World News by Wild Rose

Around 175,000 people in Indonesia have suffered from respiratory illness since August.

Men’s Kayak Four 500m: Harshwardhan Shaktawat, Varinder Singh, L Naocha Singh Oinam, and Arun Singh in Heat 1

More than 170,000 respiratory cases were recorded in regions affected by haze in Indonesia, a health ministry official said on Tuesday, as the country continues its battle to control fires that caused the toxic smog. Blazes in Borneo, Sumatra and Papua have blanketed parts of the vast archipelago of more than 280 million people with haze, as well as neighbouring Malaysia and Singapore, sending air quality indices plummeting. The toxic smog contains pollutants including PM 2.5, a fine particulate...

Undercover footage recorded by the BBC reveals he has been released after serving less than half his sentence.

BBC Eye has discovered a teacher who was imprisoned for sexually assaulting a student in Indonesia has been secretly released early.

The World Health Organization should look beyond its own budget for funds to support itself and member countries, according to Indonesia’s Health Minister Budi Gunadi Sadikin, who is seeking to lead the agency.

Students spent years collecting evidence against their Indonesian principal, before falling in love.

Bad weather has pushed authorities to begin operations to right the capsized ferry.

A Malaysian woman has died while scuba diving after she was caught in strong currents in Bali, Indonesia. According to local media portal Bali News, the victim, Siti Nuraini Rusidi, 40, was on a diving trip with a divemaster, boat captain and several other divers when the incident occurred at 11.10am local time on Wednesday. The trip’s divemaster, Eugenius Franciso Ray, 33, had reportedly raised concerns over her health when he noticed her coughing when the group was at the first dive site at...

Indonesia’s latest ferry disaster has exposed persistent weaknesses in maritime safety oversight, experts have said, with poor enforcement and inadequate supervision continuing to leave passengers vulnerable across the sprawling archipelago. The capsizing of the Virgo Transport 8 in the Java Sea on Sunday has intensified scrutiny of a system that analysts say too often comes under pressure only after deadly accidents, rather than preventing them. Six people have been confirmed dead and 129...

Jakarta, Sept. 17 (Jiji Press)--Japan's Self-Defense Forces has started work to extinguish forest fires in western Kalimantan, Indonesia. The Ground SDF's CH-47 helicopters started spraying river water scooped into large buckets Wednesday. According to Japan's Defense Ministry, it is the SDF's first firefighting operation outside of the country. The operation was slated to begin Sunda...

Hundreds of Indonesian rescuers including the coast guard and the navy raced on Monday to board a passenger ship that capsized in the Java Sea over the weekend as they searched for 129 people still missing, officials said, with the confirmed death toll at six.

Indonesia intensified its search operation on 14 September for 129 people still missing after the Virgo Transport 8 ferry capsized in rough seas in the Java Sea the previous day. By then, 108 survivors had been rescued and six bodies recovered.

Indonesian rescue teams on Monday deployed specialised underwater teams and navy-operated underwater drones as the search for more than 120 people missing in the Virgo Transport 8 ferry capsizing intensified.

Officials say more than 600 rescuers battle stormy seas in search for missing people.

Six people have been killed and 130 remain missing after a passenger ship capsized in the Java Sea off Indonesia.

At least one person has died and more than 100 people remain missing after a ferry carrying 243 people sank in rough weather between the Indonesian islands of Java and Borneo. The disaster is the second major ferry accident in the region in five days, renewing concerns over safety standards, overcrowding and maintenance.

The nation's search and rescue team said it lost contact with the Virgo Transport 8 in the early hours of Sunday morning.

Search and rescue ongoing after Virgo Transport 8, with 243 people on board, lost contact with its operator.

Indonesian rescuers launched a search operation on Sunday after a passenger ship carrying 240 people lost contact in the Java Sea while travelling from East Java to South Kalimantan on Borneo Island, officials said. The Search and Rescue Office in Banjarmasin, the capital of South Kalimantan province, said they received a report the Virgo Transport 8 had experienced a communication failure while en route to the city from Surabaya, Indonesia’s second largest city in East Java province. Initial...

Irma smells the fire before she sees it: a column of thick, yellow-tinged smoke rising above the tree line near her small wooden home. She pulls on heavy rubber boots, checks her equipment and drives straight into the impenetrable smog emanating from wildfires devouring the peatland and ancient forests of Borneo. “I am terrified that the flames will reach residential areas. It is extremely dangerous,” the 39-year-old mother told This Week in Asia, moments before disappearing into the murk that...

Dr Asma Zafirah doesn’t need satellite images to know when Kalimantan is burning. She sees it in the watery eyes and laboured breaths of the patients at her clinic in Sarawak, and the children who are kept home from school to protect them from the toxic air. Southeast Asia’s transboundary haze crisis was meant to have been brought under control six years ago. But Borneo is once again belching out dangerous emissions, as fires in the peatlands and forests of Kalimantan – Indonesia’s section of...

Six orangutans including two nursing infants have been rescued from fires raging on Borneo island in the past week, Indonesian authorities and rescuers said on Thursday, bringing the total to 15 in a month. The apes were saved from plantations in deep rural West Kalimantan province, on the Indonesian part of the island, where they got stuck after fires cut off access to their forest home, according to the forestry ministry and the YIARI wildlife rehabilitation foundation. A large fire was...

Indonesia’s wildfires are creeping towards Nusantara, the country’s new capital under construction on Borneo island, challenging its promise of becoming an eco-friendly “smart forest city”. The Southeast Asian nation is battling what officials call its most intense wildfire season in 11 years. Nearly 202,000 hectares (499,000 acres) of forest and peatland have been razed nationwide from January to June, according to Sipongi, the Indonesian forest ministry’s monitoring platform. Sipongi data...

Journalists missing after Indonesian volcanic eruption

Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto’s flagship free nutritious meals programme is facing renewed scrutiny after yet another wave of mass food poisoning that affected more than 2,000 students, raising questions about why safeguards on paper fail to translate to food safety on the ground. A series of illnesses were reported in Java, Sumatra, and Sulawesi in the past week. The latest was on Tuesday in Rembang, Central Java, where 200 students of an Islamic school showed symptoms of food poisoning...

Schools in the capital of Indonesia’s South Sumatra province switched to remote learning on Wednesday as worsening haze from forest and peatland fires pushed air pollution to unhealthy levels, adding to disruptions that had already affected more than 1.4 million students across the country, officials said. Indonesia has been plagued by forest and land fires for decades but an intensifying El Nino pattern and a prolonged dry season made the impact of the fires especially dire this year. Toxic...

Some Hong Kong employment and travel companies have warned that air traffic in Jakarta could continue to face disruptions even after the Indonesian capital’s international airport reopened following a volcanic eruption that spewed ash into the sky, as airlines work through a backlog. GLC (Manado) Employment Service founder and director Chu Shek-yin told the South China Morning Post that he would not rush to book an air ticket for his client’s helper despite the resumption of operations at all...

The eruption of Anak Krakatoa in Indonesia has tested the country’s disaster preparedness, disrupting nearly 3,000 flights carrying more than 340,000 passengers as volcanic ash spread across the region. Authorities say they are monitoring the volcano, which remains under the country’s second-highest alert status. According to scientists, the event’s exceptional scale makes its impact hard to anticipate. The eruption has renewed debate on whether Indonesia’s monitoring and disaster planning can...

Five airports reopen after authorities cleared volcanic ash from critical infrastructure.