Edition Monday, August 20, 2018 | International Bali Post

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Monday, August 20, 2018

UK’s richest man forced out of the shadows

LONDRES - Reclusive titan of industry Jim Ratcliffe has found himself under unusual scrutiny after being declared Britain’s richest man, with his political leanings and tax affairs coming under the microscope.

The 65-year-old head of the Ineos chemicals group has assets worth an estimated £21 billion ($26.7 billion, 23.5 billion euros), putting him top of the 2018 Sunday Times rich list.

He was only 18th on last year’s list but the value of his company, of which he owns 60 percent, soared last year, propelling him up the ranks and earning him a knighthood from Queen Elizabeth II. It is a long way from his humble beginnings, growing up in social

housing in Manchester, northern England.

After earning a chemistry degree from the University of Birmingham and an MBA from the London Business School, Ratcliffe began a 40-year career in the business world at investment company Advent International before creating Ineos in 1998.

The company went on to become an industrial juggernaut in a country increasingly dominated by the service sector.

The group now has annual sales of $60 billion and employs over 18,000 people in 24 countries.

Chemicals manufactured by Ineos are found in various everyday products, from shower gel to medication. (afp)

Monday, August 20, 2018

Defia presents first gold for Indonesia

JAKARTA - Taekwondoin Defia Rosmaniar has won Indonesia’s first Asian Games gold medal after coming out on top in the taekwondo women’s individual Poomsae category.

Defia, with a score of 8.690, won gold after beating IR Iran’s Marjan Salahshouri 8.470 score in a match at JCC Senayan, Jakarta, Sunday.

Defia advanced to the semifinals after strong showings in the knockouts and quarterfinals.

In the round 16, Defia beat Wong Kai Yu of Hong Kong, while in the quarterfinals, she defeated Tuyet Van Chau of Vietnam. In the semifinals, she ousted Jihye Yun of South Korea (KOR).

Defia was born 23 years ago on May 25, 1995.

She has a height of 167 centimeters and weighs 51 kilograms.

Meanwhile Nineteen-year-old wushu athlete Edgar Xavier Marvelo became the first Indonesia medalist after securing silver in the men’s changquan final.

The changquan final took place at JIExpo Sports Hall, Jakarta, at 9:00 a.m. on Sunday.

Marvelo picked up silver with a score of 9.72, just 0.3 points below the score of gold medalist Peiyuan Sun from China.

Marvelo is proud to win a medal for host country Indonesia. “Thanks to everyone, including the officials, coaches and friends.

Also to my family who has supported and encouraged me so I can win the silver medal,” said Marvelo in tears of joy.

Head coach Noviyanti was delighted with Marvelo’s achievement. “This medal is also dedicated to our country, which just celebrated its 73rd Independence Day,” Novi said.

Another coach, Susyana, said the Indonesia wushu team did not expect Marvelo to get the top spot.

“We didn’t expect him to get a gold medal. The main thing is that he gave a good performance. Apparently, Marvelo can win silver.

It is a good achievement considering Marvelo is a rookie athlete,” Susyana said.The Indonesia women’s badminton team stepped into the quarterfinals after beating Hong Kong, China 3-0, although two Indonesian women’s single players had to play three games to win the match at Istora Senayan on Sunday.

SUJIT JAISWAL / AFP

In this file photo taken on June 28, 2018, Indian Bollywood actress Priyanka Chopra (L) accompanied by Nick Jonas.

India star Chopra to become ‘Mrs Jonas’

MUMBAI - American singer Nick Jonas on Saturday announced Indian superstar Priyanka Chopra will be “Mrs Jonas” after the couple performed a traditional ceremony in Mumbai, the home of Bollywood cinema.

Jim Ratcliffe

Andy Buchanan / AFP

Jonas, 25, posted a photo with Chopra on Instagram, captioning it: “Future Mrs. Jonas. My heart.

My love.”

Chopra, 36, posted the same photo on her Instagram page, writing: “Taken... with all my heart and soul.”

She was seen wearing a diamond ring that Jonas reportedly bought after shutting down a Tiffany store in New York last month.

Chopra, who won the Miss World pageant in 2000, is one of Bollywood’s most identifiable stars and one of the few to have achieved success in the West.

She stars in the ABC thriller series “Quantico” and has released songs with US chart-toppers including Pitbull and The Chainsmokers.

Jonas first found success as a child as the frontman of The Jonas Brothers with his two siblings.

The brothers hailed from a deeply devout Christian family and presented a wholesome image, including wearing purity rings to promote chastity.

In more recent years Jonas remolded himself with with a more mature and edgy musical image, as well as turning to acting.

He has been romantically linked

to a number of celebrities including Miley Cyrus and Selena Gomez.

In photos shared on social media Saturday, Chopra and Jonas were seen performing a prayer ritual in traditional Indian attires.

While Chopra opted for a flowing yellow ensemble, Jonas wore white kurta-pyjama. Jonas’ parents also wore Indian outfits.

Rumours that the duo were engaged kicked off last month when People magazine reported Jonas had proposed to Chopra after a whirlwind two months of dating.

The couple are yet to announce a wedding date. (afp)

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Indonesia’s Defia Rosmaniar competes in the taekwondo women’s individual poomsae round of 16 at the 2018 Asian Games at Jakarta on August 19, 2018.

Gregoria Mariska Tunjung, who played as the first single player, opened the lead for Indonesia after defeating Cheung Ngan Yi in three games 1921, 21-8, 21-18. Gregoria, who is ranked 22nd in the world, was left behind in the first game with 5-13.

Although she reduced the gap to 12-13, Cheung win the first game.

Nevertheless, Gregoria was able to turn things around in the last two games and ensured excellence for the host.

“In the first game, I had to deal with strong wind in my direction and it took me longer to adapt to the conditions of the field so that I got left behind far enough. It’s only when I got my 11th point that I could play better, but I was already left far behind,” she said.

Meanwhile, in the second and third games, Gregoria was able to play better because she could adapt to conditions on the field and already knew the game rhythm of the opponent, who is ranked 21st in the world.

“I learned and paid attention to the game pattern of the opponent from her videotaped matches. And the opponent looked tired every time I played a long rally,” she said.

Indonesia doubled the advantage through women’s double Greysia Polii-Apriyani Rahayu, who won two straight games against Hong Kong’s Ng Tzs Yau-Yuen Sin Yin with 21-14, 21-11.

“Every point obtained in a match in a team event is very important because it can motivate players who will play later,” said Greysia. In general, she said, she had no difficulty facing opponents from Hong Kong but needed to further adapt to field conditions such as the wind because it could affect the game.

“And most importantly, we must be able to show the best game. If other countries underestimate us, then it becomes an opportunity to play without burden,” she said.

The Indonesia women’s team ensured a place in the quarterfinals through the second women’s single Fitriyani, who also played three games to beat Yip Pui Yin 18-21, 21-13, 21-10.

“In the first game, the game was quite tight. Toward the end of the first game, many points were missed because I wanted to play fast,” she said.

Meanwhile, in the second and third games, Fitriyani claimed to be able to play more calmly. “The opponent’s physical condition seemed to have been decreasing, too,” she said, upon ensuring victory after Yip’s shuttlecock failed to clear the net.

In the quarterfinals match on Monday (Aug. 20), Indonesia will meet South Korea (KOR). (afp)

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. listen2myradio.com or live video streaming at http://radioglobalfmbali.com and http://ustream.tv/channel/global-fm-bali.

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Monday, August 20, 2018

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Ponkod, innovative coconut tree climber created by Balinese

DENPASAR - The assistance for agriculture is not only in the form of seeds and fertilizer.

However, the no less important for farmers is the post-harvest assistance like post-harvest technology and marketing such as cold storage, technology for processing agricultural products, including harvesting tools.

I Gede Juliana Eka Putra with two friends namely I Gde Sucahya Jaya and Gede Widiasa created a ponkod—innovative coconut tree climber--to help farmers climb coconut trees. They are not agricultural people. But his love of agriculture inspired this lecturer, merchant and motor mechanic to create the tool.

The idea of making this tool was triggered by the intention to help farmers climb coconut trees at a low cost. “Currently, the wage of climbing coconut tree is expensive namely IDR 25,000 each. During rainy season, it is worse and cannot climb coconuts,” he said at the end of July. Traditionally, after climbing 15 coconut trees, people will get tired. However, with the ponkod tool people can double the capacity.

Climbing costs can also be cheaper, from initially IDR 25,000, but with ponkod the price can be reduced to IDR 15,000 per tree.

The tool was created autodidactically without any

previous specific basic. “We only make fun because we both like agriculture,” he said. Incidentally, there was a technology business incubator competition held by the Ministry of Technology in 2016, where they also took part. Starting from the first to final stage, they won. Finally, they got a grant of IDR 800 million.

After winning the competition, many stages should be passed through so that the ponkod could be commercialized. The stages include the obligation to pass the patent test, training, incubation, SNI testing, et cetera.

“Now, it has been tested and safe to be used,” he said.

Production cost of each ponkod is IDR 800,000.

He sells it for IDR 1.8 million each. In Indonesia, this tool is only available in Bali because it is created by Balinese.

Ponkod is not only a climbing tool but also used to go down. “Its operation is just like going up and down the stairs,” he said. Aside from climbing coconut tree, this tool can be used to climb areca trees. In short, it can be used to climb branchless trees.

Today, this ponkod is widely used at hotels in Ubud to clean up old coconut leaves at villas. However, he admitted to have received many orders from outside Bali. Since the coconut-producing centers of Indonesia are in Halmahera, Maluku, Sulawesi, in the near future he will hold an exhibition in the regions. (kmb42)

IBP/kmb

Activities

Monday, August 20, 2018

New International Sunday Brunch at Mövenpick Bali IBP/sosiawan

Ketut Mayoni is showing how to make Kamasan Painting to the tourists

Efforts of Ketut Mayoni in preserving Kamasan puppet painting

KAMASAN puppet painting is one of the distinctive art works owned by Klungkung district.

Along with the progress of times, it still survives. The preservation is not only carried out by male artists, but also by female artists.

Tourist visits at Kertha Gosa destination on Saturday (Aug. 8) were quite crowded. Almost all of them are foreign tourists coming with tall stature, blond hair and white skin. They stepped on the Bale Kambang or Floating Pavilion, one of the buildings surrounded by a pond decorated with a lotus starting to bloom. Painting on the ceilings of the palm fiber-roofed building drew their attention. They saw in details, traced according to the storyline. Right in the middle, a middle aged woman was sitting down. Her legs were supine and went under the small table. She was busy coloring on the sketch that looked so detailed. She is Ketut Mayoni. This 59-year-old woman is one of the people who take part in preserving the Kamasan puppet painting amid the modern era.

Not inferior to male artists, when stroking acrylic ink, her hands seemed graceful. Apparently, nothing has been missed. From the look on her face, she also seemed to enjoy it very much as if showing that she is used to doing it. “It’s normal like this. Learning from parents while still attending elementary school,” she said kindly.

Her painting is not just an art expression. It is a series of pictures of a number of characters containing

a story taken from various stories, such as Mahabharata and Ramayana epic. There is also Goddess Saraswati. Every now and then, the artists also express their ideas from animal stories or fables. All of them offer strong philosophical values.

Her activity was able to attract the attention of tourists making a visit. They watched from various angles and tested details one by one. Every now and then a guest asked about the purpose of her work. “We’ve been painting here (Kertha Gosa—Ed) for around five years. We do it in turns with 25 painters,” she said.

Watching doesn’t mean buying right away. That is what tourists often show and not a few go straight away. Apparently, their curiosity has been satisfied. By Mayoni, such things are commonplace. “Sometimes, there are also guests who buy or just look around. Regarding the price, it is according to the size and complexity,” she said.

Although the sales seem sluggish, this resident of Sangging hamlet does not get frustrated.

She continues to work no matter whether or not someone is buying.

Her desire to preserve is still very large. “I do not just paint while in Kertha Gosa but also at home,” she said.

There is an interesting story expressed. If she does not have time to paint within a day, her life seems to have something incomplete. “If I do not paint, it feels strange. It has been a habit since my childhood,” she added. (sos)

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Monday, August 20, 2018

Traveling

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Bali News

International

Lebanon’s mountains offer cool refuge from Mideast heat

FARAYA — The passengers’ chatter on the Beirut-bound flight was far from reassuring. Taxi drivers were striking. Traffic was going to be bad. Add the heat and suffocating humidity of a typical summer day and you’re hit with a powerful urge to get out of town.

The mountains? Absolutely.

Whether during war or peace, Lebanon’s high mountain ranges have long been a favorite refuge for Lebanese living in cities, towns and

villages along the Mediterranean coastline.

“If anything happens here (in the mountains) now, then it’s probably the end of the world,” said 24-year-old old hotelier Elyse Salamah.

Just a short drive from Beirut, the mountains offer an escape from summer heat and, for those with deep pockets, a place to ski in winter.

Others make the trip in pursuit of culinary bliss: the perfect tabbouleh, the ultimate hummus or the divine

pastry kunafeh.

The mountains saw some of the worst battles of Lebanon’s 1975-1990 civil war. But they have also served as a safe haven from conflict, including the 2006 war between the Shiite Hezbollah group and Israel, when tens of thousands fled there to escape the month of fighting and bombardment.

My destination was Faraya, a ski resort high enough — 1,850 meters (6,000 feet) above sea level — to be sufficiently cool in July.

AP Photo/Hamza Hendawi

In this Thursday, July 26, 2018 photo, people participate in a summer festival designed to attract visitors with music, food stalls and swimming pools in the mountain village of Faraya, Lebanon. Whether it’s war or peace, Lebanon’s high mountain ranges have long been a favorite refuge for the Lebanese living in the cities, towns and villages below and along the Mediterranean coastline. The Lebanese drive up the mountains to avoid the summer’s heat or, for those with deep pockets, to ski in winter.

It took nearly an hour and a half to drive the 50-kilometer (30-mile) route, winding around sharp mountain curves. The moment I stepped out of the car at my destination — a small family-run hotel — I knew I made the right decision. The temperature was a pleasant 22 C (72 F), noticeably cooler than Beirut along with a just fraction of the capital’s humidity.

But what does one do in a ski resort in summer?

Not an awful lot, to be honest. But you can hike on nature trails if you feel up to it. One trek takes you up to an imposing, 23-meter (75-foot) statue of St. Charbel, a 19th-century saint revered by Lebanon’s Maronite Christians. A hooded monk, he raises a hand in blessing over the landscape of mountains, barren in the summer, snow-covered in winter.

Or you can drive around the surrounding hills in a quad (all-terrain vehicle) or just swim and sunbathe at any of the many small pools in the village, which charge a fee for a day’s use.

But if you are a big city boy like myself — my hometown, Cairo, is a city of 20 million with the unflattering distinction of being among the world’s most polluted cities — then a short break in Faraya offers a rare opportunity to kick back, relax and savor Lebanese food.

And the village offers visitors unique little experiences you rarely encounter in big city life.

Like most other mountain villages, almost all hotels and restaurants in Faraya are family run, so staying there has a personal feel. From where I sat in my hotel’s dining room, I could hear the chef, Mahmoud Mohammed, in the kitchen cooking, chopping the onions and parsley for my tabbouleh.

And at every meal, he came out to discuss the food with me.

“The vegetables you just ate I picked from our kitchen garden today,” the chef boasted one evening after serving a light dinner of tabbouleh and hummus. “I spent years spying on experienced chefs while they cooked. I have my own secrets now and I make sure that no one is watching when I cook.”

Or, take the woman running the local supermarket. When I asked her, “Are these strawberries grown in Lebanon?” she clearly thought it was a silly question. “Yes, they come from my back garden,” she declared.

Go to a restaurant in the center of the village and you can be sure you’ll find three generations of family involved in running it — usually the grandfather cooking, the daughter or son waiting tables and the grandchildren glued to smart phones between running errands. One thing visitors must remember when in Faraya, which is on the Matn mountains range, that this is not the Swiss or French Alps with tourist-poster landscapes. In the summer, the mountains around Faraya are dry and treeless.

And all through Lebanon’s mountains, there are the infrastructure woes that plague the country.

But don’t focus too much on the litter on roadsides or in some of the mountain streams. Don’t complain too much about the quality of the running water in your hotel room (drink only bottled water). The country’s economic problems also mean the mountains are dotted with halffinished structures meant to be hotels or holiday apartments.

Electricity? Make sure that your hotel has its own power generator. The alternative would be maddeningly frequent power cuts.

Instead, enjoy the hospitality offered by locals, and of course, the wonderful food. (ap)

AP photo/Hamza Hendawi

In this Friday, July 27, 2018 photo, mountains surround Faraya, a popular ski resort north of the capital Beirut, Lebanon. Whether it’s war or peace, Lebanon’s high mountain ranges have long been a favorite refuge for the Lebanese living in the cities, towns and villages below and along the Mediterranean coastline. The Lebanese drive up the mountains to avoid the summer’s heat or, for those with deep pockets, to ski in winter.

