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Groton Daily Independent
Friday, Oct. 27, 2017 ~ Vol. 25 - No. 110 ~ 45 of 48
noisy engines, but he denied workers were locked inside when the re spread. “Many panicking workers run to wrong direction... maybe to a generator room that was locked,” Safri said.
He said some workers seemed like young women and teenagers, but he was not sure if any were underage.
Minister of Manpower Hanif Dhakiri said his department would investigate the allegations some workers were underage.
The factory is next to a residential area in Tangerang, a city in Banten province on the western outskirts of Jakarta. It had been operating for less than two months, Kurniawan said.
“Factory owners or anyone who neglects and violates safety rules should be held legally responsible,” Kurniawan told reporters.
MetroTV, quoting a local of cial, said although the factory had a permit, its proximity to a residential area was against regulations.
Safety laws are inconsistently enforced or even completely ignored in Indonesia, a poor and sprawling archipelago nation where worker rights are often treated as a lower priority than economic growth and jobs.
Cuba presents detailed defense against sonic attack charges By MICHAEL WEISSENSTEIN and ANDREA RODRIGUEZ, Associated Press
HAVANA (AP) — Cuba on Thursday presented its most detailed defense to date against U.S. accusations that American diplomats in Havana were subjected to mysterious sonic attacks that left them with a variety of ailments including headaches, hearing problems and concussions.
In a half-hour, prime-time special titled “Alleged Sonic Attacks,” Cuban of cials attempted to undermine the Trump administration’s assertion that 24 U.S. of cials or their relatives had been subjected to deliber- ate attacks by a still-undetermined culprit. Many of cials reported being subjected to loud, grating noises before falling ill. The U.S. has not accused Cuba of carrying out the attacks, but says that Cuba has not met its obligation to protect diplomats on its territory.
The television special pointed out what it alleged was a lack of evidence for the U.S. accusations. It argued the United States had failed to show that such attacks had actually occurred because it had not given Cuba or the public access to the testimony or medical records of U.S. of cials who reported attacks, despite three visits to Cuba by U.S. investigators in June, August and September.
“The members of the U.S. delegation said they don’t have evidence that con rms that these reported attacks occurred, and brought up that there was no working theory about the cause of the health problems reported by their diplomats,” the program’s narrator said.
The narrator said Cuba had undertaken an exhaustive investigation ordered by “the highest government authorities,” a clear reference to President Raul Castro. Cuba did not possess any technology capable of carrying out a sonic attack and importing it was prohibited by law, according to the special.
“Its entering the country could only take place illegally,” the narrator said.
The creators of the report interviewed neighbors of the affected diplomats who said they had not heard any strange sounds or suffered any symptoms, which the special presented as another purported weak- ness in the U.S. allegations. It said security around U.S. diplomats’ homes had been dramatically increased.
The U.S. State Department declined to comment at length on the Cuban critique, saying Thursday that, “the safety and wellbeing of American citizens is our top priority ... We are continuing our investigation into the attacks, and the Cuban government has told us they will continue their efforts as well.”
The U.S. has cut staf ng at its Havana embassy by 60 percent in response to the incidents, expelled Cuban diplomats from the embassy in Washington, issued a travel warning for Americans going to Cuba and stopped issuing visas for Cubans in Havana. The measures have sent U.S.-Cuba relations plummeting from a high point under President Barack Obama and cut into the increasingly important ow of tourists to Cuba, whose economy went into recession last year for the rst time in more than two decades.
Thursday night’s special did not present an alternate explanation for the facts presented by U.S. of - cials, with one signi cant exception. Of cials with Cuba’s Interior Ministry said that U.S. investigators had presented them with three recordings made by presumed victims of sonic attacks and that analysis of the