Communities flee as Volcano of Fire erupts Official: Fuel tax foes risk French economy

About 4,000 residents fled Guatemala’s Volcano of Fire on Monday as red-hot rock and ash spewed into the sky and cascaded down the slopes toward an area devastated by a deadly eruption earlier this year. Guatemala’s vulcanology unit said that explosions from the 12,300-foot mountain shook homes with “constant sounds similar to a train locomotive.” Incandescent material burst as high as 13,200 feet above the crater, and flows of hot rock and ash extended nearly 2 miles down one flank of the volcano. Hot blasts of pyroclastic material pushed down canyons on the slopes, while a column of ash rose nearly 23,000 feet above sea level and drifted toward Guatemala City to the east. The Volcano of Fire is one of the most active in Central America, and an eruption in June killed 194 people.

WASHINGTON

Citizen protests of fuel tax hikes are choking facilities critical to the French economy, and police have orders to remove the drivers blocking sensitive sites to show their anger, France’s interior minister said Monday. In a third day of actions, grass-roots protesters blocked oil depots with their vehicles and disrupted English Channel traffic in a bid to keep up pressure on President Emmanuel Macron’s government. Interior Minister Christophe Castaner said the demonstrations around France had grown smaller while yielding “a multiplication of violent acts, racist acts, anti-Semitic acts and vandalism” since Sunday. Since the main protests on Saturday, 528 people have been injured — 17 seriously, the minister said. The figure did not include 92 police officers who were injured, two of them seriously.

NORTH CAROLINA