Indonesia

The monkey, shackled to an iron stake, paced a narrow strip of dirt filled with its own excrement. As people laughed and pointed, the creature bared its teeth and lunged at the end of its line. "He gets angry," said one trader at the teeming animal market here. "Like a little person." Irma Hermawati gets angry too. The 31-year-old Javanese native is an investigator for the nonprofit group ProFauna, which lobbies on behalf of what she believes is Indonesia's most precious resource: its indigenous wildlife.

The last time Indonesia allowed Peace Corps volunteers to work here, they weren't sent into villages to teach English or build schools. The Americans were assigned to whip athletes into shape for the 1964 Olympics. The peculiar aid to reluctant hosts didn't work out: Jakarta ended up boycotting the Tokyo Games, and thugs from the Indonesian Communist Party, which accused the American coaches of being CIA agents, ran them out of the country in 1965, less than three years after they had arrived.

Indonesia's most powerful Islamic scholars weren't looking for a debate when they handed down their latest fatwas on how to be a good Muslim. But they still got an argument and, perhaps worse, a chorus of "Who cares?" after decreeing that it is haram, or forbidden, to smoke in public, or for children and pregnant women to have a puff of tobacco anywhere. It didn't matter that the clerics were providing sound health guidance.

Indonesia's Supreme Court convicted a former Garuda airlines pilot of the 2004 murder of human rights leader Munir Said Thalib on Friday, more than a year after acquitting the same defendant amid allegations of a coverup. The court sentenced Pollycarpus Budihari Priyanto, who was an off-duty pilot aboard the state-run airline flight on which Munir was poisoned, to 20 years in prison.

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said Monday that the U.S. was still willing to sell Indonesia new weaponry, particularly for its navy and air force. But he cautioned that democracies must have firm civilian control of their militaries, which must be disciplined for human rights abuses. Gates praised Jakarta for moving to professionalize its military, which for decades under former President Suharto ruled the archipelago with an iron fist until the dictator was deposed a decade ago.

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates wrapped up a six-day visit to three regional democracies Wednesday, working to strengthen ties and upgrade the militaries of all three, which have increasingly complex relationships with a burgeoning China. In two days of talks with Indian leaders, Gates spent more time discussing New Delhi's security challenges with Beijing than with its traditional regional rival Pakistan, according to a senior Defense Department official who attended the meetings.

Police on Thursday arrested a former top intelligence official suspected of involvement in the 2004 killing of a human rights activist who was poisoned on an airliner. The announcement reflects a major break in the investigation of the killing of Munir Said Thalib, who exposed Indonesian military abuses during the U.S.-backed dictatorship of former President Suharto. It is the first formal acknowledgment by authorities that the powerful National Intelligence Agency may have been involved.

The president of Indonesia on Tuesday formally accepted a commission report that blames his country's security forces for supporting militias in a frenzy of murder, rape and other crimes against humanity in East Timor nine years ago. "We convey very deep remorse at what happened in the past that has caused the loss of lives and property," President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said as he and East Timorese President Jose Ramos-Horta jointly received the commission's findings.

A beauty queen in a full-length evening gown is enough to make Abu Mohammed Jibril's blood boil. Those bare arms and uncovered head. That cleavage. And don't get him started on the bikini portion of the show. Miss Universe is disgusting pornography to the deputy head of Indonesia's Mujahedin Council. "It's destructive," he said of the contest that airs here. "Miss Universe is very famous, so Muslim mothers want their daughters to be like Miss Universe and copy what they've seen.

In the rush to feed the world's growing appetite for climate-friendly fuel and cooking oil that doesn't clog arteries, the Bornean orangutan could get plowed over. Several plantation owners are eyeing Tanjung Puting park, a sanctuary for 6,000 of the endangered animals. It is the world's second-largest population of a primate that experts warn could be extinct in less than two decades if a massive assault on its forest habitat is not stopped.