A Lion Air flight lost contact shortly after it left Indonesia's capital Monday morning, and a search and rescue effort was being made at sea.
The Boeing 737-800 plane departed Jakarta, about 6.20 a.m. for Pangkal Pinang on an island chain off Sumatra. Data for Flight 610 on aircraft tracking website FlightAware ends just a few minutes following takeoff.
"We can confirm that one of our flights has lost contact," said Lion Air spokesman Danang Mandala Prihantoro. "Its position cannot be ascertained yet."
A telegram from the National Search and Rescue Agency to the air force has requested assistance with the search of a location at sea off Java.
A report to the Jakarta Search and Rescue Office cites the crew of a tug boat reporting a Lion Air flight falling from the sky. It said several vessels have headed to the location.
Indonesian TV showed dozens of people waiting anxiously outside the Pangkal Pinang airport and officials bringing out plastic chairs.
There was no immediate confirmation of how many people were on board, but the maximum capacity would be about 190.
Lion Air is one of Indonesia's youngest and biggest airlines, flying to dozens of domestic and international destinations.
In 2013, one of its Boeing 737-800 jets missed the runway while landing on the resort island of Bali, crashing into the sea without causing any fatalities among the 108 people on board.
WARSAW, Poland (AP) — A former Polish justice minister who faces prosecution in his homeland over alleged abuse of power said Monday that he has been granted asylum in Hungary.
Zbigniew Ziobro was a key figure in the government led by the nationalist conservative Law and Justice party that ran Poland between 2015 and 2023. That administration established political control over key judicial institutions by stacking higher courts with friendly judges and punishing its critics with disciplinary action or assignments to far-away locations.
Current Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s government came to power more than two years ago with ambitions to roll back the changes, but efforts to undo them have been blocked by two successive presidents aligned with the national right.
In October, prosecutors requested the lifting of Ziobro's parliamentary immunity to press charges against him. They allege among other things that Ziobro misused a fund for victims of violence, including for the purchase of Israeli Pegasus surveillance software.
Tusk’s party says Law and Justice used Pegasus to spy illegally on political opponents while in power. Ziobro says he acted lawfully.
Hungary, led by nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, has hosted several politicians close to Law and Justice while Polish authorities were seeking them.
In a lengthy post on X Monday, Ziobro wrote that he had “decided to accept the asylum granted to me by the government of Hungary due to the political persecution in Poland.”
“I have decided to remain abroad until genuine guarantees of the rule of law are restored in Poland,” he said. “I believe that instead of acquiescing to being silenced and subjected to a torrent of lies — which I would have no opportunity to refute — I can do more by fighting the mounting lawlessness in Poland.”
Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó said in Budapest on Monday that Hungarian authorities have granted asylum to “several” individuals who would face political persecution in Poland, according to his ministry. He declined to specify their names.
In an English-language post on X, Tusk wrote that “the former Minister of Justice(!), Mr. Ziobro, who was the mastermind of the political corruption system, has asked the government of Victor Orbán for political asylum.”
