The volcanic ash headed westward and northwestward of the crater, Malaysia’s state-run Bernama news agency quoted national disaster management agency spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho as saying.

Rain of ashes is projected to fall in the northwest of the crater, and local disaster agency officials had distributed masks to the folks, the spokesman told Xinhua news agency in a text message.

An exclusion zone was declared about four kilometres from the crater and extended to 6.5km for the areas situated in the southwest of the crater by the country’s volcanology agency, said Sutopo.

North Sulawesi province is located next to Central Sulawesi province which is reeling from the risk of powerful quakes that triggered a tsunami last Friday, leaving over 1,249 people dead.

In a statement, the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) confirmed her arrest and said that the wife of former prime minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak will be taken to the Kuala Lumpur Sessions Court at 8am Thursday (Oct 4).

The MACC added that Rosmah was arrested after obtaining the Attorney General’s Chamber’s permission to charge her.

This is the first time the wife of a former prime minister has been arrested.

On June 5, she was questioned for about five hours over a probe into SRC International Sdn Bhd, a former 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) subsidiary.

On Sept 26, Rosmah was called in for a second round of questioning – this time on 1MDB – which lasted for almost 13 hours.

The police are also expected to call Rosmah in for questioning and to verify which of the jewellery pieces seized during raids on several premises linked to Najib belongs to her.

Two jewellers have since come forward to seek the return of 47 pieces of jewellery that were delivered to Rosmah but had not been paid for.

On June 26, Lebanese-based jeweller Global Royalty Trading SAL filed a suit against Rosmah at the Kuala Lumpur High Court seeking a mandatory order for 44 pieces of jewellery amounting to US$14,787,770 (RM59,831,317.40), to be returned.

Dubai-based jeweller Adi Hasan AlFardan Jewellery is also seeking the recovery of a necklace and another necklace and earring set worth more than US$5mil (RM20.69mil) in total.

The 36-year-old actress, model and producer has been a household name in China for years and tasted Hollywood success with a role in the 2014 blockbuster “X-Men: Days of Future Past.”

But her once active social media presence went silent in May after allegations that she had evaded taxes on a lucrative movie shoot, charges her studio called “slander”.

She has not been seen in public since.

Chinese tax authorities have now ruled that both Fan and companies controlled by her failed to pay tens of millions of dollars in taxes, the official Xinhua news service reported on Wednesday.

The report said Fan would have to pay a total of 883 million yuan ($129 million) in owed taxes, fines and penalties, adding that she would avoid criminal prosecution as long as she met a repayment deadline.

At least one other person implicated in the probe has been detained for further investigation related to concealing and “deliberately destroying” accounting documents, Xinhua added without detailing that person’s identity.

Following the investigation into Fan, authorities have declared a wider crackdown on the entertainment industry, Xinhua said.

Offenders are being offered an amnesty until December 31 to pay up any taxes they owe.

Fan’s troubles began in May soon after she appeared on the red carpet at Cannes film festival when a former presenter for state-run China Central Television (CCTV) posted a purported movie shoot contract.

The documents suggested Fan was officially paid 10 million yuan ($1.45 million) for a project while unofficially receiving an additional 50 million yuan — all for four days of work.

So-called “yin and yang” dual contract arrangements — with one contract for income declared to tax authorities while the other is kept secret — are reported to be used in China to evade taxes.

After the contract documents went viral, the national tax administration announced it had instructed authorities in eastern Jiangsu province to investigate alleged use of such dual contracts in the entertainment industry.

Fan was not mentioned by name but she has businesses registered in Jiangsu.

Last year, Fan topped Forbes magazine’s list of top-earning Chinese celebrities with income of 300 million yuan ($43 million).

She is one of five leading international actresses cast in the forthcoming Hollywood spy thriller “355”, alongside Jessica Chastain and Penelope Cruz.

But her star has dimmed among authorities in China.

A recent report by academics ranking the “social ranking” of Chinese celebrities placed Fan at the very bottom with a score of zero.

The study was widely carried by Chinese state media.

The PKR presidentelect shared an Instagram photo of himself jogging barefoot on Teluk Kemang beach on Wednesday (Oct 3).

“Spent some time jogging around Teluk Kemang this morning,” he wrote in his post.

Despite a packed campaign schedule, health and stamina cannot be neglected. This is a refreshing start to the day,” he added.

Donning black sunglasses and a white cap, Anwar panted as he jogged, while talking about his 30minute jog.

“The air is fresh,” he said while taking a deep breath, adding that he feels healthy and refreshed.