AP photo/Hamza Hendawi

In this Friday, July 27, 2018 photo, the statue of St. Charbel, a 19th-century saint revered by Lebanon’s Maronite Christians, stands high above Lebanon’s mountain village of Faraya. The 23-meter-high (75 feet) statue is visited by thousands every year.

Monday, August 20, 2018

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Sukma Dewi, a farmer’s daughter from Negara Becomes national flag-hoisting team NEGARA - The 73rd Indonesian Independence Day was celebrated on Friday (Aug. 17).

There was something special for the Jembrana people in the celebration, where a Jembrana girl from Banyubiru village, Negara, was selected as the national flag-hoisting team. The girl is Ni Putu Sukma Dewi Widiyanti, 16.

She is the first daughter of three siblings of the couple I Ketut Widiastawa, 45, and Ni Made Purniastini, 41, from Banyubiru hamlet, Banyubiru, Negara.

Ketut Widiastawa aka Galung stated on Thursday (Aug. 16) that his daughter left for Jakarta on July 26.

When leaving for Jakarta, he continued, he just could take his daughter who is now sitting on the eleventh grade of SMAN 2 Negara high school to Denpasar because of lack of money supplies.

Galung said the feeling of missed encapsulated his family, especially for her two siblings. However, it was then relieved with pride because his daughter who has a height of 169 cm was chosen as a member of the

District govt to regulate tourism facilities GIANYAR - Gianyar district government ensured to immediately regulate the new tourism facilities that are now developing in the region. One of them is by organizing and studying the swing tourist attraction currently in demand by many tourists.

Acting Regent of Gianyar, Made Gede Wisnu Wijaya, said the death incident of tourist enjoying the swing attraction in the Tegallalang village area must be used as a moment for improving and increasing the quality of tourism facilities.

“We will restructure tourism facilities and their support,” he said on Friday (Aug. 17).

He said that in responding to the acceleration of tourism development, such as swing tourism, special regulations must be made, including the requirements so that employers can open swing tourist attraction. “We observe the acceleration of the tourism facilities

national flag-hoisting team (paskibraka).

When first getting the news that his daughter, Sukma Dewi, was chosen to represent Bali at the national level in the national flag-hoisting team, he claimed to be shocked and mixed with emotion. It happens because he is only a farmer and cannot provide more facilities for his daughter having inspiration to become a policewoman.

According to him, his daughter is indeed diligent. “I didn’t think she could pass in the selection,” he said.

He told that his daughter, who is an alumnus of the SMPN 2 Negara junior high school, has indeed been interested in marching exercise when attending junior high school. He did not expect that her hobby would deliver her to Jakarta, even to the State Palace.

Galung admitted that he could only pray that she remains healthy so that she can carry out her duties properly. “If we miss, we all will surely miss as well,” he said. He also hoped her daughter can be successful and proud of her family and community. (120)

IBP/net

development like the swing attraction. Formerly, such attraction had no permits, but now we need to regulate it,” said the man who is also the Regional Secretary of Gianyar.

He said the important point in making the regulation is to ensure the security and comfort of tourists.

So, the death incidence of tourists while enjoying the tourist attraction is not repeated. “On that account, people may not install such tools haphazardly in a tree. There must be a standard for the safety of tourists,” he said.

Moreover, his authority has instructed the Gianyar Tourism Office with the relevant agency to conduct a study related to the issue. Of course, it must make cooperation with the experts that understand about swing attraction.

“I have ordered it. Maybe I request the report as soon as possible,” he said. (kmb35)

IBP/kmb

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Bali News

Monday, August 20, 2018

International

Monday, August 20, 2018

International

Farmers utilized, agriculture dumped DENPASAR - The supporting sector of Bali’s economy is tourism, namely accommodation, food and drinks. Meanwhile, the second largest source of economic growth is agriculture. However, since 2010, the contribution of agriculture to the GRDP continues to decline in keeping with the rapid development of tourism. From originally 17 percent in the second quarter of 2017, it dropped to 14.37 percent, 14.29 percent in the first quarter of 2018 and 13.95 percent in the second quarter of 2018.

The Division Head of the Distribution Statistics at the Bali Central Statistics Agency (BPS), I Gede Nyoman Subadri, said the accommodation, food and beverage business (tourism) is the highest contributor to the GRDP. In the second quarter of 2018, the contribution reached 23.19 percent. This business field is inseparable from the number of tourist visits increasing every year.

As of June 2018, foreign tourist arrivals experienced an increase of 8.02 percent (yoy) as their arrival in June reached 544,550 compared to June 2017 coming to 504,141. In terms of month-to-month (monthly), it also increased. No wonder the Ngurah Rai Airport was ranked first as the recipient of foreign tourists.

Of the total foreign visits, Chinese tourist still dominated the visit to Bali, followed by that of Australia and India. Based on a survey conducted by Bank Indonesia of Bali Representative Office in 2017, the average daily expenditure of Chinese tourists amounted to IDR 1,578,545 and with an average length of stay of 6.12 days while Australian tourists averagely spent IDR 1,496,189 with an average length of stay of 8.95 days.

The attraction of Bali is indeed extraordinary. Mount Agung eruption disaster and the recent Lombok earthquake getting to be felt in Bali did not discourage tourists from coming. It also included the Prince and Princess Juan Bagration Mukhrani from Georgia spending holidays in Bali on August 12-15. These Prince and Princess from Eastern Europe remained to choose Bali as a tourist

destination.

Welcoming host of the Georgian Prince and Princess, Hans Huang, said they were very happy with Bali.

They liked Bali because of the culture and love to establish closeness with the locals. “They like the atmosphere of Balinese settlement that enters the alleys,” he said. They considered the disasters hitting Lombok and Bali are not something scary. According to them, it is a natural phenomenon that cannot be resisted. “They stated to still choose Bali as their tourist destination,” he said.

According to an economic observer, Viraguna Bagoes Oka, the contribution of agriculture to the GRDP continues to fall because the agricultural development in Bali is only short-term oriented, not longterm. So, it cannot be enjoyed and prosper farmers in the long term. In addition, human resources problems are also a scourge as the farming human resources are decreasing. It happens due to the result of the HR mindset oriented to an instant and factual profession, namely the work in the bureaucracy and tourism. “This orientation is still very prominent.

Such mindset causes the agricultural sector requiring patience, fighting power, determination to produce optimally and really takes a long time to produce results,” he explained.

Over the past ten years, the government has prioritized short-term aspects so that the sectors requiring a long oriented foundation is less considered. For example, infrastructure is very apprehensive. As a result, the flow of goods from village to city or from city to city is very inefficient.

Unavoidably, the production factors of agriculture are burdened with transportation costs.

Besides, there is no agricultural management from upstream to downstream. It should be managed well and sustainably. “So, what produced in the upstream can be absorbed by the market. Since the infrastructure is not supportive, half of the production is taken from other region that is also costly. In short, Bali remains to be 70 percent dependent on outside Bali for the eight basic ingredients,” he explained. (kmb42)

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The second largest source of economic growth in Bali is agriculture.

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More bodies found in flooded Kerala as toll hits 357

Ed JONES / AFP

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The fruit gebogan offerings for monkey flocks became a spectacle for tourists making a visit.

Gebongan offerings for monkeys at Uluwatu draw visitors’ interests

MANGUPURA - A different atmosphere is seen in the tourist attraction outside the Uluwatu area with a series of Tumpek Uye or Tumpek Kandang celebration on Saturday (Aug. 18). In which, the fruit gebogan offerings for monkey flocks became a spectacle for tourists making a visit.

According to chief of Pecatu customary village, I Made Sumerta, the ceremony is an expression of gratitude so that the population of monkey can coexist with humans and visitors in the Uluwatu destination in accordance with the Tri Hita Karana concept. The activity is routinely carried out every six months (210 days) in the Balinese calendar. “This is a reflection to implement the Tri Hita Karana concept, respect for nature and the contents, where one of which is the monkey,” he said.

All this time, said Sumerta, the monkey has contributed positively to the completeness of the tourist object in the Uluwatu area. Of course, this is a difference from other tourist objects because this has become a support for the welfare at Pecatu village. “The tourist

area of Uluwatu temple can be said to be one of the quite complete tourist objects, and more than other tourist objects. Additionally, the Uluwatu destination is often referred to as ‘The Five Wonderful Beauties at Uluwatu’ because other than being able to see natural panorama, sunset, temple, forest and kecak, of course visitors can also see the presence of monkeys,” he said.

Meanwhile, Assistant Manager of Uluwatu Temple Outdoor Object, Wayan Mosin Arjana, added that as is known, Tumpek Kandang is carried out every six months routinely by the Uluwatu tourist area operator. So, the existence of the monkey is expected to boost tourist visits.

“Bali has the Tri Hita Karana concept containing the human rela-

tions with nature and the environment, especially those that provide benefits to this object, namely the presence of monkeys in the Uluwatu area,” he explained.

He said that based on the data of observations made by Canadian researchers, the number of monkey population is currently around 330.

Moreover, the Uluwatu monkeys have been declared rabies-free by the Veterinary Center and are routinely treated every six months by the Veterinary Medicine Faculty of Udayana University. He advised that visitors do not need to be afraid and worried about the existence of the monkeys because every day there is an officer or monkey handler in charge of the task. “The monkeys here belong to the smart and funny, not aggressive ones,” he said. (kmb23)

Participant Ahn Jong-ho speaks to reporters as he arrives at a hotel and gathering point ahead of the inter-Korean family reunion in Sokcho on August 19, 2018.

S. Korean families gather on eve of rare reunion

SOKCHO - Dozens of elderly and frail South Koreans gathered excitedly Sunday on the eve of their first meeting for nearly seven decades with family members in North Korea.

The three-day reunion -- the first for three years -- begins Monday at the Mount Kumgang resort in North Korea, following a rapid diplomatic thaw on the peninsula.

Millions of people were swept apart by the 1950-53 Korean War, which divided brothers and sisters, parents and children and husband and wives and perpetuated the division of the peninsula.

Among them was Lee Keumseom, now a tiny and frail 92. She was waiting to see her son for the first time since she left him behind in the turmoil of war.

She lost her husband and fouryear-old son as their family fled, and boarded a ferry headed for the South with only her infant daughter -- who was accompanying her to the reunion.

The son is now 71 and Lee has been told that he will bring his daughter-in-law to the meeting.

“I don’t know what I’m feeling, whether it’s good or bad,” Lee told AFP. “I don’t know if this is real or a dream.”

She raised seven children after remarrying in South Korea but always worried about the son she left in the North. Now there are many questions to ask.

“Where he lived, who he lived with and who raised him -- because he was only four,” she said.

Because the conflict ended with an armistice rather than a peace treaty, the two Koreas have remained technically remain at war.

All civilian exchanges -- even mundane family news -- are banned.

- Time running out Since 2000 the two nations have held 20 rounds of reunions but time is running out for many ageing family members.

More than 130,000 Southerners have signed up for a reunion since the events began but most of them have since died. Most of those still waiting are over 80 and the oldest participant this year is 101.

With a few people dropping out at the last minute for health reasons, 89 elderly South Koreans -- ac-

companied by relatives -- gathered in Sokcho city on South Korea’s northeast coast to spend the night before heading to the heavilyfortified border that has taken them decades to cross.

Lee Keum-seom is one of the few parents reuniting with a child.

Some of those selected for this year’s reunions dropped out after learning that their parents or siblings had died and that they could only meet more distant relatives whom they had never seen before.

But Lee Kwan-joo, 93, said he would meet his nephew and niece to get a sense of the life that his parents and six siblings had led in the North before they died.

Lee in 1945 went to school in Seoul, away from his family in Pyongyang, and the war made the separation permanent.

“I was delighted to hear about my nephew and niece, even though I don’t even know their faces,” Lee said. “I just want to ask them how my brothers, sisters and parents passed away.” (afp)

THRISSUR - Rescuers waded into submerged villages in southern India on Sunday in a desperate search for survivors cut off for days by floods that have already killed more than 350 people.

Entire villages in Kerala have been swept away in the state’s worst floods in a century, and emergency responders fear the death toll will rise as they reach areas almost entirely underwater.

In Thrissur, one of the worst-hit districts, rescuers sifting through inundated houses have discovered the bodies of those unable to escape as the floodwaters quickly rose.

“They didn’t think that it would rise this high -- 10 to 15 feet at some places -- when the initial warnings were issued,” said Ashraf Ali K.M, who is leading the search in the small town of Mala.

“Some of them later gave distress calls when the water rose high and fast,” he told AFP at the scene, where dead cattle and other livestock floated past.

Thousands of army, navy and air force troops have fanned out across Kerala to assist as distress calls sound out across the idyllic tourist hotspot. The death toll stands at 357, local officials said, with 33 killed in just the last 24 hours.

Among the dead was a mother and son in Mala, whose home collapsed around them late Saturday.

Another was a local man who volunteered for the search and rescue mission.

His body was retrieved by comrades early Sunday, said Dibin K.S, a Kerala firefighter, in a grim

reminder of the perils facing rescuers.

Officials say many houses are irreparably damaged across the state, and have warned residents against trying to return to them.

- Panicked appeals Roads and 134 bridges have been damaged, isolating remote areas in the hilly districts of the state which are worst affected.

With power and communication lines down, thousands remained trapped in towns and villages cut off by the floods amid growing shortages of food and water.

A train from Pune, in Maharashtra state, embarked south on Saturday for Kerala laden with one million litres (two million pints) of drinking water.

Panic-stricken flood victims have been making appeals on social media for help, saying they cannot get through to rescue services.

In Mala, villagers in desperate wait had to improvise as the floodwaters rose.

Jobin K John, a local rescuer, showed pictures of locals rowing through the murky brown waters using kitchen pots as rafts to reach their stricken neighbours.

“They used these huge cooking pots to rescue around 100 people in the first wave of flash floods, as no one was prepared (for a rescue),” he told AFP. Mobile phone operators have been offering free data and SMS messages across Kerala since Saturday to assist with distress calls. (afp)

MANJUNATH KIRAN / AFP

Indian people look at a houses destroyed by a landslide at Kannapanakundu village, about 422 km north of Trivandrum, in the south Indian state of Kerala, on August 18, 2018.

12

International

Monday, August 20, 2018

BUSINESS Turkish lira resumes fall after Trump sanctions threat

ISTANBUL - The Turkish currency fell again on Friday, breaking a three-day quiet spell in the country currency crisis, after the United States threatened to impose new sanctions on the NATO country.

The lira dropped about 5 percent, to about 6.11 per dollar, after U.S. President Donald Trump posted a tweet warning the country of more punitive measures over the continued detention in Turkey of American pastor Andrew Brunson, an evangelical pastor who faces 35 years in prison on charges of espionage and terrorrelated charges.

Turkey’s trade minister, Ruhsar Pekcan, said her government would respond to any new trade duties.

Dashing hopes for a quick solution to the dispute, a Turkish court on Friday rejected an appeal for the pastor’s release from house detention. Upholding a lower court’s decision earlier this week, it also ruled against lifting a travel ban imposed on Brunson.

The United States has already imposed sanctions on two Turkish government ministers and doubled tariffs on Turkish steel and aluminum imports. Turkey retaliated with some $533 million of tariffs on some U.S. imports — including cars, tobacco and alcoholic drinks — and said it would boycott U.S. electronic goods.

The diplomatic dispute is worsening investors’ concerns about Turkey’s fundamental economic problems. The country has amassed high levels of foreign debt to fuel growth in recent years and as the currency drops, that debt becomes so much more expensive to repay, leading to potential bankruptcies. Economists are worried of a recession.

The turmoil led ratings agency Moody’s to downgrade Turkey’s

credit rating further into “junk” status and slap a “negative” rating on its outlook.

Moody’s stripped Turkey of its investment-grade rating in 2016 and Friday’s move lowered it one rung further. The agency says the downgrade was triggered by what it described as a further weakening of Turkey’s public institutions and a related reduction in the predictability of Turkish policy making.

Debt rating downgrades typically mean higher borrowing costs as investors demand steeper interest rates to take on riskier debt. Moody’s says its negative outlook reflects its expectation that there’s more financial stress likely on the horizon for Turkey.

Meanwhile, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s has consolidated power over the central bank, and pushed for it to refrain from raising interest rates to support the currency, as experts say it should. (ap)

AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis

An oversized copy of a 200 Turkish lira banknote, featuring a photo of modern Turkey’s founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk decorates a currency exchange shop in Istanbul, Friday, Aug. 17, 2018. Turkey and the United States exchanged new threats of sanctions Friday, keeping alive a diplomatic and financial crisis.

Fed rate policy unintentionally pressures emerging economies WASHINGTON - President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is blaming the United States for Turkey’s financial crisis, ignoring homegrown problems like high debts, raging inflation and his own erratic policies.

Yet one of the threats facing Turkey and other emerging-market countries really is made-in-America: By ratcheting up U.S. interest rates, the Federal Reserve has — unintentionally — led investors to pull money out of emerging markets like Turkey, strengthened the dollar’s value and made it harder for foreign companies to repay their dollar-denominated debts.

