Edisi 13 Maret 2015 | International Bali Post

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I N T E R N A T I O N A L

Friday, March 13, 2015


16 Pages Number 627th year

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DPs 23 - 32WEATHER FORECAsT

China top judge renews campaign against wrongful convictionsPage 6 Page 8

Luiz and Silva the unlikely heroes for PSG

Dion hasn’t performed since her July 29 show at The Colosseum at Caesars Palace. She has been suffer-ing from inflammation of her throat muscles and caring for her husband who had a cancerous tumor removed in 2013.

Aldo Giampaolo said in a statement emailed Wednesday that he wanted to reassure Dion’s fans. He says the contracts for four of Dion’s band members would not be renewed when they expire this weekend.

A Caesars Entertainment spokes-woman says the company and show producer AEG are ready to welcome Dion back to the venue as soon as she is ready but confirmed that there are no performance dates to announce. (ap)

LOS ANGELES - Jim Parsons, the American actor famous for his portrayal of a quirky, self-centered scientist Sheldon Cooper on “The Big Bang Theory,” earned a star Wednesday on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame.

Parsons, 41, was flanked by Kaley Cuoco-Sweeting, Johnny Galecki and the rest of his castmates in the wildly popular series now going into its eighth season. Fans jostled for autographs.

“One of the things I know is, the main reason I’m in this career and here today, is because of my fam-ily and the support they gave me, and the way I was encouraged to pursue this insane dream of acting, from Texas to here,” Parsons said looking at his mother and partner, art director Todd Spiewak.

But “the biggest reason is be-cause I had the chance to play this

incredible character that I neither created, nor write for, nor put into a series.

“That credit goes to Chuck Lorre and Bill Prady and Steve Molaro. And the credit goes to the rest of the cast,” said Parsons, an Emmy and Golden Globe-winner.

Parsons plays a highly intelligent yet ill-adapted university professor -- mad about comic books and vid-eogames -- whose group of mostly scientist friends help expose him to the real world in seemingly end-less, and painful, ways. The show has been a top US TV comedy for years.

“You have accomplished some-thing that’s beyond imagination. This is just the beginning,” Lorre said.

“People laugh at your work, and their life is a little bit better. I’m deeply proud of you.” (afp)

LONDON - British rock band Muse announced the release of a new album called “Drones” and a tour on Wednesday, keeping up with previous themes of science fiction and political unease.

Lead singer Matt Bellamy said the band’s seventh studio album will be released on June 8, after

months of hinting that new work was on the way.

“To me, ‘Drones’ are meta-phorical psychopaths which enable psychopathic behaviour with no re-course. The world is run by Drones utilising Drones to turn us all into Drones,” Bellamy said.

“This album explores the

journey of a human, from their abandonment and loss of hope, to their indoctrination by the system to be a human drone, to their eventual defection from their oppressors.”

A new track, “Psycho”, will be released on YouTube on Thursday, followed by the release of the al-

bum’s first single “Dead Inside” on March 23.

The band is to play a series of live shows across Britain in March, followed by a tour that will pass through countries including Ger-many, Russia and France.

Hailing from Devon in England, the band’s signature fusion of

genres has found considerable suc-cess over a 21-year career, and the group composed the official song of the London Olympics in 2012.

Previous hits include anthems “Time is Running Out” and “Super-massive Black Hole”, and the band had sold over 20 million albums worldwide. (afp)

Rock band Muse announce new album and tour

Celine Dion to return

to stageLAS VEGAS — A representative

for Celine Dion says the singer will return to the Las Vegas stage but offered no dates for future perfor-mances.

AP Photo/Julie Jacobson, File

Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP

Kunal Nayyar, from left, Mayim Bialik, Melissa Rauch, Simon Helberg, Johnny Galecki and Kaley Cuoco, and center, Jim Parsons, who is honored with a star at the Hollywood Walk of Fame on Wednesday, March 11, 2015, in Los Angeles.

Jim Parsons of ‘Big Bang Theory’ gets

Hollywood star

Tourists sunbathed at Canggu Beach, Bali Island. Tourism industry grows rapidly but does not pay attention to carrying capacity and the capacity of the environment. The nature of small

Bali Island will be increasingly eroded and have an impact on the emergence

of crisis.

News can also be heard in “Bali Image” at Global Radio FM 96.5 from 9.30 until 10.00 am. Listen to Global Radio FM at http://globalfmbali.listen2my-

radio.com or live video streaming at http://radioglobalfmbali.com and http://ustream.tv/channel/global-fm-bali.

IBP/Wawan

This was revealed by National Executive of the Indonesian Forum for the Environment (WALHI), Deddy Ratih, during a public discussion on the results of research by the MP3EI, Development or Threat to the Con-servation and Community-managed Area.

“WALHI conducted a research in three regions namely Lampung, Bali and South Kalimantan” said Deddy accompanied by other researchers, Khalisah Khalid and Sita S, in Den-pasar on Wednesday (Mar. 11).

Results of the research indicated

that many crises are beginning to surface due to the impact of tourism, proving that the tourism industry with the number of accommodations as the sole indicators of progress has had devasting effects on marine conser-vation, culture and management and requires pressure to put on creating a moratorium on the construction of tourist accommodations in Bali.

Benoa Bay is a unique ecosystem. It is a shallow estuary where Pung-gawa River, Balian River, Badung River, Mati River, Soma River, Mum-bul River and Bualu River empty into

the waters of Benoa Bay. The estuary in the area of Benoa Bay creates a typology that provides particular habitat in these shallow coastal waters, for mangroves, seagrass beds, macro-zoobenthos and abundance of infauna components and high biodiversity.

“Today, Benoa Bay is threatened by tourist accommodations and an infrastructure development plan with an integrated tourism development program. Developments using a land reclamation model has met with re-jection from many parties, especially the people of Bali, because they still

consider that the territorial water of Benoa Bay is a part of their culture,” he said.

Some researchers, continued Ded-dy, have shown that the impact of land reclamation could cause floods. The ecological crisis threatening Bali is right in front of our eyes so policies to prevent it are required. “At least, to keep the environment on land and sea sustainable. Spatial planning regula-tions are not adhered to and are even changed, and in order to accommodate the interests of capital owners or inves-tors,” said Deddy.

Eliminating coral reefs, seagrass beds and mangrove forests by means of reclamation would further increase the burden on the environmental sta-bility of the area.

Related to the result of research,

the WALHI conveyed some recom-mendations to the government such as immediately revoking the Presidential Regulation No.51/2014 so as to pre-vent the reclamation of Benoa Bay, Presidential Regulation No.48/2014 regarding the amendment of Presi-dential Regulation No.32/2011 on the masterplan of the acceleration and expansion of Indonesia’s economic development from 2011 to 2025 as well as stop the MP3EI projects hav-ing indication to increase the amount of emissions. (rah)

Mass tourism in Bali causing degradation of the environmentDENPASAR - The tourism industry is growing rapidly but does not take into account the car-

rying capacity of the environment. Nature on the small island of Bali will be increasingly eroded and give rise to a severe crisis if left unchecked. Cultural tourism having switched to mass tour-ism in Bali has degraded many things, including the social, cultural and environmental aspects and is causing a water crisis, massive land conversions and other worrying things.

International2 Friday, March 13, 2015 15International Activities

Bali News

EvEry Temple and Shrine has a special date for it annual Ceremony, or “ Odalan “, every 210 days according to Balinese calendar, including the smaller ancestral shrine which each family possesses. Because of this practically every few days a ceremony of festival of some kind takes place in some Village in Bali. There are also times when the entire island celebrated the same Holiday, such as at Galungan, Kuningan, Nyepi day, Saraswati day, Tumpek Landep day, Pagerwesi day, Tumpek Wayang day etc.

The dedication or inauguration day of a Temple is con-sidered its birth day and celebration always takes place on the same day if the wuku or 210 day calendar is used. When new moon is used then the celebration always happens on new moon or full moon. The day of course can differ the religious celebration of a temple lasts at least one full day with some temple celebrating for three days while the celebration of Besakih temple, the Mother Temple, is never less than 7 days and most of the time it lasts for 11 days, depending on the importance of the occasion.

The celebration is very colorful. The shrine are dressed with pieces of cloths and sometimes with brocade, sailings, decorations of carved wood and sometimes painted with gold and Chinese coins, very beautifully arranged, are hung in the four corners of the shrine. In front of shrine are placed red, white or black umbrellas depending which Gods are worshipped in the shrines.

In front of important shrine one sees, besides these umbrellas soars, tridents and other weapons, the “umbul-umbul”, long flags, all these are prerogatives or attributes of Holiness. In front of the Temple gate put up “Penjor”, long bamboo poles, decorated beautifully ornaments of young coconut leaves, rice and other products of the land. Most beautiful to see are the girls in their colorful attire, carrying offerings, arrangements of all kinds fruits and colored cakes, to the Temple. Every visitor admires the grace with which the carry their load on their heads.

Balinese Temple Ceremony


Founder : K.Nadha, General Manager :Palgunadi Chief Editor: Diah Dewi Juniarti Editors: Gugiek Savindra,Alit Susrini, Alit Sumertha, Daniel Fajry, Mawa, Suana, Sueca, Sugiartha, Yudi Winanto Denpasar: Dira Arsana, Giriana Saputra, Subrata, Sumatika, Asmara Putra. Bangli: Suasrina, Buleleng: Dewa kusuma, Gianyar: Agung Dharmada, Karangasem: Budana, Klungkung: Bagiarta. Jakarta: Nikson, Hardianto, Ade Irawan. NTB: Agus Talino, Izzul Khairi, Raka Akriyani. Surabaya: Bambang Wilianto. Development: Alit Purnata, Mas Ruscitadewi. Office: Jalan Kepundung 67 A Denpasar 80232. Telephone (0361)225764, Facsimile: 227418, P.O.Box: 3010 Denpasar 80001. Bali Post Jakarta, Advertizing: Jl.Palmerah Barat 21F. Telp 021-5357602, Facsimile: 021-5357605 Jakarta Pusat. NTB: Jalam Bangau No. 15 Cakranegara Telp.

(0370) 639543, Facsimile: (0370) 628257. Publisher: PT Bali Post

The Royal Santrian provides an unforgettable wedding experience on Paradise Island. It offers a nice wed-ding chapel, beautiful decorations and a royal dinner party on the popular Tanjung Benoa beach, Nusa Dua. This exclusive outdoor venue can accommodate hundreds of guests. It is designed as perfectly as possible by a professional team that will be on hand every step of the wedding celebration.

The luxury wedding reception concept includes an excellent menu with fine wine. Wine is always the essential element to a successful wedding reception. The Chef and talented Food & Beverage Team will be delighted to accommodate guests’

culinary tastes with dishes inspired by fresh ingredients. They will add flavor to the couple and the their guests’ heartfelt celebration with a custom-ized wedding cake along with creative canapes and sweet treats. The Royal Santrian will ensure that everything is impeccably presented to look just as good as it tastes.

General Manager Ricky Putra presents the site which is built on 2.5 hectares with 3 Royal Villas and 17 Deluxe Villas. The location is im-manently suitable for a honey moon too. Guests will find all the fabulous amenities of an exquisitely luxurious home. The sizeable private pools and open-air gazebo with dining area offer a living space in which to spend relax-

Absolutely, Bali Island retains a variety of uniqueness. This epithet is frequently revealed by tourists. In this connection, I.B. Darmayasa graduated from Diploma 4 majoring in Tourism Studies of the Udayana University (1995) can be said to be quite good at bringing in tourists. By all means, it is not enough for him to rely on the fascination of the object to draw tourist arrival. Due to his competency, he was then entrusted to promote the Villa Kayu Raja, Seminyak as Sales & Marketing Manager.

The man of Denpasar-born on October 27, 1972 is indeed has a strong foundation in sales domain. He always has confidence and optimism in doing the job and it is the key to success of reaching customers. As a sale and marketing

person, the men who likes traveling, sporting and reading has had a dozen years of experience. “My current job has been focused, namely selling the hotel rooms and facilities only,” he said.

Why can it be so? The man with computer skills and some foreign languages then said that before working in Villa Kayu Raja he worked in an Internet Portal Company and Agent with the position as the Head of Sales & Marketing. His responsibility was to bring in guests from all over the world by offering a variety of products starting from hotels, villas, restaurants, rafting and some others.

To support the matter, added Gustra as he is familiarly greet-ed, he first looked for the data

on the growth of per capita income of a country, learned about the char-acteristics of their economic growth of the target market. Similarly, he

should also identify the advantages and dis-

advantages of his products. “I’m a salesperson that has understood how to sell a product. The key is to know well

the market,” he said.

(kmb)

IBP/kmb

IBP/kmb

Profile

I.B. Putra Darmayasa:Unique selling point is key

to successful marketing

Romantic Wedding Venue

The royal Santrian Luxury Beach villas Bali is one of the most romantic wedding venues in Nusa Dua. With its white sand beach and unobstructed view of the Indian Ocean, The royal Santrian has the ideal atmosphere for hosting a wedding celebration. The lovely couple can enjoy a peaceful location and have a taste of truly royal Balinese hospitality surrounded by beautiful green gardens.

ing days and romantic evenings with conscientious staff on call and ready to attend to every desire.

“Within the villa, the tasteful fittings and furnish-ings surround the guest with comfort and conve-nience. These will enable the guest to fully savor the relaxing atmosphere,” said Ricky Putra one afternoon while giving a taste of the Royal Santrian menu to Bali Travel News. (ocha)

“This One Day No Cash Pro-gram is intended for transactions at minimarkets and supermarkets in Bali” said the Head of Bali Representative Office of the Bank of Indonesia, Dewi Setyowati, in Kuta, on Wednesday (Mar. 11).

According to Setyowati, the one-day without cash that will be take place in April will require people to use electronic money in-stead of cash for their transactions. The idea is familiarize people with banking in general and specifically with non-cash transactions. “No cash day will be tested at Tiara Dewata and Hardys first” she said. Before the no-cash concept is ap-plied they will launch an educa-tional program and have banking representatives on standby in the supermarkets.

“If people are caught off guard on no-cash day, there will be a bank counter set up on site so that people can trade their cash for electronic money” she explained.

This program is intended to edu-cate people about the advantages of non-cash transactions, includ-ing the efficiency and usefulness of electronic transactions. With e-money, SMS banking, internet banking and other such services, transactions can be made more safely, quickly, comfortably and

SEMARAPURA - Reckless speeding on Jalan Bypass I.B. Mantra has caused residents of Klungkung to complain.The reck-less speeding is not only com-mitted by local residents but by those from outside of Klungkung as well, specifically by a group of youth from a gambling arena with members coming from outside of the area. Unfortunately, the extreme speeding which takes place every Saturday night, has yet to be dealt with by the police. “I witnessed the reckless speeding action as well as police officers disbanding those

watching, rather than going after the culprits” said Gelgel resident, Wayan Merta, on Wednesday.

According to Merta, the reckless speeding in Klungkung is most fre-quently committed on Jalan Bypass I.B. Mantra west of the intersection at Uma Dukuh hamlet, Gelgel. The speeding usually takes place between 11 o’clock at night and two o’clock in the morning. Most of those speeding down the highway are not from Klungkung. Local residents are dimly spectators.

Similar comments were also given by another resident of Gelgel,

Ketut Suparta. According to him, the reckless speeding is committed almost every day on Jalan Bypass I.B. Mantra. However, it is most severe on Saturday nights when groups of young people park their motorbikes on the side of the high-way to watch.

When the command to start is given, the young spectators cheer the speeding mtorbiker and may people even engage in betting mil-lion so frupiah on the outcome of the speed racing.

Chief of the Klungkung Police Criminal Investigation Unit, Wayan

Subrata, when asked for his con-firmation claimed to have never witnessed such activities on Jalan Bypass I.B. Mantra. According to Subrata, his officers in charge of Lepang Post, even frequently come down to monitor the Dukuh area to the west. Five officers assigned to the location are on guard for 24 hours a day. They are also equipped with a Kancil car and patrol sedan unit. “Yes, if there is in fact such speeding going on, the officers at local post will promptly come down to the location to disband any disorder” said Subrata.

Meanwhile, the rise of reckless speeding in the area of Klungkung has also made the Deputy Regent of Klungkung, Made Kasta, con-cerned. The deputy regent from Akah village hopes that the police will increase their surveillance by patrolling places prone to such ac-tivities. This is especially important because those who are involved in the reckless speeding are mostly young people who are national as-set that should be saved. “I do hope the officers will conduct maximum surveillance so as to avoid casual-ties” said deputy regent. (119)

People complain about reckless speeding on Jalan Bypass Mantra

IBP/File

In order to encourage the use of electronic money (e-money) in Bali, the Bali Representative Office of the Bank of Indonesia (BI) has launched a program of one day without cash.

BI announces one day without cashMANGUPUrA - In order to

encourage the use of electronic money (e-money) in Bali, the Bali Representative Office of the Bank of Indonesia (BI) has launched a program of one day without cash.

from anywhere. “Non-cash transactions are in-

deed more practical and efficient because users do not have to bother to count their money when making

payments and receiving funds. We hope to educate the public, busi-nesses and the government about its advantages” she explained.

These are some of the reasons

why the use of cash has begun to diminish all over the world and be replaced with non-cash money such as debit cards, credit card, and electronic money integrated with

mobile payments. Dewi plans to target merchants in markets and those selling fruits and other crops for education about the advantages of e-money. (kmb27)

3Friday, March 13, 2015 14 InternationalInternational Bali NewsFashion Friday, March 13, 2015

PARIS — This season’s mantra is: pile it all on. We’ve seen it notably at Lanvin, Dries Van Noten — and now, here, at Kenzo’s draped, voluminous and colorful fashion spectacle.

It takes a lot to drag fashionistas out early on a Sunday morning to a venue on the out-skirts of the city.

But Kenzo rewarded those who did — feeding them tasty cookies and coffee — and treating them to an incredibly energetic pre-sentation, in which gargantuan rectangular mirrored walls moved behind models in the warehouse venue.

The collection too continued this energy in its vivid splashes of kinetic graphic lines and

flashes of contrasting, colored prints.But fall-winter was all about the layering.Geometric lines featured on bulging and

layered A-line column dresses, topped off with funky asymmetrical poncho-hoods.

One billowing printed look, an oversize shirt with a top and layered skirt, featured a play on jarring prints — the skirt looking Eastern, the leopard print top, Western.

Kenzo is all about the cultural fusion.The dark looks featured a nice play of

camouflage print on a poncho and assorted jungle pants: if you looked closely you real-ized the pattern was of flowers.

It was tongue in cheek, and is bound to be a hit. (ap)

But Chanel, the fashion house that is perhaps the most synonymous with Paris’s reputation for glamour, is deter-mined to keep the Paris dream alive.

On Tuesday, it pulled out all the stops as it showed off its autumn-win-ter women’s collection in a pop-up but fully functioning, specially-built Paris cafe that served both as catwalk and as guest refreshment.

Designer Karl Lagerfeld created the cinema-grade set from scratch in the middle of a neoclassical, glass-roofed exhibition hall in the middle of the city.

