World in brief
Farmers return despite volcano risk
Hundreds of poor farmers concerned about their crops and livestock returned to the slopes of Indonesia’s ash-spewing Mount Merapi on Friday, a day after fleeing the biggest eruption yet.
A monitoring station counted dozens of lava bursts and nine small emissions of gas from Indonesia’s most dangerous volcano, the official Antara news agency reported. A thin layer of gray ash covered crops and village rooftops.
But there was nothing Friday comparable to Thursday’s burst, which sent billowing gray clouds of hot ash 3 1/2 miles down the slope, and farmers said they felt at greater risk of losing their livelihood than their lives.
“The volcano appears to be calming down. I think the real danger has passed,” Haryono, a rice and fruit farmer, said as he trudged to his village. “I have to get back to my fields and watch over my house.”
Today, the mountain spewed out more lava and hot clouds of gas at least five times. Scientists repeated that they didn’t know for sure if a major eruption was imminent.
Indonesia’s most dangerous mountain has been venting steam and debris for more than a month. Merapi’s lava dome has swelled, raising concerns it could collapse suddenly and send deadly, scalding clouds of fast-moving gas, rocks and debris into populated areas.
Yangon, Myanmar
Democracy activist briefly hospitalized
Myanmar’s pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi was taken to a hospital Friday with a stomach ailment, but her condition has improved and she has returned home, a spokesman for her party said today.
Nyan Win of the National League for Democracy party said that Suu Kyi was taken to hospital on Friday but was returned home after her condition improved.
Anti-government activists in the United States, citing contacts from inside Myanmar, had said Friday that Suu Kyi, the 1991 Nobel peace laureate, had been hospitalized with severe diarrhea.
Rostov-on-Don, Russia
Police commander, kids gunned down
Gunmen raked a car with automatic fire Friday and killed a top police commander, his three young children and two other people in Ingushetia, a troubled Russian province neighboring Chechnya, officials said.
At least four assailants opened fire from from both sides of the car that was carrying Musa Nalgiyev, chief of the OMON riot police in Ingushetia and his children, ages 4, 5, and 6, deputy regional prosecutor Dmitry Gurulyov said.
The OMON chief’s driver and bodyguard also died in the gunfire, and the gunmen fled after the morning ambush in Karabulak, Gurulyov said.
In a second attack, gunmen in a car shot a key administrator of a village close to the border with Chechnya in Russia’s south, the Interior Ministry said. Galina Gubina died from his wounds in a hospital, the ministry said.