JAKARTA - ABOUT a hundred Indonesian Muslims held a mass prayer session in the capital Jakarta on Sunday to protest over unrest between Muslim Uighurs and Han Chinese which left more than 180 people dead.

'We Muslims in Indonesia feel the pain and struggle of our Muslim brothers and sisters and pray for their well-being. We urge the Indonesian government to tell the Chinese government to stop this brutality,' a Muslim coordinator Jamal Aldin told AFP.

TIMIKA - A SECOND employee of US mining giant Freeport McMoRan was shot dead on Sunday in Indonesia, a day after an Australian worker was killed by men using military-issue weapons in a planned ambush, reports said.

The latest victim, Mr Markus Rattealo, a security guard for the Freeport's Indonesian subsidiary, was shot while he was travelling in a car in the restive Papua province, The Jakarta Post newspaper reported.

KUALA LUMPUR - AN INCREASING number of Malaysian couples are seeking fertility treatment as the country's birthrate declines, a newspaper reported on Sunday.

A recent United Nations report showed the country's fertility rate dropped from 3.6 babies per couple in 1990 to 2.6 babies currently, the New Sunday Times said.