Nuclear Protest, Nuclear Dump in Northern Australia

APEC energy officials meeting in Northern Australia have stepped from the air-conditioned conference room inside Darwin's Parliament House to the elevated balcony to spy this unusual sight. It's a giant inflatable nuclear power stack erected by protesters who don't want a nuclear power industry in Northern Australia. Currently there is one uranium mine - the Ranger Uranium mine - which operates on a lease inside the World Heritage listed Kakadu National Park and there is pressure on traditional aboriginal owners - the Mirrar people - to agree to a second mine closeby at Jabiluka. The Mirrar's senior custodian, Yvonne Margarula, has for years strongly opposed Jabiluka's development, often explaining that uranium mining at Ranger had upturned aboriginal people's lives, brought access to alcohol and created arguments - mostly about money.


There's another nuclear issue brewing in Northern Australia. Aboriginal elders living on a remote Northern Territory community have agreed to accept $12 million for allowing Australia's first nuclear waste dump to be built on their land.
Under the deal, Canberra would take the land for up to 200 years to store nuclear waste. Up to 150 truckloads of radioactive material would be driven thousands of kilometres from Lucas Heights in Sydney and Woomera in South Australia to the site. Suspend your judgement about what this could all mean and click here for taste of what this same issue has produced elsewhere.


... And back to the APEC meeting in Darwin for one moment. Greenpeace is questioning why no renewable energy representatives were on a key panel at the meeting. Other protesters used the opportunity of visiting nations to voice their anger at human rights abuses in Indonesia's West Papua. The flag on display (right) is "The Morning Star" - the independence flag of the Free Papua Movement.

Portrait of an average Indigenous Australian

This week, Australians are celebrating the 40th anniversary of a national referendum that allowed Aborigines to be counted as members of the Australian population. It seems incredible now, but before that vote, Australia's indigenous people weren't counted as people, they came under the Flora and Fauna Act.
So what's it like 40 years on? Crikey has compiled a revealing snapshot of Aboriginal life today. It's a grim view of untimely death, marginalisation and stunted opportunity.

Aborigines will help "fat" teens survive on TV

Hunters like this boy will help teenagers survive in Northern Australia's Arnhemland.




Opponents say its "voyeuristic television designed to humiliate fat people" - a BBC reality television show which will showcase the hunting prowess of 10 overweight young Britons let loose in the Northern Territory. What do you think?
The British teenagers will have to spear wallabies, trap lizards and skin snakes when they go hunting with Aborigines in Arnhemland as part of the series "Fat Kids Can't Hunt".
Drawing on 40,000 years of knowledge, Aborigines will teach 10 overweight young Britons how to survive on bush tucker in the series Fat Teens Can't Hunt.
The participants will have to swap burgers, chips and pizzas for lizards, mangrove worms and charred kangaroo. If they fail to find food in the wild, they will go hungry.
The programme, due to start filming in the Northern Territory in August, will feature five boys and five girls, aged 16 to 19. The six one-hour episodes are expected to be screened later this year or early next year.
The series is based on an earlier programme, Fat Men Can't Hunt, in which eight obese adults were sent to live with Bushmen in Namibia.
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Between them they lost 106 lbs after being forced to live on nuts and berries and having to kill a pair of porcupines with spears.

The Fourth Estate

As you would know the term Fourth Estate refers to the press, both in its explicit capacity of advocacy and in its implicit ability to frame political issues. The term goes back at least to Thomas Carlyle in the first half of the 19th century.

Novelist Jeffrey Archer in his work The Fourth Estate made this observation: "In May 1789, Louis XVI summoned to Versailles a full meeting of the 'Estate General'. The First Estate consisted of three hundred nobles. The Second Estate, three hundred clergy. The Third Estate, six hundred commoners. Some years later, after the French Revolution, Edmund Burke, looking up at the Press Gallery of the House of Commons, said, 'Yonder sits the Fourth Estate, and they are more important than them all.'" How true.

On this theme, add typewriters, guitar, bass and drums and you have Darwin's 4thEstate which provides a very interesting twist.

