In a super rare occurrence, conjoined twins born in Indonesia have four arms, three legs and shared genitalia. Such twins are scientifically known as ischiopagus tripus and is one in a two million phenomenon. Just a handful of such conjoined twins, also referred to as ‘spider twins’, have been recorded – the case of Indonesian boys has been published in American Journal of Case Reports. The twins were born in 2018, but the case was published in the journal this week.

“The rarity of ischiopagus tripus conjoined twins complicates the surgical separation, owing to the lack of cases and high complexity,” the authors wrote in the American Journal of Case Reports.

They are defined as those who are connected by the lower half of their body instead of the upper torso.

In over 60 per cent of such cases, one of the twins dies or is stillborn. But these toddlers survived all the odds. The brothers, however, had to lie flat for their first three years as their unique body structure prevented them from sitting up.

The case report says that surgeons amputated their third leg – which is often two fused legs – and stabilised their hips and legs so the brothers could sit upright independently.

A follow-up appointment three months after the surgery revealed that the twins didn’t suffer any complications.

The twins are not separated, and it is not known if the doctors will attempt such a complicated surgery.

Still, doctors believe that the case highlights that “there is still room for surgical correction to be performed” in cases where separation is not possible.

A birth like this takes place when the embryo only partially separates to form two people due to a congenital birth defect, as per Mayo Clinic.

While the babies develop from this embryo, they remain physically joined, most “often at the chest, abdomen or pelvis”.

Denpasar:

An Australian man faces up to 20 years in prison on the resort island of Bali and a fine of more than $600,000 for allegedly attempting to sell crystal meth, police said Monday.

Indonesian police said the 49-year-old suspect — named by his initials TAS and identified by Australian media as Troy Smith — was arrested on April 30 at his hotel on the popular tourist island.

He was allegedly found with 3.19 grams of crystal methamphetamine and his wife, a foreign national only identified by her initials TIM, was also held but found not to be involved.
Smith was charged with a “drug transaction”, which means offering to sell or become a broker of narcotics, Ponco Indriyo, Bali police deputy director of drugs investigation told a news conference.

The charge carries a maximum prison sentence of 20 years and a fine of 10 billion rupiah ($622,000).
Smith was also charged with drug possession, which carries a lower maximum sentence of 12 years in prison and a maximum fine of 8 billion rupiah.

Authorities made him take a urine test which came back positive for meth, the police official said.
The suspect had received a package carrying the meth sent by a friend in Australia, Indriyo said.

A Bali police press statement said the package contained “one Colgate toothpaste tube containing 3.15 grams of alleged crystal meth”.

Smith did not appear at the press conference but authorities in Indonesia typically parade drug suspects to the media.

But there was no evidence his wife TIM — named as Tracy Ijusa in Australian media reports — was involved, Indriyo said.

Indonesia has some of the world’s toughest drug laws including the death penalty for traffickers.
There are dozens of traffickers on death row in Indonesia, including a cocaine-smuggling British grandmother and a Philippine woman accused of smuggling heroin.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

A column of ash rises over the Gunung Ibu (Mount Ibu) volcano, in Tabaru, North Maluku province, Indonesia May 13, 2024. Screengrab
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Indonesia’s Ibu volcano erupted on May 13 morning, spewing thick columns of grey ash several kilometres into the sky, the country’s volcanology agency said.

The volcano on the remote island of Halmahera erupted at 9.12 a.m. (0012 GMT) for about five minutes, projecting ash into the sky as high as 5 km (3.1 miles), officials said. A smaller eruption was also recorded on May 10.

The alert status of the volcano remains at the second-highest level, Hendra Gunawan, head of Indonesia’s Volcanology and Geological Hazard Mitigation Centre, said in a statement.

All activities within a five-kilometre radius of the volcano were prohibited, he added.

“If it starts to rain ash, we recommend people who are near the volcano to wear a mask and glasses,” Mr. Gunawan said.

Footage of the eruption shared by the centre showed clouds of grey ash billowing from the crater. The official said a booming noise was also heard. No evacuation of residents has been reported so far.

Indonesia sits on the Pacific “Ring of Fire” and has 127 active volcanoes, according to the volcanology agency.

