SRN NEWS

PONTIANAK, Indonesia (AP) — Thick smoke from forest fires has disrupted airline flights for several days in Indonesia’s West Kalimantan province as an intensifying El Niño weather pattern and a prolonged dry season worsen the impact of blazes. Since Friday, a thick white and yellowish haze has blanketed the city of Pontianak, reducing visibility to less than 1 kilometer (0.62 miles). Poor air quality and limited visibility have also hampered firefighting efforts, carried out with equipment from Japan that arrived on Thursday. Across Indonesia, seasonal forest fires are beginning to subside, but thick haze still shrouds parts of the island of Kalimantan. In a written statement on Monday, the Ministry of Forestry stated that the latest monitoring data shows a significant decrease in so-called “high-confidence” hot spots, strongly suspected to be caused by forest fires, in Central Kalimantan and West Kalimantan. There are no high-confidence hot spots in Riau province. “The thick smoke we’re currently experiencing, if we look in the direction the wind is blowing, is also smoke carried here from other provinces on the island of Kalimantan that are also on fire,” said the head of the Disaster Information Task Force at the West Kalimantan Provincial Disaster Management Agency, Daniel, who like other Indonesians only uses a single name. Residents are also beginning to hope that the smoke from the forest fires, which have been burning for over a month, will soon dissipate so that it no longer poses a health threat. “Hopefully, we pray to God for His protection; may we be blessed by Allah, and may rain fall once again on the land of Pontianak,” said Aminah, a resident of Pontianak. Fires continue to burn in several parts of Kalimantan, particularly in the provinces of West and Central Kalimantan, according to Indonesia’s National Disaster Management Agency. The Forestry Ministry recorded more than 202,000 hectares of burned land between January and July, an area nearly three times the size of Singapore. Toxic haze and smoke have caused a health crisis in neighboring countries. The smoke has drifted as far as the Philippines, more than 800 kilometers (500 miles) away, and breached Malaysia’s emergency-level threshold for air pollution, forcing authorities to declare an emergency last week in the Malaysian part of Boa town in Sarawak state, the Malaysian part of Borneo. The air pollution has also affected several areas on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, forcing schools to suspend learning activities at school. The toxic haze has affected more than 1.4 million students across the country. Indonesian authorities have intensified firefighting operations across several provinces in an effort to contain the blazes. The response has included aircraft provided by regional and international partners, including Japan, the United States, Russia, Australia, Canada and Ukraine. Brought to you by www.srnnews.com

Democratic state parties announced Monday that they are launching an operation for the midterm elections they’re calling the “New Battlefield Project,” intended to recruit 10,000 volunteers to guard polling places in case armed federal officers show up. Activists are planning mass protests if the Trump administration tries to interfere with voting or ballot counting. And legal scholars are distributing white papers advising judges what they should do if the government tries to seize ballots. The unprecedented efforts are in response to President Donald Trump’s equally unprecedented moves to interfere in this year’s midterm elections, which include attempts to impose proof-of-citizenship requirements to register to vote and directing the Postal Service to play a central role in deciding which voters should get a mail ballot. The anxious contingency planning as voting gets underway has become a marker for how fraught democracy has become in the country that once stood as an example to the world. “We have never prepared for an election sabotage event like we have now,” said Ezra Levin of the left-leaning group Indivisible. Democrats say they have reason to plan for doomsday scenarios. During his first term, Trump refused to accept his 2020 loss to Democrat Joe Biden and attempted to overturn the vote, only to be defied by career officials and more establishment Republicans. Upon returning to power, Trump has stocked his administration with those who helped his 2020 efforts, has used the federal government to target his political enemies and pardoned more than 1,000 people prosecuted for the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol that was intended to halt the certification of Biden’s win. Incumbent presidents’ parties usually lose ground in the midterms, but Trump has pulled out the stops to try to keep that from happening this time. He’s demanded Republicans redraw maps to create more safe seats for themselves in the House of Representatives, held last week’s unusual midterm convention and tried to change