Indonesia probes Bali tattoo HIV infection report

A local artist tattoos the back of a foreigner (L) during a tattoo festival at Legian Kuta on Indonesia’s resort island of Bali. An investigation is being launched into an alleged case of an Australian tourist contracting HIV while getting a tattoo on the island.


Indonesia is investigating the case of an Australian who is believed to have been infected with HIV while getting a tattoo on the resort island of Bali, an official said today.

“We received a report about this case from the health ministry yesterday and officials will be visiting tattoo parlours today to verify this claim,” Bali health department chief Nyoman Sutedja said.

“At this point, we are still investigating. We can’t say for sure if the patient caught the virus from getting a tattoo or sexual contact,” he added.

There are currently 4,200 HIV/AIDS cases on Bali, Sutedja said.

Crew fled with life vests as packed Indonesian boat sank

Most of the survivors are believed to be economic migrants from countries including Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan.Surviving asylum seekers said the boat that was heading for Australia broke apart in stormy seas about 90km off the coast of Java.

The crew and captain of an Indonesian boat packed with illegal immigrants grabbed life vests and swam away as it sank during a heavy storm, leaving more than 200 passengers missing, Australian media reported today.

Surviving asylum seekers said terrified passengers on the boat that was heading for Australia were left to drown as it broke apart in stormy seas about 90km off the coast of Java, Indonesia.

WWF takes images of rare tigers in logging forest

A Sumatran tiger plays with its cub in the Bukit Tigapuluh forest in central Sumatra in this image captured using camera traps on April 14, 2011, and released today, May 9, 2011.


The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) has recorded images of 12 endangered Sumatran tigers, including a mother playing with cubs, in an Indonesian forest that it said is about to be cleared by loggers.

WWF, which estimates that there are only 400 Sumatran tigers left in the wild, captured the images on camera traps in the Bukit Tigapuluh forest on central Sumatra island, which has seen rampant deforestation for palm oil and paper plantations.

Karmila Parakkasi, leader of WWF’s tiger research team in Sumatra, said the number of big cats seen in two months of observation was impressive.



“What’s unclear is whether we found so many tigers because we’re getting better at locating our cameras or because the tiger’s habitat is shrinking so rapidly here that they are being forced into sharing smaller and smaller bits of forests,” Parakkasi said.

Still images show six individual tigers and a mother with a cub, while the video shows footage of another mother and three young cubs playfully chasing a leaf.

WWF said Indonesia’s government had pledged to protect this forest area, but it was inside a land concession belonging to a subsidiary of Indonesian paper firm Barito Timber Pacific.

The firm was not immediately available for comment.

“As soon as pending permits are granted by the government, the company could clear the forest to supply the wood to Asia Pulp & Paper of Sinar Mas Group,” said WWF, adding that it and other environmental groups have opposed the clearance plan.

Indonesia agreed with Norway a two-year moratorium on new permits to clear forest, under a landmark US$1 billion (RM3 billion) deal to curb greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation, but it has yet to be signed into law as ministries wrangle over details.

The moratorium was expected to slow rapid industry expansion by the world’s largest producer of palm oil, used to make everything from biscuits and soap to biodiesel and seeing growing demand from consumers in fast-growing Asia.

In the last 50 years, Indonesia has lost both the Bali tiger and Java tiger.

Indonesian copper mine workers protest after killings

Workers from Freeport-McMoran Copper and Gold Inc’s gold mine go on strike in front of the local parliament in Timika, Indonesia’s Papua province, April 8, 2011

Hundreds of workers at an Indonesian copper and gold mine run by Freeport-McMoran Copper & Gold Inc protested today after the killing of two colleagues, which heightened concern about security along the jungle road they need to take to work.

Local police said two men had died inside a burning car yesterday, a day after two other people were wounded in a shooting near the huge mine in Papua, a province with a simmering separatist movement.

