Women in poverty-stricken Papua New Guinea suffer "severe brutality" with violence, including savage attacks involving knives, axes and whips, occurring in two-thirds of all families.
More than 500 people have been evacuated from a tiny Indonesian island where a volcano erupted at the weekend, spewing rocks and lava that killed five villagers.
Malaysian rescuers found a fourth body at sea Monday as authorities said they may soon end the search for 36 other Indonesians missing after their boat sank on the way home to celebrate Eid al-Fitr.
Rescuers were searching for 40 Indonesians including women and children on Saturday after a boat carrying them home to celebrate the end of the Islamic fasting month sank off Malaysia.
Rescuers searched the seas off Indonesia's Java island Wednesday for possibly dozens of asylum-seekers missing after their Australia-bound boat sank, leaving at least three dead, with 157 saved.
Scientists on Sunday sparked a fresh debate over what triggered Indonesia's Lusi mud volcano, still spewing truckloads of slime more than seven years after it leapt catastrophically into life.
From a painting hung high on a blood-red wall, Adolf Hitler peers down on young students eating schnitzel and slurping German beer in Indonesia's Nazi-themed cafe.
Australia's new prime minister Kevin Rudd said Friday the conservative opposition's proposal to turn back asylum-seeker boats risked inciting conflict with Indonesia.
Fires on Indonesia's Sumatra, which have cloaked Singapore in record-breaking smog, are raging on palm oil plantations owned by Indonesian, Malaysian and Singaporean companies.
Singapore and Indonesia were scheduled to hold emergency talks Thursday after thick smog from forest fires on Sumatra island reached unprecedented levels in the city-state.
An Indonesian woman died Sunday in a fire lit by workers outside her country's consulate in western Saudi Arabia, where thousands converged seeking to resolve their immigration status.
Hundreds of billions of dollars have been spent battling extreme poverty and disease since 2000 and now the United Nations is lining up a new war on the social distress still suffered by huge numbers around the world.
Indonesian event organiser Risti Rahmadi wears an Islamic headscarf, uses halal lipstick and knows that it's time to pray when an app on her BlackBerry emits Koranic verses five times a day.