Indonesia to Tighten Control over Umroh Travel Agencies

Muslim pilgrims gather at Mount Arafat to pray, southeast of the Saudi holy city of Mecca, on November 15, 2010. Pilgrims flooded into the Arafat plain from Mecca and Mina before dawn for a key ritual around the site where the prophet Mohammed gave his farewell sermon on this day according to the Islamic calendar 1,378 years ago. Pilgrims spend the day at Arafat in reflection and reading of the Koran

The government will tighten its control on travel agencies organizing minor hajj pilgrimage (Umroh) because some 30 percent of over-stayers sent back from Saudi Arabia recently come from umroh travel agencies, a minister said.
"Records made on Indonesian migrant workers (TKI) who overstayed in Saudi Arabia and have been returned to Indonesia show that about 30 percent of them came from umroh pilgrimage groups," Manpower Minister Muhaimin Iskandar said. Based on the finding, the manpower ministry asked the ministry of religious affairs to tighten its control over umroh travel agencies.
"In order not to repeat this problem the manpower ministry and other relevant agencies will seriously tighten the mechanism in the sending of migrant workers, especially to the Middle East," the minister said.
Hundreds of Indonesian migrant workers are staying under several bridges in Saudi Arabia because they have no money to return home. Up to March 2011, the government has repatriated 2,073 problematic Indonesian migrant workers (TKIs) or over-stayers through six repatriation batches from Saudi Arabia.
The government this year is planning to repatriate 25,000 Indonesian migrant workers/Indonesian nationals(TKIs/WNIs). It has an estimate that the repatriation would cost some Rp128 billion,
"The government will be selective in returning them from Saudi Arabia. We will priorize old and sick people and children," Muhaimin said.

Challenges Indonesia Faces to Host JBC

Indonesian Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa, center, speaks to the media as his Cambodian counterpart Hor Namhong, left, and Thailands Kasit Piromya, right, listen during a press conference following Informal ASEAN Foreign Ministers Meeting in Jakarta, Indonesia, Tuesday, Feb. 22, 2011. Southeast Asian foreign ministers held emergency talks about a deadly border dispute that broke out between Cambodia and Thailand near an 11th century temple.

A delegation of Cambodian senior officials on Wednesday left Phnom Penh for Indonesia to attend the meetings with Thailand over the border conflict next to the Preah Vihear temple.
The meetings of Cambodia-Thai General Border Committee (GBC) and Joint Border Committee on Demarcation for Land Boundary (JBC) will be held on April 7-8 in Bogor, aimed to negotiate on the border conflict.
The meetings, arranged by Indonesia as the status of ASEAN chair, follow the deadly clashes between Cambodian and Thai troops over the disputed border areas near Preah Vihear temple on Feb. 4- 7.
Cambodian delegation was headed by Deputy Prime Minister Hor Namhong. Speaking at Phnom Penh International Airport before leaving for the meetings, Hor Namhong said that the main target of the meetings is to determine the term of reference in order to enable Indonesian observers to monitor the ceasefire at the disputed border areas.
However, Thai media reported that Thailand will attend only the JBC meeting. Thailand’s Supreme Commander Gen Songkitti Jaggabatara said Tuesday that Thai army officers will not attend the GBC meeting taking place in Indonesia and that Indonesian observers will not be allowed to be present at the disputed Thai- Cambodian border, the Thai state’s media MCOT online reported.
Cambodia and Thailand had border conflict just a week after Cambodia’s Preah Vihear temple was enlisted as World Heritage Site on July 7, 2008, since then both sides have built up military forces along the border, and periodic clashes happened, resulted in the deaths of troops on both sides.
The border between Thailand and Cambodia has never been completely demarcated. Although the International Court of Justice ruled in 1962 that the temple itself belonged to Cambodia, the row over the 4.6-square-km territory around the temple has never been resolved.

New Website Showcases Beachfront Hotels

It is every beach-lover's vacation fantasy: waking up to stretches of silky white sand and an azure ocean just outside your hotel room. Nothing between sun bathing and lazy-day lounging but a few paces in flip-flops.
That sumptuous vision can turn into a nightmare if the vaunted beachfront lodging, so idyllic-looking on the hotel website, turns out to be a room facing a concrete swath of furiously-trafficked roadway, with the ocean on the other side of the obstacle course.
So, how do unsuspecting travelers, who often pick vacation spots based on nothing more than enticing images on hotel websites and brochures, weed out the imposters from the real thing?
One answer might be The Beachfront Club, a newly-launched website that promises to help beach junkies avoid such marketing traps. The site, found at http://www.thebeachfrontclub.com, provides lists, maps, photos and descriptions of "hotels right on the beach. no exception."
To qualify for inclusion, hotels must pass the "no-traffic" test: no roads or vehicle traffic between guest rooms and the beach or the water. A hotel perched on a hillside bluff still aces the test; one with beach access blocked by buildings or busy roads would not.
Still in its beta stage, The Beachfront Club has listings for about 6,500 "true beachfront" hotels in every corner of the world, with another 1,000 mapped. The site's creators, former travel photographer John Everingham and veteran hotelier Chris Ryan, plan eventually to increase that number to 10,000.
The hotels, rated according to a four-star ranking and four-dollar-sign pricing system, range from exclusive luxury resorts to modest bungalows on the sand.
Visitors to the site can browse hotels by continent, country, and region using drop-down "destinations lists" menus, locator maps or simply by typing a location into the search engine. Clicking on the menu or a regional map zooms in further on the satellite map, allowing future travelers to compare each hotel's proximity to the water.
Planning a jaunt to Asia? The Beachfront Club inventory includes 1,342 beachside hotels from which to choose. A tap on the map or on the destination menu winnows the selection to country-specific lists: 900 hotels in Thailand, 144 in Indonesia, 122 in Malaysia, 66 in Vietnam.
Narrow the search to Thailand, and up pops Mom Tri's Boathouse, located on the soft, white sand of Kata Beach in Phuket. The detailed hotel overview offers a guide to wining (the Mom Tri's has one of the top wine cellars in Thailand), dining (The Boathouse Wine & Grill features a beachfront terrace), and a break-down of "on the beach" ambience and activities (sunsets, snorkeling, and scuba-diving).
Prefer a stateside retreat? There are 811 hotels listed in the mainland United States and Hawaii, including the Pier House Resort and Caribbean Spa in Key West. The resort, which earned a four-star, three-dollar-sign rating, is positioned on a white sand beach overlooking the Gulf of Mexico.
There also is a "top-optional sunning area" — for those beach-hungry travelers who really want nothing but flip-flops between themselves and the sand.

Thinking Outside The Square

Game changers...some fund managers are willing to back their judgement rather than just track the sharemarket.

