A former UK doctor faces dozens of charges linked to alleged sexual offences against 38 patients who were in his care, including a child under 13, prosecutors have announced.

Nathaniel Spencer, 38, was charged with “a number of serious sexual offences allegedly carried out against patients while he was working as a doctor” in central England, regional prosecutor Ben Samples said on Friday.

They include “assault by penetration and sexual assault against a child”, he noted.

The charges against Spencer, of Birmingham, follow a police probe into the alleged sexual offences at two regional state-run hospitals in Stoke-on-Trent and Dudley between 2017 and 2021.

“Our prosecutors have worked at length to support a detailed and complex investigation by Staffordshire Police, carefully reviewing the available evidence,” Samples said.

They established “that there is sufficient evidence to bring the case to trial and that it is in the public interest to pursue criminal proceedings,” he added.

Spencer, who was a resident doctor — previously known in Britain as a junior doctor — faces 15 counts of sexual assault, 17 assault by penetration charges and one count of attempted assault by penetration.

He is also accused of a further dozen offences involving a child under 13, which include sexual assault and assault by penetration.

Prosecutors and police have not disclosed how many alleged child victims were involved.

Spencer is due to appear at the North Staffordshire Justice Centre on January 20 for his first court hearing.

• Rain, floods kill 1,790 in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam.
• Deforestation causes landslides, floods in Indonesia, say environmentalists.
• People not only dying from the flood, but also from starvation: state media.
  

Ruinous floods and landslides have killed more than 900 people on Indonesia’s island of Sumatra, the country’s disaster management agency said on Saturday, with fears that starvation could send the toll even higher.

A chain of tropical storms and monsoonal rains has pummeled Southeast and South Asia, triggering landslides and flash floods from the Sumatran rainforest to the highland plantations of Sri Lanka.

More than 1,790 people have been killed in natural disasters unfolding across Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam over the past week.

In Indonesia’s provinces of Aceh and North Sumatra, floods have swept away roads, smothered houses in silt, and cut off supplies.

Aceh governor Muzakir Manaf said response teams were still searching for bodies in “waist-deep” mud.

However, starvation was one of the gravest threats now hanging over remote and inaccessible villages.

“Many people need basic necessities. Many areas remain untouched in the remote areas of Aceh,” he told reporters.

“People are not dying from the flood, but from starvation. That’s how it is.”

Entire villages had been washed away in the rainforest-cloaked Aceh Tamiang region, Muzakir said.

“The Aceh Tamiang region is completely destroyed, from the top to the bottom, down to the roads and down to the sea.

“Many villages and sub-districts are now just names,” he said.

Aceh Tamiang flood victim Fachrul Rozi said he had spent the past week crammed into an old shop building with others who had fled the rising waters.

“We ate whatever was available, helping each other with the little supplies each resident had brought,” he told AFP.

“We slept crammed together.”

Aceh resident Munawar Liza Zainal said he felt “betrayed” by the Indonesian government, which has so far shrugged off pressure to declare a national disaster.

“This is an extraordinary disaster that must be faced with extraordinary measures,” he told AFP, echoing frustrations voiced by other flood victims.

“If national disaster status is only declared later, what’s the point?”

Declaring a national disaster would free up resources and help government agencies coordinate their response.

Analysts have suggested Indonesia could be reluctant to declare a disaster — and seek additional foreign aid — because it would show it was not up to the task.

Indonesia’s government this week insisted it could handle the fallout.

Climate calamity

The scale of devastation has only just become clear in other parts of Sumatra as engorged rivers shrink and floodwaters recede.

AFP photos showed muddy villagers salvaging silt-encrusted furniture from flooded houses in Aek Ngadol, North Sumatra.

Humanitarian groups worry that the scale of the calamity could be unprecedented, even for a nation prone to natural disasters.

Indonesia’s death toll rose to 908 on Saturday, according to the disaster management agency, with 410 people missing.

Sri Lanka’s death toll jumped on Friday to 607, as the government warned that fresh rains raised the risk of new landslides.

Thailand has reported 276 deaths and Malaysia two, while at least two people were killed in Vietnam after heavy rains triggered a series of landslides.

Seasonal monsoon rains are a feature of life in Southeast Asia, flooding rice fields and nourishing the growth of other key crops.

However, climate change is making the phenomenon more erratic, unpredictable and deadly throughout the region.

Environmentalists and Indonesia’s government have also suggested that logging and deforestation exacerbated landslides and flooding in Sumatra.

• IndiGo faces biggest crisis in its 20-year history
• Some operations of crisis-hit airlines normalise. 
• IndiGo hopes to be in better shape by around Dec 15. 

India capped airline fares on Saturday as hundreds of passengers gathered outside Bengaluru and Mumbai airports after 385 IndiGo flights were cancelled on the fifth day of a crisis that has hit the country’s biggest airline.

Air travel across India has been in turmoil this week after IndiGo cancelled thousands of flights, prompting the government to announce special relief for the carrier and the operation of additional trains to help clear the backlog.

The spate of IndiGo cancellations led to a big jump in fares at other airlines on popular routes, and the government said it was capping fares to maintain pricing discipline in the market. It did not share details on what the caps would be.

“The Ministry will continue to closely monitor fare levels through real-time data and active coordination with airlines,” the Indian government said.

Fares were last capped during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.

The flight cancellations are the biggest crisis ever for 20-year-old IndiGo, which has prided itself for on-time performance and lured passengers with low-cost fares.

IndiGo, opens new tab has admitted it failed to plan properly ahead of a November 1 deadline to implement stricter rules on night flying and weekly rest for pilots, ultimately leading to scheduling problems this week.

On Friday, more than 1,000 IndiGo flights were cancelled. After the government announced the exemptions to the rules for IndiGo, the airline said it could return to normal operations between December 10-15.

The Delhi airport in a post on X on Saturday said flight operations are steadily resuming, but that some IndiGo flights continue to be affected.

Airport sources told Reuters that IndiGo cancelled 124 flights in Bengaluru on Saturday, 109 in Mumbai, 86 in New Delhi and 66 in Hyderabad.

Hundreds of passengers gathered outside Bengaluru and Mumbai airports on Saturday, some unaware of the cancellations, according to Reuters photographers at the scene.

Satish Konde had to catch a connecting flight from Mumbai to the western city of Nagpur and had checked in, but he was later told it was cancelled.

“I am waiting for my luggage to be returned,” he told Reuters.

Other major Indian airlines, including Air India and Akasa, have not had to cancel flights due to the new rules.