In recent weeks North Sulawesi’s Ruang volcano has erupted, spewing incandescent lava as lightning flashed from its crater. The eruption prompted authorities to evacuate more than 12,000 people living on a nearby island.

In December, more than 20 people were killed after Marapi volcano, one of Sumatra’s most active volcanoes, erupted and belched grey clouds of ash as high as 3 km.

Jakarta:

An undersea quake with a magnitude of 6.5 jolted Indonesia’s West Java province on Saturday night, without triggering giant waves, the country’s meteorology, climatology and geophysics agency said.

The earthquake occurred at 23:29 Jakarta time (1629 GMT) on Saturday with its epicentre located 151 km southwest of Garut Regency and a depth of 10 km, the agency said.

The tremors of the quake were also felt in nearby Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia, and the nearby province of Banten, as well as the provinces of Central Java, Yogyakarta and East Java, it said.

In West Java province, the intensity of the quake was felt at IV MMI (Modified Mercally Intensity) in Sukabumi town and Tasikmalaya town, and III to IV MMI in Bandung city, the capital of West Java province, the agency said.

There was no tsunami alert issued by the agency as the tremors would not potentially trigger giant waves, Xinhua news agency reported.

Indonesia, an archipelagic nation, is prone to earthquakes because of its position on a vulnerable quake-hit zone, called the “Pacific Ring of Fire.”

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

A 31-year-old Chinese woman died after falling off the edge of a crater while posing for a photo on an Indonesian volcano known for its popular “blue fire” phenomenon. According to the New York Post, the woman, identified as Huang Lihong, was with her husband on a guided tour when the incident took place on Saturday. The couple, in their bid to watch the sunrise, had climbed to the edge of the crater of Ijen – a volcano tourism park in the region – cops said.  

According to the police, the woman plummeted from a height of 75m and died from the impact of her fall. The death has been marked as an accident, per The Post.

The tour guild later told authorities that Ms Lihong kept a safe distance from the edge of the crater after being repeatedly warned of the dangers while posing for snaps. However, she then started walking backwards to inch closer and then accidentally stepped on her long clothing, tripped and fell into the mouth of the volcano. It is not clear if the 31-year-old was wearing a skirt or a dress.   

According to the officials, it took rescuers around 2 hours to retrieve Ms Lihong’s body.

Notably, the Ijen volcano is known for its “blue fire” caused by the blue light emitted from the combustion of sulfuric gases. According to The Independent, in 2018, scores of people were forced to evacuate their homes and at least 30 people were hospitalised after the volcano started to emit toxic gases. Mount Ijen regularly releases small amounts of noxious gases but the site stays open to the public.

Indonesia is home to around 130 active volcanoes. Recently, a remote Indonesian volcano sent a tower of ash spewing into the sky, after nearly half a dozen eruptions forced thousands to evacuate when molten rocks rained down on their villages. Mount Ruang in Indonesia’s outermost region of North Sulawesi started erupting on April 16, stirring a spectacular mix of fiery orange lava, a towering ash column and volcanic lightning. The country’s volcanology agency said the eruption sent a plume of smoke 400 metres (1,312 feet) above the peak.

United Nations:

UN Secretary-General António Guterres has appointed Gita Sabharwal of India as the United Nations resident coordinator in Indonesia.

Sabharwal, who took up her post on Monday, brings close to 30 years of experience in development supporting climate transition, sustainable peace, governance and social policy, while leveraging digital technology and data to accelerate the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the UN said in a statement.

Sabharwal has been appointed as the UN resident coordinator in Indonesia with the host government’s approval, it said.

“Just landed in Jakarta! Very honoured as I look forward to serve, as @UN Resident Coordinator (designate), the govt and people of #Indonesia through @UNinIndonesia, together with 26 UN agencies in one of the region’s largest economies, in support of #SDGs,” Sabharwal said in a post on X.

Previously, Sabharwal served as the UN resident coordinator in Thailand and as peacebuilding and development adviser for the United Nations in Sri Lanka.

Before joining the UN, Sabharwal was The Asia Foundation’s deputy country representative for the Maldives and Sri Lanka and held positions as the poverty and policy adviser for the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development in India and Vietnam.