The resulting flight of capital into safer and higher-yielding U.S. investments has sent many emergingmarket currencies tumbling. The MSCI Emerging Markets Currency Index has sunk nearly 8 percent since early March.Especially vulnerable are countries with weak economic fundamentals: Runaway inflation, bulging trade deficits, piles of foreign debt and paltry foreign-currency reserves available to intervene in the markets to help prop up their own currencies.

Turkey is Exhibit A: Inflation is running near 16 percent a year. The country buys much more than it sells abroad. Its borrowing binge has left Turkey highly vulnerable. Erdogan

has rattled global investors by pressuring the country’s central bank not to raise interest rates — the conventional response to high inflation. High interest rates normally help strengthen a nation’s currency. But they also tend to slow economic growth, something Erdogan clearly wants to avoid.

Erdogan has named his son-in-law as finance minister, blamed foreigners for his country’s woes and escalated tensions with Turkey’s longtime ally the United States. On Wednesday, Turkey said it was increasing taxes on U.S. products like cars, alcohol and coal in retaliation for President Donald Trump’s move to double tariffs on Turkish steel and aluminum. The two countries are feuding over Ankara’s decision to arrest an American pastor and try him on espionage and terrorism charges related to a failed coup attempt two years ago.

The Turkish lira’s value recovered a bit on Wednesday, by 5 percent to around 6.05 lira per dollar, after the government acted to shore it up by reducing the daily limit in bank foreign currency swap transactions. But even with Wednesday’s gain, the lira is down 38 percent against the dollar since early March.Yet among the currencies of emerging economies, it’s hardly alone: Argentina’s peso has lost

34 percent over the same period. That nation is grappling with a corruption scandal and double-digit inflation.

Argentina’s central bank just jacked up its benchmark rate to 45 percent.

Likewise, South Africa’s rand has tumbled 18 percent. That country’s economy hasn’t achieved even a modest 2 percent annual growth in five years. And it runs a gaping deficit in its current account, the broadest measure of trade. A crumbling currency inflicts many damaging consequences: Companies that borrowed in dollars — the global reserve currency — have to come up with steadily more money in their local currencies to repay U.S. dollar debts. Having to do so also raises risks for the banks that lent to them. That’s the kind of squeeze that ignited the catastrophic 1997-1998 Asian financial crisis. A currency disaster in Thailand infected the entire region, and East Asian economies absorbed devastating damage.

Fears of a replay have gripped financial markets as Turkey’s crisis has intensified. “Contagion” is the word analysts use to describe their nightmare of seeing Turkey’s problems spread across the developing world.

Still, most economists remain optimistic for now that another such crisis can be avoided. For one thing,

Turkey’s economy is uniquely mismanaged.

“Turkey is the No. 1 country we had our eyes on for a potential financial crisis in the Obama administration,” said Jason Furman, a Harvard economist and a former chief economist for President Barack Obama.

Turkey’s “economic circumstances are so different than many other emerging markets,” Furman said, referring to the country’s debts and Erdogan’s unconventional policies.

And emerging-market countries learned lessons from the debacle two decades ago. Many piled up reserves to fend off speculative assaults on their currencies. At the start of 1997, emerging-market countries’ reserves amounted to barely 6 percent of their economic output. Now, they equal nearly 18 percent, according to the Institute of International Finance, a banking trade group.

“Emerging-market countries, on the whole, have much stronger financial positions than they did 20 years ago,” the Wells Fargo Investment Institute said in a report Tuesday. Their foreign debts, for instance, have fallen from 38 percent of economic output in 1999 to 29 percent last year.

What’s more, emerging-market economies, for the most part, appear

relatively stable. The International Monetary Fund expects them to collectively register growth of roughly 5 percent this year and next, which would be the best showing since 2013. Turkey’s troubles are “unlikely to trigger a meltdown — just a fair bit of volatility in currency and financial markets,” said Eswar Prasad, a Cornell University economist and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

“Turkey is in a crisis because of a particular potent mix of bad economics mixed with even worse politics,” Mandy Xu, a Credit Suisse analyst, wrote in a research report.

More worrisome, Xu and others say, is the prospect of a sharp slowdown in the Chinese economy, the world’s second-largest after the United States. China’s growth slowed in the April-June period. Beijing has tightened lending controls over the past year to stem a surge in debt. The IMF expects Chinese growth to decelerate to 6.6 percent this year from 6.9 percent in 2017. That slowdown poses at least a threat for emerging-market countries that export raw materials to Beijing.

Among those with the most to lose are the Philippines, Russia, Malaysia, Brazil and Argentina, economist Vanda Szendrei of Oxford Economics noted in a research report. (ap)

Bali News

International

Monday, August 20, 2018

5

Giant’s Bamboo Jegog Instrument

Jegog is a form of gamelan music indigenous to Bali, Indonesia, played on instruments made of bamboo. The tradition of jegog is centered in Jembrana, a region in Western Bali. In recent years jegog has started to become popular in other regions of Bali with a few groups being established in central Bali to entertain tourists. International interest has been spread by tourists visiting Bali and by recordings.

There are virtually no ensembles outside of Bali with the exception of at least two groups in Japan (Sekar Sakura and GeinohYamashirogumi, the latter’s having been used in 4 of the tracks in their score for the film Akira as well as on the final track of EcophonyRinne ), one in the United States (Sekar Jaya) and one in Germany.

Jegog music is very fast, loud, rhythmic and precise. Pieces last from a few minutes to as long as thirty minutes. We invited a very special talent teacher directly from Jembrana for 3 years, from how to build a Jegog and how to play it till becomes a group of Jegog’s orchestra.

Instrument Jegog instruments have a fournote scale that roughly corresponds to the four pitches of a dominant 7th chord in Western music. All instruments have eight bamboo keys.

Some instruments have two keys for each pitch slightly detuned so that the pitches beat when they are played together. Other instruments have a two octave range with four pitches in a low octave and the same

four pitches anoctave higher.

In this case the instrument will be paired with another instrument that is slightly detuned. Taken together the ensemble has a range of five octaves. Most Jegog ensembles have instruments that have keys that are made of bamboo that are split at one end and then half of the tube is removed.

The other end remains intact and functions as a resonator for the split part. The keys are suspended on a wooden frame and struck with mallets (called pangguls), made out of wood or rubber. There are also Jegog ensembles with instruments called JegogTingklik. These smaller instruments are used primarily with children. The keys are made of bamboo slats mounted above a resonatorbox.

The lowest instrument in a Jegog ensemble is also called a Jegog. The ensemble gets its name from this instrument. The keys of the Jegog instrument are as long as 3 meters in length and a pitch as low as 60 hertz. The instrument is so large, and the mallets are so heavy that it takes two people to play it.

The players crouch on a platform on the top of the instrument and alternate playing the keys. The Jegog instrument has the lowest octave of the ensemble. Each pair of pitches are detuned by as much as 7 hertz. In this octave, that is almost a whole tone. The keys are arranged 1’ 2’ 3’ 4’ 1 2 3 4, one being the lowest pitch and 4 being the highest. The four keys on the left are the higher pitches of the detuned pairs and the four on the right are the lower ones.

Melody Instruments One octave higher than the Jegog is an instrument called the Undir, and an octave above that is the Kuntung. The instruments are small enough to be played by one person each. The Undir is still big enough that the player needs to crouch on a platform on the top of it to play it. There are two Undir and two Kuntung. The Undir and Kuntung have the same arrangement of keys as the Jegog. These five instruments together play the melody (called the bun). Some ensembles have a high pitch flute called a suling that also

plays the melody.

Kotekan instruments Each of the remaining 9 instruments span two octaves and are arranged 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 where 5 through 8 is an octave above 1 to 4. The lowest of these instruments, called the Barangan, span the same octaves as the Undir and the Kuntung. The next higher is the Kancil which begins with the octave of the Kuntung and extends an octave higher. The next higher—the highest in the ensemble—is the Suir, likewise, extending one octave

higher. There are three Barangan, three Kancil, and three suir.

The Barangan play the melody twice as fast as the other melody instruments. Since this is often very fast, the players alternate playing the notes. The Kancil and Suir play interlocking patterns called Kotekan, sometimes the Barangan play these patterns as well. The Barangan are the front line of the ensemble. The center of the three Barangan is the leader of the ensemble. Other players watch the leader for cues and tempo changes. (kmb)

Betel Nut Box, a Tradition of the Elderly when Receiving Guests

Nampin or chewing betel leaves is one of the traditions that remains strong amongst Balinese elders. According to one respected elder named Ni Ketut Darma, who still chews betel leaves everyday, tradtionally the ingredients for betwel chewing are kept in a special betel nut box called pabuan or pecanangan. “When we use this box at home we call it pabuan, but when we serve guests we call this penginangan, using more refined language” she explained.

According to Grandma Darma, the betel nut box is made of wood in the long side shape where it generally consists of some compartments containing lime, betel leaves, gambier, betel nut, betel nut mortar and pestle or panyawisan, small knife, and caket (used to halve areca nut). She said that in the past the betel nut box was the first thing to be served to guests who came or when visiting other people’s homes.

“Presenting betel nut box and nampin has become a tradition in the life of Balinese people, until now this tradition remains to be implemented especially by parents like me,” she said.

She added the betel nut box is not only served at home, but also at temple with a different designation. At temple, it is called pacanangan, functioned as the offerings presented to deities. Pabuan and pacanangan is basically not the same. Pabuan served at home usually contains lime, gambier, betel leaf, betel nut, betel nut mortar and pestle, small knife, and caket, while the pecanangan at temple has the same contents with additional ingredients like thread, money and fruits.

When asked about how she feels when doing nampin, she just claimed to be accustomed to doing it. Men and women of her age usually do it. It is tasteless but the lips feel abrasive. It feels nothing due to the mixture with lime. “Our lips are abrasive, but I have been accustomed to the taste,” she said. (kmb)

6

Monday, August 20, 2018

W

International

RLD

Fifty years ago, Soviet tanks crush the Prague Spring

In August 1968 Soviet tanks rolled into communist Czechoslovakia to crush a burgeoning democratic reform movement known as the Prague Spring. Here is a recap of the shock intervention that reined in the Soviet satellite state, its aspirations for democracy warded off for another 20 years.

Party. General Ludvik Svoboda became president in March.

Driven by Dubcek, reforms aimed at achieving “Socialism with a human face” were introduced. They included the abolition of censorship, freedom of assembly and association, and cautious economic reforms. Moscow responded with warnings and an ultimatum.

- Explosive context -

- Tanks in the cities -

“At 11:00 pm, Soviet, Polish, East German, Bulgarian and Hungarian troops crossed the Czechoslovak border,” AFP reported early on August 21, picking up Radio Prague’s announcement of the overnight invasion.

Tensions had been mounting between then Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev and the reformist government that had taken over in the Central European state.

In January, Moscow’s pointman was replaced by Alexander Dubcek, who became head of the powerful Communist

At 4:59 am Radio Prague announced that the capital and the rest of the country had been occupied.

Moscow and its communist allies poured 200,000 soldiers into Czechoslovakia that day, their numbers rising to 600,000.

The government urged citizens to “remain calm and not to take up arms against the foreign troops.” Many learnt of the invasion of their country only via their radios.

In Prague, the Soviet troops were concentrated around three nerve centres: the headquarters of the Communist

Party’s Central Committee, Prague Castle and the radio headquarters.

From dawn, hundreds of Prague citizens gathered in front of the radio building which was surrounded by tanks. Soldiers fired bursts of machine-gun fire at the building and nearby houses with people shouting insults at them like “Gestapo”, or “Long live Dubcek”. Around 100 people were killed in the first days of the offensive.

- Leaders arrested -

Russia’s Tass news agency said the intervention followed a request from “Czechoslovakian statesmen”.

Historians would later establish that one was Vasil Bilak, a member of the Communist Party’s politburo.

In the early hours of the invasion, the Soviet Red Army arrested Dubcek, prime minister Oldrich Cernik and others.

They were taken to the Kremlin on August 22, joined a day later by another group that included the president, Svoboda.

All were forced to sign the Moscow Protocol, a diktat which formalised the Soviet occupation, cooperating after four days of fraught talks.

Dubcek was kept in power but he was deliberately and progressively weakened.

- The people resist -

The population, in the dark about the Moscow talks, had meanwhile mobilised non-violent resistance to the occupation.

Street signs were taken down to confuse the invaders. In the countryside, where farms flew the Czechoslovak flag at half-mast, road signs went up that showed a single arrow for “Direction Moscow”. Twelve free radios continued to operate, despite Soviet attempts to take them off air.

Car horns, factory sirens and church bells regularly sounded in unison in a sign of support for Svoboda and Dubcek, whose return was awaited restlessly.

- Prague Spring extinguished -

On the morning of August 27, alerted by the radio of the imminent return of their leaders, jubilant crowds lined the road leading from the airport to the castle, where the national flag was flying again. But their relief was short-lived.

In an address to the nation, Svoboda announced that the departure of the “occupiers” was conditional on a “normalisation of the situation”.

“Freedom will be restricted for a time, to allow a return to normal,” Dubcek added in “a broken voice... as if to take his breath or overcome his emotions,” AFP wrote. An agreement on the temporary stationing of Soviet troops was signed in April 1969.

Nikolay DOYCHINOV / AFP Dubcek was ousted as head of the Communist Party Former Bulgarian soldier Pencho Valkov poses on August 16, 2018 in Sevlievo with portraits of himself in April 1969, and massive purges followed. Democracy as a young soldier during his military service, as he wears a t-shirt bearing a Kalashnikov with a rose would not return until the Velvet Revolution in 1989. Four emerging from its barrel and the date Prague 1968. Valkov was one of the Bulgarian soldiers who took years later, the country split into the Czech Republic and part in the crushing of the Prague Spring in 1968 under the direction of Moscow.

Slovakia. (afp)

Russian activist on hunger strike hospitalised Hunger-striking Russian activist Sergei Udaltsov was hospitalised Sunday as he serves a one-month term over organising protests, according to observers and his social media channels.

The far-left Kremlin critic was taken to a Moscow hospital suffering from dehydration after doctors were called to his detention centre to take blood tests, five days into a

hunger strike, his Facebook page said.

“He was hospitalised on doctors orders,” an official from Moscow’s public monitoring commission told the TASS news agency. “In our presence he was evacuated by paramedics,” Ivan Melnikov said.

Udaltsov was active in a wave of demonstrations at the end of July

against deeply unpopular plans to raise the Russian retirement age.

He was arrested and last week sentenced to 30 days behind bars after burning images of members of the Russian government at one of the rallies.

Last year Udaltsov finished a four-and-a-half-year prison sentence for organising anti-Kremlin protests.

Udaltsov and co-defendant Leonid Razvozzhayev were convicted in July 2014 of fomenting mass riots across Russia ahead of Vladimir Putin’s inauguration to a third term as president in 2012.

He went on hunger strike several times during those years spent in a penal colony in central Russia’s Tambov province.

Ukrainian filmmaker Oleg

Sentsov who was convicted of arson attacks on pro-Moscow party offices in Crimea in 2014 is also on hunger strike in a Russian prison.

According to his cousin Natalia Kaplan, his health has dramatically declined since he started the protest on May 14 to demand the release of all Ukrainian political prisoners in Russia. (afp)

International

Monday, August 20, 2018

11

Fresh quake rocks Indonesia’s Lombok island

A strong earthquake rocked the Indonesian island of Lombok Sunday, triggering landslides, damaging buildings and sending people fleeing just two weeks after a tremor killed more than 480 people there.

The 6.3-magnitude quake, centred in East Lombok, struck at a relatively shallow depth of seven kilometres (four miles) and was felt across the island, officials said.

It was the third major quake in less than a month to rock the island, after deadly tremors on July 29 and August 5 and numerous aftershocks, but this time there were no immediate reports of deaths or injuries.

“The earthquake caused people to panic and flee their houses,” national disaster agency spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho told Metro TV. “There have been no reports of death or (serious) damage but people are traumatised.”

Landslides were reported in a national park on Mount Rinjani where hundreds of hikers had been briefly trapped after the quake in late July.

The park has been closed since then.

Local disaster mitigation agency spokesman Agung Pramuja said several houses and other structures in the district of Sembalun, on the slopes of Mount Rinjani, collapsed on Sunday after being damaged by the previous two quakes.

The structures included checkpoints once used by trekkers climbing the mountain, Pramuja said, adding that the exact number of damaged buildings was still being checked. Residents said the latest earthquake was felt strongly in East Lombok.

“I was driving to deliver aid to evacuees when suddenly the electricity pole was swaying. I realised it was an earthquake.

“People started to scream and cry. They all ran to the street,” East Lombok resident Agus Salim told AFP. The tremor was also felt in the island’s capital Mataram and on the neighbouring resort island of Bali.

“Everybody ran outside their house. They’re all gathering in an open field, still terrified,” said Endri Susanto, a children rights activist in Mataram. “People are traumatised by the previous earthquakes and aftershocks never seem to stop.”

- ‘Ring of Fire’ -

The latest tremor comes two weeks after a shallow 6.9-magnitude quake on August 5 levelled tens of thousands of homes, mosques and businesses across Lombok. At least 481 people died and tens of thousands were injured.

