World

Tens of thousands of people have braved a steep, rugged trail in Iceland to catch a rare glimpse of an active volcano after it erupted last week, spewing red-hot lava into the sky.  

Tourism officials said Thursday that almost 23,000 people had made the difficult, hours-long trek to spot the volcano in the Meradalir valley, just 40 kilometres (25 miles) from the capital. 

“We’ve been here for three, four hours and we never get tired of it, it’s always moving”, said Jean-Paul Couturier, a French pensioner on vacation in Iceland.

The hike to the newly-formed crater is a 14 kilometres round-trip across tough terrain, with a 300-metre (985-foot) ascent. The walk takes about two hours from the nearest car park.

Strong winds and rain have done little to deter crowds.

On Wednesday alone — when authorities reopened the site following a three-day closure — more than 4,600 people took in the mesmerising views of the red-hot magma. 

The volcano is located in the Meradalir valley, an uninhabited area that would normally not attract more than a few visitors.

Known as the land of fire and ice, Iceland has 32 volcanic systems currently considered active, the highest number in Europe. It had an eruption every five years on average.

The latest volcano erupted in the Meradalir valley on August 3 and has continued at a fairly stable rate since, the Icelandic Meteorological Office said. 

– ‘Nature’s power’ –

“It would be very easy for it to last as long as the previous one”, vulcanologist Thorvaldur Thordarson told AFP.

Last year, lava spewed from the nearby Mount Fagradalsfjall volcano for six months, the longest eruption in Iceland in more than 50 years.

Hikers making the trek on Wednesday were well-equipped with walking sticks, hiking boots and rain gear. 

It was a sharp contrast from the shorts and flip flops worn by some of the first curious onlookers who initially rushed to the scene. 

Observers watch from a safe distance the red-orange lava fountains spurting as high as 70 meters before falling back to the ground, forming a large blanket of magma and a volcanic semi-cone as it solidified.

The lava reaches temperatures of 1,200 degrees Celsius (2,192 Fahrenheit), the hottest lava produced on Earth, and has so far flowed almost two kilometres to the south across the valley.

“The hot rock shooting out of the earth is really the first most impressive thing that you see,” American tourist James Maniscalco said.

For French tourist Clemence Ernoult, the experience was as rare as it gets. 

“You really see Nature’s power,” she said.  

“It’s something you’ll probably only see once in your life”.

Taiwan’s army held another live-fire drill Thursday after Beijing ended its largest-ever military exercises around the island and repeated threats to bring the self-ruled democracy under its control.

Beijing has raged at a trip to Taiwan last week by US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi — the highest-ranking elected American official to visit in decades — staging days of air and sea drills that raised tensions to their highest level in years.

Taiwan has accused China of using the Pelosi visit as an excuse to kickstart drills that would allow it to rehearse for an invasion.

Lou Woei-jye, spokesman for Taiwan’s Eighth Army Corps, told AFP its forces fired howitzers and target flares as part of the defensive drill on Thursday.

The exercise in Taiwan’s southernmost county Pingtung began at 08:30 am (0030 GMT) and lasted about an hour, he said.

Artillery tucked in from the coast was lined up side by side, with armed soldiers in units firing the howitzers out to sea one after the other, a live stream showed.

Taiwan held a similar drill on Tuesday in Pingtung. Both involved hundreds of troops, the military said.

The military has played down the exercises’ significance, saying they were already scheduled and were not in response to China’s war games. 

“We have two goals for the drills, the first is to certify the proper condition of the artillery and their maintenance condition and the second is to confirm the results of last year,” Lou said, referring to annual drills.

Taiwan routinely stages military drills simulating defence against a Chinese invasion.

On Thursday, Taipei’s army said it detected 21 Chinese planes and six ships operating in the Taiwan Strait, without specifying if they were conducting operations.

Of those, 11 planes crossed the median line, an unofficial demarcation between China and Taiwan that Beijing does not recognise.

– ‘Prepare for war’ –

Taiwan’s president Tsai Ing-wen thanked troops in a visit to an air force command headquarters on Thursday.

“Right now, China’s military threat has not lessened,” she said in a statement posted on her Facebook page.

“I will reiterate, we will not escalate the conflict or cause disputes, we will firmly defend our sovereignty and national security, and defend the front line of democracy and freedom.”

Taiwan’s latest exercise came after China’s military indicated its own drills had come to an end Wednesday, saying its forces “successfully completed various tasks” in the Taiwan Strait while vowing to continue patrolling its waters.

But in the same announcement, China said that it would “continue to carry out military training and prepare for war”.

In a white paper published the same day, China’s Taiwan Affairs Office said Beijing would “not renounce the use of force” against its neighbour and reserved “the option of taking all necessary measures”.

“We are ready to create vast space for peaceful reunification, but we will leave no room for separatist activities in any form,” it said in the paper.

China last issued a white paper on Taiwan in 2000.

Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council, the island’s top policymaking body on China, rejected the paper and said the document was “full of lies that are ‘wishful thinking and disregarding the facts'”.

Taiwan’s foreign ministry on Thursday joined the council in rebuffing the “one country, two systems” model that Beijing has proposed for the island. 

“China’s whole statement absolutely goes against the cross-strait status quo and its reality,” ministry spokesperson Joanne Ou told a press conference.

“China is using US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit as an excuse to destroy the status quo and taking the opportunity to make trouble, attempting to create a new normal to intimidate the Taiwanese people.”

