Libya said today it has asked the United States for “clarifications” regarding the abduction in Tripoli of an al Qaida leader linked to the 1998 US Embassy bombings in East Africa, adding that Libyan nationals should be tried in their own country.

A boat carrying would-be asylum seekers to Australia has sunk in Indonesian waters, killing at least three people including two children.

US President Barack Obama has arrived on the Indonesian island of Bali for a summit of East Asian nations at the end of a nine-day Asia-Pacific trip.

INDONESIA’S most active volcano killed 77 people yesterday in its biggest eruption in over a century, incinerating homes, grounding flights and driving thousands into shelters.

THE world’s smallest wallaby and a frog with a Pinocchio-like nose were among the new species discovered in a remote mountain wilderness, conservationists said.

US officials on Bali have warned of a possible terrorist attack on the Indonesian island tonight.

Rescuers say the number of people killed when a dam burst outside the Indonesian capital Jakarta has climbed to 96. The toll is expected to keep climbing with 130 still missing.

TORRENTIAL rain caused a colonial-era dam to burst outside the Indonesian capital early yesterday, sending a wall of muddy water crashing into a densely packed neighbourhood and killing at least 58 people.

A ferry carrying around 250 passengers and 17 crew has sunk in a storm in central Indonesian waters, officials said today.

Students at Barack Obama’s old primary school in the Indonesian capital couldn’t be prouder.

Police say they are questioning 57 members of a hardline Muslim group following a bloody attack on an interfaith rally in the Indonesian capital, Jakarta.

The self-proclaimed military commander of the south-east Asian terror network behind the Bali bombings faced a possible death penalty as his trial opened in the Indonesian capital today.

High tides have flooded parts of the Indonesian capital Jakarta with sea water, forcing tens of thousands of people to flee homes, cutting off a toll road leading to the international airport, officials and media reports said today.

Beyonce Knowles has been given permission to put on her raunchiest show when she takes to the stage in Muslim Indonesia next month.

Simon Dyson insisted today he had not been deterred from returning to defend his Enjoy Jakarta Astro Indonesia Open title despite the recent heavy flooding which caused considerable devastation in the city.

Deadly floods that have swamped the Indonesian capital Jakarta since last week began receding today, enabling emergency workers and evacuees to reach previously inaccessible areas and start a daunting cleanup operation.

Flooding in the Indonesian capital, Jakarta, has affected around three quarters of the city, an official said today as the death toll from the disaster hit 25.

Flooding killed five people and more than 100,000 others were left homeless in the Indonesian capital, an official said today as neck-high waters submerged large sections of the city.

Countries in Asia must improve how they share information on earthquakes and possible tsunamis to build an effective regional disaster warning system, an international tsunami expert said in Malaysia today.

A magnitude-7.7 earthquake rocked eastern Indonesia today, the US Geological Survey said.

INDONESIA said yesterday a 16-year-old youth is suffering from bird flu and several other countries also reported more suspected cases in people.

The top US health official was reviewing Indonesia’s ability to identify and contain bird flu outbreaks today, warning it will be almost impossible to halt a pandemic if the virus mutates into a more dangerous form.

INDONESIA said yesterday it suspected two fugitives linked to al-Qaida masterminded the suicide bombings of crowded restaurants in tourist areas of Bali that killed at least 26 people and injured more than 100.

Suicide bombers carried out the attacks on three crowded restaurants on Indonesia’s resort island of Bali, killing at least 25 people and wounding more than 100, a top anti-terror official said yesterday.

The British Embassy in the Indonesian capital has been evacuated after receiving a suspicious package, an embassy spokeswoman said today.

THE Government will seek to compel the adoptive parents of a young boy whom they left in an Indonesian orphanage to pay for his maintenance and upkeep over the past two years.

A 6.3-magnitude earthquake struck off the Indonesian coast today, Hong Kong seismologists said.

An 8.2 magnitude earthquake has struck in the sea off the coast of Sumatra, Indonesia, the US Geological Survey said.

Illegal logging in Indonesia’s Papua province is rampant and much of the illicit wood is smuggled to China to feed the country’s voracious appetite for lumber, environmentalists said.

Top hotels in several Asian capitals have stopped ordering sea bass and sole from waters off their tsunami-ravaged coastlines to ease diners’ concerns about fish feasting on corpses.

Camps for up to 500,000 tsunami refugees will be built on devastated Sumatra island, the UN said today.

Residents of Indonesia’s quake-and-tsunami-devastated Aceh province welcomed US Secretary of State Colin Powell’s visit to the region today, expressing gratitude for American aid.

The main airport on Indonesia’s tsunami-battered Sumatra island reopened today after being closed for hours when a relief plane hit a herd of cows on landing.

The main airport on Indonesia’s tsunami-battered Sumatra island was closed today after a relief plane hit a herd of cows, hampering the world’s still-fragile efforts to get aid to victims of the disaster.

The EU has set by €300m in an emergency fund to aid countries hit by the deadly tidal waves.

The death toll in Indonesia’s Aceh province might reach 80,000, a UN official said.

RESCUE teams converged on beaches and remote islands in search of the missing yesterday as authorities reported that more than 430 people, including a number of foreign tourists, were killed and 4,100 injured when earthquake-spawned tidal waves devastated idyllic resort areas of southern Thailand.

More than 22,000 people were reported killed around southern Asia and as far away as Somalia on Africa’s eastern coast by massive tidal waves triggered by a massive earthquake off the Indonesian coast on Sunday.

Last year’s bombing of the Marriott hotel in the Indonesian capital Jakarta was inspired by Osama bin Laden, a militant convicted of the attack said today.

Police have arrested the wife of one of Southeast Asia’s most wanted terror suspects and plan to charge her in connection with last year’s suicide bombing at the Marriott hotel in the Indonesian capital, police said today.

The West must stop associating Islam with violence, poverty and indignity, top officials from three southeast Asian nations have stressed.

Indonesia today ordered a mandatory mass cull of chickens in areas affected by an outbreak of bird flu, reversing its earlier insistence that a large-scale slaughter was not necessary.

Indonesia’s environment minister today labelled illegal loggers ”terrorists” for rampant deforestation said to be the main cause of a devastating flood on Sumatra island that left more than 200 people either dead or missing.

INDONESIAN police seized documents last month showing terrorists were planning an attack in the area around Jakarta’s Marriott Hotel, where 10 people died yesterday in a suicide car bombing.