East Timor Violence Flares

Today, the day that Jose Ramos-Horta was officially declared East Timor's president, fresh outbreaks of violence were reported in the capital, Dili.
Four homes were burned to the ground as rival gangs clashed in renewed unrest that officials say is unrelated to last week's presidential election.
The UN's spokeswoman Allison Cooper says it's a sign of a resurgence in clashes between gangs.
"We don't believe it was related to the election, although UN police are investigating," Cooper told AFP.
One resident says some of the gang members were carrying guns as they battled in Bairro Pite area, although no injuries were reported.
"They attacked this morning at 10:00 am. They took over the area and burned houses until police came. Some of them were carrying automatic weapons," the resident told AFP, declining to give his name.
The violence today flared just hours before the court of appeal officially declared the results of last week's landmark election.
Ramos-Horta won 69 percent of the vote in the election in a landslide victory many East Timorese hope will bring peace and heal deep divisions after last year's unrest. He'll be sworn in on Sunday.

All peaceful after Horta wins East Timor Presidency.. well almost.

Nobel Peace Prize winner Jose Ramos-Horta has easily won the vote in East Timor's election after the counting of all ballots.
The election for president was the first since East Timor gained independence in 2002 after a bloody separation from neighbouring Indonesia three years earlier. Ramos-Horta will formally take office on May 20, succeeding former guerrilla leader Xanana Gusmao.
A National Election Commission spokeswoman has confirmed Ramos-Horta won 69 pct of the vote and his rival Francisco 'Lu-Olo' Guterres 31 pct.
The election was conducted peacefully.. well almost. Three men were today arrested for destroying the homes of Jose Ramos Horta's supporters.
Police say two houses were burned down and six others badly damaged in the villages in the Viqueque district, according to the local newspaper, Suara Timor Lorosae.
"Two houses owned by fishermen Elio and Hendrikus was burned on May 10," Inspector Jose de Carvalho is quoted as saying.. adding both were supporters of Ramos-Horta and that the arsonists were upset at the election result.

East Timor: Horta claims big lead after peaceful vote

Above: AFP snaps East Timorese President Xanana Gusmao waiting in a queue to vote along with others at a polling station in Dili. East Timor's election for president was peaceful - bolstering hopes that months of deadly political turmoil could be near an end. Gusmao will stand aside for a new president, but he will make a tilt for the prime ministership.

East Timor presidential candidate Jose Ramos-Horta says he's secured a large lead over his rival as vote counting continues following this week's run-off election.
"I am still awaiting official results because they are still being counted, but I could get 70-80 percent," Ramos-Horta told reporters in the capital Dili. "In most of the districts, in all the western districts, I think I am winning."
East Timor held a peaceful presidential election on Wednesday, but Ramos-Horta a Nobel laureate - is alleging vote tampering in some districts that are strongholds of his rival, ruling Fretilin party president Francisco "Lu-Olo" Guterres.
"In Los Palos, Suai, observers and polling staff found many boxes with pre-perforated ballot papers for Lu-Olo, so there were strong attempts at manipulation," he says. Ramos-Horta repeated his call for the United Nations to stage the parliamentary poll in June, as the local body, the Timorese Technical Secretariat for Election Administration (STAE), was not up to the task.



More from Australia's ABC News

East Timor Vote for Hope

(.. but there's confusion.. : read ABC News Online)