The hardest-hit region was in the north of the island, which has suffered hundreds of aftershocks since. A week before that quake, a tremor surged through the island and killed 17.

The August 5 quake left more than 350,000 displaced, with many sleeping under tents or tarpaulins near their ruined homes or in evacuation shelters, while makeshift medical facilities were set up to treat the injured.

Badly damaged roads, particularly in the mountainous north of the island, are a headache for relief agencies trying to distribute aid.

The economic toll of the quake -- including its impact on buildings, infrastructure and productivity -- has been estimated to be at least five trillion rupiah ($348 million).

Dubbed “The Island of a Thousand Mosques”, Muslim-majority Lombok is a less popular destination than its neighbour Bali, the Hindumajority island that is the backbone of Indonesia’s $19.4 billion tourist sector.

But Lombok had been earmarked as one of Indonesian President Joko Widodo’s “10 new Balis”, with the regional government hoping to develop it into a major destination, especially in the booming halal tourism sector.

Indonesia, an archipelago of thousands of islands, sits on the so-called Pacific “Ring of Fire”, where tectonic plates collide and many of the world’s volcanic eruptions and earthquakes occur In 2004 a tsunami triggered by a magnitude 9.3 undersea earthquake off the coast of Sumatra, in western Indonesia, killed 220,000 people in countries around the Indian Ocean, including 168,000 in Indonesia. (afp)

Handout / INDONESIAN MILITARY / AFP

This handout photo taken and released on August 15, 2018 by the Indonesian Military shows soldiers removing debris from damaged buildings in Pemenang, northern Lombok, after a 6.9 magnitude earthquake struck the area on August 5. The death toll from an earthquake on the Indonesian island of Lombok has topped 400, authorities said, as bodies were still being recovered from the ruins of destroyed buildings.

10

Destination

Monday, August 20, 2018

International

Monday, August 20, 2018

International

Davis Cup overhauled for 2019 with season-ending team event

The Davis Cup is getting a radical makeover in hopes of reviving an event that has lost some luster.

Beginning next year, the top team event in men’s tennis will be decided with a seasonending, 18-team tournament at a neutral site.

The International Tennis Federation believes this format will be more attractive to elite players who often pass on competing for their countries because of a crowded schedule.

Teams will play one week in February to advance to the championship in November, replacing the current Davis Cup format that is played over four weekends throughout the year. Players will compete for what the ITF says rivals Grand Slam prize money.

The $3 billion, 25-year agreement was approved Thursday at the organization’s conference in Orlando, Florida. Two-thirds of the delegates needed to vote for the reforms, and 71 percent did. Beginning in 2019, 24 nations will compete in a home-or-away qualifying round in February, with the 12 winners advancing to the final tournament. They will be joined by the four semifinalists from the previous year, along with two wild-card teams, who need to be in either the top 50 of the Davis Cup rankings or have a top-10 singles player to be eligible.

The finalists will be placed into six, threeteam groups for round-robin play, involving two singles matches and one doubles, all bestof-three-sets — instead of the current best-offive format featuring four singles matches and one doubles. The winners, along with the next two teams with the best records, will advance to the single-elimination quarterfinals.

The first championship will be held on an indoor hardcourt from Nov. 18-24, 2019, in either Madrid or Lille, France. ITF President David Haggerty said he expected that announcement in the next two weeks.

The new event was developed in partnership with the investment group Kosmos, which was founded by Barcelona and Spain soccer player Gerard Pique. The original plan called for simply an 18-team championship at the end of the year, but was amended after some nations objected to the loss of home-site matches. So

Motel Mexicola Tacos, Tequilas and Fiestas in Seminyak SEMINYAK - Motel Mexicola is a colourful and quirky Mexican bar and restaurant down Jalan Kayujati. It’s just a minutes’ walk from La Lucciola and Petitenget temple, and a stone’s throw from Sense Hotel Seminyak. Visitors from Sydney may be familiar with this partnership between The Bucket List and Rojo Rocket, who serve a range of tostadas, tacos and ceviche created

by Veracruzian Chef Alejandro Urbina. The tasty morsels and modern takes on traditional Mexican fare are accompanied by a drinks list featuring tequilas, margaritas and Cuba libres, that can be enjoyed al fresco. In addition, Mexicola hosts regular house parties with live Latin music that will transport you ‘south of the border’.

The first things to catch your eye at Motel Mexicola are criss-crosses of small red, yellow, green and blue flags strung across the street

from Mexicola to the Bodyworks Spa opposite. Further splashes of colours cover its front entrance, with ‘Taqueria, Rockin’ Maria’ written above a counter that serves Mexican drinks, tacos and fajitas.

This street side cantina is an early night treat for those hooking up with friends before going inside the main building to party. Stepping through its small arched entrance hall, you’ll encounter a table filled with bright orange and yellow marigolds against a blue painted wall. This peculiar sight, referred to as the ‘Motel Mexicola shrine’, also features Latin curios and retro-style photographs surrounded by thick candles with melting wax left to flow down the table’s sides.

To the left of the shrine is a central courtyard, with perimeters lined with bars, bars and more bars serving shots and beer. Another peculiar sight within the

courtyard is a rectangular concrete ‘gravesite’ with a visible cross on it. On our night out there, Sexy Jose Cuervo promotion girls and Carmen Miranda-style fruity beauties added to the Latin-style party atmosphere. Fire dancers boogied and juggled to the beat of the Latin band, and the place was packed.

Motel Mexicola also features a more laid-back upstairs where you can take a cosy seat, sit back, relax and enjoy the view down to the ravers in the courtyard below and it is where you’ll find a similar but smaller shrine too! If you’re feeling a little peckish, you can order tacos, tostadas, aguachile, quesadillas and other antojitos (tapas), before heading down again for more partying.

It’s one of the latest and best places to enjoy a good night in Seminyak, with simple and affordable Mexican food, and great drinks and atmosphere. (net)

AP Photo/Christophe Ena, File

In this Nov. 26, 2017, file photo, members of the French team lift up their trophies after France won the Davis Cup final at the Pierre Mauroy stadium in Lille, northern France. The Davis Cup will be decided with a season-ending, 18team tournament beginning next year. The new format replaces the one in which the Davis Cup is played over four weekends throughout the year. those were added to the proposal as the qualifying round, though that still wasn’t enough for critics of the plan who felt neutral-site matches were too much of a change for an event that dates to 1900. “Those that were opposed were generally opposed because they may believe that home-and-away should be the way that the format is played and always should be every round,” Haggerty said, adding he believed the February qualifying round “gives us the combination of history and tradition that we maintain

as well as innovation with the finals.”

The U.S. Tennis Association was among the national federations that backed the changes.

The organization said the new format will “project Davis Cup into the 21st century” and elevate the competition to “the heights it deserves.” The Americans will play at Croatia in this year’s semifinals in September, with Spain and France meeting in the other semifinals.

Top-ranked Rafael Nadal is expected to play for Spain, but Roger Federer has frequently

passed on playing for Switzerland.

The new format would cut in half the Davis Cup time commitment. Pique is among those who think the World Cup-style format is the boost the event needs. “This is the beginning of a new stage that guarantees the pre-eminent and legitimate place that the Davis Cup should have as a competition for national teams while adapting to the demands of this professional sport at the highest level,” he said in a statement. (ap)

Fury beats Pianeta to set up Wilder bout

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Tyson Fury set up a world title fight with American WBC heavyweight champion Deontay Wilder with a points victory over Francesco Pianeta in Belfast on Saturday.

On just his second bout since ending a two-and-a-half year ab-

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sence from the ring, former world champion Fury looked understandably rusty in just doing enough to see off journeyman Pianeta.

Fury will need to be far closer to the fighter that once dominated the heavyweight division when facing the undefeated Wilder.

FILE - In this April 27, 2016, file photo, Britain’s Tyson Fury gestures during a press conference in Manchester, England.

Heavyweight champion Deontay Wilder is on a business trip this weekend in Belfast. He’ll be ringside as a TV commentator for Saturday’s fight between Tyson Fury and Francesco Pianeta. But even Wilder has something riding on the outcome of this matchup. If Fury wins, Wilder plans to challenge Fury to a fight they’ve already discussed _ right then and there.

That fight is expected to take place in Las Vegas later in the year with Fury’s promoter Frank Warren confirming the venue and date will be announced next week.

Wilder was ringside in the Northern Irish capital and seemed to appreciate Fury’s introduction to the ring accompanied by the tune of “Sweet Home Alabama”, Wilder’s home state.

There was much less to impress Wilder once the action got underway as Fury failed to land a knockout blow.

However, Fury controlled the fight throughout to stretch his own unbeaten professional record to 27-0. (afp)

8

Monday, August 20, 2018

Monday, August 20, 2018

9

ASIAN GAMES 2018 Jakarta Palembang

China’s Sun wins first gold medal of Asian Games

Chinese wushu athlete Sun Peiyuan won the first gold medal of the Asian Games as the Olympic heavyweights made a fast start in their quest to top the medals table on Sunday.

Sun, 28, scored 9.75 to win the men’s changquan category of the Chinese martial art, denying hosts Indonesia the Games’ opening title as he edged Edgar Xavier Marvelo into second place.

China snared 151 gold medals at the 2014 Games in Incheon, nearly double the total of home nation South Korea, as they extended their record of topping the table at each edition of the regional Olympics since 1982.

Taiwan’s Tsai Tsemin took the first bronze of the Games as the two-week, 40-sport competition got underway in Jakarta and Palembang, a port city on Sumatra island. (afp)

MONEY SHARMA / AFP

(L to R) Silver medallist Edgar Xavier Marvelo of Indonesia, gold medallist Sun Peiyuan of China and bronze medallist Tsai Tsemin of Taiwan celebrate during the victory ceremony for the men’s changquan event at the wushu competition during the 2018 Asian Games in Jakarta on August 19, 2018.

Indonesia’s teeny skateboard hope too cool for school Mohd RASFAN / AFP

Gold medallists Taiwan’s Lin Yingshin (L) and Lu Shaochuan pose with their medals after the victory ceremony for the 10m air rifle mixed team shooting final during the 2018 Asian Games in Palembang on August 19, 2018.

Taiwan shoots into first place for gold in Asiad blow to China Taiwanese teenager Lin Yingshin and teammate Lu Shaochuan scored a narrow victory over bitter rivals China at the shooting range of the Asian Games on Sunday.

The finals venue for the 10m air rifle mixed team event in Palembang, which is co-hosting the Games with Jakarta, was standing room only as 19-year-old Lin and 21-yearold Lu brought the victory home.

The pair, ranked second and ninth in the world respectively, managed to keep their calm to beat their Chinese counterparts, world number three 20-year-old Zhao Ruozhu and 22-year-old Yang Haoran.

Lu told reporters afterwards that

Indonesia’s nine-year-old skateboarder Aliqqa Noverry is set to melt hearts at the Asian Games -- but give her ice cream and she could be a medal threat, says her mum.

The youngest competitor at this year’s event in Jakarta, the pint-sized adrenaline junkie loves nothing better than to rip into jumps at breakneck speed, her pigtails billowing

behind her.

“I like all the tricks and going so fast -- that’s the fun part,” Aliqqa told AFP. “My family support me but they’re also very surprised knowing that I’m the youngest athlete here,” added the trailblazing teeny-bopper, who stands just 1.30 metres (4ft, 2in) tall and has only been skating for two years.

“Being the youngest makes me a little nervous but also more motivated.

But my

friends think it’s a bit unfair that I get to skip school.”

Clearly nine is the new 16 -especially in the hipster sport of skateboarding, which is making its Asian Games debut and will appear at the Olympics for the first time at Tokyo in 2020.

Coolly fist-bumping the bigger boarders at her local skate park on the outskirts of Jakarta, Aliqqa stops

the win came as a total surprise following an under-par display in the qualifying round.

“It’s unbelievable,” he said. “I wanted to give up but I cheered up again once I reached the final...I’m very happy.” India came away with bronze as the last to be eliminated in a tense battle requiring high levels of concentration to block out the blaring pop music and cheers and cries from the onlookers.

China is the dominant force at the Asian Games after topping the medal table in every edition of the Regional Olympics since 1982. (afp)

Two Koreas march together as Asian Games burst into life North and South Korea marched together in a stirring display of unity as the Asian Games, one of the world’s biggest sports events, opened in a blaze of colour in Jakarta on Saturday.

South Korean women’s basketball player Lim Yung-hui and North Korean footballer Ju Kyong-chol jointly held the Korean Unification flag aloft as they led the athletes out to an ovation from the packed crowd.

It is the second such symbolic gesture this year by the two Koreas, who also walked together at the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics opening ceremony -- an event that heralded an unprecedented warming of ties.

The North and South, still technically at war, are joining forces in women’s basketball, canoeing and rowing during the 40-sport, two-week regional Olympics in the Indonesian capital and Palembang, a port city on Sumatra island.

South Korean Prime Minister Lee Nak-yon and North Korean Deputy Prime Minister Ri Ryong-nam, watching from the VIP seats, rose

together holding hands and beaming as the Korean athletes marched.

The ceremony opened with a skit purportedly showing President Joko Widodo doing stunts on a motorbike in Jakarta’s streets before riding into the Gelora Bung Karno stadium, to roars from the crowd.

About 1,500 dancers in traditional dress then performed a tightly choreographed routine before Afghanistan led the athletes’ parade into the stadium.

There were huge cheers when the two Koreas, whose athletes together number about 1,000, marched into the stadium together wearing pristine white and blue uniforms.

- ‘You can feel proud’ -

Widodo was then seen dancing in his seat as Indonesian singer Via Vallen took to the stage, before the stadium fell silent to honour the victims of the recent Lombok earthquake.

“You can feel proud of your home country Indonesia,” said Sheikh Ahmed Al-Fahad AlSabah, president of the Olympic Council of

Asia, before Widodo declared the Games open.

Indonesian badminton great Susi Susanti, the women’s singles Olympic champion in 1992, lit the Games cauldron and the ceremony closed with a noisy music performance and spectacular fireworks.

It provided a vibrant start to the Games, whose build-up has been dogged by logistical headaches and security fears after Indonesia suffered its deadliest terror attack in a decade in May. The sprawling archipelago has also been grappling with its latest earthquake disaster after strong tremors in Lombok, an eastern island, left more than 400 people dead.

Indonesia, a country of about 270 million, stepped in to host the Games at short notice after Vietnam pulled out, citing the event’s eye-watering costs.

Indonesia has a poor track record in hosting multi-sports events -- the 2011 Southeast Asian Games in Jakarta and Palembang suffered serious corruption problems and delays, and two people died in a stadium stampede.

Rights group Amnesty International said at least 31 people were killed in a “shoot first and ask questions later” police crackdown on petty crime.

But officials say all venues are ready for competition and tournament-related problems so far have been relatively minor, from the ticket website crashing to misspelt words on signs. About 18,000 athletes and officials from 45 Asian countries will be at the Asiad, organisers said, looking to make their mark across a range of sports from swimming to sepak takraw and bridge.

The Asian Games encompass nearly the full Olympic programme and are considered the pinnacle by many participating nations, for whom Olympic success often proves elusive.

Mohd RASFAN / AFP

This picture taken on August 17, 2018 shows Indonesian skateboarder Aliqqa Noverry, 9, demonstrating her skills at a public park ahead of the 2018 Asian Games in Jakarta. The youngest competitor at this year’s event in Jakarta, the pint-sized adrenaline junkie Noverry loves nothing better than to rip into jumps at breakneck speed, her pigtails billowing behind her.

shredding to observe the call to prayer from the local mosque.

“I think I would like to skate in Tokyo,” nodded Aliqqa, who could potentially come up against host country Japan’s skateboarding Tinkerbell, Sky Brown, at the 2020 Olympics. “I want to get as much experience as possible from lots of different Games.”

- Sweet incentive -

Proud mother Nin Hardi admits to being scared witless as she sits and watches her daughter skating with boys almost twice her size. “Of course I worry,” she said. “That’s why I never leave her alone and always go with her to practice.” Hardi also reveals little Aliqqa’s secret weapon in her quest for gold -- ice cream.

“If she gets ice cream, she’s all pumped up,” said mum, who took care to hire a coach who would teach her daughter the correct techniques to help reduce injuries.

As she prepares to make Asian

Games history, Aliqqa admits that the bumps and scrapes are the worst part of her favourite hobby.

“I don’t like the injuries,” she said, screwing up her nose.

“I twisted my ankle badly once and I couldn’t walk for five days.

I can get a bit traumatised by a trick if it injures me.”

Aliqqa’s coach backed his young prodigy to do well at the Asian Games, which kicks off this weekend. “At times she can be a bit moody,” admitted Yudi Toengkagie. “But if she’s in a good mood she’s full of beans and never gives up, despite being so little.”

Aliqqa, though, just wants to have fun. “My hopes are that I want to enjoy myself,” she said, sporting a red Indonesia sweatshirt.

