’s teacher was homosexual.” Or this, true or false: “The gender composition of an orgy would be irrelevant to my decision to participate.” In recent weeks, foreign teachers at some private schools in Indonesia have been required to answer these questions and many more like them in what has been billed as a psychological exam. The goal is to determine teachers’ sexual orientation and attitude toward gay rights under a 2015 government regulation that prohibits international schools from hiring foreign teachers who have...

Homo erectus, one of modern humans' direct ancestors, was a wandering bunch. After the species dispersed from Africa about two million years ago, it colonized the ancient world, which included Asia and possibly Europe. But about 400,000 years ago, Homo erectus essentially vanished. The lone exception was a spot called Ngandong, on the Indonesian island of Java. But scientists were unable to agree on a precise time period for the site...A new study...dates the last existence of Homo erectus at Ngandong between 108,000 and 117,000 years ago.

Cave art depicting a hunting scene has been found in Indonesia dated to 44,000 years old, making it the oldest rock art created by humans. The painting itself is intriguing because it shows a group of figures that represent half-animal, half-human hybrids called therianthropes. The therianthropes are hunting warty pigs and dwarf buffaloes called anoas using spears and ropes. The abstract figures depict a story, which changes our view of early human cognition, according to a study published Wednesday in the journal Nature. The art could even show the foundation of human spirituality, given the supernatural scene depicted. "To me,...

At age 60, she wasn’t entirely sure where Bali was. By age 62, she was living there. Sherry Bronson, now 69, spent much of her life in Minnesota, where she raised three daughters and worked in real estate. But she didn’t love it: “I have hated the weather in Minnesota since I was a child,” she says. So in 2010, when her oldest daughter, who was teaching in South Korea, asked her to come to Bali so they could celebrate Sherry’s 60th birthday together, Sherry — after, she recalls with a laugh, Googling “Where’s Bali?” — jumped at the...

Despite the constant accusations against Westerners of being “intolerant,” “racist,” and “Islamophobic,” everywhere Islam is found, Islamic supremacists are lording it over innocent people, oppressing them, murdering them, and seeking further conquest and further Islamization. This occurs even in majority-Muslim countries where Sharia is not fully implemented. For example, there is a drive to further Islamize Indonesia, and Sharia parties are constantly pressuring Pakistan to implement more of Islamic law. Then there are the people of Balochistan. These are Iranians spread across the southeastern edge of the Iranian plateau in Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan. They are resisting Pakistani jihadists whose...

Trump was particularly agitated that the rest of the world, particularly developing countries such as China and India, had corralled Washington into the Paris Accord on climate change and put the onus on the US to clean up the planet while themsel... (This story originally appeared in The Times of India https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/us/donald-trump-raises-stink-claiming-garbage-from-india-reaches-los-angeles/articleshow/72043638.cms on Nov 13, 2019) WASHINGTON: As if its own woes with air pollution is not enough of a headache, New Delhi has to deal with another pointless stink bomb: US President Donald Trump claimed on Tuesday that garbage from India is floating all the way to Los Angeles....

I review V.S. Naipaul's travelogue/anthropological study of 4 separate non-Arab Muslim nations. The first, Among the Believers, published after a series of economic and political revolutions during the late 1970s, and the sequel published 2 decades later, Beyond Belief.

From California raging wildfires and fear of more wildfires causing Pacific Gas and Electric to warn that up to 850-thousand customers...... Protesters back on the streets of Iraq today with at least 40 reported dead.... The demonstrations continuing in Lebanon..... The streets of Bolivia's capital La Paz blocked today in protest at the election result..... Some one million people reported participating in a mass rally in Santiago, Chile...... A federal judge ruling late Friday that the Justice Department must hand over grand jury materials from the Robert Mueller investigation to the Democrat controlled House Judiciary Committee.... The news late Thursday...

An Indonesian man is claiming to be 145 year old - making him the oldest person in the world. Sidomejo - or Mbah Gotho as he is known locally - claims to have been born on December 31, 1870, and he even has the "identity card" to prove it. He says the secret to his exceptional longevity is to "relax and take it easy" and that there is "nothing special" in his eating habits. A local official said that while his ID card is real, it is impossible to verify Sidomejo's claims. But the local government would help the elderly...

quite disturbing to learn that, contrary to what the press had .. assured us about a supposedly disgruntled aircraft mechanic who got caught trying to disable a Boeing 737, the guy had ISIS video on his cell phone. ... Doesn't everyone with labor beefs against his boss have ISIS video murders on his cell phone? ... Abdul-Majeed Marouf Ahmed Alani might just have been motivated by ISIS's brand of Islamism, not a woikin' man's desire for more overtime. The gullible media reported it otherwise, always eager to look the other way on Islamist terror. ... Alani's phone also had a...

JAKARTA (Reuters) - Indonesia is poised to pass a new penal code that criminalizes consensual sex outside marriage and introduces stiff penalties for insulting the president’s dignity - a move rights groups criticized as an intrusive assault on basic freedoms. Indonesia is the world’s most populous Muslim majority country and has substantial Christian, Hindu and Buddhist minorities, but has seen a recent trend towards deeper religious piety and conservative Islamic activism. The new criminal code is due to be adopted in the next week after parliament and the government agreed a final draft on Wednesday, four parliamentarians told Reuters. Lawmakers...

(WIkipedia...."During the certification process, the FAA delegated many evaluations to Boeing, allowing the manufacturer to review their own product.[48][49] It was widely reported that Boeing pushed to expedite approval of the 737 MAX to compete with the Airbus A320neo. That aircraft hit the market nine months ahead of Boeing's model.") Article excerpt... ...During his time as President of the United States, Barack Obama promoted the sale of Boeing planes—including the 737 Max 8 planes—around the world. In November 2011, in Bali, Indonesia, President Obama announced an agreement between Boeing and Lion Air. "For the last several days I’ve been talking...