JAKARTA The central government ordered Indonesians on Monday to leave strife-torn Egypt and promised to dispatch military aircraft to bring them home. President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono ordered the evacuation due to the deteriorating security situation in the Arab country, where a popular uprising is threatening the regime. “As the situation is worsening, I ordered an [...]

DENPASAR Tourism authorities in Bali have set this year’s target for foreign arrivals at 2.7 million, up from 2.3 million in 2010. Last year’s target was surpassed by around 200,000, to 2.5 million foreigners arriving on the island, Bali Tourism Office chief Ida Bagus Subhiksu said over the weekend. “We therefore think we can attract [...]

MATARAM A government land-swap deal that villagers say threatens to swindle them out of their new holdings sparked a riot last Monday at Batu Layar in West Lombok in which the newly built local agriculture counselling agency office and a vocational high school were ransacked and a village hall broken into and then sealed off [...]

DENPASAR New Zealand-born Bali resident Angus McCaskill was sentenced to seven years in prison on Monday for possession of cocaine. Judges at the Denpasar District Court found McCaskill, 57, guilty of the crime and agreed with prosecutors’ request for a seven-year term. McCaskill, previously known as Willie Ra’re, who emigrated to Australia — where he [...]

DENPASAR Two Australians on death row in Bali for drug smuggling may escape the death penalty, according to preliminary thoughts on their verdicts by judges in Jakarta, Australian media reported on Monday. Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran are hoping their judicial review will result in their sentences being reduced to 20 years in prison by [...]

Sentenced: Singer Nazril Ariel was jailed for three and a half years in Bandung, West Java, on Monday for making a homemade sex video, in a verdict that has enraged Muslim conservatives and the rocker’s supporters. Full story below.

BANDUNG Rock star Nazril Ariel was jailed on Monday for more than three years after sex tapes of him with two television celebrities appeared online. The sentence drew howls of outrage from Ariel’s fans in the court and across the Malay-speaking world, while the “freeariel” hashtag shot to the top list of trending topics on [...]

By Jonathan Cainer Valentine’s Day, this year, falls on a Monday. There’s an ideal excuse to turn the whole preceding weekend into a festival of romantic gestures. Regardless of the downturn, there’ll be an upturn for various cosy little restaurants and getaway hotels. Florists, chocolatiers, jewellers and candlemakers should do well. There has long been [...]

The number of ionternet users worldwide has mushroomed to reach the two billion mark, the head of the UN’s telecommunications agency, Hamadoun Toure, has said. The number of mobile phone subscriptions also reached the symbolic threshold of five billion, the secretary general of the UN’s International Telecommunications Union (ITU) said. “At the beginning of the [...]

Scientists are moving closer to coming up with a non-physical definition of the kilo after discovering the metal artefact used as the international standard had shed a little weight. Researchers caution there is still some way to go before their mission is complete, but if successful it would lead to the end of the useful [...]

 The sun has burst the sky Because I love you And the river its banks. The sea laps the great rocks Because I love you And takes no heed of the moon dragging it away And saying coldly “Constancy is not for you.” The blackbird fills the air Because I love you With spring and [...]

By Testriono At the end of 2010, two Indonesian civil society organisations that work to promote tolerance and understanding in Indonesia, the Moderate Muslim Society (MMS) and the Wahid Institute (WI), separately released the results of research they had conducted on religious life in Indonesia. Both showed significant increases in the number of religiously motivated [...]