“I want to get more experience, learn lots of tricks from skaters from other countries and have fun competing in international competitions.” (afp)

8

Monday, August 20, 2018

Monday, August 20, 2018

9

ASIAN GAMES 2018 Jakarta Palembang

China’s Sun wins first gold medal of Asian Games

Chinese wushu athlete Sun Peiyuan won the first gold medal of the Asian Games as the Olympic heavyweights made a fast start in their quest to top the medals table on Sunday.

Sun, 28, scored 9.75 to win the men’s changquan category of the Chinese martial art, denying hosts Indonesia the Games’ opening title as he edged Edgar Xavier Marvelo into second place.

China snared 151 gold medals at the 2014 Games in Incheon, nearly double the total of home nation South Korea, as they extended their record of topping the table at each edition of the regional Olympics since 1982.

Taiwan’s Tsai Tsemin took the first bronze of the Games as the two-week, 40-sport competition got underway in Jakarta and Palembang, a port city on Sumatra island. (afp)

MONEY SHARMA / AFP

(L to R) Silver medallist Edgar Xavier Marvelo of Indonesia, gold medallist Sun Peiyuan of China and bronze medallist Tsai Tsemin of Taiwan celebrate during the victory ceremony for the men’s changquan event at the wushu competition during the 2018 Asian Games in Jakarta on August 19, 2018.

Indonesia’s teeny skateboard hope too cool for school Mohd RASFAN / AFP

Gold medallists Taiwan’s Lin Yingshin (L) and Lu Shaochuan pose with their medals after the victory ceremony for the 10m air rifle mixed team shooting final during the 2018 Asian Games in Palembang on August 19, 2018.

Taiwan shoots into first place for gold in Asiad blow to China Taiwanese teenager Lin Yingshin and teammate Lu Shaochuan scored a narrow victory over bitter rivals China at the shooting range of the Asian Games on Sunday.

The finals venue for the 10m air rifle mixed team event in Palembang, which is co-hosting the Games with Jakarta, was standing room only as 19-year-old Lin and 21-yearold Lu brought the victory home.

The pair, ranked second and ninth in the world respectively, managed to keep their calm to beat their Chinese counterparts, world number three 20-year-old Zhao Ruozhu and 22-year-old Yang Haoran.

Lu told reporters afterwards that

Indonesia’s nine-year-old skateboarder Aliqqa Noverry is set to melt hearts at the Asian Games -- but give her ice cream and she could be a medal threat, says her mum.

The youngest competitor at this year’s event in Jakarta, the pint-sized adrenaline junkie loves nothing better than to rip into jumps at breakneck speed, her pigtails billowing

behind her.

“I like all the tricks and going so fast -- that’s the fun part,” Aliqqa told AFP. “My family support me but they’re also very surprised knowing that I’m the youngest athlete here,” added the trailblazing teeny-bopper, who stands just 1.30 metres (4ft, 2in) tall and has only been skating for two years.

“Being the youngest makes me a little nervous but also more motivated.

But my

friends think it’s a bit unfair that I get to skip school.”

Clearly nine is the new 16 -especially in the hipster sport of skateboarding, which is making its Asian Games debut and will appear at the Olympics for the first time at Tokyo in 2020.

Coolly fist-bumping the bigger boarders at her local skate park on the outskirts of Jakarta, Aliqqa stops

the win came as a total surprise following an under-par display in the qualifying round.

“It’s unbelievable,” he said. “I wanted to give up but I cheered up again once I reached the final...I’m very happy.” India came away with bronze as the last to be eliminated in a tense battle requiring high levels of concentration to block out the blaring pop music and cheers and cries from the onlookers.

China is the dominant force at the Asian Games after topping the medal table in every edition of the Regional Olympics since 1982. (afp)

Two Koreas march together as Asian Games burst into life North and South Korea marched together in a stirring display of unity as the Asian Games, one of the world’s biggest sports events, opened in a blaze of colour in Jakarta on Saturday.

South Korean women’s basketball player Lim Yung-hui and North Korean footballer Ju Kyong-chol jointly held the Korean Unification flag aloft as they led the athletes out to an ovation from the packed crowd.

It is the second such symbolic gesture this year by the two Koreas, who also walked together at the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics opening ceremony -- an event that heralded an unprecedented warming of ties.

The North and South, still technically at war, are joining forces in women’s basketball, canoeing and rowing during the 40-sport, two-week regional Olympics in the Indonesian capital and Palembang, a port city on Sumatra island.

South Korean Prime Minister Lee Nak-yon and North Korean Deputy Prime Minister Ri Ryong-nam, watching from the VIP seats, rose

together holding hands and beaming as the Korean athletes marched.

The ceremony opened with a skit purportedly showing President Joko Widodo doing stunts on a motorbike in Jakarta’s streets before riding into the Gelora Bung Karno stadium, to roars from the crowd.

About 1,500 dancers in traditional dress then performed a tightly choreographed routine before Afghanistan led the athletes’ parade into the stadium.

There were huge cheers when the two Koreas, whose athletes together number about 1,000, marched into the stadium together wearing pristine white and blue uniforms.

- ‘You can feel proud’ -

Widodo was then seen dancing in his seat as Indonesian singer Via Vallen took to the stage, before the stadium fell silent to honour the victims of the recent Lombok earthquake.

“You can feel proud of your home country Indonesia,” said Sheikh Ahmed Al-Fahad AlSabah, president of the Olympic Council of

Asia, before Widodo declared the Games open.

Indonesian badminton great Susi Susanti, the women’s singles Olympic champion in 1992, lit the Games cauldron and the ceremony closed with a noisy music performance and spectacular fireworks.

It provided a vibrant start to the Games, whose build-up has been dogged by logistical headaches and security fears after Indonesia suffered its deadliest terror attack in a decade in May. The sprawling archipelago has also been grappling with its latest earthquake disaster after strong tremors in Lombok, an eastern island, left more than 400 people dead.

Indonesia, a country of about 270 million, stepped in to host the Games at short notice after Vietnam pulled out, citing the event’s eye-watering costs.

Indonesia has a poor track record in hosting multi-sports events -- the 2011 Southeast Asian Games in Jakarta and Palembang suffered serious corruption problems and delays, and two people died in a stadium stampede.

Rights group Amnesty International said at least 31 people were killed in a “shoot first and ask questions later” police crackdown on petty crime.

But officials say all venues are ready for competition and tournament-related problems so far have been relatively minor, from the ticket website crashing to misspelt words on signs. About 18,000 athletes and officials from 45 Asian countries will be at the Asiad, organisers said, looking to make their mark across a range of sports from swimming to sepak takraw and bridge.

The Asian Games encompass nearly the full Olympic programme and are considered the pinnacle by many participating nations, for whom Olympic success often proves elusive.

Mohd RASFAN / AFP

This picture taken on August 17, 2018 shows Indonesian skateboarder Aliqqa Noverry, 9, demonstrating her skills at a public park ahead of the 2018 Asian Games in Jakarta. The youngest competitor at this year’s event in Jakarta, the pint-sized adrenaline junkie Noverry loves nothing better than to rip into jumps at breakneck speed, her pigtails billowing behind her.

shredding to observe the call to prayer from the local mosque.

“I think I would like to skate in Tokyo,” nodded Aliqqa, who could potentially come up against host country Japan’s skateboarding Tinkerbell, Sky Brown, at the 2020 Olympics. “I want to get as much experience as possible from lots of different Games.”

- Sweet incentive -

Proud mother Nin Hardi admits to being scared witless as she sits and watches her daughter skating with boys almost twice her size. “Of course I worry,” she said. “That’s why I never leave her alone and always go with her to practice.” Hardi also reveals little Aliqqa’s secret weapon in her quest for gold -- ice cream.

“If she gets ice cream, she’s all pumped up,” said mum, who took care to hire a coach who would teach her daughter the correct techniques to help reduce injuries.

As she prepares to make Asian

Games history, Aliqqa admits that the bumps and scrapes are the worst part of her favourite hobby.

“I don’t like the injuries,” she said, screwing up her nose.

“I twisted my ankle badly once and I couldn’t walk for five days.

I can get a bit traumatised by a trick if it injures me.”

Aliqqa’s coach backed his young prodigy to do well at the Asian Games, which kicks off this weekend. “At times she can be a bit moody,” admitted Yudi Toengkagie. “But if she’s in a good mood she’s full of beans and never gives up, despite being so little.”

Aliqqa, though, just wants to have fun. “My hopes are that I want to enjoy myself,” she said, sporting a red Indonesia sweatshirt.

“I want to get more experience, learn lots of tricks from skaters from other countries and have fun competing in international competitions.” (afp)

10

Destination

Monday, August 20, 2018

International

Monday, August 20, 2018

International

Davis Cup overhauled for 2019 with season-ending team event

The Davis Cup is getting a radical makeover in hopes of reviving an event that has lost some luster.

Beginning next year, the top team event in men’s tennis will be decided with a seasonending, 18-team tournament at a neutral site.

The International Tennis Federation believes this format will be more attractive to elite players who often pass on competing for their countries because of a crowded schedule.

Teams will play one week in February to advance to the championship in November, replacing the current Davis Cup format that is played over four weekends throughout the year. Players will compete for what the ITF says rivals Grand Slam prize money.

The $3 billion, 25-year agreement was approved Thursday at the organization’s conference in Orlando, Florida. Two-thirds of the delegates needed to vote for the reforms, and 71 percent did. Beginning in 2019, 24 nations will compete in a home-or-away qualifying round in February, with the 12 winners advancing to the final tournament. They will be joined by the four semifinalists from the previous year, along with two wild-card teams, who need to be in either the top 50 of the Davis Cup rankings or have a top-10 singles player to be eligible.

The finalists will be placed into six, threeteam groups for round-robin play, involving two singles matches and one doubles, all bestof-three-sets — instead of the current best-offive format featuring four singles matches and one doubles. The winners, along with the next two teams with the best records, will advance to the single-elimination quarterfinals.

The first championship will be held on an indoor hardcourt from Nov. 18-24, 2019, in either Madrid or Lille, France. ITF President David Haggerty said he expected that announcement in the next two weeks.

The new event was developed in partnership with the investment group Kosmos, which was founded by Barcelona and Spain soccer player Gerard Pique. The original plan called for simply an 18-team championship at the end of the year, but was amended after some nations objected to the loss of home-site matches. So

Motel Mexicola Tacos, Tequilas and Fiestas in Seminyak SEMINYAK - Motel Mexicola is a colourful and quirky Mexican bar and restaurant down Jalan Kayujati. It’s just a minutes’ walk from La Lucciola and Petitenget temple, and a stone’s throw from Sense Hotel Seminyak. Visitors from Sydney may be familiar with this partnership between The Bucket List and Rojo Rocket, who serve a range of tostadas, tacos and ceviche created

by Veracruzian Chef Alejandro Urbina. The tasty morsels and modern takes on traditional Mexican fare are accompanied by a drinks list featuring tequilas, margaritas and Cuba libres, that can be enjoyed al fresco. In addition, Mexicola hosts regular house parties with live Latin music that will transport you ‘south of the border’.

The first things to catch your eye at Motel Mexicola are criss-crosses of small red, yellow, green and blue flags strung across the street

from Mexicola to the Bodyworks Spa opposite. Further splashes of colours cover its front entrance, with ‘Taqueria, Rockin’ Maria’ written above a counter that serves Mexican drinks, tacos and fajitas.

This street side cantina is an early night treat for those hooking up with friends before going inside the main building to party. Stepping through its small arched entrance hall, you’ll encounter a table filled with bright orange and yellow marigolds against a blue painted wall. This peculiar sight, referred to as the ‘Motel Mexicola shrine’, also features Latin curios and retro-style photographs surrounded by thick candles with melting wax left to flow down the table’s sides.

To the left of the shrine is a central courtyard, with perimeters lined with bars, bars and more bars serving shots and beer. Another peculiar sight within the

courtyard is a rectangular concrete ‘gravesite’ with a visible cross on it. On our night out there, Sexy Jose Cuervo promotion girls and Carmen Miranda-style fruity beauties added to the Latin-style party atmosphere. Fire dancers boogied and juggled to the beat of the Latin band, and the place was packed.

Motel Mexicola also features a more laid-back upstairs where you can take a cosy seat, sit back, relax and enjoy the view down to the ravers in the courtyard below and it is where you’ll find a similar but smaller shrine too! If you’re feeling a little peckish, you can order tacos, tostadas, aguachile, quesadillas and other antojitos (tapas), before heading down again for more partying.

It’s one of the latest and best places to enjoy a good night in Seminyak, with simple and affordable Mexican food, and great drinks and atmosphere. (net)

AP Photo/Christophe Ena, File

In this Nov. 26, 2017, file photo, members of the French team lift up their trophies after France won the Davis Cup final at the Pierre Mauroy stadium in Lille, northern France. The Davis Cup will be decided with a season-ending, 18team tournament beginning next year. The new format replaces the one in which the Davis Cup is played over four weekends throughout the year. those were added to the proposal as the qualifying round, though that still wasn’t enough for critics of the plan who felt neutral-site matches were too much of a change for an event that dates to 1900. “Those that were opposed were generally opposed because they may believe that home-and-away should be the way that the format is played and always should be every round,” Haggerty said, adding he believed the February qualifying round “gives us the combination of history and tradition that we maintain

as well as innovation with the finals.”

The U.S. Tennis Association was among the national federations that backed the changes.

The organization said the new format will “project Davis Cup into the 21st century” and elevate the competition to “the heights it deserves.” The Americans will play at Croatia in this year’s semifinals in September, with Spain and France meeting in the other semifinals.

Top-ranked Rafael Nadal is expected to play for Spain, but Roger Federer has frequently

passed on playing for Switzerland.

The new format would cut in half the Davis Cup time commitment. Pique is among those who think the World Cup-style format is the boost the event needs. “This is the beginning of a new stage that guarantees the pre-eminent and legitimate place that the Davis Cup should have as a competition for national teams while adapting to the demands of this professional sport at the highest level,” he said in a statement. (ap)

Fury beats Pianeta to set up Wilder bout

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Tyson Fury set up a world title fight with American WBC heavyweight champion Deontay Wilder with a points victory over Francesco Pianeta in Belfast on Saturday.

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sence from the ring, former world champion Fury looked understandably rusty in just doing enough to see off journeyman Pianeta.

Fury will need to be far closer to the fighter that once dominated the heavyweight division when facing the undefeated Wilder.

FILE - In this April 27, 2016, file photo, Britain’s Tyson Fury gestures during a press conference in Manchester, England.

Heavyweight champion Deontay Wilder is on a business trip this weekend in Belfast. He’ll be ringside as a TV commentator for Saturday’s fight between Tyson Fury and Francesco Pianeta. But even Wilder has something riding on the outcome of this matchup. If Fury wins, Wilder plans to challenge Fury to a fight they’ve already discussed _ right then and there.

That fight is expected to take place in Las Vegas later in the year with Fury’s promoter Frank Warren confirming the venue and date will be announced next week.

Wilder was ringside in the Northern Irish capital and seemed to appreciate Fury’s introduction to the ring accompanied by the tune of “Sweet Home Alabama”, Wilder’s home state.

There was much less to impress Wilder once the action got underway as Fury failed to land a knockout blow.

However, Fury controlled the fight throughout to stretch his own unbeaten professional record to 27-0. (afp)

6

Monday, August 20, 2018

W

International

RLD

Fifty years ago, Soviet tanks crush the Prague Spring

In August 1968 Soviet tanks rolled into communist Czechoslovakia to crush a burgeoning democratic reform movement known as the Prague Spring. Here is a recap of the shock intervention that reined in the Soviet satellite state, its aspirations for democracy warded off for another 20 years.

Party. General Ludvik Svoboda became president in March.

Driven by Dubcek, reforms aimed at achieving “Socialism with a human face” were introduced. They included the abolition of censorship, freedom of assembly and association, and cautious economic reforms. Moscow responded with warnings and an ultimatum.

- Explosive context -

- Tanks in the cities -

“At 11:00 pm, Soviet, Polish, East German, Bulgarian and Hungarian troops crossed the Czechoslovak border,” AFP reported early on August 21, picking up Radio Prague’s announcement of the overnight invasion.

Tensions had been mounting between then Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev and the reformist government that had taken over in the Central European state.

In January, Moscow’s pointman was replaced by Alexander Dubcek, who became head of the powerful Communist

At 4:59 am Radio Prague announced that the capital and the rest of the country had been occupied.

Moscow and its communist allies poured 200,000 soldiers into Czechoslovakia that day, their numbers rising to 600,000.

The government urged citizens to “remain calm and not to take up arms against the foreign troops.” Many learnt of the invasion of their country only via their radios.

In Prague, the Soviet troops were concentrated around three nerve centres: the headquarters of the Communist

Party’s Central Committee, Prague Castle and the radio headquarters.

From dawn, hundreds of Prague citizens gathered in front of the radio building which was surrounded by tanks. Soldiers fired bursts of machine-gun fire at the building and nearby houses with people shouting insults at them like “Gestapo”, or “Long live Dubcek”. Around 100 people were killed in the first days of the offensive.

