The incident happened after police on Sunday raided several beauty salons in conservative Aceh province and rounded up a dozen transgender employees over claims they had teased a group of boys.

Police accused the employees of violating the province’s religious laws.

Dozens of locals tried to attack the group of beauticians as they were hauled off to the police station, but they were pushed back by authorities, they said.

Police then lopped off some members’ long hair with scissors as well as forcing the group to wear male clothing and speak in a masculine voice.

“We have reports from mothers that their sons were teased by the transgender women,” local police chief Ahmad Untung Surianata told AFP Monday.

“Their numbers are growing here — I don’t want that,” he added.

Aceh on Sumatra island has been ruled by Islamic law since it was granted special autonomy in 2001 — an attempt by the central government to quell a long-running separatist insurgency.

This month a Christian was publicly flogged for selling alcohol in the conservative region, making him only the third non-Muslim in Indonesia to suffer a public whipping.

Flogging is a common punishment under Aceh’s religious law and local police are also known to shave the heads of those accused of anti-social behaviour.

The transgender women would be detained for several days followed by a five-day “training” regimen including efforts to make them walk and speak in a more “manly” way, as well as “morals teaching” by local clerics, police said.

“We want to change their mentality so they can be better people,” Surianata said.

Homosexuality and gay sex are legal everywhere in Indonesia except in Aceh.

But police have often used the country’s tough anti-pornography legislation to criminalise members of the LGBT community, and there have been a recent string of arrests.

Prejudice against transgender people has long been widespread in Indonesia but the discrimination is particularly acute in Aceh where Islamic law rules.

“It’s very strange that officers (in Sunday’s incident) would arrest innocent people and cut off their hair,” said gay rights activist Hartoyo, who like many Indonesians goes by one name.

“It’s barbaric.”//AFP

The man, identified as Rajesh Maru, was carrying an oxygen cylinder as he accompanied his elderly relative into the MRI room at BYL Nair Charitable Hospital, reported The Statesman newspaper.

Maru’s brother-in-law, Harish Solanki, said a ward boy told them it was fine to bring in the cylinder. However, objects containing metals are not allowed inside the MRI room as they could be pulled by the machine’s powerful magnet.

“When we told him that metallic things aren’t allowed inside an MRI room, he said ‘sab chalta hai, hamara roz ka kaam hai’ (it’s fine, we do it every day). He also said that the machine was switched off. The doctor as well as the technician didn’t say anything,” Solanki said.

Eyewitnesses said Maru was pulled into the machine with great force.

“As soon as Rajesh entered with the cylinder, it turned out that the machine was on. He was sucked in and his hand got stuck there. His body swelled up and he couldn’t speak. It’s because of their carelessness that Rajesh died,” Solanki was quoted as saying by NDTV.

Maru was reportedly bleeding heavily when he was pulled away. He was rushed to the emergency ward where he died within 10 minutes.

BJP lawmaker Mangal Prabhat Lodha has demanded compensation and stern action against those responsible for Maru’s death, according to NDTV.

A police case has been filed against the hospital’s doctor Siddhant Shah, ward boy Vitthal Chavan and ward attendant Sunita Surve for causing death by negligence. All three were arrested yesterday, reported ANI.

The hospital’s dean, Dr Ramesh Bharmal, said they are conducting an inquiry into the incident.

The move has not only caused job losses of about 50 Bangladeshis but also revenue losses for the civil aviation authority and Bangladesh Biman that conducts the ground handling works at Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport, industry insiders said.

Oman Air operated on Dhaka-Chittagong route for nearly a decade, but the Middle Eastern carrier suspended its operations from Chittagong in May last year and from Dhaka five months later.

Bangkok Airways that spread its wings to Dhaka in 2011 suspended operations in November last year, and Thai Smile, the lower cost version of Thai Airways, in July, just after four months of operations.

“Oman Air shut down its operations in Bangladesh and some other places due to commercial reasons,” said Ashraful Kabir, the former country manager of the national carrier of the Sultanate of Oman.

Rising oil price in recent months has made the business difficult, he said.

Kabir, however, said Oman Air will introduce a low-cost flight from Bangladesh soon.

There are about 30 foreign airlines operating from Bangladesh. All the carriers are from Asia; no European or American airlines have operations here.

Kazi Wahidul Alam, an aviation expert, said the shutting down of any foreign airline’s operations gives a wrong message to the rest of the aviation world.

He gave the example of KLM, the royal Dutch airline that wound up its operations from Bangladesh several years ago.

Lufthansa, which is the largest German airline, was thinking of entering the Bangladesh market, but KLM’s decision made them change their mind.