Waiters in crisp white shirts and black vests carried silver trays with steaming coffee and croissants to

models as they slid in to sit in one of the glass-and--brass trimmed booths or to stand nonchalantly at the wooden bar after their turn down the runway.

The vast illusory cafe was dubbed “Brasserie Gabrielle” in a nod to the famous founder Gabrielle Bonheur Chanel, nicknamed “Coco”.

The resulting cafe scene was so utterly, archetypically Parisian that fans of the movies “Amelie” or “Midnight in Paris” might recognise an imagined ideal once again stage-managed into fleeting reality.

“It’s the biggest French brasserie ever,” Lagerfeld boasted after the show, as he proudly stood behind the

mock/real bar to speak to journalists.“It’s an idealised vision of a Paris

of today that I wanted to amplify, to pour water on ‘French bashing’.

“Even if the French say that France is ugly, it’s not so ugly -- no need to exaggerate. It’s not as bad as all that.”

The German designer who lives in Paris -- “I’m international, global!” he exclaimed -- said he could get away with pumping up the Paris il-lusion because he’s not French. “If a French person had done it, it would been patriotic.”

Kris Jenner, an avid Chanel client and the mother of Kim Kardashian who was attending other Paris fashion

Chanel brings fantasy Paris to life at fashion week

AP Photo/Francois Mori

Models wear creations for Chanel’s ready to wear fall-winter 2015-2016 fashion collection presented during the Paris fashion week, in Paris, France, Tuesday, March 10, 2015.

PARIS - Paris, according to lore and legend, is a city predominantly inhabited by elegant women, chic cafes and famous faces. Visitors, of course, find the reality more down-to-earth. The French capital can sometimes seem more heavily touristed, surly and less sartorially ob-sessed than they might have anticipated.

shows with husband Kanye West, said she found the cafe setting “abso-lutely wonderful, magnificent”.

“I can’t believe he (Largerfeld) put all this together in such little time,” she told AFP.

The collection models displayed in Chanel’s ersatz cafe featured knee-length skirts and dress ensembles in the house’s signature checkered black-and-white. There were also two-tone numbers that showcased Chanel’s take on the ubiquitous winter parka: a fashion-statement pil-lowed jacket complete with hood.

Other looks boasted autumn colours including bronze and dark blues, and many were accessorised with Chanel’s range of instantly rec-ognisable handbags.

All the models had their feet encased in the same shoes: cream-beige with black-toes and practical

square heels.The clothes appeared to glide in

and out of a range of retro periods from the last century, their timeless-ness emphasised by the brasserie in the background.

Lagerfeld, who seems indefati-gable at age 81, said he took great pleasure in unveiling eight collections a year, instead of the four ready-to-wear and haute couture ranges brought out by most other top-end houses, or even just the haute couture series some designer rivals like Jean Paul Gaultier have fallen back on exclusively.

Other designers “may be a little lazy,” Lagerfeld said mischievously.

“You have to know in what kind of world you live. If the pace of the world is too big for you, there are other jobs. Or do half-time jobs. That’s not my problem.” (afp)

Kenzo says layering is in at Paris Fashion Week

AP Photo/Zacharie Scheurer

Models wear creations for Kenzo’s ready-to-wear Fall-Winter 2015/2016 fashion collection presented at the Paris Fashion Week in Paris, France, Sunday, March 8, 2015.

SEMARAPURA - Batu Tumpeng Beach at Gelgel village, Klungkung, is recently visited by many travelers. The overlay of coast in the south of Jalan Bypass Prof. I.B. Mantra attracts the attention of travelers who like surfing. Unfortunately, though visited by many travelers, the beach status has not yet become a tourist attraction. It makes the Batu Tumpeng Beach seem to be neglected as one of the potential tourist attractions that must be developed by local government.

The Head of Klungkung Tourism and Culture Agency, Wayan Sujana, admitted the Batu Tumpeng Beach did not have the status as tourist attraction. On that account, no matter how busy the tourist visits to the beach was, local government could not take advantage of it as a source of the regionally gener-ated revenue (PAD). However, Sujana realized the potential of the region. He also admitted to have come down to the field for several times along with the staff to check in detail the condition of the beach, and then drew conclusion what steps to be taken next.

To arrange as a whole, Sujana said that local government would make de-tailed engineering design of the region as a tourism area this year. In addition, the potential of Batu Tumpeng Beach had also been included in the monitor-ing of Coastal Planning Team of local government to be arranged together with the strategic planning of regional arrangement for Tegal Besar-Goa La-wah having been designed long ago by the Regent of Klungkung, Nyoman Suwirta. Sujana asserted that serious arrangement should be done together starting from the severely damaged road access, the arrangement of erod-ing coastline and provision of tourist accommodation to management by local government.

“It must be made feasible first, set as one of the attractions and well managed either in the imposition of levies or others,” said Sujana. After completing the DED in collaboration with consultant, it could be ascertained how the draft of Batu Tumpeng Beach would look like. At present, the beach was affected by quite bad abrasion.

“The legal aspect presented con-sists of 5 points. Essentially, it should refer to the spatial planning rules of Denpasar Municipality in the area of Benoa Bay because it belongs to conservation area and protected area so that when it is revitalized or reclaimed with the function of tourist destinations, it will contradict to the existing regional spatial plan-ning (RTRW) of Denpasar,” said Sudarsana during public hearing that conducted to get public view on Benoa Bay reclamation plan.

In terms of technical aspect, Benoa Bay was an estuary area of Badung River, Mati River and Punggawa River so that the sedi-mentation occurred in the area. Reclamation was also mentioned to cause significant changes in ocean currents and abrasion or destabilize the beach. Besides, it would also cause traffic congestion in South Bali as well as affect the landscape and psychological aspect due to the loss of the bay.

“In terms of socio-cultural aspect, Benoa Bay poses the sanctified estu-ary of five rivers. Other social aspects are the presence of some attitudes and perceptions of the community show-ing the rejection and it should also

become a consideration. In terms of socio-economic aspect, the addition of population will cause the carrying capacity to be unstable as the impact of 250,000 workers. In addition, the reclamation is also contrary to the concept of community-based economy and disrupt the location of catching fish,” he added.

Ministry representative who at-tended the public consultation on the environmental impact analysis of the PT TWBI seemed to take investor’s side. When a participant mentioned if reclamation would cause abrasion, the representative of the Ministry of Maritime Affairs and Fisheries, Eko Rudiyanto, rushed to clarify.

Eko said the PT TWBI so far only had a permit of location to prepare its master planning, environmental permit, detailed plan for reclamation and method on the implementation of the equipment use and schedules. So far, the TWBI was said to have not yet carried out reclamation at Benoa Bay because it had not had a permit of implementation.

“Sorry, I need a bit clarification, which reclamation has caused the existing abrasion? So far, the permit of its implementation has not been issued yet and I am confident that

PT TWBI has never dared to carry it out,” he said.

When met after the consulta-tion, Eko explained that his party granted the permission of location to PT TWBI because its proposal had complied with a number of checklists or requirements set forth by the ministry. One of them met the requirements as stipulated in the Presidential Regulation or in accordance with the spatial plan-ning rules.

“The permit is not for reclama-tion. The TWBI only has the permit of location from the Ministry of Maritime and Fisheries Affairs (KKP), while I do not know about the other permits. From the KKP, there will be the permit of implemen-tation. Then, it can only be issued if it already has the Environmental Impact Analysis (Amdal) document, proposal, feasibility study, master plan, detailed design, working plan and what measures to be taken to en-sure the sustainability and livelihood of many communities in surrounding area,” he continued.

Related to the public consultation of the TWBI previously questioned by ForBALI, Eko even assessed the consultation was legitimate in order

Reclamation contrary to spatial plan of Denpasar

DENPASAR - Denpasar Municipality represented by the Head of Denpasar Environment Agency (BLH), Sudarsana, remained to refer to the consideration letter sent by the Mayor of Denpasar to Director General of Marine, Coastal and Small Islands dated July 4, 2014. In essence, the letter carried five aspects of consideration regarding the legality, technical, environmental, social, cultural and socio-economic aspect.

to collect data and make term of ref-erence (TOR). “Thus, when judging it illegal, it misguides. I think it in-deed has not owned an Amdal permit because officially the Amdal process is just issued right now. So, if it col-lected the data for initial consultation is not a problem. The addition is just a matter of term, from earlier the groove is clear,” he said.

A similar statement was also ex-pressed by representative of the Min-istry of Environment and Forestry, Ary Sudijanto. According to him, the process of public involvement in the Amdal process was stipulated in the Decree of the Minister of Environ-ment No.17/2012. In the rule there was no requirement that the an-nouncement and public consultation should comply with administrative requirements, such as the permit of location.

“There is no such requirement. It is only applied in the administrative test for feasibility of document as reference for trial or not. So, none of the rules had been violated. In terms of substance, the more initiators to make public consultation, the more beneficial will be for us to keep the process more transparent and par-ticipatory. If we deny it, let’s say, the previous one does not apply and so forth, we even waste input. The input submitted by the public turns useless, it is uglier, isn’t it?” he said.

Ary added, in principle, there were no rules violated by the TWBI.

If it had organized public consulta-tion three years earlier and the public inputs in the consultation were used as material for preparing the terms of reference, according to him, would be even increasingly better.

“So, just now I encouraged the community not only to see in terms of formal process. If possible for the TWBI, here is the tough atmosphere when chatting with society at stall. Simply ask their concerns, it will be more useful. What is actually the desire of society, what is the concern of society and what is their fear of that activity? It is the benefit of this formal process,” he added.

It was said that his party would not issue an environmental permit if the PT TWBI could not cope with the impact of the reclamation plan. Conversely, if the PT TWBI was proved to be able to overcome all the negative effects mentioned by the community, then there would be no reason to reject the reclamation mega project.

“People have the right to be protected, to get good and healthy environment, but the entrepreneur is also protected by laws. I cannot stop this process because they have the rights and they already fulfill all the administrative requirements. If I refuse it, I will be prosecuted by the administrative court because of providing no public service. The TWBI also belongs to the part of society,” he added. (kmb32)

Batu Tumpeng Beach, a neglected tourist attraction

IBP/Bagiarta

Batu Tumpeng Beach at Gelgel village, Klungkung, is re-cently visited by many travelers. The overlay of coast in the south of Jalan Bypass Prof. I.B. Mantra attracts the attention of travelers who like surfing.

Even, a temple at the shoreline namely the Ketapang Kembar Temple had been eroded since the beginning of 2013. Process of the levee repair could just be carried out in the eastern part of the coastline by using boulders. In addition, it had also been equipped with the installation of paving block for pedestrians.

Every day, dozens of travelers came to this beach for surfing. Local waves on the beach were suitable for foreign travelers to channel their hobby. They kept coming, even

though the condition of road access was severely damaged. Such condi-tion drew the attention of various circles. A legislator of the Klungkung House, Komang Suantara, asked to immediately arrange the place, so that it deserved to be called as a tourist attraction. After that, the local govern-ment should also be able to manage and develop the region as a new tourist destination in Bali. “It is very potential to increase the regionally generated revenue of Klungkung,” said Suan-tara. (kmb31)

International4 Friday, March 13, 2015 Friday, March 13, 2015 13InternationalBali News

New York-based Human Rights Watch said in a report released Thursday that a special program to safeguard workers’ interests in-stituted by the U.N.’s International Labor Organization is subject to evasion that leaves factory em-ployees vulnerable to unhealthy working conditions and unfair pay and benefits.

The 140-page report, “Work Faster or Get Out: Labor Rights Abuses in Cambodia’s Garment Industry,” said factors behind the problem include flaws in the ILO’s oversight program and a failure by Cambodian officials to enforce existing labor laws and standards, partly due to corruption.

It said its report was based on interviews with more than 340 people, including 270 workers from 73 factories in Phnom Penh and nearby provinces.

“The Cambodian government should take swift measures to re-verse its terrible record of enforcing its labor laws and protect workers from abuse,” Aruna Kashyap, a researcher at Human Rights

Watch, said in a statement. “These global apparel brands are household names. They have a lot of leverage, and can and should do more to en-sure their contracts with garment factories are not contributing to labor rights abuses.”

Cambodia’s garment and textile exports for 2013 totaled $4.96 billion, roughly three-quarters of all the coun-try’s exports, with the figure increasing to an estimated $5.7 billion last year, says the report. The industry employs an estimated 700,000 workers, about 90 percent of them women.

Production for major interna-tional brands is carried out by con-tractors whose export licenses are contingent on allowing inspections and reporting under a 14-year-old scheme worked out with the ILO called Better Factories Cambodia. The program has since been used in other developing nations to en-courage good labor practices while promoting economic growth.

But the report echoes previous criticisms that the Cambodian pro-gram fails to curb significant labor rights abuses, including “forced

overtime and retaliation against those who sought exemption from overtime, lack of rest breaks, denial of sick leave, use of underage child labor, and the use of union-busting strategies to thwart independent unions.”

It said the use of short-term contracts made it easier to fire and control workers, while poor govern-ment inspections and enforcement, and aggressive tactics against inde-pendent unions, made it difficult for workers to assert their rights.

A major source of the problems, the report said, was the generally unmonitored use of subcontrac-tors — without the knowledge or agreement of the big brand compa-nies — particularly because such establishments are not covered by the Better Factories Cambodia inspections.

Human Rights Watch says about 200 apparel brands source from Cambodia, adding it was in contact with six brands, of which Adidas, Gap, and H&M “seriously dis-cussed their efforts to address the problems found.” (ap)

YANGON — Myanmar authorities have freed several stu-dents detained after a bloody protest, but others involved in the stand-off over a new education law will face charges including disrupting stability, which carries a two-year prison term.

Yee Mon, a Yangon university student who was released Thursday, said that 12 students have been freed and about 15 more were expected to be released later Thursday. “We didn’t break the law but we were peacefully protesting for academic policy change,” said the 19-year-old.

The government announced Wednesday that students who are currently in university will be freed on humanitarian grounds, while 10 Buddhist monks detained after a police crackdown on the protest in Letpadan, about 140 kilometers (90 miles) north of Yangon, had also been released.

Several student leaders and other protesters were brought to court under tight security Wednesday and were charged with five different counts ranging from disrupting public tranquility, which can result in a prison term of up to two years, to joining an unlawful assembly, which carries a six-month prison sentence or a fine.

Nearly 130 people, including about 60 students, were detained Tuesday after hundreds of riot police charged their protest, pum-meling them with batons and then dragging them into trucks, bringing a harsh end to a weeklong standoff.

The students say that the new law puts all decisions about education policy and curriculum in the hands of a group largely made up of government ministers, which critics say undermines the autonomy of universities. (ap)

AP Photo/Khin Maung Win

Protesters are detained by police after a gathering oppos-ing a new education law in Yangon, Myanmar, Thursday, March 5, 2015. Police cracked down on students and other activists opposing Myanmar’s new education law, charging protesters with batons and dragging them into trucks at the landmark Sule Pagoda in the heart of the old capital, Yangon.

Some detained Myanmar

students freed but others face

charges

AP Photo/Heng Sinith

Phil Robertson, left, deputy director of Human Rights Watch’s Asia division, and the group’s Asia researcher in the women’s rights division Aruna Kashyap attend a press conference in Phnom Penh, Cambodia Thursday, March 12, 2015.

Rights group: big brands should fight

Cambodian labor abusePHNOM PENH, Cambodia — Leading clothing retailers such as Gap and H&M need to

help alleviate labor abuses at factories in Cambodia that manufacture their products, a human rights organization said.

SINGARAJA - Tofu and tempeh makers at Kampung Tinggi Singaraja have begun to fret and are looking for ways to reduce production costs because of the deprecia-tion of the rupiah against the US dollar. Such condition has had a direct impact on the price hike of imported soy-bean on the market. Tempeh producers have been forced to reduce the amount of tofu and tempeh that they produce every day.

The price of imported soybean

has gone up to IDR 7,800 from IDR 7,000 per kg. The price hike of im-ported soybean has forced tofu and tempeh makers to raise the price by about IDR 800 over the last two days due to increased production costs.

Tofu and tempeh producer Mo-hammed Said, said that a number of tofu and tempeh makers have had to find ways around increas-ing costs, by reducing the amount of soybean in each pack that they produce. !kg packs have been re-duced to 2 ounces per pack. “Our production costs have gone up over the last two days sir, so in order to not suffer losses, we have started to reduce the amount we provide per pack, rather than raise our prices.” he said on Wednesday (Mar. 11).

He said production normally re-quires 150 kg of soybeans but then it has been reduced to 80 kg of soy-bean. He hopes the government can help to offset the cost of imported soybeans. “We hope the price of im-ported soybeans will go down again soon. If the price is stable, the tofu and tempeh makers can continue to work” he said. (kmb34)

SINGARAJA - Heavy rain for three hours caused the area of Seririt subdistrict to flood. It was alleged to happen due to the collapse of levee at Subak Yeh Anakan, Banjarasem village, Seririt subdistrict, Bule-leng. As a result, the water easily flowed as high as adult’s knee and swamped the road and settlements, Wednesday (Mar. 11).

The Regent of Buleleng, Putu Agus Suradnyana, accompanied by the Head of the Buleleng Disaster Mitigation Agency (BPBD), Ketut Yasa, and Chairperson of the PKK Motivator Team, Mrs. Aries Sujati Suradnyana, after getting the in-formation on the flooding in Seririt subdistrict immediately came down to monitor the field conditions.

Based on observation in the field, the surge of water surrounded Bubunan village, Seririt village, Tangguwisia village, Sulanyah village and Banjarasem village. Flooding with the height of the adult’s knee made residents intro-spect by making impromptu dike to prevent flooding from entering their homes.

To anticipate the subsequent flooding, local residents attempted to secure their valuables, including motorcycles and cars. “I wish the public to remain vigilant over the flooding. Other than in Seririt, when entering rainy season the entire community in Buleleng is expected to prevent flooding by maintaining sanitation of their respective envi-

ronment,” he said.Headman of Banjarasem, Gede

Aria Jana, said that approximately 200 homes were flooded. It was the most severe flooding condition and required special attention from the government in anticipating further flooding. “Flooding condition is getting worse, not to mention the collapse of levee owned by Subak Yeh Anakan. To that end, residents directly saved their valuables for fear of being flooded,” he said.

Some areas on Jalan Ngurah Rai and RT 1 Kampung Madura, Seririt village were also affected by the worst flooding inundation. Water level reached adult’s waist, so that residents spontaneously did not want to take risk and go to highest

places. Meanwhile, other residents were unable to move slightly but had to wait until the water had completely receded. Conditions of floodwater in the area around Jalan Seririt-Singaraja, Tangguwisia vil-lage and Sulanyah village had made traffic jam for a few hours.

Meanwhile, in the area of Bubu-nan village, the house of local resident also flooded and made people panic. Although flooding had occurred repeatedly, the con-dition remained to make people to be extra careful. Flooding this year was rated as the most severe. “Now, the flooding is the most severe. We are so difficult and must clean up our home again. The flooding already reached the

height of adult’s waist,” said Ketut Mika Wijaya.

