The Carr Fire, located some 200 miles (322 kilometers) north of San Francisco, is still growing, CalFire said Sunday.

Its intensity was so great at one point, that it generated a tornado-like whirl of fire — as well as its own weather system.

PG&E power company identified the worker Sunday as Jairus Ayeta, who was killed in a remote area of Shasta county where crews were working to restore electricity.

“The safety of our employees and our customers is PG&E’s top priority. Our thoughts and prayers are with our fallen team member, his family and our extended team,” the company said in a statement.

“We are working with law enforcement to investigate the circumstances of the incident,” it added.

The Carr Fire has scorched 154,524 acres (62,534 hectares) of land since July 23, when authorities say it was triggered by the “mechanical failure of a vehicle” that caused sparks to fly in tinderbox-dry conditions.

The fire has also razed more than 1,600 buildings, including some 1,000 homes, making it the sixth most destructive blaze in the history of the fire-prone western state, state officials say.

More than 4,200 firefighters have been deployed to battle the conflagration but they have only succeeded in containing 41 percent of it so far.

Other fires raging in the state include the Mendocino Complex, comprised of two blazes: the River Fire and the Ranch Fire.

Several thousand people have been evacuated as the fires swept across the state, although some have been given permission in recent days to return to their homes.

The 6.9 magnitude tremor, which triggered panic among tourists and locals on Sunday evening, was also felt on the neighbouring island of Bali, one of Southeast Asia’s leading tourist destinations.

Nugroho said an initial tsunami warning which was later cancelled had sparked terror as residents scrambled to reach safer ground.

“People were panicking… especially because of the early tsunami warning,” he said.

Memories of the devastating 2004 tsunami which claimed 168,000 lives in Indonesia remain raw in the vast archipelago nation.

Most of the victims in the latest disaster died in mountainous northern Lombok, away from the main tourist spots on the south and west of the island. Thousands of people were evacuated to outside shelters.

Lombok’s beaches and hiking trails draw holidaymakers from around the world.

The death toll jumped from 37 hours earlier as the scale of the destruction began to emerge overnight.

The US Geological Survey said the shallow quake hit northern Lombok just 10 kilometres underground and was followed by two further secondary quakes and nearly two dozen aftershocks.

‘Everyone ran out of their homes’

Rescue officials said much of the damage had hit Lombok’s main city of Mataram.

Residents of the city described a strong jolt that sent people scrambling to get out of buildings.

“Everyone immediately ran out of their homes, everyone is panicking,” Iman, who like many Indonesians has one name, told AFP.

Electricity was knocked out in several parts of the city and patients were evacuated from the main hospital, witnesses and officials said.

Singapore’s Home Affairs Minister K. Shanmugam, who was in Lombok for a security conference when the earthquake struck, described on Facebook how his hotel room on the 10th floor shook violently.

“Walls cracked, it was quite impossible to stand up,” he said.

Despite the tsunami warning being cancelled, seawater poured into two villages, senior disaster agency official Dwikorita Karnawati told local television.

In the neighbouring resort island of Bali people could be heard screaming as locals and tourists ran onto the streets.

Bali’s international airport suffered damage to its terminal but the runway was unaffected and operations had returned to normal, disaster agency officials said.

Facilities at Lombok’s main airport were also unaffected, although passengers were briefly evacuated from the main terminal.

The tremor came a week after a shallow 6.4-magnitude quake hit Lombok, killing 17 people and damaging hundreds of buildings.

It triggered landslides that briefly trapped trekkers on popular mountain hiking routes.

Indonesia, one of the most disaster-prone nations on earth, straddles the so-called Pacific “Ring of Fire”, where tectonic plates collide and many of the world’s volcanic eruptions and earthquakes occur.

In 2004 a tsunami triggered by a magnitude 9.3 undersea earthquake off the coast of Sumatra in western Indonesia killed 220,000 people in countries around the Indian Ocean, including 168,000 in Indonesia.

The move follows vigorous calls by Canada for the immediate release of human rights activists swept up in a new wave of detentions.

“The kingdom of Saudi Arabia… will not accept interference in its internal affairs or imposed diktats from any country,” the foreign ministry tweeted.

“The kingdom announces that it is recalling its ambassador… to Canada for consultation.”

The ministry said that the Canadian ambassador to Riyadh had 24 hours to leave the country, and announced the “freezing of all new commercial and investment transactions” with Ottawa.