BAUCAU, East Timor, May 9, 2007 (AFP) - From just after dawn they began to queue, waiting patiently in the early light for polling stations to open. At first they numbered about 60, but they kept coming, and within an hour had swelled to several hundred at this primary school in East Timor's second city.
"If you want your country to be run by a person you trust, you have to vote," said Fransisca Belo as she joined the line for what is the tiny nation's first election since independence five years ago. Cancio Fernandes Quintao, a financial administrator at the local hospital, agreed. "Everyone should vote as the country needs a leader who loves and understands his people."
The queues at the school pointed to a good turnout, and observers said they were hopeful it would mirror the numbers at last month's round of voting.
"This is our right," said George Lopes Belo, 29, who was first in line. "We hope that the next president, whoever that is, can take East Timor out of the crisis, the conflict." Belo, who lives nearby, arrived about 30 minutes before the polls opened at the school in Bahu area of the city, east of the capital Dili. Unable to find steady work for several years, he said he hoped the new president would create jobs for the thousands of unemployed in this nation of just one million people.
"For the moment, everything is going well. I think the people need democracy, people need and want peace and they want reconciliation, and this is the way to solve the crisis," EU observer chief Javier Pomes Ruiz said. The quiet chatting among the voters in the rising heat was disrupted by the arrival of presidential candidate Jose Ramos-Horta and his large entourage. There were no cheers of welcome for the Nobel laureate, who spent about 20 minutes in the queue before delegating the duty to one of his minders. Voters looked on as Ramos-Horta, the current prime minister, disappeared to the terrace of a nearby house for a cold soft drink. "I'm totally relaxed, whatever the outcome, I will win," he told reporters. He returned in time, and held up his finger dipped in red ink after voting to warm applause from the crowd. Quintao said the Bahu area was a stronghold for the ruling Fretilin party whose candidate Francisco Guterres is challenging Ramos-Horta in the election to succeed the popular and charismatic Xanana Gusmao. "But it is quite alright for him to vote here. We do not have any animosity towards him or any other East Timorese politicians," Quintao said.
In Dili, voters were peacefully making their way to polling stations as police and Australian-led peacekeepers patrolled the streets. The election is being held amid tight security after violence erupted last year between factions of the military that degenerated into deadly gang clashes. More than 30,000 people remain displaced in Dili fearful to return home.
An election observer, Julio Tomas from the University of Peace of Timor Leste, said it appeared voter turnout in the capital was lower than the first round. "But I am convinced that the election is proceeding in a just way and with no manipulation ... because of the presence of international and national observers," he said.

East Timor's Balibo Five Mystery Remains

The author, outside the "Balibo House" in Balibo, East Timor. In 1975, this is where the so-called Balibo Five spent their last night before Balibo was attacked by Indonesian soldiers. The House is now a museum dedicated to the memory of the five Australian-based newsmen.

This just in from the AFP:

May 8th - Sydney Former Australian prime minister Gough Whitlam on Tuesday appeared at a coroner's inquest into the death of an Australian journalist killed with four colleagues in East Timor 32 years ago.

The 90-year-old former leader of the centre-left Labor Party, who held office from 1972-75, testified for three hours at the inquest into the death of cameraman Brian Peters at the East Timor border town of Balibo in October 1975.

Officials maintain the so-called "Balibo Five" were killed in crossfire during a skirmish ahead of Indonesia's invasion of East Timor but their families insist they were murdered and there was a cover-up by Canberra and Jakarta.

Whitlam denied he had prior intelligence warning the journalists would be targeted by the Indonesian military in Balibo, Australian Associated Press reported. He said he learned about the men's deaths on October 21 -- five days after they were killed -- and had not seen diplomatic cables sent before that date suggesting they had been executed by the Indonesian military.

Asked whether anyone told him the five journalists had been killed in the orders of the Indonesian military, Whitlam replied: "No." Whitlam said he had twice warned a member of the group, cameraman Greg Shackleton, not to travel to East Timor because there was nothing his government could do to protect them there. "I warned him the Australian government had no way of protecting him or his colleagues," Whitlam told the court. "I assumed Greg Shackleton would have taken notice of my warnings. I assumed he would have warned his colleagues." "It would have been very irresponsible if he didn't, then he would be culpable."

Deputy coroner Dorelle Pinch warned lawyers at the inquest on Monday that they could not question Whitlam about any potential cover-up of the men's deaths because the issue went beyond the parameters of her inquiry. Outside the court, Shackleton's widow, Shirley, described Whitlam's evidence as "bizarre" and said it had little value because the former prime minister claimed he could not remember vital details. Shirley Shackleton, who has led a decades-long campaign to find the truth behind her husband's death, also dismissed Whitlam's statement that he warned her partner about travel to East Timor. "He is totally despicable," she told reporters. "Dead men can't tell stories, so it's left to their poor old wives to do it for them."

Urge for Calm Before East Timor Vote

ISF troops around 50 metres away from a Presidential rally in Ainaro.
Glenn Campbell, The Age