When confirmed separately, the Head of the Buleleng Disas-ter Mitigation Agency (BPBD), Ketut Yasa, asserted the field team personnel had been deployed to anticipate subsequent flooding. His party had assigned a team to monitor the condition of flooding that submerged hundreds of homes in Seririt subdistrict. All residents were still asked to be vigilant and prioritize children. When the condition got worse, people were expected to find a higher place. “The condition remains idle. Our team in the field has been deployed to maintain the safety of residents,” he said. (kmb34)

Heavy rain for three hours, Residents of Seririt surrounded by flooding

IBP/Dewa Kusuma

The tofu and empeh maker in Kampung Tinggi, Buleleng is processing the soybeans

Hampered by high price of imported soybeans

Production of tofu and tempeh declining

Bali News Friday, March 13, 2015 5InternationalFriday, March 13, 201512 International

BUSINESS

In Tokyo afternoon trade, the common currency fell to $1.0515, down from $1.0548 in New York where it hit $1.0510 at one stage.

The euro also weakened to 127.72 yen from 128.10 yen in US trade, while the dollar was slightly higher at 121.45 yen against 121.44 yen.

With the ECB just starting on its quantitative easing drive, and the Fed due to lift rates possibly by

June, analysts are tipping dollar-euro parity by next year, which last happened in 2002.

“The asset-purchase programme, which is starting now, that’s ob-viously going to drive the euro lower,” said Fabian Eliasson, head of US corporate foreign-exchange sales at Mizuho Financial Group.

“The dollar is just crushing it across the board.”

The greenback rose to 1,131.55

won from Wednesday’s 1,126.40 won after South Korea’s central bank announced a surprise cut in interest rates to a record low 1.75 percent in a bid to avert deflation and to kickstart the economy.

The Bank of Korea is the latest country -- including China, India and Australia -- to lower rates in the face of falling prices and weak economic growth.

“There’s such a divergence be-

tween what’s going on in the rest of the world with central banks cut-ting rates and the US likely raising them,” Michael Cuggino, president of Pacific Heights Asset Manage-ment, told Bloomberg News.

The ECB on Monday launched its stimulus programme, under which it plans to buy 1.14 trillion euros’ worth of bonds over the next 18 months. The programme aims to pump liquidity into the stagnant euro area economy.

Investors are also nervously watching strained talks between Greece and its European creditors

over reforming its bailout obliga-tions.

In other trading, the dollar rose to Tw$31.68 from Tw$31.63 on Wednesday, and to 32.86 Thai baht from 32.68 baht.

It weakened to 44.31 Philip-pine pesos from 44.34 pesos, to Sg$1.3856 from Sg$1.3869, to 13,182.50 Indonesian rupiah from 13,210.00 rupiah, and to 62.59 In-dian rupees from 62.75 rupees.

The Chinese yuan rose to 19.39 yen from 19.36 yen, while the Australian dollar eased to 76.00 US cents from 76.01 cents. (afp)

SEOUL — South Korea unex-pectedly lowered its benchmark interest rate Thursday to a record low of 1.75 percent, joining central banks from Europe to India in efforts to revi-talize sluggish economic growth.

The quarter percentage point cut was the first interest rate cut by the Bank of Korea in five months. Analysts had predicted that the central bank would stand pat amid concerns that lower borrowing costs could ac-celerate growth in household debt.

But the central bank said South Korea’s economic growth and in-flation this year will be lower than expected. There are also concerns in financial markets and at the finance ministry that South Korea could suffer falling prices, also known as deflation, which can cause prolonged economic stagnation as people and companies delay investment and spending.

“We took into consideration that it was necessary to revive recovery momentum,” BOK Governor Lee

Ju-yeol told a press conference. He repeated his previous view that South Korea’s economy has not entered deflation.

In January, the central bank re-vised its 2015 growth outlook to 3.4 percent from 3.9 percent and downgraded its inflation projection to 1.9 percent from 2.4 percent. The bank will release revised economic forecasts in April.

Japan has grappled with a defla-tionary slump for years and is car-rying out an unprecedented stimulus effort to create inflation. Europe is on the verge of deflation and has launched its own massive program to boost the money supply. Central banks in countries such as Australia and India have cut interest rates re-cently to boost sluggish growth.

The U.S. Federal Reserve, mean-while, is heading in the opposite di-rection. It is expected to raise interest rates this year as the U.S. economic recovery gains momentum.

Exports, South Korea’s key growth

driver, dropped 3 percent last month from a year earlier. Industrial produc-tion slipped 4 percent in January from a month earlier while capital expendi-ture fell 7 percent in the same month.

The rate cut comes after South Korea’s consumer prices rose less than 1 percent for the last three months despite government’s efforts to boost consumption and investment. Consumer prices edged up just 0.5 percent in February, marking the lowest inflation rate in years.

Earlier this week, South Korea’s finance ministry expressed concerns about Asia’s fourth-largest economy falling into deflation, citing weak production, consumption, investment and exports. The finance minister pledged to introduce measures to encourage spending. Some analysts saw the remark as the government giving a green light to the central bank to cut rates.

The central bank lowered the benchmark interest rate two times last year. (ap)

BEIJING — A month before Apple Inc.’s smartwatch hits the market, China’s thriving copycat manufacturers are selling lookalikes, some openly advertised as Apple copies.

“Apple Smart Watch with Blu-etooth Bracelet,” says one vendor on Alibaba Group’s popular Taobao e-commerce website.

Photos on the vendor’s page ap-pear to be the real Apple Watch. It says features on the Chinese version include text messaging and a music player. It starts at 288 yuan ($45), or one-eighth the $349 price of the cheapest Apple Watch.

Alibaba, which listed on the New York Stock Exchange last year after a record initial public offering, has

faced criticism in the past for hosting the sale of counterfeit goods. It says it has been taking steps to reduce the problem.

The flood of “me too” smart-watches reflects China’s mix of skilled electronics manufacturers and a growing consumer market for bargain-price style.

Most of the world’s personal computers and mobile phones are as-sembled in China. But this country’s own companies are only starting to develop design skills and the ability to create breakthrough products.

That has led to the rise of an industry known as “shanzhai,” or “mountain forts” — hundreds of small, anonymous manufacturers that quickly copy the design or features

of popular foreign mobile phones or other products at a fraction of the price.

At least eight vendors on Taobao advertised watches as “Apple Watch” or “Apple Watch lookalike.” Most said they were compatible with Apple’s iOS or Google Inc.’s rival Android operating system.

One vendor jokingly used Chinese slang for a vulgar rich person, offer-ing an “All-New Apple Tyrant Gold Mobile Phone-Supporting Watch” for 288 yuan ($45).

Eight vendors failed to respond to questions from The Associated Press sent through their Taobao accounts.

Asked whether it had taken action against any sellers, Alibaba said in a statement, “Alibaba Group is dedi-

cated to the fight against counterfeits. We work closely with our govern-ment partners, brands and industry associations to tackle this issue at its source. We also utilize technology like data mining and big data to scrub our platforms of counterfeits.”

Alibaba faced controversy in January after a Chinese government agency accused the company of lax oversight and allowing vendors to sell counterfeit goods on Taobao. The two sides settled their dispute a few days later. The agency said its report had no legal force and Alibaba promised to tighten its oversight of vendors.

Apple, based in Cupertino, Cali-fornia, says buyers in China and Hong Kong can pre-order its watch

beginning April 10, the same day it takes orders in the United States, Ja-pan, Britain, France and Germany.

Most previous Apple products were released in China weeks or months after other markets. That fueled a trade in iPhones that were smuggled in for sale to gadget fans who were willing to pay a pre-mium.

Apple lookalikes also are on sale in markets in the southern city of Shenzhen, “the mainland’s best place to shop for ... hi-tech knockoffs,” ac-cording to the Hong Kong newspaper The South China Morning Post.

“Shanzhai Apple Watches in Shenzhen Less Than 1 Day After Launch,” said a headline on Internet portal Sohu.com. (ap)

Euro slumps on ECB stimulusTOKYO - The euro resumed its slump Thursday, sitting around 12-year lows against the

dollar, as the European Central Bank’s new stimulus and the likelihood of a US rate hike push the embattled unit closer to parity with the greenback.

Chinese makers roll out wave of Apple watch lookalikes

South Korea cuts interest rate to record low

AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon

A woman passes by signs of foreign exchange in Seoul, South Korea, Thursday, March 12, 2015. South Korea unexpectedly lowered its benchmark interest rate Thursday to a record low of 1.75 percent, joining central banks from Europe to India in efforts to revitalize sluggish economic growth.

DENPASAR — An American woman charged with premeditated murder in the death of her mother on Indonesia’s Bali island told a court Wednesday that her boy-friend killed her mother in anger after she threatened to kill their unborn baby.

Heather Mack, 19, and her boy-friend Tommy Schaefer, 21, are being tried separately by Denpasar District Court.

They are charged with murder-ing Sheila von Wiese-Mack last August at the St. Regis hotel on

Bali and face possible death by firing squad if found guilty. Von Wiese-Mack’s badly beaten body was found in a suitcase in the trunk of a taxi at the hotel.

In her first questioning in court Wednesday, Mack, who is eight months’ pregnant, said Schaefer beat her mother with a metal soup bowl after von Wiese-Mack made the threat in an argument. Von Wiese-Mack objected to their relationship.

“The blow was not so hard ... and my mother was still resist-

ing,” Mack said. “I asked Tommy to stop and then I ran into the bathroom.”

Mack said when she left the bathroom, she found Schaefer on the bed trying to give her artificial respiration.

“Tommy said my mother was not breathing,” she said. Mack said she also tried to revive her but it didn’t work.

She said they panicked and thought about either calling the police or taking the body in a suitcase to the U.S. Consulate. She

did not explain why they did not do either one.

“We panicked and didn’t know what to do,” she said.

Mack answered “no” when the judge asked whether she wished her mother dead.

According to the indictment, Schaefer battered von Wiese-Mack with the metal handle of a bowl following an argument in her room over the hotel bill.

It says Mack helped stuff her mother’s body into the suitcase by sitting on it to enable Schaefer

to close it. They then placed the suitcase in the trunk of a taxi and told the driver they were going to check out of the hotel and would return, but never did, it says.

Prosecutors said Mack had sug-gested to Schaefer while they were in America that he hire someone for $50,000 to kill her mother.

Mack and her mother had ar-rived first in Bali and were stay-ing in a room on the third floor of the hotel, while Schaefer arrived later and was staying on the sixth floor. (ap)

Peter Hans Naumann, 48, was arrested by customs officials at the resort island’s airport in September after they noticed him acting sus-piciously following his arrival on a flight from Bangkok.

An initial search turned up no drugs, but further examinations in hospital found that he had 11

capsules of cocaine in his stom-ach weighing 239 grams (8.4 ounces).

He confessed during his trial that he had been promised $5,000 to deliver the drugs.

Presiding judge Putu Gde Hari-yadi told a court in the Balinese capital Denpasar that Naumann

had been “proven legally and convincingly guilty of importing narcotics”.

The judge said mitigating fac-tors included that “the defendant regretted his action, was polite during the trial and had not been involved in a crime before”.

He handed him a 15-year jail

term, and ordered him to pay a fine of one billion rupiah ($75,700) or spend an additional three months in jail.

However, judges decided not hand him the toughest penalty in Indonesia for drug trafficking, the death sentence.

Jakarta imposes some of the toughest anti-drugs laws in the world, and is currently making preparations to execute several for-eigners on death row for narcotics

offences, including nationals from Australia, France and Brazil.

President Joko Widodo, who took office in October, has taken a hard line against the drugs trade, claiming that Indonesia is facing an “emergency” due to rising nar-cotics use, and vowing to show no clemency for traffickers on death row.

Foreigners are regularly caught with drugs on hard-partying Bali. (afp)

AP Photo/Firdia Lisnawati

Heather Mack from Chicago, Ill., stands inside a cell before a trial in Bali, Indonesia, Wednesday, March 11, 2015. Mack is charged with murdering her mother, Sheila von Wiese-Mack, whose badly beaten body was found in a suitcase in the trunk of a taxi outside an upscale hotel in the resort island last year.

German jailed for 15 years for Bali drug-smuggling

DENPASAR - A German man was Wednesday jailed for 15 years for trying to smuggle cocaine into Bali, the latest example of Indonesian authorities’ hard line against the narcotics trade as they gear up to execute several foreign drug offenders.

US woman says her boyfriend killed her mother in Indonesia

Friday, March 13, 2015 Friday, March 13, 2015 6 11International International

INDONESIAW RLD

Australia is lobbying hard to prevent the executions by firing squad of Australians Andrew Chan, 31, and Myuran Sukuma-ran, 33. They are among nine foreign drug convicts plus an Indonesian who are to be ex-ecuted soon on Nusakambangan Island prison off the main island of Java.

The offer to pay for the prison-ers’ keep was made by Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop last week in a letter to her Indonesian counterpart Retno Marsudi and reported by The West Australian newspaper on Thursday.

Bishop confirmed the offer was among several suggestions of alternatives to executions.

“We haven’t had a specific response to that suggestion,” Bishop told reporters.

The letter, seen by The Asso-ciated Press, proposes a prisoner exchange in which the Austra-lians would be swapped for three Indonesian drug traffickers held

in Australian prisons.“The Australian government

would be prepared to cover the costs of the ongoing life impris-onment of Mr. Chan and Mr. Sukumaran should a transfer not be possible,” Bishop wrote.

In a response dated Sunday, also seen by AP, Marsudi wrote that President Jokowi Widodo “is of the position that such an ex-change cannot be undertaken.”

Lawyers for the Australians have appealed to the High Ad-ministrative Court, which was scheduled to rule on the case Thursday. They argued that Widodo’s refusal of clemency did not provide proper and individual consideration to their applica-tions. A Jakarta court dismissed the appeal earlier, ruling that clemency is a prerogative of the president.

Bishop wrote that an inquiry into the alleged corruption of the Austra-lians’ trial judges was another legal avenue open to the pair.

“A Judicial Commission has invited Mr. Chan, Mr. Sukumaran and their original lawyer to make statements in a matter relating to alleged corruption of the trial judges,” she wrote.

“These are serious allegations and I request that your govern-ment accord due legal process and institute a pause in the execu-tion preparations until these two important processes have been completed,” she added.

A senior Indonesian official on Tuesday warned Australia to tone down its criticism of the planned executions, saying Canberra should be grateful to Indonesia for keeping asylum seekers away from Australian shores.

The minister for political, legal and security affairs, Tedjo Edy Purdjianto, said at a seminar that if about 10,000 migrants who have been stopped in Indonesia from reaching Australia were al-lowed to proceed, “there will be a human tsunami in Australia.”

THE HAGUE - The Dutch state must compensate widows and children of men executed by colonial troops in the late 1940s, a court in The Hague ruled on Wednesday, potentially open-ing the door to similar claims.

“The Dutch state is liable to com-pensate Indonesian relatives of men who were illegally executed between 1946-49 in the former Dutch East Indies,” the three-judge bench said in a ruling.

Twenty-three plaintiffs -- 18 wid-ows and five children -- took the Dutch state to court in 2012, almost a year after judges ruled in favour of widows in a similar case involving executions at an Indonesian village in 1947.

In a separate case, a widow is suing for the death of her husband in 1949 in the town of Peniwen in Eastern Java.

The relatives are claiming com-pensation for the murder of their

husbands and fathers, executed by colonial Dutch troops during so-called “cleansing actions” to root out Indonesian freedom fighters during its independence struggle.

At least 860 men died in front of fir-ing squads, mostly between December 1946 and April 1947 on Indonesia’s Sulawesi island, then called Celebes.

Judges ruled Wednesday that nine widows were indeed married “to men who were executed.”

The other 14 -- including children of victims who were for the first time included in a compensation ruling -- still need to prove they were related to men who died by Dutch firing squads, the judges said.

The court said it would appoint an expert to investigate.

Judges slapped down the state’s de-fence that the cases had lapsed because of a statute of limitations in Dutch law, calling the lawsuit “exceptional.”

“We are very satisfied, particularly because the court ruled that children are also liable for compensation,” the relatives’ lawyer Liesbeth Zegveld told AFP.

Dubbed the “South Celebes Affair” by local media, the Netherlands for the first time in 2013 formally apologised for the executions.

Previously the Dutch government was ordered to pay 20,000 euros ($21,000) in compensation to other In-donesian widows who brought similar cases to the Hague court.

The court did not set a compensa-tion amount for the nine widows in this case.

“This is a first step,” Jeffry Pondaag, chairman of the KUKB Foundation that represents victims’ families told AFP.

“We will now travel to Indonesia to see if we can find more victims’ children,” he said. (afp)

Australia offers to pay for 2 prisoners’ keep in Indonesia

CANBERRA — Australia has offered to cover Indonesia’s costs for keeping two Australian heroin traffickers in prison for life if Jakarta grants permanent stays of execution, the foreign minister said Thursday.

Dutch state must pay Indonesia war widows, children

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott responded Wednes-day by saying he isn’t picking fights with anyone.

Chan and Sukumaran were flown last week from a prison on the resort island of Bali to the prison island where executions are carried out. The firing squads will execute the 10 simultaneous-ly in pairs, so the execution date will not be set until all of them have exhausted legal appeals.

Chan and Sukumaran led an Austral ian smuggling group dubbed “the Bali Nine.” They were arrested in 2005 after a tip-off from Australian police while trying to smuggle more than 8 kilograms (18 pounds) of heroin from Bali to Sydney. The rest were sentenced to prison terms.

Indonesia executed six drug convicts including foreigners in January, drawing protests from Brazi l and the Netherlands, which withdrew their ambas-sadors after their citizens were denied clemency appeals. More than 130 people are on death row, including 57 drug convicts.

In another development, a dis-trict court in Tangerang, just west of the capital Jakarta, opened the case of judicial review by French national Serge Atlaoui on Wednesday. It adjourned the next hearing until March 25.

Mary Jane Fiesta Veloso, a Philippine national who is the only woman among the con-demned inmates, is awaiting the ruling on her judicial review by the Supreme Court. (ap)

Courts will not tolerate attempts to cover up wrongful convictions and will demand lessons be learned whenever such cases were discov-ered, Zhou said in reading out the report.

“We demand that facts be pur-sued, that mistakes be corrected and that where wrongful convictions are found, they be overturned out of a sense of responsibility for the law and the people,” Zhou said.

Zhou singled out the miscarriage

of justice in the case of Huugjilt, an ethnic Mongolian teenager convicted and executed for the 1996 rape and murder of a woman in a public toilet. A serial rapist and murderer confessed to the crime in 2005 and was convicted and sentenced to death in February. Huugjilt’s conviction was posthumously overturned, and his parents received an apology and financial settlement.

Zhou said authorities were con-tinuing to investigate those assigned

to the case for their responsibility in obtaining the wrongful conviction.

China’s courts have long relied heavily on confessions, many of them believed to have been coerced, and trials almost always result in convictions.