The move came after the Canadian embassy in Riyadh said it was “gravely concerned” over a new wave of arrests of human rights campaigners in the kingdom, including award-winning gender rights activist Samar Badawi.

“We urge the Saudi authorities to immediately release them and all other peaceful #humanrights activists,” the embassy tweeted on Friday.

Badawi was arrested along with fellow campaigner Nassima al-Sadah last week, “the latest victims of an unprecedented government crackdown on the women’s rights movement”, Human Rights Watch said.

The arrests come weeks after more than a dozen women’s right campaigners were detained and accused of undermining national security and collaborating with enemies of the state. Some have since been released.

The Saudi foreign ministry voiced anger over the Canadian statement.

“It is very unfortunate that the words ‘immediate release’ appeared in the Canadian statement… it is unacceptable in relations between countries,” the ministry said.

THE afternoon clouds did little to take the edge off the extreme heat Yan Horl endures toiling in his rice field in Cambodia’s Prey Veng province. He arrives home exhausted.

Just a few years ago, the 58-year-old could eke out a living on his one-hectare plot in the village of Trapeang Cham. Yields that routinely exceeded three tonnes now barley surpass two as rising temperatures and a greater propensity for disease reduce productivity.

Horl’s travails are not unique, and illustrate just part of a deeper story of threats to Cambodia’s food security and farmers responsible for achieving it.

In the end, farmers like Horl are spending more money on fertiliser, insecticides and diesel to fuel their water pumps.

“I pump water onto my field for two days in a row and a few days later the water is all dried up. But when it rains, it rains too much and insects come to destroy our rice,” Horl says.

Yan Horl (left) and his neighbor discuss the growing hardship changing weather patterns have brought to those in their community persevering to make ends meet. picture by HENG HAK

None of the US$515 (Bt17,000) received from his last harvest went toward supporting his family.

Then there’s the physical toll. “There is nothing to stifle the rising heat, which also affects our health,” he says.

Yang Phirom, an organic-rice expert who previously advised the Cambodian Centre for Study and Development in Agriculture, says that nearly 90 per cent of the Cambodian population are farmers who largely depend on rain.

With the arrival of climate change, he says, “Sometimes it doesn’t rain and it’s very hot, making the rice yield drop. In contrast, when it’s almost harvest season, rain falls and destroys the harvest.”

Back in the 1990s, Horl says, it was common for family members to head abroad off and on for a few years and send money home. He and many of his friends did so. Now they don’t come back. His daughter Vanny and son Vanna have both gone to Thailand to work in the fishery industry, with no plans to return.

At least a million Cambodians are currently working in Thailand. Trapeang Cham is home to 128 families, but Horl reckons that more than 50 per cent have migrated because farming is too risky and there are no

other opportunities.

Though Cambodia remains an agricultural country, farm employment is declining dramatically from 80 per cent in 1993 to about 40 per cent last year and projected to fall below 30 per cent by 2030.

Women who are often left behind inherit expanded domestic and farming responsibilities. Ever since her husband left to work in Malaysia several years ago, Sieng Hay, 24, has risen before dawn daily to make breakfast for the six-member family before heading out to the fields. While returning home, Hay collects grass for the family’s cows, hunts for crabs and snails, and cuts vegetables to make dinner.

Struggling to respond

To adapt to changing weather conditions, the government has bred new rice species in addition to distributing over 10,000 tonnes of rice for people affected by recent droughts and floods.

As Trapeang Cham continues to face rising temperatures, domestic water shortages and insufficient irrigation have become more frequent.

Yan Horl says that, in the 1990s, villagers retrieved water from three wells that were less than nine metres deep. As groundwater shortages began to take hold, the families employed a local company to sink a well 16 metres further.

Such local investments are insufficient, however, says village chief Chy Luk, adding that rising temperatures cost farmers more money. Luk, whose son and two grandsons have migrated, hopes the village can build an additional pond.

But it’s unclear how the pond will help them overcome the kind of drought the country experienced two years ago when 15 provinces and 2.5 million people were affected.

Heng Hak is an independent journalist based in Phnom Penh. The story was produced in cooperation with Mekong Eye, a project of Internews’ Earth Journalism Network.