Fund managers have been criticised for running 'me too' funds that invest in a way that is not very different from the sharemarket index while taking hefty fees from investors for the privilege. However, a handful of fund managers is producing good returns by searching for undervalued companies and backing them.
They are boutique businesses where those running the money own the businesses. Senior investment staff tend to have equity in the business with 'skin' in the game, rather than just being employees.
Rather than worrying about what others are doing, they back their own judgments and are not afraid to be assessed on the results. They hold the stocks they believe in and run the risk of their fund's performance falling behind the market and peer funds.
Rather than hug or mirror the sharemarket index, they shrug off the constraints of most managers. The DWS Global Equity Thematic Fund takes a different approach to investing.
The fund manager picks key themes and trends around the globe. The fund is run by boutique manager Global Thematic Partners from New York, led by the portfolio manager Oliver Kratz. It has an alliance with Deutsche Asset Management.
An investment specialist at Deutsche Asset Management, Bill Barbour, says the trouble for investors in global share funds whose portfolios closely match the global sharemarket indices is that they can end up investing in countries or sharemarket bubbles at just the wrong time.
One of the most widely followed sharemarket indices - the MSCI World index - includes 26 countries but excludes China, India and Brazil and many other emerging economies.
'In 2000, Microsoft was the biggest company in the world and its weighting in the MSCI was bigger than Germany, which is the biggest industrial exporter on the planet,' Barbour says.
'This is a crazy way to construct a portfolio. But that is what most people do. We divide the world into themes that have an inevitability about them - not if but when.'
The fund can have up to a 30 per cent exposure to emerging markets and the fund is pushing against that limit now. The global agribusiness theme is one in which companies that are trying to solve the problem of feeding the world are identified for investment.
Food prices are likely to continue to rise because of population growth, the 'wealth' effect in emerging economies, increasing consumption of meat and dairy, limited agricultural land, global warming and rise in biofuel use.
'Kratz is a high-calibre commander who explores sweeping themes to construct portfolios,' investment researcher Morningstar says.
The researcher is of the opinion that the fund manager's qualities and distinct take on investing will bear fruit for many years to come.
GO ANYWHERE
The way Hunter Hall invests reflects the personal passions of its founder, Peter Hall. The manager has funds that invest in Australian-listed companies and companies listed on global markets.
The way it manages money is unusual in that the manager often takes big positions (up to 30 per cent) in unloved companies. Hall says the manager sometimes engages in 'corporate warfare' and acts like the owner of the business rather than as a passive investor. Sometimes it will take many years to turn businesses around, so Hunter Hall takes a long-term view.
The manager typically favours smaller companies whose shares are cheaply priced and not as frequently traded as the share of big companies. Hunter Hall also has an ethical screen and will not invest in companies associated with activities that are harmful to people, destructive to the environment or cruel to animals.
Morningstar says Hall is the 'heart and soul' of the business and is backed by an experienced team in London and Sydney.
From time to time, its funds will underperform the market. Hunter Hall's funds suffered in 2008 at the height of the GFC. However, that was to be expected, given the way the manager invests.
Once shareholders started selling their shares, it was always going to be the case that the share prices of companies whose shares were not frequently traded were going to be among the hardest hit.
Key holdings for the manager include Korean educational services company Woongjin Thinkbig and Indian bank Allahabad. More recently, Hunter Hall has become an investor in Catch the Wind, which is an American company that has developed a laser that sits on top of wind turbines and directs the turbine into the direction of the wind.
WORLD-CLASS
'There is every reason to own Platinum International and very few reasons to look the other way,' Morningstar says of the fund run by Sydney boutique manager Platinum Asset Management.
The fund invests in international shares and uses an 'eclectic, thematic stock-picking approach in their quest for what they consider undervalued stocks', Morningstar says.
Platinum was founded by Kerr Neilson in 1994 with four former Bankers Trust Australia colleagues. The global shares specialist has an impressive track record. Its flagship International Fund has had an average annual compound return of more than 13 per cent since its inception in April 1995. Platinum has other funds that invest in particular regions or countries or themes.
Neilson says the predominant concern for many managers is not to be too far away from the crowd. 'Platinum's portfolios will look very different to the index … and performances will diverge from the index performance, sometimes for some while,' he says.
Platinum is run as a meritocracy, with the performances of investment staff carefully measured and rewarded. It differs from other managers in that it can take very active views on currencies from an Australian perspective and can short-sell stocks, which, is a way of making money when a share's price falls.
Like most boutique managers, Platinum funds do not to have to remain fully invested. For example, if Platinum believes share prices are about to fall, it can increase the cash levels of its funds. Significant holdings of the International Fund include Shin-Etsu Chemical of Japan, Royal Dutch Shell, and Bangkok Bank.
CONTRARIAN
Global Value Investors is majority owned by Anton Tagliaferro's boutique fund manager Investors Mutual. Global Value Investors applies the same value-investing style to global equities that Tagliaferro applies to Australian shares.
The Global Value Investors Industrial Share Fund does have some holdings in Australian shares but is mostly invested in overseas-listed shares that are paying good dividends.
The head of investment at Global Value Investors, Roy Chen, says a prerequisite to be considered for investment is the quality of the company's balance sheet.
Chen says a mistake that many managers make is they tend to 'go with the flow' when markets are rising and invest not too differently from the market but when share prices tumble, their investors get hurt quite badly.
One of his bigger contrarian calls is Spanish telecommunications company Telefonica. Chen's team questioned the logic of buying shares in the company when the economic outlook for southern Europe was so poor.
However, he was attracted to the telco's sustainable 8 per cent yield on a low price-to-earnings multiple. And while the business faces challenges in Spain, it is doing well in the many other countries where it does business.
The investment team does not invest with a view to being invested in any one country but its stock-selection process gives the fund a high weighting to Germany, having invested in chemical companies. The fund favours liquid natural gas producers and holds shares in the ASX-listed Origin Energy.
Chen says commentators have been saying that supply of LNG had been increasing too quickly and LNG prices would be depressed but that did not change the team's view of it as a valuable commodity. Japan's nuclear power plant problems as a result of the earthquake and tsunami are likely to increase the demand for LNG.
NEXT GENERATION
Generation Investment Management was co-founded in 2004 by Al Gore and David Blood. Its Generation Global Share Fund is a 'sustainable' investment fund that is based on the idea that 'sustainability' factors - economic, environmental, social and governance - will drive a company's returns in the long term.
Colonial First State, the funds management arm of the Commonwealth Bank, is the distributor of the fund in Australia. The fund performed very well during the GFC. Morningstar says the key factors for the outperformance was the large exposure to the healthcare sector and an underweight to the financial-services sector, which was hammered during the crisis.
'We think Generation's long-term approach to global equities investing is one of the best around,' Morningstar says. 'We believe that Generation's strategy, focused on sustainability, is a measured approach that has sound investment merit.'
It is important to understand that this is not an 'ethical' fund, says the general manager of funding and alliances at Colonial First State, Graham Hand. The investment process starts with industry 'road maps', based on how the world is changing, and then finds companies that will benefit from those changes.
An example is Novo Nordisk, a Danish pharmaceuticals company that specialises in diabetes care and biopharmaceuticals. About 180 million people around the world suffer from diabetes and this figure is expected to rise to 330 million by 2025.
Novo Nordisk Novo is the market leader, with a global insulin market share of 52 per cent. The fund also invests in Cochlear, the Australian-listed hearing-device maker.
Words of caution
Fund managers that invest with conviction can often have portfolios that differ from the composition of the sharemarkets in which they invest, but it does not mean they throw caution to the wind, the co-head of fund research at Morningstar, Tim Murphy, says.
These managers have good risk controls but they invest without the usual constraints of most managers, making money any way they can.
This method of investing does, however, mean that from time to time the returns they produce are markedly different to the returns of the market in which they invest, Murphy says.
Almost all of these managers have gone through periods where they have significantly underperformed the market, he says. Platinum has had a poor last six months, Hunter Hall really struggled in 2008 and GVI Global Investors struggled in 2009.
But they are the sort of managers that tend to do better in the longer term, he says. Anyone contemplating investing in a fund that invests with few restraints needs to understand that the fund will experience times of underperformance, compared with funds that invest in a way that closely mirrors or matches the market.
Diversification among fund managers is the best way to mitigate against risks, Murphy says. Investors should not put too much of their money in any one fund.

PLN NOT Attracted to Nuclear Energy

Indonesian workers repair an electricity installation in Jakarta on July 7, 2010. The organization of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) countries, including Indonesia and Malaysia, have agreed since 1997 to cooperate in developing 11 cross-border transmission points allowing them to exchange power. The networks are expected to be online by 2015 a report said.

Indonesia’s State Electricity Company (PLN) was not interested in developing a nuclear power plant because it was not efficient, the company’s CEO said.
At the same time, Indonesia was rich in other alternative energy sources though they were not yet used optimally, PLN President Director Dahlan Iskan said here Wednesday.
"For now, we are not interested in using nuclear energy as there are many other energy sources which are cheaper," he said. According to him, it needed six years to build a nuclear power plant while the electricity costs Rp1,700.00 per kWh.
"We still have plenty of energy sources such as coal, water, geothermal, and natural gas," he said at a coordinative meeting with directors and officials of the State Enterprises Ministry and local authorities.
Those alternative energy sources were abundant in Indonesia, while other countries, such as Japan and South Korea, had different condition, Dahlan said adding that it was why the two countries offered nuclear energy development to Indonesia.
"I would agree if a nuclear plant were to be built here as long as there were no more energy sources that could be used," Dahlan said.
Dahlan then compared the cost of electricity generated by nuclear energy and other energy sources. Meanwhile, it needed around five years to build a geothermal power plant and two years for natural gas power plant which both set a value of Rp900,00 per kWh for electricity.
According to a Second Assistance of Regional Secretary Office of East Java administration, Hadi Prasetyo, there were 11 spots of geothermal sources in East Java region. Two of them had been bidden. On the occasion, he also offered geothermal source to PLN.

New Subaru Impreza

Subarus new look Impreza, which will be unveiled at the 2011 New York motor show.




Subaru has released the first official image of its new-look Impreza ahead of its full reveal at the New York motor show later this month.

The new Impreza will be making its debut just four years after the launch of the third-generation model but is understood to have been fast-tracked to address its predecessor's polarising styling and much-criticised interior quality.
The single profile shot suggests the new Impreza is staying relatively faithful to the Impreza concept shown at last November's LA motor show, though the production model is inevitably more conservative.
The proportions of the Japanese brand's small car are vastly improved, while the shape is clearly more curvaceous compared with the model it will replace. A more steeply raked windscreen rises into a swooping roofline, while the all-new sheetmetal brings a cleaner, crisper look to the body.
Flared wheelarches are also retained from last year's concept car and indicate even the regular models will carry muscular design cues usually reserved for the sportier Impreza variants - the WRX and STI. The new Impreza is expected to be slightly longer, wider and lower, and offer a more spacious cabin.
"Major gains in interior design and refinement" are promised by Subaru's related press release.
Subaru says a number of new advanced features will be included on the model, which should go on sale locally some time later this year. Optional features are likely to include the company's new EyeSight system that uses two cameras to alert the driver to a potential crash and even automatically stop the car to avoid an impact.
Engines will include a new version of the company's horizontally opposed 'boxer' four-cylinder, teamed for the first time in the Impreza with a continuously variable transmission.
Subaru has seemingly adopted the New York motor show as its unofficial home for Impreza unveilings. It revealed the current model there in 2007 and an STI sedan last year.

N Sumatra's Wood Exports Up Again

Destruction remains from tropical rainforest in Kuala Cenaku on October 3, 2010 in Riau Province, Sumatra, Indonesia. Norway entered a partnership with Indonesia to support Indonesias efforts to reduce emissions from deforestation and degradation of forests and peat lands. The business of pulp, palm oil and wood are causing the deforestation of Sumatra, the largest island owned by Indonesia, and is contributing global climate change to the extinction of many of the worlds rare species.

North Sumatra’s wood and wooden products had been increasingly restored and reached 26.977 million US dollars until February 2011.
"While the increase had been relatively small, only 3.26 percent compared the value of last year’s same period, and the foreign exchange revenue dropped," Head of the North Sumatra central bureau of statistics (BPS) Erwin Said said here Wednesday.
The exports have started to increase in 2010, with a total foreign exchange revenue of 194.281 million US dollars from only 181.171 million US dollars in 2009. He said last year’s rise in North Sumatra’s exports of wood and wooden products was not only triggered by an increase in their prices, but also in their volume.
This year, the trend was similar in which the exports increased 4.2 percent from January’s 13.770 million US dollars. Head of exports of farm and mining products of the foreign trade division of the North Sumatra industrial and trade agency, Fitra Kurnia, said that he had the information from the exporters that demand for wood and wooden products had been increasing already in 2010.
But the increased demand caused a problem as the exporters said they had problems in obtaining the raw material. He also said that since the issue on the environment broke out especially with regard to illegal wooden, North Sumatra’s exports of wood and wooden products had dropped because both the exporters and importers became afraid of making transactions.

