At least seven dead in attack on camp housing Kashmir tunnel workers

Six construction workers and a doctor were killed and five people were wounded in a suspected militant attack in the restive Himalayan territory of Kashmir in India on Sunday evening.

Gunmen opened fire indiscriminately on a camp housing workers involved in a tunnel project in Ganderbal district in the latest attack on workers from outside Kashmir, where an armed rebellion against Indian rule has raged since 1989.

The attackers also burned two vehicles of the company constructing the Z Morh tunnel at Gagangeer.

The tunnel is a strategic asset as it connects regional capital Srinagar to Ladakh, where the Indian military is locked in border disputes with Pakistan and China.

Police and military have cordoned off the Gagangeer area and launched a search for the attackers.

Kashmir’s police chief Vidhi Kumar Birdi said the victims included “non-local and local persons”.

The attack occurred less than a week after Kashmir got its first elected government in a decade.

Kashmir, Ladakh and the neighbouring region of Jammu formed India’s northernmost state until 2019, when Narendra Modi’s federal government downgraded it into a pair of territories – Jammu and Kashmir, and Ladakh – ruled directly by Delhi. It also removed from India’s constitution provisions that gave the majority-Muslim region a degree of autonomy, fulfilling a longstanding aim of the ruling party’s Hindu nationalist agenda.

These and other legal changes mean that Kashmir’s newly-elected local government has vastly reduced powers than it did prior to 2019.

This was the second attack on workers from outside Kashmir since the new government took over. Police recovered a non-local worker’s body, riddled with bullet wounds, from a maize field in southern Shopian district on Friday. Authorities claimed he was killed by militants.

Omar Abdullah, the new chief minister, called Sunday’s a “dastardly and cowardly attack on non-local labourers”. “These people were working on a key infrastructure project in the area,” he said.

“I strongly condemn this attack on unarmed innocent people and send my condolences to their loved ones.”

Manoj Sinha, the lieutenant governor who administers the territory for New Delhi, assured that “those behind this despicable act will not go unpunished”.

“Full freedom has been given to police, army and security forces” to deal with the perpetrators, he said.

The federal road transport and highways minister also condemned “the horrific terror attack on innocent labourers” who he said were “engaged in a vital infrastructure project”.

The family of the doctor killed in Sunday’s attack was left devastated. “It felt like doomsday when we heard about his death. There is mourning in the whole village, every eye is moist today,” Dr Shahnawaz Qadir Dar’s cousin, identified by only his first name Tariq, was quoted as saying by the Greater Kashmir newspaper.

Dar was from Nadigam village in the central district of Budgam.

Additional reporting by agencies

Australia to toughen rules on forever chemicals in tap water

Australia may soon tighten regulations on allowable levels of “forever chemicals” in drinking water, with guidelines proposing significant reductions.

The National Health and Medical Research Council on Monday released draft guidelines recommending far lower limits of four PFAS compounds, reflecting growing concerns about their potential health risks.

PFAS are a class of thousands of synthetic chemicals used in common products, ranging from nonstick cookware to firefighting foams and stain-resistant fabrics.

They are notoriously persistent in the environment and can take decades or longer to break down earning them the label “forever chemicals”.

PFAS can accumulate in human and animal tissue, leading to widespread exposure through contaminated water, food and even air. Their presence in drinking water is of particular concern due to the potential for long-term health effects.

Dr Ian Musgrave, senior lecturer at the University of Adelaide, said PFAS are “highly fat-soluble compounds that are very slow to break down”.

“They persist in the environment and can accumulate in the human body. It can take five years for half an ingested dose of PFAS to be removed.”

The draft guidelines propose stricter limits based on evidence linking PFAS exposure to various health issues. The limit for PFOA, used in making products like teflon, would drop from 560 nanograms per litre (ngl) to 200 ngl.

This reduction is based on evidence of PFOA’s carcinogenic properties. In December 2023, the International Agency for Research on Cancer classified PFOA as a cancer-causing agent for human beings, placing it in the same category as other known carcinogens such as alcohol and air pollution.

Similarly, the limit for PFOS, once a primary ingredient in Scotchgard fabric protectors, would be slashed from 70 ngl to just 4 ngl. This change stems from new research highlighting PFOS’s potential effects on bone marrow.