As leaders urge their supporters to remain peaceful, there are fears that if East Timor's ruling party Fretilin loses this week's presidential election, street violence could follow.
The UN mission in the tiny state urged voters to accept the result of Wednesday's runoff which many East Timorese hope will help stabilise the impoverished nation beset by violence and regional rivalry. It's the first presidential poll since East Timor gained independence in 2002, amid concerns of unrest.
Election observers have expressed concern that supporters of the ruling Fretilin party could trigger violence if their candidate, Francisco "Lu-Olo" Guterres, loses.
Guterres faces Nobel laureate and current prime minister Jose Ramos-Horta in the runoff being held because neither candidate won a majority in the first-round polls last month.
Asked if the UN mission was concerned violence would erupt once the result was declared, spokeswoman Allison Cooper said: "We would urge all people in East Timor to remain calm and peaceful -- so far this has been a free and fair process."
Ramos-Horta, who shared the Nobel peace prize in 1996 for championing East Timor's cause under Indonesian occupation, is favoured to win after five of the six losing candidates in the April 9 poll urged their supporters to back him.
Campaigning for the election has been peaceful, amid tight security provided by thousands of UN and local police, backed by international peacekeeping troops, deployed in the wake of unrest last year.
Meanwhile, Australian-led peacekeeping troops have rejected Fretilin accusations that they were deliberately intimidating party supporters and disrupting its campaign rallies.
Fretilin officials have written to the troops' commander, Brigadier Mal Rerden, complaining about the intimidation, which they suggested was done in support of Ramos-Horta.
A spokesman for the peacekeepers, known as the International Stabilisation Force, said all of their East Timor operations were done to "ensure a safe and secure election."
More on East Timor's presidential vote in "The Age"

Travel with a Twist

Ken Haley - travel writer extraordinaire - has set off on another great adventure. It made me green with envy when he emailed me from St Petersburg to tell me he had just bought a ticket to Petrozavodsk - one of the early legs of his epic journey that will take him to the Arctic Circle, across, up, down and right through Europe.

I can't tell you exactly what's the aim of Ken's latest travels - you'l have to read his book to find out!! In the meantime, Ken is this month's featured writer in "Writers Interview" on my website.




Author Profile: Ken Haley
Ken Haley is one of Australia’s most widely travelled authors. To date he has visited 109 countries, 57 of these on his own two feet, and 52 in a wheelchair. He became a paraplegic in 1991, but as far as Ken is concerned the only difference this has made is that he now observes the world from a sitting position. A journalist by profession, Ken has a unique story to tell in his first book "Emails from the Edge" - in which with great humour, and not a hint of sentimentality, he lays bare his darkest times, when he plunged over the precipice into madness, and reveals the wanderlust that led him to the heart of the world�s hot spots.

Read a complete interview with Ken Haley in "Writers Interview" on my website.

Here's a taste:

How did you get started writing?

As a child, all I seemed to need was the alphabet. One was supplied in bubs' class, and it's served me perfectly well ever since. But I feel the urge to scrawl - literally to make my mark - has been so strong that if they hadn't supplied the alphabet I might have just scribbled the same nonsense in a code of my own device.
As an adult, I'm lucky that newspapers nurtured my early efforts long enough for me to work out what it was I was trying to do.

What do you consider your first "break" as a writer?

When a small country newspaper in western Victoria hired an insistent 20-year-old, sight unseen. As a book writer, when a small independent publisher in western Melbourne offered to take up the manuscript of Emails from the Edge and turn it into a book, despite the fact that - when it came to non-journalistic writing - I was an unknown quantity.

Extreme Adventures become Classics

Looking for an adventure book to take you right out of your comfort zone? National Geographic compiled a list of the very best adventure books of all time and its worth a look. The list is from 2004 but most of these titles are timeless classics- like the Journals of Captain Cook, and perhaps the most influencial mountaineering book of all time, Maurice Herzog's tale of altitude and frost bite - Annapurna.

East Timor drowns in language soup

This story comes from Reuters journalist Ahmad Pathoni. It highlights of one of many challenges facing East Timor:


Outgoing President Xanana Gusmao is one who understands the difficulty of the East Timor's language dilemna. He favours Portuguese - but speaks Bahasa and English.





Dili, East Timor - Portuguese is one of the two official languages in East Timor, but you can hardly hear it spoken in the streets of the young nation.

The tiny country was a Portuguese colony for more than three centuries, but only an estimated 5% of its one million people now speak the European language.

After Lisbon cut the territory free, East Timor was occupied by neighboring Indonesia for 24 years before gaining full independence in 2002.

Under Indonesian rule, Portuguese was suppressed and speakers of the language now mostly come from the political elite or are older people educated in the colonial era.

Despite government attempts to push the use of Portuguese as an official language, Indonesian remains the main language of instruction in secondary schools and universities, along with native Tetum, the other national language.
Many of East Timor's leaders left for exile in Portugal or its colonies before or soon after the territory was invaded by Indonesian forces and many of them do not speak Indonesian.