election rules even as states begin to send out ballots. The advice for judges asked to approve search warrants for ballots, for example, was inspired by the Trump administration’s seizure of 2020 ballots and other election records in Fulton County, Georgia, which includes Atlanta, based on old, disproven conspiracy theories. Rick Hasen, a UCLA Law professor and director of the school’s Safeguarding Democracy Project, noted that Trump has expressed regret that he didn’t take more aggressive action to overturn the 2020 results, such as ordering voting machines to be seized. “All these things take what was off the wall and put it on the wall,” Hasen said. He said that while it is important not to unduly scare voters about what might happen, it’s “hard to walk the line between alarmism and complacency.” Last year, Democrats worried that Trump might intervene in off-year elections in California, Virginia and elsewhere, only to have voting go smoothly with no clashes with the federal government. “The only ‘fears’ Americans have about our elections are being fueled by extreme liberal Democrats who refuse to support commonsense legislation that ensures Americans, and Americans only, decide our elections and other basic election security measures like Voter ID,” White House spokeswoman Lauren Blis said in a statement. Still, the stakes are far higher in the midterms, which will determine whether Republicans continue to control both houses of Congress. So far Trump has been unable to change voting procedures before the midterms. Courts halted Trump’s first attempt to reshape election rules via executive order last year. The president backed a bill in Congress to make even more sweeping changes but it’s stalled in the Senate because of opposition from Democrats and some Republicans. Then Trump tried to limit mail voting by executive order, but the courts again blocked it, saying the changes couldn’t happen before the midterms. That case is before the Supreme Court. Election officials warn that it would be impossible to implement Trump’s requirements in time for this election. Litigation about election rules has reached such a pitch that the National Bar Association last week announced an initiative to help voters of both parties understand last-minute election rule changes and to create a hotline for those who encounter trouble casting ballots. Every election, the two major parties mobilize massive operations of attorneys, staffers and volunteers to monitor polling places and ballot counting. The Republican National Committee said it’s already recruited a record number of poll watchers. “The RNC has spent this entire cycle preparing not just to defy history in November, but to protect it,” spokeswoman Ally Triolo said. “We’ve built the largest election integrity operation in Republican Party history because our mission is simple: secure every legal vote and ensure Americans can trust the outcome of our elections.” Democrats also have expanded their operations, and the Association of State Democratic Parties is adding to that effort with its “battlefield” recruitment project. That also will include a network to share information about online threats and manipulation, said Jane Kleeb, the chair of the group and of the Nebraska Democratic Party. “If they’re saying they’re going to put armed people outside polling places, we should put friendly people outside polling locations to film them,” Kleeb said in an interview. “There’s a whole new battlefield we have now.” Kleeb was referring to widespread fears among Democrats that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers will be deployed to the polls, something that multiple administration officials for months have denied will happen. There have been scattered instances of ICE officers at polling places over the past year, usually saying they’re in pursuit of or investigating a specific person. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said this month it’s possible that could happen again in November. In an indication of the distrust of the administration’s reassurances, civil rights groups and the city of Denver last week filed a lawsuit asking a federal judge to formally bar ICE from polling places. They cited a law dating to the Civil War era prohibiting armed federal agents at election sites. “This administration is basically using the rhetoric that undocumented citizens are voting and that they’re going to have DHS and ICE at the polls to try and intimidate and suppress the Latino vote,” said Juan Proaño, CEO of the League of United Latin American Citizens, one of the plaintiffs. A staple of the election buildup is a series of tabletop exercises in which each side runs hypothetical scenarios to practice its response. As part of that, Democrats and civil rights groups are rehearsing for the possible deployment of ICE agents or the National Guard to polling sites, although the Pentagon has said it has no plans to deploy troops to the polls. Levin, of Indivisible, said his group