Category Archives: Indonesia

Five killed as elevator at Bali resort plunges down ravine

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Accident at Ubud’s Ayuterra Resort believed to have occurred when cable in inclined lift carrying hotel staff snapped

Balinese police are investigating the catastrophic failure of a lift that left five hotel workers dead at a resort on Friday.

The accident took place at Ubud’s Ayuterra Resort about 1pm and is believed to have occurred when a cable in the inclined lift carrying the three women and two men snapped, plunging them 100 metres down a steep ravine at the hillside resort.

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Australia remains free of lumpy skin disease despite Indonesia blocking cattle imports, officials say

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Indonesia imposes strict testing conditions on cattle from three major export ports after claiming infectious disease detected in eight cattle

The Australian government has denied suggestions that a highly infectious livestock disease has been detected in the country, after the Indonesian government moved to block live exports of cattle from northern Australia.

On Sunday, Indonesian officials notified their Australian counterparts they had detected eight cases of lumpy skin disease in cattle imported from Australia.

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Indonesia’s tropical Eternity Glaciers could vanish within years, experts say

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El Niño weather pattern could accelerate melting, leading to sea level rise

Two of the world’s few tropical glaciers, in Indonesia, are melting and their ice may vanish by 2026 or sooner as an El Niño weather pattern threatens to accelerate their demise, the country’s geophysics agency has said.

The agency, known as BMKG, has said the El Niño phenomenon could lead to the most severe dry season in Indonesia since 2019, increasing the risk of forest fires and threatening supplies of clean water.

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Indonesian rescuers end search for crew member missing from surf boat

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Four Australians and two crew were saved after their boat capsized off Sumatra, but hopes of finding the remaining person on board appear over

Rescuers have ended their search for a missing Indonesian crew member one week after a boat with seven on board hit bad weather off Sumatra island, officials said on Monday.

The search was launched last week after authorities received a report that one of two boats headed for Pinang island from Nias island had failed to reach its destination.

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Search for Indonesian sailor continues as rescued Australian surfers contact relieved families

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Officials hope Fifan Marongo who went missing off Aceh on Sunday has safely stranded on an island on the western side of Sumatra

Indonesian authorities plan to continue a search for a missing sailor, after the other six people in a boat lost in remote waters off Aceh on Sunday were rescued on Tuesday.

Four Australians and two other Indonesian crew were safely recovered from the sea. They survived 36 hours in the water on surfboards they had brought for a beach holiday.

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Australian Associated Press contributed to this report

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‘He was petrified’: Australian surfer drifts at sea for 37 hours after boat capsizes off Indonesia

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Elliot Foote’s father Peter Foote says his son floated through the night alone on a surfboard in ‘amazing’ survival story

The father of one of the Australian surfers who were missing at sea off the coast of Indonesia has spoken of the 37-hour ordeal, saying his son was “petrified” as he drifted on a surfboard through the night.

Elliot Foote, his girlfriend Steph Weisse and friends Will Teagle and Jordan Short were in a small boat that capsized in the sea during a storm near Pinang island off Aceh on Sunday night.

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Missing Australian surfers found alive off the coast of Indonesia’s Aceh province

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Elliot Foote, Steph Weisse, Will Teagle and Jordan Short and two Indonesian crew have been found but one crew member is still missing

Four Australians who went missing when their boat encountered poor weather off the coast of Indonesia’s Aceh province on Sunday have been found alive.

Steph Weisse, Will Teagle and Jordan Short were found floating in the water on surfboards on Tuesday.

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Four Australians among seven missing after boat hit by storm off Indonesian islands

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Search and rescue operation launched after small vessel failed to arrive at Pinang resort in the Banyak Islands off Aceh

Four Australian tourists and three Indonesian crew are missing after their boat encountered a storm on its way to a group of remote islands off the west coast of Indonesia.

A search and rescue operation was launched on Monday after the small boat failed to arrive at its resort island destination known for its surf and beaches on Sunday.

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Miss Universe cuts ties with Indonesia pageant over sexual assault claims

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Six Miss Universe Indonesia contestants allege they were asked to strip for ‘a body check for scars and cellulite’

The global organiser of the Miss Universe beauty pageant has cut ties with its franchise in Indonesia days after several contestants alleged they had been sexually abused in the run-up to the competition’s crowning ceremony in Jakarta.

Six contestants in the Miss Universe Indonesia pageant are understood to have filed complaints with police, alleging that organisers asked contestants to strip down to their underwear for “a body check for scars and cellulite” two days before the ceremony in July.

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Student journalists in Indonesia face backlash after reporting on sexual harassment

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Students say they are being targeted with expulsion, physical assault and death threats after writing about sensitive subjects

Yolanda Agne, 23, was just months away from graduating in journalism at a university in Maluku province, Indonesia, when she was banned from finishing her studies.

In March last year, the student magazine Lintas – of which Agne was then editor-in-chief – published a damning piece on the prevalence of sexual harassment on her campus at Ambon Islamic State Institute. Among the alleged perpetrators were eight lecturers, with incidents dating over a six-year period.