Zhou and others have sought to reduce the use of confessions, banned police torture and argued against anti-crime campaigns that demand swift arrests and accelerated trials and are blamed for bad judgments. (ap)

MOSCOW — President Vladi-mir Putin’s spokesman has dis-missed rumors circulating on the Internet that the Russian leader is in poor health. Dmitry Peskov told Ekho Moskvy radio station Thurs-day that the president was “ab-solutely” healthy, adding that the president’s handshake was still so strong it could “break your hand.” Peskov’s comment was a reference to the Kremlin’s usual response to regular queries about the fragile health of former President Boris Yeltsin, who had heart surgery dur-ing his tenure.

Peskov also said that Putin would not be appearing at a meeting with the Federal Security Service on Thursday, which he often at-tends. “Yes, he’s usually there,” Peskov said. “But this year he was not planning to be.”

A Kremlin announcement Wednesday that Putin would post-pone an upcoming trip to Kazakh-stan set off a flurry of rumors online, with some suggesting that Putin had could be seriously ill and others positing that he could be planning for the ouster of a major govern-ment figure. Putin has not been seen in public since March 5, when he met with Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi in Moscow.

The Kremlin’s press service on Wednesday issued a photo of a meeting between Putin and the regional governor of Karelia. However, local news agencies had reported on the meeting as early as March 5. Russian news agency RBC cited an anonymous source in the Karelian governor’s office as saying that the meeting had actually taken place March 4. (ap)

WARSAW, Poland — Poland is seeking to obtain Tomahawk cruise missiles from the United States or another country, Defense Minister Tomasz Siemoniak said Thursday. The government considers Poland’s security challenged by the armed conflict in neighboring Ukraine, which also involves another neigh-bor, Russia.

The Defense Ministry is inviting men and women aged between 18 and 50 to go through military train-ing and is intensifying efforts to modernize the armed forces, while major NATO and international military exercises are to be held in Poland in the summer.

Siemoniak said on Polish Radio 1 that he decided last year that he would like to have Tomahawk missiles on three submarines that

Poland is planning to purchase by the year 2030.

“We are asking everyone who is able to deliver such weapons, also our American partners,” Siemo-niak said without specifying how many missiles Poland would like to have.

Poland has a professional army of some 100,000 troops and 20,000 reservists. Spending on defense is to be raised next year to 2 percent of GDP, compared with 1.95 percent currently.

Siemoniak said that some 5,000 troops will take part in exercise of NATO’s new spearhead fast-reaction force that will test its de-ployment capabilities. U.S. troops will join soldiers from Poland, Ger-many, The Netherlands, Norway and the Czech Republic. (ap)

VIENNA — Austria’s interior minister says her agency plans to work closely with Google and YouTube to rid them of videos posted by terrorists. Johanna Mikl-Leitner says the idea is to “remove violent videos from terror-

ists and radicals as quickly as possible from the net.”

Mikl-Leitner urged all internet users Thursday to report such vid-eos to her ministry so that experts there can pass on the information

to the platforms where they are be-ing shown and ask they be purged. She tells state-run ORF radio that the plan is to be discussed later in the day by a meeting of EU interior ministers. (ap)

AP Photo/Andy Wong

Delegates leave the Great Hall of the People after attending a plenary session of the National People’s Congress in Beijing Thursday, March 12, 2015.

China top judge renews campaign against wrongful convictions

BEIJING — China’s top judge renewed his commitment to uncovering and overturning wrongful convictions, citing to national legislators on Thursday the much-publicized case of an 18-year-old executed and confirmed years later to have been innocent. Chinese courts at all levels overturned convictions in 1,317 criminal cases last year, Zhou Qiang, president of the Supreme People’s Court, said Thursday in an annual report to the legislature.

Austria to work with YouTube to remove terrorist videos

Putin’s spokesman dismisses rumors about poor health

Poland seeks Tomahawk missiles from US, others

AP Photo/RIA Novosti, Alexei Druzhinin, Presidential Press Service

Russian President Vladimir Putin listens during a meeting at the Kremlin, in Moscow, Russia, Tuesday, March 10, 2015.

Friday, March 13, 2015 7SportsFriday, March 13, 201510 InternationalInternationalDestination

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KUTA - This luxurious Gatotkaca statue was built in 1993 located in the middle of T- junction in the northeast of Ngurah Rai International Airport,

Tuban. Inspired by the Mahabharata epic, it depicts the story of the gal-lant and brave knight Gatotkaca, the son of Bimasena, one of the

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IBP/File Photo

Gatotkaca Knight Statue

But the Italian team has shown good form in pre-season testing, which has led to the likes of world champion team Mercedes and Wil-liams acknowledging it as a threat. “We feel better overall as a team and I’m sure we are much more ready for this year,” said Raikkonen, who finished a career-worst 12th in the drivers’ standings last season.

“We are in a much stronger po-sition. We still have work to do to get to where we want to - but that’s

part of the game. “I think we have to be happy with where we are in testing and comparing where we finished last year. “We have done a good job, but we have to wait and see if it is good enough or how far away we are.”

Team-mate Sebastian Vettel agreed that the team has made prog-ress and is performing well follow-ing sweeping management changes in which long-time president Luca di Montezemolo and team princi-

pal Marco Mattiacci departed. “It depends on the form of the other teams as well but I think we’ve made a step,” said the four-time world champion.

“Generally, the atmosphere is very positive. Obviously there has been a lot of change over the winter but people have been working very hard. “We have definitely improved as a team, so now we’ll see [how much] when we get the chance to put the car on the track.”(net)

INDIAN WELLS, Califor-nia - Though Roger Federer has not won a grand slam singles title since he claimed the Wimbledon crown in 2012, the Swiss master believes he is playing some of the best tennis of his career at the age of 33. He outclassed his long-time rival, Serbian world number one Novak Djokovic, with a brilliant all-round display in the final of the Dubai Championships earlier this month and cannot recall ever serving better.

“I feel like I am playing very well,” Federer, a 17-times grand slam singles champion, told re-porters on Wednesday while preparing for the BNP Paribas Open at the Indian Well Tennis Garden. “I am serving as good as I ever have, I am playing very good attacking tennis and I am playing very committed, which is maybe something I haven’t always done throughout my career.”

Asked if there was anything he could no longer do on the court as he approaches his mid-thirties that was effortless for him a decade ago, Federer replied: “Not really. “I have a hard time remember-ing back how I felt in 2002,” he added, sparking loud laughter in the interview room. “(Ten years ago) I felt like I was more insecure with my game, I was more worried about a bad day.

“Today I don’t feel like I have that many bad days any more. Maybe sometimes you just come

out and it’s just not working. That sometimes happens and it happened very few times in the years when I was very dominant.” Federer returns this week to one of his favourite venues, having claimed four titles at Indian Wells, including a unique run of three in a row from 2004-2006.

Asked why he felt no one had managed to match his feat since by winning at least two consecu-tive BNP Paribas Open crowns, Federer replied: “I just think it’s a coincidence. “If you are playing well here, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t be able to win this one a few times in a row, to be honest.”

The BNP Paribas Open at Indian Wells is the first of back-to-back Masters 1000 events on the ATP Tour, with the Miami Open scheduled to follow from March 25.

Though the two tournaments are extremely well run and at-tract the best players in the world, Federer has never been a big fan of them being squeezed together.

“I don’t mind the 10 days but when it’s back-to-back 10 days

there’s a lot of time that gets wasted, especially for

those who lose (in the) first round,”

he said. (rtr)

OKLAHOMA CITY — Chris Paul had 33 points and nine assists, and J.J. Redick added 25 points as the Los Angeles Clippers beat Okla-homa City 120-108 on Wednesday, ending the Thunder’s seven-game home winning streak.

DeAndre Jordan had 18 points and 17 rebounds for the Clippers, who are fighting for a top-four seed in the Western Conference playoffs. Oklahoma City is battling to merely make the field and fell a half-game behind the New Orleans Pelicans in

the race for the final playoff spot.Both teams are playing for

extended stretches without their superstar forwards: Kevin Durant for the Thunder, Blake Griffin for the Clippers. In their absence, Paul fared better than his point guard counterpart, Oklahoma City’s Rus-sell Westbrook. Westbrook, who triple-doubles in five of Oklahoma City’s previous six games, finished with 24 points, nine rebounds, seven assists and a career-high 10 turnovers.

Golden State’s Klay Thompson reached the 5,000-point mile-stone and knocked down two late 3-pointers in a 1:09 span to lead the Warriors past the Detroit Pistons 105-98 for their fifth straight win. Thompson finished with 27 points on 11-for-19 shooting in the War-riors’ 51st victory — matching their total from last season — and their eighth straight against Detroit.

Andre Drummond had a career-high 27 rebounds — 17 offensive — to go with 22 points in the Pistons’

eighth straight loss. In Denver, Da-nilo Gallinari had 23 points and Will Barton added 16 as the Nuggets beat Eastern Conference-leading Atlanta 115-102 for their eighth straight home win over the Hawks.

Kyle Korver had 18 points to lead Atlanta. He hit five 3-pointers to give him 1,697 in his career and move him past Kobe Bryant (1,694) for 12th in NBA history.

The Boston Celtic ended a five-game losing streak to the Memphis Grizzlies 95-92 after Marcus Smart

converted a go-ahead, three-point play with 52 seconds left and Avery Bradley added a vital jump shot with 8 seconds remaining.

Bradley scored 17 points to help the Celtics win their second in a row as they chase a playoff spot. Dwyane Wade had 28 points and nine assists for Miami and Chris Andersen equaled a career high with 18 points and set a season high with 14 Goran Dragic added 17 points in his return to the Miami lineup.(ap)

Paul has 33, outplays Westbrook as Clippers beat Thunder

REUTERS/Brandon Malone

Formula One drivers for the 2015 season are pictured in this combination photo at Melbourne’s Albert Park Track, March 12, 2015. (Top Row, L to R) Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton of Britain, Mercedes driver Nico Rosberg of Germany, Red Bull driver Daniel Ricciardo of Australia, Red Bull driver Daniil Kvyat of Russia, Williams driver Felipe Massa of Brazil, Williams driver Valtteri Bottas of Finland, Ferrari driver Sebastian Vettel of Germany, Ferrari driver Kimi Raikkonen of Finland, McLaren driver Kevin Magnussen of Denmark and McLaren driver Jenson Button of Britain. (Bottom Row, L to R) Force India driver Nico Hulkenberg of Germany, Force India driver Sergio Perez of Mexico, Toro Rosso driver Max Verstappen of the Netherlands, Toro Rosso driver Carlos Sainz Jr of Spain, Lotus driver Romain Grosjean of France, Lotus driver Pastor Maldonado of Venezuela, Sauber driver Marcus Ericsson of Sweden, Sauber driver Felipe Nasr of Brazil, Marussia driver Will Stevens of Britain and Marussia driver Roberto Merhi of Spain.

Raikkonen says Ferrari starts 2015 F1

season ‘much stronger’KIMI RAIKKONEN believes his Ferrari Formula 1 team is in a “much stronger position” as

it begins 2015 after last year’s disappointments. The Scuderia managed just two podiums last season, its worst haul for more than 20 years, and finished fourth in the constructors’ champi-onship.

I’ve never served better, says Federer

Roger Federer of Switzer-land reacts during his final match a g a i n s t N o v a k Djokovic of Serbia at the ATP C h a m p i o n -ships tennis tour-nament in Dubai, February 28, 2015.

98 InternationalFriday, March 13, 2015 International Friday, March 13, 2015

Sp rt

The result was enough to send 10-man PSG through to the quarter-finals on away goals. It was redemption for Silva as it was his handball that gave Premier League leaders Chelsea the penalty in extra-time which Hazard coolly converted. Silva was, however, full of praise for the whole team.

“This goal is not a personal re-venge,” he said. “I was very happy to score but especially for the team because it rewarded us for a great game after playing with one less man.” “Thiago Silva and David Luiz are world class players, I’m happy to have them with me,” said Zlatan Ibrahimovic, who was sent off in the 31st minute.

Former Chelsea defender Luiz’s price tag of 50 million pounds has often been mocked at as he suffered lapses of concentration that cost PSG more than once, while Silva’s first part of the season suggested the ‘Monster’ had not fully recovered from the World Cup trauma, when hosts Brazil were eliminated in the semi-finals with a 7-1 defeat to Germany.

Yet, on Wednesday, both were re-markable for PSG, who were probably counting more on Ibrahimovic to score

after a 1-1 draw in the first leg had left the French club in an uncomfortable position. But the Sweden striker, who has often been a pale shadow of his brilliant self, was once again disappointing, showing very little until he was sent off for a tackle on Oscar.

His absence barely unsettled PSG, who also had a steely midfield of Thiago Motta , Marco Verratti and Blaise Ma-tuidi to thank for as they stayed afloat. “It was amazing tonight, the spirit, the players gave ev-erything. When we lost Ibra we said we had to keep it simple and keep the ball,” said Luiz.

According to Verratti, Ibrahi-movic’s sending-off gave PSG extra motivation. “We had a big desire to win this game, but after Ibra’s sending-off, w e w e r e even more motivated,” t h e I t a l i a n said. (rtr)

Bayern Munich could be for-given for sneaking a peek towards the Champions League final in Berlin in June after their 7-0 destruction of Shakhtar Donetsk on Wednesday sent them through to the last eight. The five-time European champions, who last won in 2013 and also played in the 2010 and 2012 finals, were in a class of their own as they equalled the biggest win in knockout stage history of the Champions League.

“We desperately want to go to Ber-lin,” said defender Jerome Boateng, who was on target on Wednesday. “We will have to see who we will face in the last eight and it is still a long way until the final.” Bayern played the 2012 final in their home stadium, losing to Chelsea on penalties. This year’s final in Berlin is their chance to make amends with a win on Ger-man soil.

They rightly count themselves

among the select group of favourites for the title, having had another extremely consistent season both at home and in Europe. In the Champi-ons League, they have yet to let in a goal in four home games, scoring 13 times themselves.

Coach Pep Guardiola had said before Wednesday’s second leg that he was aware of what to expect if his team were eliminated. He can expect even more pressure for the quarter-finals with expectations now sky-high in Munich. The domestic league title looks set to stay in Munich with Bayern 11 points clear at the top while a German Cup defence is also on track.

But it is the European trophy that Bayern want to lift again and that Guardiola needs in order to turn his second season at the Bavarians into a potentially legendary one.

With title holders Real Madrid

showing none of their dominance of last season, former winners Chelsea eliminated and only Barcelona in the kind of form that could seriously threaten Bayern over two games, the enthusiasm is understandable. With captain Philipp Lahm set to return from a broken ankle, Medhi Benatia fit again and defender Holger Badstuber in fine form after almost two years out, Bayern will be even stronger in the closing stages of all three com-petitions.

Long-term injury absentees Thi-ago Alcantara and Javi Martinez are also working towards their return to action, further boosting Guardiola’s options.

“We have earned the great respect of football-playing Europe,” Bayern CEO Karl-Heinz Rummenigge told reporters. “Now I don’t think we are on a club’s wish list for the last eight draw.” (ap)

OSAKA — Uruguay forward Diego Forlan is retiring from inter-national football, saying it’s time for the next generation of players to make their mark for the national team.

The 35-year-old Forlan made the announcement in Osaka, where he is under contract with J-League side Cerezo Osaka. He is expected to retire when his current contract expires after this season.

“Of course, this was a very tough decision but it’s time to make way for a new generation (of players),”

said Forlan, who played in three World Cups.

Forlan was awarded the Golden Ball as the best player of the 2010 World Cup and was joint top-scorer with five goals, bringing his inter-national total to 36 since his World Cup debut in 2002.

Despite a reported $5.8 million contract, a record for the J-League, Forlan has struggled with the Osaka team, scoring just seven goals in 26 games. His career has included stints at Manchester United, Inter Milan and Atletico Madrid. (ap)

ZURICH — European champion Spain has fallen out of the top 10 in FIFA’s rankings for the first time since 2007. World Cup winner Germany is still No. 1 ahead of Argentina, Colombia, Belgium and the Netherlands.

The only change in the top 10 is

that Italy rises two places into 10th, while Spain drops one spot to 11th. None of the elite teams played in the last month, but games played earlier in the four-year cycle of results lost ranking value. Romania rises two places at No. 14 and could be seeded in July when European

qualifying groups for the 2018 World Cup are drawn.

Costa Rica remains No. 13 to lead CONCACAF nations. The United States falls one to No. 32. Algeria at No. 18 leads African nations. Iran is Asia’s best at No. 42. (ap)

ZURICH — FIFA has expelled Zimbabwe from 2018 World Cup qualifying for failing to pay its national team coach.

FIFA’s disciplinary commit-tee says it took the action “as a result of the non-payment of an outstanding debt” by Zimbabwe’s football federation to coach Jose

Claudinei Georgini.FIFA says Zimbabwe failed

to make the payments despite a grace period.

As a result, Zimbabwe has been kicked out of the prelimi-nary qualifying competition for the 2018 World Cup in Russia. (ap)

MADRID - Gareth Bale may have been warned by his new em-ployers about how fickle the Real Madrid fans can be when he signed for the Spanish giants for a world record fee in 2013. Just how fickle is now painfully clear to the Wales winger, who has become a target for supporters angry with Real’s recent slump and has been whistled along with captain and goalkeeper Iker Casillas in recent outings at the Bernabeu.

Bale has not scored for the Eu-

ropean champions in nine matches since he converted a penalty against Cordoba on Jan. 24 and is strug-gling to shake off a perception that he neglects his defensive duties and sometimes selfishly opts to shoot himself when a team mate is better placed.

That Bale had a successful debut season in Spain, scoring the winning goal against Barcelona in the King’s Cup final and netting in the Champions League show-piece against Atletico Madrid, has

quickly been forgotten.While it is unfair to blame Bale

for all of Real’s recent woes, it cannot be denied that he appears to be struggling for form and confidence. His travails have even prompted speculation he could be sold, with English Premier League side Manchester United said to be interested.

The 25-year-old, who barely made an impact in Tuesday’s 4-3 Champions League reverse at home to Schalke 04, has a chance to set

things right when second-placed Real host Levante in La Liga on Sunday. By the time the game kicks off, they could find themselves four points behind leaders Barcelona.

Barca leapfrogged their great rivals, who they host for the ‘Cla-sico’ on March 22, into top spot last weekend and play at Eibar on Saturday. Real centre back Pepe defended Bale, who he described as “shy”, in an interview with Spanish radio on Thursday. “Ball hog? A forward lives on goals,” the

Portugal international said.“When he gets into a position to

score it’s the instinct of the killer. If you put me in front of the goal I will shoot.” Champions Atletico Madrid, six points behind Real in third, are looking to get back to winning ways after draws against Sevilla and Valencia when they play at Espanyol on Saturday. Fourth-placed Valencia can climb above Atletico if they avoid defeat at home to Deportivo La Coruna on Friday. (rtr)

Spain falls from top 10 of FIFA rankings; Germany still 1st

Bayern dream of home final after record-equalling win

AP Photo/Matthias Schrader

Bayern’s Robert Lewandowski, left, and Bayern’s Thomas Mueller celebrate Lewandowski’s 6-0 during the Champions League round of 16 second leg soccer match between Bayern Munich and Shakhtar Donetsk Wednesday, March 11, 2015 in Munich, southern Germany.

