Because I love our beautiful beaches and working every day at Padang Padang. Nyoman Nesil, 50, Bali

NAME: Ngurah Muliarta AGE: 26 OCCUPATION: Food-shop owner LOCATION:  Gianyar How do you think the country is doing now? It’s not so good because everyone wants to be the leader as they want money, but they don’t do much for the country. The government doesn’t give enough money for health and education. Is the central [...]

What are we here for? To prepare so we can be better in our next life. Do you believe in the Big Bang theory that the circa-13.7-billion-year-old universe and all that’s in it was created by a massive explosion of enormously dense matter at what may have been the beginning of time? Yes, I believe [...]

Meghan Pappenheim, 37, moved from New York City to Bali 16 years ago, after living for six months on the island as a university exchange student. A mother of two, she runs the Yoga Barn in Ubud that she built with her Balinese husband in 2007, as well as the annual Bali Spirit Festival. Meghan [...]

Ida Ayu Anom Mahyuni, 63, is an elementary and junior high school teacher who comes from Karangasem. She has four children and nine grandchildren. What’s the greatest lesson life has taught you? To try to help each other and to look after our environment. What’s most important? My children and the rest of my family. [...]

By Vyt Karazija After living here for a while, it’s inevitable that you develop relationships with the locals. Casual friendships are formed, conversational interludes become more frequent and before you know it, the local people are talking about the vicissitudes of their day-to day lives. And in Bali, this often seems to end up as [...]

NUSA DUA The Bali Times, AFP COUNTRIES will have to make far greater cuts in greenhouse gas emissions if the world is to limit the rise in global temperatures to two degrees Celsius or less, the UN has warned. Commitments made since December’s Copenhagen climate conference have been insufficient, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) [...]

JAKARTA By Jerome Rivet Following Brazil’s trail, Indonesia is encouraging foreign and local investors to lease huge swathes of fertile countryside and help make the country a major food producer. “Feed Indonesia, then feed the world,” was the recent call from President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono after the government announced plans to fast-track development of vast [...]

By James M. Lindsay and Ray Takeyh AS IRAN relentlessly moves toward acquiring a nuclear weapons capability, calls will grow for the United States to think seriously about how to contain Tehran. A preventive attack will not work, some will argue, and could unleash a wave of terrorism that would further imperil Iraq and Afghanistan. [...]

By Carlos Lozada REMEMBER when we admired Wall Street’s financial wizards, the math and computer geeks who dreamed up all those credit default swaps, mortgage derivatives, collateralized debt obligations and the like? They were wise. They won Nobel Prizes. They made the economy more efficient. And they earned tons of cash. Today, of course, they’re [...]

By Hannah Black This may sound condescending, but when I arrived in Bali, I was amazed by the stylishness of the young people. Coming from New York via the UK I never expected Bali to be such a trendy place. I’m not sure exactly what I did expect, but it sure wasn’t 1970s New York [...]

Bali’s Ngurah Rai International Airport is celebrating its 45th anniversary, at a time when it is under pressure like never before. Record numbers of foreign tourist arrivals are pushing the facility to breaking point as it is about to embark on an ambitious overhaul. The airport’s general manager, Heru Legowo, 55, spoke this week with [...]