US Hopes to Double Agricultural Exports to Indonesia

An aerial view of the Tanjung Priok container terminal in Jakarta August 12, 2010. Indonesias state port firm will start building a new container terminal in Jakarta this year to cope with overflowing volumes at the main shipment hub in Indonesias capital as trade grows.

The United States has hoped to double its exports of farm products to Indonesia making it the ninth-largest market, US Ambassador to Indonesia Scot Marciel said at the Indonesia Expo 2011 here Wednesday.
"Indonesia’s market-based economy is growing well and thus makes me hope that the farm product exports from my country can be maximized," Scot said.
He also said that the partnership between the US and Indonesia in raising the export of farm products was one of the points discussed by President Barack Obama and President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono in the state visit of the US President to Indonesia last November.
Meanwhile, Michael Scuse, the USDA Acting Under Secretary, said that Indonesia would continue as an important US trade partner due to the fastest growing economy of Indonesia.
"In the past 15 years, agricultural trade between our countries has boomed, and Indonesia is one of Southeast Asia’s fastest growing economies with a vibrant business climate and upwardly mobile, expanding middle class, providing opportunities to expand exports of US food and agricultural goods and stimulate investment," Scuse said.
Through the comprehensive partnership between the US and Indonesia, Scuse said both countries were looking forward to expanding trade, investment and commercial relationships as well as creating great chances for the economy.
Food and Hotel Indonesia Expo 2011 was held for four days until Saturday and participated in by more than 1,000 companies from 29 countries, including Germany, the US, Turkey, Singapore, Korea, Brunei Darussalam, besides Indonesia.
In the opening remarks of the Indonesian Minister of Culture and Tourism which was conveyed by General Director of Tourism Destination Development Firmansyah, he said that the expo was a kind of effort in increasing the number of tourists to Indonesia which was scheduled to reach 7.7 million in 2011.
"If the target is achieved, we will try to increase the number of foreign tourists to Indonesia to 10 million by 2014. Therefore, food service companies and hotels play an important role in meeting the target," Jero said.

Gaddafi's Rambling Letter to Obama

Vehicles belonging to forces loyal to Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi explode after an air strike by coalition forces, along a road between Benghazi and Ajdabiyah March 20, 2011. It is a war that Barack Obama didnt want, David Cameron didnt need, Angela Merkel couldnt cope with and Silvio Berlusconi dreaded. Picture taken March 20, 2011.

Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi appealed directly to President Barack Obama on Wednesday to halt what the Libyan leader called "an unjust war" and wished Obama good luck in his bid for re-election next year.
In a rambling, three-page letter to Obama, Gaddafi implored Obama to stop the NATO-led air campaign, which he called an "unjust war against a small people of a developing country".
"You are a man who has enough courage to annul a wrong and mistaken action," Gaddafi wrote in the letter that was sent to the State Department and forwarded immediately to the White House, according to a US official who had seen the letter.
"I am sure that you are able to shoulder the responsibility for that.
"To serving world peace ... Friendship between our peoples ... and for the sake of economic, and security cooperation against terror, you are in a position to keep NATO off the Libyan affair for good," Gaddafi wrote.
White House press secretary Jay Carney confirmed that the White House received a letter from Gaddafi. As for Gaddafi's appeal for a ceasefire, Carney appeared to dismiss it for now.
"The conditions the president laid out are clear," Carney told reporters travelling with Obama to New York.
In the letter, sent on Wednesday, Gaddafi said his country had been hurt more morally than physically by the NATO campaign and that a democratic society could not be built through missiles and aircraft. He also repeated his claim that his foes are members of al-Qaeda.
Addressing Obama as "our dear son" and "Excellency," Gaddafi said his country had been hurt more "morally" than "physically" by the NATO campaign. The letter, in stilted and formal English, includes numerous spelling and grammatical errors.
"Our dear son, Excellency, Baraka Hussein Abu oumama, your intervention is the name of the USA is a must, so that Nato would withdraw finally from the Libyan affair," Gaddafi wrote. "Libya should be left to Libyans within the African union frame."
Gaddafi said his country had already been unfairly subjected in 1986 to "a direct military armed aggression" ordered by then-President Ronald Reagan, who famously called the leader the Mad Dog of the Middle East, as well as earlier rounds of US and international sanctions. Although he listed a litany of complaints, Gaddafi said he bears no ill will toward Obama.
"We have been hurt more morally [than] physically because of what had happened against us in both deeds and words by you," he wrote. "Despite all this you will always remain our son whatever happened. We still pray that you continue to be president of the USA. We Endeavour and hope that you will gain victory in the new election campaigne [sic]."
The letter, dated April 5, 2011 in Tripoli is signed by "Mu'aumer Qaddaffi, Leader of the Revolution".

BI Orders Citibank NOT to Increase Citigold Customers Yet

Visitors are reflected on a Citibank booth during the Jakarta Fair June 14, 2010.

Bank Indonesia has ordered Citibank to temporarily stop seeking new Citigold customers due to the case of embezzlement of Rp17 billion in customers’ accounts done by Citibank manager MD as reported recently.
"We have sent a letter asking the bank to settle the problem well without hurting the customers and improve internal control and for the time being stop seeking Citigold customers," Bank Indonesia governor Darmin Nasution said at a hearing with House Commission XI here on Wednesday.
The meeting was attended by Citibank regional representative Shariq Mukhtar and South Jakarta police resort chief Gatot Edy. Darmin said the ban was temporary and would be revoked after investigation by the police was finished.
"Customers could still conduct transactions but they could not add new customers," he said.
Darmin said if the results of the investigation were more serious we could increase the sanctions. Darmin stated the case occurred because internal control was not implemented as it had to be as shown by absence of supervision, rotation, dual control according to procedures and confirmation to customers.
Bank Indonesia deputy governor Halim Alamsyah meanwhile said the ban for Citibank to seek new Citigold credit card customers had been effective as of March 16 or two days after the bank reported about the case.
"On March 14 they reported the fraud and on March 16 we asked them to stop the activity until the problem was clear," he said.

Mariah Carey Poses for Nude Cover Shoot

Fit to burst: Mariah Carey proudly shows off her pregnant body as she waits to give birth to twin babies

Mariah Carey has posed for her fair share of portraits. But none has been as personal or emotional as the singing legend unveiling her baby bump - days away from giving birth to twins.
Eight months pregnant Mariah, 42, proudly showed off the bump in time-honoured celebrity fashion - in an exclusive cover shoot with a magazine. Bronzed, radiant, with her hair tumbling softly about her shoulders, the chart-topping singer looked relaxed as she awaits the arrival of her first children, a boy and a girl.
'I was feeling very vulnerable about taking pictures at all right now, but then I didn’t want to miss this opportunity to document this once-in-a-lifetime experience,' Carey told Life & Style magazine
'My ultimate goal was to share this incredibly personal moment with my true fans.'
Carey joins a number of pregnant stars who have posed nude while heavily pregnant. Demi Moore famously appeared naked on the cover of Vanity Fair in August 1991 while seven months pregnant with daughter Scout LaRue.
Many have copied that pose, including Christina Aguilera, who was pictured pregnant with son Max on the January 2008 cover of Marie Claire. Carey's twins - a boy and a girl - were clearly ready for their close-ups. She said: 'The babies were kicking almost the entire time; it was unbelievable.
'Especially the girl - clearly she’s a diva in training. We didn’t start shooting until 1:30am because I was in the hospital from the night before until the day of the shoot with contractions five minutes apart!'
Clearly, although Carey isn't due to give birth for a few weeks, the twins could be making their entrance sooner rather than later.
The We Belong together singer suffered a scare when she was admitted to hospital last month with early contractions. But for now, she and her husband Nick Cannon are enjoying their last few days as a household of two.
Cannon said he has never been more attracted to his wife. 'I thought I couldn’t love Mariah more,” he tells Life & Style.
'But I have a whole new appreciation and admiration for her.'
However, yesterday he admitted he may come to regret stripping off for a photo shoot with his heavily pregnant wife.
The TV and radio presenter, 30, has confessed that he is already regretting the artistic photos which are due to be displayed on the walls of their family home.
'My children are going to have to see these pictures. It's a little weird,' he said during his Rollin' with Nick Cannon radio show.
'It's a little nasty,' he continued. 'I mean, have you ever seen your parents naked?
'When they get older and their friends come over... they will see the pictures and say, "Your daddy's butt naked".'
Carey added: 'Now I have so much respect for mothers everywhere, especially those who’ve had difficult pregnancies or given birth to multiples. We need to have Mother’s Day once a week.'

To Confirm The Plant of Indonesian Origin

Yuan Shui, a member of the Register of Chinese Herbal Medicine (RCHM) prepares a prescription with Chinese herbal ingredients at the Yuan Clinic in London February 16, 2011. An EU directive passed in 2004 comes into effect from May 1, 2011 which requires that traditional herbal medicinal products must be licensed or prescribed by a registered herbal practitioner.