“More airlines mean more competition, which gives price benefits to passengers,” said Alam, a former director of state-run Biman Bangladesh Airlines. On the revenue side, he said an airline has to pay $7,000 to $10,000 for ground handling of each flight, while the civil aviation authority earns another $3,000 to $4,000 by rendering other services.

Revenue is also generated from cargo handling, he said.

“The government should take the issue seriously. The authorities concerned should have sat with the three airlines to find out why they were closing their operations here.”

In photos of the aftermath shared on Facebook, the red Mazda is seen mounted on the pavement. Its front bumper appeared to be heavily damaged after hitting the railing at the base of the bridge’s staircase.

The police said they were alerted to the accident involving a car in Jurong East Central, towards Science Centre Road, at about 7.30am. The woman was conscious when taken to Ng Teng Fong General Hospital.

The Straits Times understands that the woman, who was alone in the car, had minor injuries. It is believed that she was driving along the road when she got a shock at seeing a cockroach in the car.

She then lost control of her vehicle and swerved in the direction of the overhead bridge. Her son arrived at the scene shortly after the accident. Police investigations are ongoing

A report posted to the National Police website Saturday said that police on Thursday “cracked down on a place where pornographic pictures and tools were displayed” in an operation led by Deputy Provincial Anti-Human Trafficking Police Chief Duong Thavry and coordinated by Siem Reap Provincial Court Prosecutor Keut Vannareth.

Thavry declined to comment today, referring questions to the prosecutor before adding “this case affects the face of the country”.

According to the report, 77 tourists were brought to the provincial headquarters, “educated and let free”, while 10 suspects – whom the report labelled “organisers” – were arrested.

Prosecutor Vannareth would only say he was taking action according to legal procedures before hanging up on a reporter.

Subsequent calls to Vannareth and Thavry went unanswered.

Court spokesperson Yin Srang could not be reached, while Riem Channy, a spokesperson for the court prosecutor, and Thavry’s direct superior Chea Heng, both said they lacked enough information to comment. Tep Channa, the Siem Reap town police chief, confirmed the operation was carried out by provincial police and that the municipal authorities were not involved. Tit Narong, Siem Reap provincial police chief, could not be reached for comment.

According to the National Police posting, the 10 comprised six British nationals, two Canadians, one New Zealander and one defendant whose citizenship was not identified, though Britain’s Foreign Office said in a statement that it was in contact with the British nationals arrested in Cambodia, and the number of suspects was five, not six.

A relative of one of the detainees, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that the British Embassy in Phnom Penh had said the suspects were sent to pre-trial detention after appearing in court today on the accusation they had produced pornographic photos, a charge which is pending investigation. If charged and convicted under Article 39 of a law on sexual exploitation, which covers pornography, they could face one month to one year imprisonment and a fine of 200,000 to 2,000,000 riels, or about $50 to $500.

The family member also said the 10 were made to sign and thumbprint documents in Khmer by the court prosecutor. They described the arrest as occurring at a party at a private residence.

“At 4pm, 30 police officers arrived and arrested him and his friends. Ladies that were sunbathing by the pool in bikinis were told not to dress and had photos taken,” the relative said, adding that police demanded bribes. Information about court procedures or the nature of the charges was also seemingly withheld from the detainees, according to the relative.

Alongside group shots of the suspects, the National Police also posted photos of people – fully clothed – appearing to engage in simulated sex acts. However, the individuals appear to be different from those arrested and the photos were taken at night, though the crackdown occurred during daylight hours.

In past years, authorities have clamped down on visitors posting indecent pictures of themselves at the nearby temples in the Angkor Archaeological Park, which is considered a holy site as well as a major tourism draw, but Siem Reap has otherwise long been tolerant of throngs of backpackers and other visitors engaging in the raucous local nightlife and bar scene.

While some bases are well known to groups that want to attack them, the map also shows what appear to be routes taken by forces moving outside of bases — information that could be used in planning bombings or ambushes.

The map, made by Strava Labs, shows the movements of its app users around the world, indicating the intensity of travel along a given path — a “direct visualization of Strava’s global network of athletes,” it says.

Routes are highlighted over large parts of some countries, but in others, specific locations stand out.

The map of Iraq is largely dark, indicating limited use of Strava’s app, but a series of well-known military bases where American and US-led anti-jihadist coalition forces have been deployed are highlighted in detail.

These include Taji north of Baghdad, Qayyarah south of Mosul, Speicher near Tikrit and Al-Asad in Anbar Province.

Smaller sites are also highlighted on the map in northern and western Iraq, indicating the presence of other, lesser-known installations.

More dangerously, stretches of road are also highlighted, indicating that Strava users kept their devices on while traveling, potentially providing details about commonly-taken routes.

In Afghanistan, Bagram Air Field north of Kabul is a hive of activity, as are several locations in the country’s south. And in Syria, Qamishli in the northwest, a stronghold of US-allied Kurdish forces, is clearly visible.

