WASHINGTON US combat troops pulling out of Iraq can claim the ouster of a brutal dictator as a clear success but otherwise leave behind unresolved questions about democracy, terror and neighbouring Iran’s power. With Washington about to declare an official end to the combat mission in Iraq more than seven years after the invasion, analysts [...]

By Vyt Karazija So I’ve just finished bargaining hard for something inconsequential and the price has been accepted. All that remains is for me to hand over the money and receive my goods from the nice lady. Then, with studied diffidence, comes the sob story: “You give me extra Rp10,000 (US$1.10) so I can buy [...]

How can one little island, which attracts travellers from around the planet to its fabulous scenery and some of the world’s best resorts, do so horribly badly when it comes to something as essential to everyone’s health and comfort as rubbish control? Outside of the manicured enclave of Nusa Dua, it’s almost impossible to find [...]

An experimental the-rapy that targets the protein that feeds certain types of advanced melanomas has successfully shrunk tumours in up to 80 percent of test patients, a new study says. The orally administered medication, called PLX4032, “shuts off” tumours by neutralizing a mutated gene called “BRAF” that feeds the cancerous growths. “We have never seen [...]

A protein that eliminates iron from cells could be used to slow the growth of cancerous tumours, to treat breast cancer, and to predict the outcome for breast cancer patients, a study published this week has found. Researchers at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center in North Carolina found that levels of ferroportin – a [...]

People with insulin resistance and type-2 diabetes are at higher risk of developing plaques associated with Alzheimer’s, Japanese researchers say in a study. The research, published in the American Academy of Neurology, involved 135 peo-ple with an average age of 67 from Hisayama, Japan. The group was tested for blood sugar levels and followed over [...]

DENPASAR Bali’s new police chief, Hadiatmoko, has reminded his senior officers that hotels and villas in Bali were still potential terrorist targets and said no one could afford to relax about the threat. “Bali’s tourism is still threatened as a terrorist target. We will keep on protecting assets such as hotels and villas from terrorist [...]

We have come a long way since the heart was torn out of Bali eight years ago, and again three years later. Amid the rubble and hundreds of deaths, most of them foreigners on holiday, people said the bombed island would never recover, that its main tourist industry had been fatally damaged and that holidaymakers [...]

A dozen hefty security guards held back the crowd gathered on a Paris street this week to glimpse US director Martin Scorsese jump into a limo at lunch break during the shoot of his latest film, a 3-D fantasy releasing late next year. But the Oscar-winning 67-year-old, shooting in the City of Light for only [...]

Mexico’s Jimena Navarrete was crown-ed Miss Un-iverse on Monday night in an upset victory that stunned a pageant world that had predicted a winner to emerge from Ireland, Venezuela or the United States. The 22-year-old from Gua-dalajara, resplendent in a flowing ruby-red eveninggown, has been modelling since she was 15, but nothing could quite prepare [...]

British pop singer George Michael pleaded guilty in a London court on Tuesday to driving under the influence of cannabis when he crashed his car into a shop last month, and could face jail. The 47-year-old Careless Whisper star also admitted possessing cannabis cigarettes when he appeared at Highbury Corner Magistrates’ Court. Dressed in a [...]

TABANAN Nine prostitutes, eight of them from East Java and all rounded up by police in Tabanan as part of a Ramadhan clampdown, gave everyone — judges, prosecutors and the public — a laugh when they appeared in court this week unrepentant about their career choice. The women, most of whom are newly arrived in [...]