Anwar is engaged in a sevencornered fight in the Port Dickson byelection to pave the way for him to return to Parliament.

Others contesting the seat include Mohd Saiful Bukhari Azlan, PAS candidate Mohd Nazari Mokhtar, former Teluk Kemang Umno chief Tan Sri Mohd Isa Abdul Samad. The other three contestants are Stevie Chan, Lau Seck Yan, and Kan Chee Yuen.

This led to the Hat Yai-bound plane being turned back to Singapore, and fighter jets from the Republic of Singapore Air Force (RSAF) being scrambled to escort it back.

On Tuesday (Oct 2), Hsu Chun Meng was fined $4,500 for breaching the Protection from Harassment Act by using threatening words to cause alarm.

The court heard that Hsu boarded flight TR634 from Singapore to Hat Yai, Thailand, with two friends at about 12.55pm on April 5 this year.

He tried to put his hand-carry luggage in the overhead compartment but it could not fit.

Stewardess Boo Joe We, 23, told him that he had to check it in. He tried to shut the compartment a few more times before relenting.

When Ms Boo asked him if he had any prohibited items in the bag, Hsu, unhappy with her attitude and the way she spoke to him, replied: “Nothing, only bomb.”

The stewardess stared at him.

He then said: “No bomb lah. Joking. How can it be?”

Ms Boo was initially alarmed by what he said, but accepted his explanation and went about the rest of her duties.

When the plane was about to take off at 1.53pm, Ms Boo told her cabin crew leader, Ms Ginny Chiong Wen Chin, 26, about the incident with Hsu.

Ms Chiong decided to inform the captain of the plane, but as the plane was about to take off, she could not enter the cockpit.

When the plane was airborne, Ms Chiong entered the cockpit and informed the pilot of what Hsu had said earlier.

After ascertaining the facts, the pilot followed established protocol and reported “Mayday” to the Malaysian air traffic control. He also informed the Singapore air traffic control that he was heading back to Singapore, which was the nearest airport.

As the plane carrying 179 people entered Singapore airspace at about 2.20pm, RSAF fighter jets were scrambled to escort the plane. The plane landed at a remote area away from the main Changi Airport terminals.

When the police arrived, all the passengers had to disembark while officers conducted a security sweep of the aircraft. Hsu and his friends’ luggage bags were located and separately removed for security checks.

In all, the flight was delayed for four hours and 48 minutes.

The entire cabin crew and pilots were replaced with a fresh crew, and affected passengers were given vouchers totalling $13,757.60.

In sentencing, District Judge Adam Nakhoda said Hsu’s behaviour cannot be tolerated, and there was a need to deter like-minded individuals from doing the same.

Mount Soputan in North Sulawesi’s Minahasa regency erupts at 8:47 a.m. on Oct. 3.The Center for Volcanology and Geological Hazard Mitigation (CVGHM) has estimated that the ash column reached a height of 4 kilometers and was headed in a westerly-northwesterly direction. (Courtesy of BNPB/-)

The Center for Volcanology and Geological Hazard Mitigation (CVGHM) has advised  local residents to refrain from entering the area within a 4- to 6.5-kilometer radius around Mount Soputan. Residents of riverbank settlements near the mountain – those on the Ranowangko, Lawian, Popang and Kelewahu rivers – were also warned of the potential for lava flows following rain.

The CVGHM forecast that the volcanic ash was drifting to the west and northwest. “This means that the volcanic ash will not disrupt flights. Sam Ratulangi International Airport in Manado is still operating normally, as it is located southeast of the mountain,” it said in a statement.

“We also suggest residents to use dust masks to avoid any potential respiratory problems in the event of falling ash,” the center added.

The North Sulawesi Disaster Mitigation Agency (BPBD) has distributed masks to residents of the affected areas.

The move was made official after Canada’s Senate voted to revoke the symbolic honor.

The lower house had already approved a motion to the same effect last week.

The House of Commons granted the privilege to Suu Kyi in 2007, but her international reputation has since been tarnished by her refusal to call on the Burmese army to put an end to the atrocities committed against the Rohingya.

Canadian lawmakers described the violence against them as a “genocide” in a resolution passed in September.

The ethnic group are treated as foreigners in Burma, a country that is more than 90 percent Buddhist.

A brutal military campaign that started last year drove more than 700,000 Rohingya Muslims from Myanmar into neighboring Bangladesh, where they now live in cramped refugee camps — fearful of returning despite a repatriation deal.

Many have given accounts of extrajudicial killings, sexual violence and arson.

