Although it is now temporarily in a state of emergency with the looming eruption of Mount Agung volcano, located in the eastern part of the resort island, statistics released last week show that Bali has been a stellar performer for the country’s tourism sector.

Nearly four million tourists visited the island in the first eight months of this year – almost half of the 9.25 million arrivals seen country-wide over the same period, according to the Central Statistics Agency.

That is a 25 per cent increase in arrivals over last year, when tourism contributed 11 per cent, or 172 trillion rupiah (S$17 billion), to Indonesia’s gross domestic product.

The 11.5 million arrivals last year also generated tourism-related jobs for almost 12 million Indonesians.

So what would happen if Indonesia had more than one Bali? Enter President Joko Widodo’s “10 New Balis” growth strategy – a plan that aims to replicate the economic effects of tourism in Bali nationally.

“You all know Bali, our famous island paradise? With improved infrastructure, we will launch a programme called 10 New Balis,” the president, popularly known as Jokowi, told businessmen during a visit to Hong Kong in May. He has also set a target of welcoming 20 million foreign tourists by 2019, and he has been doing his part by sharing his plan of creating more Balis with counterparts such as Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong during the Singapore-Indonesia Leaders’ Retreat, held on Sept 7.

Analysts have said that the ambitious plan to grow the tourism sector complements the president’s broader strategy for more infrastructure development, particularly to enhance connectivity.

The Ministry of Tourism has listed the destinations earmarked under the 10 New Balis plan for further development, which includes the upgrading of airports and construction of new amenities:

lLake Toba, North Sumatra

lTanjung Lesung, Banten

lKepulauan Seribu, Jakarta

lTanjung Kelayang Beach,

Bangka Belitung

lBorobudur Temple, Central Java

lMount Bromo, East Java

lMandalika, West Nusa Tenggara

lLabuan Bajo, East Nusa

Tenggara

lWakatobi, South Sulawesi

lMorotai Island, North Maluku

According to the ministry, the locations were selected based on three As: They are already an attraction in their own right, and they would benefit from better access and more amenities.

“The strategy is to accelerate development,” Deputy Tourism Minister Dadang Rizki Ratman told The Straits Times last month.

“For a start, we looked at the ones with high potential and that are already iconic, but that have relatively low visitor numbers, and we found they all had the same problem with access and infrastructure.”

One destination that is popular with both local and foreign tourists but suffers from a lack of more direct access is Lake Toba on the island of Sumatra.

International visitors to the volcanic lake typically fly to Medan, and travel hours by road before arriving at the location.

Joko is set to officiate at the upgrading of Silangit Airport, which is less than an hour away from Lake Toba, to an international airport later this month.

With the upgrade, the journey for travellers from Singapore, for instance, will be much shorter.

“Now, we have international direct flights to Silangit Airport. Next is Tanjung Kelayang later this year, and we are also designing a new airport in Kulon Progo that would serve international visitors to Borobudur,” said Dadang.

Transportation Minister Budi Karya Sumadi said last month that Garuda Indonesia would fly into Silangit Airport from Singapore on Oct 28 – marking the first international flight to land there after its runway was extended for wide-body aircraft.

Singapore is Indonesia’s largest source of tourists, with 1.5 million visitors arriving from the city-state, but Indonesia also aims to attract more travellers from China, as well as Australia and India.

The tourism ministry said that additional flights, particularly by low-cost carriers, to and from those countries, which started |earlier this year, would help increase tourist numbers.

It hopes to see 15 million tourist arrivals by the end of this year, so that the sector can contribute 13 per cent to growth.

To ensure that infrastructure developments are carried out efficiently, the ministry has streamlined the project approval process, which previously required collaborations with various local authorities.

“For example, Lake Toba lies in seven regencies across North Sumatra province,” said Mr Dadang. “How can we build in the Lake Toba area if the seven regencies have different views and plans?”

He said special economic zones had been carved out as well in areas where infrastructure developments are needed to draw foreign investors from, say, Singapore.

However, all 10 destinations will have their own unique offerings, from yachting and diving in places such as Labuan Bajo to cultural experiences at world-renowned heritage sites such as Borobudur.

Further, special zones will be created for meetings, incentives, conferences and events, or |Mice activities, as well as sports tourism.

Some also highlighted security concerns, from mass street protests that have the potential to turn violent to terrorist attacks by Islamic militants in the country.

Researcher Syarif Hidayatullah from think-tank Wiratama Institute said that the government is heading in the right direction in terms of its focus on improving infrastructure to boost tourism.

As a way to compete with current western-oriented AI devices, such as Apple’s Siri, Google’s Google Assistant and Amazon’s Alexa, LINE developed its own AI system called Clova in about a year and aims to bring Asia into the AI era – one country at a time.

Introduced at the “Barcelona Mobile World Congress” in February, the Clova technology exists in LINE’s new smart-home speakers, WAVE and the smaller CHAMP, as the company’s response to the growing technological advancements of the day.