The guidelines also set new limits for PFAS compounds PFHxS and PFBS based on their impact on thyroid function. The proposed limit for PFHxS is 30 ngL while PFBS, which has been used as a replacement for PFOS in Scotchgard since 2023, would be capped at 1000 ngl.

“The proposed guidelines are pretty sensible and within the ranges suggested by other regulatory agencies around the world, except for the USA – whose guidelines for some compounds are lower but based more on policy, not any scientific evidence of harm,” said Oliver Jones, professor of chemistry at RMIT University.

While the proposed limits for PFOS align with draft guidelines in the US, Australia’s limit for PFOA remains higher than that in the US.

In the US, regulatory authorities aim for zero concentrations of carcinogenic compounds while Australia takes a “threshold model” approach, meaning that regulators believe health risks are mitigated as long as chemical concentrations remain below a threshold.

According to the council’s chief executive professor Steve Wesselingh, the limits were determined using animal studies in the absence of high-quality human studies to guide the process.

“It’s not unusual for guideline values to vary from country to country,” Prof Wesselingh said, explaining that different countries use various methodologies and scientific endpoints when setting safety limits for substances like PFAS.

The council opted to create individual limits for each PFAS compound rather than a combined limit, citing the vast number of PFAS chemicals and the limited toxicological data available for most of them.

Water quality management in Australia is overseen by both federal and state governments.

According to Dr David Cunliffe, a principal water quality adviser, producing individual guideline values for specific PFAS compounds ensures that drinking water safety measures are based on the best available science.

Despite the proposed stricter limits, experts say the public need not be overly concerned about PFAS in their drinking water.

Dr Daniel Deere, a water and health consultant at Water Futures, said that Australia has relatively little PFAS contamination in its public water supplies.

He advised that alternative water sources, such as bottled water, home filtration systems, or rainwater tanks, are unnecessary unless individuals are specifically notified by local authorities of PFAS contamination in their area.

Professor Stuart Khan, head of the school of civil engineering at the University of Sydney, said: “Australians can continue to feel confident that the Australian Drinking Water Guidelines incorporate the latest and most robust science to underpin drinking water safety.”

The council’s review of PFAS limits in drinking water has been underway since late 2022. The current guidelines, last updated in 2018, are being revised in response to mounting evidence of PFAS-related health risks.

The draft guidelines will remain open for public consultation until 22 November 2024, allowing scientists, stakeholders, and the public to provide feedback before the final limits are established.

What’s behind bomb threats that have disrupted 100 flights in India?

Hoax bomb threats have disrupted nearly 100 flights in India over the past week and rattled the country’s aviation sector.

The wave of threats, issued mostly via X, has alarmed passengers and sent the aviation authorities scrambling to mount a response.

At least 30 of the threats were received on Saturday alone and another dozen the next day. All turned out to be hoaxes.

A Vistara flight bound for Frankfurt was compelled to return to Delhi on Sunday after Afghanistan reportedly denied it permission to fly through due to a bomb threat.

Flight UK25, carrying over 240 passengers, had left Delhi at 1.10pm local time. Since the threat was deemed “non-specific”, the initial plan was for it to continue the journey to Germany, the news agency PTI reported, citing unnamed sources.

But the Afghan authorities refused to allow the Boeing 787 to enter their airspace, forcing it to return to Delhi after circling briefly over Pakistan and Afghanistan, according to flight tracking data from Flightradar24. The plane landed safely at about 4.20pm local time.

UK25 typically flies over Pakistan and Afghanistan on the way to Frankfurt.

“Flight UK25 from Delhi to Frankfurt is returning back to Delhi and is expected to arrive in Delhi at 1620 hours,” the airline confirmed on X.

Another three Vistara Airlines flights had received similar threats on Saturday morning. While a flight from Delhi to London was diverted to Frankfurt in view of the threat, the other flights landed safely at their destinations in Paris and Hong Kong.

A few days earlier, a Vistara flight arriving in Mumbai from Frankfurt with 147 passengers and crew had to make an emergency landing and undergo security checks in an isolation bay after a bomb scare.

