Indonesia school collapse death toll rises to 36, search for bodies continues
Indonesia school collapse death toll rises to 36, search for bodies continues/node/2617813/world
Indonesia school collapse death toll rises to 36, search for bodies continues
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FILE PHOTO: Search and rescue operations search for victims in the rubble of a collapsed building after a hall collapsed while students were praying at the Al-Khoziny Islamic boarding school, in Sidoarjo, East Java province, Indonesia, October 1, 2025. (Reuters)
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Family of students react while waiting for news as the rescue operations continue following a building collapse on Monday, where people remained trapped according to disaster mitigation agency, at Al Khoziny Islamic boarding school in Sidoarjo, East Java province, Indonesia, October 2, 2025. REUTERS/Dipta Wahyu
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Updated 9 sec ago
AP
Indonesia school collapse death toll rises to 36, search for bodies continues
Efforts continued for a seventh day to search for the bodies of 27 students still declared missing
Updated 9 sec ago
AP
JAKARTA: The number of students confirmed dead after the collapse of an Islamic boarding school building in Indonesia rose to 36, from 16 a day earlier, the country's disaster mitigation agency said on Sunday.
Efforts continued for a seventh day to search for the bodies of 27 students still declared missing - mostly teenage boys from the ages of 13 to 19 - trapped under the rubble, the agency said.
Cranes were deployed to excavate debris and search and evacuation efforts were 60% complete, according to the agency, which said it expected to clear all debris and finish the search on Monday.
The Al Khoziny school in the town of Sidoarjo in East Java province caved in last Monday, collapsing on top of hundreds of teenage students during afternoon prayers, its foundations unable to support ongoing construction work on its upper floors.
On Friday, rescuers received the parents' permission to make use of heavy equipment after failing to find signs of life during previous efforts.
Rescuers dug through tunnels in the remains of the building, calling out the boys' names and using sensors to detect any movement, but found no signs of life.
Al Khoziny is an Islamic boarding school known locally as a pesantren.
Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim-majority nation, has about 42,000 pesantren serving 7 million students, according to religious affairs ministry data.
Trump’s ‘paper tiger’ jab at Russia echoes Mao’s propaganda against the US
Trump's mocking of Russia’s military powers and calling the country “a paper tiger,” prompted the Kremlin to push back
“You’re four years fighting a war that should have taken a week,” Trump said of Russia’s war with Ukraine. “Are you a paper tiger?”
Updated 14 sec ago
AP
WASHINGTON: Nearly 80 years after Mao Zedong called the United States a “paper tiger” to boost morale at home, US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin are exchanging barbs who is the paper tiger of today.
In a Sept. 23 post on Truth Social, Trump mocked Russia’s military powers and called the country “a paper tiger,” prompting the Kremlin to push back. Trump backed off, but on Tuesday he brought back the dismissive rhetoric when addressing a roomful of generals and admirals. “You’re four years fighting a war that should have taken a week,” Trump said of Russia’s war with Ukraine. “Are you a paper tiger?”
On Thursday, Putin retorted, “We are fighting against the entire bloc of NATO, and we keep moving, keep advancing and feel confident, and we are a paper tiger; what NATO itself is?”
He added: “A paper tiger? Go and deal with this paper tiger then.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin, center, visits a newly-opened concert hall in Sirius urban-type settlement, Krasnodar Territory, Russia, on Oct. 3, 2025. (Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP)
Those familiar with modern Chinese history have found it amusing, odd and not without irony that an American president should be using a classic Chinese propaganda slogan — words that came from the heart of a communist government that is the polar opposite of what the Trump administration frames as the best way to run a country.
“As a Chinese historian I had to laugh at the irony when President Trump appropriated one of Chairman Mao’s favorite expressions in calling Russia a ‘paper tiger,’” said John Delury, a senior fellow at Asia Society.
“Mao famously said this about the United States, at a time when the US had a growing nuclear arsenal and China was not yet a nuclear power. ... How times have changed. Now the leaders of the United States and Russia are calling one another ‘paper tigers’ as Chinese leader Xi Jinping sits back looking like the adult in the room.” How paper tiger became a propaganda term in China
The phrase — “zhilaohu” in China’s dominant dialect — is well-rooted in the culture of the Chinese Communist Party. Perry Link, a well-known American scholar on modern Chinese language and culture, recalled that Lao She, a famous Chinese writer, referred to US troops as the “paper tiger” during the Korean War years.