Clova’s response mechanisms are tailored to process language in a more natural way, meaning that its responses are geared toward being more “human”.

The importance of its human-likeness factor is stressed in LINE chief technology officer Euivin Park’s way of referring to Clova.

“It’s not just machine learning. [Clova] is aimed to be a virtual assistant that is close to our daily lives. Machine learning is just a component of the virtual assistant,” she explained at the recent “LINE Developer’s Day” summit in Tokyo.

As of September, the Clova technology was only available in LINE’s WAVE and CHAMP smart speakers, which will go on sale to the general public outside of fall season presales, but only to those in Japan and South Korea.

Khin Myat Thu Zar zips up to the top of a wall at a newly opened climbing centre in Yangon with ease. But her climb isn’t finished yet.

With the support of a rope partner she flips upside down, her feet gripping two climbing wall holds in an inverted split that would make the couch potatoes of the world wince at just the thought.

“Much more strength is needed to do this kind of yoga and the mind has to be entirely stable,” she told AFP after a climb intermixed with an array of elaborate poses.

“You need to be courageous,” she added.

The 32-year-old former lawyer has been teaching yoga in Myanmar professionally for the last five years. She started climbing six months ago as a way to strengthen her muscles and decided to marry the two hobbies together.

“The feeling on the wall is very different from (yoga) on the ground,” she beamed, while admitting climbing yoga was not for the faint hearted and carried some risks. “If we do something wrong, it can hurt and it is dangerous.”

Most of her students hail from Myanmar’s rapidly growing middle classes, who have been devouring global trends since the once isolated country abandoned outright military rule six years ago.

Lifestyle options that many in the west might have taken for granted — from fast fast food joints and hipster cafes to nightclubs — are still seen as novel in Myanmar. Now yoga studios, climbing walls and tight-fitting gym clothes, trends almost unheard of under cloistered military rule, are breaking through.

“Things are changing,” Khin Myat Thu Zar said, when asked whether the skin-tight gear turned heads in a country that remains deeply conservative and where women are not encouraged to show flesh.

“Sportswear fashion is a new trend now in Myanmar,” she explained.

At $12 for an hour long session, her climbing yoga classes are inevitably only affordable for the wealthy in a country where the average annual salary is just $1,250.

But there is no shortage of willing participants. At a recent session, some half a dozen women and two men warmed up before trying their hand at various yoga position on the wall.

Myint Myat Sandy, a 25-year-old student, said she wanted to use climbing to boost her fitness and improve her yoga skills on the ground.

“The way we do climbing yoga, it builds up strength in your hands,” she said.

Sandar Win, a bodybuilder in her 40s, says it is inner peace she is after.

She explained: “I love the feeling I get at the end of a yoga session. My mind is totally at peace.”//AFP

The four tonnes of ephedrine could make about three tonnes of crystal methamphetamine, known as “ice”, he said.

Sea cargo including the haul was confiscated in Sydney earlier this month as part of a joint investigation by Australia and Thailand under the code name Task Force Storm, which began with information from Thai authorities about suspected large-scale imports of drugs into Sydney.

The task force was formed in May last year to combat crime syndicates and drug trafficking in Southeast Asia.

Sirinya said that Thais were suspected to be involved because the ship started its journey in Thailand.

The ephedrine was found hidden in green tea bottles.

The haul was the largest seizure of drug precursor chemicals at the Australian border. The latest haul was 1.4 tonnes four months ago.

Sirinya said the source of the ephedrine was a neighbouring country of Thailand, and the drugs were smuggled into Thailand.

The Australian Broadcasting Company reported recently that officers examined consignments at the Sydney Container Examination Facility and detected a shipment with more than 1,000 cartons filled with bottles of iced tea.

Approximately one third of the cartons returned a positive reading for liquid ephedrine, which is used to manufacture methamphetamine.

Two people, a Chinese-Australian dual national and an Australian man, were arrested during the raid.

Troubled by low fertility rates in the southern provinces, the Ministry of Health has proposed relaxing the country’s two-child policy.

The proposal was one of three population planning proposals presented by the ministry at the 12th Party Central Committee’s sixth meeting underway in Hanoi.

The three suggestions, contained in a draft population law, include a differential policy of birth rate flexibly according to regions so that in areas with high fertility rate of three children per woman, families would be encouraged to have fewer than two children whereas in areas where the fertility rate is low, parents would be encouraged to have two children.

The second option would keep in place the two-child policy, which encouraged parents to have only one or two children. The third option would allow parents to decide.

Nguyen Van Tan, deputy chief of the ministry’s General Office for Population and Family Planning, said the country has managed to maintain the ideal replacement level fertility of 2.1 children per woman over the past decade. Replacement levels refer to a balance between the number of births and deaths.

