Jakarta Informer

One of Indonesia’s most active volcanoes erupted Friday, sending lava and a searing gas cloud tumbling down its slopes. At least four people were feared dead, officials said, and several others were seriously hurt. “It happened so fast,” said Surono, the director of the volcanology and mitigation agency. “There was no time for an evacuation.” [...]

A court in Jakarta has upheld an Indonesian government ban on the Australian feature film Balibo, saying it could incite political tensions. The film Balibo shows Indonesian Special Forces murdering five Australian-based newsmen during Indonesia’s invasion of East Timor in 1975. The account contradicts Indonesia’s official explanation that they were accidentally killed in crossfire. It [...]

A South Korean supplier of city gas identified as Samtan Co. plans to buy a 34 percent in equity share of E-Pertagas, a liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) producer in Indonesia, a company official said. E-Pertagas is a joint venture between South Korean LPG provider E1 Corp and Pertagas, a subsidiary of Pertamina, Indonesia’s state-owned oil [...]

Recently, actress Febby Febiola caught a university student videotaping her in a public toilet. According to Febby, while using the toilet , she saw a cellphone being held above the cubicle wall. She screamed and immediately banged the next cubicle. She later called the security. According to the police, the man appeared to be drunk. [...]

The jerseys worn by Dutch fans at the World Cup final were orange but Spain’s red may better describe the feelings of replica soccer kit workers trying to raise wages in Indonesian factories. The workers in a garment factory near the capital Jakarta making the Dutch, English and Australian replica shirts and the Australia team [...]

In 2007, the government initiated a very good program of converting the use of kerosene into LPG (Liquefied Petroleum Gas). And along with Pt. Pertamina, LPG kits were distributed free of cost to the masses. This step towards progress was applauded by one and all. Using LPG for cooking purposes instead of kerosene or wood [...]

Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono rebuked his country’s police force at a ceremony to commemorate its 64th anniversary yesterday, saying he has received millions of public complaints about the force that has been tainted with allegations of graft. His comments came in the wake of a firebomb attack on the office of a news magazine [...]

The Minister for the Environment and Water Resources, Dr Yaacob Ibrahim, will be in Jakarta, Indonesia, on July 8. Dr Yaacob and fellow ASEAN environment ministers will be meeting Mexico’s Foreign Secretary, Patricia Espinosa – the incoming President of the 16th Conference of the Parties (COP 16) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate [...]

The death toll from last week’s strong earthquakes that struck Indonesia’s eastern province of Papua has risen to 17. This was a statement from the National Disaster Management Agency today. The series of quakes on Wednesday, the strongest of which measured 7.1 on the Richter scale, also left 15 people injured, about 3,500 houses damaged [...]

In a bid to clamp down on incidents of sexual harassment on its buses, the TransJakarta management on Thursday launched separate lines for male and female passengers, but critics call the system ineffective. TransJakarta control manager Gunardjo said his company had posted signs directing passengers to queue in different lines according to gender at 140 [...]

A two-year-old toddler in South Sumatra, Indonesia, has become addicted to cigarettes, smoking around forty a day. The parents of Aldi Rizal say their boy started smoking cigarettes at 18 months old when his father, Muhammad, introduced him to the habit. They say Rizal screams, slams his head against the floor and even gets sick [...]

The South Jakarta District Court turned down a pretrial motion by graft suspect, high-ranking policeman Susno Duadji who challenged his arrest on the grounds that police had enough preliminary evidence to detain the suspect. “The South Jakarta District Court considers that (incoming) report to police and testimony by a witness can serve as preliminary evidence [...]

Yahoo! has announced that it has acquired Koprol, an Indonesian Internet service that lets people use mobile telephones to instantly connect with nearby people and places. “Users are increasingly relying on mobile devices to communicate and access the Internet and they are looking for seamless integration between those devices and PCs,” said Rose Tsou, senior [...]

The body of former first lady Hasri Ainun Habibie, the wife of former president B.J. Habibie arrived in Jakarta on early Tuesday morning where she will be buried on the same day. News portal kompas.com reported that the body arrived at Halim Perdana Kusuma Airport in East Jakarta at 4:58 a.m. State Secretary Sudi Silalahi, [...]

Singer Kelly Clarkson won her fight against Jakarta’s cigarette company Djarum that was sponsoring her gig in Indonesia. The sponsorship of the company for the event has now been canceled. Kelly Clarkson was under pressure to cancel her 29th April concert as posters of the cigarette brand would promote smoking but she has refused to [...]

Bloody riots over the Muslim tomb in Jakarta killed 3 people yesterday before police was sent to stop the violence. Over 100 people got injured, many of them quite seriously. They clashed with security forces and protested against plans to flatten part of a cemetery which contains a memorial to a Muslim scholar. A misunderstanding [...]

Authorities removed a statue of Barack Obama from a park in the Jakarta due to a public backlash.It was moved today to a elementary school nearby where the U.S. president went to as he was a child. The statue, inspired by a childhood photograph of the 10-year-old Obama and made of bronze, was the target [...]

After a long struggle in court, Prita Mulyasari, the defendant in the criminal case on the defamation of Omni International Hospital in Serpong has been declared not guilty by the judge panel of the district court of Tangerang. The email she has sent out to her friends, containing her complaints about how she was poorly [...]