Tobias Schneider, a security analyst who was among the group of people who discovered that the map showed military bases, noted that it indicated military sites in Syria, as well as the Madama base used by French forces in Niger.

“In Syria, known Coalition (i.e. US) bases light up the night. Some light markers over known Russian positions, no notable coloring for Iranian bases,” Schneider wrote on Twitter.

“A lot of people are going to have to sit thru lectures come Monday morning,” he wrote, referring to soldiers likely to be taken to task for inadvertently revealing sensitive information while trying to keep in shape.

The issue could have been fairly easily avoided: According to Strava, “athletes with the Metro/heatmap opt-out privacy setting have all data excluded.”

Caption : From a makeshift structure, the village hall is now a concrete building that hosts community activities.

The now infamous Mamasapano massacre, which ensued during an operation against a terrorist, had thrust what was once a neglected village of about 2,700 people into the limelight and made the government realize how forsaken it was, Arbaiyah Amelil said.

Amelil’s small “sari-sari” store was located less than 100 meters from where one of the clashes that killed Malaysian Zulkifli bin Hir, alias Marwan, on Jan. 25, 2015, took place.

“Life has improved, there’s a big difference now,” Amelil, 31, said as she recounted how the people of the village used to struggle with the lack of infrastructure in the area.

Even the bridge that connected the interior of the village to the main road was difficult to cross in the past as it was made only of bamboo poles and wooden slabs. Transporting goods to market was challenging, the store owner added.

Arbaiyah Amelil explains how her store—right across the village hall—has been earning as much as P1,000 a day.

P1,000 a day

Three years after that fateful day, Amelil said villagers like her had been enjoying what government should have provided early on—ease of access through roads and bridges and other development projects.

“I used to earn less than P100 a day. Now I earn as much as P1,000 a day, depending on the day’s activities in the village center,” Amelil said of her store, which was just across the village hall here.

The village hall itself had been rebuilt and was now made of concrete, from being a makeshift structure of wood and bamboo.

The concrete structure also has a covered court “thanks to the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) government and the Maguindanao provincial government,” Amelil said.

At least 60 percent of barangay roads had since been concreted, said Ismael Hashim, village chief.  Such development projects, he added,  had helped improve the village’s peace and order condition such that it was now considered “outsider-friendly.”

“That (Mamasapano) incident was really gruesome, but it changed the way people here live,” Hashim said, adding that people used to carry firearms even if they were only attending prayers at the mosque.

“After that clash, people realized that they could be mistaken for freedom fighters or terrorists, so instead of guns, they now give more attention to farming corn,” he said.

Villagers, too, have become more vigilant since that fateful day, Hashim said.

“The suspicious presence of armed men would immediately be reported to the police or military, unlike before when people would just close their doors and windows and quietly leave the place,” he added.

Mute witness

A concrete bridge was now being built beside the “mute witness” to the carnage, the bamboo and wooden footbridge used by the SAF to cross Kabulnan River to get to the hut where the Malaysian terrorist had stayed. The concrete bridge would replace the temporary steel bridge put up in the aftermath of the clash.

A footbridge and access road constructed at the site of the Mamasapano encounter.

“This bridge will further improve the economic activities here, but I will not say thanks to the massacre or the encounter,” Hashim said.

He said that before the bloody incident, farmers from the other side of the river would spend P40 to P50 per sack of corn transported by a carabao-drawn cart to a wooden banca.  After crossing the river, the sacks of corn would then be transferred to another carabao-drawn cart for transport to the town center.

“Now farmers only spend P10 per sack of corn from here to the town center using tricycles known here as ‘payong-payong,’” Hashim said.

Amelil said one way of judging how life had improved here after the carnage was the presence of “pedicabs” and “single” motorbikes traversing what used to be known as the “less traveled dirt road” from the village hall to Tukanalipao bridge.

‘Bridge of Peace’

“There were few pedicabs in the past.  Seldom do they dare enter here,” she added. “Instead, there were mostly carabaos, horses and cargo trucks.”

The payong-payong (umbrella-covered pedicab) drivers and farmers now “happily transport farm produce” across the steel and wooden bridge built by the ARMM government to temporarily replace the old footbridge.

Called “The Bridge of Peace,” it was built “months after the massacre. A permanent concrete bridge was expected to be completed in May this year,” Hashim said of the P180-million bridge being built over Kabulnan River.

“In the past, our harvest would rot because farmers could not bring them to the market on time. Now, it’s a lot easier because as soon as farmers harvest their crops, they can immediately deliver the produce to the market,” he added.

Another boon after Mamasapano:  “All homes are now enjoying electricity,” the village chief said.

