Indonesian ferry fire kills at least 5, dozens missing in Java waters

In the early hours of a Sunday morning on the Java Sea, a passenger ferry named Mutiara Sentosa 2 became a vessel of crisis rather than passage, as fire swept through its decks and forced 271 people to confront the sea itself as their only refuge. Five lives were lost, and 41 souls remained unaccounted for by day's end — a toll that speaks not only to this single disaster but to the long, recurring story of maritime vulnerability in a nation whose islands are bound together by water. Indonesia has known this kind of tragedy before, and the questions rising from the smoke — about safety, enforc