Yesterday, Freeport said in a statement: “Initial reports from police indicated that the vehicle appears to have been fired upon.” Police would not comment on whether the men had been shot at.

Freeport said production at the mine continued as normal.



“Several employees expressed their grief and solidarity in a peaceful manner and operational activity is normal,” Jakarta-based Freeport spokesman Ramdani Sirait said in a statement emailed to Reuters on Friday.

The police said they would beef up security in the area.

“We will scour the area ... We can’t underestimate this,” the area’s deputy police chief, Mada Laksanta, told Reuters.

The mine has been a frequent source of friction in Papua because of its environmental impact, the low share of revenue going to local Papuans and the legality of payments to Indonesian security forces who help guard the site.

In 2002, two American teachers and an Indonesian companion were killed in an ambush outside the Freeport installation.

Previous deadly attacks blamed on separatists have generally been unsophisticated and the movement is poorly armed. The military and police generally keep a tight rein on the province.

Freeport is the world’s biggest publicly traded copper miner and its Grasberg facility, 3,400km east of Indonesia’s capital Jakarta, has the world’s largest recoverable reserves of copper and the largest gold reserves.

It expects to sell 1.0 billion pounds of copper and 1.3 million ounces of gold this year, down from 2010 sales of 1.2 billion pounds of copper and 1.8 million ounces of gold, as the Indonesian unit is expected to mine lower-grade ore at the Grasberg pit, the firm said on its website.

Freeport owns 90.64 per cent of PT Freeport Indonesia, which operates the mine in Papua, while the Indonesian government owns the remainder.

Indonesia lifts tsunami alert after 7.2 quake

A local tsunami alert was issued and later lifted after a magnitude 7.2 quake struck off Papua, eastern Indonesia early this morning.

The US Geological Survey (USGS) reported a strong 6.6 tremor followed by the stronger second quake, which hit at 2.11am today. The latter was only 12.3km deep and centred 109 km northwest of Dobo, in the Aru Islands, very close to the first quake.

An official at the Indonesian meteorological agency said there were no reports of damage or of a tsunami.

Indonesia sits on the Pacific “Ring of Fire” and is prone to earthquakes.

An employee works in front of computers monitoring the Tsunami warning system in Jakarta

Dozens killed, injured in Indonesian train crash

Dozens of people were killed or badly injured when two trains collided in Indonesia’s central Java province early on Saturday morning, officials told Reuters.

Local television showed several carriages had overturned or were badly mangled. Rescue and transport ministry officials put the death toll at around 22 to 23 with many more injured, while local news agency Antara said 33 people had been killed in the crash. Indonesia needs to spend billions of dollars on improving its ageing infrastructure, including roads, power plants, railways, and airports.

Underinvestment in the years since the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis has resulted in several accidents in the transport sector, and has hampered economic development, with the result that Indonesia’s GDP growth is well below potential and lags that of China and India.

The accident happened about 0245 am local time in Petarukan train station, Pemalang, on the north coast of entral Java.

Hengky Susilo Hadi, head of a local search and rescue unit, told Reuters that 22 people had died, and 19 others were badly injured.

“It is possible there are additional victims,” still trapped inside the wreckage, he said.

Sugeng Priyono, spokesman for the national railway PT Kereta Api Indonesia, said that the Argo Bromo Anggrek train was travelling from Jakarta to the East Java provincial capital city of Surabaya, when it ploughed into the stationary Senja Utama train before dawn.

“The Petarukan station is where double tracks change to a single track. Initial report is that the Argo Bromo Anggrek train had not yet been given permission to go ahead when it hit the other train. However, this is still under investigation, so there could be other causes.”

Rockers blasted over Indonesia tobacco deal

Australian, British and US rock bands including The Smashing Pumpkins and Stereophonics have been urged to withdraw from a music festival in Indonesia because of its tobacco sponsorship.