An Air India flight from Mumbai to New York had to be rerouted to Delhi, evacuated, and searched for explosives. The plane was forced to dump nearly 100 tonnes of jet fuel to ensure a safe landing, costing the airline around Rs10mn (£91,210), the Times of India reported. The total cost of the diversion, including accommodation for passengers, grounding of the aircraft and crew replacements, was expected to exceed Rs 30 mn (£273,626).

A similar threat had forced an Air India Boeing 777 flight to Chicago to make an emergency landing in Canada, stranding over 200 passengers for over 18 hours at a remote airport.

Indian police and security agencies have launched investigations into the hoax threats, but made little headway.

Delhi police have contacted X for information about accounts posting the hoax threats. They suspect the perpetrators are using VPN or dark web to post threatening messages.

Most of the threats issued on Sunday came from anonymous and unverified X account @schizophreniqqq, the Indian Express reported, and those on Friday and Saturday from another anonymous X account called @adamlanza11. The accounts have since been suspended.

“To get the IP addresses, we have written to the social media platform,” a senior police officer told PTI.

Police have so far only arrested a minor boy accused of issuing three hoax threats from a fake X handle, supposedly in an attempt to implicate his friend.

Investigators have been trying to establish a “pattern” in the series of threats to various airlines, the Hindustan Times reported, citing unnamed sources.

“There is a pattern behind the messages. A threat is given using social media or through a phone call, and then suddenly similar threats start to appear within a short span of time,” an aviation security official, who was part of the discussions, told the paper.

“VPNs have been used to post the messages to avoid being traced. We’re analysing the pattern, and investigation agencies are coordinating to locate the sources of threats.”

The intention, the official claimed, was to “definitely disturb the aviation sector, create panic, and keep the agencies on their toes”.

India’s civil aviation minister assured that urgent steps were being taken to address the situation. “Such activities are a matter of grave concern,” K Ram Mohan Naidu said on Wednesday. “We will take all necessary measures to ensure the safety of passengers and the smooth functioning of the aviation sector.”

All those “responsible for the disruptions will be identified and duly prosecuted”, the minister said.

Officials found that around 70 per cent of these threats have all come from the same source – an unverified and anonymous account on X that made threats to 46 domestic and international flights of Indian carriers in two days.

The account made 12 threats on Friday night and 34 on Saturday, reported Indian news daily The Indian Express. The account has now been suspended by X.

Around 100 bomb threats have been sent since they began last Monday.

A Vistara flight and an Air India Express flight received bomb threats on Tuesday night, and four flights of IndiGo, two of SpiceJet and one of Akasa Air were targeted on Wednesday.

IndiGo flight 6E 74 from Riyadh to Mumbai was diverted to Muscat, Oman, while 6E 515 from Chennai to Lucknow needed to be isolated upon landing. Another IndiGo flight from Delhi to Mumbai was redirected to Ahmedabad on Tuesday night.

An Akasa Air flight taking 180 people to Bengaluru returned to Delhi after a similar scare on Wednesday afternoon.

An Air India flight from Delhi to Chicago was diverted to the remote Iqaluit airport in Canada after the airline received a threat on Tuesday.

The 211 passengers and crew made their way to Chicago on Wednesday after the Canadian Air Force flew them out, having spent 18 hours stranded at the airport.

Five flights from IndiGo and Akasa were sent threats, as well as three from Vistara and one from Air India Express.

On Saturday, a spokesperson from Akasa Air made a statement saying: “Some of our flights operating on 19 October 2024 have received security alerts. As per safety and security procedures, all passengers had to be deplaned as the local authorities followed necessary procedures. We request your understanding as our team on the ground did everything possible to reduce the inconvenience.”

“Airport police responded to eight incidents involving reported bomb threats this month,” Usha Rangnani, the police officer incharge of security at the Delhi airport, said. “After thorough verifications and inspection, all threats were confirmed to be hoaxes.”

She said social media accounts of people “responsible for these false threats have been suspended”.

“Legal action has been initiated against those responsible for these false alarms to ensure strict measures against misuse and to maintain the safety and security of passengers and airport operations,” she was quoted as saying by local media.

The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Transportation summoned Vumlunmang Vualnam, India’s top civil aviation bureaucrat, who informed the lawmakers that efforts to identify suspects were underway.

