JAKARTA A man carrying a homemade bomb on a bicycle was badly injured on Thursday when the device exploded near a market on the outskirts of Jakarta, police said. Police said the device was packed with nails and exploded as the man rode the bicycle down a street in Bekasi. A note was found at [...]

DENPASAR Bali’s legislature is looking at a draft provincial budget for 2011 that requires total investments of Rp15.78 trillion (US$1.75 billion) a 17-percent rise in tax collections. Some legislators attended a September 14 session with provincial officials and the head of Bali’s planning agency said later they did not believe the targets were achievable. The [...]

DENPASAR Dewa Agung Ayu Diah Cahyani, the 18-year-old health sciences student found naked and stabbed to death in her Denpasar boarding house bed three weeks ago, most likely knew her killer, says Udayana University criminologist Gede Made Swardana. And he discounts the psychopath theory that is one line of police inquiry in the investigation, saying [...]

Elemental: Hindu leaders holding a ceremony at Kuta Beach on Wednesday evening to mark the opening of Kuta Karnival 2010, the eighth annual event designed to bolster business in the tourist district. (Photo: The Bali Times/Juliyusman Sine)

JAYAPURA A major 7.4-magnitude earthquake struck off Papua in eastern Indonesia early on Thursday, prompting a tsunami alert that was cancelled soon after it was issued. The Meteorology and Geophysics Agency said the quake occurred at 2.10am at a depth of 21 kilometres 105 kilometres north-northwest of Dobo in the Kepulauan Aru islands off the [...]

JAKARTA A man was hacked to death and two others were killed in a gang fight outside a court in Jakarta on Wednesday, police and witnesses said. Men armed with blades and guns fought in the streets near the South Jakarta District Court for about an hour, police said. An AFP reporter at the scene [...]

JAKARTA Indonesia’s Muslim majority has become less tolerant over the past decade and the government of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono is turning a blind eye to the problem, researchers said on Wednesday. A new survey by the Center for the Study of Islam and Society found “a worrying increase” in religious intolerance among Muslims in [...]

DENPASAR Bali’s airport expansion is going ahead — but with a reduced budget following analysis and verification of the project costs by the national government. State airport operator PT Angkasa Pura I reduced its estimate of the cost by Rp400 billion (US$44.5 million) after the audit. “The State Development Finance Comptroller [BPKP] has completed its [...]

DENPASAR The months-long series of electricity blackouts that struck Bali multiple times daily from October last year into January may be a thing of the past as state power firm PLN gears up to provide a new — if novel — solution for the voltage-deficient island. Recently installed PLN chief Dahlan Iskan, a dynamic private-sector [...]

DENPASAR Bali’s government has signed up to a mass dog vaccination campaign — targeting 400,000 animals — financed by foreign money as part of a new approach to rabies control that also commits the authorities to a “more humane” way of culling stray dogs. Earlier this month Governor I Made Mangku Pastika announced a 560,000-stray [...]

Collaboration: Indonesian military helicopters landed in Renon, Bali, at the start of military exercises with Australia this week. The programme is designed to strengthen military cooperation between both countries. (Photo: The Bali Times/Juliyusman Sine)

By Hector It’s not something The Diary generally does, but last Friday a two-hour session at the Stadium Café in Kuta paid a dividend. The Diary was there with an Australian friend, who was on his way back to the cares and woes of life in Sin City on one of those overnight red-eye specials [...]