VOI - Voice of Indonesia | RRI - Radio Republik Indonesia

As many as 27 soldiers of the Marine Infantry Brigade 2 in East Java will soon depart for Lebanon to join the Mechanical Battalion Task Force of the Indonesian Military's Garuda Contingent (TNI Konga XXIII-N/UNIFIL) and Force Protection Company (FPC) Task Force.

Commander of the Marine Infantry Brigade, Colonel Agus Gunawan Wibisono, said on Monday the 27 soldiers led by Second Lieutenant Assistant, Erdi Herdiyansyah, will join the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), with 26 of them joining the Mechanical Battalion Task Force of the TNI Konga XXII-N/UNIFIL and one joining the FPC Task Force.

"We hope that all the soldiers will perform their duties with a sense of responsibility and always maintain the good image of the Indonesian Navy Marine Corps, TNI, the nation and the state since the soldiers assigned abroad serve as envoys of the Indonesian nation," he said, while dispatching the soldiers at the Marine Infantry Brigade 2 Command Station in Sidoarjo, East Java.

The assignment is part of the Marine Corps' golden ink and proves that the Indonesian Navy Marine Corps is always present on the battlefield, Wibisono stated.

"In the mission of world peace under the aegis of the UN, I am proud that you have been selected to carry out the assignment in Lebanon. Keep up the good image of the Indonesian nation," he said.

The 27 soldiers will soon depart for Jakarta and then join the Marine Corps soldiers of the Marine Corp Command Station, marine troops 1, marine troops 3 and Marine Infantry Brigade 4/BS and later the Infantry battalion 726 Tamalatea. (ANTARA)

Dressed in her protective wetsuit and scuba gear, Antigone Kouteri jumps into the murky waters of Zakynthos harbor in search of plastics -- and promptly snags her arm on a submerged object.

"It was a tire," offers her patrol mate Efthymis, coming up with a discarded beer bottle. "My treat!" he jibes.

The Ionian island of Zakynthos is one of Greece's most pristine travel destinations, renowned for its azure waters and fabulous beaches, an environment clean enough to be a major Mediterranean nesting ground sought out by loggerhead sea turtles.

But even here, plastic pollution poses a grave threat to wildlife.

Kouteri is one of nearly a dozen volunteers from Aegean Rebreath, a Greek organization formed in 2017 to protect Aegean biodiversity from waste.

Within three hours, the team has collected four tyres, two shopping carts, a street lamp, metal boxes, plastic bags, dozens of plastic bottles and several kilometers of fishing line.

"Marine litter is a global issue, so it is (present) in Greece. More than 70 percent of marine litter is plastic in Greece," says Katerina Tsagari, a biologist at the Hellenic Centre for Marine Research near Athens.

Tsagari says her team has found litter, most of it plastic, in about 75 percent of loggerhead sea turtles tested. 

Overall, they have found plastic ingestion in between 20 and 45 percent of the species tested, which include fish and mussels.

With a coastline of some 14,000 kilometers, one of the longest in the southeastern Mediterranean, Greece attracts tens of millions of tourists every year.

It's a regional problem. The Mediterranean, a partly closed sea, accumulates 570,000 tons of plastic annually from surrounding countries, according to the World Wildlife Fund.

WWF has reported that Greece produces 700,000 tons of plastic per year, or 68 kilos per capita. Out of that, 11,500 tons end up in the sea, it said.

The prolonged drought this dry season has affected the productivity of poultry farmers in East Java, with a decline recorded in the quality and quantity of chicken eggs over the last few months.

National Breeders Association (PPRN) chairman Rofi Yasifun said that the severe drought due to climate change had caused a 30 percent decline in Blitar's chicken egg production.

“Because of the high temperature during this extended drought, chickens eat more and drink less. Consequently, their eggs have shrunk in size,” Rofi said on Nov. 26, on the sidelines of the launch of a chicken cage specially designed to withstand the effects of climate change.

The event was held by the USAID Climate Change Adaption and Resilience program (USAID-APIK) and PT Cargill Indonesia, the local unit of the United States commodities giant, as part of the program's Climate Field Adaptation project that aims to improve business resilience among chicken farmers in Blitar amid climate change.

Blitar accounts for 50 percent of East Java's chicken egg production, with 18 million chickens producing 155,802 tons of eggs in 2018. East Java contributes 30 percent to national egg production.

“The hot weather takes a toll on the health of chickens,” Rofi added, and also increased their mortality rate.

This was where the newly launched chicken cages came in, which had been designed so that chickens could develop a level of resistance to hot weather, said USAID-APIK chief of party Paul Jeffrey.

The special cages had proved superior to conventional cages, Jeffrey explained, as they were equipped with a feature that could lower the interior temperature through an air circulation system.

“Poultry farmers must learn to anticipate the effects of climate change, which will continue for at least another 20 years,” he added.

Jeffrey said that climate change would extend the dry season while leading to a shorter but more intense wet season in Indonesia in the next 20 years. Chicken farmers should also be ready for natural disasters like landslides and floods that could potentially harm their livelihood, he said.

Blitar's poultry farmers have taken to the streets earlier this year to voice their concerns over the constantly fluctuating market price of chicken eggs.

Indonesia’s consumer price index (CPI) increased 3 percent year-on-year (yoy) in November, well within the central bank’s targeted range of between 2.5 percent and 4.5 percent for 2019, Statistics Indonesia (BPS) announced on Monday.

Benign inflation has given room for Bank Indonesia (BI) to ease monetary policy, as it cut the nation’s benchmark interest rate 100 percent since July to 5 percent in order to stoke growth in Indonesia’s economy amid rising global risks.

BPS said that inflation picked up slightly in November to 0.14 percent from 0.02 percent the previous month, driven by an increase in food prices.

BPS head Suhariyanto said on Monday in Jakarta that increased inflation in November was in line with patterns in previous years, which recorded a slight uptick in inflation in the last two months of the year as businesses prepared to face increased seasonal demand between Christmas and New Year.

November inflation was driven primarily by price hikes in food commodities, which increased 0.37 percent last month and contributed 0.07 percent to the headline inflation.

Suhariyanto added that shallots, tomatoes, chicken meat and eggs were among the commodities that drove November inflation, while deflationary pressures were also recorded in the prices for red chilis, fresh fish and bird’s eye chilis.

Meanwhile, the processed food, beverages, cigarettes and tobacco category was the second-highest driver of inflation at 0.25 percent.

“[The prices of] Clove cigarettes and filtered clove cigarettes have been gradually increased over the past few months. It seems like retailers are anticipating the plan to hike cigarette [prices] in January,” said Suhariyanto, referring to the planned increase in tobacco excise and retail price.

Core inflation in November stood at 0.11 percent, while volatile items and administered items recorded 0.42 percent and 0.03 percent inflation, respectively.