Jakarta - South-East Asian foreign ministers Monday formalized a charter that transforms the 41-year-old bloc of half a billion people into a a more united community.

The charter sets out rules of membership, transforms the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) into a legal entity and proposes a single free trade area by 2015.

"Today, the ASEAN Charter officially entered into force," Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono told the meeting at the ASEAN secretariat in Jakarta. "This is a momentous development at a time when ASEAN is consolidating, integrating and transforming itself into a community."

Jakarta - An 30-year-old Indonesia man allegedly doused his girlfriend in petrol and burned her to death in a fit of jealousy, a media report said Saturday.

Jakarta- Indonesian police seized more than 6 kilograms of heroin and arrested two people in one of the biggest drug hauls in the country this year, police said Friday.

The heroin was seized when police raided a house in the eastern Jakarta suburb of Cipinang on Thursday night, said Brigadier General Harry Montolalu, director of the anti-drugs unit at national police headquarters.

Wellington  - New Zealand Foreign Minister Murray McCully Friday expressed his country's condolences on the death of former Indonesian Foreign Minister Ali Alatas, who he described as one of South-east Asia's most eminent statesmen.

McCully said Alatas had been a good friend to New Zealand over several decades and particularly noted the role he played in building the Association of South-east Asian Nations (ASEAN) into a major force for regional progress and stability.

Jakarta  - An earthquake measuring 6.3 on the Richter scale struck off Indonesia's North Sulawesi province Friday morning, seismologists said.

The quake's epicentre lay about 101 kilometres south-east of Gorontalo in northern Sulawesi at about 4:40 am Jakarta time (2140 GMT Thursday), and occurred about 95 kilometres beneath the seabed, the National Meteorology and Geophysics Agency (BMG) said.

Jakarta  - Former Indonesian foreign minister Ali Alatas died on Thursday at the age of 76, officials and media reports said.

Alatas, who served as Indonesia's foreign minister from 1988 and 1999, passed away at Singapore's Mount Elizabeth Hospital at about 7:30 am (0030 GMT) after he was hospitalised on November 24, Foreign Ministry spokesman Teuku Faizasyah said.

However, Faizasyah declined to go into details about the former top diplomat's illness. He added that preparations are underway to fly Alatas' body to Jakarta from Singapore.