Bali marks 10th anniversary of devastating bombing

Ten years ago, the bombing of two nightclubs in Bali resulted in 202 deaths and unsettled the long-peaceful island popular with Western tourists. On Friday, hundreds of survivors and their families gathered in Bali to remember the bombing, a devastating attack that mobilized Indonesia against terrorism.

Grieving families laid wreaths, scattered flower petals and cupped candles in prayer before a memorial monument. Thousands of police and military personnel guarded the gathering, watchful for a new attack. At one of Bali's famed beaches, surfers took to their boards for a “Paddle for Peace.”

Bombing victims included people from more than two dozen countries, including Australians, Indonesians, Britons, Americans and Swedes. The attack shook governments allied with the West; U.S. officials feared the bombing was part of a new global spasm of terrorist attacks.

As the 10th anniversary neared this week, Indonesian police said they had detected a new terror threat, but the news didn’t seem to deter the crowds bearing candles and flowers Friday. Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard insisted she wanted to be in Bali on the fateful date, remembering “the worst terrorist attack our nation has ever known.”

“Perhaps there is a grim reassurance in knowing that the terrorists did not achieve what they set out to do,” Gillard said in a speech at the memorial service. “They did not undermine Indonesian democracy, which has only grown stronger across the passage of a decade. And though our vigilance is greater, we have not surrendered the freedoms that brought us here in the first place.”

More countries push to block YouTube over anti-Islam video

This post has been updated. See the note below for details.

As protests over an online video mocking the Islamic prophet continue to simmer in Pakistan, Indonesia and elsewhere, more countries are trying to keep it from being seen around the world.

Google has already stopped the film trailer from being viewed on YouTube in Egypt and Libya “given the very difficult situation” and has restricted it in Indonesia and India over concerns that it violates local laws. Malaysian news media reported that the video was also inaccessible there late Monday after  government officials lodged similar complaints with the company about the amateurish video.

However, the company has turned down requests to pull down the video entirely so as to stop it from being viewed anywhere, saying it was “clearly within our guidelines” and widely available online.

That has failed to appease some of those disgusted by the “Innocence of Muslims” trailer, even in countries where the video has been blocked. In Egypt, attorney Mohamed Hamed Salem filed a lawsuit aimed at completely blocking the website, the Al Ahram state newspaper reported Tuesday.

"Not only has YouTube insisted on showing the original movie, but now there are at least 50 different videos showing various clips of the film," Salem told Al Ahram. "We need to block YouTube in Egypt because this would be a robust response, and we need a robust response so that what happened is not repeated again."

Scores feared dead off Java as Australia laments rush of boats

In the dwindling days before Australia reopens island detention camps for asylum seekers who try to reach its shores by sea, as many as 100 people are feared dead on yet another sunken boat off Indonesia. Australian officials have bemoaned a recent rush of boats before the camps open.

The troubled boat is believed to have held as many as 150 people, more than 50 of whom have reportedly been saved since early Wednesday morning when Australian rescue teams got a distress call from southwest of Java. Scores more are still missing.

Indonesian search and rescue crews tried to spot the struggling vessel from the air, but didn’t find people in the water until early Thursday morning, a lag that has spurred criticism of its efforts.

“Don't underestimate how hard it is to find people in the middle of the sea,” Home Affairs Minister Jason Clare told reporters Thursday in Sydney, defending the Indonesian rescuers.  

The deaths come weeks after Australia decided to establish camps for asylum seekers offshore on Nauru and Papua New Guinea while their cases are weighed in an attempt to discourage people from risking their lives on rickety boats to reach Australia.

The country used to hold asylum seekers on the Pacific islands of Nauru and Manus in Papua New Guinea, but abolished the practice years ago under a torrent of criticism from human rights groups.

Singapore restricts window washing after maids plunge to deaths

After a grim streak of foreign maids falling to their deaths, Singapore has insisted on new restrictions on window washing, hoping to stop the tragic trend.

The new rules were issued Monday by the Ministry of Manpower, which warned that foreign workers hired from countries such as Indonesia and the Philippines may not be used to towering buildings and their dangers. Singaporean media have spread alarming photos of foreign maids squatting or inching along sills, trying to clean windows in perilously high apartments.

