CNN
 — 

A volcanic eruption in Indonesia sent an enormous ash cloud more than six miles into the sky, disrupting or canceling dozens of flights to and from the tourist island of Bali.

Mount Lewotobi Laki Laki erupted at 5:35pm local time on Tuesday, unleashing a 6.8-mile (11-kilometer) hot ash column over the tourist island of Flores in south-central Indonesia, the country’s Geology Agency said.

Images showed an orange mushroom-shaped cloud engulfing the nearby village of Talibura with sightings reported up to 93 miles (150km) away.

Officials issued the country’s highest alert and urged tourists to stay away.

Dozens of flights were halted in Bali, according to Denpasar International Airport website, which marked the disruptions “due to volcano.”

They included domestic routes to Jakarta and Lombok as well as others to Australia, China, India, Malaysia, New Zealand and Singapore.

Fransiskus Xaverius Seda Airport was closed until Thursday, “to ensure the safety of the passengers,” airport operator AirNav said in an Instagram post.

Singapore’s Changi Airport website shows Jetstar and Scoot canceled flights to Bali Wednesday morning while AirAsia called off its midday flight to the Indonesian capital.

Holidaymakers Athirah Rosli, 31, and her husband Fadzly Yohannes, 33, woke up this morning to discover that their Jetstar flight home from Bail to Singapore was canceled.

“My first reaction was annoyed and panicked but I calmed down almost immediately,” Rosli told CNN.

“My husband and I looked at new flights, booked more accommodation and insurance and then had breakfast at our hotel,” she said.

“I see it was a blessing in disguise that we’re safe and well.”

The volcano’s eruption follows significant volcanic activities, including 50 in two hours, up from the average eight to 10 activities per day.

The 5,197-foot (1,584-meter) twin volcano erupted again Wednesday morning, spewing a 0.62-mile (1km) ash cloud, officials confirmed.

Dozens of residents in two nearby villages were evacuated, according to Avi Hallan, an official at the local disaster mitigation agency.

A danger zone is in place around five miles (8km) from the crater and residents have been warned about the potential for heavy rainfall triggering lava flows in rivers flowing from the volcano.

More than a thousand tourists have been affected, particularly those traveling to Bali and Komodo National Park, famed for its Komodo dragons, according to a local tour operator.

Sales worker Remdy Doule, from Come2Indonesia travel agency in Bali, told CNN: “We were looking at more than 1,000 tourists being affected with the cancelations.”

Mount Lewotobi Laki Laki’s last erupted in May when authorities also raised the alert level to the most severe.

A previous eruption in March forced airlines to cancel and delay flights into Bali, around 500 miles (800km) away, including Australia’s Jetstar and Qantas Airways.

In November, the volcano erupted multiple times killing nine people, injuring dozens and forcing thousands to flee and flights to be canceled.

Indonesian, home to 270 million people, has 120 active volcanoes and experiences frequent seismic activity.

The archipelago sits along the “Ring of Fire,” a horseshoe-shaped series of seismic fault lines encircling the Pacific Basin.

CNN’s Haicen Yang contributed to this report.

CNN
 — 

For the first time since the global outbreak of Covid-19, researchers claim to have pierced North Korea’s ironclad information blockade to reveal how some ordinary citizens endured the pandemic.

While Pyongyang insisted for more than two years that not a single case had breached its hermetically sealed borders, a new report paints a far darker picture, of a deadly wave of largely untreated illness that swept the country, but was barely talked about.

The 26-page report also details testimony of deaths by counterfeit or self-prescribed medicine, and official denial leading to a culture of dishonesty.

“Doctors were lying to the patients. Village leaders were lying to the party. And the government was lying to everybody,” said Dr. Victor Cha, one of the report’s lead authors.

Released by the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in partnership with the George W. Bush Institute, the paper is based on 100 in-person interviews conducted discreetly inside North Korea between September and December 2023.

The testimony – gathered through informal, conversational methods known as “snowball sampling” – span all nine provinces and the capital Pyongyang. The result is what the authors describe as “arguably the first glimpse” inside the country’s most extreme period of isolation in modern history.

Snowball sampling is a recruitment method often used when studying hidden or hard-to-access populations. Researchers begin by identifying one or two trusted participants, who then refer them to others in their networks. Over time, the pool of participants “snowballs,” growing through word-of-mouth and personal trust.

While it lacks the scientific rigor of more conventional surveys, this method is often the only way of getting raw, subjective testimony from people living in repressive and totalitarian states, such as North Korea.

