Jakarta

JAKARTA, Indonesia -- Abdurrahman Wahid, a partly blind and frail Muslim cleric who previously had never run for political office, was elected Indonesia's president yesterday in a stunning upset that steers the world's fourth-most-populous nation into uncharted waters.The powerful military immediately said it will support Wahid, who won this nation's first free presidential election in 44 years and was quickly sworn in.Wahid's defeated rival, Megawati Sukarnoputri, called on her supporters to respect the results.

WASHINGTON -- Revealing their first piece of concrete evidence that foreign money was funneled to the Democratic Party, senators investigating campaign fund-raising abuses showed yesterday that illegal funds from Asia entered the U.S. political money stream as early as 1992.In an August 1992 memo, John Huang -- at the time a U.S. official for the Indonesia-based Lippo Group -- asked the home office in Jakarta to "please kindly wire" money to cover expenses that included a $50,000 contribution to the Democratic National Committee Victory Fund.

In June 2009, my husband Sam and I slammed down the hatchback of our Honda CRV, the interior bulging with containers of Legos and books, school supplies and board games, and a box of shoes, a tin of Old Bay in the glove compartment. On the roof was a plastic carrier with as much clothing as we could stuff into it: the necessities of five soon-to-be expatriates. Everything else was in the basement of our Lutherville home, with a new family moving in at the end of the month. Our mission: to give our three children a taste of life in a foreign country, where the language, food, and culture would be vastly different from suburban Baltimore.

In its first incursion into the Indonesian market, Sparks-based McCormick & Co. Inc. yesterday announced it has formed a joint venture with a major Indonesian company to manufacture and market spices and herbs in the Southeast Asian island country."

Dennis Storm's two-month odyssey from an Indonesian hospital bed to Maryland ended yesterday as relieved relatives gathered around the Vietnam war hero and Bel Air resident. "It's all fine now," said Sharon Storm-Brown, Storm's sister from North Carolina, who rode with him on the last leg of his journey on a state-owned helicopter provided by Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. "This was the smoothest leg of the journey," she said. Storm, 57, a Marine veteran, was awarded the Silver Star for saving eight men from a burning helicopter in 1969.

JAKARTA, Indonesia - One of the foundation stones of American life abroad - good schools for the children - was shattered yesterday when three schools for international students announced they would remain closed for most of the month because of a continuing terrorist threat. The closing of the schools sent an anxious frisson through the foreign community in Jakarta, a city that has seen plenty of violence but rarely against expatriates, much less their children. Many parents, unnerved by a specific terrorist threat to bomb international schools, said they were leaving Indonesia immediately to put their children in schools back home.

BANDA ACEH, Indonesia -- It has become a hauntingly familiar drama in Indonesia: families huddling on a wind-swept pier or in a crowded bus station, fleeing a home that has become too dangerous as old grievances give rise to explosive separatist passions.Last time it was East Timor, which voted for independence from Indonesia in August only to be plunged into bloodshed that an Australian-led international military force was sent in to quell.Now it is Aceh (pronounced ah-CHAY), a lush, devoutly Islamic province that lies on the extreme western edge of the Indonesian archipelago.

JAKARTA, Indonesia -- As a mostly hand-picked national assembly applauded and affirmed President Suharto for a seventh five-year term yesterday, thousands of students held protests across the country to demand political reform and an end to government corruption.The mood of some students in the capital, though, was subdued and a little fearful -- which helps explain why the 76-year-old former general continues to maintain firm control over the world's fourth most populous country in the midst of its worst economic crisis in three decades.

JAKARTA, Indonesia - Trying to send a strong message that widespread violence and corruption will no longer be tolerated in Indonesia, President Abdurrahman Wahid said yesterday that he would not to pardon the convicted son of former dictator Suharto and ordered the arrest of the country's most notorious militia leader. But Wahid's actions could lead to further unrest. Violence and public disorder have erupted during past government efforts to bring the Suharto family and the militias to justice, underscoring the difficulty of this impoverished country's struggle to forge a democracy after decades of authoritarian rule.

JAKARTA, Indonesia - The American Embassy here was closed yesterday because of what officials would only describe as an unspecified security threat. But a Western counterterrorism official and private security analyst said the decision was made after a diagram of the embassy and details of how to carry out an attack using 300 pounds of explosives were posted on an Islamic Web site. The diagram, posted on www.Istimata.co.nr, by a group calling itself the Brigade Istimata International, showed the location of the ambassador's office and of surveillance cameras and thermal devices.