AP Photo/Kyodo News

Uruguay forward Diego Forlan speaks during a press confer-ence to make an announcement of retiring from international football, in Osaka, western Japan Thursday. March 12, 2015.

Uruguay striker Forlan retires from international football

FIFA: Zimbabwe expelled from 2018 World Cup qualifying

Bale’s Spanish adventure turning sour at Real

Reuters / Toby Melville Livepic

Thiago Silva celebrates after

scoring the second goal for

PSG


PARIS - David Luiz and Thiago Silva have often been criticised at Paris St Ger-main for their defensive weaknesses but the Brazilian duo were the unlikely heroes on Wednesday as the French champions knocked Chelsea out of the Champions League. Luiz levelled with four minutes left with a powerful header after Gary Cahill’s 81st-minute opener and Silva made it 2-2 with a looping header after Eden Hazard had given the hosts the advantage from the spot.

98 InternationalFriday, March 13, 2015 International Friday, March 13, 2015

Sp rt

The result was enough to send 10-man PSG through to the quarter-finals on away goals. It was redemption for Silva as it was his handball that gave Premier League leaders Chelsea the penalty in extra-time which Hazard coolly converted. Silva was, however, full of praise for the whole team.

“This goal is not a personal re-venge,” he said. “I was very happy to score but especially for the team because it rewarded us for a great game after playing with one less man.” “Thiago Silva and David Luiz are world class players, I’m happy to have them with me,” said Zlatan Ibrahimovic, who was sent off in the 31st minute.

Former Chelsea defender Luiz’s price tag of 50 million pounds has often been mocked at as he suffered lapses of concentration that cost PSG more than once, while Silva’s first part of the season suggested the ‘Monster’ had not fully recovered from the World Cup trauma, when hosts Brazil were eliminated in the semi-finals with a 7-1 defeat to Germany.

Yet, on Wednesday, both were re-markable for PSG, who were probably counting more on Ibrahimovic to score

after a 1-1 draw in the first leg had left the French club in an uncomfortable position. But the Sweden striker, who has often been a pale shadow of his brilliant self, was once again disappointing, showing very little until he was sent off for a tackle on Oscar.

His absence barely unsettled PSG, who also had a steely midfield of Thiago Motta , Marco Verratti and Blaise Ma-tuidi to thank for as they stayed afloat. “It was amazing tonight, the spirit, the players gave ev-erything. When we lost Ibra we said we had to keep it simple and keep the ball,” said Luiz.

According to Verratti, Ibrahi-movic’s sending-off gave PSG extra motivation. “We had a big desire to win this game, but after Ibra’s sending-off, w e w e r e even more motivated,” t h e I t a l i a n said. (rtr)

Bayern Munich could be for-given for sneaking a peek towards the Champions League final in Berlin in June after their 7-0 destruction of Shakhtar Donetsk on Wednesday sent them through to the last eight. The five-time European champions, who last won in 2013 and also played in the 2010 and 2012 finals, were in a class of their own as they equalled the biggest win in knockout stage history of the Champions League.

“We desperately want to go to Ber-lin,” said defender Jerome Boateng, who was on target on Wednesday. “We will have to see who we will face in the last eight and it is still a long way until the final.” Bayern played the 2012 final in their home stadium, losing to Chelsea on penalties. This year’s final in Berlin is their chance to make amends with a win on Ger-man soil.

They rightly count themselves

among the select group of favourites for the title, having had another extremely consistent season both at home and in Europe. In the Champi-ons League, they have yet to let in a goal in four home games, scoring 13 times themselves.

Coach Pep Guardiola had said before Wednesday’s second leg that he was aware of what to expect if his team were eliminated. He can expect even more pressure for the quarter-finals with expectations now sky-high in Munich. The domestic league title looks set to stay in Munich with Bayern 11 points clear at the top while a German Cup defence is also on track.

But it is the European trophy that Bayern want to lift again and that Guardiola needs in order to turn his second season at the Bavarians into a potentially legendary one.

With title holders Real Madrid

showing none of their dominance of last season, former winners Chelsea eliminated and only Barcelona in the kind of form that could seriously threaten Bayern over two games, the enthusiasm is understandable. With captain Philipp Lahm set to return from a broken ankle, Medhi Benatia fit again and defender Holger Badstuber in fine form after almost two years out, Bayern will be even stronger in the closing stages of all three com-petitions.

Long-term injury absentees Thi-ago Alcantara and Javi Martinez are also working towards their return to action, further boosting Guardiola’s options.

“We have earned the great respect of football-playing Europe,” Bayern CEO Karl-Heinz Rummenigge told reporters. “Now I don’t think we are on a club’s wish list for the last eight draw.” (ap)

OSAKA — Uruguay forward Diego Forlan is retiring from inter-national football, saying it’s time for the next generation of players to make their mark for the national team.

The 35-year-old Forlan made the announcement in Osaka, where he is under contract with J-League side Cerezo Osaka. He is expected to retire when his current contract expires after this season.

“Of course, this was a very tough decision but it’s time to make way for a new generation (of players),”

said Forlan, who played in three World Cups.

Forlan was awarded the Golden Ball as the best player of the 2010 World Cup and was joint top-scorer with five goals, bringing his inter-national total to 36 since his World Cup debut in 2002.

Despite a reported $5.8 million contract, a record for the J-League, Forlan has struggled with the Osaka team, scoring just seven goals in 26 games. His career has included stints at Manchester United, Inter Milan and Atletico Madrid. (ap)

ZURICH — European champion Spain has fallen out of the top 10 in FIFA’s rankings for the first time since 2007. World Cup winner Germany is still No. 1 ahead of Argentina, Colombia, Belgium and the Netherlands.

The only change in the top 10 is

that Italy rises two places into 10th, while Spain drops one spot to 11th. None of the elite teams played in the last month, but games played earlier in the four-year cycle of results lost ranking value. Romania rises two places at No. 14 and could be seeded in July when European

qualifying groups for the 2018 World Cup are drawn.

Costa Rica remains No. 13 to lead CONCACAF nations. The United States falls one to No. 32. Algeria at No. 18 leads African nations. Iran is Asia’s best at No. 42. (ap)

ZURICH — FIFA has expelled Zimbabwe from 2018 World Cup qualifying for failing to pay its national team coach.

FIFA’s disciplinary commit-tee says it took the action “as a result of the non-payment of an outstanding debt” by Zimbabwe’s football federation to coach Jose

Claudinei Georgini.FIFA says Zimbabwe failed

to make the payments despite a grace period.

As a result, Zimbabwe has been kicked out of the prelimi-nary qualifying competition for the 2018 World Cup in Russia. (ap)

MADRID - Gareth Bale may have been warned by his new em-ployers about how fickle the Real Madrid fans can be when he signed for the Spanish giants for a world record fee in 2013. Just how fickle is now painfully clear to the Wales winger, who has become a target for supporters angry with Real’s recent slump and has been whistled along with captain and goalkeeper Iker Casillas in recent outings at the Bernabeu.

Bale has not scored for the Eu-

ropean champions in nine matches since he converted a penalty against Cordoba on Jan. 24 and is strug-gling to shake off a perception that he neglects his defensive duties and sometimes selfishly opts to shoot himself when a team mate is better placed.

That Bale had a successful debut season in Spain, scoring the winning goal against Barcelona in the King’s Cup final and netting in the Champions League show-piece against Atletico Madrid, has

quickly been forgotten.While it is unfair to blame Bale

for all of Real’s recent woes, it cannot be denied that he appears to be struggling for form and confidence. His travails have even prompted speculation he could be sold, with English Premier League side Manchester United said to be interested.

The 25-year-old, who barely made an impact in Tuesday’s 4-3 Champions League reverse at home to Schalke 04, has a chance to set

things right when second-placed Real host Levante in La Liga on Sunday. By the time the game kicks off, they could find themselves four points behind leaders Barcelona.

Barca leapfrogged their great rivals, who they host for the ‘Cla-sico’ on March 22, into top spot last weekend and play at Eibar on Saturday. Real centre back Pepe defended Bale, who he described as “shy”, in an interview with Spanish radio on Thursday. “Ball hog? A forward lives on goals,” the

Portugal international said.“When he gets into a position to

score it’s the instinct of the killer. If you put me in front of the goal I will shoot.” Champions Atletico Madrid, six points behind Real in third, are looking to get back to winning ways after draws against Sevilla and Valencia when they play at Espanyol on Saturday. Fourth-placed Valencia can climb above Atletico if they avoid defeat at home to Deportivo La Coruna on Friday. (rtr)

Spain falls from top 10 of FIFA rankings; Germany still 1st

Bayern dream of home final after record-equalling win

AP Photo/Matthias Schrader

Bayern’s Robert Lewandowski, left, and Bayern’s Thomas Mueller celebrate Lewandowski’s 6-0 during the Champions League round of 16 second leg soccer match between Bayern Munich and Shakhtar Donetsk Wednesday, March 11, 2015 in Munich, southern Germany.

AP Photo/Kyodo News

Uruguay forward Diego Forlan speaks during a press confer-ence to make an announcement of retiring from international football, in Osaka, western Japan Thursday. March 12, 2015.

Uruguay striker Forlan retires from international football

FIFA: Zimbabwe expelled from 2018 World Cup qualifying

Bale’s Spanish adventure turning sour at Real

Reuters / Toby Melville Livepic

Thiago Silva celebrates after

scoring the second goal for

PSG


PARIS - David Luiz and Thiago Silva have often been criticised at Paris St Ger-main for their defensive weaknesses but the Brazilian duo were the unlikely heroes on Wednesday as the French champions knocked Chelsea out of the Champions League. Luiz levelled with four minutes left with a powerful header after Gary Cahill’s 81st-minute opener and Silva made it 2-2 with a looping header after Eden Hazard had given the hosts the advantage from the spot.

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KUTA - This luxurious Gatotkaca statue was built in 1993 located in the middle of T- junction in the northeast of Ngurah Rai International Airport,

Tuban. Inspired by the Mahabharata epic, it depicts the story of the gal-lant and brave knight Gatotkaca, the son of Bimasena, one of the

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IBP/File Photo

Gatotkaca Knight Statue

But the Italian team has shown good form in pre-season testing, which has led to the likes of world champion team Mercedes and Wil-liams acknowledging it as a threat. “We feel better overall as a team and I’m sure we are much more ready for this year,” said Raikkonen, who finished a career-worst 12th in the drivers’ standings last season.

“We are in a much stronger po-sition. We still have work to do to get to where we want to - but that’s

part of the game. “I think we have to be happy with where we are in testing and comparing where we finished last year. “We have done a good job, but we have to wait and see if it is good enough or how far away we are.”

Team-mate Sebastian Vettel agreed that the team has made prog-ress and is performing well follow-ing sweeping management changes in which long-time president Luca di Montezemolo and team princi-

pal Marco Mattiacci departed. “It depends on the form of the other teams as well but I think we’ve made a step,” said the four-time world champion.

“Generally, the atmosphere is very positive. Obviously there has been a lot of change over the winter but people have been working very hard. “We have definitely improved as a team, so now we’ll see [how much] when we get the chance to put the car on the track.”(net)

INDIAN WELLS, Califor-nia - Though Roger Federer has not won a grand slam singles title since he claimed the Wimbledon crown in 2012, the Swiss master believes he is playing some of the best tennis of his career at the age of 33. He outclassed his long-time rival, Serbian world number one Novak Djokovic, with a brilliant all-round display in the final of the Dubai Championships earlier this month and cannot recall ever serving better.

“I feel like I am playing very well,” Federer, a 17-times grand slam singles champion, told re-porters on Wednesday while preparing for the BNP Paribas Open at the Indian Well Tennis Garden. “I am serving as good as I ever have, I am playing very good attacking tennis and I am playing very committed, which is maybe something I haven’t always done throughout my career.”

Asked if there was anything he could no longer do on the court as he approaches his mid-thirties that was effortless for him a decade ago, Federer replied: “Not really. “I have a hard time remember-ing back how I felt in 2002,” he added, sparking loud laughter in the interview room. “(Ten years ago) I felt like I was more insecure with my game, I was more worried about a bad day.

“Today I don’t feel like I have that many bad days any more. Maybe sometimes you just come

out and it’s just not working. That sometimes happens and it happened very few times in the years when I was very dominant.” Federer returns this week to one of his favourite venues, having claimed four titles at Indian Wells, including a unique run of three in a row from 2004-2006.

Asked why he felt no one had managed to match his feat since by winning at least two consecu-tive BNP Paribas Open crowns, Federer replied: “I just think it’s a coincidence. “If you are playing well here, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t be able to win this one a few times in a row, to be honest.”

The BNP Paribas Open at Indian Wells is the first of back-to-back Masters 1000 events on the ATP Tour, with the Miami Open scheduled to follow from March 25.

Though the two tournaments are extremely well run and at-tract the best players in the world, Federer has never been a big fan of them being squeezed together.

“I don’t mind the 10 days but when it’s back-to-back 10 days

there’s a lot of time that gets wasted, especially for

those who lose (in the) first round,”

he said. (rtr)

OKLAHOMA CITY — Chris Paul had 33 points and nine assists, and J.J. Redick added 25 points as the Los Angeles Clippers beat Okla-homa City 120-108 on Wednesday, ending the Thunder’s seven-game home winning streak.

DeAndre Jordan had 18 points and 17 rebounds for the Clippers, who are fighting for a top-four seed in the Western Conference playoffs. Oklahoma City is battling to merely make the field and fell a half-game behind the New Orleans Pelicans in

the race for the final playoff spot.Both teams are playing for

extended stretches without their superstar forwards: Kevin Durant for the Thunder, Blake Griffin for the Clippers. In their absence, Paul fared better than his point guard counterpart, Oklahoma City’s Rus-sell Westbrook. Westbrook, who triple-doubles in five of Oklahoma City’s previous six games, finished with 24 points, nine rebounds, seven assists and a career-high 10 turnovers.

Golden State’s Klay Thompson reached the 5,000-point mile-stone and knocked down two late 3-pointers in a 1:09 span to lead the Warriors past the Detroit Pistons 105-98 for their fifth straight win. Thompson finished with 27 points on 11-for-19 shooting in the War-riors’ 51st victory — matching their total from last season — and their eighth straight against Detroit.

Andre Drummond had a career-high 27 rebounds — 17 offensive — to go with 22 points in the Pistons’

eighth straight loss. In Denver, Da-nilo Gallinari had 23 points and Will Barton added 16 as the Nuggets beat Eastern Conference-leading Atlanta 115-102 for their eighth straight home win over the Hawks.

Kyle Korver had 18 points to lead Atlanta. He hit five 3-pointers to give him 1,697 in his career and move him past Kobe Bryant (1,694) for 12th in NBA history.

The Boston Celtic ended a five-game losing streak to the Memphis Grizzlies 95-92 after Marcus Smart

converted a go-ahead, three-point play with 52 seconds left and Avery Bradley added a vital jump shot with 8 seconds remaining.

Bradley scored 17 points to help the Celtics win their second in a row as they chase a playoff spot. Dwyane Wade had 28 points and nine assists for Miami and Chris Andersen equaled a career high with 18 points and set a season high with 14 Goran Dragic added 17 points in his return to the Miami lineup.(ap)

Paul has 33, outplays Westbrook as Clippers beat Thunder

REUTERS/Brandon Malone

Formula One drivers for the 2015 season are pictured in this combination photo at Melbourne’s Albert Park Track, March 12, 2015. (Top Row, L to R) Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton of Britain, Mercedes driver Nico Rosberg of Germany, Red Bull driver Daniel Ricciardo of Australia, Red Bull driver Daniil Kvyat of Russia, Williams driver Felipe Massa of Brazil, Williams driver Valtteri Bottas of Finland, Ferrari driver Sebastian Vettel of Germany, Ferrari driver Kimi Raikkonen of Finland, McLaren driver Kevin Magnussen of Denmark and McLaren driver Jenson Button of Britain. (Bottom Row, L to R) Force India driver Nico Hulkenberg of Germany, Force India driver Sergio Perez of Mexico, Toro Rosso driver Max Verstappen of the Netherlands, Toro Rosso driver Carlos Sainz Jr of Spain, Lotus driver Romain Grosjean of France, Lotus driver Pastor Maldonado of Venezuela, Sauber driver Marcus Ericsson of Sweden, Sauber driver Felipe Nasr of Brazil, Marussia driver Will Stevens of Britain and Marussia driver Roberto Merhi of Spain.

Raikkonen says Ferrari starts 2015 F1

season ‘much stronger’KIMI RAIKKONEN believes his Ferrari Formula 1 team is in a “much stronger position” as

it begins 2015 after last year’s disappointments. The Scuderia managed just two podiums last season, its worst haul for more than 20 years, and finished fourth in the constructors’ champi-onship.

I’ve never served better, says Federer

Roger Federer of Switzer-land reacts during his final match a g a i n s t N o v a k Djokovic of Serbia at the ATP C h a m p i o n -ships tennis tour-nament in Dubai, February 28, 2015.

Friday, March 13, 2015 Friday, March 13, 2015 6 11International International

INDONESIAW RLD

Australia is lobbying hard to prevent the executions by firing squad of Australians Andrew Chan, 31, and Myuran Sukuma-ran, 33. They are among nine foreign drug convicts plus an Indonesian who are to be ex-ecuted soon on Nusakambangan Island prison off the main island of Java.

The offer to pay for the prison-ers’ keep was made by Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop last week in a letter to her Indonesian counterpart Retno Marsudi and reported by The West Australian newspaper on Thursday.

Bishop confirmed the offer was among several suggestions of alternatives to executions.

“We haven’t had a specific response to that suggestion,” Bishop told reporters.

The letter, seen by The Asso-ciated Press, proposes a prisoner exchange in which the Austra-lians would be swapped for three Indonesian drug traffickers held

in Australian prisons.“The Australian government

would be prepared to cover the costs of the ongoing life impris-onment of Mr. Chan and Mr. Sukumaran should a transfer not be possible,” Bishop wrote.

In a response dated Sunday, also seen by AP, Marsudi wrote that President Jokowi Widodo “is of the position that such an ex-change cannot be undertaken.”

Lawyers for the Australians have appealed to the High Ad-ministrative Court, which was scheduled to rule on the case Thursday. They argued that Widodo’s refusal of clemency did not provide proper and individual consideration to their applica-tions. A Jakarta court dismissed the appeal earlier, ruling that clemency is a prerogative of the president.

Bishop wrote that an inquiry into the alleged corruption of the Austra-lians’ trial judges was another legal avenue open to the pair.

“A Judicial Commission has invited Mr. Chan, Mr. Sukumaran and their original lawyer to make statements in a matter relating to alleged corruption of the trial judges,” she wrote.

“These are serious allegations and I request that your govern-ment accord due legal process and institute a pause in the execu-tion preparations until these two important processes have been completed,” she added.

A senior Indonesian official on Tuesday warned Australia to tone down its criticism of the planned executions, saying Canberra should be grateful to Indonesia for keeping asylum seekers away from Australian shores.

The minister for political, legal and security affairs, Tedjo Edy Purdjianto, said at a seminar that if about 10,000 migrants who have been stopped in Indonesia from reaching Australia were al-lowed to proceed, “there will be a human tsunami in Australia.”

