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A New Paleolithic Revolution Image Caption: The ‘Rangki Papa’ (‘Father of all Rafts’) built using Palaeolithic technology and approaching the coast of Komodo, Bali, having succeeded in crossing from Sumbawa, 7 October 2004. The vessel travelled 36.4km in 9 hours 22 minutes Jerome M. Eisenberg, Ph.D. and Dr Sean KingsleyJuly/August 2007 For decades archaeologists have rightly respected the Neolithic period c. 8500 BC as a revolutionary era of the most profound change, when the wiring of mankind’s brain shifted from transient hunter-gathering to permanent settlement in farming communities. Hearths, temples, articulated burials, whistling ‘wheat’ fields and security replaced the...

Erectus AhoyPrehistoric seafaring floats into view Bruce Bower As the sun edged above the horizon on Jan. 31, 2000, a dozen men boarded a bamboo raft off the east coast of the Indonesian island of Bali. Each gripped a wooden paddle and, in unison, deftly stroked the nearly 40-foot-long craft into the open sea. Their destination: the Stone Age, by way of a roughly 18-mile crossing to the neighboring island of Lombok. Project director Robert G. Bednarik, one of the assembled paddlers, knew that a challenging trip lay ahead, even discounting any time travel. Local fishing crews had told him...

BALI’s highest volcano Mount Agung is sending a dark ash cloud into the sky as it erupts for the second time in less than a week. Here are live updates and the latest news. ... Sutopo Purwo Nugroho a spokesman for Bali’s Disaster Management Agency (BNPB), has said that some Bali residents living within Mount Agung’s danger zone are refusing to evacuate the area. He said: “Some people within a radius of 8-10km from the summit crater of Mount Agung have not been displaced. “They feel safe because the area was not damaged during the 1963 eruption. They will evacuate...

Volcanic eruptions on the Indonesian resort island of Bali have prompted officials to cancel flights and move about 24,000 residents out of the way as a thick ash cloud from Mount Agung, thousands of meters high, drifts east and southeast along the archipelago. ... Indonesia’s Center for Volcanology and Geological Hazard Mitigation raised its aviation notice from an orange alert to a red one Sunday. The ash, which began spewing into the sky after Mount Agung in eastern Bali erupted three times Saturday, has reached heights of about 2.5 miles, according to Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, head of information and data...

Vehicles laden with food, masks and bedding have been dispatched to help more than 75,000 people who have fled a volcano on the tourist island of Bali, as rising magma and increased tremors fuel fears of an imminent eruption. Mount Agung, about 75 kilometres (47 miles) from the Indonesian tourist hub of Kuta, has been rumbling since August, threatening to erupt for the first time since 1963. "The chance that an eruption will happen is quite big. But it cannot be predicted when it will happen," Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, spokesman for the disaster mitigation agency, said. The increased frequency of...

Mount Agung in Bali is experiencing unprecedented levels of seismic activity and could erupt in a “matter of hours” if tremors continue, Indonesia’s volcanology centre has said. More than 75,000 people have been evacuated in the last few days as Agung, the highest point of the island, has experienced hundreds of internal volcanic earthquakes. “Instrumentally we have never recorded such high energy or seismicity from Mount Agung,” Devy Kamil Syahbana, a seismologist from Indonesia’s centre for volcanology and geological hazard mitigation, told the Guardian. Data showed that Mount Agung experienced 844 volcanic earthquakes on Monday, and 300 to 400 earthquakes...

Former United States president Barack Obama arrived in Bali on Friday evening for a family vacation. His Gulfstream G-V N50JE aircraft landed at I Gusti Ngurah Rai International Airport in Bali at 6.52 p.m. local time, or a bit late from its initial schedule of 5.55 p.m. Wearing a blue T-shirt, blue jeans and white sneakers, Obama was seen relaxed and smiling when he embarked from the plane, witnesses reported. Meanwhile, former First Lady Michelle Obama, who wore a white T-shirt and blue jeans walked by his side. Obama's daughters, Malia and Sasha, also joined the vacation. Journalists did not...

UBUD, Indonesia (AFP) - Barack Obama has kicked off a 10-day family holiday in Indonesia that will take in Bali and Jakarta, the city where he spent part of his childhood, officials said on Saturday (June 24). The casually dressed former president arrived in the resort island of Bali with his wife Michelle and their two daughters, a local military commander said. "They arrived late last night and went straight to the hotel in Ubud," a local military commander, I Gede Widiyana, told AFP. Obama woke up early and did some exercise in the lush green riverside resort, Widiyana said,...

Obama kicks off tropical holiday in Indonesia [AFP] AFPJune 23, 2017 Soldiers gather for security prepartions in Denpasar on Indonesia's resort island of Bali, on June 23, 2017, ahead of a visit by former US president Barack Obama Soldiers gather for security prepartions in Denpasar on Indonesia's resort island of Bali, on June 23, 2017, ahead of a visit by former US president Barack Obama (AFP Photo/SONNY TUMBELAKA) Barack Obama kicked off a 10-day family holiday in Indonesia that will take in Bali and Jakarta, the city where he spent part of his childhood, officials said on Saturday. The casually...

Australian tourists are unwittingly eating dog meat in Bali, according to evidence provided to the ABC's 7.30 program. The animals are brutally caught and then butchered not far from the beaches visited by more than 1 million Australians every year. Some of the animals are poisoned, posing a risk to human health, according to a leading toxicologist. Whilst eating dog meat is not illegal in Bali, killing animals cruelly or eating meat contaminated with poison is against the law, Animals Australia's campaign director Lyn White said. "The dog-meat trade breaches animal cruelty laws and food safety laws. That is a...