Canada has granted honorary citizenship only to five other personalities, including Nelson Mandela, the Dalai Lama and Malala Yousafzai.

Ministry of Defence spokesperson Chhum Socheath said: “During the first nine months of this year, the RCAF has cracked down on 4,233 transnational crimes.

“Of these, 2,054 cases were intercepted along the Cambodia-Thai border, 1,171 along the Cambodia-Laos border, and 1,008 at the borders with Vietnam.

“Most of the intercepted crimes are ‘normal’ ones such as illegal crossings and drug trafficking. There hasn’t been any arms sale or major cases. It has been mostly people crossing illegally to log or work and drug trafficking cases.”

Socheath said the RCAF continues to fortify national defence in all sectors along the borders through measures such as increasing regular patrols and improving situation management.

He also said it has intensified cooperation with neighbouring countries’ forces to prevent and curtail transnational crimes.

“Neighbouring countries must work together to prevent crimes from happening. Nobody can do that alone. We have established bilateral measures for all the Kingdom’s borders with Thailand Laos and Vietnam,” Socheath said.

He noted that his personnel have been in close contact with the authorities from the other countries.

The RCAF, Socheath said, continuously cooperates with neighbouring countries to solve existing problems to maintain a peaceful and safe situation along the borders.

Rights body Adhoc’s spokesperson Soeung Senkarona said transnational crimes in the Kingdom keep increasing and that more people disobey the law despite the authorities having implemented sound regulations along the borders.

“Though we heard about the crackdown involving 4,000 cases, we can still see drug crimes constantly happen throughout the Kingdom,” he said.

Earlier in April, Interior Minister Sar Kheng ordered the authorities to investigate the roots of arms smuggling from Cambodia to other countries, especially Thailand, and arrest the masterminds.

June and July last year saw a number of arrests involving Thai and Cambodian nationals for smuggling weapons between the two countries.

Among those arrested were a Thai police lieutenant, and a first lieutenant at the Ministry of Interior who is a relative by marriage of both Defence Minister Tea Banh and former Koh Kong Provincial Governor Bun Leut.

Four days after the 7.4-magnitude earthquake, followed by a 7m-high tsunami, wreaked havoc on Central Sulawesi, it has proved difficult to reach the more than 61,000 people displaced across the disaster-hit areas.

At least 1,234 people are already known to have died in the provincial capital of Palu and neighbouring regencies of Donggala, Sigi and Parigi Moutong, while 152 are trapped under buildings and 99 are still missing, according to official figures from the National Disaster Management Agency (BNPB) on Tuesday (Oct 2).

The toll is likely to rise into the thousands as rescuers reach more areas, and as the telecommunication network and utilities are restored, Dr Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, BNPB’s spokesman, told journalists in a press briefing.

Amid shortages of food, drinking water and medical supplies, reports have surfaced of looting and thefts from abandoned shops and warehouses.

Sounding a warning, the United Nations children agency Unicef said more than 1,000 schools have been damaged, affecting nearly one in five students in the province.

Unicef is appealing for US$5 million (S$6.8 million) to provide health and educational services and has highlighted the dire need for ready-to-eat meals, water and sanitation materials, basic healthcare items, medicines and female hygiene kits.

Efforts also need to be stepped up to identify children separated from their families and give psycho-social support and educational services, it said.

Although the central government has dispatched disaster relief aid, it has not been possible to reach all the survivors of the disaster, The Jakarta Post reported.

The daily quoted Alexander Manggabarani, 32, a resident of Tipo village in Palu, as saying that the 189 survivors in his village had to build their own shelter and look for food and water on their own, since aid had not arrived.

“We have gone to the offices of the governor and mayor and to the Tadulako Military Command but have yet to receive assistance,” Mr Alexander told Jakarta Post.

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“For the last two days, we have only been eating bananas and looking for spring water; we built makeshift tents.”

“We need food supplies and medical assistance, there are many injured victims.”

The survivors were also stepping forward on their own to retrieve bodies trapped under soil, he said.

President Joko Widodo on Sunday night gave a nod for foreign assistance to be accepted to facilitate urgent disaster response and relief,  tasking a team led by the Coordinating Ministry for Political, Legal and Security Affairs to handle all matters pertaining to the aid.

On Tuesday, he instructed Coordinating Minister for Political, Legal and Security Affairs Wiranto, to identify Indonesia’s needs and later, convey them to countries willing to help.

In response to mounting demand for evacuation from local residents, Mr Joko advised that they remain calm as the government is trying to restore economic activities there.

