JAKARTA Australian Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd spoke with President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono about the plight of Australian drug prisoners in Bali during a visit to Jakarta this week, The Bali Times understands. The former Australian prime minister brought up the cases of three Australians on death row at Kerobokan Prison in Bali, Scott Rush, Andrew [...]

JAKARTA An alleged mastermind of the 2002 Bali bombings that killed more than 200 people has been arrested in Pakistan, an Indonesian counter-terrorism official said on Wednesday. The official told the AFP news agency on condition of anonymity that Umar Patek had been detained on Tuesday but declined to give details about where or how [...]

MANILA Small amounts of radiation from Japan’s leaking nuclear power plant have spread across Asia, authorities said on Tuesday, deepening concerns for millions of people already wary of eating Japanese food. The governments of China, South Korea, the Philippines and Vietnam reported that radiation had drifted over their territories, although they emphasised the levels were [...]

DENPASAR Bali counted 1,298 lost room nights from cancellations by Japanese tourists the day after the earthquake and tsunami struck the country on March 11, with 38 hotels in Kuta, Nusa Dua, Tuban and Jimbaran reporting lost bookings. Worst-hit was Kuta, where 1,151 room nights were lost from Japanese travellers cancelling holiday plans. Tuban hotels [...]

DENPASAR Bali’s monopoly state power provider PLN says it cannot provide sufficient electricity to Bali and has asked people to turn off their lights to conserve usage. Bali PLN chief Dadan Koerniadipoera said Bali’s many hotels should operate on their own generators at peak times and private homes should turn off as many lights as [...]

DENPASAR Police have found a car suspected to be a bomb vehicle after an island-wide hunt. The vehicle, driven by a man named by police as Edy Yunianto of Kediri, East Java, was spotted in Renon at 8pm last Tuesday and stopped, following a chase, in Jl Diponegoro. Yunianto and the vehicle, a silver Toyota [...]

NEGARA New allegations of extortion by village administrations over land certificates have emerged at Pengambengan, Jembrana, but have been denied by village secretary H. Asmuni Truyadi who claimed the Rp600,000 (US$68) charge was to cover administration and contribute funds to village projects. Asmuni said a small village committee had been formed and had proposed the [...]

OSAKA Highly radioactive water has leaked from a reactor turbine building at a stricken nuclear plant in Japan, the operator said on Monday, adding to fears the liquid is seeping into the environment. The water, found in an underground tunnel linked to the number two reactor at the Fukushima plant, showed a radiation reading of [...]

AMLAPURA A land row at Klian village in Karangasem has pitted a local resident and Udayana University engineering lecturer against other villagers over a 2009 deal to lease out hundreds of hectares of land to a Korean investor who wants to build a hotel and golf course on the site. Wayan Reti Adnyana is being [...]

SANUR Sanur will host the World Culture Forum 2011 in June, in a bid to explore the unequal distribution of cultural power and the increasing “clash of cultures” around the world. The forum is being organised by the Bali government. It is seeking “new neutral instruments of intercultural collective bargaining” and a new perspective on [...]

DENPASAR Bali’s provincial government is clamping down on vehicles registered in other provinces in a bid to increase income from annual renewals, according to revenue chief Ketut Sudira. He said: “We have held an internal meeting. One of the main items on the agenda was the plan of the Bali provincial government to bring into [...]

Franco-Turkish researchers have found that a deadly 1999 earthquake in Turkey was preceded by seismic signals, raising hopes of a predictive system for future tremors as Japan reels from its disaster. Studying copious data from the period just before the quake hit Turkey’s northwestern Kocaeli province on August 17, 1999, the seismologists discovered what they [...]