Macaque with stolen goods I’m willing to trade Kylie McLaughlin/Getty ================================================================================================================================= Long-tailed macaques living near an Indonesian temple have figured out how to run a ransom racket on visiting tourists. The monkeys grab valuables, such as glasses, hats, cameras or, in one case, a wad of cash from the ticket booth, then wait for temple staff to offer them food before dropping their ill-gotten gains and dashing off with the tasty prize (see video below). Although this behaviour has been reported anecdotally at Uluwatu Temple on the island of Bali for years, it had never been studied scientifically in the...

JAKARTA (REUTERS, AFP) - An explosion on a ferry between the Indonesian resort islands of Bali and Lombok on Thursday (Sept 15) killed two people, an Indonesian and a Dutch national, and injured 13, police said. The boat was carrying 35 passengers, all of whom were foreigners, and four crew, and had just left Padang Bai port in eastern Bali on Thursday morning when the blast occurred. "Two of them died, 13 were injured," Bali police spokesman Made Sudana said, adding the explosion happened off the coast of Lombok. "It seems there was some sort of explosion on the boat,...

An Australian teenager who travelled to Syria has had his passport cancelled by the government, according to his lawyer. Oliver Bridgeman, from Toowoomba in Queensland, was reported missing by his parents in March 2015 after they thought he was spending time in Bali. Instead, the teenager journeyed on to war-torn Syria where his lawyer said he had been engaged in humanitarian work... Immigration Minister Peter Dutton defended the government's decision, telling ABC News those who travel to Syria put Australia's military staff and personnel at risk... The government has the power to cancel an Australian passport when a person "might...

Remnants of ancient Indian pottery, beads and even Indian DNA found in human bones point to thriving trade and social contacts between India and Bali dating back to more than 2,000 years. Besides trade, Indian merchants brought with them their language -- Sanskrit -- and the influence of Hinduism and Buddhism... The major Indian port of connect with Bali in Indonesia and other places in Southeast Asia was Arikamedu, a thriving port located seven kilometres from Puducherry from where archaeologists have unearthed Roman artefacts too. The influence of Sanskrit and the ideology of Hinduism and Buddhism which the Indian traders...

By Joel Leyden Israel News AgencyJerusalem — January 9, 2015 … Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with French Ambassador to Israel Patrick Maisonnave and made the following remarks at the start of their meeting: “I wish to send from this place our deepest condolences to President François Hollande, the bereaved families and the people of France. We grieve with our French brothers and sisters. We reaffirm our commitment to work together to defeat the enemies of the democratic values we all cherish. I know that you’re going from here to France, and I want you to take with you...

August 13, 2014 American Woman's Body Found In Suitcase In Indonesia BALI, Indonesia -- The body of a 62-year-old suburban Chicago woman was found stuffed inside a suitcase on the Indonesian resort island of Bali, and authorities on Wednesday arrested her daughter and her daughter's boyfriend in connection to the death, police said. The suitcase containing Sheila von Wiese-Mack's body was found Tuesday inside the trunk of a taxi parked in front of the St. Regis Bali Resort in the island's upscale Nusa Dua area, said Col. Djoko Hari Utomo, the police chief in Bali's capital, Denpasar. Heather Mack, 19,...

Sheila Von Weise Mack was last seen alive on Monday when an argument she had with her daughter was captured by surveillance cameras in the lobby of the St. Regis Hotel in Denpasar, Bali A Chicago woman vacationing in Indonesia was killed -- her body stuffed inside a suitcase earlier this week -- and her daughter and another man were arrested. The body of 62-year-old Sheila Von Weise Mack was discovered on Tuesday in a suitcase in the back of a taxi, parked at the prestigious St. Regis Hotel in Denpasar. Mack's daughter, Heather Lois, 19, and another man, 21-year-old...

More than 100 passengers had a miracle escape today after a plane overshot a runway off the coast of Bali and crashed into the sea. Eyewitnesses said passengers fearing for their lives screamed in panic as the Lion Air jet overshot the runway at Ngurah Rai Airport, near Denparsar. The aircraft, carrying 101 passengers and seven crew members - then fell into the sea from a height of about 50 metres.

By John Crewdson, Tribune senior correspondent. Reporting and research assistance was provided by Drew Crosby in Madrid MADRID -- The most sweeping criminal indictment to arise thus far from the Sept. 11 attacks reflects a quiet but dramatic change in understanding by investigators here and across Europe of the terrorist organization known as Al Qaeda, and the international Islamic radical-terrorist network of which, they now agree, it is merely a part. As laid out in the indictment, the defendants' alleged activities--from arranging travel and providing introductions to procuring false documents and, especially, moving money--provide the first detailed look at one...

A 56-year-old British grandmother has been sentenced to death by firing squad in Indonesia for drug trafficking. Lindsay Sandiford was arrested at Bali's airport in May last year after 4.8kg (10.6lb) of cocaine was found in the lining of her suitcase during a routine customs check. Sandiford, whose last UK address was in Gloucestershire, said she was coerced into bringing the drugs to the island. Foreign Office minister Hugo Swire has condemned the sentence. He told MPs the government strongly objected to the death penalty imposed. Her lawyers have said they were "surprised" at the verdict and would appeal. Prosecutors...