- Leaders arrested -

Russia’s Tass news agency said the intervention followed a request from “Czechoslovakian statesmen”.

Historians would later establish that one was Vasil Bilak, a member of the Communist Party’s politburo.

In the early hours of the invasion, the Soviet Red Army arrested Dubcek, prime minister Oldrich Cernik and others.

They were taken to the Kremlin on August 22, joined a day later by another group that included the president, Svoboda.

All were forced to sign the Moscow Protocol, a diktat which formalised the Soviet occupation, cooperating after four days of fraught talks.

Dubcek was kept in power but he was deliberately and progressively weakened.

- The people resist -

The population, in the dark about the Moscow talks, had meanwhile mobilised non-violent resistance to the occupation.

Street signs were taken down to confuse the invaders. In the countryside, where farms flew the Czechoslovak flag at half-mast, road signs went up that showed a single arrow for “Direction Moscow”. Twelve free radios continued to operate, despite Soviet attempts to take them off air.

Car horns, factory sirens and church bells regularly sounded in unison in a sign of support for Svoboda and Dubcek, whose return was awaited restlessly.

- Prague Spring extinguished -

On the morning of August 27, alerted by the radio of the imminent return of their leaders, jubilant crowds lined the road leading from the airport to the castle, where the national flag was flying again. But their relief was short-lived.

In an address to the nation, Svoboda announced that the departure of the “occupiers” was conditional on a “normalisation of the situation”.

“Freedom will be restricted for a time, to allow a return to normal,” Dubcek added in “a broken voice... as if to take his breath or overcome his emotions,” AFP wrote. An agreement on the temporary stationing of Soviet troops was signed in April 1969.

Nikolay DOYCHINOV / AFP Dubcek was ousted as head of the Communist Party Former Bulgarian soldier Pencho Valkov poses on August 16, 2018 in Sevlievo with portraits of himself in April 1969, and massive purges followed. Democracy as a young soldier during his military service, as he wears a t-shirt bearing a Kalashnikov with a rose would not return until the Velvet Revolution in 1989. Four emerging from its barrel and the date Prague 1968. Valkov was one of the Bulgarian soldiers who took years later, the country split into the Czech Republic and part in the crushing of the Prague Spring in 1968 under the direction of Moscow.

Slovakia. (afp)

Russian activist on hunger strike hospitalised Hunger-striking Russian activist Sergei Udaltsov was hospitalised Sunday as he serves a one-month term over organising protests, according to observers and his social media channels.

The far-left Kremlin critic was taken to a Moscow hospital suffering from dehydration after doctors were called to his detention centre to take blood tests, five days into a

hunger strike, his Facebook page said.

“He was hospitalised on doctors orders,” an official from Moscow’s public monitoring commission told the TASS news agency. “In our presence he was evacuated by paramedics,” Ivan Melnikov said.

Udaltsov was active in a wave of demonstrations at the end of July

against deeply unpopular plans to raise the Russian retirement age.

He was arrested and last week sentenced to 30 days behind bars after burning images of members of the Russian government at one of the rallies.

Last year Udaltsov finished a four-and-a-half-year prison sentence for organising anti-Kremlin protests.

Udaltsov and co-defendant Leonid Razvozzhayev were convicted in July 2014 of fomenting mass riots across Russia ahead of Vladimir Putin’s inauguration to a third term as president in 2012.

He went on hunger strike several times during those years spent in a penal colony in central Russia’s Tambov province.

Ukrainian filmmaker Oleg

Sentsov who was convicted of arson attacks on pro-Moscow party offices in Crimea in 2014 is also on hunger strike in a Russian prison.

According to his cousin Natalia Kaplan, his health has dramatically declined since he started the protest on May 14 to demand the release of all Ukrainian political prisoners in Russia. (afp)

International

Monday, August 20, 2018

11

Fresh quake rocks Indonesia’s Lombok island

A strong earthquake rocked the Indonesian island of Lombok Sunday, triggering landslides, damaging buildings and sending people fleeing just two weeks after a tremor killed more than 480 people there.

The 6.3-magnitude quake, centred in East Lombok, struck at a relatively shallow depth of seven kilometres (four miles) and was felt across the island, officials said.

It was the third major quake in less than a month to rock the island, after deadly tremors on July 29 and August 5 and numerous aftershocks, but this time there were no immediate reports of deaths or injuries.

“The earthquake caused people to panic and flee their houses,” national disaster agency spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho told Metro TV. “There have been no reports of death or (serious) damage but people are traumatised.”

Landslides were reported in a national park on Mount Rinjani where hundreds of hikers had been briefly trapped after the quake in late July.

The park has been closed since then.

Local disaster mitigation agency spokesman Agung Pramuja said several houses and other structures in the district of Sembalun, on the slopes of Mount Rinjani, collapsed on Sunday after being damaged by the previous two quakes.

The structures included checkpoints once used by trekkers climbing the mountain, Pramuja said, adding that the exact number of damaged buildings was still being checked. Residents said the latest earthquake was felt strongly in East Lombok.

“I was driving to deliver aid to evacuees when suddenly the electricity pole was swaying. I realised it was an earthquake.

“People started to scream and cry. They all ran to the street,” East Lombok resident Agus Salim told AFP. The tremor was also felt in the island’s capital Mataram and on the neighbouring resort island of Bali.

“Everybody ran outside their house. They’re all gathering in an open field, still terrified,” said Endri Susanto, a children rights activist in Mataram. “People are traumatised by the previous earthquakes and aftershocks never seem to stop.”

- ‘Ring of Fire’ -

The latest tremor comes two weeks after a shallow 6.9-magnitude quake on August 5 levelled tens of thousands of homes, mosques and businesses across Lombok. At least 481 people died and tens of thousands were injured.

The hardest-hit region was in the north of the island, which has suffered hundreds of aftershocks since. A week before that quake, a tremor surged through the island and killed 17.

The August 5 quake left more than 350,000 displaced, with many sleeping under tents or tarpaulins near their ruined homes or in evacuation shelters, while makeshift medical facilities were set up to treat the injured.

Badly damaged roads, particularly in the mountainous north of the island, are a headache for relief agencies trying to distribute aid.

The economic toll of the quake -- including its impact on buildings, infrastructure and productivity -- has been estimated to be at least five trillion rupiah ($348 million).

Dubbed “The Island of a Thousand Mosques”, Muslim-majority Lombok is a less popular destination than its neighbour Bali, the Hindumajority island that is the backbone of Indonesia’s $19.4 billion tourist sector.

But Lombok had been earmarked as one of Indonesian President Joko Widodo’s “10 new Balis”, with the regional government hoping to develop it into a major destination, especially in the booming halal tourism sector.

Indonesia, an archipelago of thousands of islands, sits on the so-called Pacific “Ring of Fire”, where tectonic plates collide and many of the world’s volcanic eruptions and earthquakes occur In 2004 a tsunami triggered by a magnitude 9.3 undersea earthquake off the coast of Sumatra, in western Indonesia, killed 220,000 people in countries around the Indian Ocean, including 168,000 in Indonesia. (afp)

Handout / INDONESIAN MILITARY / AFP

This handout photo taken and released on August 15, 2018 by the Indonesian Military shows soldiers removing debris from damaged buildings in Pemenang, northern Lombok, after a 6.9 magnitude earthquake struck the area on August 5. The death toll from an earthquake on the Indonesian island of Lombok has topped 400, authorities said, as bodies were still being recovered from the ruins of destroyed buildings.

12

International

Monday, August 20, 2018

BUSINESS Turkish lira resumes fall after Trump sanctions threat

ISTANBUL - The Turkish currency fell again on Friday, breaking a three-day quiet spell in the country currency crisis, after the United States threatened to impose new sanctions on the NATO country.

The lira dropped about 5 percent, to about 6.11 per dollar, after U.S. President Donald Trump posted a tweet warning the country of more punitive measures over the continued detention in Turkey of American pastor Andrew Brunson, an evangelical pastor who faces 35 years in prison on charges of espionage and terrorrelated charges.

Turkey’s trade minister, Ruhsar Pekcan, said her government would respond to any new trade duties.

Dashing hopes for a quick solution to the dispute, a Turkish court on Friday rejected an appeal for the pastor’s release from house detention. Upholding a lower court’s decision earlier this week, it also ruled against lifting a travel ban imposed on Brunson.

The United States has already imposed sanctions on two Turkish government ministers and doubled tariffs on Turkish steel and aluminum imports. Turkey retaliated with some $533 million of tariffs on some U.S. imports — including cars, tobacco and alcoholic drinks — and said it would boycott U.S. electronic goods.

The diplomatic dispute is worsening investors’ concerns about Turkey’s fundamental economic problems. The country has amassed high levels of foreign debt to fuel growth in recent years and as the currency drops, that debt becomes so much more expensive to repay, leading to potential bankruptcies. Economists are worried of a recession.

The turmoil led ratings agency Moody’s to downgrade Turkey’s

credit rating further into “junk” status and slap a “negative” rating on its outlook.

Moody’s stripped Turkey of its investment-grade rating in 2016 and Friday’s move lowered it one rung further. The agency says the downgrade was triggered by what it described as a further weakening of Turkey’s public institutions and a related reduction in the predictability of Turkish policy making.

Debt rating downgrades typically mean higher borrowing costs as investors demand steeper interest rates to take on riskier debt. Moody’s says its negative outlook reflects its expectation that there’s more financial stress likely on the horizon for Turkey.

Meanwhile, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s has consolidated power over the central bank, and pushed for it to refrain from raising interest rates to support the currency, as experts say it should. (ap)

AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis

An oversized copy of a 200 Turkish lira banknote, featuring a photo of modern Turkey’s founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk decorates a currency exchange shop in Istanbul, Friday, Aug. 17, 2018. Turkey and the United States exchanged new threats of sanctions Friday, keeping alive a diplomatic and financial crisis.

Fed rate policy unintentionally pressures emerging economies WASHINGTON - President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is blaming the United States for Turkey’s financial crisis, ignoring homegrown problems like high debts, raging inflation and his own erratic policies.

Yet one of the threats facing Turkey and other emerging-market countries really is made-in-America: By ratcheting up U.S. interest rates, the Federal Reserve has — unintentionally — led investors to pull money out of emerging markets like Turkey, strengthened the dollar’s value and made it harder for foreign companies to repay their dollar-denominated debts.

The resulting flight of capital into safer and higher-yielding U.S. investments has sent many emergingmarket currencies tumbling. The MSCI Emerging Markets Currency Index has sunk nearly 8 percent since early March.Especially vulnerable are countries with weak economic fundamentals: Runaway inflation, bulging trade deficits, piles of foreign debt and paltry foreign-currency reserves available to intervene in the markets to help prop up their own currencies.

Turkey is Exhibit A: Inflation is running near 16 percent a year. The country buys much more than it sells abroad. Its borrowing binge has left Turkey highly vulnerable. Erdogan

has rattled global investors by pressuring the country’s central bank not to raise interest rates — the conventional response to high inflation. High interest rates normally help strengthen a nation’s currency. But they also tend to slow economic growth, something Erdogan clearly wants to avoid.

Erdogan has named his son-in-law as finance minister, blamed foreigners for his country’s woes and escalated tensions with Turkey’s longtime ally the United States. On Wednesday, Turkey said it was increasing taxes on U.S. products like cars, alcohol and coal in retaliation for President Donald Trump’s move to double tariffs on Turkish steel and aluminum. The two countries are feuding over Ankara’s decision to arrest an American pastor and try him on espionage and terrorism charges related to a failed coup attempt two years ago.

The Turkish lira’s value recovered a bit on Wednesday, by 5 percent to around 6.05 lira per dollar, after the government acted to shore it up by reducing the daily limit in bank foreign currency swap transactions. But even with Wednesday’s gain, the lira is down 38 percent against the dollar since early March.Yet among the currencies of emerging economies, it’s hardly alone: Argentina’s peso has lost

34 percent over the same period. That nation is grappling with a corruption scandal and double-digit inflation.

Argentina’s central bank just jacked up its benchmark rate to 45 percent.

Likewise, South Africa’s rand has tumbled 18 percent. That country’s economy hasn’t achieved even a modest 2 percent annual growth in five years. And it runs a gaping deficit in its current account, the broadest measure of trade. A crumbling currency inflicts many damaging consequences: Companies that borrowed in dollars — the global reserve currency — have to come up with steadily more money in their local currencies to repay U.S. dollar debts. Having to do so also raises risks for the banks that lent to them. That’s the kind of squeeze that ignited the catastrophic 1997-1998 Asian financial crisis. A currency disaster in Thailand infected the entire region, and East Asian economies absorbed devastating damage.

Fears of a replay have gripped financial markets as Turkey’s crisis has intensified. “Contagion” is the word analysts use to describe their nightmare of seeing Turkey’s problems spread across the developing world.

Still, most economists remain optimistic for now that another such crisis can be avoided. For one thing,

Turkey’s economy is uniquely mismanaged.

“Turkey is the No. 1 country we had our eyes on for a potential financial crisis in the Obama administration,” said Jason Furman, a Harvard economist and a former chief economist for President Barack Obama.

Turkey’s “economic circumstances are so different than many other emerging markets,” Furman said, referring to the country’s debts and Erdogan’s unconventional policies.

And emerging-market countries learned lessons from the debacle two decades ago. Many piled up reserves to fend off speculative assaults on their currencies. At the start of 1997, emerging-market countries’ reserves amounted to barely 6 percent of their economic output. Now, they equal nearly 18 percent, according to the Institute of International Finance, a banking trade group.

“Emerging-market countries, on the whole, have much stronger financial positions than they did 20 years ago,” the Wells Fargo Investment Institute said in a report Tuesday. Their foreign debts, for instance, have fallen from 38 percent of economic output in 1999 to 29 percent last year.

What’s more, emerging-market economies, for the most part, appear

relatively stable. The International Monetary Fund expects them to collectively register growth of roughly 5 percent this year and next, which would be the best showing since 2013. Turkey’s troubles are “unlikely to trigger a meltdown — just a fair bit of volatility in currency and financial markets,” said Eswar Prasad, a Cornell University economist and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

“Turkey is in a crisis because of a particular potent mix of bad economics mixed with even worse politics,” Mandy Xu, a Credit Suisse analyst, wrote in a research report.

More worrisome, Xu and others say, is the prospect of a sharp slowdown in the Chinese economy, the world’s second-largest after the United States. China’s growth slowed in the April-June period. Beijing has tightened lending controls over the past year to stem a surge in debt. The IMF expects Chinese growth to decelerate to 6.6 percent this year from 6.9 percent in 2017. That slowdown poses at least a threat for emerging-market countries that export raw materials to Beijing.

Among those with the most to lose are the Philippines, Russia, Malaysia, Brazil and Argentina, economist Vanda Szendrei of Oxford Economics noted in a research report. (ap)

Bali News

International

Monday, August 20, 2018

5

Giant’s Bamboo Jegog Instrument

Jegog is a form of gamelan music indigenous to Bali, Indonesia, played on instruments made of bamboo. The tradition of jegog is centered in Jembrana, a region in Western Bali. In recent years jegog has started to become popular in other regions of Bali with a few groups being established in central Bali to entertain tourists. International interest has been spread by tourists visiting Bali and by recordings.

There are virtually no ensembles outside of Bali with the exception of at least two groups in Japan (Sekar Sakura and GeinohYamashirogumi, the latter’s having been used in 4 of the tracks in their score for the film Akira as well as on the final track of EcophonyRinne ), one in the United States (Sekar Jaya) and one in Germany.

Jegog music is very fast, loud, rhythmic and precise. Pieces last from a few minutes to as long as thirty minutes. We invited a very special talent teacher directly from Jembrana for 3 years, from how to build a Jegog and how to play it till becomes a group of Jegog’s orchestra.

Instrument Jegog instruments have a fournote scale that roughly corresponds to the four pitches of a dominant 7th chord in Western music. All instruments have eight bamboo keys.

Some instruments have two keys for each pitch slightly detuned so that the pitches beat when they are played together. Other instruments have a two octave range with four pitches in a low octave and the same

four pitches anoctave higher.

In this case the instrument will be paired with another instrument that is slightly detuned. Taken together the ensemble has a range of five octaves. Most Jegog ensembles have instruments that have keys that are made of bamboo that are split at one end and then half of the tube is removed.

The other end remains intact and functions as a resonator for the split part. The keys are suspended on a wooden frame and struck with mallets (called pangguls), made out of wood or rubber. There are also Jegog ensembles with instruments called JegogTingklik. These smaller instruments are used primarily with children. The keys are made of bamboo slats mounted above a resonatorbox.

The lowest instrument in a Jegog ensemble is also called a Jegog. The ensemble gets its name from this instrument. The keys of the Jegog instrument are as long as 3 meters in length and a pitch as low as 60 hertz. The instrument is so large, and the mallets are so heavy that it takes two people to play it.

