VOI - Voice of Indonesia | RRI - Radio Republik Indonesia

Industry Minister Agus Gumiwang Kartasasmita delivers his remarks at the National Lighthouse Industri 4.0 Awards in Jakarta on February 21, 2024. (ANTARA/HO-Kemenperin)

VOInews, Jakarta: Industry Minister Agus Gumiwang Kartasasmita has highlighted that the use of digital technology can increase the competitiveness and productivity of the manufacturing industry.

He noted that the implementation of technology in industries can have positive impacts in the fields of finance, operations, and technology innovation.

"Transforming through Industry 4.0 principles is believed to significantly enhance productivity, competitiveness, efficiency, value-added contribution, and the sustainability of our national industry," Kartasasmita said in a statement from his ministry on Wednesday.

He noted that to realize the goal, the government issued the Making Indonesia 4.0 road map in 2018 to expedite digital transformation in the country’s manufacturing sector.

The road map aims to make Indonesia one of the 10 strongest economies in the world by 2030.

Kartasasmita said that the most important thing in the technology transformation in industries is the utilization of digital devices and the ability to adopt technology.

Since 2019, the Industry Ministry has been carrying out the National Lighthouse Industry 4.0 program, under which several manufacturing companies have served as role models for other companies in carrying out transformation and implementing Industry 4.0.

Earlier on Tuesday, Kartasasmita said that the contribution of Indonesia's manufacturing sector was above the global average.

Quoting UNStats data, he said that the value of Indonesia's manufacturing value added (MVA) in 2021 stood at US$228 billion. Indonesia's MVA ranking in the same year was above that of several countries, such as Canada, Turkey, Ireland, Brazil, Spain, Switzerland, Thailand, and Poland.

"Contributing to 1.46 percent of the total global MVA in 2021, Indonesia firmly establishes itself as a major manufacturing player globally," he remarked.

Source : ANTARANEWS

CHICAGO, ILLINOIS - JANUARY 23: Passengers check in for United Airlines flights at O'Hare International Airport on January 23, 2024 in Chicago, Illinois. United Airlines said Monday it expects to face a loss in its first quarter due to the temporary grounding of Boeing 737 Max 9 jets due to safety concerns. Scott Olson/Getty Images/AFP (Photo by SCOTT OLSON / GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA / Getty Images via AFP)

VOInews, Jakarta: United Airlines announced Wednesday it will resume flights to Israel next month, becoming the first US carrier to bring back flights since last fall's suspensions with the outbreak of war in Gaza.

United plans initial flights to Tel Aviv from its New York-area hub in Newark, New Jersey on March 2 and 4, with a goal of having daily non-stop service restored from March 6.

"United conducted a detailed safety analysis in making this decision, including close work with security experts and government officials in the United States and Israel," the US carrier said in a news release.

"United will continue to monitor the situation in Tel Aviv and adjust the schedule as warranted," the company said.

The company hopes to bring back a second flight from Newark as soon as May, United said, adding that it would evaluate bringing back flights from San Francisco, Washington and Chicago as early as the fall.

United and US rivals Delta Air Lines and American Airlines suspended service to Israel after the October 7 attack by Hamas, which has been followed by an ongoing siege of the Gaza Strip by Israel.

A Delta spokesperson referred AFP to the company's January 19 statement canceling flights to Tel Aviv through April 30 that said the company is "continuously monitoring the security situation" in the region.

American Airlines did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Other companies that have resumed service to Israel include British Airways, Lufthansa, Air France and RyanAir.

Source: jmb/dw/AFP

General view of the G20 foreign ministers meeting in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, taken on February 21, 2024. Foreign ministers of the G20 group of nations open a two-day meeting Wednesday in Brazil, with a bleak outlook for progress on a thorny agenda of conflicts and crises, from the Gaza and Ukraine wars to growing polarization. (Photo by MAURO PIMENTEL / AFP)

VOInews, Jakarta- Brazil criticized the "paralysis" of the UN Security Council on the wars in Gaza and Ukraine as it opened a G20 meeting Wednesday where the international community's deep divisions were on display.

The outlook is bleak for progress on the thorny agenda of conflicts and crises gripping the planet as foreign ministers from the world's biggest economies gather in Rio de Janeiro for the Group of 20's first high-level meeting of the year.

Opening the two-day meeting, which featured US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, Brazil's top diplomat, Mauro Vieira, said the explosion of global conflicts shows international institutions like the United Nations are not working.

"Multilateral institutions are not properly equipped to deal with the current challenges, as has been demonstrated by the Security Council's unacceptable paralysis on the ongoing conflicts" in Gaza and Ukraine, Vieira said, adding the situation was costing "innocent lives."

EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell for his part warned multilateralism "is in crisis."

The Security Council has failed to act on Russia's invasion of Ukraine, held in check by Russian veto power, and has struggled to find a response to the war in Gaza, with Israel's ally the United States using its veto to block calls for a ceasefire, most recently Tuesday.

Brazil, which took over the rotating G20 presidency from India in December, has voiced hopes the group could be a forum to make progress on such questions.

But that likely took a hit when Lula ignited a diplomatic firestorm Sunday by accusing Israel of "genocide," comparing its military campaign in the Gaza Strip to the Holocaust.

The comments drew outrage in Israel, which declared him persona non grata, and could overshadow any bid to de-escalate the conflict via the G20.

Blinken, who met Lula Wednesday in Brasilia before heading to the G20, "made clear we disagree with (his) comments," a senior State Department official told journalists.

The secretary of state and Brazilian leader had a "frank exchange" in their more than 90-minute meeting at the presidential palace, the official said.

Source : AFP

FILE PHOTO: A woman stands in front of a Google logo during the inauguration of a new hub in France dedicated to the artificial intelligence (AI) sector, at the Google France headquarters in Paris, France, February 15, 2024. REUTERS/Gonzalo Fuentes/File Photo - 

Voinews, San Francisco - Google on Wednesday (Feb 21) released new artificial intelligence (AI) models that outside developers potentially can fashion as their own, following a similar move by Meta Platforms and others.

The Alphabet subsidiary said individuals and businesses can build AI software based on its new family of "open models" called Gemma, for free. The company is making key technical data such as what is called model weights publicly available, it said.

The move may attract software engineers to build on Google's technology and encourage usage of its newly profitable cloud division. The models are "optimised" for Google Cloud, where first-time cloud customers using them get US$300 in credits, the company said.

Google stopped short of making Gemma fully "open source," meaning the company still may have a hand in setting terms of use and ownership.

Some experts have said open-source AI was ripe for abuse, while others have championed the approach for widening the set of people who can contribute to and benefit from the technology.

With the announcement, Google did not make its bigger, premier models known as Gemini open, unlike Gemma. It said the Gemma models are sized at two billion or seven billion parameters - or the number of different values that an algorithm takes into account to generate output.

Meta's Llama 2 models range from seven to 70 billion parameters in size. Google has not disclosed the size of its largest Gemini models. For comparison, OpenAI's GPT-3 model announced in 2020 had 175 billion parameters.

Chipmaker Nvidia on Wednesday said it has worked with Google to ensure Gemma models run smoothly on its chips. Nvidia also said it will soon make chatbot software, which it is developing to run AI models on Windows PCs, work with Gemma//CNA-VOI