has run 17 different scenarios preparing for what could happen in November. But the first priority, he said, is to boost turnout. The No Kings network, which has spearheaded large anti-Trump protests over the president’s second term and includes Indivisible, is launching a campaign encouraging early voting that will peak with rallies Oct. 17. Others are organizing among both left-wing and more traditional groups to push back if the administration is aggressive in November. Some look to the anti-ICE protests in Minneapolis as a possible model. Two activists were shot and killed by ICE agents during those January demonstrations, and the administration eventually backed off the aggressive crackdown the president had launched against the city. “We recognize there might be a similar moment in November, where Trump attempts to do that again, where everyday working people and students need to band together and say, ‘Actually, no, this is our country, you don’t get to decide who gets elected or who gets to take office,’” said Kidus Girma of the left-wing Sunrise Movement. Brought to you by www.srnnews.com

ALAMO, Texas (AP) — A segment of border wall erected in late July stands incomplete along the edge of a wildlife refuge in Alamo, Texas, after a lawsuit halted work. Lush public land in the Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge is a corridor for hundreds of thousands of birds and butterflies migrating to South America. Visitors glimpse rare species, walk trails and take in views from an iconic suspended bridge. The refuge is home to armadillos, warblers, bats, snakes and two endangered cat species that run through its over 2,000 acres (about 809 hectares). An irrigation canal hugs the northern perimeter of the refuge, connecting water with farmland in this agriculture hub. Border Patrol agents working the dense foliage patrol the park on bicycles and set up a rescue beacon with a push button that signals to them if anyone needs to be rescued, though it’s mostly used by hikers who get lost on the winding trails. Border walls are part of the landscape built under the Bush and Obama administrations to deter illegal crossings. In late July, the Trump administration began erecting more wall — but Hidalgo County Irrigation District No. 2, which manages a canal near the refuge, filed a lawsuit last month saying the construction company entered its property without consent and began dumping “significant dirt” into its canal. An order paused construction until mid-October and remains in litigation. The lawsuit is one of several attempting to stop construction along protected or public lands as the administration races ahead with efforts to build a $46 billion wall along the U.S.-Mexico border from the Pacific Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico. A lawsuit failed last month to halt the construction in Presidio, Texas after arguing the wall could cause flooding problems. Construction in Southern Arizona in late August pressed forward through a Native American tribe’s reservation in spite of objections. In West Texas, construction in Big Bend National Park drew public outrage from both sides of the political aisle. ___ This is a documentary photo story curated by AP photo editors. Brought to you by www.srnnews.com

Yemen’s Houthi rebels have seized the strategic islands of Greater and Lesser Hanish in the southern Red Sea, bolstering the Iranian-backed rebels’ ability to control a key maritime shipping route. Meanwhile, Iran says Saudi Arabia was behind Oman’s decision to postpone a meeting bringing together Iran with other regional countries to discuss the Strait of Hormuz. In Iraq, two people died and more than 100 others were injured after an ammonia gas leak at a fertilizer plant in the country’s south. Here’s a look at the latest news in the Middle East. Full coverage can be found here. Houthi officials said Monday they had taken over the two islands just as Saudi-backed government forces tried to claw back territory from the rebels’ swift advances around the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, a crucial shipping alternative to the Strait of Hormuz. Iran effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz — through which a fifth of the world’s traded oil and gas transits in peacetime — in the opening days of the war. The Saudis have since used Bab el-Mandeb Strait that leads out of the Red Sea for crude oil exports. The Houthis’ newest takeover, following the seizure of the Red Sea port of Mokha and a strategic island last week, puts more pressure on Saudi shipments and, in turn, global oil supplies and prices. This could give Iran additional leverage in its war with the United States. China, a major Middle East oil importer, on Monday called Houthi attacks on Saudi energy infrastructure “unacceptable” and said it was “deeply concerned” about further escalations by the rebels against Saudi Arabia. Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun said “attacks on civilian infrastructure that is important to people’s livelihoods are unacceptable.” He called on all sides to exercise restraint and resolve disputes through dialogue. Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei said Monday Saudi Arabia had “demanded” that a meeting bringing together Iran with other regional countries to discuss the Strait of Hormuz be scrapped “for the time being.” Baghaei called the meeting, which was to be hosted by Oman, a “proper opportunity” to restore security in the region. The spokesman said an agreement between Iran and Oman on the Strait of Hormuz has been finalized and it will be announced later. Saudi Arabia had submitted amendments to the agreement, citing concerns it could have lasting implications for the Strait of Hormuz, negatively impacting other Gulf Cooperation Council countries, according to a Gulf official familiar with the matter who was not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity. Iran denounced on Monday Austria’s refusal to issue visas to the Iranian nuclear chief and other delegation members for the International Atomic Energy Agency’s General Conference in Vienna, calling the decision “completely unjustified.” Esmail Baghaei, Iran’s Foreign ministry spokesman, said Tehran summoned the Austrian chargé d’affaires, saying Austria was obligated as the host country to issue the visas. Baghaei accused Western countries of denying Iran an opportunity to defend itself and blamed the U.S. for pressuring Austria to deny the visas. The refusal is part of U.N. sanctions on Iran, reinstated last year, that include a travel ban on Iranian officials. Last week, the U.N. atomic watchdog’s board reported Iran to the U.N. Security Council for the first time in 20 years, citing failure to cooperate in a long-running investigation into uranium traces detected by inspectors at undeclared sites. The B’Tselem human rights group said Monday Israel is carrying out a systematic and accelerated project aimed at “dismantling the foundations of Palestinian existence” in the occupied West Bank. The group made the accusation in a new report that claims Israeli actions against Palestinians in the West Bank by settlers and the military are designed to undermine Palestinian collective life “while entrenching a permanent system of Jewish supremacy” across the territory. Settler violence in the West Bank has surged under the ultranationalist government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Rights groups say the military frequently turns a blind eye to the violence, and that when it intervenes it often focuses on protecting the settlers. The B’Tselem report also claims that Israeli actions rely heavily on open cooperation between state authorities and armed settlers who attack Palestinian communities using weapons and vehicles supplied by the state while the military either fails to prevent the violence or, in some cases, participates in it. The report adds that as of July, Israel had taken control of more than 264,402 acres – nearly a fifth of the West Bank — through “armed settler militias.” Most of the international community views settlements as illegal. Iraq’s health ministry said Monday an ammonia gas leak at a fertilizer plant in the southern province of Basra killed two people and injured 114 others. Health Ministry spokesman Saif al-Badr said most of the injuries were minor, but 21 people remain hospitalized. ___ This report will be updated throughout the day as new developments emerge. Brought to you by www.srnnews.com

BERLIN (AP) — Germany’s federal prosecutor’s office said Monday it had filed charges against a German-Ukrainian woman suspected of acting on behalf of Russian intelligence. The woman, who was only identified as Ilona W. in line with German privacy rules, is accused of having been in contact with a full-time intelligence officer at the Russian Embassy in Berlin at least since Oct. 2023, the prosecutor’s statement said. The defendant ran a marketing agency in Berlin and was also the chairwoman of a lobbying group. As a result, she had an extensive network in military and political circles, prosecutors said. Over the course of several years, the woman provided the intelligence officer at the Russian embassy with numerous tips about high-profile events and ensured that he could attend them — sometimes under a false name. This was intended to enable him to build his own network for intelligence purposes, the statement said. To identify contacts and potential targets, she also attended such events herself. Furthermore, the defendant attempted to recruit individuals from the German Ministry of Defense and the defense industry for her own purposes, prosecutors alleged. On behalf of her contact at the Russian embassy, the defendant sought information on German defense policy and the defense industry, particularly in light of Russia’s war on Ukraine. The woman was arrested in January and charges were filed on Sept. 6. She remains in pretrial detention. Brought to you by www.srnnews.com