Sabharwal holds a master’s degree in development management from the University of Wales in the UK.

The UN resident coordinator is the highest-ranking representative of the UN Development System at the country level. Resident coordinators lead UN country teams and coordinate UN support to countries in implementing the 2030 Agenda. The resident coordinator is the designated representative of — and reports to — the UN secretary-general, according to the world body.

Key duties and responsibilities of resident coordinators include representing the United Nations at the highest levels of State and, together with the relevant agency representatives, fostering engagement with the government, civil society, bilateral and multilateral partners, academia and the private sector in order for the UN development system to help address the country’s needs, priorities and challenges to fulfil the SDGs, the world body said.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

This handout photograph taken and released by the Centre for Volcanology and Geological Hazard Mitigation on April 17, 2024, shows Mount Ruang spewing hot lava and smoke as seen from Sitaro, North Sulawesi.
| Photo Credit: AFP

Indonesia shut a provincial airport and evacuated hundreds of people from the vicinity of the Ruang volcano after it belched explosive plumes of lava, rocks and ash for days, officials said on April 18, declaring the highest alert on the situation.

Wednesday’s dramatic eruption of the volcano on a remote island in the Province of North Sulawesi threw a fiery-red column of lava, incandescent rock and ash as much as 3 km (two miles) into the sky.

Purple flashes of lightning rent the sky above the erupting volcano, videos on social media showed.

“We’re running, guys,” said one witness who filmed the eruption while scrambling to evacuate. “We are escaping because the ash is coming close.”

More than 800 people were evacuated from the area, with authorities widening the evacuation zone further after the volcanology agency raised the alert status.

“The potential for further eruption is still high, so we need to remain alert,” agency official Heruningtyas Desi Purnamasari told reporters on April 18, blaming a rapid escalation in volcanic activity.

The agency had also received reports that falling rocks and ash damaged homes and forced a nearby hospital to evacuate, the official said.

Transport authorities shut the airport in the provincial capital of Manado to protect against the showers of ash from the eruption.

Budget airline Air Asia cancelled flights with nine airports in East Malaysia and Brunei after aviation authorities warned of a safety threat.

Officials have cordoned off an area of six kilometres (4 miles) around the volcano and are evacuating more residents, some from the neighbouring island of Tagulandang, said Abdul Muhari, spokesperson of the disaster mitigation agency.

About 1,500 of those in high-risk areas needed to be immediately evacuated, he added, while almost 12,000 more stand to be affected.

Officials have also flagged the risk of a tsunami if parts of the mountain collapse into the ocean below. About 400 people were killed in a tsunami unleashed by a previous eruption of the volcano in 1871.

Presidential candidate Anies Baswedan. File
| Photo Credit: AP

Failed Indonesian presidential candidate Anies Baswedan challenged Prabowo Subianto’s decisive victory at the Constitutional Court on March 21, alleging rules were unfairly changed to allow the outgoing leader’s son to run as his vice president.

Anies’ call for a new vote comes a day after Defence Minister Prabowo, 72, was confirmed as the next leader of the world’s third-biggest democracy, beating former Jakarta governor Anies and a third rival with 58.6 percent of the vote.

But his campaign was mired in allegations that outgoing leader Joko Widodo, popularly known as Jokowi, had interfered in a bid to establish a political dynasty, engineering rules changes that allowed his eldest son Gibran Rakabuming Raka to run as Prabowo’s vice president.

“We asked for the disqualification of the vice presidential candidate… and we asked for a revote with that said VP candidate being replaced,” Anies’s legal chief Ari Yusuf Amir told AFP.

“We also asked the Constitutional Court to order the president to stop meddling in the next process of the election.”

An Anies campaign staffer told AFP on condition of anonymity that they would “provide the proof of intervention… and let the judges decide what to do with that.”

Earlier, Anies’ legal chief told reporters outside their campaign headquarters that they submitted an “election dispute petition” to the court online early Thursday morning.

Anies’s team has said the complain was aimed at improving future elections and bolstering Indonesia’s young democracy, which emerged from decades of autocratic rule in the late 1990s.

