Bali Island, Indonesia - Government authorities on Bali ordered the island's airport and all seaports closed Thursday and told visitors not to try to enter the resort island when local residents are observing their Lunar New Year, also known as the Day of Silence.

"Both domestic and foreign tourists who want to go to Bali on Thursday are advised to change their schedule because it will be a day of absolute silence without lights, work, traffic, etc," I Putu Suardhika, Bali's provincial administration spokesman, said Tuesday.

Banda Aceh, Indonesia - Recent killings of former rebels-turned-politicians in Indonesia's Aceh province were not politically motivated, the province's deputy governor said Tuesday.

Four members of the Aceh Party, the political wing of the former separatist Free Aceh Movement (GAM), have been killed in the past two months by unknown assailants, sparking fears of further violence ahead of the April 9 general elections.

The Aceh Party is one of six local parties allowed to contest for provincial legislative seats under a 2005 peace pact between the government and GAM, which ended decades of conflict in the province.

Jakarta - An Indonesian airplane with 112 people on board made an emergency landing at Batam airport, just south of Singapore, on Monday due to an engine problems, officials and passengers said.

A Boeing 737-200 jetliner belonging to Sriwijaya Airlines, one of the Indonesian private carrier, was bound for Jakarta from Tanjungpinang airport of Bintan island, airport and company official said.

An airline official said the plane with 122 passengers and crew onboard managed to land safely at Batam island, just south of Singapore, and no one was injured.

Bali Island, Indonesia - South-East Asian nations must take stronger measures to curb sexual exploitation of children in the tourism industry, delegates at an international conference on child sex tourism said Friday.

A statement issued at the end of the conference on Indonesia's resort island of Bali warned that the current global financial crisis would increase children's vulnerability to child sex tourism.

Jakarta - An exiled separatist leader seeking independence for Indonesia's easternmost Papua region called Friday for a peaceful solution to the conflict.

Nicholas Jouwe, 85, the Dutch-based co-founder of the Free Papua Movement (OPM), returned to Indonesia Wednesday for the first time after more than 40 years in exile.

He met with government officials in Jakarta in a move that could pave the way for a peace pact to end the insurgency.

Jakarta  - Indonesia's defence minister accused Singapore of obstructing an extradition treaty because it fears it would have to hand over businessmen who sought refuge in the city-state with huge amounts of illegally gotten money, a news report said Friday.

Juwono Sudarsono also said a defence cooperation agreement with Singapore, negotiated simultaneously with the extradition pact, appeared to have collapsed as well, according to The Jakarta Post.

"They [the agreements] are frozen," Juwono told the Post.