JAKARTA (Reuters) -- Thousands of people rallied in Indonesia’s biggest cities on Tuesday, seeking to pile pressure on the government to reverse its first subsidized fuel price hike in eight years amid soaring inflation. Under pressure to control a ballooning energy subsidy budget, President Joko Widodo on Saturday said he had little choice but to hike subsidized fuel prices by about 30 percent, an unpopular move in the country of 270 million people. Oil prices are about 32 percent higher than a year ago. By midday on Tuesday, protests were underway in and around the capital Jakarta and in the cities of Surabaya, Makassar, Kendari, Aceh, and Yogyakarta, among a series of demonstrations led by students and labor unions that police say could draw tens of thousands of people this week. Thousands of police were deployed across Jakarta, many guarding gas stations, fearing those could become targets of mounting anger over a price hike that unions say will hurt workers and the urban poor the most.

 

*** 

MOSCOW (AP) -- Russia imposed personal sanctions on 25 Americans, including actors Sean Penn and Ben Stiller, in response to U.S. sanctions against Russians stemming from the conflict in Ukraine. U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo was on the new sanctions list, as were several American senators: Mark Kelly and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, Kevin Cramer of North Dakota, Mike Rounds of South Dakota, Rick Scott of Florida, and Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania. Russia’s Foreign Ministry said the group, which also included business leaders, academics and government officials, would be banned permanently from entering Russia. Previous rounds of Russian sanctions against Americans have included President Joe Biden and members of his family, as well as lawmakers and business leaders. The U.S. has sanctioned numerous Russians, including government officials and business people.

 

*** 

LOS ANGELES (AP) — California is facing its highest chance of blackouts this year as a brutal heat wave continues to blanket the state with triple-digit temperatures. State energy officials said the electrical load Tuesday afternoon could top 51,000 megawatts, the highest demand the state has ever seen. As people crank up their air conditioners, the state forecasted record levels of energy use, said Elliot Mainzer, president of California Independent System Operators, which runs the state’s electrical grid. The state has additional energy capacity at the moment “but blackouts, rolling, rotating outages are a possibility,” Mainzer said, calling additional conservation “absolutely essential.” The CAISO site Tuesday morning showed California could fall more than 5,000 megawatts short of its power supply at peak demand, forecasted for 5:30 pm. The danger of wildfires was extreme as scorching heat and low humidity turned brush to tinder. Four deaths were reported over the Labor Day weekend as some 4,400 firefighters battled 14 large fires around the state, with 45 new blazes on Sunday alone, said Anale Burlew, a deputy chief with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.

 

*** 

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — The most powerful typhoon to hit South Korea in years on Tuesday dumped a meter (3 feet) of rain, destroyed roads and fell power lines, but the death toll of three could have been higher if not for proactive evacuations and closures of schools, officials said. There was also greater public awareness about the storm and its risks. Typhoon Hinnamnor made impact just weeks after heavy rains around the capital Seoul caused flooding that killed at least 14 people. Government officials had put the nation on high alert for days as Hinnamnor approached, warning of potentially historic destruction and putting in motion life-saving measures. After grazing the resort island of Jeju and hitting the mainland near the port city of Busan, Hinnamnor weakened as it blew into waters between the Korean Peninsula and Japan. 

 

*** 

RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — Two members of the Brazilian Indigenous group known for its forest guardians who combat illegal deforestation have been killed according to the Indigenist Missionary Council, a nonprofit that monitors violence against native peoples.  Forest guard Janildo Oliveira Guajajara was killed with multiple gunshots from behind, while another Guajajara man who was shot in the Saturday morning attack survived and is in a health unit, the nonprofit’s division in Maranhao state said in a statement posted on Instagram. In a separate municipality of Maranhao, Jael Carlos Miranda Guajajara was run over by an unspecified vehicle the same morning, and members of his group suspect it was a targeted killing, the statement said. The Guajajara live within the Arariboia Indigenous Territory in Maranhao and patrol their lands to expel invaders. That has often put them in the crosshairs: Five were slain in a five-month period in 2019-2020.

 

*** 

GENEVA/MOGADISHU (Reuters) -- Hundreds of children have died in nutrition centers across Somalia, the UN children’s agency (UNICEF) said on Tuesday, a day after the global body warned that parts of the country will be hit by famine in coming months. An official in one Somali region described famished people walking long distances with children on their shoulders to escape from drought and violence inflicted by Al Shabaab militants. Some children died along the way. The Horn of Africa region is facing a fifth consecutive failed rainy season. A 2011 famine in Somalia claimed more than a quarter of a million lives, most of them children. “Some 730 children have been reported to have died in food and nutrition centers across the country between January and July this year but the numbers could be more as many deaths go unreported,” UNICEF Somalia representative Wafaa Saeed told a Geneva news briefing. The centers are for children with severe acute malnutrition as well as illnesses such as measles, cholera or malaria and offer a snapshot of the situation across the country.