The players crouch on a platform on the top of the instrument and alternate playing the keys. The Jegog instrument has the lowest octave of the ensemble. Each pair of pitches are detuned by as much as 7 hertz. In this octave, that is almost a whole tone. The keys are arranged 1’ 2’ 3’ 4’ 1 2 3 4, one being the lowest pitch and 4 being the highest. The four keys on the left are the higher pitches of the detuned pairs and the four on the right are the lower ones.

Melody Instruments One octave higher than the Jegog is an instrument called the Undir, and an octave above that is the Kuntung. The instruments are small enough to be played by one person each. The Undir is still big enough that the player needs to crouch on a platform on the top of it to play it. There are two Undir and two Kuntung. The Undir and Kuntung have the same arrangement of keys as the Jegog. These five instruments together play the melody (called the bun). Some ensembles have a high pitch flute called a suling that also

plays the melody.

Kotekan instruments Each of the remaining 9 instruments span two octaves and are arranged 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 where 5 through 8 is an octave above 1 to 4. The lowest of these instruments, called the Barangan, span the same octaves as the Undir and the Kuntung. The next higher is the Kancil which begins with the octave of the Kuntung and extends an octave higher. The next higher—the highest in the ensemble—is the Suir, likewise, extending one octave

higher. There are three Barangan, three Kancil, and three suir.

The Barangan play the melody twice as fast as the other melody instruments. Since this is often very fast, the players alternate playing the notes. The Kancil and Suir play interlocking patterns called Kotekan, sometimes the Barangan play these patterns as well. The Barangan are the front line of the ensemble. The center of the three Barangan is the leader of the ensemble. Other players watch the leader for cues and tempo changes. (kmb)

Betel Nut Box, a Tradition of the Elderly when Receiving Guests

Nampin or chewing betel leaves is one of the traditions that remains strong amongst Balinese elders. According to one respected elder named Ni Ketut Darma, who still chews betel leaves everyday, tradtionally the ingredients for betwel chewing are kept in a special betel nut box called pabuan or pecanangan. “When we use this box at home we call it pabuan, but when we serve guests we call this penginangan, using more refined language” she explained.

According to Grandma Darma, the betel nut box is made of wood in the long side shape where it generally consists of some compartments containing lime, betel leaves, gambier, betel nut, betel nut mortar and pestle or panyawisan, small knife, and caket (used to halve areca nut). She said that in the past the betel nut box was the first thing to be served to guests who came or when visiting other people’s homes.

“Presenting betel nut box and nampin has become a tradition in the life of Balinese people, until now this tradition remains to be implemented especially by parents like me,” she said.

She added the betel nut box is not only served at home, but also at temple with a different designation. At temple, it is called pacanangan, functioned as the offerings presented to deities. Pabuan and pacanangan is basically not the same. Pabuan served at home usually contains lime, gambier, betel leaf, betel nut, betel nut mortar and pestle, small knife, and caket, while the pecanangan at temple has the same contents with additional ingredients like thread, money and fruits.

When asked about how she feels when doing nampin, she just claimed to be accustomed to doing it. Men and women of her age usually do it. It is tasteless but the lips feel abrasive. It feels nothing due to the mixture with lime. “Our lips are abrasive, but I have been accustomed to the taste,” she said. (kmb)

4

Bali News

Monday, August 20, 2018

International

Monday, August 20, 2018

International

Farmers utilized, agriculture dumped DENPASAR - The supporting sector of Bali’s economy is tourism, namely accommodation, food and drinks. Meanwhile, the second largest source of economic growth is agriculture. However, since 2010, the contribution of agriculture to the GRDP continues to decline in keeping with the rapid development of tourism. From originally 17 percent in the second quarter of 2017, it dropped to 14.37 percent, 14.29 percent in the first quarter of 2018 and 13.95 percent in the second quarter of 2018.

The Division Head of the Distribution Statistics at the Bali Central Statistics Agency (BPS), I Gede Nyoman Subadri, said the accommodation, food and beverage business (tourism) is the highest contributor to the GRDP. In the second quarter of 2018, the contribution reached 23.19 percent. This business field is inseparable from the number of tourist visits increasing every year.

As of June 2018, foreign tourist arrivals experienced an increase of 8.02 percent (yoy) as their arrival in June reached 544,550 compared to June 2017 coming to 504,141. In terms of month-to-month (monthly), it also increased. No wonder the Ngurah Rai Airport was ranked first as the recipient of foreign tourists.

Of the total foreign visits, Chinese tourist still dominated the visit to Bali, followed by that of Australia and India. Based on a survey conducted by Bank Indonesia of Bali Representative Office in 2017, the average daily expenditure of Chinese tourists amounted to IDR 1,578,545 and with an average length of stay of 6.12 days while Australian tourists averagely spent IDR 1,496,189 with an average length of stay of 8.95 days.

The attraction of Bali is indeed extraordinary. Mount Agung eruption disaster and the recent Lombok earthquake getting to be felt in Bali did not discourage tourists from coming. It also included the Prince and Princess Juan Bagration Mukhrani from Georgia spending holidays in Bali on August 12-15. These Prince and Princess from Eastern Europe remained to choose Bali as a tourist

destination.

Welcoming host of the Georgian Prince and Princess, Hans Huang, said they were very happy with Bali.

They liked Bali because of the culture and love to establish closeness with the locals. “They like the atmosphere of Balinese settlement that enters the alleys,” he said. They considered the disasters hitting Lombok and Bali are not something scary. According to them, it is a natural phenomenon that cannot be resisted. “They stated to still choose Bali as their tourist destination,” he said.

According to an economic observer, Viraguna Bagoes Oka, the contribution of agriculture to the GRDP continues to fall because the agricultural development in Bali is only short-term oriented, not longterm. So, it cannot be enjoyed and prosper farmers in the long term. In addition, human resources problems are also a scourge as the farming human resources are decreasing. It happens due to the result of the HR mindset oriented to an instant and factual profession, namely the work in the bureaucracy and tourism. “This orientation is still very prominent.

Such mindset causes the agricultural sector requiring patience, fighting power, determination to produce optimally and really takes a long time to produce results,” he explained.

Over the past ten years, the government has prioritized short-term aspects so that the sectors requiring a long oriented foundation is less considered. For example, infrastructure is very apprehensive. As a result, the flow of goods from village to city or from city to city is very inefficient.

Unavoidably, the production factors of agriculture are burdened with transportation costs.

Besides, there is no agricultural management from upstream to downstream. It should be managed well and sustainably. “So, what produced in the upstream can be absorbed by the market. Since the infrastructure is not supportive, half of the production is taken from other region that is also costly. In short, Bali remains to be 70 percent dependent on outside Bali for the eight basic ingredients,” he explained. (kmb42)

IBP/kmb

The second largest source of economic growth in Bali is agriculture.

13

More bodies found in flooded Kerala as toll hits 357

Ed JONES / AFP

IBP/kmb

The fruit gebogan offerings for monkey flocks became a spectacle for tourists making a visit.

Gebongan offerings for monkeys at Uluwatu draw visitors’ interests

MANGUPURA - A different atmosphere is seen in the tourist attraction outside the Uluwatu area with a series of Tumpek Uye or Tumpek Kandang celebration on Saturday (Aug. 18). In which, the fruit gebogan offerings for monkey flocks became a spectacle for tourists making a visit.

According to chief of Pecatu customary village, I Made Sumerta, the ceremony is an expression of gratitude so that the population of monkey can coexist with humans and visitors in the Uluwatu destination in accordance with the Tri Hita Karana concept. The activity is routinely carried out every six months (210 days) in the Balinese calendar. “This is a reflection to implement the Tri Hita Karana concept, respect for nature and the contents, where one of which is the monkey,” he said.

All this time, said Sumerta, the monkey has contributed positively to the completeness of the tourist object in the Uluwatu area. Of course, this is a difference from other tourist objects because this has become a support for the welfare at Pecatu village. “The tourist

area of Uluwatu temple can be said to be one of the quite complete tourist objects, and more than other tourist objects. Additionally, the Uluwatu destination is often referred to as ‘The Five Wonderful Beauties at Uluwatu’ because other than being able to see natural panorama, sunset, temple, forest and kecak, of course visitors can also see the presence of monkeys,” he said.

Meanwhile, Assistant Manager of Uluwatu Temple Outdoor Object, Wayan Mosin Arjana, added that as is known, Tumpek Kandang is carried out every six months routinely by the Uluwatu tourist area operator. So, the existence of the monkey is expected to boost tourist visits.

“Bali has the Tri Hita Karana concept containing the human rela-

tions with nature and the environment, especially those that provide benefits to this object, namely the presence of monkeys in the Uluwatu area,” he explained.

He said that based on the data of observations made by Canadian researchers, the number of monkey population is currently around 330.

Moreover, the Uluwatu monkeys have been declared rabies-free by the Veterinary Center and are routinely treated every six months by the Veterinary Medicine Faculty of Udayana University. He advised that visitors do not need to be afraid and worried about the existence of the monkeys because every day there is an officer or monkey handler in charge of the task. “The monkeys here belong to the smart and funny, not aggressive ones,” he said. (kmb23)

Participant Ahn Jong-ho speaks to reporters as he arrives at a hotel and gathering point ahead of the inter-Korean family reunion in Sokcho on August 19, 2018.

S. Korean families gather on eve of rare reunion

SOKCHO - Dozens of elderly and frail South Koreans gathered excitedly Sunday on the eve of their first meeting for nearly seven decades with family members in North Korea.

The three-day reunion -- the first for three years -- begins Monday at the Mount Kumgang resort in North Korea, following a rapid diplomatic thaw on the peninsula.

Millions of people were swept apart by the 1950-53 Korean War, which divided brothers and sisters, parents and children and husband and wives and perpetuated the division of the peninsula.

Among them was Lee Keumseom, now a tiny and frail 92. She was waiting to see her son for the first time since she left him behind in the turmoil of war.

She lost her husband and fouryear-old son as their family fled, and boarded a ferry headed for the South with only her infant daughter -- who was accompanying her to the reunion.

The son is now 71 and Lee has been told that he will bring his daughter-in-law to the meeting.

“I don’t know what I’m feeling, whether it’s good or bad,” Lee told AFP. “I don’t know if this is real or a dream.”

She raised seven children after remarrying in South Korea but always worried about the son she left in the North. Now there are many questions to ask.

“Where he lived, who he lived with and who raised him -- because he was only four,” she said.

Because the conflict ended with an armistice rather than a peace treaty, the two Koreas have remained technically remain at war.

All civilian exchanges -- even mundane family news -- are banned.

- Time running out Since 2000 the two nations have held 20 rounds of reunions but time is running out for many ageing family members.

More than 130,000 Southerners have signed up for a reunion since the events began but most of them have since died. Most of those still waiting are over 80 and the oldest participant this year is 101.

With a few people dropping out at the last minute for health reasons, 89 elderly South Koreans -- ac-

companied by relatives -- gathered in Sokcho city on South Korea’s northeast coast to spend the night before heading to the heavilyfortified border that has taken them decades to cross.

Lee Keum-seom is one of the few parents reuniting with a child.

Some of those selected for this year’s reunions dropped out after learning that their parents or siblings had died and that they could only meet more distant relatives whom they had never seen before.

But Lee Kwan-joo, 93, said he would meet his nephew and niece to get a sense of the life that his parents and six siblings had led in the North before they died.

Lee in 1945 went to school in Seoul, away from his family in Pyongyang, and the war made the separation permanent.

“I was delighted to hear about my nephew and niece, even though I don’t even know their faces,” Lee said. “I just want to ask them how my brothers, sisters and parents passed away.” (afp)

THRISSUR - Rescuers waded into submerged villages in southern India on Sunday in a desperate search for survivors cut off for days by floods that have already killed more than 350 people.

Entire villages in Kerala have been swept away in the state’s worst floods in a century, and emergency responders fear the death toll will rise as they reach areas almost entirely underwater.

In Thrissur, one of the worst-hit districts, rescuers sifting through inundated houses have discovered the bodies of those unable to escape as the floodwaters quickly rose.

“They didn’t think that it would rise this high -- 10 to 15 feet at some places -- when the initial warnings were issued,” said Ashraf Ali K.M, who is leading the search in the small town of Mala.

“Some of them later gave distress calls when the water rose high and fast,” he told AFP at the scene, where dead cattle and other livestock floated past.

Thousands of army, navy and air force troops have fanned out across Kerala to assist as distress calls sound out across the idyllic tourist hotspot. The death toll stands at 357, local officials said, with 33 killed in just the last 24 hours.

Among the dead was a mother and son in Mala, whose home collapsed around them late Saturday.

Another was a local man who volunteered for the search and rescue mission.

His body was retrieved by comrades early Sunday, said Dibin K.S, a Kerala firefighter, in a grim

reminder of the perils facing rescuers.

Officials say many houses are irreparably damaged across the state, and have warned residents against trying to return to them.

- Panicked appeals Roads and 134 bridges have been damaged, isolating remote areas in the hilly districts of the state which are worst affected.

With power and communication lines down, thousands remained trapped in towns and villages cut off by the floods amid growing shortages of food and water.

A train from Pune, in Maharashtra state, embarked south on Saturday for Kerala laden with one million litres (two million pints) of drinking water.

Panic-stricken flood victims have been making appeals on social media for help, saying they cannot get through to rescue services.

In Mala, villagers in desperate wait had to improvise as the floodwaters rose.

Jobin K John, a local rescuer, showed pictures of locals rowing through the murky brown waters using kitchen pots as rafts to reach their stricken neighbours.

“They used these huge cooking pots to rescue around 100 people in the first wave of flash floods, as no one was prepared (for a rescue),” he told AFP. Mobile phone operators have been offering free data and SMS messages across Kerala since Saturday to assist with distress calls. (afp)

MANJUNATH KIRAN / AFP

Indian people look at a houses destroyed by a landslide at Kannapanakundu village, about 422 km north of Trivandrum, in the south Indian state of Kerala, on August 18, 2018.

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Monday, August 20, 2018

Traveling

International

Bali News

International

Lebanon’s mountains offer cool refuge from Mideast heat

FARAYA — The passengers’ chatter on the Beirut-bound flight was far from reassuring. Taxi drivers were striking. Traffic was going to be bad. Add the heat and suffocating humidity of a typical summer day and you’re hit with a powerful urge to get out of town.

The mountains? Absolutely.

Whether during war or peace, Lebanon’s high mountain ranges have long been a favorite refuge for Lebanese living in cities, towns and

villages along the Mediterranean coastline.

“If anything happens here (in the mountains) now, then it’s probably the end of the world,” said 24-year-old old hotelier Elyse Salamah.

Just a short drive from Beirut, the mountains offer an escape from summer heat and, for those with deep pockets, a place to ski in winter.

Others make the trip in pursuit of culinary bliss: the perfect tabbouleh, the ultimate hummus or the divine

pastry kunafeh.

The mountains saw some of the worst battles of Lebanon’s 1975-1990 civil war. But they have also served as a safe haven from conflict, including the 2006 war between the Shiite Hezbollah group and Israel, when tens of thousands fled there to escape the month of fighting and bombardment.

My destination was Faraya, a ski resort high enough — 1,850 meters (6,000 feet) above sea level — to be sufficiently cool in July.

AP Photo/Hamza Hendawi

In this Thursday, July 26, 2018 photo, people participate in a summer festival designed to attract visitors with music, food stalls and swimming pools in the mountain village of Faraya, Lebanon. Whether it’s war or peace, Lebanon’s high mountain ranges have long been a favorite refuge for the Lebanese living in the cities, towns and villages below and along the Mediterranean coastline. The Lebanese drive up the mountains to avoid the summer’s heat or, for those with deep pockets, to ski in winter.

It took nearly an hour and a half to drive the 50-kilometer (30-mile) route, winding around sharp mountain curves. The moment I stepped out of the car at my destination — a small family-run hotel — I knew I made the right decision. The temperature was a pleasant 22 C (72 F), noticeably cooler than Beirut along with a just fraction of the capital’s humidity.

But what does one do in a ski resort in summer?

Not an awful lot, to be honest. But you can hike on nature trails if you feel up to it. One trek takes you up to an imposing, 23-meter (75-foot) statue of St. Charbel, a 19th-century saint revered by Lebanon’s Maronite Christians. A hooded monk, he raises a hand in blessing over the landscape of mountains, barren in the summer, snow-covered in winter.

Or you can drive around the surrounding hills in a quad (all-terrain vehicle) or just swim and sunbathe at any of the many small pools in the village, which charge a fee for a day’s use.

But if you are a big city boy like myself — my hometown, Cairo, is a city of 20 million with the unflattering distinction of being among the world’s most polluted cities — then a short break in Faraya offers a rare opportunity to kick back, relax and savor Lebanese food.

And the village offers visitors unique little experiences you rarely encounter in big city life.

Like most other mountain villages, almost all hotels and restaurants in Faraya are family run, so staying there has a personal feel. From where I sat in my hotel’s dining room, I could hear the chef, Mahmoud Mohammed, in the kitchen cooking, chopping the onions and parsley for my tabbouleh.

And at every meal, he came out to discuss the food with me.

