Hong Kong  - An Indonesian maid was in a Hong Kong jail Thursday awaiting trial for mixing her menstrual blood in a pot of vegetables she was cooking for her employer.

Indra Ningsih, 26, allegedly told police afterwards she mixed the blood into the meal in a superstitious effort to make her Chinese employer "more amiable and less picky" towards her.

Jakarta  - An undersea earthquake registering 6.4 on the Richter scale struck the western coast of the Indonesian island of Sumatra early Thursday, but there were no immediate reports of injury or damage, the Indonesian seismologist agency said.

The quake struck at 3:01 am (2001 GMT Wednesday) and was centred in the Indian Ocean, 32 kilometres south-west of Mentawai Islands, off the western coast of Sumatra, Indonesia's National Meteorology and Geophysics Agency said in a statement.

Jakarta - Separatist rebels ambushed a police truck in Indonesia's Papua province Wednesday, killing one officer and wounding five others, state media reported.

The officers were travelling in Jayawijaya district to pick up ballot boxes from last week's elections when they were attacked, Papua police chief Bagus Eko Danto said, according to the Antara news agency.

One officer died while being airlifted to the provincial capital Jayapura, Bagus said.

Bali Island, Indonesia - Ministers and officials from 40 countries began a two-day meeting on the Indonesian resort island of Bali Tuesday to discuss people smuggling and the fate of migrants from Myanmar's Rohingya ethnic group. The meeting, co-hosted by Indonesia and Australia, will discuss Asia-Pacific solutions to people smuggling and trafficking and ways to improve border security.

Jakarta - Political parties led by the opposition Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle said Tuesday that last week's elections were rigged, calling the vote the "worst" since the fall of autocratic president Suharto in 1998. The Democratic Party of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono was leading in early vote counting after Thursday's parliamentary elections, and pollsters said the party would win about 20 per cent of the total votes.

Former presidents Megawati Sukarnoputri and Abdurrahman Wahid as well leaders of smaller political parties met at Megawati's house on Tuesday to forge a common stance on alleged election irregularities.

Jakarta - Police arrested an Indonesian man Tuesday for trying to smuggle three kilograms of heroin estimated to be worth about 270,000 dollars into the country. The Indonesian citizen, identified only as W, was arrested by anti-narcotics police at the parking lot of Jakarta's Soekarno-Hatta International airport, after he arrived on an AirAsia flight from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Brigadier General Harry Montolalu, director of the national police's criminal investigation department, said the man successfully got through the airport's security checkpoints.