VOI - Voice of Indonesia | RRI - Radio Republik Indonesia

JAKARTA (Reuters) - Indonesian authorities on Sunday located the black boxes of the Sriwijaya Air jet that crashed into the sea soon after taking off from the capital Jakarta, as human body parts and pieces of the plane were retrieved.

The Boeing 737-500 with 62 passengers and crew was headed on a domestic flight to Pontianak in West Kalimantan on Saturday before it disappeared from radar screens four minutes after take-off.

Indonesia National Transport Safety Committee (KNKT) chief Soerjanto Tjahjono said the locations of Flight SJ 182’s two black boxes had been identified.

“Hopefully, we can retrieve them soon,” said military chief Hadi Tjahjanto, without giving an estimated timeframe.

Search will continue into the night, a search and rescue official said, but efforts will be limited to sonar scans by boats.

There were no clues yet as to what caused the crash, the first major aircrash in Indonesia since 189 passengers and crew were killed in 2018 when a Lion Air Boeing 737 Max in 2018 also plunged into the Java Sea soon after take-off from Soekarno-Hatta International Airport.

Even before the latest crash, more people had died in air cashes in Indonesia than in any other country over the past decade, according to Aviation Safety Network’s database.

Pieces of wreckage were brought to Jakarta port by rescuers, including the plane’s altimeter radar, emergency chute and a piece that was suspected to have come off of the bottom part of the plane’s tail, KNKT official Nurcahyo Utomo said.

One twisted piece of metal was painted in Sriwijaya Air’s blue and red colours. Authorities said they came from a depth of 23 metres (75 feet) near a group of islands off the Jakarta coast.

Indonesian authorities said they had also retrieved body parts and clothing.

Police asked families to provide information such as dental records and DNA samples to help identify bodies.

The plane had 12 crew and 50 passengers on board, all Indonesians and including 10 children.

President Joko Widodo, speaking at the palace in Bogor, expressed “deep condolences” over the disaster and urged the public to pray the missing people could be found. (reuters)

DUBAI/LONDON (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia’s crown prince on Sunday unveiled plans to build a zero carbon city at NEOM, the first major construction project for the $500 billion flagship business zone aimed at diversifying the economy of the world’s largest oil exporter.

Prince Mohammed bin Salman, in a rare televised appearance, said the city, known as “The Line”, would extend over 170 km (105 miles) and be able to house one million residents in “carbon-positive urban developments powered by 100% clean energy”.

“Why should we sacrifice nature for the sake of development?” Prince Mohammed said. “We need to transform the concept of a conventional city into that of a futuristic one.”

There have been few announcements regarding NEOM since it was first announced by de facto ruler Prince Mohammed to much fanfare in 2017 as a pillar of his Vision 2030 plan to rid the Saudi Arabia of its reliance on crude revenues.

A Saudi statement said construction would start in the first quarter of 2021 and that the city was expected to contribute $48 billion to the kingdom’s gross domestic product and create 380,000 jobs. No value was announced for the project.

Prince Mohammed outlined key highlights of the city: zero cars, zero streets, zero carbon emissions and Artificial Intelligence.

NEOM, a 26,500 square km (10,230 square mile) high-tech development with several zones, including an industrial and logistics areas, is planned for completion in 2025.

Saudi Arabia’s efforts to attract foreign capital and investment were dealt a blow in 2018 after many Western investors were unnerved by the murder of prominent journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the kingdom’s Istanbul consulate which triggered an international furore.

Last year, a sharp drop in oil prices and the outbreak of COVID-19 dealt a blow to the Saudi economy. (reuters)

President Joko Widodo (Jokowi) said that in the next five years the government wants to focus on the downstream industry of nickel ore, considering that Indonesia has the largest nickel reserves in the world.

“Indonesia has the largest nickel reserves in the world, 25 percent of the world's nickel reserves are in Indonesia, which amounts to approximately 21 million tons. Indonesia controls almost 30 percent of nickel production in the world, "said President Jokowi in a virtual PDI Perjuangan 48th anniversary commemoration, Sunday.

President Jokowi said Indonesia already has an integrated nickel ore industry from upstream to downstream with production such as ferronickel or stainless steel.

In the future, said President Jokowi, Indonesia also needs to process nickel ore into lithium batteries that can be used for cellphones and electric cars.

President Jokowi believes that the creation of new economic sectors from the upstream to downstream chain of the nickel ore industry will create many jobs.

If it succeeds in becoming a lithium battery producer, he said, then Indonesia will become an important player in the global electric car industry chain.

"In the future, we want BUMN cooperation with the private sector and multinational companies. We want to enter the next phase of the production of lithium batteries as the main component of electric vehicles, which is a great opportunity for us to enter the electric vehicle industry, which is the future," explained President Jokowi. (antaranews)

The joint search and rescue (SAR) team has located the crash point of Sriwijaya Air SJ-182 in the waters of Seribu Islands, National Defense Forces (TNI) Chief Marshal Hadi Tjahjanto said.

All soldiers particularly naval personnel in the field have been ordered to assist the National Search and Rescue Agency (Basarnas) in collecting the debris of the plane, he said here on Sunday.

"They can collect small parts of plane wreckage, while a crane ship will salvage the large ones," he said.

The TNI chief expressed the hope the debris of the plane located 23 meters beneath sea water surface could be salvaged soon.

The joint team is trying to find the black box flight recorder which is strongly believed to have been located based on the signal it sent out, he said

"Hopefully, the black box flight recorder could be salvaged soon so KNKT (the National Committee for Transportation Safety) will be able to establish the cause of the plane crash," he said.

The Ministry of Transportation has confirmed that airport authorities lost contact with Sriwijaya Air flight number SJY 182 serving the Jakarta-Pontianak route at approximately 2:40 p.m.on Saturday.

According to the ministry, tthe Boeing 737-500 jet, registration number PK CLC, had its last contact at a position 11 nautical miles north of Soekarno-Hatta International Airport, Tangerang, in suburban Jakarta, after passing an altitude of 11,000 feet and while rising to 13,000 feet.

The plane took off from Soekarno-Hatta Airport at 2.40 p.m. local time on Saturday, and was scheduled to land at Supadio Airport in Pontianak, West Kalimantan, at 3:50 p.m.

Based on the manifest, the plane carried 50 passengers and 12 crew members. (antaranews)