Scores of people are feared dead after a wooden ship carrying about 250 asylum seekers sank off Indonesia's main island of Java.

A powerful earthquake flattened buildings in central Indonesia early today, killing at least 2,900 people and injuring thousands more in the country’s worst disaster since the 2004 tsunami.

Indonesia’s health minister promised to work harder to protect people from bird flu after two young children died of the H5N1 virus, raising the country’s toll to 22.