Jakarta - Nine people were seriously injured and many buildings were damaged when an earthquake measuring 7.4 on the Richter scale struck early Thursday off the northern tip of Indonesia's Sulawesi island, an official said.

A small island chain off Sulawesi near the Philippines was hit hardest, with houses and government buildings collapsing, said Sutiono, an official at the Meteorology and Geophysics Agency in Jakarta.

"According to the latest information, nine people were badly injured in Kabarua district," Sutiono told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

Jakarta - An Indonesian court on Wednesday threw out a multimillion-dollar lawsuit against a son of late president Suharto over a business deal involving a failed national car project.

The Finance Ministry had sought 4 trillion rupiah (340 million dollars) in damages from Hutomo Mandala Putra, better known as Tommy Suharto, and his companies.

PT Timor Putra Nasional, set up by Tommy Suharto to build a homegrown car, defaulted on its loans to national banks after the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis.

But in 2003, Timor's assets were sold to a little-known company called Vista Bella Pratama by the Indonesian Bank Restructuring Agency, which managed Timor's assets after the carmaker defaulted.

Jakarta - Many of Indonesia's child domestic workers toil up to 18 hours a day and face physical and sexual abuse while the government is doing very little to protect them, New York-based Human Rights Watch said Wednesday.

Hundreds of thousands of children under the age of 18 who work as domestic help are not considered formal workers in Indonesia and therefore are not entitled to a minimum wage, overtime pay, and a weekly day off and vacation, Human Rights Watch said in a statement.

Jakarta  - Police in East Java province have closed a clinic run by a nine-year-old child believed to possess healing powers after four people died while queuing for treatment, an officer said Tuesday.

Two patients died on Monday while lining up with thousands of others at the house of Muhammad Ponari, who has been called "child witch doctor" by locals, in Jombang district, said police officer Muhammad Indra.

Two other patients died last week in a stampede, he said.

Jakarta - An Indonesian district court on Monday sentenced three Muslim militants to up to nine years in prison after they were convicted of assisting and hiding leaders of the Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) terrorist network.

The Central Jakarta District Court found Abu Husna, Agus Purwanto and Parmin guilty of violating the country's tough anti-terrorism laws, enacted just weeks after the October 2002 bombings of two nightspots on Bali island which killed at least 202 people, mostly foreign visitors.

Jakarta (Indonesia), Feb. 5 : Cricket has blossomed in Indonesia and administrators of the sport are now dreaming of an Indonesian cricket team emerging as a rival to Asian super powers India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.

Despite its proximity to cricket-mad Australia, the mainly Muslim country of 234 million people was a stranger to the sport until the early 1990s when a handful of eccentric expatriates started their own league.

The Daily Telegraph quoted Cricket Indonesia chairman Sachin Gopalan as saying:"It used to be only social games played by expatriates. But it has changed.''''