The Technology Research and Assessment Agency (BPPT) has begun a research on the DNA fingerprint of ginger (curcuma zanthorrhiza) to ascertain that the plant is of Indonesian origin, a BPPT official has said.
"There have been many countries claiming ginger as part of their national heritage and makes it their state icon just like Korea does with ginseng," BPPT Medical Pharmaceutical Technology Center director, Rifatul Widjhati said in a talk-show on herbal medicine, here, on Wednesday.
Widjhati said if Indonesia could not prove that the plant which is called temulawak in bahasa as an Indonesian indigenous plant, then there would be big economic loss in the future in particular with regard to herbal medicines and the jamu, the herb-based Indonesian traditional medicine.
"Take Korea as an example, despite the country produces only up to 30 percent of the world production of ginseng, but the iconic name is already linked to Korea. Thus, the world can only trust ginseng which is produced by Korea as the real one," she said.
Widjhati said that temulawak is one of the world’s most important ingredients for herbal medicines where up to 80 percent of the world’s traditional and herbal medicines contain temulawak.
The significance of temulawak, she said, lies with its active compounds contents and its property as immunity system for human body, a cure for hepatitis and menstruation for women.
Speaking in the same event, BPPT Bio-Technology Assessment Division Bambang Marwoto said the research done on temulawak at BPPT was started by stocktaking on the plant and characterizing it by its phenotive contents and through its genotyping.
"Knowledge on the genetic variability side is a precondition to study the evolutionary history of a species and on the enrichment program and genetic source conservation of the plant," Marwoto said, adding that this is the way to stockpile information for the database on temulawak properties.
By doing so, he stressed it will be Indonesia that in the possession of the unique information of the cultivar, or a cultivated variety of a plant that has been deliberately selected for its desirable haracteristics. This way would close the claims from other countries on the indigenousness of the plant.
"The DNA fingerprint is a kind of barcode for Indonesian local plants," he said. There are more than 30,000 species of tropical plants in Indonesia, of which some 7,000 species have their medicinal properties. However, Indonesia currently accounts only 0.2 percent of the world’s herbal medicines.

Fiji Seeking Indonesia's Support to be Observer in ASEAN

Indonesian First Lady Ani Yudhoyono (C) stands beside President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono as she takes photos of journalists prior to the arrival of Turkeys President Abdullah Gul, in Jakarta on April 5, 2011. The two leaders signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) on trade and customs, presidential spokesman Teuku Faizasyah said.

The Republic of Fiji is seeking Indonesia’s support for its bid to obtain observer status in ASEAN according to Fijian Prime Minister Commodore Voreqe Bainimarama during a courtesy call on President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono here Wednesday. The Fijian prime minister is visiting Indonesia April 4-6 2011 ro strengthen his country’s relations with indonesia. .
After the 30 minutes meeting, Indonesian Foreign Affairs Minister Marty Natalegawa said that President Yudhoyono who acts as the 2011 ASEAN Chairman promised to convey the Fijian request to other ASEAN country members.
"They asked for Indonesian support to make Fiji an observer for ASEAN, and the president will convey it to other ASEAN member countries leaders," said Marty
Fijian Prime Minister in Indonesia is also to open his county’s representative office or Embassy to Indonesia. Previously Indonesia is listed be referring to Fijian representative office in Tokyo, Japan, but Indonesia has set its embassy in Fiji since 2002.
Marty said that Fijian Prime Minister and President Yudhoyono also discuss on the Republic of Fiji Islands interest to learn more on democracy in Indonesian because it is considered to be successfully applied.
"Experiences on democracy in Indonesia were discussed. The Foreign Affairs Ministry has been working with the Fijian government in facilitating to provide some sort of information from the General Election Commission (KPU) with the Fijian counter part on how to hold a democratic election," Marty said.
Marty said that Fiji is going through a democrat ion process in the upcoming election which planned to be held on 2014. Indonesia has also provided technical training to Fiji in the field of agriculture, fishery and diplomacy.
With the establishment of Fijian embassy in Indonesia, the two countries who have a diplomatic relation since 1974 will gain a stronger bond, where Indonesia also promised to provide more technical training courses to Fiji.

Wayne Rooney Axed as Face of Coca-Cola

Wayne Rooney in an advertising campaign for FIFA World Cup trophy tour sponsored by Coca-Cola. The drinks company today confirmed they would no longer be working with the Manchester United star

Wayne Rooney was axed as the face of Coca-Cola in the wake of a public furore over his foul-mouthed outburst on live television.
The Manchester United star, 25, was initially dropped from the soft drink company's ad campaign following allegations over his private life last year.
But today Coca-Cola confirmed that they would no longer be working with the footballer.
'We mutually agreed that we would not renew our relationship,' the company said in a statement. 'We wish Wayne well in his career.'
The news comes as Rooney waits to find out the result of his appeal against a two-match suspension for the use of offensive language during a match against West Ham at the weekend.
As it stands, he will miss Saturday's Premier League encounter with Fulham and an FA Cup semi-final against Manchester City on April 16. He will find out his fate tomorrow.
Rooney, who has endorsed Coke Zero since 2007, was initially dropped by Coca-Cola in September after he reportedly cheated on his then-pregnant wife Coleen with a prostitute.
At the time, the world's largest soft drink maker responded by saying it was not 'appropriate' to use the England international in promotions, but insisted that its 'relationship with Wayne Rooney is ongoing'.
The partnership, however, has now been permanently severed. Coca-Cola was today keen to stress that it was an amicable arrangement and part of a change of  strategy.
'Our marketing plans have evolved to focus on our sponsorship of the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games and the upcoming launch of our plans for the Olympic Torch Relay,' they said.
However, the timing of Coca-Cola's announcement raises fresh questions that the player's image is irrevocably tarnished.
His foul-mouthed outburst live on TV after scoring a penalty during the Saturday lunchtime match stunned thousands of viewers, many of whom were watching with their children.
The goal, which completed a hat-trick for him and a momentous turnaround for his title-chasing team, prompted a vile reaction from the young star.
After netting the spot-kick to make the score 3-2, Rooney ran to celebrate with the visiting fans but quickly turned his attention to the camera and screamed the F-word twice.
For this, he was charged with the use of offensive or insulting language by the Football Association.
Rooney apologised after the game, blaming his ‘inappropriate’ behaviour on a ‘heat-of-the-moment reaction’.
Ironically, Saturday was the first day of the Premier League's revival of its Respect campaign, which calls for better behaviour from football's highly paid stars.
The game was being broadcast live to millions of viewers worldwide on Sky Sports, and commentator Rob Hawthorne immediately apologised for any offence caused by Rooney’s abuse
His obscenities were later replayed by 4million viewers on BBC1’s Match Of The Day, although they were cut from a repeat of the programme yesterday morning.
Former shadow sports minister Lord Pendry, now president of the Football Foundation which supports grass-roots football, said: ‘It is disgusting for youngsters watching television to be subjected to this vile behaviour.
‘Even if the words cannot be heard clearly, it is not difficult to understand what is being said. Players should be banned.’
Director Sir Trevor Brooking said: ‘There will be a decision. It was a surprise, after scoring a hat-trick, to react that way.’
FA rules state that players should not use ‘indecent or insulting words or behaviour’.
Rooney verbally attacked England fans during last summer’s World Cup when he turned to a television camera and complained about them after a woeful performance in a goal-less draw with Algeria.
He said: ‘Nice to see your home fans booing you. That’s loyal supporters.’ Again, he later apologised for his comments.
Meanwhile former referee Graham Poll, writing in the Daily Mail, said that Wayne Rooney should be banned for three games.
He said the FA should use the incident to send out the message: ‘We won’t tolerate abusive language and inappropriate behaviour.’
He wrote: 'I have a friend who sat and watched West Ham versus Manchester United in his  living room with his six-year-old son, who asked: "Daddy, why has Wayne Rooney just said ‘f***’?".
'It was not what he expected at lunchtime on Saturday. Why should we  tolerate such an invasion and one that is likely to come without any punishment?'
And while Rooney's teammate Rio Ferdinand sought to defend him and wandered, via Twitter, whether stadiums have become 'no swearing zones', Mr Poll pointed out the difference in the Rooney incident.
'Football is a game where passions run high,' he wrote, 'but when a player seeks out a camera to ensure that his foul language can be seen and heard, action must follow.'

10 Warships for Indonesian Navy

Battleship USS Germantown visited Surabaya and docked at Dermaga Jamrud, Tanjung Perak on March 3, 2011. The warship arrived from San Diego to strengthen relations and continue to promote peace and stability in the region. Surabaya, Indonesia.

National ship-building company PT Palindo Marine Industri located in Batam, Riau Islands province, has received an order from the Navy for ten warships, a naval spokesman said.
"The ten warships will be operated in the Western and Eastern Fleets to patrol the country’s waters," Batam Naval base commander Col Iwan said here on Wednesday.
PT Palindo Marine Industri or PMI, according to him, had so far completed one of the ten warships, which which was expected to be handed to the Defense Ministry on April 25, 2011.
The warship type is the rapid ship missile (KCR) 40, equipped with modern weapons systems in the form of Sensor Weapon Control (Sewaco), cannon caliber of MM 30 with 6 pitches as a Close In Weapon System (CIWS) and guided missiles.
It was estimated that the warships were able to sail with a speed of 30 knots and can fire up the C-705 missiles to hundreds of meters. The warship with high technology specification is 44 meters long, 8 feet wide, 3.4 meters high and 5 leaves-fixed propeller, the spokesman said.
In the meantime, Defense Minister Purnomo Yusgiantoro said that the construction of rapid ships missile (KCR) 40 fits to control the unitary state of Indonesian waters which are surrounded by small islands.

Amnesty Concerned at Indonesia Religious Attacks

Suspects and followers of Head of the Islamic Defenders Front, Murhali Barda (not pictured), sing an Islamic song before the judges verdict at acourt in Bekasi, West Java province on February 24, 2011. The leader of a violent Islamic vigilante group was sentenced to jail over an attack on Christian elders amid an outbreak of bloody religious violence in Indonesia.

Rights group Amnesty International on Wednesday criticised Indonesia for failing to protect the rights of religious minorities after another attack on followers of an Islamic sect.
In the latest of a string of attacks on the Ahmadiyah group, a mob hurled stones at at least five houses belonging to sect followers late Tuesday in Bogor district, West Java province, local media reported.
Separately, three men are on trial for damaging property and inciting violence in an October attack in another village in the same district. They were allegedly part of a mob which torched houses, schools and a mosque belonging to the Ahmadis, who unlike mainstream Muslims, do not believe Mohammed was the last prophet.
Amnesty’s Asia-Pacific director Saman Zia-Zarifi said the increasing attacks on religious minorities, particularly the Ahmadiyah, showed a “major deterioration of the situation”. “This is not the direction in which we had hoped to see Indonesia move.
This is Indonesia moving in the wrong direction,” he told reporters.
“The central government’s inability or lack of desire to address these issues is potentially catastrophic,” he said. Amnesty this week raised its concerns with the country’s religious leaders and police in “very open, frank and productive” meetings and urged Indonesia to be serious about handling the problem, Zia-Zarifi said.
“The Indonesian government needs to demonstrate that it is serious about dealing with this problem, that it will prevent any more serious cases of violence, and it will provide accountability for the violence that has already occurred,” he added.
Indonesian human rights group Imparsial said it had recorded 56 cases in West Java province in which soldiers allegedly forced Ahmadiyah followers to convert to mainstream Islam. Indonesia’s constitution guarantees freedom of religion but rights groups say violence against minorities including Christians and Ahmadis has been escalating since 2008.