They consider Portuguese to be the language of resistance.

But the government's decision to enshrine Portuguese in the Constitution is criticized by some, who see it as short-sighted.

They say many young people educated under Indonesian rule have been denied state jobs because they lack Portuguese skills.

"This is the biggest type of discrimination practiced by the government," said Suzanna Cardoso, a Timorese journalist.

"The government does not recognize the contribution of those educated under the Indonesian system to the struggle for independence," she told Reuters.

Cardoso said English would be more useful for East Timor.

"Why do we have to use Portuguese? Portuguese-speaking countries are poor and they are far from us," she said.

Jumble of languages
Tetum is used in daily interaction but some experts say it is mainly a spoken language and has to be developed further for wider usage.

But the issue is sensitive and a Cabinet minister has been criticised for only speaking Portuguese and never using Tetum in public.

Signboards at government offices are written in Portuguese, although for most Timorese it remains a foreign language they don't understand.

Newspapers run articles in Tetum and Indonesian side-by-side. Indonesian TV soap operas are also hugely popular.

"I don't know any Portuguese. I'd rather learn English than Portuguese," said Ano Pereira, a driver and high school graduate.

The language issue was raised by some of the eight candidates contesting April 9 presidential elections, with one promising to ditch Portuguese if he won the presidency.

News conferences during the elections were held in four languages -- English, Tetum, Portuguese and Indonesian -- adding to the difficulty of coordinating the fairly chaotic polls.

No candidate in the election won a big enough majority to win outright and a run-off is expected to be held next month.

At the National University of East Timor, teachers give lectures and students write their theses in Indonesian.
"Most of our textbooks are in Indonesian and most lecturers don't speak Portuguese," management student Julio Rangel said as he sat at the hallway of a white-painted campus building, a Catholic seminary during colonial times.

A report released by the United Nations Development Programme in 2002 said 82% of East Timor's one million populations spoke Tetum, while 43% could speak Indonesian.

Only 5% spoke Portuguese.

The government, dominated by the Fretilin party that spearheaded the struggle against Indonesian rule, has brought in teachers mostly from Portugal to teach in elementary schools.

However, there are concerns that once pupils finish elementary education, they will have to enroll at a secondary school where teachers don't speak Portuguese.

"This is going to be a big problem. These students don't speak Indonesian and their teachers don't know Portuguese," said Julio Thomas Pinto, who teaches at two universities in the East Timor capital Dili.

The head of East Timor's National Institute of Linguistics, Dr Geoffrey Hull, defends the adoption of Portuguese as a national language.

"Anyone with the slightest familiarity with East Timor's history knows that the Portuguese language has long been central to the national identity," he said on the institute's website.

"East Timor needs both Tetum and Portuguese to be fully itself," he said.

But Silvino Pinto Cabral, an economics lecturer at the national university, is not convinced.

"This policy of imposing a foreign language will not work. I doubt that in 50 years the government will be able to make the whole nation proficient in Portuguese," he said.

Protest in Indonesia's Papua

Papua's remarkable highland peaks. Below the mist is the Grasberg mine carved out of the mountains. This is the traditional lands of the Amungme people. According to legend these mountains are the sacred home of their ancestral grandmother who guards the balance of nature. Freeport has been accused of disturbing this natural balance.

In an unprecedented action, thousands of workers from a giant US-run mine in Indonesia's remote Papua province have staged a protest demanding better wages and welfare.

The workers come from the Grasberg gold and copper mine high up in the mountainous interior (see photo above). They demonstrated outside the Indonesian headquarters of Freeport-McMoRan, which is in the lowlands about 70 kilometres downstream from the minesite. News reports say the protest was peaceful , but the thousands of demonstrators were flanked by Indonesian police at all times.

The workers have been gathering in Timika from surrounding villages and towns demanding to speak with a Freeport executive in the US via teleconference.
Critics accuse Freeport of not giving enough to the people of Papua in return for the mine. They allege the mine causes pollution and that the military's protection of the site leads to human rights abuses.
The firm has disputed the claims.
A Freeport spokesman told the AFP News Agency that in the past decade the company had almost quadrupled its Papuan employment, from some 800 in 1996 to the current 3,000 workers.

