Indonesian quake, tsunami devastate coast; many victims
PALU, Indonesia — The powerful earthquake and tsunami that hit Indonesia’s central Sulawesi has claimed many victims, a disaster official said Saturday, as rescuers raced to reach the region and an AP reporter saw numerous bodies in a hard-hit city.
Disaster agency spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho told a press conference that four hospitals in the central Sulawesi city of Palu have reported 48 dead and hundreds of injured. He said “many victims” are still to be accounted for.
Dawn revealed a devastated coastline in central Sulawesi where the 3-meter high (10 foot) tsunami triggered by a magnitude 7.5 earthquake Friday smashed into two cities and several settlements.
In Palu, the capital of Central Sulawesi province, the city of more than 380,000 people was strewn with debris from collapsed buildings.
The city is built around a narrow bay that apparently magnified the force of the tsunami waters as they raced into the tight inlet.
An AP reporter saw bodies partially covered by tarpaulins and a man carrying a dead child through the wreckage.
In the nearby city of Donggala a large bridge with yellow arches that spanned a coastal river had collapsed.
Indonesian TV showed a smartphone video of a powerful wave hitting Palu at dusk, with people screaming and running in fear.
The water smashed into buildings and a large mosque already damaged by the earthquake.
Communications with the area are difficult because power and telecommunications are cut, hampering search and rescue efforts.
Nugroho has said that essential aircraft can land at Palu airport’s though AirNav, which oversees aircraft navigation, said the runway is cracked and the control tower damaged.
NEW YORK — Facebook reported a major security breach in which 50 million user accounts were accessed by unknown attackers.
The attackers gained the ability to “seize control” of those accounts, Facebook said, by stealing digital keys the company uses to keep people logged in. Facebook has logged out owners of the 50 million affected accounts — plus another 40 million who were vulnerable to the attack. Users don’t need to change their Facebook passwords, it said.
Facebook said it doesn’t know who was behind the attacks or where they’re based. In a call with reporters on Friday, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that attackers would have had the ability to view private messages or post on someone’s account, but there’s no sign that they did.
“We do not yet know if any of the accounts were actually misused,” Zuckerberg said.
Facebook shares fell $4.38, or 2.6 percent, to close at $164.46 on Friday.
At UN, Russia says meddling claims baseless, slams the US
UNITED NATIONS — Russia’s foreign minister trashed accusations of Russian meddling abroad as “baseless” and used the podium at the U.N.’s biggest event to tear into U.S. policies in Iran, Syria and Venezuela. He later declared that U.S.-Russian relations “are bad and probably at their all-time low.”
In a rapid-fire, unforgiving speech Friday, Sergey Lavrov pounded away at “self-serving” unilateral moves by U.S. President Donald Trump and assailed crippling Western sanctions against Russia as “political blackmail.”
Lavrov deflected accusations of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, a nerve agent attack in Britain and other meddling abroad — despite mounting evidence of a broad, coordinated influence campaign.
He criticized “baseless accusations of interference in the internal affairs of certain countries” and turned it around against the West, accusing unnamed forces of “overt endeavors to undermine democratically elected governments,” in an apparent reference to U.S. and EU support for Russia’s neighbors and the Syrian opposition.
He expanded on that at a news conference later, giving examples of U.S. interference that included the U.S. envoy for Ukraine, Kurt Volcker, promoting efforts to replace the 2015 agreement reached by leaders of Russia, Ukraine, France and Germany to end the violence in eastern Ukraine.
AP Source: Trump signs spending plan, avoiding shutdown
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump signed an $854 billion spending bill on Friday to keep the federal government open through Dec. 7, averting a government shutdown in the weeks leading up to the November midterm elections.