THE HAGUE - The Dutch state must compensate widows and children of men executed by colonial troops in the late 1940s, a court in The Hague ruled on Wednesday, potentially open-ing the door to similar claims.

“The Dutch state is liable to com-pensate Indonesian relatives of men who were illegally executed between 1946-49 in the former Dutch East Indies,” the three-judge bench said in a ruling.

Twenty-three plaintiffs -- 18 wid-ows and five children -- took the Dutch state to court in 2012, almost a year after judges ruled in favour of widows in a similar case involving executions at an Indonesian village in 1947.

In a separate case, a widow is suing for the death of her husband in 1949 in the town of Peniwen in Eastern Java.

The relatives are claiming com-pensation for the murder of their

husbands and fathers, executed by colonial Dutch troops during so-called “cleansing actions” to root out Indonesian freedom fighters during its independence struggle.

At least 860 men died in front of fir-ing squads, mostly between December 1946 and April 1947 on Indonesia’s Sulawesi island, then called Celebes.

Judges ruled Wednesday that nine widows were indeed married “to men who were executed.”

The other 14 -- including children of victims who were for the first time included in a compensation ruling -- still need to prove they were related to men who died by Dutch firing squads, the judges said.

The court said it would appoint an expert to investigate.

Judges slapped down the state’s de-fence that the cases had lapsed because of a statute of limitations in Dutch law, calling the lawsuit “exceptional.”

“We are very satisfied, particularly because the court ruled that children are also liable for compensation,” the relatives’ lawyer Liesbeth Zegveld told AFP.

Dubbed the “South Celebes Affair” by local media, the Netherlands for the first time in 2013 formally apologised for the executions.

Previously the Dutch government was ordered to pay 20,000 euros ($21,000) in compensation to other In-donesian widows who brought similar cases to the Hague court.

The court did not set a compensa-tion amount for the nine widows in this case.

“This is a first step,” Jeffry Pondaag, chairman of the KUKB Foundation that represents victims’ families told AFP.

“We will now travel to Indonesia to see if we can find more victims’ children,” he said. (afp)

Australia offers to pay for 2 prisoners’ keep in Indonesia

CANBERRA — Australia has offered to cover Indonesia’s costs for keeping two Australian heroin traffickers in prison for life if Jakarta grants permanent stays of execution, the foreign minister said Thursday.

Dutch state must pay Indonesia war widows, children

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott responded Wednes-day by saying he isn’t picking fights with anyone.

Chan and Sukumaran were flown last week from a prison on the resort island of Bali to the prison island where executions are carried out. The firing squads will execute the 10 simultaneous-ly in pairs, so the execution date will not be set until all of them have exhausted legal appeals.

Chan and Sukumaran led an Austral ian smuggling group dubbed “the Bali Nine.” They were arrested in 2005 after a tip-off from Australian police while trying to smuggle more than 8 kilograms (18 pounds) of heroin from Bali to Sydney. The rest were sentenced to prison terms.

Indonesia executed six drug convicts including foreigners in January, drawing protests from Brazi l and the Netherlands, which withdrew their ambas-sadors after their citizens were denied clemency appeals. More than 130 people are on death row, including 57 drug convicts.

In another development, a dis-trict court in Tangerang, just west of the capital Jakarta, opened the case of judicial review by French national Serge Atlaoui on Wednesday. It adjourned the next hearing until March 25.

Mary Jane Fiesta Veloso, a Philippine national who is the only woman among the con-demned inmates, is awaiting the ruling on her judicial review by the Supreme Court. (ap)

Courts will not tolerate attempts to cover up wrongful convictions and will demand lessons be learned whenever such cases were discov-ered, Zhou said in reading out the report.

“We demand that facts be pur-sued, that mistakes be corrected and that where wrongful convictions are found, they be overturned out of a sense of responsibility for the law and the people,” Zhou said.

Zhou singled out the miscarriage

of justice in the case of Huugjilt, an ethnic Mongolian teenager convicted and executed for the 1996 rape and murder of a woman in a public toilet. A serial rapist and murderer confessed to the crime in 2005 and was convicted and sentenced to death in February. Huugjilt’s conviction was posthumously overturned, and his parents received an apology and financial settlement.

Zhou said authorities were con-tinuing to investigate those assigned

to the case for their responsibility in obtaining the wrongful conviction.

China’s courts have long relied heavily on confessions, many of them believed to have been coerced, and trials almost always result in convictions.

Zhou and others have sought to reduce the use of confessions, banned police torture and argued against anti-crime campaigns that demand swift arrests and accelerated trials and are blamed for bad judgments. (ap)

MOSCOW — President Vladi-mir Putin’s spokesman has dis-missed rumors circulating on the Internet that the Russian leader is in poor health. Dmitry Peskov told Ekho Moskvy radio station Thurs-day that the president was “ab-solutely” healthy, adding that the president’s handshake was still so strong it could “break your hand.” Peskov’s comment was a reference to the Kremlin’s usual response to regular queries about the fragile health of former President Boris Yeltsin, who had heart surgery dur-ing his tenure.

Peskov also said that Putin would not be appearing at a meeting with the Federal Security Service on Thursday, which he often at-tends. “Yes, he’s usually there,” Peskov said. “But this year he was not planning to be.”

A Kremlin announcement Wednesday that Putin would post-pone an upcoming trip to Kazakh-stan set off a flurry of rumors online, with some suggesting that Putin had could be seriously ill and others positing that he could be planning for the ouster of a major govern-ment figure. Putin has not been seen in public since March 5, when he met with Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi in Moscow.

The Kremlin’s press service on Wednesday issued a photo of a meeting between Putin and the regional governor of Karelia. However, local news agencies had reported on the meeting as early as March 5. Russian news agency RBC cited an anonymous source in the Karelian governor’s office as saying that the meeting had actually taken place March 4. (ap)

WARSAW, Poland — Poland is seeking to obtain Tomahawk cruise missiles from the United States or another country, Defense Minister Tomasz Siemoniak said Thursday. The government considers Poland’s security challenged by the armed conflict in neighboring Ukraine, which also involves another neigh-bor, Russia.

The Defense Ministry is inviting men and women aged between 18 and 50 to go through military train-ing and is intensifying efforts to modernize the armed forces, while major NATO and international military exercises are to be held in Poland in the summer.

Siemoniak said on Polish Radio 1 that he decided last year that he would like to have Tomahawk missiles on three submarines that

Poland is planning to purchase by the year 2030.

“We are asking everyone who is able to deliver such weapons, also our American partners,” Siemo-niak said without specifying how many missiles Poland would like to have.

Poland has a professional army of some 100,000 troops and 20,000 reservists. Spending on defense is to be raised next year to 2 percent of GDP, compared with 1.95 percent currently.

Siemoniak said that some 5,000 troops will take part in exercise of NATO’s new spearhead fast-reaction force that will test its de-ployment capabilities. U.S. troops will join soldiers from Poland, Ger-many, The Netherlands, Norway and the Czech Republic. (ap)

VIENNA — Austria’s interior minister says her agency plans to work closely with Google and YouTube to rid them of videos posted by terrorists. Johanna Mikl-Leitner says the idea is to “remove violent videos from terror-

ists and radicals as quickly as possible from the net.”

Mikl-Leitner urged all internet users Thursday to report such vid-eos to her ministry so that experts there can pass on the information

to the platforms where they are be-ing shown and ask they be purged. She tells state-run ORF radio that the plan is to be discussed later in the day by a meeting of EU interior ministers. (ap)

AP Photo/Andy Wong

Delegates leave the Great Hall of the People after attending a plenary session of the National People’s Congress in Beijing Thursday, March 12, 2015.

China top judge renews campaign against wrongful convictions

BEIJING — China’s top judge renewed his commitment to uncovering and overturning wrongful convictions, citing to national legislators on Thursday the much-publicized case of an 18-year-old executed and confirmed years later to have been innocent. Chinese courts at all levels overturned convictions in 1,317 criminal cases last year, Zhou Qiang, president of the Supreme People’s Court, said Thursday in an annual report to the legislature.

Austria to work with YouTube to remove terrorist videos

Putin’s spokesman dismisses rumors about poor health

Poland seeks Tomahawk missiles from US, others

AP Photo/RIA Novosti, Alexei Druzhinin, Presidential Press Service

Russian President Vladimir Putin listens during a meeting at the Kremlin, in Moscow, Russia, Tuesday, March 10, 2015.

Bali News Friday, March 13, 2015 5InternationalFriday, March 13, 201512 International

BUSINESS

In Tokyo afternoon trade, the common currency fell to $1.0515, down from $1.0548 in New York where it hit $1.0510 at one stage.

The euro also weakened to 127.72 yen from 128.10 yen in US trade, while the dollar was slightly higher at 121.45 yen against 121.44 yen.

With the ECB just starting on its quantitative easing drive, and the Fed due to lift rates possibly by

June, analysts are tipping dollar-euro parity by next year, which last happened in 2002.

“The asset-purchase programme, which is starting now, that’s ob-viously going to drive the euro lower,” said Fabian Eliasson, head of US corporate foreign-exchange sales at Mizuho Financial Group.

“The dollar is just crushing it across the board.”

The greenback rose to 1,131.55

won from Wednesday’s 1,126.40 won after South Korea’s central bank announced a surprise cut in interest rates to a record low 1.75 percent in a bid to avert deflation and to kickstart the economy.

The Bank of Korea is the latest country -- including China, India and Australia -- to lower rates in the face of falling prices and weak economic growth.

“There’s such a divergence be-

tween what’s going on in the rest of the world with central banks cut-ting rates and the US likely raising them,” Michael Cuggino, president of Pacific Heights Asset Manage-ment, told Bloomberg News.

The ECB on Monday launched its stimulus programme, under which it plans to buy 1.14 trillion euros’ worth of bonds over the next 18 months. The programme aims to pump liquidity into the stagnant euro area economy.

Investors are also nervously watching strained talks between Greece and its European creditors

over reforming its bailout obliga-tions.

In other trading, the dollar rose to Tw$31.68 from Tw$31.63 on Wednesday, and to 32.86 Thai baht from 32.68 baht.

It weakened to 44.31 Philip-pine pesos from 44.34 pesos, to Sg$1.3856 from Sg$1.3869, to 13,182.50 Indonesian rupiah from 13,210.00 rupiah, and to 62.59 In-dian rupees from 62.75 rupees.

The Chinese yuan rose to 19.39 yen from 19.36 yen, while the Australian dollar eased to 76.00 US cents from 76.01 cents. (afp)

SEOUL — South Korea unex-pectedly lowered its benchmark interest rate Thursday to a record low of 1.75 percent, joining central banks from Europe to India in efforts to revi-talize sluggish economic growth.

The quarter percentage point cut was the first interest rate cut by the Bank of Korea in five months. Analysts had predicted that the central bank would stand pat amid concerns that lower borrowing costs could ac-celerate growth in household debt.

But the central bank said South Korea’s economic growth and in-flation this year will be lower than expected. There are also concerns in financial markets and at the finance ministry that South Korea could suffer falling prices, also known as deflation, which can cause prolonged economic stagnation as people and companies delay investment and spending.

“We took into consideration that it was necessary to revive recovery momentum,” BOK Governor Lee

Ju-yeol told a press conference. He repeated his previous view that South Korea’s economy has not entered deflation.

In January, the central bank re-vised its 2015 growth outlook to 3.4 percent from 3.9 percent and downgraded its inflation projection to 1.9 percent from 2.4 percent. The bank will release revised economic forecasts in April.

Japan has grappled with a defla-tionary slump for years and is car-rying out an unprecedented stimulus effort to create inflation. Europe is on the verge of deflation and has launched its own massive program to boost the money supply. Central banks in countries such as Australia and India have cut interest rates re-cently to boost sluggish growth.

The U.S. Federal Reserve, mean-while, is heading in the opposite di-rection. It is expected to raise interest rates this year as the U.S. economic recovery gains momentum.

Exports, South Korea’s key growth

driver, dropped 3 percent last month from a year earlier. Industrial produc-tion slipped 4 percent in January from a month earlier while capital expendi-ture fell 7 percent in the same month.

The rate cut comes after South Korea’s consumer prices rose less than 1 percent for the last three months despite government’s efforts to boost consumption and investment. Consumer prices edged up just 0.5 percent in February, marking the lowest inflation rate in years.

Earlier this week, South Korea’s finance ministry expressed concerns about Asia’s fourth-largest economy falling into deflation, citing weak production, consumption, investment and exports. The finance minister pledged to introduce measures to encourage spending. Some analysts saw the remark as the government giving a green light to the central bank to cut rates.

The central bank lowered the benchmark interest rate two times last year. (ap)

BEIJING — A month before Apple Inc.’s smartwatch hits the market, China’s thriving copycat manufacturers are selling lookalikes, some openly advertised as Apple copies.

“Apple Smart Watch with Blu-etooth Bracelet,” says one vendor on Alibaba Group’s popular Taobao e-commerce website.

Photos on the vendor’s page ap-pear to be the real Apple Watch. It says features on the Chinese version include text messaging and a music player. It starts at 288 yuan ($45), or one-eighth the $349 price of the cheapest Apple Watch.

Alibaba, which listed on the New York Stock Exchange last year after a record initial public offering, has

faced criticism in the past for hosting the sale of counterfeit goods. It says it has been taking steps to reduce the problem.

The flood of “me too” smart-watches reflects China’s mix of skilled electronics manufacturers and a growing consumer market for bargain-price style.

Most of the world’s personal computers and mobile phones are as-sembled in China. But this country’s own companies are only starting to develop design skills and the ability to create breakthrough products.

That has led to the rise of an industry known as “shanzhai,” or “mountain forts” — hundreds of small, anonymous manufacturers that quickly copy the design or features

of popular foreign mobile phones or other products at a fraction of the price.

At least eight vendors on Taobao advertised watches as “Apple Watch” or “Apple Watch lookalike.” Most said they were compatible with Apple’s iOS or Google Inc.’s rival Android operating system.

One vendor jokingly used Chinese slang for a vulgar rich person, offer-ing an “All-New Apple Tyrant Gold Mobile Phone-Supporting Watch” for 288 yuan ($45).

Eight vendors failed to respond to questions from The Associated Press sent through their Taobao accounts.

Asked whether it had taken action against any sellers, Alibaba said in a statement, “Alibaba Group is dedi-

cated to the fight against counterfeits. We work closely with our govern-ment partners, brands and industry associations to tackle this issue at its source. We also utilize technology like data mining and big data to scrub our platforms of counterfeits.”

Alibaba faced controversy in January after a Chinese government agency accused the company of lax oversight and allowing vendors to sell counterfeit goods on Taobao. The two sides settled their dispute a few days later. The agency said its report had no legal force and Alibaba promised to tighten its oversight of vendors.

Apple, based in Cupertino, Cali-fornia, says buyers in China and Hong Kong can pre-order its watch

beginning April 10, the same day it takes orders in the United States, Ja-pan, Britain, France and Germany.

Most previous Apple products were released in China weeks or months after other markets. That fueled a trade in iPhones that were smuggled in for sale to gadget fans who were willing to pay a pre-mium.

Apple lookalikes also are on sale in markets in the southern city of Shenzhen, “the mainland’s best place to shop for ... hi-tech knockoffs,” ac-cording to the Hong Kong newspaper The South China Morning Post.

“Shanzhai Apple Watches in Shenzhen Less Than 1 Day After Launch,” said a headline on Internet portal Sohu.com. (ap)

Euro slumps on ECB stimulusTOKYO - The euro resumed its slump Thursday, sitting around 12-year lows against the

dollar, as the European Central Bank’s new stimulus and the likelihood of a US rate hike push the embattled unit closer to parity with the greenback.

Chinese makers roll out wave of Apple watch lookalikes

South Korea cuts interest rate to record low

AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon

A woman passes by signs of foreign exchange in Seoul, South Korea, Thursday, March 12, 2015. South Korea unexpectedly lowered its benchmark interest rate Thursday to a record low of 1.75 percent, joining central banks from Europe to India in efforts to revitalize sluggish economic growth.

DENPASAR — An American woman charged with premeditated murder in the death of her mother on Indonesia’s Bali island told a court Wednesday that her boy-friend killed her mother in anger after she threatened to kill their unborn baby.

Heather Mack, 19, and her boy-friend Tommy Schaefer, 21, are being tried separately by Denpasar District Court.

They are charged with murder-ing Sheila von Wiese-Mack last August at the St. Regis hotel on

Bali and face possible death by firing squad if found guilty. Von Wiese-Mack’s badly beaten body was found in a suitcase in the trunk of a taxi at the hotel.

In her first questioning in court Wednesday, Mack, who is eight months’ pregnant, said Schaefer beat her mother with a metal soup bowl after von Wiese-Mack made the threat in an argument. Von Wiese-Mack objected to their relationship.

“The blow was not so hard ... and my mother was still resist-

ing,” Mack said. “I asked Tommy to stop and then I ran into the bathroom.”

Mack said when she left the bathroom, she found Schaefer on the bed trying to give her artificial respiration.

“Tommy said my mother was not breathing,” she said. Mack said she also tried to revive her but it didn’t work.

She said they panicked and thought about either calling the police or taking the body in a suitcase to the U.S. Consulate. She

did not explain why they did not do either one.

“We panicked and didn’t know what to do,” she said.

Mack answered “no” when the judge asked whether she wished her mother dead.

According to the indictment, Schaefer battered von Wiese-Mack with the metal handle of a bowl following an argument in her room over the hotel bill.

It says Mack helped stuff her mother’s body into the suitcase by sitting on it to enable Schaefer

to close it. They then placed the suitcase in the trunk of a taxi and told the driver they were going to check out of the hotel and would return, but never did, it says.

Prosecutors said Mack had sug-gested to Schaefer while they were in America that he hire someone for $50,000 to kill her mother.

Mack and her mother had ar-rived first in Bali and were stay-ing in a room on the third floor of the hotel, while Schaefer arrived later and was staying on the sixth floor. (ap)

Peter Hans Naumann, 48, was arrested by customs officials at the resort island’s airport in September after they noticed him acting sus-piciously following his arrival on a flight from Bangkok.

An initial search turned up no drugs, but further examinations in hospital found that he had 11

capsules of cocaine in his stom-ach weighing 239 grams (8.4 ounces).

He confessed during his trial that he had been promised $5,000 to deliver the drugs.

Presiding judge Putu Gde Hari-yadi told a court in the Balinese capital Denpasar that Naumann

had been “proven legally and convincingly guilty of importing narcotics”.

The judge said mitigating fac-tors included that “the defendant regretted his action, was polite during the trial and had not been involved in a crime before”.

He handed him a 15-year jail

term, and ordered him to pay a fine of one billion rupiah ($75,700) or spend an additional three months in jail.

However, judges decided not hand him the toughest penalty in Indonesia for drug trafficking, the death sentence.

Jakarta imposes some of the toughest anti-drugs laws in the world, and is currently making preparations to execute several for-eigners on death row for narcotics

offences, including nationals from Australia, France and Brazil.

