The Jakarta administration is set to make New Year’s Eve a wedding date of choice for couples from lower to middle economic classes.

Jakarta Deputy Governor Sandiaga Uno said on Monday that the idea to provide free weddings was brought up by Governor Anies Baswedan during a weekly meeting with their subordinates at City Hall.

“The governor had really good idea [during the meeting]. Couples from lower to middle economic classes, who wish to get married this New Year’s Eve will be provided with support,” Sandiaga said, adding that technical matters related to the implementation of a mass wedding day would be handled by the Jakarta Governance Bureau.

Separately, Jakarta Governance Bureau head Premi Lasari said she would disclose the requirements for participation on Wednesday. One requirement would be that the couples possess Jakarta ID cards.

JAKARTA – A dog owner who has been widely criticised for leaving her dog in a car for more than eight hours, says she had no intention of allowing her pet to suffer.

Elishia said she left her dog named Valent in her car in the parking lot of Grand Indonesia shopping mall on Friday evening, while she watched a movie in a theatre.

The dog was reportedly thirsty, starving and overheating in the car, which had one window only slightly open.

Elishia said on Monday that she preferred to take her pet everywhere she went instead of leaving it at home because she and her pet were inseparable.

“It’s like my own child. Anywhere I go it wants to follow me,” Elishia told Tanah Abang Police in Central Jakarta.

She said she had to leave her dog because bringing animals into Grand Indonesia was prohibited.

“It would be impossible for me to let Valent, who is my soulmate, suffer,” she said as quoted by kompas.com.

Video footage uploaded by a mall visitor named Tommy Prabowo went viral on the internet over the weekend.

Tommy accompanied the pet until after midnight and tried to give it water through the opening in the window.

He reported the case to the police.

SHANGHAI – China’s aviation authority has suspended all flights from the Indonesian holiday island of Bali to Chinese cities until the threat of volcanic ash clears, the state-run People’s Daily newspaper reported on Monday.

Clouds of volcanic ash from Bali’s erupting Mount Agung volcano disrupted flights to and from the island’s airport last week, stranding many thousands of tourists.

Flights began resuming when the airport reopened on Wednesday, after the wind changed and blew the ash away from flight paths. Individual airlines make their own decisions on whether to operate.

Australia’s Jetstar resumed flying tourists in to Bali on Monday, while Virgin Australia Holdings Ltd said it planned to do so on Tuesday.

Despite the resumption of some services, China’s aviation authority was stopping any more flights after the return on Monday of the last charter flight, bringing to 15,237 the number of stranded Chinese tourists brought home, the People’s Daily newspaper said on its Twitter page.

“China’s aviation authority has suspended all flights from Bali to Chinese cities until volcanic ash threat clears,” it said.

China Eastern Airlines and China Southern Airlines, which stopped flying new tourists into Bali last week, told Reuters that any resumption of flights would depend on the situation.

They declined to comment on the reported directive from the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC).

The CAAC did not respond to Reuters’ request for comment.

China Southern, which flies to Bali from the cities of Shenzhen and Guangzhou, said in an email that “due to volcanic activity in the area, the local airport and associated routes are not airworthy so flights on these two routes have been cancelled in the near term”.

China has overtaken Australia this year as the biggest source of international visitors to Bali, representing about a quarter of the 4.9 million arrivals from January to September, according to industry statistics.

Airlines avoid flying through volcanic ash as it can damage aircraft engines, clogging fuel and cooling systems, hampering pilot visibility and even causing engine failure.

Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, a spokesman for Indonesia’s disaster mitigation agency, said on Twitter that Mount Agung was no longer spewing ash but just white smoke that reached a height of 1,000 metres early on Monday.

A tragic accident on Monday morning (Dec 4) again focused the public’s attention on a call for the Land Transport Department to ban people with epilepsy from driving.

