I love Bali because… The people are very welcoming, friendly and adapted to tourists. The food is amazing and the seafood in particular is excellent. Alwi Idrus, 24, Java BT/PCAR

NAME: Wayan Mujarsa AGE: 27 OCCUPATION: Personal assistant LOCATION: Sanur How do you think the country is doing now? There are still many problems. We have corruption and the citizens’ welfare isn’t good. Maybe that’s why we have corruption. Politicians are always busy with meetings but they only talk as instead of acting. Is the [...]

From the perspective of Aldiv Kasaro, 29, a public relations executive from Majenang, East Java What are we here for? To make this world become something. 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 [...]

Ni Arpah, 60, from Gianyar, is the owner of a souvenir shop near Lake Beratan, in Bedugul. She has six children and seven grandchildren. What’s the greatest lesson life has taught you? To take care of each other. What’s most important? My family. What advice would you give the younger generations? Learn and do what’s [...]

By Vyt Karazija There are some pedestrians in Bali who choose to walk on the road. They eschew the footpath, apparently so oblivious to what is happening around them that their life expectancy can be measured in minutes. Watching them is like performing some sort of macabre countdown to a gory fate. Almost without exception, they are non-locals, seemingly treating any [...]

LONDON ~ An 18th-century manuscript telling the original story of how Isaac Newton developed his theory of gravity after seeing an apple fall off a tree was made public this week for the first time. The account forms part of William Stukeley’s 1752 biography of the scientist, which has been hidden away in the archives [...]

LONDON ~ An 18th-century manuscript telling the original story of how Isaac Newton developed his theory of gravity after seeing an apple fall off a tree was made public this week for the first time. The account forms part of William Stukeley’s 1752 biography of the scientist, which has been hidden away in the archives [...]

NEW YORK ~ International scientists nudged back the minute hand of the symbolic Doomsday clock, as they praised President Barack Obama for helping to pull the world back from nuclear or environmental catastrophe. “It is six minutes to midnight,” the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists (BAS), which created the Doomsday clock in 1947 as a barometer [...]

Veteran Australian observer of Indonesian affairs Graeme Dobell remembers Gus Dur both as a larrikin and as a powerful marker in national and international politics Indonesia can direct Australia’s regional dreams or dominate its nightmares. The death of Abdurrahman Wahid is a reminder of how old nightmares have faded as Indonesia has transformed itself in [...]

‘America’s future is linked to the future of the Asia-Pacific region, and the future of this region depends on America’ US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in a policy speech on January 14 at the East-West Center in Honolulu, Hawaii, defined America’s future as linked to the future of the Asia-Pacific region,laid out principles that [...]

John Fawcett, 78, is an Australian who moved to Bali 32 years ago and started the John Fawcett Foundation, a non-governmental organisation that brings sight to the cataract-blind of Bali. He was talking with Carla Albertí de la Rossi. When I wake up in the morning, at 6am, I know I’m going to have a [...]

JAKARTA ~ Prosecutors have requested the death sentence for former chief corruption fighter Antasari Azhar, who is on trial for the alleged murder of his rival in a love triangle. Prosecutor Cirus Sinaga told the South Jakarta District Court on Tuesday that Azhar had “participated in the act of persuading others to carry out premeditated [...]