Cha, a former White House adviser and Korea Chair at CSIS, said the findings were evidence of “a total failure on the part of the government to do anything for the people during the pandemic.”

“Everybody was effectively lying to everybody during the pandemic,” he said. “Because of a government policy that said there was no COVID in the country. When they knew there was.”

Cha said Pyongyang’s policy of denial didn’t just attempt to deceive the outside world – it forced North Korea’s more than 26 million people into mutually enforced silence.

When North Korea closed its borders in early 2020 – as the virus made its way across the globe, on its way to infecting and killing millions – state media claimed it had kept the virus out entirely; no infections, no deaths. The world was skeptical. But the regime’s total control over borders and information made independent verification nearly impossible.

Two years later, North Korean television aired scenes of a military parade in Pyongyang. Crowds filled Kim Il Sung Square. Masks were scarce. Not long after, reports of a mysterious “fever outbreak” began appearing in state media. By early May, Pyongyang confirmed its first Covid-19 case. Three months later, it declared victory – claiming just 74 deaths out of nearly 5 million “fever” cases.

But according to the new survey, Covid-19 had by that point been circulating widely inside the country for at least two years.

Ninety-two percent of respondents said they or someone close to them had been infected. Most said 2020 and 2021 – not 2022 – were when outbreaks were at their worst.

“Fevers were happening everywhere, and many people were dying within a few days,” one participant reported. Another, a soldier, described a military communications battalion in which more than half the unit – about 400 soldiers – fell ill by late 2021. In prisons, schools, and food factories, respondents described people collapsing or missing days of work due to fever.

Even under normal conditions, the country’s isolated and underfunded healthcare system struggles to meet the needs of its people. But a pandemic-level event, coupled with official denial and an initial refusal to accept foreign vaccines, left people dangerously exposed, the report claims.

With virtually no access to testing, diagnoses came from Covid-19 symptoms that most of the world had grown familiar with: fever, cough, shortness of breath. Some respondents said even these symptoms were taboo. One woman recalled being told by a doctor that if she said she had those symptoms, “you will be taken away.” Another said bluntly: “They told me it’s a cold, but I knew it was COVID.”

In place of official care, citizens turned to folk medicine: saltwater rinses, garlic necklaces, even opium injections. One woman said her child died after being given the wrong dosage of adult medication. Another respondent described neighbors overdosing on counterfeit Chinese drugs. In total, one in five respondents reported seeing or hearing of deaths due to misuse of medication or fake pharmaceuticals.

Protective gear was nearly nonexistent. Just 8% of respondents said they received masks from the government. Many made their own, reused them, or bought them at black-market prices. One mother said her children had to sew their own because adult-issued masks were too big.

Cha says the failure was not just in what the government withheld, but in how it blocked the kind of grassroots survival that had helped North Korea’s “resourceful” citizens endure past disasters – including the 1990s famine, known inside the country as the “Arduous March.” That crisis gave rise to private marketplaces, which emerged as a lifeline when the state-run ration system collapsed. During the pandemic, however, those markets were shut down – officially to contain the virus, but also, Cha suggests, to limit the spread of information.

“They didn’t allow the people to find coping mechanisms,” he said. “Just shut them down, quarantine them, lock them down – and then provided them with nothing.”

The suffering extended beyond illness. With internal travel banned and markets shuttered, food shortages became acute. Eighty-one percent of those surveyed said they faced hunger. Respondents spoke of trying to survive quarantine periods with no rations, no access to medicine, and no way to seek help.

The rationing system, long unreliable, collapsed entirely under the weight of the lockdown. “If you didn’t have emergency food at home, it was really tough,” one soldier said.

Eighty-seven percent of respondents said they had no access to Covid tests at any point in the pandemic. Fewer than 20% received any vaccine — and most of those were administered only after Pyongyang acknowledged the outbreak in 2022 and accepted limited Chinese assistance. Soldiers reported receiving three shots as part of a campaign later that year. Civilian respondents described group vaccinations administered at schools or workplaces – months after the rest of the world had rolled out full vaccination programs.

Even the basic act of reporting illness became a risk. According to the report, local clinics and neighborhood watch units were required to report cases to central authorities. But only 41% of respondents ever received any information about those reports. Most said the results were either never shared or filtered through rumor. One respondent said: “I realized that serious illnesses and deaths were not reported because they were told not to call it COVID.”