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Australian man arrested over alleged drunken rampage in Indonesia freed from jail

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Noosa man Bodhi Mani Risby-Jones tells news conference he is ‘relieved’ after being released

An Australian man arrested for an alleged drunken rampage in Indonesia has been freed from jail.

Bodhi Mani Risby-Jones, 23, was detained in April after he was accused of assaulting people during a naked rampage near a surf resort on the island of Simeulue, off the coast of Sumatra in Aceh province.

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West Papua rebels threaten to shoot New Zealand pilot if independence talks denied

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Phillip Mehrtens, who has been held hostage since February, makes the claim in a new video released by the separatist group

Rebels in Indonesia’s Papua region have threatened to shoot a New Zealand pilot being held hostage if countries do not comply with their demand to start independence talks within two months, a new video released by the group shows.

Guerrilla fighters in Papua’s central highlands, who want to free Papua from Indonesia, kidnapped Phillip Mehrtens after he landed a commercial plane in the mountainous area of Nduga in February.

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Australian man charged for allegedly spitting in Indonesian imam’s face

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Brenton Craig Abbas Abdullah McArthur faces up to 14 months in prison if convicted

An Australian man is facing more than a year in jail after allegedly spitting in the face of an imam at an Indonesian mosque.

Brenton Craig Abbas Abdullah McArthur has been charged over the alleged assault at a mosque in Bandung that was captured on CCTV.

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Australian man arrested in Indonesia says he felt ‘almost possessed’ during naked rampage

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Bodhi Mani Risby-Jones faces up to five years in jail after he allegedly assaulted a fisherman who required 50 stitches for his injuries

Bodhi Mani Risby-Jones says he was not himself and felt “almost possessed” during an alleged drunken naked rampage that led to his arrest on an Indonesian island.

The 23-year-old Australian faces up to five years in jail if convicted over the alleged incident on Thursday on Simeulue, within the conservative Aceh province off the coast of Sumatra.

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Revealed: most of EU delegation to crucial fishing talks made up of fishery lobbyists

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Europe accused of ‘neocolonialism’ for using vassal small island states to sway policy and continue ‘disgraceful plundering’ of distant waters

More than half of the EU’s delegation to a crucial body of tuna stock regulators is made up of fishing industry lobbyists, the Guardian’s Seascape project can reveal, as Europe is accused of “neocolonial” overfishing in the Indian Ocean.

The numbers could shed some light on why the EU recently objected to an agreement by African and Asian coastal nations to restrict harmful fish aggregating devices (FADs) that disproportionately harvest juvenile tuna. Stocks of yellowfin tuna are overfished in the Indian Ocean.

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2023 Goldman environmental prize winners include Texas Gulf coast defender

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Diane Wilson took on Formosa Plastics and won a $50m settlement to help clean up decades worth of toxic plastic waste

Grassroots activists who took on British mining giants and a serial plastics polluter – and won – are among this year’s recipients of the world’s most prestigious environmental prize.

The environmental campaigns led by the six 2023 Goldman prize winners highlight the hurdles faced by some local activists, who are often on the frontlines confronting the toxic mix of corporate greed and systemic corruption that is fuelling the climate emergency, biodiversity collapse and increasingly forced displacement.

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‘Otherworldly’ hybrid solar eclipse reaches totality over Australia – as it happened

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This blog is closed

Among those in Exmouth, Australia today are the Solar Wind Sherpas, an international team of scientific adventurers who have tracked solar eclipses across the Sahara and Mongolia, in Svalbard and Antarctica.

There are 13 sherpas and they come from countries including Germany, the Czech Republic and the US.

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Cyclone Ilsa: 11 shipwrecked fishers rescued off WA coast after six days, nine others feared dead

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Makeshift camp of Indonesian crew spotted by a surveillance plane in the Rowley Shoals, about 300km west of Broome

Eleven Indonesian fishers have been rescued from a remote island off Western Australia after their vessel was destroyed by Cyclone Ilsa.

The men were shipwrecked without food and water for six days on a remote island in the Rowley Shoals, about 300km west of Broome.

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Six soldiers killed, 30 missing in attempt to rescue kidnapped pilot in West Papua

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Separatist rebels confronted Indonesian army troops as they searched for New Zealander who was taken hostage in February

Separatist gunmen attacked Indonesian army troops who were deployed to rescue a New Zealand pilot taken hostage by the rebels in Indonesia’s restive Papua province, leaving at least six dead and about 30 missing, officials said on Sunday.

Initial information from army reports said there were about 36 soldiers at a post in the hilly district of Nduga, when attackers from the West Papua Liberation Army, the armed wing of the Free Papua Movement, opened fire on Saturday.

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Indonesia considers tourist tax to curb bad behaviour in Bali

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Business groups fear cost could damage tourism sector still recovering from effects of pandemic

Indonesia is considering imposing a tax for tourists after a series of incidents in which badly behaved foreigners have violated laws or customs, according to local media.

The tourism and creative economy minister, Sandiaga Uno, told reporters this week that the possibility of a tourism tax was “currently being studied”.

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