House for sale in Indonesia - with free wife

Wina Lia, a 40-year-old widow and beauty salon owner, stands in front of her house in Sleman on March 11. (Agence France-Presse)

Sleman, Indonesia:  An advert for a house in Indonesia has gone viral online after the woman selling it offered to throw in an unusual extra feature for free - her hand in marriage.

The Internet ad reads for the most part like a regular house listing, saying that the single-storey property has two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a parking space and a fish pond.

But it also proposes to buyers a "rare offer" - "when you buy this house, you can ask the owner to marry you", alongside a picture of Wina Lia, a 40-year-old widow and beauty salon owner, leaning against a car in front of the house.
The ad said that terms and conditions apply, and notes the offer is "for serious buyers and non-negotiable". The house in Sleman, on the island of Java, is on the market for 999 million rupiah (about $75,000).

News of the offer quickly spread among Internet users in social media-crazy Indonesia.

Boldies99, a user on popular online forum Kaskus, said Lia was "quite smart - even though the house will be sold, she will remain the owner."

Lia told AFP she was "shocked at the reaction", as she had been overwhelmed by journalists coming to interview her, and even the police in the conservative, Muslim-majority country had been asking questions.

The police "came to verify the news as they consider it as an improper advertisement. But I explained to them that it was not my idea," she said.

The mother of two explained that she had asked a friend who was a property agent to help her find a buyer - and in the process a husband - but she had expected him to pass on the news to a limited number of people, not put an ad online.

"I told a friend of mine who also works as property agent that if there is a buyer who is a single man or a widower who wants to buy a house, and at the same time look for a wife, he can let me know as I'm also a widow," she said.

She added that there was only one potential buyer, who had visited on Wednesday, but refused to give further details.

Source: NDTV

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UPDATE: AirAsia crash French copilot’s body recovered

Indonesian rescue workers unload bodies taken from the wreckage of AirAsia flight QZ8501

Reuters/Beawiharta

Divers have recovered a body they believe to be that of the French co-pilot of the AirAsia flight QZ8501, which crashed into the sea off Indonesia last December with 162 people on board.

The body that is believed to be that of Remi Plesel was found in the front part of the fuselage during a search operation on Friday.

It is in poor condition due to its time in the water but is wearing a uniform with a co-pilot’s insignia.

"It is likely the body of the French co-pilot, wearing uniform with three stripes on [the] shoulder," search and rescue coordinator SB Supriyadi told the AFP news agency.




A formal confirmation will be given after the Disaster Victims Identification (DVI) team finishes identifying the body, he explained.

The AirAsia A320-200 crashed into the sea when flying between the Indonesian city of Surabaya and Singapore on 28 December.

It was later found 30 metres under water.

Indonesian investigators last month said that Plesel was flying the plane at the time of the crash, rather than Captain Iriyanto, an experienced former fighter pilot.

His family insist he was an "excellent" flyer.

Divers also found three bodies in the main body of the plane on Friday, bringing the total number retrieved to 101, Supriyadi said.

Rescuers are still trying to raise the fuselage from the seabed using giant inflatable bags, although previous attempts have failed.

Source: RFI

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AirAsia captain left seat before doomed jet lost control

Co-pilot of AirAsia flight QZ8501, Remi Emmanuel Plesel  Photo: AFP/Getty

The captain of the AirAsia jet that crashed into the sea in December was out of his seat conducting an unorthodox procedure when his co-pilot apparently lost control, and by the time he returned it was too late to save the plane.

Details emerging of the final moments of Flight QZ8501 are likely to focus attention partly on maintenance, procedures and training, though Indonesian officials have stressed publicly that it is too early to draw any firm conclusions.

The Airbus A320 jet plunged into the Java Sea while en route from Surabaya, Indonesia, to Singapore on Dec. 28, killing all 162 people on board.

It had been suffering maintenance faults with a key flight control computer for over a week, and one person familiar with the matter said the captain had flown on the same plane with the intermittently faulty device just days before the crash.

AirAsia said it would not comment while the matter was under investigation by the National Transportation Safety Committee (NTSC) of Indonesia.

Reuters reported this week that maintenance problems on the Flight Augmentation Computer (FAC), and the way the pilots reacted to them, were at the heart of the investigation.

After trying to reset this device, pilots pulled a circuit-breaker to cut its power, Bloomberg News reported on Friday.

People familiar with the matter told Reuters it was the Indonesian captain Iriyanto who took this step, rather than his less-experienced French co-pilot Remy Plesel, who was flying the plane.

The outage would not directly upset the aircraft but would remove flight envelope protection, which prevents a pilot from taking a plane beyond its safety limits, leaving the junior pilot to fly the jet manually in delicate high altitude conditions.

The decision to cut off the FAC has surprised people following the investigation because the usual procedure for resetting it is to press a button on the overhead panel.