This system of denial created what Cha calls a “double lie”: the government lied to its people, and the people lied to each other and to their government – each trying to avoid quarantine, censure, or worse.

The survey also documented a deep well of frustration with the regime’s response – and its propaganda. One participant said: “Our country can build nuclear weapons, but they can’t give us vaccines.” Others noted the contrast between their conditions and what they heard about other countries: free testing, access to medicine, the ability to travel.

In one of the report’s most striking findings, 83% of respondents said their experience did not align with what the government or its leader Kim Jong Un told them. More than half said they explicitly disbelieved the regime’s Covid-related announcements.

“When I saw the Supreme Leader touting his love for the people, while so many were dying without medicine,” one respondent said, “I thought of all the people who didn’t survive.”

Seoul, South Korea
CNN
 — 

For the past month Chinese aircraft carrier strike groups have been operating further from home shores and in greater strength than ever before, testing state-of-the-art technology and sending a message they are a force to be reckoned with, analysts and officials say.

Since early May, a People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) flotilla led by the carrier Shandong has conducted exercises north of the Philippines; its newest carrier, the soon-to-be commissioned Fujian, has been on sea trials in disputed waters west of the Korean Peninsula; and its oldest carrier, the Liaoning has led exercises in the Pacific waters of Japan’s exclusive economic zone.

During the drills the Fujian for the first time conducted aircraft take-off and landing operations at sea using its advanced electromagnetic catapult system (EMALS), regional defense officials said.

That’s a significant development. Only one other carrier in the world has that system – the US Navy’s newest carrier, the USS Gerald R Ford.

Last Monday, the Japanese Defense Ministry said the Shandong and its support ships had been exercising in the waters southeast of the island of Miyako Island in southern Okinawa prefecture, putting two Chinese carrier strike groups in the open Pacific for the first time.

At the center of that box of exercises is Taiwan, the democratically ruled island claimed by China’s Communist Party despite never having controlled it.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping has vowed to “achieve reunification” with the island, using force if necessary.

Analysts noted that the Pacific exercises specifically covered areas through which US naval support of Taiwan, in the event of conflict there, would have to pass.

A Taiwanese security official told CNN that during the month of May, the PLAN regularly deployed about 70 warships and coast guard vessels across waters in the first island chain — all the way from the Bohai Sea and Yellow Sea to the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea.

“The projection of power is beyond China’s own defensive needs,” the Taiwanese official said, unless it wants to assert the entire first island chain is its internal waters.

The first island chain stretches from Japan to the Philippines and further down to Indonesia as is seen as a strategically vital line to both China and the US.

Some analysts say Beijing may be laying the groundwork for that with so-called “salami slicing” tactics, or pushing its claims and presence in small but unrelenting steps until it’s too late for an opponent to stop them.

Besides Taiwan, the waters inside that first island chain include the Japanese-controlled Senkaku Islands, called the Diaoyus in China and, like Taiwan, claimed by it as sovereign territory.

Chinese maritime forces have been increasing their visibility around those islands. According to statistics from the Japanese Defense Ministry, more than 100 Chinese vessels have appeared in the contiguous zone of the islands – the waters between them – for all but one of the past 24 months.

Also within the first island chain are disputed islands in the South China Sea that have seen violent flare-ups between Chinese and Philippine forces as Beijing tries to aggressively assert its claim over geographical features in the waterway through which trillions of dollars in trade passes each year.

US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth called out Beijing tactics at a recent defense forum in Singapore.

“Any unilateral attempt to change the status quo in the South China Sea and the first island chain by force or coercion is unacceptable,” Hegseth said in a speech at the Shangri-La Dialogue, noting the persistent PLA presence around Taiwan and harassment and intimidation tactics in the South China Sea.

“It has to be clear to all that Beijing is credibly preparing to potentially use military force to alter the balance of power in the Indo-Pacific,” Hegseth said.

While Hegseth focused on China’s activities inside the first island chain, the PLA Navy’s recent movements have it operating carriers beyond the second island chain, which runs from the Japanese main island of Honshu southeast to the US territories of Saipan and Guam and then southwest to Yap, Palau and New Guinea.

Japanese officials reported last week two Chinese carrier groups operating well out into the open Pacific.

“It is believed that China is planning to improve the operational capability of its aircraft carriers and their ability to conduct operations in distant areas of the sea,” Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi said last Monday, noting that China has demonstrated for the first time the ability to operate a carrier in the waters east of Iwo Jima and close to Japan’s easternmost island Minamitorishima.