Aston Martin Takes on Apple's iPhone

CPT002 Aston Martin Concept Phone

Aston Martin, the British brand behind supercars associated with the 007 films, has unveiled a mobile phone concept that could challenge the Apple iPhone as the world’s coolest communications handset.
The CPT002 Aston Martin Concept Phone has been produced under licence by Canadian luxury-phone maker Mobiado and features a transparent touchscreen made from solid sapphire crystal.
Platinum sides contain all the phone’s electronics, battery and SIM card, allowing the see-through section to display multiple Android icons, including apps for social networking sites.
Details of the phone’s capabilities are scarce, but US media report the mobile can theoretically unlock the doors to the owner’s Aston Martin and has also been designed to provide in-car wireless connectivity to sites such as Facebook and Twitter.
Mobiado says the concept phone is its vision for future mobile communications and is inspired by Aston’s design values that fuse “a strong heritage and traditional craftsmanship with modern technology”.
The phone is not expected to go into production but instead act as a promotional tool for a new range of Aston Martin-badged Mobiado mobile phones due to go on sale in May.

Gunmen Fire at Mine Giant's Vehicle in Indonesia

The U.S. mining giant Freeport says gunmen fired at a company van near the world's largest gold mine in a restive Indonesian province.
Company spokesman Ramdani Sirait said no injuries were reported in the ambush Wednesday and police were on the scene investigating. He declined to give further details but said the shooting will not affect Freeport productions and operations.
Police could not immediately be reached for comment. The mine run by Arizona-based Freeport McMoRan Copper & Gold, Inc. has been a target of violence since production began in the 1970s. Underdeveloped Papua province is home to a low-level separatist movement and is thousands of miles (kilometers) from Indonesia's capital, Jakarta.

BI Orders Citibank to Stop Accepting New Private Banking Clients

Police escort Melinda Dee (C), a former Citibank relationship manager who dealt with wealthy customers, after a news conference at a police office in Jakarta in this April 4, 2011 picture. Citibank said on Tuesday it had identified suspicious transactions in its Indonesian operations and was committed to recovering the loss suffered by customers. Picture taken April 4, 2011.

Bank Indonesia has ordered Citibank not to accept new clients for its Citigold private banking services in the country after a staff member allegedly embezzled at least IDR17 billion ($2 million), said the central bank's governor Darmin Nasution.
Nasution said Tuesday in a hearing with a parliamentary committee that Bank Indonesia could impose more “severe sanctions“ against Citibank if it uncovers more wrongdoings.
The police recently detained Citibank's private banking officer Melinda Dee on allegation she has illegally transferred clients' money to her company's bank accounts. The police also seized several expensive cars in her possession, including a Ferrari, Hummer, and Mercedes Benz.
If the authorities find her guilty of the alleged embezzlement, Citibank has said that it will compensate all affected customers.

Malaysia Rearrests 58 Illegal Migrants after over 100 Escape

Malaysian police have arrested 58 alleged illegal immigrants, a senior official said on Wednesday after dozens fled a detention camp to escape difficult living conditions.
Police launched a major manhunt Tuesday after 109 inmates escaped from the Lenggeng immigration depot in Negeri Sembilan state, south of the capital Kuala Lumpur.
On Monday night the detainees, mainly from Myanmar, Bangladesh, Nepal, Iran, Thailand and Nigeria, burned down an accommodation block before fleeing.
Over 200 policemen, immigration officials and paramilitary volunteers are combing central Negeri Sembilan following the breakout. District police chief Saiful Azly said 58 inmates were arrested after being found in a nearby forest.
“The manhunt is continuing. I urge the remaining escapees to surrender,“ he said.
“Investigations showed that they were dissatisfied over cramped living conditions, the food and long detention periods,“ Abdul Manan Mohamad Hassan, state deputy police chief, was quoted as saying by the official Bernama news agency.
Abdul Manan said many had lost patience over the long process needed to resettle in third countries under the United Nations Refugee Agency program.
Home ministry officials admitted last August to poor standards at detention centres for illegal immigrants and trafficking victims, after a report labelled the facilities “ticking time bombs“.
With one of Asia's largest populations of foreign laborers, Malaysia relies on its 1.8 million immigrants to clean homes, care for children and work in plantations and factories. Malaysia is seen as a staging post for trafficking gangs moving people from Afghanistan and Myanmar to Indonesia and Australia.

Bank Indonesia Likely to Hold Rates Steady

Bank Indonesia is likely to again delay raising its policy interest rate when it meets Tuesday because of easing inflation in March. Fifteen of 16 regional economists polled by Dow Jones Newswires expect Bank Indonesia to keep its benchmark rate at 6.75%.
The official Statistics Agency reported Friday that inflation was 6.65% on year in March, easing from 6.84% in February. On month, March inflation was 0.32% less than in February, when it edged up 0.13% over January.
The agency said inflation eased somewhat because prices of basic food commodities fell during the harvest season, which usually runs from March to May.
March “inflation data apparently strengthens the case for BI to not hike its benchmark policy rate when they meet on Apr 12.“ Bank Danamon economist Helmi Arman said in a research note. Arman expects the central bank to lift the rate by 25 basis points in June or July after the harvest season ends.
Bank Indonesia Governor Darmin Nasution recently said the current harvest will keep inflation at “comfortable levels“ in April and May, suggesting the central bank won't rush to raise lending rates despite its statement last month that it is still open to such a measure should it become necessary.
Many analysts expect the central bank to deliver a 25-basis point hike later this year as inflation is expected to pick up again after the harvest season ends. Bank Indonesia last month kept its policy rate unchanged after a percentage-point rise in February.

Dumai Police Foils Illegal Dispatch of TKIs

Dumai police in Riau in the past week managed to foil the illegal dispatch of 11 Indonesian migrant workers by sea from Dumai to Malaysia.
Head of the Dumai police detective unit Ajunct Commissioner Devi Firmansyah said here Wednesday that the TKIs included four men and seven women aged 16 to 32. The men were Maulidin,32, Mardoni,28, Jamaluddin,20, and Agus Herianto 30.
The women were Mawarni, 35, Siti Syaroh, 16, Beta Ria Sonata, 18, Nurmaila, 19, Maya Puspita Wati, 23, and Siti Aisyah 27. They came from Kerinci, Jambi province, and caught while travelling by a L-300 bus on Bukit Timah highway, Bukit Timah village, Dumai Barat sub-district by the end of last week.
"This was the first attempt of illegal dispatch of TKIs from Dumai to Malaysia in the last three months," Devi said.
"Following arrest they were brought to the police station for questioning, saying that thet have paid Rp2.5 million to Rp3.5 million each to people who were still on the run," the police said.
After the questioning, the TKIs had been returned to their places because they were regarded innocent and became only victim of irresponsible people.
"Right now the police is still after the perpetrators in Dumai and Jambi with coordination of the Kerinci police station," Devi said.

Consumer Prices in Indonesia Could Fall Again

Consumer prices in Indonesia could fall again in April from the preceding month, because prices of basic food commodities are still declining due to the harvest season, the head of the official Statistics Agency Rusman Heriawan said Wednesday.
“The prices of rice, cooking oil are still on a declining trend,“ Heriawan told reporters.
The agency reported Friday that the consumer price index in March dropped 0.32% from a month earlier, after a 0.13% increase in February from January. The rate of increase in the CPI from a year earlier slowed to 6.65% from 6.84% in February.
He said that the rupiah's continued appreciation would also help rein in inflation. Rusman said that the expected on-month decline in prices will also act as a drag on inflation for the year. He, however, didn't give any figures.

Trans Babel Lane to Connect Sumatra and Kalimantan

Bangka-Belitung (Babel) Governor Eko Maulana Ali has proposed a Trans Babel Lane to connect the islands of Sumatra and Kalimantan, separated by Karimata strait.
"The Trans Babel Lane will function to connect the islands of Sumatra and Kalimantan," the governor said after opening provincial consultation on development planning here on Wednesday.
Eko Maulana said on the occasion that there were already seven trans links in Indonesia namely Trans Sumatra, Trans Java, Trans Bali, Trans Nusa Tenggara Barat- Nusa Tenggara Timur, Trans Kalimantan, Trans Sulawesi, and Trans Papua.
"Therefore, in Trans Babel a connecting line will be made through the sea from Palembang in South Sumatra to Ketapang in East Kalimantan," Governor Eko Maulana said.
According to him, the connecting line would go through the ferry ports of Palembang, Muntok in Bangka Bangka district, Sadai in Bangka Selatan district, Manggar in Belitung Timur district, Tanjungpandan in Belitung district, and Ketapang in East Kalimantan.
"We propose a road from Muntok ferry port to Tanjung Beriak in Bangka Tengah, and then cross the sea to Tanjung Batu port in Belitung, and from Belitung a road to Manggar port in Belitung Timur," he said.
He also proposed a 104-kilometer road from Muntok to Pangkalpinag, and then a 53-kilometer road from Pangkalpinang to Tanung Berikat.
"With Trans Babel, there will be a close relationship between the people in Sumatra and Kalimantan in addition to improving the economy of people in Babel province," he said.

Indonesia Uses 3-Month Bond Yield

Bank Indonesia.