"You can reset the FAC, but to cut all power to it is very unusual," said one A320 pilot, who declined to be identified. "You don't pull the circuit breaker unless it was an absolute emergency. I don't know if there was one in this case, but it is very unusual."

It is also significant because to pull the circuit breaker the captain had to rise from his seat.

The circuit breakers are on a wall panel immediately behind the co-pilot and hard or impossible to reach from the seated position on the left side, where the captain sits, according to two experienced pilots and published diagrams of the cockpit.

Shortly afterwards the junior pilot pulled the plane into a sharp climb from which investigators have said it stalled or lost lift.

"It appears he was surprised or startled by this," said a person familiar with the investigation, referring to the decision to cut power to the affected computer.

The captain eventually resumed control, but a person familiar with the matter said he was not in a position to intervene immediately to recover the aircraft from its upset.

Data already published on the plane's trajectory suggest it may have been difficult for someone to move around the cockpit in an upward-tilting and by then possibly unstable aircraft, but there is so far no confirmation of the cockpit movements.

"The co-pilot pulled the plane up, and by the time the captain regained the controls it was too late," one of the people familiar with the investigation said.

Tatang Kurniadi, chief of Indonesia's NTSC, told Reuters there had been no delay in the captain resuming control but declined further comment.

Airbus declined to comment.

Lawyers for the family of the French co-pilot say they have filed a lawsuit against AirAsia in Paris for "endangering the lives of others" by flying the route without official authorisation on that day. Investigators have said the accident was not related to the permit issue.

AirAsia did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the lawsuit.

Although more is becoming known about the chain of events, people familiar with the investigation warned against making assumptions on the accident's cause, which needed more analysis.

Safety experts say air crashes are most often caused by a chain of events, each of which is necessary but not sufficient to explain the underlying causes of the accident.

Source: The Telegraph

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UPDATE: Divers find bodies belted in seats near AirAsia fuselage

PANGKALAN BUN: Indonesian divers Thursday (Jan 22) found five bodies still belted into their seats near the main section of an AirAsia plane that crashed into the Java Sea last month with 162 people on board, and are hopeful of reaching the fuselage.

A total of 58 bodies have now been found following the crash of flight QZ8501 which went down on Dec 28 in stormy weather as it flew from the Indonesian city of Surabaya to Singapore.

"Our divers found five bodies buried in mud, close to the plane fuselage. They were still belted to their seats," S.B. Supriyadi, a rescue agency official coordinating the search, told AFP. "We believe they spilled out of the fuselage, which is 50 to 100 metres away," he said.

Three bodies have been retrieved and taken to the warship Banda Aceh, while the other two were still being recovered, he said. He added that divers had yet to reach the main section of the plane, which is thought to contain the bulk of passengers and crew, as visibility under water was only two metres.

"But it is a bright, clear day so we remain optimistic that the divers might reach the wreckage today (Thursday)," he said.

The main body of the Airbus A320-200 was spotted on the seabed by a military vessel last week following an arduous search in shallow Indonesian waters, but strong underwater currents and rough seas have prevented divers from reaching it. The jet's black boxes - the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder - were recovered last week, and investigators are analysing them.

Indonesian Transport Minister Ignasius Jonan said this week that the plane climbed abnormally fast before stalling and plunging into the sea. Just moments before the plane disappeared off the radar, the pilot had asked to climb to avoid a major storm but was not immediately granted permission due to heavy air traffic.

Source: Channel News Asia

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UPDATES: AirAsia plane climbed too fast, then disappeared

Investigators examining the tail of AirAsia flight QZ8501

JAKARTA, Indonesia — An AirAsia plane that crashed last month with 162 people on board was climbing at an abnormally high rate, then plunged and suddenly disappeared from radar, Indonesia’s transport minister said Tuesday.

Ignasius Jonan told Parliament that radar data showed the Airbus A320 was climbing at about 6,000 feet a minute before it disappeared on Dec. 28.

“It is not normal to climb like that, it’s very rare for commercial planes, which normally climb just 1,000 to 2,000 feet per minute,” he said. “It can only be done by a fighter jet.”

He said the plane then plunged and disappeared from radar.

Jonan did not say what caused the plane to climb so rapidly.

In their last contact with air-traffic controllers, the pilots of AirAsia Flight 8501 asked to climb from 32,000 feet to 38,000 feet to avoid threatening clouds, but were denied permission because of heavy air traffic. Four minutes later, the plane disappeared. No distress signal was received.

An excessively rapid ascent is likely to cause an airplane to go into an aerodynamic stall. In 2009, an Air France Airbus A330 disappeared over the Atlantic Ocean while flying from Rio de Janeiro to Paris. Investigators were able to determine from the jet’s “black boxes” that the plane began a steep climb and then went into a stall from which the pilots were unable to recover.

