Jakarta - Indonesia's central bank raised its benchmark interest rate 25 basis points to 9.50 per cent on Tuesday, signalling its commitment to fight inflation at the risk of slower growth, officials said.

Bank Indonesia Governor Boediono told reporters that the key rate was increased to suit high inflation and to anticipate the global financial crisis.

Inflation soared to 12.14 per cent year-on-year in September from 11.85 per cent in August, driven by resilient domestic demand and higher global commodity and fuel prices.

Indonesia's stock index plunged 10.02 per cent on Monday amid the global credit crisis. On Tuesday, the Indonesian composite index was down 1.76 per cent.

Jakarta - Government authorities warned climbers and residents to stay away from Mount Soputan volcano on Indonesia's Sulawesi island after it spewed smoke and flames from its crater, officials said Tuesday.

Volcanologists upgraded the alert status to the third of four levels after the 1,783-metre Soputan erupted Monday morning, sending smoke up to 1,000 metres into the sky and blanketing ash nearby.

Jakarta - Indonesia's environment minister called a Guinness World Records report "slanderous" for marking the nation's deforestation rate as the world's highest and claimed it used obsolete data, a media report said Tuesday.

The Jakarta Post reported that Indonesia has entered the Guinness Book for the second consecutive year as the nation with the highest rate of deforestation, with its forests clearing at the rate of about 52 square kilometres per day, or 300 football fields each hour.

Jakarta  - Indonesia's central bank predicted the financial crisis that is rippling out from the United States to the rest of the world would shackle Indonesia's economic growth and cause a credit shortage for local business players, media reports said Monday.

"The shortage of global liquidity will be felt as a result of this crisis," said .Boediono, governor of Bank Indonesia.

"We must be prepared to face this over the next six months to one year," The Jakarta Post quoted Boediono as saying.

Jakarta (dpa) - At least 427 people were killed and more than 1,400 others injured in traffic accidents across the country during this year's Eid al-Fitr holiday season, marking the end of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, media reports said Sunday.

National police spokesman Abubakar Nataprawira said the figures were tabulated from reports between September 25 and October 4, with a total of 970 accidents involving 1,258 vehicles.

Jakarta - A bomb was discovered in a shopping centre Tuesday in the eastern Indonesian province of Central Sulawesi, once the centre of religious conflicts which claimed the lives of more than 1,000 people, media reports said.

Two boys found the bomb in a clothing store, wrapped in a plastic bag and hidden under the seat of a vendor. A local bomb squad secured the area and detonated the device.

The Jakarta Post quoted Palu district police chief AB Sitinjak as saying the package consisted of cable, detonator, cellphone casing and a light bulb.