“Last night I already ordered National Police Chief and Indonesian Military Commander to guard fuel stations and economic centres so that shops can re-open and the economy is back to normal again, allowing the rehabilitation and reconstruction start,” he told reporters.

Indonesia’s State-Owned Enterprise Minister Rini Soemarno has provided assurance that there will be a sufficient supply of fuel for emergency services.

“State-owned oil and gas holding company Pertamina has distributed 4,000 litres of diesel fuel. The fuel comes from Tarakan, North Kalimantan. Pertamina used cargo aircraft to bring the fuel to Palu,” she said in the sidelines of her visit to Palu on Monday as quoted by Antara News.

Ms Rini also added that Pertamina has supplied 16,000 litres of fuel to three gas stations that were not destroyed by the quake and subsequent tsunami and will continue to distribute it to overcome fuel shortage.

Indonesia, the world’s largest archipelagic nation with more than 17,000 islands, lies on the Pacific’s “Ring of Fire”, where earthquakes and volcanic eruptions are frequent as a result of movements of tectonic plates.

Prior to last week, Indonesia was last hit by a tsunami in December 2004 following a 9.1-magnitude earthquake off the coast of Sumatra, claiming around 120,000 lives.

Since last Friday’s earthquake, as many as 254 aftershocks have been recorded as of Monday. On Tuesday morning, two quakes – of 5.9 and 6.0 magnitude – were recorded in quick succession off the southern coast of Indonesia’s Sumba island.

Pompeo will visit Pyongyang Sunday as the US pushes to dismantle the regime’s nuclear weapons program and set up a second summit between President Donald Trump and Kim.

At their first summit in Singapore in June, Kim agreed to work toward “complete” denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula in exchange for security guarantees from the US.

Negotiations between the two sides have since stalled as the US demands concrete steps toward denuclearization and the North insists on first declaring an end to the 1950-53 Korean War.

The three-year conflict ended with an armistice, not a peace treaty, leaving the sides technically at war.

Pompeo will be making his fourth trip to Pyongyang after an earlier visit in August was called off by Trump over what he called a lack of progress in denuclearization.

“These conversations are going in the right direction and we feel confident enough to hop on a plane to head there and continue the conversations,” department spokeswoman Heather Nauert told a regular news briefing. “Our policy has not changed. Things stand firmly in place, such as the sanctions … remain in place.”

Pompeo met with his North Korean counterpart, Ri Yong-ho, on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York last week. The State Department announced afterward that the secretary had accepted Kim’s invitation to visit Pyongyang.

Days later, in an address to the UN General Assembly, Ri slammed the US for continuing to pressure the regime with sanctions and declared there was “no way” the North would give up its nuclear program before seeing trust-building steps from the US.

Nauert said Pompeo will also visit Seoul Sunday and Monday to meet with South Korean President Moon Jae-in and Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha. On Monday, he will travel to Beijing, where he is to meet with his Chinese counterparts.

Prior to visiting Pyongyang, Pompeo will stop in Japan Saturday and Sunday for talks with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Foreign Minister Taro Kono.

“Secretary of State Pompeo’s visit to North Korea to meet with Chairman Kim Jong-un presents an excellent opportunity to not only ensure Washington and Pyongyang have a clear understanding of each other’s goals when it comes to denuclearization but, and of much more importance, what the agenda and deliverables would be for a much bigger meeting: a summit between President Donald Trump and Chairman Kim,” said Harry Kazianis, a North Korea expert at the Center for the National Interest.

“While surely Pompeo and Kim won’t be able to create the complete agenda for a second summit — or achieve a massive breakthrough in one meeting — their talks can explore if such a meeting is viable and what both sides might be willing to compromise on.”

Trump said last week that a second meeting would happen “in the not too distant future” and that a date and venue would be announced soon. Singapore was not among the possible locations, he said.

Citing his exchange of fiery rhetoric with Kim last year, Trump also said the two were being “tough” over the North’s testing of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles capable of reaching the US.

“And then we fell in love,” he said at a rally in West Virginia Saturday. “No really. He wrote me beautiful letters.”

Kim has expressed a desire to denuclearize before the end of Trump’s term in early 2021. Trump himself has said he is in no rush.

“We’re hopeful. We’re working toward that goal,” Nauert said of the 2021 timeline. “Everyone recognizes that we have a way to go, ways to go, and a lot of work that is left to be done.”

Kazianis said Sunday’s meeting between Pompeo and Kim could be a “make or break event” for US-North Korea relations, “especially if it were to go badly.”