President Joko Widodo, who took office in October, has taken a hard line against the drugs trade, claiming that Indonesia is facing an “emergency” due to rising nar-cotics use, and vowing to show no clemency for traffickers on death row.

Foreigners are regularly caught with drugs on hard-partying Bali. (afp)

AP Photo/Firdia Lisnawati

Heather Mack from Chicago, Ill., stands inside a cell before a trial in Bali, Indonesia, Wednesday, March 11, 2015. Mack is charged with murdering her mother, Sheila von Wiese-Mack, whose badly beaten body was found in a suitcase in the trunk of a taxi outside an upscale hotel in the resort island last year.

German jailed for 15 years for Bali drug-smuggling

DENPASAR - A German man was Wednesday jailed for 15 years for trying to smuggle cocaine into Bali, the latest example of Indonesian authorities’ hard line against the narcotics trade as they gear up to execute several foreign drug offenders.

US woman says her boyfriend killed her mother in Indonesia

International4 Friday, March 13, 2015 Friday, March 13, 2015 13InternationalBali News

New York-based Human Rights Watch said in a report released Thursday that a special program to safeguard workers’ interests in-stituted by the U.N.’s International Labor Organization is subject to evasion that leaves factory em-ployees vulnerable to unhealthy working conditions and unfair pay and benefits.

The 140-page report, “Work Faster or Get Out: Labor Rights Abuses in Cambodia’s Garment Industry,” said factors behind the problem include flaws in the ILO’s oversight program and a failure by Cambodian officials to enforce existing labor laws and standards, partly due to corruption.

It said its report was based on interviews with more than 340 people, including 270 workers from 73 factories in Phnom Penh and nearby provinces.

“The Cambodian government should take swift measures to re-verse its terrible record of enforcing its labor laws and protect workers from abuse,” Aruna Kashyap, a researcher at Human Rights

Watch, said in a statement. “These global apparel brands are household names. They have a lot of leverage, and can and should do more to en-sure their contracts with garment factories are not contributing to labor rights abuses.”

Cambodia’s garment and textile exports for 2013 totaled $4.96 billion, roughly three-quarters of all the coun-try’s exports, with the figure increasing to an estimated $5.7 billion last year, says the report. The industry employs an estimated 700,000 workers, about 90 percent of them women.

Production for major interna-tional brands is carried out by con-tractors whose export licenses are contingent on allowing inspections and reporting under a 14-year-old scheme worked out with the ILO called Better Factories Cambodia. The program has since been used in other developing nations to en-courage good labor practices while promoting economic growth.

But the report echoes previous criticisms that the Cambodian pro-gram fails to curb significant labor rights abuses, including “forced

overtime and retaliation against those who sought exemption from overtime, lack of rest breaks, denial of sick leave, use of underage child labor, and the use of union-busting strategies to thwart independent unions.”

It said the use of short-term contracts made it easier to fire and control workers, while poor govern-ment inspections and enforcement, and aggressive tactics against inde-pendent unions, made it difficult for workers to assert their rights.

A major source of the problems, the report said, was the generally unmonitored use of subcontrac-tors — without the knowledge or agreement of the big brand compa-nies — particularly because such establishments are not covered by the Better Factories Cambodia inspections.

Human Rights Watch says about 200 apparel brands source from Cambodia, adding it was in contact with six brands, of which Adidas, Gap, and H&M “seriously dis-cussed their efforts to address the problems found.” (ap)

YANGON — Myanmar authorities have freed several stu-dents detained after a bloody protest, but others involved in the stand-off over a new education law will face charges including disrupting stability, which carries a two-year prison term.

Yee Mon, a Yangon university student who was released Thursday, said that 12 students have been freed and about 15 more were expected to be released later Thursday. “We didn’t break the law but we were peacefully protesting for academic policy change,” said the 19-year-old.

The government announced Wednesday that students who are currently in university will be freed on humanitarian grounds, while 10 Buddhist monks detained after a police crackdown on the protest in Letpadan, about 140 kilometers (90 miles) north of Yangon, had also been released.

Several student leaders and other protesters were brought to court under tight security Wednesday and were charged with five different counts ranging from disrupting public tranquility, which can result in a prison term of up to two years, to joining an unlawful assembly, which carries a six-month prison sentence or a fine.

Nearly 130 people, including about 60 students, were detained Tuesday after hundreds of riot police charged their protest, pum-meling them with batons and then dragging them into trucks, bringing a harsh end to a weeklong standoff.

The students say that the new law puts all decisions about education policy and curriculum in the hands of a group largely made up of government ministers, which critics say undermines the autonomy of universities. (ap)

AP Photo/Khin Maung Win

Protesters are detained by police after a gathering oppos-ing a new education law in Yangon, Myanmar, Thursday, March 5, 2015. Police cracked down on students and other activists opposing Myanmar’s new education law, charging protesters with batons and dragging them into trucks at the landmark Sule Pagoda in the heart of the old capital, Yangon.

Some detained Myanmar

students freed but others face

charges

AP Photo/Heng Sinith

Phil Robertson, left, deputy director of Human Rights Watch’s Asia division, and the group’s Asia researcher in the women’s rights division Aruna Kashyap attend a press conference in Phnom Penh, Cambodia Thursday, March 12, 2015.

Rights group: big brands should fight

Cambodian labor abusePHNOM PENH, Cambodia — Leading clothing retailers such as Gap and H&M need to

help alleviate labor abuses at factories in Cambodia that manufacture their products, a human rights organization said.

SINGARAJA - Tofu and tempeh makers at Kampung Tinggi Singaraja have begun to fret and are looking for ways to reduce production costs because of the deprecia-tion of the rupiah against the US dollar. Such condition has had a direct impact on the price hike of imported soy-bean on the market. Tempeh producers have been forced to reduce the amount of tofu and tempeh that they produce every day.

The price of imported soybean

has gone up to IDR 7,800 from IDR 7,000 per kg. The price hike of im-ported soybean has forced tofu and tempeh makers to raise the price by about IDR 800 over the last two days due to increased production costs.

Tofu and tempeh producer Mo-hammed Said, said that a number of tofu and tempeh makers have had to find ways around increas-ing costs, by reducing the amount of soybean in each pack that they produce. !kg packs have been re-duced to 2 ounces per pack. “Our production costs have gone up over the last two days sir, so in order to not suffer losses, we have started to reduce the amount we provide per pack, rather than raise our prices.” he said on Wednesday (Mar. 11).

He said production normally re-quires 150 kg of soybeans but then it has been reduced to 80 kg of soy-bean. He hopes the government can help to offset the cost of imported soybeans. “We hope the price of im-ported soybeans will go down again soon. If the price is stable, the tofu and tempeh makers can continue to work” he said. (kmb34)

SINGARAJA - Heavy rain for three hours caused the area of Seririt subdistrict to flood. It was alleged to happen due to the collapse of levee at Subak Yeh Anakan, Banjarasem village, Seririt subdistrict, Bule-leng. As a result, the water easily flowed as high as adult’s knee and swamped the road and settlements, Wednesday (Mar. 11).

The Regent of Buleleng, Putu Agus Suradnyana, accompanied by the Head of the Buleleng Disaster Mitigation Agency (BPBD), Ketut Yasa, and Chairperson of the PKK Motivator Team, Mrs. Aries Sujati Suradnyana, after getting the in-formation on the flooding in Seririt subdistrict immediately came down to monitor the field conditions.

Based on observation in the field, the surge of water surrounded Bubunan village, Seririt village, Tangguwisia village, Sulanyah village and Banjarasem village. Flooding with the height of the adult’s knee made residents intro-spect by making impromptu dike to prevent flooding from entering their homes.

To anticipate the subsequent flooding, local residents attempted to secure their valuables, including motorcycles and cars. “I wish the public to remain vigilant over the flooding. Other than in Seririt, when entering rainy season the entire community in Buleleng is expected to prevent flooding by maintaining sanitation of their respective envi-

ronment,” he said.Headman of Banjarasem, Gede

Aria Jana, said that approximately 200 homes were flooded. It was the most severe flooding condition and required special attention from the government in anticipating further flooding. “Flooding condition is getting worse, not to mention the collapse of levee owned by Subak Yeh Anakan. To that end, residents directly saved their valuables for fear of being flooded,” he said.

Some areas on Jalan Ngurah Rai and RT 1 Kampung Madura, Seririt village were also affected by the worst flooding inundation. Water level reached adult’s waist, so that residents spontaneously did not want to take risk and go to highest

places. Meanwhile, other residents were unable to move slightly but had to wait until the water had completely receded. Conditions of floodwater in the area around Jalan Seririt-Singaraja, Tangguwisia vil-lage and Sulanyah village had made traffic jam for a few hours.

Meanwhile, in the area of Bubu-nan village, the house of local resident also flooded and made people panic. Although flooding had occurred repeatedly, the con-dition remained to make people to be extra careful. Flooding this year was rated as the most severe. “Now, the flooding is the most severe. We are so difficult and must clean up our home again. The flooding already reached the

height of adult’s waist,” said Ketut Mika Wijaya.

When confirmed separately, the Head of the Buleleng Disas-ter Mitigation Agency (BPBD), Ketut Yasa, asserted the field team personnel had been deployed to anticipate subsequent flooding. His party had assigned a team to monitor the condition of flooding that submerged hundreds of homes in Seririt subdistrict. All residents were still asked to be vigilant and prioritize children. When the condition got worse, people were expected to find a higher place. “The condition remains idle. Our team in the field has been deployed to maintain the safety of residents,” he said. (kmb34)

Heavy rain for three hours, Residents of Seririt surrounded by flooding

IBP/Dewa Kusuma

The tofu and empeh maker in Kampung Tinggi, Buleleng is processing the soybeans

Hampered by high price of imported soybeans

Production of tofu and tempeh declining

3Friday, March 13, 2015 14 InternationalInternational Bali NewsFashion Friday, March 13, 2015

PARIS — This season’s mantra is: pile it all on. We’ve seen it notably at Lanvin, Dries Van Noten — and now, here, at Kenzo’s draped, voluminous and colorful fashion spectacle.

It takes a lot to drag fashionistas out early on a Sunday morning to a venue on the out-skirts of the city.

But Kenzo rewarded those who did — feeding them tasty cookies and coffee — and treating them to an incredibly energetic pre-sentation, in which gargantuan rectangular mirrored walls moved behind models in the warehouse venue.

The collection too continued this energy in its vivid splashes of kinetic graphic lines and

flashes of contrasting, colored prints.But fall-winter was all about the layering.Geometric lines featured on bulging and

layered A-line column dresses, topped off with funky asymmetrical poncho-hoods.

One billowing printed look, an oversize shirt with a top and layered skirt, featured a play on jarring prints — the skirt looking Eastern, the leopard print top, Western.

Kenzo is all about the cultural fusion.The dark looks featured a nice play of

camouflage print on a poncho and assorted jungle pants: if you looked closely you real-ized the pattern was of flowers.

It was tongue in cheek, and is bound to be a hit. (ap)

But Chanel, the fashion house that is perhaps the most synonymous with Paris’s reputation for glamour, is deter-mined to keep the Paris dream alive.

On Tuesday, it pulled out all the stops as it showed off its autumn-win-ter women’s collection in a pop-up but fully functioning, specially-built Paris cafe that served both as catwalk and as guest refreshment.

Designer Karl Lagerfeld created the cinema-grade set from scratch in the middle of a neoclassical, glass-roofed exhibition hall in the middle of the city.

Waiters in crisp white shirts and black vests carried silver trays with steaming coffee and croissants to

models as they slid in to sit in one of the glass-and--brass trimmed booths or to stand nonchalantly at the wooden bar after their turn down the runway.

The vast illusory cafe was dubbed “Brasserie Gabrielle” in a nod to the famous founder Gabrielle Bonheur Chanel, nicknamed “Coco”.

The resulting cafe scene was so utterly, archetypically Parisian that fans of the movies “Amelie” or “Midnight in Paris” might recognise an imagined ideal once again stage-managed into fleeting reality.

“It’s the biggest French brasserie ever,” Lagerfeld boasted after the show, as he proudly stood behind the

mock/real bar to speak to journalists.“It’s an idealised vision of a Paris

of today that I wanted to amplify, to pour water on ‘French bashing’.

“Even if the French say that France is ugly, it’s not so ugly -- no need to exaggerate. It’s not as bad as all that.”

The German designer who lives in Paris -- “I’m international, global!” he exclaimed -- said he could get away with pumping up the Paris il-lusion because he’s not French. “If a French person had done it, it would been patriotic.”

Kris Jenner, an avid Chanel client and the mother of Kim Kardashian who was attending other Paris fashion

Chanel brings fantasy Paris to life at fashion week

AP Photo/Francois Mori

Models wear creations for Chanel’s ready to wear fall-winter 2015-2016 fashion collection presented during the Paris fashion week, in Paris, France, Tuesday, March 10, 2015.

PARIS - Paris, according to lore and legend, is a city predominantly inhabited by elegant women, chic cafes and famous faces. Visitors, of course, find the reality more down-to-earth. The French capital can sometimes seem more heavily touristed, surly and less sartorially ob-sessed than they might have anticipated.

shows with husband Kanye West, said she found the cafe setting “abso-lutely wonderful, magnificent”.

“I can’t believe he (Largerfeld) put all this together in such little time,” she told AFP.

The collection models displayed in Chanel’s ersatz cafe featured knee-length skirts and dress ensembles in the house’s signature checkered black-and-white. There were also two-tone numbers that showcased Chanel’s take on the ubiquitous winter parka: a fashion-statement pil-lowed jacket complete with hood.

Other looks boasted autumn colours including bronze and dark blues, and many were accessorised with Chanel’s range of instantly rec-ognisable handbags.

All the models had their feet encased in the same shoes: cream-beige with black-toes and practical

square heels.The clothes appeared to glide in

and out of a range of retro periods from the last century, their timeless-ness emphasised by the brasserie in the background.

Lagerfeld, who seems indefati-gable at age 81, said he took great pleasure in unveiling eight collections a year, instead of the four ready-to-wear and haute couture ranges brought out by most other top-end houses, or even just the haute couture series some designer rivals like Jean Paul Gaultier have fallen back on exclusively.

Other designers “may be a little lazy,” Lagerfeld said mischievously.

“You have to know in what kind of world you live. If the pace of the world is too big for you, there are other jobs. Or do half-time jobs. That’s not my problem.” (afp)

Kenzo says layering is in at Paris Fashion Week

AP Photo/Zacharie Scheurer

Models wear creations for Kenzo’s ready-to-wear Fall-Winter 2015/2016 fashion collection presented at the Paris Fashion Week in Paris, France, Sunday, March 8, 2015.

SEMARAPURA - Batu Tumpeng Beach at Gelgel village, Klungkung, is recently visited by many travelers. The overlay of coast in the south of Jalan Bypass Prof. I.B. Mantra attracts the attention of travelers who like surfing. Unfortunately, though visited by many travelers, the beach status has not yet become a tourist attraction. It makes the Batu Tumpeng Beach seem to be neglected as one of the potential tourist attractions that must be developed by local government.

The Head of Klungkung Tourism and Culture Agency, Wayan Sujana, admitted the Batu Tumpeng Beach did not have the status as tourist attraction. On that account, no matter how busy the tourist visits to the beach was, local government could not take advantage of it as a source of the regionally gener-ated revenue (PAD). However, Sujana realized the potential of the region. He also admitted to have come down to the field for several times along with the staff to check in detail the condition of the beach, and then drew conclusion what steps to be taken next.

To arrange as a whole, Sujana said that local government would make de-tailed engineering design of the region as a tourism area this year. In addition, the potential of Batu Tumpeng Beach had also been included in the monitor-ing of Coastal Planning Team of local government to be arranged together with the strategic planning of regional arrangement for Tegal Besar-Goa La-wah having been designed long ago by the Regent of Klungkung, Nyoman Suwirta. Sujana asserted that serious arrangement should be done together starting from the severely damaged road access, the arrangement of erod-ing coastline and provision of tourist accommodation to management by local government.

“It must be made feasible first, set as one of the attractions and well managed either in the imposition of levies or others,” said Sujana. After completing the DED in collaboration with consultant, it could be ascertained how the draft of Batu Tumpeng Beach would look like. At present, the beach was affected by quite bad abrasion.

“The legal aspect presented con-sists of 5 points. Essentially, it should refer to the spatial planning rules of Denpasar Municipality in the area of Benoa Bay because it belongs to conservation area and protected area so that when it is revitalized or reclaimed with the function of tourist destinations, it will contradict to the existing regional spatial plan-ning (RTRW) of Denpasar,” said Sudarsana during public hearing that conducted to get public view on Benoa Bay reclamation plan.

In terms of technical aspect, Benoa Bay was an estuary area of Badung River, Mati River and Punggawa River so that the sedi-mentation occurred in the area. Reclamation was also mentioned to cause significant changes in ocean currents and abrasion or destabilize the beach. Besides, it would also cause traffic congestion in South Bali as well as affect the landscape and psychological aspect due to the loss of the bay.

“In terms of socio-cultural aspect, Benoa Bay poses the sanctified estu-ary of five rivers. Other social aspects are the presence of some attitudes and perceptions of the community show-ing the rejection and it should also

become a consideration. In terms of socio-economic aspect, the addition of population will cause the carrying capacity to be unstable as the impact of 250,000 workers. In addition, the reclamation is also contrary to the concept of community-based economy and disrupt the location of catching fish,” he added.

Ministry representative who at-tended the public consultation on the environmental impact analysis of the PT TWBI seemed to take investor’s side. When a participant mentioned if reclamation would cause abrasion, the representative of the Ministry of Maritime Affairs and Fisheries, Eko Rudiyanto, rushed to clarify.

Eko said the PT TWBI so far only had a permit of location to prepare its master planning, environmental permit, detailed plan for reclamation and method on the implementation of the equipment use and schedules. So far, the TWBI was said to have not yet carried out reclamation at Benoa Bay because it had not had a permit of implementation.

“Sorry, I need a bit clarification, which reclamation has caused the existing abrasion? So far, the permit of its implementation has not been issued yet and I am confident that

PT TWBI has never dared to carry it out,” he said.

When met after the consulta-tion, Eko explained that his party granted the permission of location to PT TWBI because its proposal had complied with a number of checklists or requirements set forth by the ministry. One of them met the requirements as stipulated in the Presidential Regulation or in accordance with the spatial plan-ning rules.

“The permit is not for reclama-tion. The TWBI only has the permit of location from the Ministry of Maritime and Fisheries Affairs (KKP), while I do not know about the other permits. From the KKP, there will be the permit of implemen-tation. Then, it can only be issued if it already has the Environmental Impact Analysis (Amdal) document, proposal, feasibility study, master plan, detailed design, working plan and what measures to be taken to en-sure the sustainability and livelihood of many communities in surrounding area,” he continued.

