VOI - Voice of Indonesia | RRI - Radio Republik Indonesia

The South Sumatra provincial government has established a U-20 World Cup preparation committee to fulfill its role as one of the six city hosts for the soccer tournament in Indonesia.

Acting head of the South Sumatra provincial Youth and Sports Office, Rudi Irawan, said here on Wednesday that the committee involves all provincial government agencies, military, police, as well as youth and tourism organizations.

The committee has been formed based on a Presidential Decree (Kepres), which requires each region selected as the host of the cup to finalize all preparations ahead of the implementation of the competition in 2023.

Irawan noted that the competition is drawing closer: it is scheduled to take place from May 20 to June 11, 2023.

“The regional committee is preparing everything which is needed, (in addition to) venue infrastructure, which has been readied by the PUPR (Public Works and Public Housing) Ministry," he said.

The required supporting preparations concern the transportation, security, and accommodation of participants of the cup, he added.

Moreover, good preparations will be needed in case the central government designates Gelora Sriwijaya Stadium in Palembang city, South Sumatra province, as the venue for the opening match of the tournament. The venue has not been decided yet.

"However, we cannot speculate, as everything is up to the central government. Still, we will certainly ready everything,” Irawan said.

The U-20 World Cup will be hosted by six stadiums in Indonesia.

In addition to the Gelora Sriwijaya Stadium, the other venues include Gelora Bung Karno Main Stadium (Jakarta), Si Jalak Harupat Stadium (Bandung district, West Java province), and Manahan Stadium (Solo city, Central Java province).

Gelora Bung Tomo Stadium (Surabaya city, East Java province) and Captain I Wayan Dipta Stadium (Gianyar district, Bali province) will also host the cup.

Earlier, South Sumatra Governor Herman Deru said that the Gelora Sriwijaya Stadium is almost ready to be used as a U-20 World Cup venue since the revitalization of the stadium is 80 percent complete. (Antaranews)

Russian President Vladimir Putin presided over the launch of a major new Siberian gas field on Wednesday to help drive a planned surge in supply to China.

The Kovykta gas field will feed into the Power of Siberia pipeline carrying Russian gas to China. With recoverable reserves of 1.8 trillion cubic metres, it is the largest in eastern Russia.

The launch is part of Russia's strategy to shift gas exports to the east as the European Union cuts reliance on Russian energy in response to the war in Ukraine.

Putin hailed it as a "significant event" for Russia's energy industry and the whole economy. He joined a video link to workers at the site, who were shown lined up on the snow in blue protective suits and white helmets, and gave the order "Start work!" to inaugurate the project.

Russia started selling natural gas to China at the end of 2019 via the Power of Siberia pipeline, which supplied about 10 billion cubic metres (bcm) of gas in 2021 and is due to reach its full capacity of 38 bcm in 2025. Russia is now Beijing's No. 3 gas supplier.

In February, Putin reached an agreement to sell an additional 10 bcm of gas to China from Russia's Far East through a new, smaller pipeline to China's northeast.

Russia also plans to construct another major pipeline, the Power of Siberia 2, via Mongolia with a view to selling an additional 50 bcm of gas per year.

Putin said last week the projects would allow Russia to boost its gas sales to China to 48 bcm annually by 2025 and to 88 bcm by 2030.

Former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev made a surprise visit to China on Wednesday for talks with President Xi Jinping, which Medvedev said had included discussion of the "no limits" strategic partnership that the two countries announced in February. (Reuters)

Berlin has sent its first batch of BioNTech (22UAy.DE) COVID-19 vaccines to China to be administered initially to German expatriates, a German government spokesperson said on Wednesday, the first foreign coronavirus vaccine to be delivered to the country.

No other details were available on the timing and size of the delivery, although the spokesperson said Berlin is pushing for foreigners other than German citizens to be allowed access to the shot if they want it.

The shipment comes after China agreed to allow German nationals in China to get the shot following a deal during Chancellor Olaf Scholz's visit in Beijing last month, with the German leader pressing for Beijing to allow the shot to be made freely available to Chinese citizens as well.

There are about 20,000 German nationals currently in the country.

"I can confirm a shipment of the BioNTech vaccine is on its way to China," the person told journalists in Berlin.