The Indonesian government said Friday that it will use the yield of its three-month bonds as a reference in deciding the yield of its existing IDR142.79 trillion ($16.4 billion) in bonds that bear variable coupons.
Previously the reference was the yield of the three-month Sertifikat Bank Indonesia note issued by the central bank. The central bank stopped auctioning those money market securities late last year to reduce fund inflows, making it necessary for the government to use another rate as a reference.
At the most recent auction Tuesday, the three-month bonds were yielding 5.12%, significantly lower than the yield of Bank Indonesia's latest three-month note of 6.367%. The government will again auction three-month bonds next month.

Japan Faces Its Next Chore

A picture shows wrecked cars littering a street in Natori, Miyagi prefecture on March 16, 2011 after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami. The official toll of the dead and missing following a devastating earthquake and tsunami that flattened Japans northeast coast has topped 11,000, with 3,676 confirmed dead, police said on March 16.

Where do you even start? Do you start by carting away the Chokai Maru, the 150-foot (45-meter) ship that was lifted over a pier and slammed into a house in this port town?
Do you start with the thousands of destroyed cars scattered like discarded toys in the city of Sendai? With the broken windows and the doorless refrigerators and the endless remnants of so many lives that clutter the canals?
In the first days after a tsunami slammed into Japan’s northeast coast on March 11, killing well over 10,000 people, it seemed callous to worry about the cleanup. The filth paled beside the tragedy. Now, nearly two weeks later, hundreds of communities are finally turning to the monumental task ahead.
The legacy of Hurricane Katrina, which devastated the U.S. Gulf of Mexico coastline in 2005, gives an idea of both the immensity of the job and the environmental hazards Japan could face for years to come.
“In Katrina, you had debris that had seawater, sewage, chemicals, gasoline, oil, that was all mixed together in a toxic soup,” said David McEntire, a disaster expert at the University of North Texas. “And you’re going to have similar problems with the disaster in Japan.”
Three years after Katrina, which spawned enough debris to cover Britain, the U.S. government had said the mess was not even close to being cleaned up. The mess looks endless in Japan, and hauling it away seems unimaginable.
The cost? No one really knows, though the crisis is emerging as the world’s most expensive natural disaster on record, with Japanese officials saying losses could total up to 25 trillion yen ($309 billion). The World Bank says reconstruction could take five years.
So there’s nothing to do but start. Mayumi Hatanaka began with the knee-high mud that had flooded into her little seafood restaurant in the small seaside city of Shiogama.
“It’s been four days, and we’ve been working, working,” she said, standing beneath a sign that promised food “Straight From The Fishery To You.”
She and her daughter were scraping the muck down their driveway and into the street. The thick, dark goo looked almost volcanic. Workers hired by the city used a gargantuan truck-mounted vacuum, normally used for well-drilling, to hose it up. The noise of the pump and the sucking splutter of the hose nearly drowned out her voice, and she had to shout to be heard.
Simply carving out an aisle in the restaurant took three days, Hatanaka said, so she has no idea when she’ll be able to reopen. “I think we’ll never finish,” she said, only briefly willing to set aside her shovel before getting back to work.
Much of the official cleanup effort so far has been to support rescue teams. Soldiers and city crews have cleared streets of debris so rescuers can get through, and some buildings have been pulled apart in search of survivors.
Now, with little chance left of finding anyone still alive, the concern is to avoid accidentally clearing away corpses with the debris. Takashi Takayama is a city official in Higashimatsushima, a port town brutalized by the tsunami, leaving nearly 700 people dead.
He said the city, where the Chokai Maru ship was thrown ashore, is still cleaning up — and footing the bill — from a major earthquake in 2003.
“I don’t know how long it will take,” he said. “The last time it was just parts of houses that were destroyed. Now it’s the whole house. So I don’t know how we’ll do it.”
With city workers desperately overworked, officials turned to a local association of construction companies to help. Those private contractors helped clear the roads and have started piling up debris in small hills, soon to be small mountains, on city land near the port.
Japan is a country where separating trash into its various components is almost sacrosanct: There are the burnables, the food items, the array of different recyclables. Takayama is already dreading the arguments when disaster-weary residents refuse to categorize their garbage properly.
“Sorting everything out will be the first challenge,” he said.
A 2004 tsunami, which killed 230,000 people in 14 Asian and African countries, left thousands of cities and towns facing a task similar to Japan’s today. In Indonesia, the United Nations employed 400,000 workers to clear 1.3 million cubic yards (1 million cubic meters) of debris just from the urban areas of the hard-hit city of Banda Aceh.
Many of the countries affected by that disaster were less developed than Japan and lacked sophisticated waste disposal systems. In the initial cleanups, some burned debris in the open air, dumped it in makeshift landfills and used other environmentally risky methods, polluting wells, inland waterways and the nearby seas.
Japan will presumably use state-of-the-art incinerators and sanitary landfills, though technological prowess doesn’t guarantee there won’t be problems. In the United States, there were allegations of corruption by cleanup companies after Hurricane Katrina, including claims that hazardous debris was improperly dumped in landfills.

Apple's iPad 2 Hits Overseas Stores after U.S. Sellout

An employee (R) looks at customers stand in line outside Apples flagship 5th Avenue store to purchase iPad 2 tablets in New York, March 16, 2011.

Hundreds of customers lined up outside Apple stores in Australia and New Zealand on Friday for the international launch of the iPad 2, which has flown off the shelves in the United States leaving the company struggling to meet demand.
Analysts forecast some 1 million devices may have been sold in the first weekend of the launch in the United States, but many warn that it’s not clear how supply constraints will affect availability following the Japan earthquake and tsunami.
Apple plans to roll out the new iPad on Friday to 25 markets including France, the United Kingdom, Canada, Denmark, Germany, Italy, Mexico, Netherlands, and Spain. The iPad 2, a thinner and faster version that features two cameras for video chat, was introduced in the United States on March 11.
But some would-be buyers have expressed frustration at how difficult it has been to secure one of the wildly popular tablet computers, sparking speculation Apple misjudged demand.
“If it wasn’t for the iPad, I wouldn’t be in Australia right now,” said Alex Lee, a backpacker from Canada, who was the first in the queue outside the glass-fronted Apple store in Sydney’s central business district.
He said he diverted his travels from Singapore to attend the launch. “It’s like a habit. I’ve also lined up on Regent Street in London for the iPhone”, added Lee, who had a folding chair and blanket and had spent two nights waiting.
Blue-shirted Apple staff in Sydney handed out trays of sandwiches to those in the queue, some of whom had bedded down on blankets overnight before being awoken by bright sunshine. The iPad 2 goes on sale at 5 p.m. local time (0400) GMT in New Zealand and at 0600 GMT on the east coast of Australia, before sales kick off in other markets.
Its retail price in Australia starts at A$579 ($568), against $499 in the United States. Chief Executive Steve Jobs said in a statement on Tuesday the company was “experiencing amazing demand for iPad 2 in the U.S.” and added “We appreciate everyone’s patience and we are working hard to build enough iPads for everyone.”
Fiona Martin, a spokeswoman for Apple in Australia, declined to comment on whether there was enough stock to meet demand. “We don’t comment on speculation, we’ve got plenty down there for all those folk that are in the queue.”
In New Zealand, a shop assistant at JB HiFi , one of Wellington’s major electronic shops, said there had been a constant stream of people asking about the iPad. “We haven’t even seen it, we don’t know how many we’re getting, but there’ll be big demand you can bet,” said the assistant.
A prospective buyer, 22-year-old student Ian MacDonald, said he had held off buying the first generation iPad because it lacked a camera and he wanted any bugs ironed out.
“This version looks way better, with the cameras and it beats all the other tablets because there are so many apps (applications),” he said.
In addition to Friday’s rollout, Apple said the iPad 2 will be available in Hong Kong, South Korea, Singapore and additional countries in April. Japan supply concerns
Analysts are concerned that Apple will face shortages of key components for the iPad 2 because of the earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan two weeks ago. Several key components in the new version of Apple’s popular iPad come from Japan, including the battery and the flash memory used to store music and video on the device, according to IT research house iSuppli .
Apple delayed sales of the iPad 2 in Japan, but has said that had nothing to do with any component shortages. “We expect Apple to face increased pressure in meeting iPad 2 and iPhone 4 demand in the second quarter,” Stifel Nicolaus analyst Doug Reid wrote recently.
“Although it is early to gauge the extent of component supply shortages, we see risk to our iPad and iPhone unit estimates in the June quarter.”
That said, the wait time on delivery of online orders has shortened to 3-4 weeks in recent days from as high as 6-7 weeks, suggesting component shortages have not reached critical levels. The iPad two also faces increased competition.
Samsung Electronics and Motorola have tablets on the market and Blackberry-maker Research In Motion and Hewlett-Packard Co are set to release tablets in coming months.

Japan's Top 11 Cars?

