A string of fresh earthquakes rocked the western Solomon Islands late on Tuesday and yesterday but there were no early reports of damage or casualties, officials said.
The largest earthquake late on Tuesday had a magnitude of 6.8, followed by seven aftershocks measuring at least 5.0 in the isolated region about 300km west of the capital Honiara.
The latest tremors followed a series of quakes on Monday, with the largest of 7.2 causing a tsunami estimated at nearly 2.5m.
The National Disaster Management Office estimated Tuesday that around 1,000 people — almost a third of the population — had been made homeless on Rendova island by the earthquake and tsunami damage.
Solomon Islands police commissioner Peter Marshall told Radio New Zealand yesterday that no fresh damage had been reported from the 6.8 quake, which the US Geological Service had earlier measured at 6.9.
“We feel we would have heard by now if had that been the case. We have people on the ground up there,” Marshall said. “There have been no reports of any additional injuries, damage or deaths.”
Solomon Islands Prime Minister Derek Sikua visited the affected area yesterday amid criticisms that the distribution of aid had been slow.
“I don’t want this operation to be handicapped by lack of money. I have instructed the Ministry of Finance, money isn’t a problem, go ahead and do what you have to do,” Sikua told emergency workers in the regional center of Munda.
There have been no deaths or major injuries reported from this week’s swarm of quakes, which followed a tsunami in the same region in April 2007 that killed more than 50 people.
Residents said the quake prompted people in coastal areas to flee for higher ground, with the memories of the 2007 disaster still fresh.
Rendova island bore the brunt of Monday’s quakes with some coastal areas inundated by the tsunami and hillsides scarred by large landslides.
One of the worst affected villages on the island was Ratova where 11 houses were washed away in the tsunami, leaving at least 30 people homeless, officials said.
The numerous landslides had also disrupted water supplies to villages on the island, where rice was being distributed to residents yesterday.
On the nearby largely uninhabited island of Tetepare, 10 foreign holidaymakers were evacuated from an eco-tourism center on Monday. None was reported hurt.
KINGPIN: Marset allegedly laundered the proceeds of his drug enterprise by purchasing and sponsoring professional soccer teams and even put himself in the starting lineups Notorious Latin American narco trafficker Sebastian Marset, who eluded police for years, was handed over to US authorities after his arrest on Friday in Bolivia. Marset, a Uruguayan national who was on the US most-wanted list, was passed to agents of the US Drug Enforcement Administration at Santa Cruz airport in Bolivia, then put on a US airplane, Bolivian state television showed. “The arrest and deportation were carried out pursuant to a court order issued by the US justice system,” Bolivian Minister of Government Marco Antonio Oviedo told reporters. The alleged kingpin was arrested in an upscale neighborhood of Santa
ACTIONABLE ADVICE: The majority of chatbots tested provided guidance on weapons, tactics and target selections, with Perplexity and Meta AI deemed to be the least safe From school shootings to synagogue bombings, leading artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots helped researchers plot violent attacks, according to a study published on Wednesday that highlighted the technology’s potential for real-world harm. Researchers from the nonprofit watchdog Center for Countering Digital Hate and CNN posed as 13-year-old boys in the US and Ireland to test 10 chatbots, including ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Perplexity, Deepseek and Meta AI. Eight of the chatbots assisted the make-believe attackers in more than half the responses, providing advice on “locations to target” and “weapons to use” in an attack, the study said. The chatbots had become a “powerful accelerant for
SCANDAL: Other images discovered earlier show Andrew bent over a female and lying across the laps of a number of women, while Mandelson is pictured in his underpants A photograph of former British prince Andrew and veteran politician Peter Mandelson sitting in bathrobes alongside late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein was unearthed on Friday in previously published documents. The image is believed to be the first known photograph of the two men with Epstein. They are currently engulfed in scandal in the UK over their ties to their mutual friend. The undated photograph, first reported by ITV News, shows King Charles III’s disgraced brother and former British ambassador to the US sitting barefoot outside on a wooden deck. They appear to have mugs with a US flag on them
Since the war in the Middle East began nearly two weeks ago, the telephone at Ron Hubbard’s bomb shelter company in Texas has not stopped ringing. Foreign and US clients are rushing to buy his bunkers, seeking refuge in case of air raids, nuclear fallout or apocalypse. With the US and Israel pounding Iran, and Tehran retaliating with strikes across the region, Hubbard has seen demand for his product soar, mostly from Gulf nation customers in Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates. “You can imagine how many people are thinking: ‘I wish I had a bomb shelter,’” Hubbard, 63, said in
RSS