The Delhi police had registered eight complaints against unknown individuals in relation to the recent spate of hoax threats targeting multiple international and domestic flights, he said.

The Mumbai police arrested a boy, 17, for allegedly issuing three of the threats through social media accounts that he had created in the name of his friend. He was reportedly arrested from the central Indian state of Chhattisgarh.

Mr Naidu, meanwhile, met with top aviation and security officials on 14 October. “I am monitoring the situation regularly and our law enforcement agencies are pursuing all cases actively,” he said. “Such mischievous and unlawful actions are a matter of grave concern and I strongly condemn any attempt to compromise the safety, security and operational integrity of our aviation sector.”

The federal government has decided to put more air marshals on flights, the Hindustan Times reported.

“Currently, a total of 35 air marshals are deployed in flights across certain sensitive sectors. The number of such marshals will be increased to 100,” an unnamed official told the paper.

Mr Naidu said his ministry was exploring harsher penalties for making hoax threats to airlines, including adding the offenders to no-fly lists.

India’s aviation laws currently do not have specific rules to tackle bomb threats that come from external sources such as social media, Mr Naidu said.

The ministry has transferred the directorate general of civil aviation Vikram Dev, the New Indian Express reported.

On Saturday, officials of the aviation safety body Bureau of Civil Aviation Security met chief executive officers of the airlines in New Delhi to go over the operating procedure in case of a bomb threat. The CEOs were asked to follow the standard operating procedure whenever a threat came in and keep all stakeholders informed as to the actions being taken.

“Indian skies are absolutely safe,” the bureau’s director general Zulfiqar Hasan said. “The current protocol is robust and is being strictly followed. We reassure passengers that they should fly without any fear and in fact, fly even more.”

Self-exiled Turkish spiritual leader Fethullah Gulen dies in US

Fethullah Gulen, a reclusive US-based Islamic cleric and one of the biggest foes of Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has died after a long illness in Pennsylvania at the age of 83.

Gulen led a movement called Hizmet that was condemned as a “terrorist” organisation by the Turkish government and accused of orchestrating an abortive coup attempt to topple Mr Erdogan’s administration in 2016. He denied the allegations repeatedly.

Gulen’s death was confirmed by his nephew Kemal Gulen who spoke to Abdullah Bozkurt, the former editor of the Gulen-linked Today’s Zaman newspaper.

Turkish state media quoted foreign minister Hakan Fidan saying that Gulen’s death had been confirmed by Turkish intelligence sources.

Gulen spent the last decades of his life in self-exile, living on a gated compound in Pennsylvania’s Pocono Mountains from where he continued to wield influence among his millions of followers in Turkey and beyond. He espoused a philosophy that blended Sufism – a mystical form of Islam – with staunch advocacy of democracy, education, science and interfaith dialogue.

Gulen was as an ally of the Turkish leader until 2013, but became a foe after he called Mr Erdogan an authoritarian bent on accumulating power and crushing dissent.

Mr Erdogan cast Gulen as a terrorist, accusing him of orchestrating the attempted military coup on the night of 15 July 2016 when factions within the military used tanks, warplanes and helicopters to try to overthrow Erdogan’s government.

Heeding a call from the president, thousands took to the streets to oppose the takeover attempt. The coup plotters fired at crowds and bombed parliament and other government buildings. A total of 251 people were killed and around 2,200 others were wounded. Around 35 alleged coup plotters were also killed.

Gulen denied involvement, and his supporters dismissed the charges as ridiculous and politically motivated.

Gulen had lived in Pennsylvania since 1999 and was stripped of his Turkish nationality in 2017.

Turkey put Gulen on its most-wanted list and demanded his extradition, but the US showed little inclination to send him back, saying it needed more evidence. Gulen was never charged with a crime in the US, and he consistently denounced terrorism as well as the coup plotters.

In Turkey, Gulen’s movement was subjected to a broad crackdown. The government arrested tens of thousands of people for their alleged link to the coup plot, sacked more than 130,000 suspected supporters from civil service jobs and more than 23,000 from the military, and shuttered hundreds of businesses, schools and media organizations tied to Gulen.

Gulen called the crackdown a witch hunt and denounced Turkey’s leaders as “tyrants”.

