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Troops deployed to Jewish community center in Sri Lanka surfing town after U.S. warns of possible attack in area
Sri Lanka deployed troops and increased police patrols around a Jewish community center in a popular surfing town on Wednesday after the U.S. embassy warned American citizens of a possible attack on popular tourist sites in the area.
The stepped-up security and warning came after social media posts called for a boycott of Israeli-owned businesses in eastern Arugam Bay.
“The information was that a place called ‘Chabad House’ run by Israelis could be a target and we have taken measures to strengthen security,” said police spokesman Nihal Thalduwa.
He said there had recently been tensions between the Jewish tourists visiting Chabad House and the bay’s Muslim-majority population.
The army and the navy along with police commandos were deployed in the area to step up patrols and man roadblocks, he said.
Wasantha Chandrapala / AP
Protests by local Muslim groups against Israel’s fighting of Iran-backed Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon have drawn support from the wider community in the predominantly Buddhist South Asian nation.
Israelis accounted for less than 1.5% of the 1.5 million tourists who visited the island in the first nine months of this year — or around 20,000 people altogether.
But Arugam Bay, a hotspot for surfing around 250 miles east of Colombo by road, is a popular destination for Israeli tourists.
In a rare notice of an imminent threat, the U.S. embassy in Colombo said Wednesday that it had “received credible information warning of an attack targeting popular tourist locations” in eastern Arugam Bay.
“Due to the serious risk posed by this threat, the Embassy imposed a travel restriction on Embassy personnel for Arugam Bay effective immediately and until further notice,” the embassy said, adding that “U.S. citizens are strongly urged to avoid the Arugam Bay area.”
Britain and Canada shared the U.S. warning on their own websites, while the Russian embassy advised its nationals to avoid crowded places while visiting the island.
Israel’s National Security Council meanwhile “raised the travel alert level for Sri Lanka due to credible terrorism threats at the tourist and coastal areas.”
Israel urged its citizens in Arugam Bay and other southern and western coastal areas to “leave the country or at least to the capital Colombo, where there is a high presence of local security forces.” The Level 4 travel alert included the Sri Lankan cities Ahangame, Galle, Hikkaduwa and Weligama.
Along with Arugum Bay and the other coastal regions, Israel’s National Security Council raised the travel risk for the rest of Sri Lanka to Level 3. The National Security Council ranks travel warnings on a scale of 1 to 4, with warnings assigned Level 4 indicating a “high threat level” and warnings assigned Level 3 indicating a “moderate threat.” A place given the latter ranking means Israeli security recommends avoiding unnecessary travel to the destination.
“In addition, the NSC stresses that Israelis in Sri Lanka must exercise increased precaution,” the travel notice said. It urged citizens currently in Sri Lanka to “avoid openly exhibiting anything that could identify you as Israeli, such as t-shirts with Hebrew writing, or any symbol that discloses your religion or nationality.”
Security officials also cautioned against “gatherings of Israeli citizens in public places where there is no security.”
New hotline
There have been no attacks in Sri Lanka since the 2019 Easter Sunday bombings, which killed 279 people, including 45 foreign nationals.
The coordinated attack against three luxury hotels and three churches was blamed on a local jihadist group that pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group.
Tourism numbers fell sharply afterward, and took another hit during a 2022 economic meltdown that precipitated widespread civil unrest.
But foreign visitor numbers have picked up after an International Monetary Fund bailout last year helped stabilize the economy.
Following the U.S. embassy warning, police said they were unveiling a new security plan to protect tourists island-wide.
“In view of the war situation in the Middle East and Eastern Europe, the police, together with intelligence agencies, are working on a plan to protect tourists and resorts,” said a statement issued by the Sri Lanka Police.
It did not give details, but said a hotline had been established for tourists to alert authorities of any safety concerns.
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Four space station fliers undock and head for Friday splashdown to wrap up extended mission
Wrapping up an extended 235-day mission, three NASA astronauts and a Russian cosmonaut strapped into their SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule and undocked from the International Space Station on Wednesday, targeting a pre-dawn Friday splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico.
With Crew 8 “Endeavour” commander Matthew Dominick and co-pilot Michael Barrett monitoring cockpit displays, flanked on the right by cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin and on the left by NASA astronaut Jeanette Epps, the Crew Dragon undocked from the lab’s Harmony module at 5:05 p.m. EDT and slowly backed away.
NASA TV
“Endeavour, departing,” called space station commander Sunita Williams, ringing the ship’s bell following naval tradition. “Fair winds and following seas.”
Left behind aboard the station were Crew 9 commander Nick Hague and his crewmates, cosmonaut Alexander Gorbunov and Boeing Starliner astronauts Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Williams, along with Soyuz cosmonauts Aleksey Ovchinin, Ivan Vagner and NASA crewmate Donald Pettit.
If all goes well, the Crew 8 Dragon will splash down in the Gulf of Mexico at 3:29 a.m. Friday to close out a nearly eight-month-long mission spanning 3,776 orbits and 100 million miles since launch from the Kennedy Space Center on March 3.