Figures from HCM City’s Department of Population and Family Planning show that Vietnam’s largest city recorded fertility rates of 1.45 children per woman of childbearing age. A low birth rate was also observed in the Mekong Delta region – between 1.5-1.6 children per woman.

If the two-child policy is maintained, and the birth rate is lower than the replacement rate, the country would face a series of problems, including social benefits for the elderly and labour shortages in the next ten years, he said.

If the birth rate drops below a certain level, it would be difficult to increase it, a problem faced by other Asian nations. Tan cited South Korea as an example of a country that maintained a limited birth rate policy until it decided to loosen the policy when the rate dropped to less than 1.6 children per woman in 1996.

However, this rate continued to decline further, reaching 1.08 children per woman in 2005. The government made efforts to encourage childbirth, adopting incentive policies that resulted in an increase up to an average of 1.27 children per woman in 2012.

Some of the participants at the discussion raised concerns of a population boom if the third option is implemented, expressing support for the differentiated regional option.

However, Tan said that based on the experience of other countries, increasing the birth rate in areas with low fertility would be difficult.

The draft population law will be discussed further before the Central Committee plenary session ends on Wednesday.

To the outside world, the 54-year-old former journalist with a thick mop of brown hair has become the face of the Catalan independence movement.

There is talk of the “Puigdemont effect” on companies moving their headquarters from the northeastern region as he threatens to declare independence as early as Tuesday.

“Puigdemont to jail,” shout defenders of Spanish unity. He has retorted that he is not scared of arrest.

So where does the determination of this happily married father of two girls come from?

Independence ‘in his blood‘

In a biography published in 2016, Carles Porta, a journalist and friend of Puigdemont, describes him as an “honest and resilient” man, a dyed-in-the-wool partisan of independence.

“He has this quality (or this flaw): he’s stubborn,” Porta writes.

But a high-ranking critic who knows him but refused to be identified in order to speak freely, said he “does not have much preparation… to take on this big challenge”, even though he has the independence of Catalonia “in his blood, as a unique driving force”.

Puigdemont’s destiny changed in January 2016 when he was selected to lead a coalition of separatist parties which had won a majority of seats in the regional parliament three months earlier, tasked with leading 7.5 million Catalans to independence.

Mayor of the city of Girona since 2001 and a lawmaker in the regional parliament, Puigdemont replaced Artur Mas as the Catalan president.

Mas, who had led the region since 2010, was deeply unpopular with far-left separatists for austerity measures he implemented in Catalonia during Spain’s severe economic crisis.

They wanted him out, and so it was that Puigdemont took over, becoming the Spanish government’s public enemy number one in the process.

He does share one thing in common with Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy though: Both suffered serious car accidents when they were younger.

Rajoy has his scars hidden under his beard, Puigdemont on his forehead, under his fringe.

‘Flair for showmanship’

Puigdemont was born in Amer, a small mountain village of about 2,200 people, on December 29, 1962, the second of eight siblings.

The son and grandson of bakers, he was just nine when he was sent to boarding school and “learnt to be a fighter”, Porta says.

He was 13 when Spain’s dictator Francisco Franco died in 1975.

Hugely attached to the Catalan language and passionate about history, the teenager would forever remember Franco’s severe repression of his region.

In 1980, he joined Convergencia Democratica de Catalunya, the conservative and nationalist party which became the Catalan European Democratic Party in 2016.

Hired in 1982 as a sub-editor for the nationalist newspaper El Punt Avui, he rose up the ranks and became editor, combining journalism with activism.

At the time, pro-independence Catalans were still a minority.

In the summer of 1991, he travelled to the Republic of Slovenia, which had just declared independence from Yugoslavia after a banned referendum, followed by a brief armed conflict.

In the following years, he sought to widen support for independence, always by peaceful means, inspired by India’s independence champion Mahatma Gandhi.

At ease with social media, he speaks French, English and Romanian — his wife Marcela Topor comes from Romania.

He also founded a Catalan news agency and an English-language newspaper on the region, and headed up the Association of Municipalities for Independence, which brings together local entities to promote the right to self-determination.

“He has a great flair for showmanship and knows how to use the media,” political analyst Anton Losada said.

Since 2012, Catalonia has been the scene of mass rallies asking for an independence referendum.

Some Catalans are thankful that he organised such a vote on October 1, even if it was banned by Madrid, repressed by police and not held according to official electoral standards.

More than 90 percent voted in favour of independence out of a turnout of just 43 percent.

Other Catalans, though, criticise a “democratic fraud” aimed at legitimising a declaration of independence, and accuse him of turning his back on half of the region that rejects breaking away from Spain.

For political analyst Joan Botella, “Puigdemont believes he has been called by destiny to take Catalans to the promised land, and his entourage is very unpredictable.”

But “he doesn’t at all appear to be a demented zealot as described by Madrid”.//AFP