Related to the public consultation of the TWBI previously questioned by ForBALI, Eko even assessed the consultation was legitimate in order

Reclamation contrary to spatial plan of Denpasar

DENPASAR - Denpasar Municipality represented by the Head of Denpasar Environment Agency (BLH), Sudarsana, remained to refer to the consideration letter sent by the Mayor of Denpasar to Director General of Marine, Coastal and Small Islands dated July 4, 2014. In essence, the letter carried five aspects of consideration regarding the legality, technical, environmental, social, cultural and socio-economic aspect.

to collect data and make term of ref-erence (TOR). “Thus, when judging it illegal, it misguides. I think it in-deed has not owned an Amdal permit because officially the Amdal process is just issued right now. So, if it col-lected the data for initial consultation is not a problem. The addition is just a matter of term, from earlier the groove is clear,” he said.

A similar statement was also ex-pressed by representative of the Min-istry of Environment and Forestry, Ary Sudijanto. According to him, the process of public involvement in the Amdal process was stipulated in the Decree of the Minister of Environ-ment No.17/2012. In the rule there was no requirement that the an-nouncement and public consultation should comply with administrative requirements, such as the permit of location.

“There is no such requirement. It is only applied in the administrative test for feasibility of document as reference for trial or not. So, none of the rules had been violated. In terms of substance, the more initiators to make public consultation, the more beneficial will be for us to keep the process more transparent and par-ticipatory. If we deny it, let’s say, the previous one does not apply and so forth, we even waste input. The input submitted by the public turns useless, it is uglier, isn’t it?” he said.

Ary added, in principle, there were no rules violated by the TWBI.

If it had organized public consulta-tion three years earlier and the public inputs in the consultation were used as material for preparing the terms of reference, according to him, would be even increasingly better.

“So, just now I encouraged the community not only to see in terms of formal process. If possible for the TWBI, here is the tough atmosphere when chatting with society at stall. Simply ask their concerns, it will be more useful. What is actually the desire of society, what is the concern of society and what is their fear of that activity? It is the benefit of this formal process,” he added.

It was said that his party would not issue an environmental permit if the PT TWBI could not cope with the impact of the reclamation plan. Conversely, if the PT TWBI was proved to be able to overcome all the negative effects mentioned by the community, then there would be no reason to reject the reclamation mega project.

“People have the right to be protected, to get good and healthy environment, but the entrepreneur is also protected by laws. I cannot stop this process because they have the rights and they already fulfill all the administrative requirements. If I refuse it, I will be prosecuted by the administrative court because of providing no public service. The TWBI also belongs to the part of society,” he added. (kmb32)

Batu Tumpeng Beach, a neglected tourist attraction

IBP/Bagiarta

Batu Tumpeng Beach at Gelgel village, Klungkung, is re-cently visited by many travelers. The overlay of coast in the south of Jalan Bypass Prof. I.B. Mantra attracts the attention of travelers who like surfing.

Even, a temple at the shoreline namely the Ketapang Kembar Temple had been eroded since the beginning of 2013. Process of the levee repair could just be carried out in the eastern part of the coastline by using boulders. In addition, it had also been equipped with the installation of paving block for pedestrians.

Every day, dozens of travelers came to this beach for surfing. Local waves on the beach were suitable for foreign travelers to channel their hobby. They kept coming, even

though the condition of road access was severely damaged. Such condi-tion drew the attention of various circles. A legislator of the Klungkung House, Komang Suantara, asked to immediately arrange the place, so that it deserved to be called as a tourist attraction. After that, the local govern-ment should also be able to manage and develop the region as a new tourist destination in Bali. “It is very potential to increase the regionally generated revenue of Klungkung,” said Suan-tara. (kmb31)

International2 Friday, March 13, 2015 15International Activities

Bali News

EvEry Temple and Shrine has a special date for it annual Ceremony, or “ Odalan “, every 210 days according to Balinese calendar, including the smaller ancestral shrine which each family possesses. Because of this practically every few days a ceremony of festival of some kind takes place in some Village in Bali. There are also times when the entire island celebrated the same Holiday, such as at Galungan, Kuningan, Nyepi day, Saraswati day, Tumpek Landep day, Pagerwesi day, Tumpek Wayang day etc.

The dedication or inauguration day of a Temple is con-sidered its birth day and celebration always takes place on the same day if the wuku or 210 day calendar is used. When new moon is used then the celebration always happens on new moon or full moon. The day of course can differ the religious celebration of a temple lasts at least one full day with some temple celebrating for three days while the celebration of Besakih temple, the Mother Temple, is never less than 7 days and most of the time it lasts for 11 days, depending on the importance of the occasion.

The celebration is very colorful. The shrine are dressed with pieces of cloths and sometimes with brocade, sailings, decorations of carved wood and sometimes painted with gold and Chinese coins, very beautifully arranged, are hung in the four corners of the shrine. In front of shrine are placed red, white or black umbrellas depending which Gods are worshipped in the shrines.

In front of important shrine one sees, besides these umbrellas soars, tridents and other weapons, the “umbul-umbul”, long flags, all these are prerogatives or attributes of Holiness. In front of the Temple gate put up “Penjor”, long bamboo poles, decorated beautifully ornaments of young coconut leaves, rice and other products of the land. Most beautiful to see are the girls in their colorful attire, carrying offerings, arrangements of all kinds fruits and colored cakes, to the Temple. Every visitor admires the grace with which the carry their load on their heads.

Balinese Temple Ceremony


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The Royal Santrian provides an unforgettable wedding experience on Paradise Island. It offers a nice wed-ding chapel, beautiful decorations and a royal dinner party on the popular Tanjung Benoa beach, Nusa Dua. This exclusive outdoor venue can accommodate hundreds of guests. It is designed as perfectly as possible by a professional team that will be on hand every step of the wedding celebration.

The luxury wedding reception concept includes an excellent menu with fine wine. Wine is always the essential element to a successful wedding reception. The Chef and talented Food & Beverage Team will be delighted to accommodate guests’

culinary tastes with dishes inspired by fresh ingredients. They will add flavor to the couple and the their guests’ heartfelt celebration with a custom-ized wedding cake along with creative canapes and sweet treats. The Royal Santrian will ensure that everything is impeccably presented to look just as good as it tastes.

General Manager Ricky Putra presents the site which is built on 2.5 hectares with 3 Royal Villas and 17 Deluxe Villas. The location is im-manently suitable for a honey moon too. Guests will find all the fabulous amenities of an exquisitely luxurious home. The sizeable private pools and open-air gazebo with dining area offer a living space in which to spend relax-

Absolutely, Bali Island retains a variety of uniqueness. This epithet is frequently revealed by tourists. In this connection, I.B. Darmayasa graduated from Diploma 4 majoring in Tourism Studies of the Udayana University (1995) can be said to be quite good at bringing in tourists. By all means, it is not enough for him to rely on the fascination of the object to draw tourist arrival. Due to his competency, he was then entrusted to promote the Villa Kayu Raja, Seminyak as Sales & Marketing Manager.

The man of Denpasar-born on October 27, 1972 is indeed has a strong foundation in sales domain. He always has confidence and optimism in doing the job and it is the key to success of reaching customers. As a sale and marketing

person, the men who likes traveling, sporting and reading has had a dozen years of experience. “My current job has been focused, namely selling the hotel rooms and facilities only,” he said.

Why can it be so? The man with computer skills and some foreign languages then said that before working in Villa Kayu Raja he worked in an Internet Portal Company and Agent with the position as the Head of Sales & Marketing. His responsibility was to bring in guests from all over the world by offering a variety of products starting from hotels, villas, restaurants, rafting and some others.

To support the matter, added Gustra as he is familiarly greet-ed, he first looked for the data

on the growth of per capita income of a country, learned about the char-acteristics of their economic growth of the target market. Similarly, he

should also identify the advantages and dis-

advantages of his products. “I’m a salesperson that has understood how to sell a product. The key is to know well

the market,” he said.

(kmb)

IBP/kmb

IBP/kmb

Profile

I.B. Putra Darmayasa:Unique selling point is key

to successful marketing

Romantic Wedding Venue

The royal Santrian Luxury Beach villas Bali is one of the most romantic wedding venues in Nusa Dua. With its white sand beach and unobstructed view of the Indian Ocean, The royal Santrian has the ideal atmosphere for hosting a wedding celebration. The lovely couple can enjoy a peaceful location and have a taste of truly royal Balinese hospitality surrounded by beautiful green gardens.

ing days and romantic evenings with conscientious staff on call and ready to attend to every desire.

“Within the villa, the tasteful fittings and furnish-ings surround the guest with comfort and conve-nience. These will enable the guest to fully savor the relaxing atmosphere,” said Ricky Putra one afternoon while giving a taste of the Royal Santrian menu to Bali Travel News. (ocha)

“This One Day No Cash Pro-gram is intended for transactions at minimarkets and supermarkets in Bali” said the Head of Bali Representative Office of the Bank of Indonesia, Dewi Setyowati, in Kuta, on Wednesday (Mar. 11).

According to Setyowati, the one-day without cash that will be take place in April will require people to use electronic money in-stead of cash for their transactions. The idea is familiarize people with banking in general and specifically with non-cash transactions. “No cash day will be tested at Tiara Dewata and Hardys first” she said. Before the no-cash concept is ap-plied they will launch an educa-tional program and have banking representatives on standby in the supermarkets.

“If people are caught off guard on no-cash day, there will be a bank counter set up on site so that people can trade their cash for electronic money” she explained.

This program is intended to edu-cate people about the advantages of non-cash transactions, includ-ing the efficiency and usefulness of electronic transactions. With e-money, SMS banking, internet banking and other such services, transactions can be made more safely, quickly, comfortably and

SEMARAPURA - Reckless speeding on Jalan Bypass I.B. Mantra has caused residents of Klungkung to complain.The reck-less speeding is not only com-mitted by local residents but by those from outside of Klungkung as well, specifically by a group of youth from a gambling arena with members coming from outside of the area. Unfortunately, the extreme speeding which takes place every Saturday night, has yet to be dealt with by the police. “I witnessed the reckless speeding action as well as police officers disbanding those

watching, rather than going after the culprits” said Gelgel resident, Wayan Merta, on Wednesday.

According to Merta, the reckless speeding in Klungkung is most fre-quently committed on Jalan Bypass I.B. Mantra west of the intersection at Uma Dukuh hamlet, Gelgel. The speeding usually takes place between 11 o’clock at night and two o’clock in the morning. Most of those speeding down the highway are not from Klungkung. Local residents are dimly spectators.

Similar comments were also given by another resident of Gelgel,

Ketut Suparta. According to him, the reckless speeding is committed almost every day on Jalan Bypass I.B. Mantra. However, it is most severe on Saturday nights when groups of young people park their motorbikes on the side of the high-way to watch.

When the command to start is given, the young spectators cheer the speeding mtorbiker and may people even engage in betting mil-lion so frupiah on the outcome of the speed racing.

Chief of the Klungkung Police Criminal Investigation Unit, Wayan

Subrata, when asked for his con-firmation claimed to have never witnessed such activities on Jalan Bypass I.B. Mantra. According to Subrata, his officers in charge of Lepang Post, even frequently come down to monitor the Dukuh area to the west. Five officers assigned to the location are on guard for 24 hours a day. They are also equipped with a Kancil car and patrol sedan unit. “Yes, if there is in fact such speeding going on, the officers at local post will promptly come down to the location to disband any disorder” said Subrata.

Meanwhile, the rise of reckless speeding in the area of Klungkung has also made the Deputy Regent of Klungkung, Made Kasta, con-cerned. The deputy regent from Akah village hopes that the police will increase their surveillance by patrolling places prone to such ac-tivities. This is especially important because those who are involved in the reckless speeding are mostly young people who are national as-set that should be saved. “I do hope the officers will conduct maximum surveillance so as to avoid casual-ties” said deputy regent. (119)

People complain about reckless speeding on Jalan Bypass Mantra

IBP/File

In order to encourage the use of electronic money (e-money) in Bali, the Bali Representative Office of the Bank of Indonesia (BI) has launched a program of one day without cash.

BI announces one day without cashMANGUPUrA - In order to

encourage the use of electronic money (e-money) in Bali, the Bali Representative Office of the Bank of Indonesia (BI) has launched a program of one day without cash.

from anywhere. “Non-cash transactions are in-

deed more practical and efficient because users do not have to bother to count their money when making

payments and receiving funds. We hope to educate the public, busi-nesses and the government about its advantages” she explained.

These are some of the reasons

why the use of cash has begun to diminish all over the world and be replaced with non-cash money such as debit cards, credit card, and electronic money integrated with

mobile payments. Dewi plans to target merchants in markets and those selling fruits and other crops for education about the advantages of e-money. (kmb27)

Page 13

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Dion hasn’t performed since her July 29 show at The Colosseum at Caesars Palace. She has been suffer-ing from inflammation of her throat muscles and caring for her husband who had a cancerous tumor removed in 2013.

Aldo Giampaolo said in a statement emailed Wednesday that he wanted to reassure Dion’s fans. He says the contracts for four of Dion’s band members would not be renewed when they expire this weekend.

A Caesars Entertainment spokes-woman says the company and show producer AEG are ready to welcome Dion back to the venue as soon as she is ready but confirmed that there are no performance dates to announce. (ap)

LOS ANGELES - Jim Parsons, the American actor famous for his portrayal of a quirky, self-centered scientist Sheldon Cooper on “The Big Bang Theory,” earned a star Wednesday on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame.

Parsons, 41, was flanked by Kaley Cuoco-Sweeting, Johnny Galecki and the rest of his castmates in the wildly popular series now going into its eighth season. Fans jostled for autographs.

“One of the things I know is, the main reason I’m in this career and here today, is because of my fam-ily and the support they gave me, and the way I was encouraged to pursue this insane dream of acting, from Texas to here,” Parsons said looking at his mother and partner, art director Todd Spiewak.

But “the biggest reason is be-cause I had the chance to play this

incredible character that I neither created, nor write for, nor put into a series.

“That credit goes to Chuck Lorre and Bill Prady and Steve Molaro. And the credit goes to the rest of the cast,” said Parsons, an Emmy and Golden Globe-winner.

Parsons plays a highly intelligent yet ill-adapted university professor -- mad about comic books and vid-eogames -- whose group of mostly scientist friends help expose him to the real world in seemingly end-less, and painful, ways. The show has been a top US TV comedy for years.

“You have accomplished some-thing that’s beyond imagination. This is just the beginning,” Lorre said.

“People laugh at your work, and their life is a little bit better. I’m deeply proud of you.” (afp)

LONDON - British rock band Muse announced the release of a new album called “Drones” and a tour on Wednesday, keeping up with previous themes of science fiction and political unease.

Lead singer Matt Bellamy said the band’s seventh studio album will be released on June 8, after

months of hinting that new work was on the way.

“To me, ‘Drones’ are meta-phorical psychopaths which enable psychopathic behaviour with no re-course. The world is run by Drones utilising Drones to turn us all into Drones,” Bellamy said.

“This album explores the

journey of a human, from their abandonment and loss of hope, to their indoctrination by the system to be a human drone, to their eventual defection from their oppressors.”

A new track, “Psycho”, will be released on YouTube on Thursday, followed by the release of the al-

bum’s first single “Dead Inside” on March 23.

The band is to play a series of live shows across Britain in March, followed by a tour that will pass through countries including Ger-many, Russia and France.

Hailing from Devon in England, the band’s signature fusion of

genres has found considerable suc-cess over a 21-year career, and the group composed the official song of the London Olympics in 2012.

Previous hits include anthems “Time is Running Out” and “Super-massive Black Hole”, and the band had sold over 20 million albums worldwide. (afp)

Rock band Muse announce new album and tour

Celine Dion to return

to stageLAS VEGAS — A representative

for Celine Dion says the singer will return to the Las Vegas stage but offered no dates for future perfor-mances.

AP Photo/Julie Jacobson, File

Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP

Kunal Nayyar, from left, Mayim Bialik, Melissa Rauch, Simon Helberg, Johnny Galecki and Kaley Cuoco, and center, Jim Parsons, who is honored with a star at the Hollywood Walk of Fame on Wednesday, March 11, 2015, in Los Angeles.

Jim Parsons of ‘Big Bang Theory’ gets

Hollywood star

Tourists sunbathed at Canggu Beach, Bali Island. Tourism industry grows rapidly but does not pay attention to carrying capacity and the capacity of the environment. The nature of small

Bali Island will be increasingly eroded and have an impact on the emergence

of crisis.

News can also be heard in “Bali Image” at Global Radio FM 96.5 from 9.30 until 10.00 am. Listen to Global Radio FM at http://globalfmbali.listen2my-

radio.com or live video streaming at http://radioglobalfmbali.com and http://ustream.tv/channel/global-fm-bali.

IBP/Wawan

This was revealed by National Executive of the Indonesian Forum for the Environment (WALHI), Deddy Ratih, during a public discussion on the results of research by the MP3EI, Development or Threat to the Con-servation and Community-managed Area.

“WALHI conducted a research in three regions namely Lampung, Bali and South Kalimantan” said Deddy accompanied by other researchers, Khalisah Khalid and Sita S, in Den-pasar on Wednesday (Mar. 11).

Results of the research indicated

that many crises are beginning to surface due to the impact of tourism, proving that the tourism industry with the number of accommodations as the sole indicators of progress has had devasting effects on marine conser-vation, culture and management and requires pressure to put on creating a moratorium on the construction of tourist accommodations in Bali.

Benoa Bay is a unique ecosystem. It is a shallow estuary where Pung-gawa River, Balian River, Badung River, Mati River, Soma River, Mum-bul River and Bualu River empty into

the waters of Benoa Bay. The estuary in the area of Benoa Bay creates a typology that provides particular habitat in these shallow coastal waters, for mangroves, seagrass beds, macro-zoobenthos and abundance of infauna components and high biodiversity.

“Today, Benoa Bay is threatened by tourist accommodations and an infrastructure development plan with an integrated tourism development program. Developments using a land reclamation model has met with re-jection from many parties, especially the people of Bali, because they still

consider that the territorial water of Benoa Bay is a part of their culture,” he said.

Some researchers, continued Ded-dy, have shown that the impact of land reclamation could cause floods. The ecological crisis threatening Bali is right in front of our eyes so policies to prevent it are required. “At least, to keep the environment on land and sea sustainable. Spatial planning regula-tions are not adhered to and are even changed, and in order to accommodate the interests of capital owners or inves-tors,” said Deddy.

Eliminating coral reefs, seagrass beds and mangrove forests by means of reclamation would further increase the burden on the environmental sta-bility of the area.

Related to the result of research,

the WALHI conveyed some recom-mendations to the government such as immediately revoking the Presidential Regulation No.51/2014 so as to pre-vent the reclamation of Benoa Bay, Presidential Regulation No.48/2014 regarding the amendment of Presi-dential Regulation No.32/2011 on the masterplan of the acceleration and expansion of Indonesia’s economic development from 2011 to 2025 as well as stop the MP3EI projects hav-ing indication to increase the amount of emissions. (rah)

Mass tourism in Bali causing degradation of the environmentDENPASAR - The tourism industry is growing rapidly but does not take into account the car-

rying capacity of the environment. Nature on the small island of Bali will be increasingly eroded and give rise to a severe crisis if left unchecked. Cultural tourism having switched to mass tour-ism in Bali has degraded many things, including the social, cultural and environmental aspects and is causing a water crisis, massive land conversions and other worrying things.

Edisi 13 Maret 2015 | International Bali Post

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