HONOLULU: Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano erupted anew before dawn Thursday, shooting a steely gray plume of ash about 30,000 feet (9,100 meters) into the sky that began raining down on a nearby town.
The explosion at the mountain summit came shortly after 4 a.m. following two weeks of volcanic activity that sent lava flows into neighborhoods and destroyed at least 26 homes.
The eruption probably lasted only a few minutes, and the ash accumulations were minimal, with only trace amounts expected near the volcano, said Mike Poland, a geophysicist with the US Geological Survey.
Some people in the community closest to the volcano slept through the blast, said Kanani Aton, a spokeswoman for Hawaii County Civil Defense, who spoke to relatives and friends in the town called Volcano.
At least one person who was wake heard nothing. Epic Lava tour operator John Tarson is an early-riser and said he only learned about the eruption because he received an alert on his phone.
Tarson said the ash plume looked different than others he’s witnessed because of its sheer height. A video he shared on Facebook showed a towering column of ash reaching into a hazy sky.
“What I noticed is the plume was just rising straight into the air, and it was not tipping in any direction,” he said.
“We’ve been expecting this, and a lot of people are going to see it and get excited and scared,” he added.
Authorities cautioned that wind could carry the ash as far as Hilo. The National Weather Service issued an ash advisory until noon. Several schools closed because of the risk of elevated levels of sulfur dioxide, a volcanic gas.
Robert Hughes owns the Aloha Junction Bed and Breakfast, about a mile and a half from the crater. He said he did not hear anything either and is in an area that did not get any ash.
So far, he said, Thursday has been a “nice rainy day.”
His business has been hit hard by fears of the volcano, once an attraction for visitors. He said he’s lost hundreds of reservations and had just three guests Thursday instead of the 12 to 14 he has typically served.
One of the guests was a news reporter. The other two were from Italy.
“In the old days, people used to love to come see the volcano. They’d even take their little postcards, burn one corner in the lava flow, mail then off, stuff like that,” he said. “Now they’re acting like it’s all super-dangerous and everything, but it just kind oozes out.”
The crater sits within Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, which has been closed since May 11 because of the risk of a more violent eruption.
Officials have said the eruption isn’t likely to be dangerous as long as people stay out of the closed park.
Kilauea is one of the world’s most active volcanoes. An eruption in 1924 killed one person and sent rocks, ash and dust into the air for 17 days.
Scientists warned on May 9 that a drop in the lava lake at the summit might create conditions for an explosion that could fling ash and refrigerator-sized boulders into the air.
Geologists predicted such a blast would mostly release trapped steam from flash-heated groundwater. Communities a mile or two away could be showered by pea-size fragments or dusted with nontoxic ash, they said.
The volcano has been erupting continuously since 1983. It’s one of five volcanoes on Hawaii’s Big Island, and the only one currently erupting.
Hawaii volcano erupts anew, sends huge ash plume into sky
Hawaii volcano erupts anew, sends huge ash plume into sky
- Some people in the community closest to the volcano slept through the blast
- The eruption probably lasted only a few minutes, and the ash accumulations were minimal
Greek court to deliver verdict on 2022 spyware scandal
- Predator is sophisticated software that makes it possible to infiltrate mobile phones, access messages and photos, and even remotely activate the microphone and camera
Athens: A Greek court was due Thursday to deliver its verdict on an illegal wiretapping scandal targeting politicians, journalists, business leaders and senior military officials that shook the conservative government in 2022.
Dubbed the "Greek Watergate" by local media, it forced the resignation of senior officials in Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis's administration.
Four defendants -- two Israelis including a former soldier and two Greeks -- face up to five years in prison for violating the confidentiality of telephone communications. They deny involvement.
The sentences are expected to be suspended, to the outrage of lawyers for the victims. The defendants could benefit from a 2019 law under which breaches of the confidentiality of communications are classed as a misdemeanour.
The defendants include Tal Dilian, a former Israeli soldier and founder of Intellexa, a company specialising in the supply of spyware, which marketed the Predator software in Greece.
His partner, as well as two former Greek executives of the company, are also on trial.
According to Greek media reports, Dilian, who remains free pending judgement, is not expected to be in court for the verdict.
Politicians, journalists monitored
The affair broke in early 2022 when a Greek investigative journalist, Thanassis Koukakis, discovered he had been wiretapped by the intelligence services (EYP) and that his phone had also been infected with the Predator spyware.
Predator is sophisticated software that makes it possible to infiltrate mobile phones, access messages and photos, and even remotely activate the microphone and camera.
"The government initially played down the affair to cover for the real political culprits," Koukakis told AFP in an interview a few months ago.
According to the Greek Authority for Communication Security and Privacy watchdog (ADAE) however, it was used against more than 90 people.
It snowballed into a political scandal in July 2022, when the soon-to-be leader of the socialist Pasok-Kinal party, Nikos Androulakis, revealed that his mobile phone had also been tapped.
At the time, Androulakis was a member of the European Parliament.
Facing mounting pressure, Mitsotakis insisted that the government had "never purchased or used" Predator.
The prosecutor in the case however made it clear he found that difficult to accept in his closing arguments earlier this month.
"Predator is not accessible to private individuals; it is only offered for sale to state services," he told the court.
High-level resignations
The "Greek Watergate" led to the resignation of one of the prime minister's closest aides, his nephew Grigoris Dimitriadis.
The head of the EYP intelligence service also stepped down.
Mitsotakis later weathered a motion of no confidence in parliament.
In July 2024, the Supreme Court cleared the intelligence services and political officials of wrongdoing, angering victims and human rights bodies.
Paris-based media rights campaigners Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has described this case as "a fresh blow to media freedom" in Greece.
Only two proven victims of Predator were questioned by the Supreme Court, and the prosecutor did not request access to the bank accounts of the company that marketed the software.
The Greek employees who, in December 2021, hurriedly moved the servers out of their office were not questioned either.
"One may wonder whether the case was really investigated or whether everything was done to bury it," Androulakis's lawyer, Christos Kaklamanis, told the court.
The socialist leader has filed an appeal with the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR).