Freeport runs its Grasberg mine under a 30-year contract with the Indonesian government that began in 1992. The company owns 91 percent of PT Freeport Indonesia, with the rest in government hands.

Members of the Amungme people who live downstream from the Freeport mine project. In 2000 I reported on a mine spill which wiped out part of the Amungme village of Banti. You can read about this story and the struggles of Papua's people in my book Running Amok

Phil O'Brien - Out of the scrub and onto the page

Northern Australia is producing some unique writers - and Phil certainly is unique.
He's the first featured "Writers Interview" on my website.

Here's a taste:

Phil O’Brien spent his early years on Tempe Downs Station 250 km’s southwest of Alice Springs, in the red heart of Australia. Decades on, and several hundred adventures later Phil still roams the outback living a uniquely nomadic life, it’s a life full of challenges, panorama’s and camaraderie…and it’s a journey that has taken him to places and put him in situations that most other Australians living amongst the security of the suburbs ever get to experience...

The Interview:

How did you get started?

It was all pretty fluky how I got into writing, or maybe it was fate I’m not sure. I was at a party half cut sharing yarns as you do, jamming as much Victoria Bitter down my throat as I could, when this bloke came up and reckoned if I could somehow document all those stories in print people might really enjoy the read.

His name was David Harris, a professional writer and he really encouraged me. It was such a ‘way out’ proposition to start with, but once I chewed on it for a while I thought… why not?

For Phil's story and full interview click here.

Elections, headlines and fishing jackets

So the people of East Timor have once again gone to the vote. Although it's likely there will be no clear winner in this presidential poll, the real story is perhaps that despite the precarious conditions, voting was peaceful.

One keen ET observer, Rob Wesley Smith reckons the media - and he singles out the ABC - have been obsessed with cheap headlines suggesting violence is the order of the day. This didn't eventuate, so he has written his own instructive sample of how a short radio news report should be written:

"Despite many fears and street gang violence over the last year, the election period has been remarkably violence free, save for some small incidents of rival political factions throwing stones. These incidents and suggested intimidation at times is regrettable, but under the existing circumstances of East Timor's history, gross poverty, gross lack of education and literacy, generalised hunger, lack of media in remote areas, and a short official electioneering period during the end of the Wet season when remote access is difficult, most seasoned observers have been pleased and optimistic of a generally free and fair election today Monday."

Meanwhile another keen observer Dili-gence has this pithy insight into the election scene in East Timor's capital:

"Dili is crawling with international election monitors (ie scrutineers, observers), many wearing fishing jackets. The award for the most stylish fishing jacket goes to the EU team, followed by Japan and the UNDP jacket in last place."


Monitoring elections in East Timor has a rugged history. The photo (at left) shows former Australian deputy Prime Minister, Tim Fischer and the author, preparing for a 'live' ABC TV news interview on the day of East Timor's independence vote in August 1999. Tim was leading Australia's election monitoring team, and he was fuming. He had just visited a polling station in the volatile town of Liquisa, only to witness an Australian 60 minutes TV crew asking would-be voters (including militiamen) how they were going to vote. The incident nearly caused a riot. You can read about this day - and the tumultuous days that followed - in my book Running Amok.

Xanana's big announcement

(Backtrack to 1999. Xanana Gusmao and the author. Gusmao had just been released from gaol in Jakarta.. but was still being held under house arrest in Jakarta. I had just conducted an interview with the East Timorese leader.)

East Timor's politics has suddenly got very interesting indeed with President Xanana Gusmao announcing he's ready to become the troubled country's prime minister, after he ceases to be head of state.

Gusmao will not seek re-election in East Timor's presidential election on April 9th - instead he intends to join a newly formed political party after the vote.

"By becoming prime minister, there will be hope for change for the people. I will seek to improve everything," he has told AFP. During many past interviews, Gusmao has confided he has no stomach for leadership and would rather be a pumpkin farmer.

East Timor's current premier, Jose Ramos-Horta, is the favourite to win the presidential election. After that, a legislative poll is supposed to follow, but a date for it has yet to be set.

As a guerilla leader, Gusmao fought Indonesia's 24-year occupation of East Timor and enjoys hero status amongst his people.

Ramos-Horta spent the entire Indonesian occupation in exile as leader of the country's independence movement and won the Nobel Peace Prize for his work.

The two men could end up swapping their current jobs if elections go their way.

