Bangkok  - Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva departed Bangkok for Jakarta Friday for a two-day official visit that will include talks on the Myanmar-Muslim Rohingya boat people.

The Thai military has been criticized for pushing back about 1,000 Rohingya refugees from Thailand's southern shores in December, dragging them out to sea in boats without engines or sufficient food and water.

Some of the boat people were rescued by the Indonesian Navy off the coast of Aceh.

Jakarta  - Nine people, including eig

Jakarta  - Thick smoke caused by forest fires blanketing Indonesia's Riau province on Sumatra island forced the brief closure of the local airport on Tuesday, an official said.

Five flights were diverted to airports in neighboring provinces after the haze reduced visibility to below 1 kilometre on Tuesday morning, said Dedi Suryana, chief of the Sultan Syarif Kasim airport in Pekanbaru, the provincial capital.

"There were some delays in departures and arrivals but we have reopened now," he said.

Kuala Lumpur  - A Malaysian policewoman who kept hearing the sound of a crying baby made a shocking discovery when she found a five-day old baby stuffed in her Indonesian maid's cupboard drawer, news reports said Tuesday.

The woman, a senior police officer from the northern Perlis state, found the crying baby early Sunday but her maid initially denied the child was hers.

However, on Monday, the 22-year old Indonesian maid known only as Yanti, admitted to giving birth to the baby girl on Thursday in her toilet.

Jakarta - About 100 Indonesian Muslims rallied outside the US embassy in Jakarta Monday to protest a planned visit this week by US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.

The protestors from the conservative Islamic group Hizbut Tahrir Indonesia waved placards denouncing Clinton as a "Zionist agent" in reference to Israel.

"Hillary, you're not welcome here," read a poster held by a woman wearing a white headscarf.

Kuala Lumpur - Malaysian marine police detained seven suspected Indonesian pirates after a high-speed shootout Monday, a piracy watchdog group said.

The suspects, travelling in a speedboat and armed with pistols, machetes and hand grenades, were nabbed after a 30-minute chase, the International Maritime Bureau (IMB) confirmed.

Marine police from Malaysia's southern region had waited in ambush for the suspects early Monday, following information and assistance from several shipping companies.