The crash occurred when a 44-year-old self-described epileptic patient lost control of his pickup truck in Chon Buri’s Pattaya City, causing it to plough into 10 motorcycles, killing two people and injuring 15 others.

At 7am, the vehicle driven by Akkaradej Udomrat, 44, suddenly veered out of its lane and collided with a line of motorcycles on the opposite side of South Pattaya Road. Two motorcyclists died at the scene while 15 others were injured – four of them seriously.

Police said Akkaradej had tested negative for alcohol use and claimed to lose control of his vehicle after suffering an epileptic seizure. He was initially charged with reckless driving causing death and injuries to others and was in police detention at press time.

Muang Pattaya superintendent Pol Colonel Apichai Krobphetch said Akkaradej had also submitted to a drug test.

Police had also demanded his medical records to confirm his claim that he had been diagnosed with the disorder about five years ago after receiving a driver’s licence, Apichai said.

Dr Somsak Tiamkao, of Khon Kaen University’s Faculty of Medicine, wrote in a Facebook post that a law should be passed to prevent such tragic accidents.

“When will a law be passed to prevent epileptic patients from driving?” he asked. “Each year, we have many crashes involving epileptic drivers.

“Relatives and family members of these patients should take care of them. Please stop this, we are worried about you,” he said.

In 2014, a similar incident occurred when a Nong Bua Lamphu school director suffered an epileptic seizure while driving to another school and crashed into a group of students, resulting in the deaths of four schoolchildren deaths and 10 injuries.

The incident prompted the Land Transport Department and the Medical Council of Thailand to discuss changing requirements for drivers. A requirement was proposed that licence applicants would have to include a medical certificate to prevent people with heart disease, diabetes and epilepsy from driving.

The proposal has not been put into effect. Land Transport Department deputy director-general Kamol Buranapong said the department was in the process of consulting with the Medical Council and drafting new health criteria for driving licences, which will include five new symptoms barring applicants from eligibility.

The five symptoms are epileptic seizures, high blood pressure, brain diseases, myocardial infarction and diabetes. It has been estimated that Thailand has between 600,000 to 700,000 people suffering from epilepsy – a neurological disorder that could stem from various causes such as genetics, strokes or other brain trauma, infections, brain tumours or developmental disorders.

Symptoms can be varied and difficult to notice, resulting in some people not knowing they had the disorder and not receiving treatment, said Department of Medical Services Department chief Dr Somsak Akksilp.

People with epilepsy are up to six times more likely to suffer premature death from fatal road accidents due to seizures, he added.

TOKYO – Dozens of Japanese lawmakers on Tuesday made a pilgrimage to the controversial Yasukuni Shrine, which neighbours China and South Korea see as a symbol of Tokyo’s militaristic past.

There were no senior ministers among the group and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe refrained from sending an offering, as he has done in the past, a shrine official told AFP.

In total, 61 MPs – mainly from Abe’s conservative Liberal Democratic Party – attended the war shrine and 75 sent a representative, according to one deputy who briefed reporters at the scene.

The shrine honours millions of Japanese war dead, but also senior military and political figures convicted of war crimes after World War II.

Beijing and Seoul view it as a symbol of Tokyo’s past aggression. The site has for decades been a flashpoint for criticism by countries that suffered from Japan’s colonialism and aggression in the first half of the 20th century.

In October, Abe sent a ritual offering to the shrine but did not visit, a move seen as an effort to minimise protests from neighbours over the issue.

Abe visited in December 2013 to mark his first year in power, a move that sparked fury in Beijing and Seoul and earned a diplomatic rebuke from close ally the United States, which said it was “disappointed” by the action.

But he has since refrained from going and sent ritual offerings instead. Abe and other nationalists say Yasukuni is merely a place to remember fallen soldiers, and compare it with Arlington National Cemetery in the United States.

Tokyo is also seeking warmer ties with Beijing and Seoul amid global concern over North Korea’s nuclear and missile programmes.