Jokowi was criticised after his brother-in-law, then-chief justice Anwar Usman, issued an October ruling lowering the age requirements for presidential and vice presidential candidates that allowed 36-year-old Gibran to run with Prabowo.

The requirements were lowered to allow candidates under 40 years of age to run if they have been elected to a political position. Gibran is the mayor of Surakarta city in Java.

Anies — who got 24.9 percent of the vote — refused to concede after official results were announced Wednesday, condemning the winner’s route to victory.

“Leadership that was born out of a process tainted by cheating and violations will result in a regime that will produce policies that are full of unfairness, and we don’t want this to happen,” he said in a statement.

Prabowo was widely predicted to win the presidency on his third attempt after losing in 2014 and 2019.

His legal team was confident the result would not be successfully challenged because of his majority and wide margin of victory, local media reported.

Officials from his campaign team did not respond to an AFP request for comment.

He takes over in October after a transition period.

Ethnic Rohingya people rescued from their capsized boat rest at a local government building in Samatiga, Aceh province, Indonesia, on March 20, 2024.
| Photo Credit: AP

A wooden boat carrying dozens of Rohingya Muslims capsized off Indonesia’s northernmost coast on Wednesday. Local fishermen rescued six refugees who said more people were still on the boat.

There were no immediate reports of casualties.

Also read: For Rohingya, there is no place called home

The survivors, four women and two men, were moved to a temporary shelter in the Samatiga sub-district. The fishermen and the survivors told The Associated Press the boat capsized about 16 miles (25 Kilometers) from the coastline of Kuala Bubon Beach in Aceh province.

Amiruddin, a tribal fishing community leader in Aceh Barat district, said the survivors indicated that the boat was sailing east when it started leaking and then strong currents pushed it toward the west of Aceh. They also told the locals that several women and children were still trying to survive on the capsized craft.

About 740,000 Rohingya were resettled in Bangladesh to escape the brutal counterinsurgency campaign by security forces in their homeland of Myanmar.

The petition challenging Rohingya refugees’ ‘illegal detention’ in India | Explained

Thousands have been trying to flee overcrowded camps in Bangladesh to neighboring countries with Indonesia seeing a spike in refugee numbers since November which prompted it to call on the international community for help. Rohingya arriving in Aceh face some hostility from some fellow Muslims.

Indonesia, like Thailand and Malaysia, is not a signatory to the United Nations’ 1951 Refugee Convention outlining their legal protections, and so is not obligated to accept them. However, they have so far provided temporary shelter to refugees in distress.

Last year, nearly 4,500 Rohingya — two-thirds of them women and children — fled their homeland of Myanmar and the refugee camps in neighboring Bangladesh by boat, the United Nations refugee agency reported. Of those, 569 died or went missing while crossing the Bay of Bengal and Andaman Sea, the highest death toll since 2014.

Returning safely to Myanmar is virtually impossible because the military that attacked them overthrew Myanmar’s democratically elected government in 2021. No country has offered them any large-scale resettlement opportunities.

Jakarta:

Indonesia’s Prabowo Subianto has been elected as president of the world’s third-biggest democracy, the elections commission said Wednesday, decisively beating two rivals who have vowed to file a legal complaint about the vote.

Defence Minister Prabowo and his vice-presidential running mate Gibran Rakabuming Raka received more than 96 million votes, commission chairman Hasyim Asy’ari said, roughly 58.6 percent of the total count and enough to secure a first-round majority.

Anies Baswedan secured nearly 41 million votes, or 24.9 percent of the total count, while Ganjar Pranowo received 27 million votes, more than 16 percent.

Prabowo and Gibran — the eldest son of outgoing leader Joko Widodo — already declared victory last month after unofficial counts showed them winning a majority.

Prabowo, 72, was widely predicted to win the presidency on his third attempt. He will take over the presidency in October after a transition period.

His popularity soared because of what experts said was his nationalist verve in populist speeches, strongman credentials as defence minister and backing from Widodo, more popularly known as Jokowi.

His rivals Anies and Ganjar have vowed to submit a complaint to the Constitutional Court about irregularities and allegations of fraud during the election.

But Prabowo’s legal team is confident the result will not be successfully challenged because of his majority and wide margin of victory, local media reported Tuesday.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)