PALEMBANG A plane that is owned by Air Asia, with flight number QZ 7661, has made an emergency landing at the airport of Sultan Mahmud Badaruddin II in Palembang, on Sumatra island. The emergency landing was made around 17:30 local time on Tuesday. The Boeing 737-300 with 99 passengers and crew on board was traveling from Jakarta to Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia) when they had to make an emergency landing because of a broken window.

According to Rudi Rums, engineering staff at Air Asia, one window broke when the plane was flying at 35,000 feet. The pilot, Farid Iskandar, decided directly to put the plane on the ground in an emergency landing. At this moment engineers from Air Asia together with people from the airport are still working on the broken front window of the plane.

DENPASAR  The HIV/AIDS epidemic continues to mount in Bali with health officials now estimating some 4,000 people have died from the disease on the Island. Each day 2-3 people die of HIV/AIDS adding at least 840 new fatalities to the mounting death toll each year. Meanwhile, health activists are warning that unless issues connected with the treatments, control and prevention of HIV/AIDS receive their proper due, the illness will, as reported in the Bali Post, sweep across the island like a AIDS tsunami.

This warning was issued by Dr. Nyoman Mangku Karmaya, the Chairman of the Committee for Combating AIDS (KPAD) at a seminar on the control and prevention of HIV/AIDS held in Denpasar on Wednesday, February 27, 2008 where he said: “The threat of drowning in Bali is not only posed by tsunamis composed of sea water, but also by a increasingly growing tsunami of HIV/AIDS sufferers threatening to drown and overwhelm the island.”

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