Former US presidents Bill Clinton and George Bush toured parts of southern Thailand yesterday on the first stop of their tour of Asian nations hit by December's catastrophic tsunamis.
Meanwhile, foreign aid workers helping tsunami relief efforts in Indonesia could be the target of terrorist attacks, Canberra warned in a travel advisory yesterday.
PHOTO: EPA
Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said his country had received intelligence its nationals could come under fire in Aceh and Northern Sumatra.
"New information [has been] received by the government concerning possible terrorist planning for attacks against foreigners involved in relief efforts in Aceh or other areas of northern Sumatra," Downer said in a statement.
"The government is working closely with Indonesian authorities and other governments involved in the relief effort to address this new threat information.
"The government is keeping the security situation in Aceh under close review and new information will be brought to the attention of the public through my department's travel advice."
The official advice said Australians should only travel to Aceh to help the post-tsunami relief effort if they were working with a recognised aid organization which had coordinated security with Indonesian authorities.
It said Australians not involved in the relief effort should leave the region.
Australia has about 1,000 military personnel and numerous civilians involved in the massive aid effort
The Australian military are unarmed and rely on their Indonesian counterparts for protection.
The former US leaders touched down shortly after noon at Phuket and were greeted by Thai Foreign Minister Surakiart Sathirathai.
They then traveled to the devastated fishing village of Baan Nam Khem to assess reconstruction efforts in Thailand's hardest-hit province of Phang Nga.
Clinton and Bush, appointed by US President George W. Bush to head private fundraising efforts following the tsunami, are also set to visit Indonesia, Sri Lanka and the Maldives from today.
Nearly 5,400 people were killed in Thailand when the giant waves struck on Dec. 26. Roughly half of the dead are believed to be foreign tourists who were spending holidays on the country's famous beaches.
Some 3,000 people are still missing, and thousands more lost their homes and livelihoods.
A massive international forensics operation is still underway in southern Thailand to identify all of the dead.
Bush and Clinton were to pay their respects for the victims during a ceremony later yesterday, and to meet with Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra.
Clinton, a Democrat who defeated the elder Bush in 1992 elections and was succeeded by the Republican's son eight years later, has been named the UN's special envoy for tsunami relief.
The White House has placed former President Bush in charge of efforts to raise private US aid for nations devastated by the tsunami that ripped through the Indian Ocean, killing nearly 289,000 people, most of them in Indonesia.
Clinton and Bush regularly appear in television advertisements requesting donations for the hundreds of thousands made homeless by the tsunamis, which were triggered by a massive undersea earthquake off the coast of Sumatra.
When a hiker fell from a 55m waterfall in wild New Zealand bush, rescuers were forced to evacuate the badly hurt woman without her dog, which could not be found. After strangers raised thousands of dollars for a search, border collie Molly was flown to safety by a helicopter pilot who was determined to reunite the pet and the owner. A week earlier, an emergency rescue helicopter found the woman with bruises and lacerations after a fall at a rocky spot at the waterfall on the South Island’s West Coast. She was airlifted on March 24, but they were forced to
HIGH HOPES: The power source is expected to have a future, as it is not dependent on the weather or light, and could be useful for places with large desalination facilities A Japanese water plant is harnessing the natural process of osmosis to generate renewable energy that could one day become a common power source. The possibility of generating power from osmosis — when water molecules pass from a less salty solution to a more salty one — has long been known. However, actually generating energy from that has proved more complicated, in part due the difficulty of designing the membrane through which the molecules pass. Engineers in Fukuoka, Japan, and their private partners think they might have cracked it, and have opened what is only the world’s second osmotic power plant. It generates
Hundreds of Filipinos and tourists flocked to a sun-bleached field north of Manila yesterday, on Good Friday, to witness one of the country’s most blood-soaked displays of religious fervor, undeterred by rising fuel prices. Scores of bare-chested flagellants with covered faces walked barefoot through the dusty streets of Pampanga Province’s San Fernando as they flogged their backs with bamboo whips in the scorching heat. Agence France-Presse (AFP) journalists said they saw devotees deliberately puncturing their skin with glass shards attached to a small wooden paddle to ensure their bleeding during the ritual, a way to atone for sins and seek miracles from
Chinese dissident artist Gao Zhen (高兟), famous for making provocative satirical sculptures of former Chinese leader Mao Zedong (毛澤東), was tried on Monday over accusations of “defaming national heroes and martyrs,” his wife and a rights group said. Gao, 69, who was detained in 2024 during a visit from the US, faces a maximum three-year prison sentence, said his wife, Zhao Yaliang (趙雅良), and Shane Yi, a researcher at the Chinese Human Rights Defenders group which operates outside the nation. The closed-door, one-day trial took place at Sanhe City People’s Court in Hebei Province neighboring the capital, Beijing, and ended without a
RSS