Honda NSX

March has been the worst month in generations up north. Most of the happenings fall outside the scope of a motoring publication but we can at least pay gentle homage to the country and people who have brought us so many wonderful wheels.
But which are the most wonderful-est? What are the top, say, 11, mainstream Japanese cars of all?
Mazda RX-7: Mazda said it would give up on the Wankel engine over its dead body and it was a close-run thing. The original 1979 RX-7 coupe was probably the best, with styling unlike anything else and high-spinning rotary performance to boot. Datsun 2000: Once they'd flung the Fairlady name (at least in export markets) and added a lively two-litre engine, Datsun had the best low-cost roadster in the world until the MX-5. It wasn't an MGB rip-off, either, despite what the Anglophiles say. The Fairlady 1500 prototype made its debut in 1961, six months before the "B" hit showrooms. Mazda MX-5: The classic English roadster - not as it really was but as we always wished it had been. Superb. Datsun 240Z: For a company that wound up destitute and homeless in the late 1990s - and had to be taken in by Renault - Nissan has produced a surprisingly high number of the great Japanese cars. In 1970 many claimed the 240Z was an E-Type rip-off; to today's eyes, the Zed looks thoroughly original and a decade more modern. Later Zs porked up but the years do not condemn the lithe original.
Datsun 1600: This was an attempt to build a BMW 2002 rival. To reduce the risk, they built an actual BMW 2002 (well, very nearly). Furthermore, they did it at a Datsun price. The 1600, or 510 series, was first seen in 1968, is still sought after and is still used in motor sport. Toyota Celica 4G: The first front-drive Celica, the fourth-gen of 1985, had sublime handling at a time when front-wheel-drive was considered as unsporting as a three-speed auto (a Saab or Subaru of the time told you why). The refreshingly styled newcomer also had an a jewel of a two-litre engine that thought the new, unpopular, low-octane unleaded was actually rocket fuel. Honda NSX: A Japanese Ferrari competitor, albeit from a company that missed the point about why people bought Ferraris. Most weren't going to buy a Honda, no matter how good. That was a reflection on them, not on Honda's accomplished, mid-engined, Ayrton Senna-tweaked NSX. Nissan Skyline GT-R: Love or hate Godzilla, you can't deny the power of the reptilian beast.
Toyota Corolla: The benchmark for affordable quality and consistency in every language. Obama reputedly said of the US's Big Three: "Why can't they make a Corolla?" Quite.
Subaru Impreza WRX: Largely responsible for convincing young Australians that V8 engines were, you know, like, so yesterday. The Lancer Evo is almost as impressive. Toyota 2000GT: Mainstream? Well, it was the best-known Japanese car in the world in 1967, courtesy of a star turn in the Bond film You Only Live Twice (the convertible version was produced just for the film).
The 2000GT was really a Japanese industry group effort that ended up wearing Toyota badges. A beautiful and capable one at that. Imagine China today suddenly coming up with a credible 911 competitor. The 2000GT was that much of a shock.
See! If you count the Evo, slipped in here with the WRX, Japan has produced such an abundance that even its Top 11 has 12 cars in it.
That's without mentioning all the ones you've been shouting out, like those great versions of the Honda Civic or perhaps the first Lexus. Or any of the many ultra-quirky fun machines. Get well soon, Japan.

How Far Indonesia Gets Involved in Supporting Libya

A Mirage 2000-5 jet fighter takes off at the aerial military base 126 - Capitaine Preziosi in Solenzara, Corsica, the French Mediterranean island, for a mission in Libya on March 24, 2011. Blasts and anti-aircraft fire rattled the Libyan capital for the sixth day as France hailed the allied air raids against Moamer Kadhafis forces and promised they would go on indefinitely.

The Indonesian government fully supports any effort to protect civilians in Libya where armed conflict is raging following a UN Security Council resolution allowing the use of all necessary measures to protect civilians in the country.
"In principle, as the president has earlier instructed to our foreign ministry, what is the most important to do is to give priority to the safety of civilians," Julian Aldrin Pasha said here on Thursday. He stated the Indonesian government would give support and assistance to any mission if it was aimed at protecting civilians.
"That’s why the Indonesian government will definitely support any action aimed at creating global peace, security, and tranquility including in Libya."
The United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 1973 last Thursday, imposing a no-fly zone above Libya and authorizing all member states to use all necessary measures to protect civilians. Two days later, the United States, Britain and France launched missile strikes on Libya from the Mediterranean Sea.
By Wednesday western warplanes had flown more than 300 sorties over Libya and more than 162 cruise missiles had been fired in the mission. The allied forces accused Libyan President Muammar Gaddafi of causing a misery to his people.
Many circles denounced the decision by the allied forces, saying the attack was a form of foreign intervention in the internal affairs of a sovereign nation.

Liz Taylor Buried Near Beloved Jackson

Family members leave the Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California after the funeral of screen legend Elizabeth Taylor, March 24, 2011.

Film icon Elizabeth Taylor was laid to rest Thursday in the same celebrity cemetery as her long-time friend Michael Jackson — and demonstrated a keen sense of humor to the end.
The legendary actress, who died Wednesday aged 79, was sent off with an hour-long private ceremony at the Forest Lawn Memorial Park, where generations of Hollywood stars are buried.
But her last wishes were respected, and announced after the service had finished. “The service was scheduled to begin at 2:00 pm, but at Miss Taylor’s request started late,” said a statement by her publicist.
“Miss Taylor had left instructions that it was to begin at least 15 minutes later than publicly scheduled, with the announcement: ’She even wanted to be late for her own funeral,’” it added.
The film legend and violet-eyed beauty, famed as much for her stormy love life as her five-decade Oscar-winning film career, died early Wednesday from congestive heart failure at Los Angeles’ Cedars-Sinai hospital. Tributes poured in from Hollywood and beyond for the actress, who won two Oscars — including for the 1966 classic “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” — and was arguably the last great star of cinema’s golden era.
But Thursday’s funeral was reserved for a few dozen family and friends, brought in a fleet of black stretch limos to the verdant cemetery, where stars including Humphrey Bogart, Clark Gable, and Jean Harlow are also interred. Irish actor Colin Farrell — a “close friend” — gave a recital of the Gerard Manley Hopkins’ poem “The Leaden Echo and the Golden Echo,” while other readings were done by her children and grandchildren, said her publicist.
Taylor’s grandson Rhys Tivey performed a trumpet solo of “Amazing Grace,” while Rabbi Jerry Cutler officiated at a “multi-denominational” service. Taylor converted to Judaism when she was in her 20s.
Forest Lawn is where Jackson was buried following his death in June 2009 aged 50, from an overdose of the powerful sedative propofol. Taylor attended that private ceremony.
During their lives, the pop icon and Hollywood legend were at times inseparable, with homes near each other in the plush Bel Air and Beverly Hills neighborhoods west of Hollywood.
“I don’t think anyone knew how much we loved each other,” Taylor said after his death. “I loved Michael with all my soul and I can’t imagine life without him. We had so much in common and we had such loving fun together.”
The TMZ celebrity news website published a copy of Taylor’s death certificate, which gave Forest Lawn as the burial location. The certificate listed her causes of death as: chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, which it said she had for 10 years; congestive heart failure, which she had for five years; and cardiopulmonary arrest, against which was noted five minutes.
In tribute to Taylor, the association representing New York’s Broadway theaters said they will dim their lights Friday in remembrance of the Hollywood goddess, whose long career included spells on the stage. At the same time it emerged that ailing actress Zsa Zsa Gabor, 94, had been rushed to hospital after hearing the news of Taylor’s death.
“She was watching the news yesterday morning, she was inconsolable. She said to her husband: ’Celebrities always go in threes, we’ve had Jane Russell, now it’s Elizabeth, I’m next,’” said her spokesman.

New Suzuki Swift

Suzukis fourth-generation Swift.

These days, it's getting difficult to tell a new car from the model that came before it.
Cut-throat competition means car makers are scared to take risks; when they come up with a successful formula, they're loath to tinker with it. The new Suzuki Swift is one such example.
When it returned to Australian shores in 2005, the Swift was poles apart from the car that came before it, the largely unloved Ignis. It turned heads like no other small hatch on the road and, in its first year, it quadrupled the sales of its predecessor.
So after taking a leap of faith on a bold new look and coming up trumps, Suzuki has done the smart thing and made the 'new' Suzuki Swift look like the old one. But the new Swift is actually a bigger step forward than it appears, with more room, more frugal engines and better protection for occupants.

Japan Death Toll Tops 10,000

Japan Ground Self Defense Force members search for earthquake and tsunami victims in Onagawa, Miyagi Prefecture, northeastern Japan on March 25, 2011.

The death toll from a massive earthquake and tsunami that devastated Japan’s northeast coast topped 10,000 on Friday, two weeks after the disaster struck, Kyodo news reported. The National Police Agency, responsible for compiling statistics from different prefectures affected, could not immediately confirm that figure.

There are fears of a much higher toll from the disaster, which flattened entire towns along the Pacific coast of the country’s main island of Honshu. In its report on Thursday, the National Police Agency said that 9,811 people had been confirmed dead and 17,541 officially listed as missing — a total of 27,352 — as of 9:00 pm (1200 GMT) as a result of the March 11 catastrophe.
A total of 2,779 people have been injured. The quake has become Japan’s deadliest natural disaster since the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake, which killed more than 142,000 people. Hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced from their homes and have taken shelter in emergency

Mini LNG Terminals to be Built in Indonesia

President Director of state-owned oil and gas company Pertamina, Karen Agustiawan

State oil and gas company PT Pertamina and state electricity company PT PLN have signed a contract for the development of eight small-scale liquefied natural gas recipient terminals in the eastern parts of Indonesia.
Pertamina President Director Karen Agustiawan and PLN President Director Dahlan Iskan signed the contract in the presence of State Enterprises Minister Mustafa Abubakar here on Thursday.
Mustafa said the construction of LNG terminals would help the country reduce the use of fuel oils and slash state subsidy. According to him, the government expected to save Rp847 billion in oil subsidy by operating the eight LNG terminals.
The project would also help accelerate the development of eastern Indonesia, he said. "PLN and Pertamina are the first to speed up evenly distribution of development gains (in the country)."
Karen meanwhile said the eight LNG terminals which would have a combined capacity of 182 million cubic feet per day (MMSCFD) would be built between 2012 and 2015. The eight mini LNG terminals will be built in Tanjung Batu (East Kalimantan) with a capacity of 25 MMSCFD, Batakan (East Kalimantan) 15 MMSCFD, Pasanggaran (Bali) 25-30 MMSCFD, and Pomalaa (Southeast Sulawesi) 25 MMSCFD expected to start operations in 2012.
Karen said the Bontang refinery in East Kalimantan would supply gas to the four LNG terminals. The other LNG terminals will be built in Mataram (West Nusa Tenggara) 15 MMSCFD and Banjarmasin (South Kalimantan) 6 MMSCFD expected to start operations in 2013 and Gorontalo (North Sulawesi) 6 MMSCFD, Halmahera (North Maluku) 60 MMSCFD in 2015.
Dahlan Iskan said the gas supplies from the eight LNG terminals would overcome problems related to the use of fuel oils during the peak load. "To date, there is no other way but to rely on fuel oils."