“The last year has taken a toll on me as hundreds of thousands of innocent Turkish citizens are being punished simply because the government decides they are somehow ‘connected’ to me or the Hizmet movement and treats that alleged connection as a crime,” he said on the one-year anniversary of the failed coup.

Turkish foreign minister on Monday said Gulen’s death “will not make us complacent”. “Our nation and state will continue to fight against this organization, as they do against all terrorist organisations,” he added.

Gulen was born in Erzurum, in eastern Turkey. His official birth date was 27 April 1941, but that has long been in dispute. Y Alp Aslandogan, who leads a New York-based group that promotes Gulen’s ideas and work, said Gulen was actually born sometime in 1938.

Trained as an imam, or prayer leader, Gulen gained notice in Turkey some 50 years ago. He preached tolerance and dialogue between faiths, and he believed religion and science could go hand in hand. His belief in merging Islam with Western values and Turkish nationalism struck a chord with Turks, earning him millions of followers.

Gulen’s acolytes built a loosely affiliated global network of charitable foundations, professional associations, businesses and schools in more than 100 countries, including 150 taxpayer-funded charter schools throughout the United States. In Turkey, supporters ran universities, hospitals, charities, a bank and a large media empire with newspapers and radio and TV stations.

But Gulen was viewed with suspicion by some in his homeland, a deeply polarised country split between those loyal to its fiercely secular traditions and supporters of the Islamic-based party associated with Erdogan that came to power in 2002.

Gulen had long refrained from openly supporting any political party, but his movement forged a de facto alliance with Erdogan against the country’s old guard of staunch, military-backed secularists, and Gülen’s media empire threw its weight behind Erdogan’s Islamic-oriented government.

Gülenists helped the governing party win multiple elections. But the Erdogan-Gulen alliance began to crumble after the movement criticized government policy and exposed alleged corruption among Erdogan’s inner circle. Erdogan, who denied the allegations, grew weary of the growing influence of Gülen’s movement.

The Turkish leader accused Gulen’s followers of infiltrating the country’s police and judiciary and setting up a parallel state, and began agitating for Gülen’s extradition to Turkey even before the failed 2016 coup.

In 2000, with Gulen still in the US, Turkish authorities charged him with leading an Islamist plot to overthrow the country’s secular form of government and establish a religious state.

Some of the accusations against him were based on a tape recording on which Gulen was alleged to have told supporters of an Islamic state to bide their time: “If they come out too early, the world will quash their heads.” Gulen said his comments were taken out of context.

The cleric was tried in absentia and acquitted, but he never returned to his homeland. He won a lengthy legal battle against the administration of then-president George W Bush to obtain permanent residency in the US.

Rarely seen in public, Gulen lived quietly on the grounds of an Islamic retreat center in the Poconos. He occupied a small apartment on the sprawling compound and left mostly only to see doctors for ailments that included heart disease and diabetes, spending much of his time in prayer and meditation and receiving visitors from around the world.

Gulen never married and did not have children. It is not known who, if anyone, will lead the movement.

Tributes poured in for Gulen on Monday, with supporters remembering him as a “man of faith who transformed the lives of millions of people across the world”.

“Another voice of peace muted, a great loss to humanity,” wrote Tushar Gandhi, the great-grandson of Mahatma Gandhi.

Former Indian spy ‘rejects’ US charge in Sikh separatist murder plot

A former Indian intelligence officer charged with directing a foiled assassination plot against a Sikh separatist leader in New York last year rejects the accusations, his family said.

Vikash Yadav, a former officer in India’s foreign intelligence service who was named by federal prosecutors for the first time in an unsealed indictment on Thursday, is charged with money laundering, conspiracy, and leading a murder-for-hire scheme.

According to the indictment, Mr Yadav was an officer in the Research and Analysis Wing, which is directly overseen by the Prime Minister’s Office.

India says it is investigating the allegations. It also claims that Mr Yadav is no longer a government employee, but won’t confirm if he has ever been an intelligence officer.

Mr Yadav’s cousin Avinash Yadav spoke to Reuters on Saturday at their ancestral village, Pranpura, some 100km from the capital New Delhi.

He said he had discussed the murder plot allegations with Mr Yadav, who described them as false media reports.

