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East Java’s blue lava spectacle

BRILLIANT blue flames light up the night sky above Kawah Ijen, casting an eerie electric glow as they flow down the sides of the active volcano in remote Indonesia.

Hot sulphuric gases – escaping at high pressure through cracks in the mountain – ignite upon contact with air, burning a fantastic, iridescent blue. This strange natural phenomenon can also create “blue lava” – rivers of burning liquid sulphur that stream from the vast crater.


The gases burn day and night at this spectacular volcano in the extreme east of Java island, but its characteristic blue hue can only be observed

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Afghanistan-Pakistan border fighting

Afghan men walk past a damaged building following an explosion in Kabul, on October 16, 2025. (Photo by -/AFP via Getty Images)

Ceasefire halts deadly Afghanistan-Pakistan border fighting

A CEASEFIRE along the frontier between Afghanistan and Pakistan was holding on Thursday (16), officials on both sides said, after dozens of troops and civilians were killed in cross-border clashes.

In Spin Boldak, a focal point of recent clashes on the Afghan side, an AFP journalist saw shops reopening and residents returning to homes they had fled during the fighting.

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