But expect fierce campaigning from East Timor's biggest political party, Fretilin, and regrettably expect more violence.

Tribute to a great conservationist

It's six months since a tragic helicopter crash in Nepal killed all 24 on board.
It was the worst-ever helicopter accident in Nepal, and one of those on board was my sister, Australian scientist Dr Jill Bowling.
Jill was the UK director of conservation for the WWF, and died together with other WWF officials, the Nepalese Minister of State for Forests, Gopal Rai, his wife, senior officials of the Forest Ministry, Nepalese wildlife experts, two journalists and four crew members.
The helicopter was a Russian-built Mi-17, chartered by the WWF conservation organisation to transport V.I.P's to a function marking the hand back a conserved area - known as the Kanchenjunga Conservation Area - to a local community in far eastern Nepal.
The hand back ceremony had just taken place and the V.I.P. party boarded the helicopter in Ghunsa, a village in Taplejung district, for the return trip to Nepal's capital Kathmandu.
Soon after takeoff the helicopter crashed in a rugged mountainous region dominated by ravines and gorges.
It took two days for search teams to reach the crash site on foot.
Soon after confirmed news of Jill's death my father and I flew to Nepal. On route I wrote this tribute which was published in The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. Many people have read this tribute and contacted my family to offer their condolences. I deeply appreciate the overwhelming response and extend the invitation to leave further comments here.

Also visit the WWF -UK and search for Jill Bowling.

Breakthrough malaria treatment

Aussie Scientists discover malaria treatment

Scientists in Australia's tropical north say they have discovered an effective treatment for the potentially deadly vivax malaria.

This is a major breakthrough because vivax is the commonest strain of malaria and is the scourge of many developing countries.

Researchers at the Northern Territory's Menzies School of Health Research say they have successfully trialled two treatments for the vivax strain of malaria in Timika in West Papua (the easternmost province in Indonesia).

The treatment combines a Chinese herbal extract and a longer-acting anti-malarial drug used to combat another, even more potent strain of the disease found in Africa.

In Running Amok, I write about malaria research going on in Timika (page 230) - not the good work carried out by the Menzies School - but a more dubious experiment being carried out by one American researcher using locals as live bait to catch and collect malaria-carrying mosquitoes! Timika is an extraordinary town carved out of the tropical jungle. Men from all over Indonesia have flocked to work at the nearby Freeport mine - one of the richest gold mines on earth. It's Indonesia's "wild east" - a place of considerable social and ethnic as well as health problems.

On page 190-191 you can also read about my wife Kim's ordeal with vivax malaria - including days of cold fits and high fever. We suspect that she was bitten during a stay at a luxury resort on the island of Lombok. Kim describes how the whole experience felt like near death. Luckily she was treated relatively quickly with Primaquine at an Australian Embassy clinic.

Most malaria sufferers don't have the advantage of being treated quickly or with access to the right drugs. Each year there are up to two million deaths from the disease.

It's reported that malaria causes the death of an African child every thirty seconds, and the main victims are young children and pregnant women.

The value of this new treatment can't be underestimated. It not only stops the malaria infection but it also protects sufferers from reinfection.

More about the history and cultural issues at Freeport

Everyone in Indonesia has an airline story

How very true.

Today on the Indonesia Blogsite a frequently flying Jakarta-based expat writes:
Following the Garuda air crash, there will no doubt be lots of newspapers publishing air disaster statistics, but they will not cover the near misses and the shambolic state of the Indonesian air industry as a whole, writes a Jakarta-based expat.

My comment on this is that as a one-time frequent flyer in Indonesia I know most passengers consider Garuda the airline of choice. Merpati Airlines for instance, is considered a far more precarious ride.
I have one experience to share: Several years ago flying aboard a Merpati Hawker Cassa from the tiny Banda Islands to Ambon. All was fine on the one hour flight until we hit the tarmac at Ambon's Patimura Airport. Suddenly the wheels jammed and the aircraft skidded off the tarmac into the grass. It was a wild, bumpy ride which ended with the plane on its side and the right wing wedged deep into the ground. We the passengers had to squeeze out through the door which was now like an overhead hatch in a boat.

We emerged into the Ambon sunshine with the smell of fuel all around us and the sound of emergency fire engines rushing across the airfield towards our plane.

Clock one up to good fortune! MB

Related: How Indonesia became aviation's Wild West