After the violence erupted in 2016, Myanmar’s de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi chose fellow Nobel laureate Kofi Annan, the former United Nations chief, to chair the Advisory Commission on Rakhine State. It was tasked with examining the complex challenges facing the state and proposing solutions.

Last August 23, after a year of consultations across Rakhine and in other parts of the region, Annan’s commission submitted its report to Suu Kyi. It recommended urgent and sustained action on a number of fronts to prevent violence, maintain peace, foster reconciliation and offer a sense of hope to the oppressed population.

Two days later, a militant group – the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army – launched a series of attacks on Myanmar security outposts. The response from the Tatmadaw – the Myanmar military – was brutal, culminating in a “clearance operation” in which thousands of people were killed and hundreds of thousands displaced. An estimated 700,000 Rohingya were uprooted from their homes after soldiers and police chased them out of the country and into Bangladesh. There were accounts of rape, torture and mass killings. The international community and UN raised concerns over ethnic cleansing.

Rather than immediately implementing Annan’s recommendations, Suu Kyi tapped Thai former foreign minister Surakairt Sathirathai to chair an Advisory Board to the Committee on the Implementation of the Recommendations on Rakhine State.

Surakiart meets with Suu Kyi in Nay Pyi Taw during a meeting on Rakhine crisis recently–Picture: surakiart.com

Surakiart’s board faced its first setback in January when former US ambassador to the UN Bill Richardson, a long-time friend of Suu Kyi, quit the board, accusing it of whitewashing the government’s excesses and acting as a cheerleader for Suu Kyi. The board suffered another blow last month when veteran diplomat Kobsak Chutikul resigned to send what he called a “cautionary message” to Myanmar.

In reality, Surakiart’s panel had a shaky foundation from the start, because Deputy Prime Minister Somkid Jatusripitak instructed Thai ministries and agencies not to lend it support.

According to Thai official sources, the Tatmadaw, the most powerful institution in the country, was concerned that Thailand was playing a “double game”. The suspicion was that Surakiart was there to influence affairs in Myanmar while Thailand officially maintained a guise of friendship. Thailand had declined to criticise Myanmar’s atrocities against the Rohingya Muslims. Fellow Asean members Malaysia and Indonesia, which are predominantly Muslim, were more critical.

According to the sources, the Thai government wants to relieve the Tatmadaw of any such suspicion. Thus government agencies and ministries were told to refrain from supporting Surakiart and his panel.

Somkid could not be reached for comment on the matter. Foreign Minister Don Pramudwinai rejected the allegation, saying the panel has coordinated closely with the Thai government and the military. Thailand has played a key role in development schemes in Rakhine, he said.

Thailand, together with China and Japan, has expressed economic interest in Myanmar’s western state. Myanmar and a Thailand-based business institute last month discussed recruiting investors for large-scale projects, while China is mulling a deep-sea port as part of a special economic zone, Don said.

Setting up and dealing with international panels is entirely Myanmar’s affair, he said.

According to one source, Surakiart and his panel, which came into being last December, have five times asked to meet Myanmar army chief Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, always in vain. The panel met State Counsellor Suu Kyi, but she does not control the security forces.

Myanmar’s Chief Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, commander-in-chief of the Myanmar armed forces.AFP PHOTO

Moreover, the Asian Peace and Reconciliation Council, a high-level panel of international statesmen that Surakiart was also chairing, refused to lend its name to the peace initiative because it believed the government was insincere about solving the crisis. It did not want its name “exploited” for that reason.

While the ability to implement the Annan recommendations is in doubt, Myanmar has established yet another “independent” board to investigate human-rights violations in Rakhine.

Asean expressed its pleasure about the new board led by former Philippines deputy foreign minister Rasario Manalo. Don said it might do well because countries such as Japan supported its creation, but other observers have denounced it as a political gimmick.

From the Rohingya point of view, advisory boards are useless unless the authorities are sincere about addressing their plight. “All the solutions are already there [in Annan’s report],” Rohingya activist Khin Maung Myint said. “We don’t ask for anything more than our rights.”

As they wait for the divers to show their jumps during the Red Bull Cliff Diving competition which is held on 04 and 05 August 2018.

// EPA-EFE PHOTO

// EPA-EFE PHOTO

// EPA-EFE PHOTO

The latest tremor had a magnitude of seven and struck just 10 km underground according to the US Geological Survey. It was followed by two aftershocks.