Riau Urged to Stop Conflict between Humans and Elephants

In this Thursday, May 7, 2009 file photo, conservationists and officials inspect the carcass of an elephant suspectedly poisoned to death by poachers near Pekanbaru, Riau province, Sumatra island, Indonesia. Two endangered elephants found dead on Indonesias Sumatra island are believed to be the victims of poachers targeting the animals for their prized ivory tusks, a park official said Monday, March 29, 2010.

The Riau World Wide Fund for Nature is trying to put an end to the conflict between humans and elephants (elephas maximus) by rehabilitating and restoring their habitats at the Balai Raja fauna reserve, Bengkalis district, a conservationist said.
"We keep encouraging the government to rehabilitate the habitats of the wild elephants at Balai Raja," Syamsidar, WWF-Riau media relations officer, said here on Thursday.
Syamsidar said that Balai Raja in 1990 covered 16,000 hectares when it was run as a fauna reserve but now it has been much reduced to 120 hectares of secondary forested land.
He also said that even with the remaining area, it was still converted into human settlements and palm oil plantations causing the elephants to become marginalized creating conflicts with human beings.
In a latest incident last week, she said, a wild female elephant and her baby had been made paralyzed by poisoning near a human settlement. Those elephants were in weak condition.
Head of Region III of Riau Nature Resource Agency (BKSDA)B. Hutomo said that that the location where the two elephants had been paralyzed was also a passage of the beasts for a long time.
As more people came to live near the area, the beasts might feel disturbed and fought the human beings from time to time, he added. In last week’s incident, the elephants could become dehydrated as humans kept them away from water sources. Hutomo said that the agency was trying to cure elephants, and drive them back to their habitats.

Floods Inundate Three Villages in E Java

Floods caused by the overflowing of Lamong river in Dawarblandong subdistrict, Mojokerto district, East Java, caused inundation of three villages on Thursday.
The flood waters had submerged Talun, Banyulegi and Pulorejo villages since early Thursday but it would naturally recede in the next two to three days, head of Banyulegi village Zainuri said.
The flood waters came too sudden and inundated a number of houses, causing some families to take refuge to buildings on higher ground such as mosques and the village community centers.
A local resident, Suparno, said Lamong river usually overflowed and caused flooding of three villages as they were low lying. But there were no reports of fatalities.

West Java to Observe Earth Hour

The "Earth Hour" campaign by turning off electricity for an hour on March 26, 2011 throughout West Java, will save a total of 661.54 megawatts (MW), a local official said here Thursday.
"If only 10 percent of West Java followed the instruction, 661.54 MW would be saved, " head of the West Java environmental management agency Setiawa Wangsatmadja noted.
He added that Earth Hour is a global campaign that invites people in the world from individuals to governments to support reducing CO2 emissions that cause damage to the earth.
"For this year’s Earth Hour environmental campaign, the agency appealed to all people in West Java to turn off their lights and all electronic equipment for one hour from 8.30 pm to 9.30 pm, because it is a peak hour," Setiawan said. The agency asserted that West Java province fully supports Earth Hour environmental campaign 2011.
"Symbolically, the campaign will be conducted at several locations that are icons of West Java such as Gedung Sate, Bandung City Hall as well as Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB) and Padjadjaran university campuses," Setiawan said.

800,000 Foreign Workers Still in Libya

In this image taken during an organized trip by the Libyan authorities, men gather at a mass funeral for people killed in coalition bombings, officials said, in Tripoli, Libya, Thursday March 24, 2011. The cause of deaths could not be verified. French fighter jets struck an air base deep inside Libya and destroyed one of Moammar Gadhafis planes Thursday, and NATO ships patrolled the coast to block the flow of arms and mercenaries. Other coalition bombers struck artillery, arms depots and parked helicopters.

Some 800,000 foreign workers are still in Libya, according to an estimate by the International Organisation for Migration (IOM).
Laurence Hart, the IOM mission chief in Tripoli, told AFP: "Based on IOM estimates, there are about 800,000 foreign workers of various nationalities still in Libya."
He added that he was not in a position to say how many of them wanted to leave the country but said the organisation had received requests for aid to help repatriate their citizens from the embassies of a number of African countries.
The IOM asked the Libyan authorities at the beginning of March for permission to send a humanitarian mission to the country where tens of thousands of immigrants were awaiting to be evacuated.
"We have still not received a reply," said Hart, who is currently away from Libya. Since February 20, some 280,000 people have fled the violence in Libya, 151,000 to Tunisia and 118,000 to Egypt, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

Earth Hour Aims for Hope in Darkened World

The full moon rises behind the statue of Mahathma Gandhi in Hyderabad on March 19, 2011. Full Moons vary in size because of the oval shape of the Moons orbit. It is an ellipse with one side (perigee) about 50,000 km closer to Earth than the other (apogee). Nearby perigee moons are about 14 percent bigger and 30 percent brighter than lesser moons that occur on the apogee side of the Moons orbit. According to US Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C. The full Moon of March 19 occurs less than one hour away from perigeea near-perfect coincidence that happens only 18 years or so.

Lights will go out around the world Saturday with hundreds of millions of people set to take part in the Earth Hour climate change campaign, which this year will also mark Japan’s earthquake and tsunami.
From across the Pacific, to Australia, Asia, Europe, Africa and the Americas, iconic landmarks such as the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, New York’s Empire State building and the Eiffel Tower in Paris will go dark.
“Earth Hour is like a New Year’s Eve,” Earth Hour co-founder and executive director Andy Ridley told AFP from the group’s Sydney office.
“It’s meant to be a celebration — it’s a bit different this year because of the Japan stuff — but it’s meant to be about hope and the future.”
Ridley said in Sydney and other cities, some Earth Hour events would hold a minute’s silence to mark the devastating 9.0-magnitude quake and subsequent tsunami in Japan this month that left more than 25,000 people dead or missing.
The disaster followed a deadly earthquake in New Zealand’s Christchurch and massive floods in Australia in January, which devastated thousands of homes and ruined crops and infrastructure.
“It’s been a bad start to the year, and I guess it’s an opportunity to take a moment and think about that,” Ridley said, adding that the campaign had a different focus in every location and not all events would mention Japan’s catastrophe.
The Earth Hour movement, which aims to raise awareness about climate change by switching off lights for 60 minutes, hopes to bring people together to think about what they can do to reduce harmful carbon pollution blamed for rising temperatures.
Environmental group WWF International helped initiate Earth Hour in Sydney in 2007, and by 2010 the energy-saving event had grown to engage hundreds of millions of people in 4,616 cities and 128 countries and territories.
“We didn’t imagine right at the beginning... it would be on the scale that it is now,” said Ridley.
“And the fact that it is so cross-cultural, beyond borders and race and religion,” he added, saying the event would never have grown so successfully without social networking sites such as Facebook.
This year organisers are focussing on connecting people online so they can inspire each other to go beyond the hour and make commitments to help the environment in their daily lives.
To do this they have created an online platform connected to the 14 top social media sites around the world, including Facebook and Twitter, which people will be easily able to access from mobile phones. Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard this week backed Earth Hour.
“Earth Hour has become a special symbol of the determination of so many people to make a difference,” said Gillard, who is facing stiff opposition to her plan to introduce a tax on carbon pollution in Australia.
Ridley said that despite the growth of the event, which organisers said was the largest voluntary action ever witnessed in 2010, the ideals of the global movement had not changed.
“When we first started this we were trying to effectively take the temperature, we were trying to prove or see whether, contrary to some commentators, whether or nor people cared (about climate change),” he said.
“I think there is a massive consensus for action, not just on climate change.
“The idea of this is not to engage in the ’why we can’t do anything’ debate but absolutely talk about what can be done.” The first lights going off Saturday will be in Fiji and New Zealand’s Chatham Islands, before cities and landmarks around the world follow suit.
Other iconic structures due to go dark include the Sydney Opera House, Indonesia’s National Monument, London’s Eye and Brazil’s Christ the Redeemer statue.

Indonesia Claims to be Ready to Deal with Coup

Defense Minister Purnomo Yusgiantoro said the government was prepared to deal with any party trying to stage a coup by military or non-military means.
"If a coup really happens, we are ready to cope with it with military power," Purnomo said on the sidelines of an international defense dialog here on Wednesday.
He said he had never received a report about a number of retired army generals seeking to topple the government of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono with the help of an Islamic hardline group.
"We (the government) have never heard about it. We have never received reports about anybody planning a coup," he said.
But he also said the government would keep monitoring developments in the field and use its security apparatus to check the truth of the foreign media’s report. Purnomo said if the coup report was true, the government would deal with the plotters with military power.
"For now, the government will not take any action until all detailed data and information about the issue have been collected," he said.
Al-Jazeera television station recently reported that a number of retired three-star generals in Indonesia had been behind the recent anti-Ahmadiyah campaign and violence against followers of the small Islamic sect. It said the generals secretly supported the hardline group because they had the same goal, namely unseating President Yudhoyono from power.
"They have come just to give support," chief of the Islam Reform Movement, Chep Hernawan, said according to Al Jazeera on Tuesday. "They said the jihad must continue. We must not stop until the liar steps down," he said.
Chep said the retired generals approached him at the end of January or around a month before violence against Ahmadiyah followers in Cikeusik, Pandeglang, Banten. He said the generals were fed up with all the lies President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s government had been telling the people.
"The three-star generals asked what issue would be used to topple President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. The Century case has failed. Perhaps the Ahmadiyah issue," he said.
Based on his confession,. Al Jazeera journalist Step Vassen said the generals supported the hardline Islamic group. They considered Yudhoyono to be too weak and reformist.