“There’s a Cold War echo across this whole story,” said Rana Mitter, a British historian specializing in modern Chinese history.
Accounts by Chinese state media and essays by party theorists say the phrase entered into the party vocabulary when Mao, the founding revolutionary, told the American journalist Anna Louise Strong in a 1946 interview that the atom bomb by the United States was a “paper tiger,” which the “US reactionaries use to scare people.”
China's paramount leader Mao Tse Tung meeting with US Secretary of State Henry Kissing in Beijing on Nov. 24, 1973. (AFP/File)
Mao then used the Chinese phrase “zhilaohu,” which means paper tiger literally. But his interpreter translated it into “scarecrow,” according to state media reports, before an American doctor who was present suggested “paper tiger,” which Mao approved. The phrase largely refers to something that is seemingly powerful but actually fragile.
Delury said at the time that Moscow, which took the nuclear threat seriously, was aghast that Mao “casually” dismissed the threat and was annoyed that “Mao would brazenly use ‘paper tiger’ rhetoric at a time when if nuclear war broke out, China would rely on Russian involvement.” The term became ‘a sharp thought weapon’ for China
That didn’t happen. Mao seized power in 1949, and the phrase “zhilaohu” became a propaganda staple in communist China, closely associated with western imperialists, particularly the United States. Mao famously said that “all reactionaries are paper tigers.” In canonizing the leader’s wisdom, party theorists have called the slogan Mao’s “strategic thought” and “a sharp thought weapon.”
The rhetoric subsided when US-China ties warmed in the 1970s, but it resurfaced in recent years as bilateral relations chilled.
In April, in the heat of a tariff war between the two countries, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson posted on X a Mao quotation from 1964: “The US intimidates certain countries, stopping them from doing business with us. But America is just a paper tiger. Don’t believe its bluff. One poke, and it’ll burst.”
Before Trump borrowed Beijing’s propaganda slogan to mock Russia, the phrase had already seeped into the public discourse in the United States. In a February editorial, Eugene Robinson, a Washington Post columnist, criticized Trump’s foreign policy and compared it to bullying. “Trump’s foreign policy is that of a paper tiger, not a real one,” wrote the columnist, now retired.
And in May, Laurence Tribe, a Harvard University professor, called Trump “a paper tiger” when assuring Harvard’s international students not to be scared by the president’s hostile policy toward foreign students.
Lithuania’s main airport shut over suspected balloons
Decision to close was made due to possible balloons in airspace
Incident is latest in series of European air traffic disruptions
Updated 29 min 59 sec ago
AFP
OSLO: Lithuania reopened to air traffic at its largest and busiest Vilnius airport early on Sunday after several hours of flight suspensions and diversions over balloons possibly flying in its airspace, the airport’s operator said.
European aviation has repeatedly been thrown into chaos in recent weeks by drone sightings and air incursions, including at airports in Copenhagen and Munich.
Air traffic at Vilnius was restored at 4:50 a.m. (0150 GMT) on Sunday after a decision was made late on Saturday to close the airspace “due to a possible series of balloons heading toward Vilnius Airport,” the operator said in a statement on its Facebook page.
Lithuania’s public broadcaster LRT cited the head of the country’s National Crisis Management as saying late on Saturday that 13 balloons were heading toward Vilnius airport.
According to notices posted to the US Federal Aviation Administration’s website, the flight restrictions were due to “hot air balloon flights.”
The Vilnius airport said the closure affected a series of overnight flights, with most incoming flights redirected to neighboring Latvia and Poland, while departures were canceled. One flight due to arrive from Copenhagen returned to Denmark.
NATO-member Lithuania in August declared a 90-km (60-mile) no-fly zone parallel to the border with Belarus in response to drones entering from there, saying this would allow its armed forces to react to violations.
Lithuania, a strong supporter of Ukraine, shares a 679-km (422-mile) border with Belarus, a close ally of Russia. The capital Vilnius lies roughly 30 km from the border.