Officials issued a tsunami warning, which was later cancelled

“Please go to a place with higher ground, while remaining calm and not panicking,” Dwikorita Karnawati, head of the agency for meteorology, climatology and geophysics, told local TV.

Seawater had entered two villages as high as 10 cm and 13 cm (4-5 inches), Karnawati said later.

Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, spokesman for Indonesia’s disaster mitigation agency, said many buildings were thought to have been damaged in Lombok’s main city of Mataram.

“They are mostly buildings with weak construction material,” Nugroho said.

Residents in Mataram described a strong jolt that sent people scrambling out of buildings.

“Everyone immediately ran out of their homes, everyone is panicking,” Iman told AFP.

Another resident Rita Siswati, 47, said the quake knocked out electricity and patients were evacuated from the main hospital.

The epicentre was in the sea 18 km northwest of Lombok, the USGS said, far from the main tourist spots on the south and west of the island.

The USGS reported two aftershocks, one with a magnitude of 5.4.

The quake was felt some 100 km (60 miles) away on the bustling resort island of Bali, and there were early reports of damage including to Ngurah Rai International Airport.

Agung Widodo, a resident of Bali’s main town of Denpasar, said he felt two strong tremors.

“The first one lasted quite a while, the second one was only about 2-5 seconds. The first one was the bigger one,” he told AFP.

People could be heard screaming as locals and tourists ran onto the road.

The tremor came a week after a shallow 6.4-magnitude quake hit Lombok, killing 17 people and damaging hundreds of buildings.

It triggered landslides that briefly trapped trekkers on popular mountain hiking routes.

Indonesia, one of the most disaster-prone nations on earth, straddles the so-called Pacific “Ring of Fire”, where tectonic plates collide and many of the world’s volcanic eruptions and earthquakes occur.

In 2004 a tsunami triggered by a magnitude 9.3 undersea earthquake off the coast of Sumatra in western Indonesia killed 220,000 people in countries around the Indian Ocean, including 168,000 in Indonesia.

“The police have the sad certainty that the 20 people aboard perished,” police spokeswoman Anita Senti told a news conference.

The Junker JU52 HB-HOT aircraft, built in Germany in 1939 and now a collectors’ item, crashed into the Piz Segnas mountain in the east of the country on Saturday.

The government said seven soldiers were wounded in the alleged attack Saturday, blamed on Colombia by Maduro and later claimed by a mysterious rebel group.

Screengrab taken from a handout video released by Venezuelan Television (VTV) showing Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro (C), his wife Cilia Flores (L) and military authorities reacting to a loud band during a ceremony to celebrate the 81st anniversary of the National Guard in Caracas on August 4, 2018.  // AFP PHOTO

“I am fine, I am alive, and after this attack I’m more determined than ever to follow the path of the revolution,” Maduro said defiantly of the incident, from which he escaped unharmed.

“Justice! Maximum punishment! And there will be no forgiveness,” he warned in an address to the nation, sparking fears of an anti-opposition offensive in a country already reportedly holding some 248 political prisoners.

Meanwhile, Attorney General Tarek William Saab, also present at the parade, said those arrested in connection with the incident would be identified on Monday.

“There will be a ruthless punishment,” he said.

Venezuelan state television images showed Maduro looking up disconcertedly in the middle of a speech having heard a bang, before members of the country’s National Guard lined up in the parade suddenly scattered.

“It was an attack to kill me, they tried to assassinate me today,” he said in a state broadcast, speaking of a “flying object (that) exploded in front of me.”

Communication Minister Jorge Rodriguez said there was “an explosive charge… detonated close to the presidential podium” and in several other spots along the parade held in central Caracas. Saab told CNN he saw a drone filming the event explode.

No drones could be seen in the television broadcast, which showed bodyguards jumping in front of Maduro to protect him with flexible ballistic shields. The broadcast was quickly cut.

Meanwhile, a policeman who requested anonymity told AFP that drones may have been released from a nearby apartment that suffered a fire after one exploded. However, other versions of events attributed the fire to the accidental explosion of a gas cylinder.

– Rebel claims –

The government pointed the blame at “the ultra-right wing” — its term for the opposition.

Screengrab taken from a handout video released by Venezuelan Television (VTV) showing uniformed military members breaking ranks and scattering after a loud bang was heard during a ceremony to celebrate the 81st anniversary of the National Guard in Caracas on August 4, 2018. // AFP PHOTO

But Maduro himself said: “I have no doubt that the name (outgoing Colombian President) Juan Manuel Santos is behind this attack.”

