Indonesia Semeru volcanic eruption kills 13 Trucks covered by volcanic ash are seen in Sumberwuluh village on Sunday. Ten people trapped after Indonesia’s Semeru volcano erupted have been evacuated to safety, the disaster mitigation agency said on Sunday, as the death toll from the disaster climbed to at least 13 with dozens injured. Semeru, the tallest mountain on Java island, threw up towers of ash and hot clouds on Saturday that blanketed nearby villages in East Java province.Xinhua Aung San Suu Kyi gets 4 years in jail Detained Myanmar President U Win Myint and State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi were sentenced to four years in prison on Monday. The ruling is expected to be the first of more to come. Suu Kyi is facing 11 charges in total, including for corruption and the sharing of state secrets. If found guilty of all charges, the 76-year-old Suu Kyi faces more than 100 years behind bars. Suu Kyi was tried in a special court in Naypyidaw, Myanmar’s spartan capital, in proceedings barred from public view. She was detained on February 1 when the military swept across the country arresting members of the elected government led by Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy party, including Win Myint. Belgian police use tear gas on protesters Belgian police used water cannon and tear gas on Sunday to disperse some rowdy protesters in Brussels after most demonstrators marched peacefully to protest tightened COVID-19 restrictions that aim to counter a surge of coronavirus infections. Thousands came to reject the new measures announced on Friday, the third week in a row that the government has tightened its rules as an avalanche of new cases strains the country’s health services, depriving people with other life-threatening diseases of treatment. The main crowd in Sunday’s mostly peaceful march had already dispersed when about a 100 protesters ran into a riot police barricade cordoning off access to the European Commission. Police used water cannon and fired tear gas to disperse the crowd. There were no immediate reports of injuries. Barrow wins reelection in Gambia Gambia’s President Adama Barrow has secured his reelection with a comfortable margin over his opposition in a vote that set the bar for a new chapter in the small West African nation’s democracy. Barrow won about 53 percent of the vote in Saturday’s election, according to results from the Independent Election Commission (IEC) announced Sunday. He easily beat out his main contender Ousainou Darboe of the United Democratic Party (UDP) who received about 28 percent of the vote. This was the country’s first presidential election in decades that did not include former dictator Yahya Jammeh, who now lives in exile in Equatorial Guinea after losing the 2016 election and refusing to accept defeat. Colombian rebel leader ‘El Paisa’ shot dead A dissident former leader of Colombia’s Farc rebels has been killed in an ambush in Venezuela, local media reported on Sunday. Hernan Dario Velasquez, nicknamed El Paisa, was reportedly shot dead in Venezuela’s Apure state. His death has not been officially confirmed and the Colombian army said it had no knowledge of the killing. Local media have speculated that mercenaries may have killed Velasquez, seeking rewards for his capture. WHO: Omicron detected in 38 countries The World Health Organization (WHO) said on Friday the COVID omicron variant has been detected in 38 countries, up from 23 two days ago, with early data suggesting the strain is more contagious than delta. “We do see an increasing growth rate, we see increasing numbers of omicron being detected,” Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO’s COVID-19 technical lead, said during a Q&A live-streamed on the group’s social media channels on Friday. “But we have reports of omicron in 38 countries in all six WHO regions.” “There is a suggestion that there is increased transmissibility, what we need to understand is if it’s more or less transmissible compared to delta,” Van Kerkhove said, noting that the delta variant is still dominant across the globe. (SD-Agencies) | 