Avinash said he spoke to his cousin regularly but Mr Yadav had never said anything about being an intelligence officer.

“The family has no information. He never mentioned anything about it,” he said, referring to Mr Yadav’s supposed employment with the spy service.

“For us he is still working for the CRPF. He told us he is deputy commandant.” The CRPF is the Central Reserve Police Force, a federal paramilitary that Mr Yadav joined in 2009.

The cousin said he didn’t know Mr Yadav’s whereabouts, only that he lived with his wife and a daughter who was born last year.

Mr Yadav and his alleged co-conspirator, Nikhil Gupta, are accused of plotting the murder of Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, a American and Canadian citizen who founded Sikhs for Justice which advocates for the creation of an independent Sikh homeland called Khalistan in northwestern India.

The organisation is banned in India, which has designated Mr Pannun a “terrorist”.

Mr Gupta, who was extradited to the US from the Czech Republic earlier this year, is lodged in a Brooklyn jail. He has pleaded not guilty.

Mr Yadav was arrested in New Delhi on 18 December last year, a police officer told Reuters on condition of anonymity. He and an associate were charged with attempted murder, according to a filing in a Delhi district court.

Mr Yadav’s lawyer, RK Hindoo, said the charges brought against his client by Delhi police were “fallacious” and that there was “an international plot to bring shame on the government of India and my client”.

It is not known where Mr Yadav is now. The Washington Post, citing American officials, reported that he was still in India and that the US would seek his extradition.

“He has been working for the country,” Mr Yadav’s mother Sudesh Yadav said.

The indictment against Mr Yadav is a “grave example of the increase in lethal plotting and other forms of violent transnational repression targeting diaspora communities in the United States,” assistant attorney general Matthew Olsen of the US Justice Department said in a statement.

The accusations against Mr Yadav and Mr Gupta that seemingly implicate the Indian government follow similar charges made by Canada over the assassination of a Sikh separatist leader in June 2023.

India rejects the “preposterous imputations” made by Canadian authorities and decries it a political agenda of the Justin Trudeau government.

Canada has expelled six Indian diplomats, including high commissioner Sanjay Kumar Verma, “in relation to a targeted campaign against Canadian citizens by agents linked to the Government of India”.

New Delhi has retaliated by ordering the expulsion of six Canadian diplomats, including acting high commissioner Stewart Ross Wheeler.

Prabowo Subianto sworn in as Indonesia’s eighth president

Prabowo Subianto was inaugurated Sunday as the eighth president of the world’s most populous Muslim-majority nation, completing his journey from an ex-general accused of rights abuses during the dark days of Indonesia’s military dictatorship to the presidential palace.

The former defense minister, who turned 73 on Thursday, was cheered through the streets by thousands of waving supporters after taking his oath on the Quran, the Muslim holy book, in front of lawmakers and foreign dignitaries. Banners and billboards to welcome the new president filled the streets of the capital, Jakarta, where tens of thousands gathered for festivities including speeches and musical performances along the city’s major throughfare.

Mr Subianto was a longtime rival of the immensely popular president Joko Widodo, who ran against him for the presidency twice and refused to accept his defeat on both occasions, in 2014 and 2019.

But Mr Widodo appointed Mr Subianto as defense chief after his reelection, paving the way for an alliance despite their rival political parties. During the campaign, Subianto ran as the popular outgoing president’s heir, vowing to continue signature policies like the construction of a multibillion-dollar new capital city and limits on exporting raw materials intended to boost domestic industry.

Backed by Mr Widodo, Mr Subianto swept to a landslide victory in February’s direct presidential election on promises of policy continuity.

Mr Subianto was sworn in with his new vice president, 37-year-old Surakarta ex-Mayor Gibran Rakabuming Raka. He chose Raka, who is Mr Widodo’s son, as his running mate, with Mr Widodo favoring Subianto over the candidate of his own former party. The former rivals became tacit allies, even though Indonesian presidents don’t typically endorse candidates.

But how he’ll govern the biggest economy in Southeast Asia — where nearly 90% of Indonesia’s 282 million people are Muslims — remains uncertain after a campaign in which he made few concrete promises besides continuity with the popular former president.

