JAKARTA – Pusat Pelaporan dan Analisis Transaksi Keuangan (PPATK) menemukan lebih dari 400 lembar cek perjalanan yang diberikan kepada Komisi Perbankan Dewan Perwakilan Rakyat periode 1999-2004. Setiap cek yang dikeluarkan sebuah bank swasta nasional itu bernilai Rp 50 juta. Pemberian cek ini diduga berkaitan dengan terpilihnya Miranda Goeltom sebagai Deputi Gubernur Senior Bank Indonesia pada [...]

More than 2 1/2 days after the earthquake destroyed the Hotel Montana in Port-au-Prince, members of a search-and-rescue team from Virginia carried American Dan Wooley out of the wreckage. Wooley was one of seven people pulled out of the flattened Montana — once one of the nicest hotels in the Haitian capital — by elite [...]

LA VERRIERE, France – The man she married is French, her four children were born in France and she speaks French with only a trace of her native Arabic tongue. Faiza Silmi contends her clothes — a head-to-toe robe and filmy tissue covering her face — are the reason France has denied her citizenship in [...]

Whether by choice or necessity, American consumers are increasingly relying on debit rather than credit cards. Debit card spending has risen steadily, growing from 47.7 percent of purchases made with plastic in 2003 to 58.9 percent in 2008 and it is expected to surpass 67 percent by 2013, according to the Nilson Report, a newsletter [...]

WASHINGTON – The U.S. State Department has updated its 1998 file photo of al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, digitally altering it to account for a decade of age and possible changes in his facial hair. There is a $25 million bounty on bin Laden’s head for the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks and the 1998 U.S. [...]

WASHINGTON – Shhhhhhh. The perks of Senate membership just got sweeter. For the first time, all 100 members of the chamber will have their own cloistered hideaways in the U.S. Capitol, traditionally a coveted mark of seniority and clout that lowly freshmen could only dream about. This year, even junior senators will get their own [...]

Port-au-Prince, Haiti — As Haitians drew close to the critical 72-hour mark after a devastating 7.0-magnitude earthquake, a sign of their desperation — a mass grave serving as possibly the final resting place of scores of victims — was discovered Friday outside Port-au-Prince. At least 100 bodies were discovered by a CNN crew in one [...]

Banda Aceh – Sejumlah warga Aceh etnis Tionghoa beragama Buddha, kecewa tak bisa menampilkan atraksi budaya, Barongsai saat menggelar doa bersama dalam memperingati lima tahun tsunami di Banda Aceh, Minggu (20/12). Atraksi tersebut masih dilarang oleh Departemen Agama di Aceh. “Kami jelas kecewa dengan pelarangan ini, karena barongsai itu sebenarnya hanya atraksi budaya, bukan agama,” [...]

PPATK menemukan 400 lebih cek berkaitan dengan pemilihan Miranda.JAKARTA – Pusat Pelaporan dan Analisis Transaksi Keuangan (PPATK) menemukan lebih dari 400 lembar cek perjalanan yang diberikan kepada Komisi Perbankan Dewan Perwakilan Rakyat periode 1999-2004. Setiap cek yang dikeluarkan sebuah bank swasta nasional itu bernilai Rp 50 juta. Pemberian cek ini diduga berkaitan dengan terpilihnya Miranda [...]

The Transportation Security Administration, under scrutiny after last month’s bombing attempt, has on its Web site a “mythbuster” that tries to reassure the public. Myth: The No-Fly list includes an 8-year-old boy. Buster: No 8-year-old is on a T.S.A. watch list. “Meet Mikey Hicks,” said Najlah Feanny Hicks, introducing her 8-year-old son, a New Jersey [...]

Search teams fighting through the gnarled concrete and steel in collapsed buildings in Haiti are guided by the principle “do the best for the most,” as they zero in on pockets of debris where survivors may be trapped. Jack Wise, chief of the disaster preparedness section of the Los Angeles Fire Department, said converging teams [...]

In the cast of corporate characters, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are A-list villains, thanks to the central role they played in the 2008 financial meltdown. The two mortgage-finance firms failed as spectacularly as AIG, the poster child for finance-gone-wrong, with the combined Fannie-Freddie rescue totaling about $111 billion so far–the biggest bailout of all. [...]

Update at 6:44 PM: Visa announced this evening that it, too, will not apply fees to charitable donations related to the crisis in Haiti through February. Update at 3:13 PM: American Express announced today that processing fees for any donations made to the 65 charities listed on this website between January 12 and the end [...]

As many as 50,000 people perished in the earthquake that struck Haiti, according to a new estimate from the Haitian Red Cross, even as aid groups struggled to meet the overwhelming needs of the increasingly desperate survivors. Planeloads of search-and-rescue teams, medics and supplies were trickling into the devastated capital of Port-au-Prince, but the aid [...]

Part 1 Part 2 Produced By Indonesia Media Edited By Bryant Irawan