“The vegetables you just ate I picked from our kitchen garden today,” the chef boasted one evening after serving a light dinner of tabbouleh and hummus. “I spent years spying on experienced chefs while they cooked. I have my own secrets now and I make sure that no one is watching when I cook.”

Or, take the woman running the local supermarket. When I asked her, “Are these strawberries grown in Lebanon?” she clearly thought it was a silly question. “Yes, they come from my back garden,” she declared.

Go to a restaurant in the center of the village and you can be sure you’ll find three generations of family involved in running it — usually the grandfather cooking, the daughter or son waiting tables and the grandchildren glued to smart phones between running errands. One thing visitors must remember when in Faraya, which is on the Matn mountains range, that this is not the Swiss or French Alps with tourist-poster landscapes. In the summer, the mountains around Faraya are dry and treeless.

And all through Lebanon’s mountains, there are the infrastructure woes that plague the country.

But don’t focus too much on the litter on roadsides or in some of the mountain streams. Don’t complain too much about the quality of the running water in your hotel room (drink only bottled water). The country’s economic problems also mean the mountains are dotted with halffinished structures meant to be hotels or holiday apartments.

Electricity? Make sure that your hotel has its own power generator. The alternative would be maddeningly frequent power cuts.

Instead, enjoy the hospitality offered by locals, and of course, the wonderful food. (ap)

AP photo/Hamza Hendawi

In this Friday, July 27, 2018 photo, mountains surround Faraya, a popular ski resort north of the capital Beirut, Lebanon. Whether it’s war or peace, Lebanon’s high mountain ranges have long been a favorite refuge for the Lebanese living in the cities, towns and villages below and along the Mediterranean coastline. The Lebanese drive up the mountains to avoid the summer’s heat or, for those with deep pockets, to ski in winter.

AP photo/Hamza Hendawi

In this Friday, July 27, 2018 photo, the statue of St. Charbel, a 19th-century saint revered by Lebanon’s Maronite Christians, stands high above Lebanon’s mountain village of Faraya. The 23-meter-high (75 feet) statue is visited by thousands every year.

Monday, August 20, 2018

3

Sukma Dewi, a farmer’s daughter from Negara Becomes national flag-hoisting team NEGARA - The 73rd Indonesian Independence Day was celebrated on Friday (Aug. 17).

There was something special for the Jembrana people in the celebration, where a Jembrana girl from Banyubiru village, Negara, was selected as the national flag-hoisting team. The girl is Ni Putu Sukma Dewi Widiyanti, 16.

She is the first daughter of three siblings of the couple I Ketut Widiastawa, 45, and Ni Made Purniastini, 41, from Banyubiru hamlet, Banyubiru, Negara.

Ketut Widiastawa aka Galung stated on Thursday (Aug. 16) that his daughter left for Jakarta on July 26.

When leaving for Jakarta, he continued, he just could take his daughter who is now sitting on the eleventh grade of SMAN 2 Negara high school to Denpasar because of lack of money supplies.

Galung said the feeling of missed encapsulated his family, especially for her two siblings. However, it was then relieved with pride because his daughter who has a height of 169 cm was chosen as a member of the

District govt to regulate tourism facilities GIANYAR - Gianyar district government ensured to immediately regulate the new tourism facilities that are now developing in the region. One of them is by organizing and studying the swing tourist attraction currently in demand by many tourists.

Acting Regent of Gianyar, Made Gede Wisnu Wijaya, said the death incident of tourist enjoying the swing attraction in the Tegallalang village area must be used as a moment for improving and increasing the quality of tourism facilities.

“We will restructure tourism facilities and their support,” he said on Friday (Aug. 17).

He said that in responding to the acceleration of tourism development, such as swing tourism, special regulations must be made, including the requirements so that employers can open swing tourist attraction. “We observe the acceleration of the tourism facilities

national flag-hoisting team (paskibraka).

When first getting the news that his daughter, Sukma Dewi, was chosen to represent Bali at the national level in the national flag-hoisting team, he claimed to be shocked and mixed with emotion. It happens because he is only a farmer and cannot provide more facilities for his daughter having inspiration to become a policewoman.

According to him, his daughter is indeed diligent. “I didn’t think she could pass in the selection,” he said.

He told that his daughter, who is an alumnus of the SMPN 2 Negara junior high school, has indeed been interested in marching exercise when attending junior high school. He did not expect that her hobby would deliver her to Jakarta, even to the State Palace.

Galung admitted that he could only pray that she remains healthy so that she can carry out her duties properly. “If we miss, we all will surely miss as well,” he said. He also hoped her daughter can be successful and proud of her family and community. (120)

IBP/net

development like the swing attraction. Formerly, such attraction had no permits, but now we need to regulate it,” said the man who is also the Regional Secretary of Gianyar.

He said the important point in making the regulation is to ensure the security and comfort of tourists.

So, the death incidence of tourists while enjoying the tourist attraction is not repeated. “On that account, people may not install such tools haphazardly in a tree. There must be a standard for the safety of tourists,” he said.

Moreover, his authority has instructed the Gianyar Tourism Office with the relevant agency to conduct a study related to the issue. Of course, it must make cooperation with the experts that understand about swing attraction.

“I have ordered it. Maybe I request the report as soon as possible,” he said. (kmb35)

IBP/kmb

2

Monday, August 20, 2018

Bali News

International

International

Ponkod, innovative coconut tree climber created by Balinese

DENPASAR - The assistance for agriculture is not only in the form of seeds and fertilizer.

However, the no less important for farmers is the post-harvest assistance like post-harvest technology and marketing such as cold storage, technology for processing agricultural products, including harvesting tools.

I Gede Juliana Eka Putra with two friends namely I Gde Sucahya Jaya and Gede Widiasa created a ponkod—innovative coconut tree climber--to help farmers climb coconut trees. They are not agricultural people. But his love of agriculture inspired this lecturer, merchant and motor mechanic to create the tool.

The idea of making this tool was triggered by the intention to help farmers climb coconut trees at a low cost. “Currently, the wage of climbing coconut tree is expensive namely IDR 25,000 each. During rainy season, it is worse and cannot climb coconuts,” he said at the end of July. Traditionally, after climbing 15 coconut trees, people will get tired. However, with the ponkod tool people can double the capacity.

Climbing costs can also be cheaper, from initially IDR 25,000, but with ponkod the price can be reduced to IDR 15,000 per tree.

The tool was created autodidactically without any

previous specific basic. “We only make fun because we both like agriculture,” he said. Incidentally, there was a technology business incubator competition held by the Ministry of Technology in 2016, where they also took part. Starting from the first to final stage, they won. Finally, they got a grant of IDR 800 million.

After winning the competition, many stages should be passed through so that the ponkod could be commercialized. The stages include the obligation to pass the patent test, training, incubation, SNI testing, et cetera.

“Now, it has been tested and safe to be used,” he said.

Production cost of each ponkod is IDR 800,000.

He sells it for IDR 1.8 million each. In Indonesia, this tool is only available in Bali because it is created by Balinese.

Ponkod is not only a climbing tool but also used to go down. “Its operation is just like going up and down the stairs,” he said. Aside from climbing coconut tree, this tool can be used to climb areca trees. In short, it can be used to climb branchless trees.

Today, this ponkod is widely used at hotels in Ubud to clean up old coconut leaves at villas. However, he admitted to have received many orders from outside Bali. Since the coconut-producing centers of Indonesia are in Halmahera, Maluku, Sulawesi, in the near future he will hold an exhibition in the regions. (kmb42)

IBP/kmb

Activities

Monday, August 20, 2018

New International Sunday Brunch at Mövenpick Bali IBP/sosiawan

Ketut Mayoni is showing how to make Kamasan Painting to the tourists

Efforts of Ketut Mayoni in preserving Kamasan puppet painting

KAMASAN puppet painting is one of the distinctive art works owned by Klungkung district.

Along with the progress of times, it still survives. The preservation is not only carried out by male artists, but also by female artists.

Tourist visits at Kertha Gosa destination on Saturday (Aug. 8) were quite crowded. Almost all of them are foreign tourists coming with tall stature, blond hair and white skin. They stepped on the Bale Kambang or Floating Pavilion, one of the buildings surrounded by a pond decorated with a lotus starting to bloom. Painting on the ceilings of the palm fiber-roofed building drew their attention. They saw in details, traced according to the storyline. Right in the middle, a middle aged woman was sitting down. Her legs were supine and went under the small table. She was busy coloring on the sketch that looked so detailed. She is Ketut Mayoni. This 59-year-old woman is one of the people who take part in preserving the Kamasan puppet painting amid the modern era.

Not inferior to male artists, when stroking acrylic ink, her hands seemed graceful. Apparently, nothing has been missed. From the look on her face, she also seemed to enjoy it very much as if showing that she is used to doing it. “It’s normal like this. Learning from parents while still attending elementary school,” she said kindly.

Her painting is not just an art expression. It is a series of pictures of a number of characters containing

a story taken from various stories, such as Mahabharata and Ramayana epic. There is also Goddess Saraswati. Every now and then, the artists also express their ideas from animal stories or fables. All of them offer strong philosophical values.

Her activity was able to attract the attention of tourists making a visit. They watched from various angles and tested details one by one. Every now and then a guest asked about the purpose of her work. “We’ve been painting here (Kertha Gosa—Ed) for around five years. We do it in turns with 25 painters,” she said.

Watching doesn’t mean buying right away. That is what tourists often show and not a few go straight away. Apparently, their curiosity has been satisfied. By Mayoni, such things are commonplace. “Sometimes, there are also guests who buy or just look around. Regarding the price, it is according to the size and complexity,” she said.

Although the sales seem sluggish, this resident of Sangging hamlet does not get frustrated.

She continues to work no matter whether or not someone is buying.

Her desire to preserve is still very large. “I do not just paint while in Kertha Gosa but also at home,” she said.

There is an interesting story expressed. If she does not have time to paint within a day, her life seems to have something incomplete. “If I do not paint, it feels strange. It has been a habit since my childhood,” she added. (sos)

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15

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

16 Pages Number 173 10th year

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

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Monday, August 20, 2018

UK’s richest man forced out of the shadows

LONDRES - Reclusive titan of industry Jim Ratcliffe has found himself under unusual scrutiny after being declared Britain’s richest man, with his political leanings and tax affairs coming under the microscope.

The 65-year-old head of the Ineos chemicals group has assets worth an estimated £21 billion ($26.7 billion, 23.5 billion euros), putting him top of the 2018 Sunday Times rich list.

He was only 18th on last year’s list but the value of his company, of which he owns 60 percent, soared last year, propelling him up the ranks and earning him a knighthood from Queen Elizabeth II. It is a long way from his humble beginnings, growing up in social

housing in Manchester, northern England.

After earning a chemistry degree from the University of Birmingham and an MBA from the London Business School, Ratcliffe began a 40-year career in the business world at investment company Advent International before creating Ineos in 1998.

The company went on to become an industrial juggernaut in a country increasingly dominated by the service sector.

The group now has annual sales of $60 billion and employs over 18,000 people in 24 countries.

Chemicals manufactured by Ineos are found in various everyday products, from shower gel to medication. (afp)

Monday, August 20, 2018

Defia presents first gold for Indonesia

JAKARTA - Taekwondoin Defia Rosmaniar has won Indonesia’s first Asian Games gold medal after coming out on top in the taekwondo women’s individual Poomsae category.

Defia, with a score of 8.690, won gold after beating IR Iran’s Marjan Salahshouri 8.470 score in a match at JCC Senayan, Jakarta, Sunday.

Defia advanced to the semifinals after strong showings in the knockouts and quarterfinals.

In the round 16, Defia beat Wong Kai Yu of Hong Kong, while in the quarterfinals, she defeated Tuyet Van Chau of Vietnam. In the semifinals, she ousted Jihye Yun of South Korea (KOR).

Defia was born 23 years ago on May 25, 1995.

She has a height of 167 centimeters and weighs 51 kilograms.

Meanwhile Nineteen-year-old wushu athlete Edgar Xavier Marvelo became the first Indonesia medalist after securing silver in the men’s changquan final.

The changquan final took place at JIExpo Sports Hall, Jakarta, at 9:00 a.m. on Sunday.

Marvelo picked up silver with a score of 9.72, just 0.3 points below the score of gold medalist Peiyuan Sun from China.

Marvelo is proud to win a medal for host country Indonesia. “Thanks to everyone, including the officials, coaches and friends.

Also to my family who has supported and encouraged me so I can win the silver medal,” said Marvelo in tears of joy.

Head coach Noviyanti was delighted with Marvelo’s achievement. “This medal is also dedicated to our country, which just celebrated its 73rd Independence Day,” Novi said.

Another coach, Susyana, said the Indonesia wushu team did not expect Marvelo to get the top spot.

“We didn’t expect him to get a gold medal. The main thing is that he gave a good performance. Apparently, Marvelo can win silver.

It is a good achievement considering Marvelo is a rookie athlete,” Susyana said.The Indonesia women’s badminton team stepped into the quarterfinals after beating Hong Kong, China 3-0, although two Indonesian women’s single players had to play three games to win the match at Istora Senayan on Sunday.

SUJIT JAISWAL / AFP

In this file photo taken on June 28, 2018, Indian Bollywood actress Priyanka Chopra (L) accompanied by Nick Jonas.

India star Chopra to become ‘Mrs Jonas’

MUMBAI - American singer Nick Jonas on Saturday announced Indian superstar Priyanka Chopra will be “Mrs Jonas” after the couple performed a traditional ceremony in Mumbai, the home of Bollywood cinema.

Jim Ratcliffe

Andy Buchanan / AFP

Jonas, 25, posted a photo with Chopra on Instagram, captioning it: “Future Mrs. Jonas. My heart.

My love.”

Chopra, 36, posted the same photo on her Instagram page, writing: “Taken... with all my heart and soul.”

She was seen wearing a diamond ring that Jonas reportedly bought after shutting down a Tiffany store in New York last month.

Chopra, who won the Miss World pageant in 2000, is one of Bollywood’s most identifiable stars and one of the few to have achieved success in the West.

She stars in the ABC thriller series “Quantico” and has released songs with US chart-toppers including Pitbull and The Chainsmokers.

Jonas first found success as a child as the frontman of The Jonas Brothers with his two siblings.

The brothers hailed from a deeply devout Christian family and presented a wholesome image, including wearing purity rings to promote chastity.

In more recent years Jonas remolded himself with with a more mature and edgy musical image, as well as turning to acting.

He has been romantically linked

to a number of celebrities including Miley Cyrus and Selena Gomez.

In photos shared on social media Saturday, Chopra and Jonas were seen performing a prayer ritual in traditional Indian attires.

While Chopra opted for a flowing yellow ensemble, Jonas wore white kurta-pyjama. Jonas’ parents also wore Indian outfits.

Rumours that the duo were engaged kicked off last month when People magazine reported Jonas had proposed to Chopra after a whirlwind two months of dating.

The couple are yet to announce a wedding date. (afp)

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Indonesia’s Defia Rosmaniar competes in the taekwondo women’s individual poomsae round of 16 at the 2018 Asian Games at Jakarta on August 19, 2018.

Gregoria Mariska Tunjung, who played as the first single player, opened the lead for Indonesia after defeating Cheung Ngan Yi in three games 1921, 21-8, 21-18. Gregoria, who is ranked 22nd in the world, was left behind in the first game with 5-13.

Although she reduced the gap to 12-13, Cheung win the first game.

Nevertheless, Gregoria was able to turn things around in the last two games and ensured excellence for the host.

“In the first game, I had to deal with strong wind in my direction and it took me longer to adapt to the conditions of the field so that I got left behind far enough. It’s only when I got my 11th point that I could play better, but I was already left far behind,” she said.

Meanwhile, in the second and third games, Gregoria was able to play better because she could adapt to conditions on the field and already knew the game rhythm of the opponent, who is ranked 21st in the world.

“I learned and paid attention to the game pattern of the opponent from her videotaped matches. And the opponent looked tired every time I played a long rally,” she said.

Indonesia doubled the advantage through women’s double Greysia Polii-Apriyani Rahayu, who won two straight games against Hong Kong’s Ng Tzs Yau-Yuen Sin Yin with 21-14, 21-11.

“Every point obtained in a match in a team event is very important because it can motivate players who will play later,” said Greysia. In general, she said, she had no difficulty facing opponents from Hong Kong but needed to further adapt to field conditions such as the wind because it could affect the game.

“And most importantly, we must be able to show the best game. If other countries underestimate us, then it becomes an opportunity to play without burden,” she said.

The Indonesia women’s team ensured a place in the quarterfinals through the second women’s single Fitriyani, who also played three games to beat Yip Pui Yin 18-21, 21-13, 21-10.

“In the first game, the game was quite tight. Toward the end of the first game, many points were missed because I wanted to play fast,” she said.

Meanwhile, in the second and third games, Fitriyani claimed to be able to play more calmly. “The opponent’s physical condition seemed to have been decreasing, too,” she said, upon ensuring victory after Yip’s shuttlecock failed to clear the net.

In the quarterfinals match on Monday (Aug. 20), Indonesia will meet South Korea (KOR). (afp)

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