AUTHORITIES in Indonesia have widened the exclusion zone around a volcano that triggered a devastating tsunami in Sumatra and Java.
The volcanology agency raised the Anak Krakatoa volcano’s alert status to the second highest and more than doubled the exclusion zone to a three-mile radius.
The eruption on Saturday evening caused part of the island in the Sunda Strait to collapse into the sea, generating tsunami waves of more than two metres which left at least 430 people dead.
The government has warned Sunda Strait communities to stay a kilometre away from the coastline because of the risk of another tsunami.
READ MORE: Indonesians urged to avoid danger spots on anniversary of deadly tsunami
MEANWHILE, a top official in Russia has said the nation’s new strategic weapon has rendered any missile defences useless.
Deputy prime minister Yuri Borisov told Russian state television that the Avangard hypersonic glide vehicle flies 27 times faster than the speed of sound, making it impossible to intercept.
He added that the new weapon “essentially makes missile defences useless”.
Borisov spoke a day after Russian president Vladimir Putin oversaw the Avangard’s reportedly successful test and hailed it as a reliable guarantee of Russia’s security for decades to come.
ELSEWHERE, Saudi Arabia’s King Salman has issued an overhaul of top government posts in the wake of international fallout from the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
Adel al-Jubeir, who has been Saudi foreign minister since 2015, has been replaced by Ibrahim al-Assaf, a former finance minister.
Al-Jubeir was appointed to the post of minister of state for foreign affairs. He had been serving as minister of state and has held a seat on the boards of oil giant Saudi Aramco as well as the kingdom’s sovereign wealth fund, the Public Investment Fund.
The changes, which affect several key ministries, come as the king and his son, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman
FINALLY, a 12-year-old boy has been found alive after being buried under an avalanche for 40 minutes in the French Alps.
Police in the town of Bourg-Saint-Maurice said the boy was skiing off-piste at the La Plagne ski resort with a group of seven skiers on Wednesday when he was swept away by a huge mass of snow.
Rescue workers flew by helicopter to the avalanche scene, which was 7875ft up the mountain.
A sniffer dog found the boy, whose snowsuit was not equipped with an avalanche detector.
Rescue workers described the operation as “miraculous” because the chances of survival are minuscule after 15 minutes under the snow.
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