Choking smoke from forest fires hung over parts of the island of Sumatra in Indonesia on Friday, forcing a delay in flights and prompting fears that conditions could worsen because of lack of rain, officials said.

About 450 fires have been detected across Indonesia, and forestry officials have warned that the number could exceed the total of 35,000 reported last year, as the dry season this year is likely to be marked by less rain than usual.

FIGUARE

The Aditya Birla Group is keen on acquiring coal mines to feed its cement business and is scouting for the mines in South Africa and Indonesia.

"We are looking for mines.... We have just started thinking on that," UltraTech Cement President and CFO K C Birla told reporters after the company's annual general meeting here today.

UltraTech is an Aditya Birla Group company engaged in the cement business.

Birla, however, said it was too premature to provide any further details now and declined to make further comments on possible acquisitions.

Jakarta: A 5.5-magnitude earthquake struck at sea off Indonesia's Aceh province on Monday but there was no threat of a tsunami and no immediate reports of damage, geologists said. The epicentre of the quake, which hit 30 km deep and struck at 11:44 am (0444 GMT), was 50 km southwest of the town of Sinabang, the main town on Simeulue island, in Aceh province. "The quake was felt only in Sinabang town, there's no report of damage so far," geophysicist Agung Mulyo Utomo said.

Scientists attempt to understand mud volcano

NEW DELHI: Spice Energy will import LNG from Indonesia at its proposed $400 million import terminal in Haldia while its unit Cals Refineries has signed a deal with oil major BP plc to source up to five million tonnes a year of crude oil for its $1.1 billion refinery in the same city. "We have signed a framework agreement with Indonesian State-run firm Pertamina for sourcing liquefied natural gas for the Haldia import and re-gassification facility we plan to set up by 2011,' Spice Energy CEO Ravi Chilukuri told PTI.

Global warming isn't just a problem of cars and smokestacks but of the chain saw, too.

The rise in food and oil prices could "severely weaken' the economies of up to 75 developing countries, including Pakistan and Indonesia, the International Monetary Fund said on Tuesday in its first broad assessment of the crisis. Dominique Strauss-Kahn, IMF managing-director, warned that some countries were now at "a tipping point' because of the double impact of rising food and oil prices.

Diagnosing multi drug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) will now take just two days' time. In a major announcement on Monday, the World Health Organisation decided to make widely available a path-breaking rapid molecular diagnostic tool that will generate TB test results in two days flat. Currently, standard tests take up to three months. This is why only 2% of MDR-TB cases worldwide are being diagnosed and treated appropriately.