Airbus spokesman Justin Dubon said Tuesday that it was too early to comment on possible similarities between the two crashes.

Survey ships have located at least nine big objects, including the AirAsia jet’s fuselage and tail, in the Java Sea. The plane’s black boxes — the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder — have been recovered but are still being analyzed.

The plane was en route from Surabaya, Indonesia’s second-largest city, to Singapore.

Only 51 bodies have been recovered so far. Rough sea conditions have repeatedly prevented divers from reaching the wreckage.

Source: Washington Post

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Fury as Indonesia executes foreigners by firing squad

Police officers and security personnel stand guard as a ferry carrying ambulances sets off for Nusakambangan island where the executions of the five of six drug convicts will be performed, at Wijayapura port in Cilacap, Central Java, Indonesia, Saturday, Jan. 17, 2015. Five foreigners and an Indonesian woman sentenced to death on drug charges will be executed by firing squad despite international pleas, Indonesian officials said Saturday. (AP Photo/Wagino)

JAKARTA — Brazil and the Netherlands recalled their ambassadors from Indonesia and expressed fury Sunday after Jakarta defied their pleas and executed two of their citizens along with four other drug offenders by firing squad.

The other convicts were from Vietnam, Malawi, Nigeria and Indonesia. The six were the first people executed under new President Joko Widodo.

Indonesia has tough anti-drugs laws and Widodo, who took office in October, has disappointed rights activists by voicing support for capital punishment despite his image as a reformist.

A spokesman for Brazilian President Dilma Roussef said she was “distressed and outraged” after Indonesia ignored her last-ditch pleas and put to death Marco Archer Cardoso Moreira, who was convicted of smuggling cocaine into Indonesia in 2004.

“Using the death penalty, which is increasingly rejected by the international community, seriously affects relations between our countries,” the spokesman said in a statement.

The Brazilian ambassador to Jakarta was being recalled for consultations, the spokesman added.

Meanwhile Dutch Foreign Minister Bert Koenders said the Netherlands had also recalled its ambassador over the execution of Dutchman Ang Kiem Soei, and  described all six deaths as “terribly sad” in a statement.

“My heart goes out to their families, for whom this marks a dramatic end to years of uncertainty,” Koenders said. “The Netherlands remains opposed to the death penalty.”

Dutch King Willem-Alexander and Prime Minister Mark Rutte had been in contact with the Indonesian president about the matter, he said, and the government had done “all in its power” to attempt to halt the execution.

In line with law

Indonesia’s attorney general, H.M Prasetyo, said Sunday the death penalty was not “something pleasing or fun” but insisted the executions had been carried out in accordance with the law.

“I hope everyone can understand this,” he told reporters.

“Indonesia must be saved from narcotics… this is a crime against humanity that damages the morals of the younger generation.”

He also insisted the death penalty was a “positive law for Indonesia.”

All the prisoners, who had been sentenced to death between 2000 and 2011, were executed around the same time shortly after midnight, the attorney general’s office said.

The 53-year-old Brazilian, who was caught with drugs stashed in the frame of his paraglider at Jakarta airport, and the 62-year-old Dutchman were executed on Nusakambangan Island, home to a high-security prison, off the main island of Java.

A Nigerian, Daniel Enemuo; Namaona Denis, from Malawi; and an Indonesian woman, Rani Andriani, were executed at the same location.

The sixth convict, Vietnamese woman Tran Thi Bich Hanh, was executed in the Boyolali district in central Java.

They were all caught attempting to smuggle narcotics apart from the Dutchman, who was sentenced to death for operating a huge factory producing the drug ecstasy.

All had their appeals to the president for clemency — their last chance to avoid the firing squad — rejected last month.

Jakarta had an unofficial moratorium on executions for several years from 2008 but resumed capital punishment again in 2013. There were no executions last year.

Widodo, known as Jokowi, has taken a particularly hard line towards people on death row for narcotics offences, insisting they will not receive a presidential pardon since Indonesia is facing an “emergency” due to high levels of drug use.

Following Sunday’s executions, the number of people on death row in Indonesia for drugs-related offences stood at 60, around half of whom are foreigners, said a spokesman for the national narcotics agency.

Widodo’s tough stance has sparked concern for other foreigners sentenced to death, particularly two Australians who were part of the “Bali Nine” group caught trying to smuggle heroin out of Indonesia in 2005.

One of the pair, Myuran Sukumaran, also had his clemency appeal rejected last month but authorities say he will be executed with fellow Australian Andrew Chan as they committed their crime together.

Chan is still awaiting the outcome of his clemency appeal.

Also on death row is British grandmother Lindsay Sandiford. She was sentenced to death in 2013 after being caught trying to smuggle cocaine into Bali.

Source: Inquirer

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