"We are working on the possibility that besides Germans also other foreigners can be vaccinated with BioNTech."

In return, Chinese citizens in Europe can be vaccinated with China's SinoVac (SVA.O), the spokesperson said.

The comment comes after a report earlier this month that Germany's health ministry had granted a permit allowing China's Sinovac COVID-19 vaccine to be imported to Germany to be given to Chinese citizens in that country.

The shot has not been approved for use by Europe's drug regulator, but the World Health Organization has given its green light for its use.

Beijing has so far insisted on using only domestically produced vaccines, which are not based on the Western mRNA technology but on more traditional technologies.

The shipment comes amid Beijing dismantling its strict "zero-COVID" regime of lockdowns, which has led to a surge of cases that caught a fragile health system unprepared.

Experts predict that the country of 1.4 billion people could face more than a million COVID deaths next year.

Allowing German expats access to a Western shot is a big gesture to Berlin, reflecting Beijing's effort to strengthen ties with EU's biggest economy after years of tensions over trade and climate between the two countries.

Frankfurt-listed shares in BioNTech briefly spiked on news of the shipment, and were up 1.9% at 1456 GMT. Pfizer shares were up 0.6% in New York.

BioNTech was not immediately available to comment on the situation on Wednesday.

NO WESTERN SHOTS

The WHO's director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a briefing on Wednesday the UN agency is concerned by the spike in COVID-19 infections in the world's No. 2 economy.

He said the WHO is supporting the government to focus its efforts on vaccinating people at the highest risk across the country.

China has nine domestically developed COVID vaccines approved for use, more than any other country. But none has been updated to target the highly infectious Omicron variant, as Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna (MRNA.O) have for boosters in many developed countries.

The two shots developed by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna are the most widely used around the world.

Early on in the pandemic, BioNTech struck a deal with Shanghai Fosun Pharmaceutical (600196.SS) with a view to supply the shots to greater China.

While the shots became available in Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan, the regulatory review for mainland China has not been concluded. BioNTech has said that decision was up to Chinese regulators and has not given a reason for the delay.

China's zero-COVID policy and lockdown measures have kept death and infection rates minimal over the past months but caused massive disruptions both domestically and in global trade and supply chains.

China uses a narrow definition of COVID deaths and reported no new fatalities for Tuesday, even crossing one off its overall tally since the pandemic began, now at 5,241 - a fraction of the tolls of many much less populous countries.

The National Health Commission said on Tuesday only deaths caused by pneumonia and respiratory failure in patients who had the virus are classified as COVID deaths. (Reuters)

Visitor arrivals to Japan jumped to nearly 1 million in November, the first full month after the country scrapped COVID-19 curbs that effectively halted tourism for more than two years, data showed on Wednesday.

The number of foreign visitors, for both tourism and business, rose to 934,500 last month, almost double the October figure, the Japan National Tourism Organization (JNTO) said. Still, arrivals were down nearly two-thirds compared with pre-pandemic levels of 2019.

"The demand for Japan out of North America is very strong right now," said Virgilio Russi, vice president of international sales for Air Canada (AC.TO), speaking Reuters in an interview before Wednesday's numbers were released.

Passenger demand from Canada to Japan is more than double what it was in 2019, Russi added, citing a shift away from China among business travellers, as well as tourists taking advantage of the current weakness of the yen.

"From a cost perspective, Japan is quite reasonable right now," he said.

While the yen has climbed this week after a surprise policy change by the Bank of Japan, it remains 13% weaker against the U.S. dollar this year. And while China has begun to relax its zero-COVID policy, analysts don't expect its borders to reopen till March or April.

So far this year, 2.46 million visitors have arrived in Japan, the JNTO data showed. That's a fraction of the record 31.8 million in 2019 and the government's original 2020 goal of 40 million, timed to coincide with the Tokyo Olympics that were eventually postponed due to the pandemic.

Japan on Oct. 11 ended some of the world's strictest border controls, and Prime Minister Fumio Kishida is counting on tourism to boost the economy.

The government aims to attract 5 trillion yen ($38 billion) in annual tourist spending. But that may be difficult to reach given Japan's hospitality sector is suffering from a labour shortage and many Chinese citizens remain unable to travel.

A record 9.5 million Chinese people came to Japan in 2019, close to a third of all visitors. (Reuters)