Georgian police clash, detain protesters as ruling party says it won local elections
Georgian Dream claims victory in municipal elections
Riot police force protesters back from presidential palace
Updated 05 October 2025
Reuters
TBILISI: Georgian riot police used pepper spray and water cannons to drive demonstrators away from the presidential palace and detained five activists on Saturday, as the opposition staged a large demonstration on a day of local elections.
The governing Georgian Dream party said it had clinched victory in every municipality across the South Caucasus country of 3.7 million people in an election boycotted by the two largest opposition blocs.
Shortly before polls closed, a group of demonstrators attempted to force entry to the presidential palace in the capital Tbilisi, a Reuters witness said, after opposition figures called for a “peaceful revolution” against GD, which they accuse of being pro-Russian and authoritarian.
Georgia’s pro-Western opposition has been staging protests since October last year, when GD won a parliamentary election that its critics say was fraudulent. The party has rejected accusations of vote-rigging.
Once one of the most pro-Western nations to emerge from the ashes of the Soviet Union, Georgia has had frayed relations with the West since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.
On Saturday the Health Ministry said 21 members of the security forces and six demonstrators had been injured in clashes in the center of Tbilisi, according to local media.
Georgia’s Rustavi-2 television and Russian state media quoted Deputy Interior Minister Aleksandre Darakhvelidze as saying the police detained five activists, including the opera singer Paata Burchuladze and two members of the United National Movement, Georgia’s largest opposition party.
They are charged with calling for the overthrow of the authorities and face up to nine years in prison, if convicted, Darakhvelidze said.
The government froze accession talks to the European Union soon after last year’s vote, abruptly halting a longstanding national goal and triggering large demonstrations that have continued since.
Thousands of protesters gathered on central Freedom Square and Rustaveli Avenue, waving Georgian and EU flags.
Davit Mzhavanadze, who attended the demonstration, said the protests were part of “a deep crisis which is absolutely formed by our pro-Russian and authoritarian government.”
“I think this protest will continue until these demands will be responded to properly from our government,” he said.
A smaller group of demonstrators marched to the presidential palace and were repelled by police after attempting to break into the building. Some of them then barricaded a nearby street, lighting fires and facing off with riot police.
Georgian Dream, which is widely seen as controlled by founder Bidzina Ivanishvili, the country’s richest man and a former prime minister, denies it is pro-Moscow. It says it wants to join the EU while preserving peace with Russia, its huge neighbor to the north.
Militants attack major prison in Mogadishu hours after roadblocks lifted
Updated 05 October 2025
AP
MOGADISHU, Somalia: Explosions and heavy gunfire erupted near Somalia’ s presidential palace on Saturday in an attack by a militant group targeting a major prison just hours after the federal government lifted roadblocks in place for years in the capital.
Residents in the central Mogadishu district of Bondhere reported hearing explosions and gunfire and seeing smoke billowing from the prison, which also serves as the headquarters for the regional intelligence unit.
A resident, Hibo Mohamed, told The Associated Press by phone, “We are truly scared. The city had been calm for months, but now everyone feels anxious once more.”
The Al-Qaeda-linked Al-Shabab militant group, which is based in Somalia, claimed responsibility for the attack, saying it had released prisoners.
The government did not immediately comment on the attack, and phone calls and messages to officials went unanswered Saturday.
Somalia’s state media reported that the militants used a vehicle disguised to resemble those of the intelligence unit’s security forces, and that soldiers repelled the attack and killed several militants.
The attack targeted the Godka Jilacow prison, which was previously attacked in 2014 when Al-Shabab militants set off a suicide car bomb at the gate before storming the compound in an attempt to free detainees. Somali forces repelled the attackers in that assault, but at least a dozen people were killed.
Saturday’s attack came just hours after the federal government lifted several long-standing roadblocks in Mogadishu. The barriers had been in place for years to safeguard critical government sites, but many residents argued that they obstructed traffic and commerce.
Security forces promptly cordoned off the roads leading to the scene, while ambulances hurried to the area. The number of casualties was not immediately clear.
