Cyber-attack brings Indonesia's national data centre to its knees

Today's news: In Shanghai two women and a child injured in an attack on a Japanese school bus. Egypt revokes licences from 16 tourist agencies after deaths in Mecca. First downpour rains in new monumental Ram temple in Ayodhya. Russia's only female governor resigns criticising the war.

INDONESIA

A cyber-attack compromised Indonesia's national data centre, disrupting immigration controls at airports. The hackers demanded a ransom of million, the country's communications minister Budi Arie Setiadi told Reuters news agency. Automated passport machines are now working, the Communications Ministry said.

ASIA

China, North Korea, Myanmar, Cambodia, Afghanistan, Macao, Papua New Guinea and Brunei are the Asia-Pacific countries that remain in 'level 3' - that of countries of highest alert - in the new edition of the US State Department's report on human trafficking. Instead, the report records a further step forward by Vietnam, which was removed from the 'level 2 watch list' because its government has 'demonstrated that it has increased its overall efforts' to combat trafficking by submitting a new bill to the legislature and increasing prosecutions of traffickers.

CHINA-JAPAN

A Japanese woman and her son were injured and a Chinese woman was seriously injured yesterday in a knife attack at a bus stop and inside a Japanese school bus in Suzhou, near Shanghai. According to the Consulate General of Japan in Shanghai, there is no indication that the suspect, believed to be Chinese, intentionally targeted Japanese citizens. However, the embassy has issued a security alert, saying that stabbings have occurred recently in crowded places in China, including parks and schools.

EGYPT-SAUDI ARABIA

The Egyptian government revoked the licences of 16 tourist agencies for 'fraud' following the deaths of more than 1,000 people during the Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca, also evoking possible criminal prosecution. The AFP news agency quoted an Arab diplomat as saying that at least 658 of the approximately 1,300 total deaths in Mecca were from Egypt, and it is estimated that almost all of them were unregistered pilgrims.

INDIA

Water is raining from the roof in the most sacred area of the Ram temple in Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh, which was inaugurated with great pomp by Indian Prime Minister Modi just five months ago. Chief Priest Acharya Satyendra Das denounced this after the first heavy downpours since it was opened to the public. Accusing negligence in the construction of the temple, Das said there were no devices to drain rainwater from the premises of the new temple built on the site revered as Ram's birthplace and where a Muslim mosque stood until a few years ago.

TERRORISM

Sunday's attack in two cities in Dagestan, according to the Isw War Research Institute, is to be attributed to the Isis cell of the Vilayat Kavkaz, having noted how the Russian branch of Al-Azaim Media, an asset of the Vilayat Khorasan, published a statement praising "our brothers in the Caucasus" for showing what they are capable of.

RUSSIA

The president of the Russian autonomous district of Khanty-Mansijsk, Natalia Komarova, Russia's only female governor, who heads the Jugra area, the country's main oil region, resigned, saying that 'Russia was not ready for war and had no need for it, we had built our future in a different way'.