He added investigations pointed to financial backers who “live in the United States, in the state of Florida. I hope that President Donald Trump is ready to fight these terrorist groups.”

The Colombian foreign ministry denied involvement, saying the allegations were “absurd” and “lacked any foundations.”

A senior US State Department official said the White House was monitoring the situation closely, without commenting further. Elsewhere, Maduro’s allies Cuba and Bolivia condemned the incident.

Meanwhile, late Saturday, a civilian and military rebel group calling itself the “National Movement of Soldiers in T-shirts” claimed responsibility for the explosion.

“It is contrary to military honor to keep in government those who not only have forgotten the Constitution, but who have also made public office an obscene way to get rich,” the group said in a statement passed to US-based opposition journalist Patricia Poleo, who read it on her YouTube channel.

“If the purpose of a government is to achieve the greatest amount of happiness possible, we cannot tolerate that the population is suffering from hunger, that the sick do not have medicine, that the currency has no value, or that the education system neither educates or teaches, only indoctrinating communism,” the statement added.

– ‘Maximum alert’ –

The parade Maduro attended marked the one-year anniversary of the Constitutional Assembly, a legislative body packed with loyalists that arrogated powers from the opposition-ruled National Assembly.

Members of different security forces stand guard and take evidence after an explosion targeted President Nicolas Maduro, in Caracas, Venezuela, 04 August 2018. // EPA-EFE PHOTO

Maduro has remained in power in oil-rich Venezuela despite a collapsing economy and a long-running political crisis that has seen the country isolated internationally.

Hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans have fled due to food and medicine shortages and hyperinflation that could reach one million percent this year, according to the International Monetary Fund.

Maduro, a 55-year-old Socialist leader who took over from his late mentor Hugo Chavez in 2013, has effectively sidelined the fractured opposition through control of the courts and the electoral body — and undinting support from the military, which holds key posts in his government.

After the explosion, he ordered the military to be on “maximum alert.”

He also warned the opposition that investigations will get to the bottom of the alleged attack, “whoever falls” in the process.

Maduro often accuses the opposition and the United States of working together to foment a “coup” to topple him.

This year he brought forward to May presidential elections — boycotted by the opposition — which handed him a new six-year term.

“The author misunderstood and wrote the article to attack Thai leader [Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha] without considering the reality,” Don told reporters in Singapore, where he attended the annual Asean ministerial meeting.

Thailand is scheduled to take up the chairmanship of the regional grouping next year. The Jakarta Post columnist, Kornelius Purpa, wrote an article last week calling on Asean to deny Thai junta chief Prayut the chance to chair the grouping.

“The Thai junta does not deserve the position amid strong waves of democratisation in this region,” the article says.

“We just witnessed how Malaysians responded to a corrupt leader. Myanmar is also undergoing a major transformation of democracy, although de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi has not been able to fully control the country. The Philippines and Indonesia belong to a club of democratic nations despite domestic problems,” according to the columnist.

Don said being the chairman of Asean is not a personal matter, but one involving the country. Thailand as a country has to take the position in national and regional interest.

Thailand under the leadership of Prime Minister Prayut over the past four years has contributed and pushed forward many Asean projects and tasks, he said.

Prayut took power after staging a coup to topple the elected civilian government of Yingluck Shinawatra in May 2014.

While the international community strongly criticised the Thai junta for suppression of democracy and human rights, Don said the government provided good cooperation to the international community to solve many problems such as human trafficking and illegal fishery.

Thailand plans to have an election next year and Don said he expected the elected government would carry on the tasks initiated by his government.

While the idea to force Thailand to skip the Asean chairmanship was not discussed in the Asean meeting here over the past week, the article was widely talked about at home, notably among dissident groups.

Prayut on Saturday called on Thais to not use the issue of Asean chairmanship to cause further rifts in the country, Government Spokesman Lt-General Sansern Kaewkamnerd said.

Sansern quoted Prayut as saying that the Asean chairmanship is a matter for the entire country and all Thais, and does not belong to a specific person.

Asean forced Myanmar to forgo its 2006 chairmanship in order to push reforms for democratisation in the then-military-ruled country. Myanmar was given the chairmanship in 2014 when the country was run by Thein Sein after the 2010 election.