VOI - Voice of Indonesia | RRI - Radio Republik Indonesia

VOInews, Jakarta: Greece on Wednesday (10/4) reopened a historic mosque in northern Thessaloniki for the first time in more than a century, allowing Muslims to perform Eid prayers there.

Around 100 people performed Eid prayers at the "Yeni Mosque" or "New Mosque", which witnessed the last gathering of worshippers in the early 1920s, before the war between Greece and Turkey led to a population exchange between the two countries that reduced the number of Muslims in the city.

"We are lucky that this mosque was opened for us," says 66-year-old Ismail Badreddin.

"I have lived in Thessaloniki for four years and this is the first time I have had the opportunity to pray with my Muslim family" at the mosque, said Ali, 23, a Turkish economics student. Greek police guarded the historic mosque during the prayers.

The Yeni Mosque, built by Italian architect Vitaliano Boselli in 1902, was at the time used by members of the Donmeh community, Jews who pretended to convert to Islam.

In 1922, refugees from the Greco-Turkish war were briefly housed in this two-story building, before it was converted into a museum and city gallery.

Greece is a predominantly Orthodox Christian country, and Muslim places of worship are mostly concentrated in the Thrace region in the northeast of the country near the Greek-Turkish border, where Muslim minorities have been settled for centuries.

In Athens, Muslims have been few in number since the Greco-Turkish war before increasing due to the refugee crisis in 2015.

In November 2020, the city's first new mosque officially opened after more than a decade of construction, which had faced strong opposition from the Orthodox Church as well as nationalist groups. (Daniel)

Source: AFP

VOInews, Jakarta: Paris-based environmental engineering firm Kayrros is using satellite data and artificial intelligence (AI) models to accurately monitor leaks of methane, a greenhouse gas produced by fossil fuels. The invisible plumes of odourless gas in the air appear on the company's maps as coloured clouds, in satellite imagery.

Since 2019, Kayrros has detected nearly 10,000 methane concentration events around the world, from the United States to India to Turkmenistan and Algeria, due to harmful practices not being properly managed in fossil industry-based infrastructure.
The leaks occur due to pressure problems in gas pipelines and the opening of valves to avoid the risk of explosion," explains Kayrros data scientist Alexis Groshneri.

Methane has a shorter lifespan than carbon dioxide but greater warming potential, and is a factor in 30 per cent of global warming since the Industrial Revolution. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), 40 per cent of methane emissions from the production of fossil energy sources (coal, oil and gas) can be avoided at little cost. However, these emissions must be properly monitored and measured.

Kayrros uses nine satellites operated by governments or official space agencies such as the European and American Space Agencies, which send their images back to Earth at different frequencies, several times a week or every 15 minutes, with greater or lesser resolution, depending on the model.

"We are working with the different sources available to try to improve the observations," Groshenry says.
The downside for mathematicians in green technology is that there is a huge amount of data to process, which is impossible to observe in a single image. That's where artificial intelligence comes in. (Daniel).

Source: AFP

VOInews, Washington: U.S. President Joe Biden said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Gaza policy was a "mistake" and urged Israel to call for a ceasefire, in an interview aired Tuesday. Biden's comments were some of his strongest criticism yet of Netanyahu amid growing tensions over the civilian death toll from Israel's war on Hamas and dire conditions inside Gaza.

VOInews, Sabang: Maltese-flagged MS Azamara Onward cruise ship visited Sabang, Aceh, ahead of Eid al-Fitr of 1445 Hijri. The ship carrying 511 foreign tourists from various countries.