NASA
The crew originally expected to return to Earth in September, but the flight slipped into early October in the wake of a decision to delay the Crew 9 launch from late August to late September to provide an eventual ride home for Wilmore and Williams.
The Starliner returned to Earth Sept. 7 without its crew on board because of safety concerns. The Crew 9 Dragon then was launched Sept. 28 with just two passengers, Hague and Gorbunov. That freed up two seats for Starliner commander Wilmore and co-pilot Williams, who will return to Earth next February with Hague and Gorbunov.
Sorting all that out pushed the Crew 8 departure into October. Dominick and company then were repeatedly held up by high winds and rough seas, much of it hurricane related, at splashdown sites in the Gulf of Mexico and along Florida’s east coast.
But forecasters expected favorable conditions Friday, and the Crew 8 fliers were finally cleared to proceed with undocking.
In the final stretch before the 2024 election, Vice President Kamala Harris embarked on a three-state tour across battleground states to court swing voters — with a particular focus on those who backed former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley in the Republican presidential primary earlier this year.
Harris’ pitch was remarkably similar to the foreign policy warning about Trump that Haley delivered when she was a presidential candidate.
“If Donald Trump were president, Vladimir Putin will be sitting in Kyiv — and understand what that would mean for America and our standing around the world,” Harris told Oakland County voters in Michigan on Monday. Claiming Trump would surrender Ukraine to Russia, Harris added, “that is signaling to the President of Russia he can get away with what he has done. Look at the map. Poland would be next.”
As a candidate in Michigan earlier this year, Haley warned of the potential consequences of Trump’s failure to treat Putin as a threat.
“Once they take Ukraine, Poland and the Baltics are next,” Haley said. “Those are NATO countries that immediately put America at war.”
Both Harris and Haley also stressed the need to support American allies, denouncing Trump and Republicans’ views on an isolationism they say would move the U.S. closer to war.
“Isolationism, which is exactly what Donald Trump is pushing to pull out of NATO and abandon our friends,” Harris said Monday. “Isolationism is not insulation. It is not insulation. It will not insulate us from harm in terms of our national security.”
Haley criticized Trump in similar terms. “Look at the situation that the Republican Party is putting us in and that Donald Trump is encouraging — it’s this isolationist approach,” Haley told Michigan voters earlier this year. “America can never be so arrogant to think we don’t need friends.”
On Monday, Harris characterized Trump’s relationships with dictators as a threat to democracy, a point Haley also made on the campaign trail.
Trump, Harris said, “is so clearly able to be manipulated by favor and flattery including from dictators and autocrats around the world, and America knows that that is not how we stand.”
The former U.N. ambassador in January said of Trump, “You don’t befriend dictators and thugs who want to kill us.” She added, “When I was in the administration with him at the U.N., I literally had to sit him down and tell him to stop this bromance that he had with Putin.”
Harris and Haley may stand on opposite ends of the political spectrum, but Harris is tapping into their common views on foreign policy and America’s role in the world to help persuade undecided moderate Republican and independent voters in suburban areas.
In the counties where Harris campaigned on Monday across Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, Haley earned tens of thousands of votes during the Republican primaries — even after she dropped out of the presidential race. A senior Harris campaign official said the campaign believes this is an indication of suburban voters’ discontent with Trump. The vice president has been relying on Republicans to help make her appeal to these voters, including former Rep. Liz Cheney, an outspoken critic of Trump who has endorsed Harris and campaigned with her this week. Harris also hit the trail with other Republicans and former Trump aides earlier this month.
In 2020, Joe Biden won Michigan by less than 155,000 votes. In her race against Trump during the primaries, Haley won nearly 55,000 votes in Oakland County, Michigan.
Haley dropped out of the presidential race before the Pennsylvania and Wisconsin primaries, but nonetheless, in Chester County, Pennsylvania, Haley received 9,000 votes, about 24% of the GOP primary votes in the county. President Biden’s margin in Pennsylvania was just 80,000 votes in 2020, and it was even smaller in Wisconsin — a mere 20,000 votes. Haley received 9,000 votes in Waukesha County, Wisconsin.
While Harris tries to woo former Haley supporters, Haley herself is ready to campaign for Trump, despite her warnings about him months ago.
According to a source familiar with the planning, Haley’s team has given the Trump campaign availability dates for a potential joint campaign event, and the two teams are working to schedule an appearance before Election Day.
Last month, Haley told CBS News’ “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan” she was happy to be helpful to the campaign if needed.
“To me, the stark contrast between a Trump and Harris administration are what led me to say, yes, I need to, you know, I’m going to be voting with Trump, and I’m going to speak at the convention,” she said. “Do I agree with his style? Do I agree with his approach? Do I agree with his communications? No. When I look at the policies and how they affect my family and how I think they’re going to affect the country, that’s where I go back and I look at the differences.”
In an interview with “Fox and Friends” last week, Trump said “I’ll do what I have to do” when asked if he’d be requesting Haley’s help, but he reiterated that he “beat her badly.”