“The PLA is demonstrating a capability for sustained carrier ops outside of the first island chain. This is certainly a significant milestone for the PLAN,” said Ray Powell, director of SeaLight, a maritime transparency project at Stanford University’s Gordian Knot Center for National Security Innovation.

“Beijing is using the PLAN to signal its growing maritime power and willingness to use it,” said Carl Schuster, a former US Navy captain and Hawaii-based analyst.

A PLA Navy press release on Tuesday acknowledged the carrier activity in waters well out into the Pacific and emphasized that they are defense-minded.

“The Chinese Navy’s Liaoning and Shandong aircraft carrier formations recently went to the Western Pacific and other waters to conduct training to test the troops’ far sea defense and joint combat capabilities. This is a routine training,” the release quoted Chinese navy spokesperson Wang Xuemeng as saying, adding that the exercises are “not targeting specific countries.”

Overall, Schuster said China is making a very clear statement with the series of exercises.

“Although Beijing has characterized these activities as routine training and trials, its neighbors did not miss the related strategic message: China has become a major naval power that can and will apply that power in their waters if it chooses,” Schuster said.

Only one other naval power, the United States, has the capability to operate two or more carrier strike groups at such distances.

US Navy carrier strike groups usually consist of the carrier plus cruisers and/or destroyers equipped with the Aegis missile system to defend the prized asset at their heart.

Analysts noted the Chinese carrier groups in the Pacific have a similar formation and include some of the PLAN’s newest and most powerful surface ships, large Type 055 guided-missile destroyers as well as new but smaller Type 052DM destroyers.

With a displacement of around 12,000 tons, the Type 055s are considered by many naval analysts to be the most powerful surface combatants afloat and a centerpiece of what is now the world’s largest naval force, a title the PLAN took from the US Navy around 2020.

A report Tuesday in the state-run Global Times said the PLAN may be looking to operate carrier strike groups in all the world’s oceans like the US Navy does.

Chinese military affairs expert Zhang Junshe told the tabloid that Beijing’s expanding overseas business and cultural interests justify its naval expansion, including the ability of carriers to operate far from Chinese shores.

New carrier training may be seen in the Indian and Atlantic oceans, Zhang said.

The Fujian, China’s newest aircraft carrier, is likely to be pivotal in the any PLA Navy plans to operate well out into the Pacific or other oceans.

Estimated to displace 80,000 tons, it’s believed to the largest non-American warship ever built and able to carry a fleet of about 50 aircraft, up from 40 on Liaoning and Shandong.

During its sea trials in the Yellow Sea last month, the Fujian conducted aircraft take-off and landing operations, according to South Korean defense officials.

The trials marked the first time a Chinese carrier had conducted such an activity inside the Provisional Measures Zone (PMZ), a disputed area where China and South Korea have agreed to both oversee fisheries management, but where friction between Beijing and Seoul persists.

The presence of the Fujian in the PMZ was reported by South Korea’s Chosun Ilbo, and later confirmed by South Korean officials to CNN.

The take-off and landing operations are significant as it marks the first time the Fujian has done so at sea, using its electromagnetic catapult system.

The system allows carrier aircraft to take off with heavier weapon and fuel loads than those operating off the Shandong and Liaoning, which feature ski-jump type take-off ramps, enabling Fujian’s aircraft to strike enemy targets from greater distances.

The Fujian is expected to carry the naval version of the J-35, a twin-engine stealth fighter jet that can’t operate off a China’s older carriers.

And China is building another carrier, for now known as the Type 004, which is expected to not only employ EMALS technology, but also – unlike Fujian but like the USS Ford – be nuclear-powered.

Nuclear power will extend the range of Chinese naval air fleet significantly because, as the carrier doesn’t need to be refueled, it can stay at sea longer and farther away from replenishment tankers.

“Beijing’s carrier program, like its fleet, is expanding and improving rapidly, not just with new ships but with new aircraft. That trend signals Beijing’s maritime intent,” Schuster said.

But even with the new equipment and expanded range, analysts expressed caution on overestimating the PLA Navy’s abilities.

Compared to the US, which has been operating carrier strike groups in the far seas for decades, China is very much at the beginning of the learning curve.

“China’s carrier force is still very much developmental at this stage. Still, China is closing the gap,” said Powell, the SeaLight analyst.

CNN’s Eric Cheung, Gawon Bae, Yoonjung Seo and Yumi Asada contributed to this report.