Ahmad Pathoni
Guest Author
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/ 12 September 2007

Tsunami warning after big Sumatra quake

A powerful earthquake measuring 7,9 struck struck near Indonesia’s Sumatra island on Wednesday, triggering tsunami warnings in Indonesia, Malaysia, India and Sri Lanka, officials said. Indonesia’s Global TV reported that several buildings in Padang, the capital of West Sumatra, had collapsed.

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/ 23 April 2007

East Timor drowns in language soup

Portuguese is one of the two official languages in East Timor, but you can hardly hear it spoken in the streets of the young nation. The tiny country was a Portuguese colony for more than three centuries, but only an estimated 5% of its one million people now speak the European language.

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/ 3 January 2007

Indonesia resumes search for missing plane

Indonesian rescuers launched new sea, land and air searches on Wednesday for a missing plane with 102 people aboard after initial reports its wreckage had been found turned out to be false. Senior government officials have apologised for erroneously saying the 17-year-old Boeing 737-400 had been spotted in the mountains of Indonesia’s eastern Sulawesi island.

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/ 2 January 2007

Indonesian airliner still missing, officials say

Senior Indonesian officials said on Tuesday reports that an airliner with 102 people on board had been found on Sulawesi island were wrong, and the plane was still missing. Officials had earlier said that wreckage of the Adam Air plane had been found after it had crashed into the mountains in heavy rain. There were reports 12 people had survived the crash.

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/ 10 June 2006

Quake survivors complain of slow aid

Cramped in a single tent sheltering 41 people, survivors of last month’s Indonesian earthquake at this hamlet complain they receive only one meal a day, with assistance still slow to fully flow here two weeks after the disaster. ”We don’t know how much longer we have to endure this situation,” said a weary looking Endang.

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/ 3 February 2006

Indonesian Muslims storm Danish embassy building

Hardline Indonesian Muslims stormed into an office block housing the Danish embassy on Friday protesting cartoons portraying the Prophet Muhammad in Denmark, as others demanded death for the cartoonist. About 100 members of the Front of the Defenders of Islam massed outside the building, chanting: "Let’s go jihad! We’re ready for jihad!".

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/ 31 January 2006

Indonesia’s poor take reality TV by storm

Forget jaded celebrities slumming it on the dance floor and illicit housemate sex: Indonesians are glued to reality TV programmes featuring the country’s most down-at-heel. <i>Surprise Cash</i> and <i>House Makeover</i>, aired weekly, were rated number two and three out of scores of reality TV programmes shown in December.

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/ 12 December 2005

In traffic-clogged Jakarta, monorail remains a mirage

Sick of being stuck in gridlocked traffic or jostled in overcrowded buses, Jakartans wonder whether their public transport dream, the city’s first monorail, is ever going to become reality. One-and-a-half years after its ground-breaking, the only sign that the saga-riddled project is under way is a few concrete and steel shoots poking into the polluted main street of South Jakarta’s business district.