The Chinese Communist Party’s Taiwan Affairs Office said in a statement Thursday that Taipei’s “rebellious actions are just a slap in the face and cannot stop the historical trend of reunification” with mainland China.

Pelosi has stood by her visit, saying Wednesday she was “very proud” of her delegation and believed China had used her visit as a “pretext” to launch its military exercises.

“We will not allow China to isolate Taiwan,” Pelosi told reporters in Washington.

In response to the Chinese military revealing it was bringing drills to an end, Taiwan’s army said it would “adjust how we deploy our forces… without letting our guard down”.

International observers expressed concern Thursday about the spread of disinformation during the long wait for results from Kenya’s election, as provisional counts point to a tight presidential race.

Preliminary results broadcast by local media indicate that Deputy President William Ruto and Raila Odinga, the veteran opposition leader now backed by the ruling party, are neck-and-neck, raising the likelihood of a challenge by the losing candidate.

No presidential poll outcome has gone uncontested in Kenya since 2002, and the disputes have led to bloodshed in the past, either involving ethnic clashes or police violence.

The Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) is under pressure to deliver a free and fair poll after 2017 presidential vote was annulled due to irregularities in the counting process and mismanagement by the election body. 

But with the complex process of verifying and tallying votes expected to take days, social media is swamped with disinformation about the results, with rights campaigners and civil society groups accusing both candidates’ camps of sharing misleading posts.

Observers from the Commonwealth warned on Thursday that the delay in releasing the results was allowing disinformation to spread rapidly online.

“The time lag between the announcement of the official results by the IEBC and the provisional, and at times conflicting, results announced by the media is an area of concern,” Bruce Golding, chairman of the Commonwealth Observer Group, told a press conference in Nairobi.

– ‘Need trust in the system’ –

At a separate briefing, observers from the United States also voiced concern about misinformation spreading as the counting process entered its third day.

“It is important that there is timely and accurate information and that all the citizens have access to that information,” said Donna Brazile of the National Democratic Institute.

“It is about the citizens having trust in the system and that is working properly. It is not about the continuation of campaigns — campaigns have ended, and results must be tabulated accurately to ensure confidence in the system.”

The remarks echoed concerns shared by Amnesty International and several Kenyan civil society groups on Wednesday about “rising levels of false or misleading information” being shared on social media.

They said in a statement that several posts by candidates and their supporters in the rival camps had “intentionally sought to misinform the electorate and the public” on the electoral process and election results.

“These include distortion, false information shared without malicious intent (misinformation) and those shared to deliberately deceive people (disinformation).”

Kenyans voted in six elections on Tuesday, choosing a new president as well as senators, governors, lawmakers, woman representatives and some 1,500 county officials in polls that were largely peaceful.

The IEBC has yet to publish a final turnout figure but as of Wednesday, turnout was just over 65 percent.

That compares with a final turnout of 78 percent in the disputed August 2017 election.

Observers from the East African Community (EAC) said the lower turnout, especially among Kenyans aged under 35, was worrying.

“This should concern everyone that young people are not participating in the process,” said Jakaya Kikwete, head of the bloc’s observation mission.

As economic pressures have mounted in the country of 50 million, with food and fuel costs shooting up, many Kenyans said they were fed up with electing leaders who had done little to ease their troubles.

“I have voted twice in my life and after the last election I decided I won’t even vote because it is a waste of time,” Ruth Musyoki, 40, told AFP in Nairobi.

South Korea’s capital has moved to ban the cramped basement flats made famous by Oscar-winning movie “Parasite” after four people drowned in subterranean dwellings during flooding caused by record-breaking rains this week.

Soldiers and relief workers were clearing debris Thursday from waterlogged, mud-covered homes in Gwanak district, an AFP reporter saw, where three tenants, including a disabled woman and a teenager, died Monday.

Their deaths — trapped by floodwater in their basement apartment — have caused public outrage, with President Yoon Suk-yeol visiting their destroyed home this week before calling on officials to do more to help the poor and vulnerable during natural disasters.

The Seoul Metropolitan Government has announced they want to get rid of tiny, cramped basement flats — known as “banjiha” — which are typically cheap to rent but prone to damp and flooding.

Around 200,000 households live in such flats, which make up around five percent of housing stock in the South Korean capital, according to official figures.

Seoul said in a press release Wednesday that it will stop issuing permits to construct such homes, while pushing to gradually phase out existing basement and semi-basement flats.

The city plans to begin discussions with the national government to ban the use of basements or semi-basement spaces for residential purposes, it added.

Four out of 11 people killed in this week’s record downpours drowned after their basement flats were inundated with floodwater, officials have said.

Such abodes received global attention due to Bong Joon Ho’s “Parasite”, which won the 2020 Best Picture Oscar and features a poor family living in a dank basement home.

Activists blamed the “banjiha” deaths this week on the government’s housing policies, saying they were preventable disasters.

“We condemn the government’s negligence regarding those marginalised people in this housing,” said the Citizens’ Coalition for Economic Justice in a statement.

“As rainfall becomes stronger and more frequent under the influence of climate change, (Seoul) must embark on a fundamental change of its approach to basement residents,” it added.

Yoon has also blamed climate change for the rains and flooding, which he said were the worst since weather records began over a century ago.

“Those who struggle financially or with physical difficulties are bound to be more vulnerable to natural disasters,” he said.