The incident, Amelil said, was “horrific and appalling, but we have moved on.”

Although she was among those who fled after the incident, she said the village “had left that incident behind and was trying to move forward.”

“Hopes remain high for us and we expect more government infrastructure to find their way here,” said Irene Abutazil, 36, another villager. “I believe that when there is development, there is peace. When people are earning, there is peace.”

This wood and bamboo footbridge, since washed away by floods, was a mute witness to the Mamasapano carnage.

Wiping poverty

Amir Mawallil, the director of the ARMM’s Bureau of Public Information, said ARMM Gov. Mujiv Hataman believed that infrastructure projects were a key to wiping poverty here and in other parts of Maguindanao.

Maguindanao Gov. Esmael Mangudadatu agreed, citing the “experience in Buluan (town).”

Mangudadatu added: “The more the economy improved, the more the town became peaceful because residents could devote more time to livelihood than to guns.”

Mawallil also said that the Mamasapano incident, while horrific, had become an opportunity for the government to respond to the community’s needs.

He said that in 2016 alone, the ARMM government earmarked P667 million for infrastructure projects in the whole of Mamasapano, which went into barangay roads, job opportunities, new school buildings, improved health services, as well as safe drinking water projects, which were implemented through the ARMM’s Health, Education, Livelihood, Peace and Governance and Synergy (ARMM-HELPS).

“Other infrastructure projects in Mamasapano are ongoing,” said James Mlok, head of the ARMM’s 2nd district engineering office.

ARMM-HELPS executive director Anwar Upam said that Hataman also ordered the creation of more livelihood programs for the town and other Maguindanao areas.

Engineer Baintan Ampatuan, the Regional Planning and Development Office executive director, said that the ARMM government also conducted a “Peoples’ Day” here on Thursday, to remember the massacre with medical-dental services, supplemental feeding, bloodletting and dispersal of fingerlings and seedlings to the locals.

Amelil said the carnage also changed the way women in the village went through their day to day activities.

“In the past, we have no other source of income but farming. Now, many women here are daily earners after the various livelihood training conducted by the ARMM and Maguindanao governments,” Amelil said.

Despite all these positive changes, Hashim said that for the locals, forgetting what happened in January 2015 was not possible.

“It will always be remembered,” he said, pausing beside the bridge to offer prayers.

Roni Gunawan built the “two-faced” car with the help of colleagues in Bandung, West Java province, by welding together the front halves of two orange Toyota Limos.

The head-turning vehicle — which took about three-and-a-half months to build — has two engines, two steering wheels and two sets of pedals.

Its dual features make it particularly easy to park, Gunawan told AFP.

Photo : AFP

But the 71-year-old’s dream has hit a serious speed bump: local authorities have ticketed him, saying he lacks the necessary permits for the modifications.

Despite the setback, Gunawan has vowed to get the vehicle roadworthy so it can see another day.

“I will not be making a second,” he said. “It’s new in Indonesia — two faces, two machines.”//AFP

The official Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (Phivolcs) issued the warning as heavy rains lashed the surroundings of the Mayon volcano, which has been emitting flaming lava and giant clouds of superheated ash for about a week.

Rainwater could combine with the volcanic ash and rock to form deadly, fast-moving mudflows — called “lahars” — that could sweep away entire settlements, authorities said.

“If there is ash fall and heavy rain, it can be converted into (a) lahar,” Phivolcs chief Renato Solidum told AFP.

“The important thing is to move out in case of heavy rains… this is a precautionary measure.”

The institute earlier said in an advisory that 25 million cubic metres (about 883 million cubic feet) of ash and other volcanic material had recently been emitted by Mayon, settling on its slopes and the surrounding area.

It warned that this could result in lahars flowing into waterways and called on officials to move residents near rivers to higher ground.

An explosion of the 2,460-metre (8,070-foot) Mayon in August 2006 did not directly kill anyone but four months later, a typhoon unleashed an avalanche of volcanic mud from Mayon’s slopes that claimed 1,000 lives.

Phivolcs said Mayon had emitted fountains of lava on Friday but bad weather was preventing observation of the volcano’s activity on Saturday.

Volcanic mudflows have been a perennial problem during and after volcanic eruptions in the Philippines, which sits on the “Ring of Fire” — islands in the Pacific that were formed by volcanic activity.

The government has already evacuated more than 84,000 people from a “danger zone” stretching as far as nine kilometres (six miles) around Mayon over fears of a possible deadly eruption.

Mayon, located about 330 kilometres (205 miles) southeast of the capital Manila, is the most active of the country’s 22 volcanoes — and one of the deadliest.

Four foreign tourists and their local tour guide were killed when it last erupted in May 2013.

In 1814, more than 1,200 people were killed when lava flows buried the nearby town of Cagsawa.