Arnold Schwarzenegger, veteran strongman of bodybuilding, screen and politics, is set to be commemorated in sculpted bronze in the city of Columbus, Ohio, next month. A 2.4-metre, 273-kilo statue of the former California governor and star of the Terminator movies will be erected at the Veterans Memorial auditorium in the city to coincide with the [...]

DENPASAR Bali Governor I Made Mangku Pastika has welcomed the announcement that Bali is to become a pilot area for a nationwide tax audit by the State Audit Board (BPK). Pastika said that the audit would help Bali achieve financial accountability this year. “I am grateful that the BPK has come here, and has made [...]

By Novar Caine Turfed out of office, the world’s dictators’ immune systems suddenly fall victim to a peculiar type of condition that renders them stricken with varying types of life-threatening illnesses. Whereas previously these great men strode the world stage in robust health, now they are reduced to shadows of their former selves. Indonesia’s great [...]

By Novar Caine We are constantly being told that Indonesians, most of whom are Muslim, practice a “moderate” brand of Islam, that they have little time for notions of extremism that have beset the country and are career- and family focused. There’s about 240 million people in this country, and somewhere around 80 percent of [...]

By Novar Caine Now that Osama has been wiped out, Obama has set his sights on the late Al-Qaeda leader’s second-in-command, who has undertaken the brave task of running the scattered militant organisation and is issuing edicts Osama-style. In his latest audio message, released this week and picked up by the SITE Intelligence Group, which [...]

By Novar Caine Can it be? Good news coming out of Bali? In recent days we learned not of yet another tragedy or health scare or government warning people off Indonesia due to threats, but of the discovery of new species of fish and coral. This may not be momentous news but the announcement by [...]

By Novar Caine If I had to be a prisoner anywhere in the world, I’d opt for Bali, I said to my sister, as I relayed the latest prisoner shenanigans to an incredulous mind. Not only Bali, mind you, but anywhere in Indonesia. We had the spectacle last year of am incarcerated taxman bribing his [...]

By Novar Caine Warnings were issued soon after the death of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan was announced that terrorists would seek to strike at Western targets in retaliation. The elimination of the unarmed Al-Qaeda chief – shot in the head during a covert US operation on Sunday – will not erase the terrorist threat. [...]

JEMBRANA Plantation owners in Jembrana are seeing their cocoa bushes devastated by a fungal infection known as vascular-streak dieback (VSD), which causes branches to wither and die and ruins harvests. Around 60 hectares of plantation land in Melaya, Pekutakan and Mendoyo districts has been affected. Gusti Ayu Fransiska Kusumadewi, an environmental activist and a biotechnology [...]

By Novar Caine As a British royal wedding counted down, not everyone was cheering. With an estimated 2 billion people tuning in to watch the showy event in London, many people just wish the royals would go away. William Wales and Kate Middleton (a mere “commoner”) tied the knot at a time when public opinion [...]

By Novar Caine In the United States a dwindling group of monks walked into an advertising agency and asked creative directors to get them new recruits. There are only 12 monks left at Porstmouth Abbey in Rhode Island; the youngest of the bunch is almost 50. The Benedictine friars’ numbers are half what they were [...]

Award-winning French director Bertrand Tavernier says he became a filmmaker because of his love of American Westerns – as he visited the home of the classic genre to launch his latest movie. The 69-year-old, whose romantic swashbuckler The Princess of Montpensier is released in the US on April 15, says the golden age of Hollywood [...]