Anti-tobacco activists and health experts from Australia, the United States and Wales have expressed their concern that the bands' actions will encourage youths to smoke in a country with high and rising addiction rates.

The country of some 240 million people is one of the last lightly-regulated major tobacco markets in the world and is paying the price in terms of growing rates of addiction, especially among women and children.



Cigarette consumption in Indonesia soared 47 percent in the 1990s, according to the World Health Organisation











Its reputation as the wild west of tobacco control was graphically illustrated earlier this year with the release of a video on the Internet of a two-year-old Javanese boy with a 40-cigarette-a-day habit.

The Washington-based Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids said it had written to US bands The Smashing Pumpkins, MUTEMATH and Dashboard Confessional asking them to cancel their appearances at the Java Rockin'Land festival next month.

"As long as this event is sponsored by a tobacco company, any band that participates should know that it is helping market cigarettes to children," Campaign president Matthew L. Myers said.

"If these bands reject tobacco sponsorship, they can send a powerful message that they care about the health of the world?s children and will not allow their name and talent to be used to market deadly tobacco products."

In Australia, health experts have accused local bands The Vines and Wolfmother of ignoring the connection between tobacco marketing and smoking-related deaths.

"Tobacco industry marketing is a key factor in what is killing people from tobacco-caused disease -- about six million a year in fact," Simon Chapman and Becky Freeman of the University of Sydney's School of Public Health wrote in an article on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's website.

Indonesia has "virtually no tobacco control policies", making it a "tobacco industry paradise where publicity for music festivals like the one Wolfmother and The Vines will participate in wallpaper the country's media," they said.

In Britain, anti-smoking group Ash Wales has similarly condemned Welsh band Stereophonics for agreeing to play at the October 8 to 10 festival in Jakarta.

"We urge the Stereophonics to demand the withdrawal of tobacco sponsorship and any associated branding from the festival or alternatively to pull out," Ash Wales chief executive Tanya Buchanan told Wales Online website Tuesday.

"If the Stereophonics go ahead with a tobacco-sponsored concert they are, by choice, being spokespeople for the tobacco industry and helping them to market to children."

In all, 14 foreign bands are scheduled to play at the festival, along with a host of local acts. Advertising for the event includes cigarette branding and tickets are being sold at a discount to students.

The festival, billed as the biggest in Southeast Asia, is being sponsored by Gudang Garam, a major Indonesian producer of clove cigarettes.

The company regularly sponsor music events targeted at young people, saying it wants to promote Indonesian bands and associate its product with rock'n'roll values.

Wolfmother has responded to the criticism by issuing a statement on its website saying it does not "support or condemn the sponsors" and will play the gig for the fans who have "parted with their very own cold hard cash".

In the past two years, US artists Alicia Keys and Kelly Clarkson refused to play in Indonesia until their promoters dropped tobacco sponsorships.

But several other Western musicians -- most recently former Guns'n'Roses guitarist Slash -- have played with the backing of the tobacco industry.

Indonesia earns billions of dollars a year in tax revenues from tobacco companies, which employ millions of people across the country.

Cigarette consumption in the Southeast Asian archipelago soared 47 percent in the 1990s, according to the World Health Organisation.


The Smashing Pumpkins have been urged to withdraw from a music festival in Indonesia because of its tobacco sponsorship



Indonesia is one of the last lightly-regulated major tobacco markets in the world

Obama to visit India, Indonesia on Asia tour in November

US President Barack Obama said today he plans to visit India and Indonesia in November as part of an Asia tour.

US President Barack Obama addresses the 65th United Nations General Assembly at the UN headquarters in New York, September 23, 2010



Obama, addressing the UN General Assembly, said he would then move on to a Group of 20 leadership summit in South Korea, scheduled from November 11-12, followed by a visit to Japan for a November 13-14 meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum.

Obama’s twice-postponed trip to Indonesia will make good on his promise to travel to the world’s most populous majority-Muslim nation where he lived for part of his youth.