Jakarta

Indonesia has widened the search for hundreds of people missing after a ferry sank, as survivors were found hundreds of kilometres from where the ship went down, a navy officer said on Thursday. A seven-year-old boy was among 13 people rescued on Wednesday clinging to an oil rig in the Java sea.

Floods and landslides in Indonesia’s Aceh and North Sumatra provinces have killed at least 80 people and forced tens of thousands to flee to higher ground, authorities in the region said on Monday. Aceh, still feeling the devastating effects of the 2004 tsunami, was hardest hit.

The death toll from devastating floods in Indonesia has jumped from 15 to at least 60, with hundreds of other people still missing, local officials said on Sunday. "We have evacuated 60 bodies from Aceh Tamiyang district," Ghufran Zainal Abidin, the local chairperson of the Prosperous Justice Party, said from the worst-affected area in Aceh province.

Dozens of new species of animals and plants including a catfish with protruding teeth and a tree frog with striking bright green eyes have been found in the past year in the forests of Borneo, a WWF report said on Tuesday. The discoveries include 30 unique fish species, two tree frog species, 16 ginger species, three tree species and one large-leafed plant species.

A quake that struck the Indonesian island of Sumatra killed at least seven people, injured 150 and brought down hundreds of homes, local officials and police said on Monday. Three aftershocks sent residents rushing out of their homes in the region, where memories of the 2004 tsunami, which devastated Aceh further to the north, are still fresh.

Landslides on Indonesia’s Sumatra island killed 17 people on Friday, most of them worshippers in a mosque, a rescue official said. Satria Arjuna, chief of the emergency team in the area, said workers were searching for 11 more people missing after the landslides struck two villages in the remote area of western Sumatra.

Paparazzi-hating Hollywood stars have nothing on a young Indonesian tiger that destroyed three camera traps during a 10-day rampage through the jungle of Sumatra. In each case, the film inside was spared and revealed that the same culprit was responsible for all three incidents, said conservation group the WWF.

A strong undersea earthquake struck near the Moluccas islands in northern Indonesia on Wednesday, the United States Geological Survey said on its website, but there were no reports of a tsunami or casualties. The agency put the strength of the quake, which struck at 10.32am (1.32am GMT), at a magnitude of 6,1.

An Indonesian university student got almost four months in jail for calling the president and his deputy ”cat excrement”. Fahrur Rohman (19) was found guilty of publicly insulting President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and Vice-President Jusuf Kalla and handed a sentence of three months and 23 days on Monday, a clerk at the South Jakarta court said.

Hundreds of people prayed for rain on Wednesday in an Indonesian province hard-hit by forest fires as south-east Asian environment ministers prepared to gather to discuss ways to tackle smoke haze covering the region. Dry season fires caused by farmers and big businesses such as plantations have been burning for weeks in parts of Indonesia.

A cry for help from a man desperate for a date was one of two million text messages sent to Indonesia’s president since he set up the service last year, a report said on Wednesday. ”I need a job Mr President! I also need a wife and I want to have a date! Please help me! You are the president, right?” said one of the messages sent to President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.

A pilot died at the controls moments after landing an aeroplane carrying 100 passengers, the Indonesian National Committee for Transport Safety said on Wednesday. Captain Sutikno (54) died of heart failure on board the Boeing 737-200 aircraft that he had guided onto the runway of Jakarta’s Sukarno-Hatta international airport late on Tuesday.

An undersea earthquake struck near Indonesia’s Moluccas islands on Tuesday but Indonesian officials said it was of moderate strength and there was no risk of a tsunami. The state meteorological agency downgraded its initial estimate of the quake’s magnitude and withdrew a tsunami warning.

Two strong earthquakes shook the west coast of Indonesia’s Sumatra island on Saturday but no casualties or damage were reported, the United States Geological Survey (USGS) and local meteorological officials said. The first quake, measured at 6, was centred 364 km south of Banda Aceh, capital of Aceh province, the USGS said. It struck at 3.54am local time with a depth of 10km. The second quake, measured at 5,1, struck at 1:15pm off western Sumatra.

Tens of thousands of Muslims demonstrated in several Indonesian cities on Sunday to protest ongoing Israeli military action, branding Israel and the United States the ”real terrorists”. Hard-line Islamic groups and women’s organisations rallied in several big Indonesian cities, denounced Israeli bombardments in Lebanon.

More than 3 000 villagers have fled the area around a volcano in eastern Indonesia after it started blasting out hot gas and lava, officials said on Friday. Saut Simatupang, a senior vulcanologist, said the alert status for Mount Karangetan on Siau island was now at maximum.

At least 654 people were killed by the tsunami that smashed into the heavily-populated south coast of Indonesia’s Java island this week, the government said on Saturday, raising the toll by 101. As many as 329 remain missing and 978 people were injured after Monday’s tsunami, according to figures compiled by the National Disaster Management Coordinating Agency.

A tsunami caused by a strong undersea earthquake off the south coast of Indonesia’s Java island killed at least 80 people on Monday, a Red Cross official said. ”Our latest data shows 80 people have died while at least 68 are badly injured,” said Fitri Sidikah, an official at the Indonesian Red Cross disaster centre.

Twenty one people have died from tetanus in the aftermath of last month’s earthquake in Indonesia’s central Java island, the health ministry said on Friday. They were among 60 people infected with tetanus after they were injured by rubble when the quake destroyed their homes, the ministry said in a statement. Thirty seven of those are still in hospital, it said.

With its hazy skies, traffic-clogged streets and fume-belching vehicles, the Indonesian capital Jakarta is poking fun at its constant state of pollution in a bid to clear the air. To mark World Environment Day, authorities on Monday unveiled six giant billboards around Jakarta reading "Welcome to Pollution City", with an illustration of a couple holding their noses.

Nearly a week after the deadly quake in central Indonesia, new patients streamed into area hospitals on Friday, seeking treatment for quake-related injuries, medical staff said. ”We continue to receive new patients injured in the quake,” said Maridi, who works at the Sardjito general hospital in Yogyakarta, the main city in the quake zone.

An earthquake measuring 6,0 on the Richter scale rocked Indonesia’s easternmost Papua province on Tuesday, causing panic among residents but no reported casualties, meteorologists said. The temblor came just days after a powerful quake left more than 5 400 dead on the central Java island.

Limited human-to-human transmission of bird flu may have occurred in an Indonesian family that lost seven members to the virus, but there was no evidence it had mutated into an easily transmissible form, the World Health Organisation said on Wednesday.

A strong earthquake measuring 6,8 on the Richter scale struck near Indonesia’s Nias Island late on Tuesday, seismologists said. There were no immediate reports of damage or casualties. The underwater quake hit at 10.28pm local time at a depth of 1,9km, some 270km south-west of Sibolga on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, the United States Geological Survey said.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Thursday that Israel ”one day will vanish” as he ramped up his anti-Western rhetoric in a speech to university students in Jakarta. The Iranian president declared last October that the Jewish state should be ”wiped off the map”.

A strong offshore earthquake registering 5,4 on the Richter scale hit the eastern coast of central Sumatra on Monday, but there were no immediate reports of damage or casualties, the meteorology office said. The earthquake, which hit at 4.16pm local time, was centred 46km under the floor of the Indian Ocean, some 129km south-west of Bengkulu city, agency official Hardiatno said in Jakarta.