Nine people have fallen and lost their lives since January, five of them while washing windows, two while hanging laundry. The other two deaths are still being investigated.

"Sometimes they know something is dangerous, but they do it because they want to work hard," one Indonesian maid in Singapore told the Associated Press last month. Maids may also face pressure from their employers to take on unsafe tasks.

Wreckage of Russian plane found on Indonesia mountain

This story has been updated. See the note below for details.

MOSCOW -– Wreckage from a Russian passenger plane that disappeared over west Java in Indonesia was found early Thursday morning on the western slope of Mt. Salak at about the 5,000-foot level, Russian television news reported.

No survivors were found among the 45 people on board, including eight Russian crew members and 37 passengers from Indonesia, the United States, France and Italy. Indonesian paratroopers descended on the site from helicopters and found bodies in what was left of the plane, Moscow radio news reported. The remains will be taken to Indonesian clinics for DNA testing, the report said.

The Sukhoi Superjet 100 disappeared from radar Wednesday afternoon about 20 minutes into its second demonstration flight of the day, part of a promotional tour of Southeast Asia for the new aircraft.

The cause of the crash is unknown. The plane had an experienced crew led by the chief test pilot of the production company, officials said.

"The plane conducted about 500 flights with overall flight time of over 800 hours, and passed all kinds of necessary preparation," Vladimir Prisyazhnyuk, president of Moscow-based Sukhoi Civil Aircraft, said in televised remarks.

Bad weather hampering search for missing Russian plane

Bad weather forced 200 Indonesian rescue workers to fan out on foot across a mountainous area east of Jakarta on Wednesday in search of a Russian passenger plane that went missing on a demonstration flight and was presumed to have crashed, Russian and Indonesian authorities said.

The flight -- intended to promote the sale of the Sukhoi Superjet 100 -- was carrying at least 44 people, including eight Russians and 36 airline and aviation officials, the Voice of Russia news site reported, quoting an unnamed Russian diplomat in Jakarta. Most of the passengers were Indonesian, it said; one was an American.

Indonesian media reports put the number on board as high as 50, noting that there were "other guests" taken on the flight.

Air traffic controllers lost radio contact with the plane about 20 minutes into its flight, a source in the Russian United Aircraft Building Corp., the plane's manufacturer, told the Itar-Tass news agency. The pilot had just asked for and been granted permission to descend from 10,000 feet to 6,000 feet, and disappeared off radar screens when it reached 6,200 feet altitude, Indonesia aviation officials reported.

Muslims in Middle East, Asia think poorly of Al Qaeda, poll finds

A new poll covering thousands of Muslims in Egypt, Jordan, Pakistan, Turkey and Lebanon found that most thought poorly of Al Qaeda nearly a year after Osama bin Laden's death.

The results came just after U.S. intelligence officials announced that the terrorist group has been greatly diminished since the death of Bin Laden, suggesting that Al Qaeda has been losing Muslim hearts and minds along with organizational muscle.

The Pew Research Center poll, carried out nearly one year after Bin Laden was killed by American forces on May 2, showed that in the countries surveyed, Al Qaeda was most popular in Egypt, where more than 1 out of 5 Muslims said they had a favorable opinion.

Yet even in Egypt, 71% of those surveyed said they disliked the group. In Jordan, only 15% of Muslims surveyed said they had a favorable opinion of the group; in Pakistan, 13%; in Turkey, 6%; and in Lebanon, 2%.

Pew based its findings on face-to-face interviews with more than 900 Muslim adults in each country, except Lebanon, where 566 people were interviewed. The results were part of a larger survey of more than 1,000 people in each of the selected countries between March 19 and April 13.

In past surveys, Pew found that confidence in Bin Laden to do the right thing had plummeted before his death. In Jordan, those numbers fell from 61% to 24% between 2005 and 2006, likely reduced by Al Qaeda suicide attacks in Amman, the Jordanian capital. By last year, only 13% of Jordanian Muslims were confident in Bin Laden.

His support level also fell markedly in Indonesia, Pakistan and the Palestinian territories from 2003 to 2011. But even with his popularity dropping, his backing remained significant in some areas: More than a third of Muslims polled in the Palestinian territories in 2011 said they had confidence in Bin Laden.