Mogadishu had been relatively calm in recent months as government forces, backed by local militias and African Union troops, have pushed Al-Shabab fighters out of several areas in central and southern Somalia.
US judge temporarily blocks Trump administration from deploying troops in Portland, Oregon
US District Judge Karin Immergut issued the order pending further arguments in a lawsuit brought by the state and city
Trump has deployed or threatened to deploy troops in several US cities, particularly ones led by Democrats, including Los Angeles, Washington, Chicago and Memphis
Updated 05 October 2025
AP
PORTLAND, Oregon: A federal judge in Oregon temporarily blocked President Donald Trump’s administration from deploying the National Guard in Portland, ruling in a lawsuit brought by the state and city.
US District Judge Karin Immergut issued the order pending further arguments in the suit. The plaintiffs say a deployment would violate the US Constitution as well as a federal law that generally prohibits the military from being used to enforce domestic laws.
Immergut wrote that the case involves the intersection of three fundamental democratic principles: “the relationship between the federal government and the states, between the military and domestic law enforcement, and the balance of powers between the executive, legislative and judicial branches of government.
“Whether we choose to follow what the Constitution mandates with respect to these three relationships goes to the heart of what it means to live under the rule of law in the United States,” she wrote.
Generally speaking the president is allowed “a great level of deference” to federalize National Guard troops in situations where regular law enforcement forces are not able to execute the laws of the United States, the judge said, but that has not been the case in Portland.
Plaintiffs were able to show that the demonstrations at the Portland immigration facility were not significantly violent or disruptive in the days or weeks leading up to the president’s order, the judge wrote, and “overall, the protests were small and uneventful.”
“The President’s determination was simply untethered to the facts.”
The Defense Department had said it was placing 200 members of Oregon’s National Guard under federal control for 60 days to protect federal property at locations where protests are occurring or likely to occur after Trump called the city “war-ravaged.”
Oregon officials said that description was ludicrous. The US Immigration and Customs Enforcement building in the city has recently been the site of nightly protests, which typically drew a couple dozen people in recent weeks before the deployment was announced.
Trump The Republican president has deployed or threatened to deploy troops in several US cities, particularly ones led by Democrats, including Los Angeles, Washington, Chicago and Memphis. Speaking Tuesday to US military leaders in Virginia, the president proposed using cities as training grounds for the armed forces.
Last month a federal judge ruled that Trump’s deployment of some 4,700 National Guard soldiers and Marines in Los Angeles earlier this year was illegal, but he allowed the 300 who remain in the city to stay as long as they do not enforce civilian laws.
As for Portland, the Defense Department announced that it was placing 200 members of Oregon’s National Guard under federal control for 60 days to protect federal property at locations where protests are occurring or likely to occur.
That announcement came after Trump called “war-ravaged” in late September, a characterization that Oregon officials called ludicrous while saying they do not need or want federal troops there.
The US Immigration and Customs Enforcement building in Portland has been the site of nightly protests, and the demonstrations and occasional clashes with law enforcement have been limited to a one-block area in a city that covers about 145 square miles (375 square km) and has about 636,000 residents.
A handful of immigration and legal advocates often gather at the building during the day. At night, recent protests have typically drawn a couple dozen people.
A larger crowd demonstrated Sept. 28 following the announcement of the guard deployment. The Portland Police Bureau, which has said it does not participate in immigration enforcement and only intervenes in the protests if there is vandalism or criminal activity, arrested two people on assault charges.
A peaceful march earlier that day drew thousands to downtown and saw no arrests, police said.
Trump sent federal officers to Portland over the objections of local and state leaders in 2020 during long-running racial justice protests following George Floyd’s killing by Minneapolis police. The administration sent hundreds of agents for the stated purpose of protecting the federal courthouse and other federal property from vandalism.
That deployment antagonized demonstrators and prompted nightly clashes. Federal officers fired rubber bulled and used tear gas.
Viral videos captured federal officers arresting people and hustling them into unmarked vehicles. A report by the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general found that while the federal government had legal authority to deploy the officers, many of them lacked the training and equipment necessary for the mission.
The government agreed this year to settle an excessive force lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union by paying compensating several plaintiffs for their injuries.