Mr Subianto, who comes from one of the country’s wealthiest families, is a sharp contrast to Mr Mr Widodo, the first Indonesian president to emerge from outside the political and military elite who came from a humble background and as president often mingled with working-class crowds.

Mr Subianto was a special forces commander until he was expelled by the army in 1998 over accusations that he played a role in the kidnappings and torture of activists and other abuses. He never faced trial and went into self-imposed exile in Jordan in 1998, although several of his underlings were tried and convicted.

Jordanian King Abdullah II bin Al-Hussein was expected to attend Sunday’s ceremony, but canceled at the last minute because of escalating Middle East tensions, instead deciding to send Foreign Affairs Minister Nancy Namrouqa as his special envoy. Mr Subianto and Abdullah met in person in June for talks in Amman on humanitarian assistance to people affected by the war in Gaza.

Mr Subianto, who has never held elective office, will lead a massive, diverse archipelago nation whose economy has boomed amid strong global demand for its natural resources. But he’ll have to contend with global economic distress and regional tensions in Asia, where territorial conflicts and the United States–China rivalry loom large.

Leaders and senior officials from more than 30 countries flew in to attend the ceremony, including Chinese Vice President Han Zheng and leaders of Southeast Asia countries. U.S. President Joe Biden sent Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Adm. Samuel Paparo, the U.S. Commander of the Indo-Pacific Command, was also among the American delegation.

Army troops and police, along with armored vehicles, fire trucks and ambulances, were deployed across the capital, and major roads were closed to secure the swearing-in.

The election outcome capped a long comeback for Mr Subianto, who was banned for years from traveling to the United States and Australia.

He has vowed to continue Mr Widodo’s modernization efforts, which have boosted Indonesia’s economic growth by building infrastructure and leveraging the country’s abundant resources. A signature policy required nickel, a major Indonesian export and a key component of electric car batteries, to be processed in local factories rather than exported raw.

He has also promised to push through Mr Widodo’s most ambitious and controversial project: the construction of a new capital on Borneo, about 2,000 kilometers (1,240 miles) away from congested Jakarta.

Before February’s presidential election, he also promised to provide free school lunches and milk to 78.5 million students at more than 400,000 schools across the country, aiming to reduce malnutrition and stunted growth among children.

Indonesia is a bastion of democracy in Southeast Asia, a diverse and economically bustling region of authoritarian governments, police states and nascent democracies. After decades of dictatorship under President Suharto, the country was convulsed by political, ethnic and religious unrest in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Since then, it has consolidated its democratic transition as the world’s third-largest democracy, and is home to a rapidly expanding middle class.

Airport bans farewell hugs longer than three minutes

An airport in New Zealand has banned prolonged goodbye hugs at drop-off – with last embraces restricted to just three minutes.

The sign at Dunedin Airport reads “max hug time 3 minutes” and suggests, “for fonder farewells please use the car park”.

A picture of the message shared on Facebook to ‘The view from my window’ group last Wednesday sparked great debate on appropriate farewell etiquette at departures.

One group member commented: “I love it. It shows warmth and compassion. My local airport it would be ‘you can’t stop there’ – there’s a £100 fine if you stop and a minimum £5.00 to drop someone off in the drop-off zone. I love Nice airport – they have ‘Kiss and Fly’.”

Another said the time limit was “inhumane” and insisted “You can’t put a time limit on hugs”

“In America, they don’t even want you to stop. Just come to a slow roll and push your passenger out,” added a social media user from the US.

The thought of a three-minute hug had others reeling.

“This got me thinking…. Who are the people I would hug for 3 minutes? There are a very few, mostly family, and a dear long-time friend. But in spite of the humor of this sign, it’s something to think about. Life is short,” shared one man.

More than a third of major UK airports have raised drop-off fees for drivers in the past year, according to RAC research.

In July, the RAC found that seven out of 20 airports analysed have raised so-called “kiss and fly” charges – which are typically levied for dropping off someone as close to a terminal as possible – since last summer.

The four that increased fees by £1 were Gatwick (which now charges £6 for 10 minutes), Edinburgh (£5 for 10 minutes), Birmingham (£5 for 15 minutes) and Bristol (£6 for 10 minutes).

For more travel news and advice, listen to Simon Calder’s podcast