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-- Emily Alpert in Los Angeles

Photo: Pakistanis in February watch demolition of the compound where Al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden was slain last year in the town of Abbottabad. Credit: Aamir Qureshi / AFP/Getty Images

New warning systems appear to work amid Indonesia tsunami scare

This post has been corrected. See note at the bottom for details.

NEW DELHI -- Warning and monitoring systems put in place after the 2004 Asian tsunami appeared to work well Wednesday after an 8.6-magnitude earthquake that struck roughly the same area off Indonesia, said officials, civic groups and citizens in affected areas.

However, the real test will only come with another major disaster.

Fortunately, no more than slightly higher than normal waves were seen in only a few coastal towns along the southwestern coast of Sumatra island, with no reports of deaths or major damage.

PHOTOS: Off-shore earthquake triggers tsunami scare

The rapid dissemination of warnings and relatively rapid evacuation of coastal areas throughout the Indian Ocean, including fairly isolated communities, were helped by fresh memories of the tsunami that battered the region eight years ago, killing 230,000 people.

Also helpful was the footage aired after Japan’s massive March 2011 tsunami and nuclear disaster, motivating people to take the risk seriously, even though ultimately the wave proved elusive. From a public safety perspective, complacency is often the biggest killer, especially if people have not  experienced or heard about a tsunami in decades.

“Things worked quite well,” said Dailin Wang, oceanographer with the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Ewa Beach, Hawaii. The Indonesian earthquake and tsunami of 2004 “was not too long ago. People took it seriously and moved away from the coast. The challenge is to keep the knowledge alive.”

GRAPHIC: How a tsunami-warning system works

Major earthquake in Indonesia sparks tsunami fears

NEW DELHI -- A major earthquake struck off the coast of Indonesia Wednesday afternoon with a reported magnitude of 8.6, sparking tsunami warnings for Australia and coastal nations across Southeast Asia, central Asia and parts of the Arabian Gulf.

Experts cautioned that a tsunami warning signals a potential for an oversized tidal wave, not necessarily that it is imminent.  

According to the U.S. Geological Survey, the powerful quake was centered 20 miles beneath the ocean floor around 308 miles from the capital of the Aceh province of the Indonesian island of Sumatra.

Experts said early indications were that the quake, which struck around 2:30 p.m. local time, was caused by a horizontal shift in the earth’s plates of a type less likely to cause severe tsunamis than vertical shifts, which tend to displace larger volumes of water.

And you think you're mad about gas prices

Every day on WorldNow, we choose an amazing photo from around the world. Today we took note of this shot from Indonesia, where protesters are furious about government plans to increase gas prices.

The Indonesian government is planning to raise fuel prices by a third, bringing the cost of subsidized fuel to 65 cents a liter, or $2.38 a gallon, Bloomberg News reported. Government officials say they have to reduce subsidies to avoid increasing the deficit.

"Without raising domestic fuel prices, the government's subsidy bill will continue to bloat," Fauzi Ichsan, senior economist with Standard Chartered Bank in Jakarta, told the BBC.

That hasn't made the idea any more popular. “It just means misery,” Nining Elitos, chairman of the Indonesian Trade Unions Alliance, told Agence France-Presse.

Roughly 2,500 protesters sang songs and sat outside the presidential palace and parliament Thursday in Jakarta to agitate against the plan, Bloomberg reported. Some of the demonstrations grew violent as students hurled stones at police. Demonstrations have also broken out elsewhere in Indonesia: In this photo, a student protester leaps over a fire set in Makassar, the capital of the South Sulawesi province.

Indonesia isn't alone: Dropping fuel subsidies has been a politically dicey move around the globe. Nigeria backtracked on a similar move early this year after protests exploded. Bolivia reversed course on slashing fuel subsidies a year earlier, after an uproar known as the gasolinazo.

How governments subsidize or tax fuel accounts for much of the difference in the price of gasoline in different countries, which is why fuel is priced very differently from one part of the world to another -- and why cutting back on fuel subsidies can cause so much uproar when it happens.

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-- Emily Alpert in Los Angeles

Photo: A student jumps over fire Thursday in Makassar,  Indonesia,  during a protest of the government's plan to raise fuel prices. Credit: Elang Herdian / Associated Press