Today's Top 3 News: Statue of Liberty Replica in Brazil Collapses After Massive Storm

5 hours ago 4

December 18, 2025 | 04:33 pm

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TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Tempo English compiled the top 3 news on Thursday, December 18, 2025. Here are the highlights: Statue of Liberty Replica in Brazil Collapses After Massive Storm; Greenpeace Warns Prabowo's Papua Plan Risks Ecological Disaster; and Fact Check: True, White Flags in Aceh Were a Call for Help.

The following is the list of the top 3 news on Tempo English today:

1. Statue of Liberty Replica in Brazil Collapses After Massive Storm

TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - On Monday afternoon, December 15, 2025, a towering Statue of Liberty replica outside a Havan megastore in southern Brazil collapsed as violent storms lashed the region, with wind gusts strong enough to tear the 114-foot structure from its pedestal, StringersHub and Newsweek reported.

Amid the dramatic footage circulating online, authorities confirmed no one was injured, thanks to immediate safety measures performed by Havan staff.

Mayor Marcelo Maranata said the metropolitan area had been battered by sustained winds of up to 56 miles per hour, conditions that ultimately proved too severe for the towering replica to withstand.

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2. Greenpeace Warns Prabowo's Papua Plan Risks Ecological Disaster

TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Greenpeace Indonesia and Yayasan Pusaka Bentala Rakyat, part of Solidaritas Merauke, have criticized Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto's directive to the local authorities in Papua and the Executive Committee for the Acceleration of Special Autonomy Development in Papua on Monday, December 16, 2025. Prabowo ordered massive planting of oil palm, sugarcane, and cassava in Papua to achieve energy self-sufficiency. Oil palm for fuel, sugarcane and cassava for ethanol.

Solidaritas Merauke assesses that such policy will repeat the ecological disaster in Sumatra, which has killed 1,030 people, displaced 205, and injured around 7,000. In pursuit of food and energy self-sufficiency ambition, Prabowo is said to be preparing an ecological disaster for Papua. To achieve this ambition, millions of natural forests in Papua must vanish. "Prabowo also disregards the presence of indigenous people as the holders of Papuan land sovereignty," said the forest campaigner from Greenpeace Indonesia, Asep Komarudin, in a written statement on Wednesday, December 17, 2025.

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3. Fact Check: True, White Flags in Aceh Were a Call for Help

TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - A number of videos claiming that Acehnese residents were putting up white flags in hopes of aid coming, including from abroad, circulated on Facebook (the first account [archive] and the second account), Instagram, and X.

The videos showed several men tying white flags and placing them on the side of the road. "Acehnese people have gone viral again," wrote the accounts uploading the content in early December 2025. They claimed that the residents were waving white flags as a signal to call on world nations to come to Aceh.

Is it true that Acehnese people raised the white flag as a symbol of asking for foreign assistance?

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