VOI - Voice of Indonesia | RRI - Radio Republik Indonesia

Chancellor Olaf Scholz said Germany must be ready for the situation in Ukraine to escalate, speaking at a conference in Berlin hosted by the Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper.

He said the 100 billion euro ($102.76 billion) defence fund announced in the wake of Russia's invasion had been the result of a lesson learned to build up the German military's defence stocks. (Reuters)

U.S. Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin on Tuesday emphasized the need to improve crisis communications during a meeting with his Chinese counterpart while raising concern about "increasingly dangerous" behavior by Chinese military aircraft.

The roughly 90-minute meeting in Cambodia, described as "productive and professional" by a U.S. official, was the pair's first since a visit to Taiwan by U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in August enraged China, which regards the island as its territory.

In his second face-to-face meeting with Chinese Defense Minister General Wei Fenghe this year, Austin discussed the importance of "substantive dialogue on reducing strategic risk and enhancing operational safety," Pentagon spokesman Brigadier General Pat Ryder said in a statement after the meeting.

"He (Austin) raised concerns about the increasingly dangerous behavior demonstrated by PLA (China's People's Liberation Army) aircraft in the Indo-Pacific region that increases the risk of an accident," Ryder said.

In June, a Chinese fighter aircraft dangerously intercepted an Australian military surveillance plane in the South China Sea region in May, Australia's defence department said.

Australia has said that the Chinese jet flew very close in front of the RAAF aircraft and released a "bundle of chaff" containing small pieces of aluminium that were ingested into the Australian aircraft's engine.

Tuesday's meeting of the defence ministers took place on the sidelines of an ASEAN gathering in Siem Reap, Cambodia.

After Pelosi's visit, China announced it was halting dialogue with the United States in a number of areas, including between theater-level military commanders.

A senior U.S. defence official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Austin and Wei had a "lengthy" discussion about Taiwan and also talked about restarting in the coming months some of the mechanisms that had been cancelled after Pelosi's visit.

"There's an expectation that there will be some restart of some of the mechanisms that have been frozen for the last six months," the official said.

Tuesday's talks come after a three-hour meeting between U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping last week on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Indonesia, aimed at preventing strained ties from spilling into a new Cold War. 

Despite tensions between the United States and China, U.S. military officials have long sought to maintain open lines of communication with their Chinese counterparts to mitigate the risk of potential flare-ups or deal with any accidents.

After Austin and Wei's first meeting this year in Singapore in June, the Pentagon chief said his talks with his Chinese counterpart were an important step in efforts to develop those means of communication.

Relations between China and the United States have been tense, with friction between the world's two largest economies over everything from Taiwan and China's human rights record to its military activity in the South China Sea.

Pelosi's Taiwan trip infuriated China, which saw it as a U.S. attempt to interfere in its internal affairs. China subsequently launched military drills near the island.

The United States has no formal diplomatic relations with Taiwan but is bound by law to provide the island with the means to defend itself. (Reuters)

Malaysian police have cautioned the country's social media users to refrain from posting "provocative" content on race and religion after a divisive general election on Saturday that ended in a hung parliament.

Two major alliances are now racing to secure support from other parties to form the government: a multiethnic, progressive bloc led by veteran opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim and a conservative Malay Muslim coalition led by former prime minister Muhyiddin Yassin.

The police warning comes as race-based narratives dominated political chatter on social media during and after the election, according to an online hate speech monitoring project run by the Malaysia-based Centre for Independent Journalism.

It also comes as electoral gains by an Islamist party that has touted sharia law raised fears among investors over its potential impact on policies.

Race and religion are thorny issues in multicultural Malaysia, which has a majority of mostly Muslim ethnic Malays alongside significant ethnic Chinese and ethnic Indian minorities of other faiths.

Police said they had detected social media content that touched on racial and religious sentiments and insulted the country's monarchy after the election.

"Stern actions... will be taken against users that attempt to incite a situation that can threaten public safety and order," Inspector-General of Police Acryl Sani Abdullah Sani said in a statement late Monday.

Malaysia's King Al-Sultan Abdullah has given political parties until 2 p.m. (0600 GMT) on Tuesday to put together a government alliance, after no coalition won enough seats for a parliamentary majority.

Muhyiddin's bloc includes the Islamist party PAS, which has advocated for a strict interpretation of sharia, while Anwar's alliance includes the Democratic Action Party, a predominantly Chinese party unpopular with many conservative Malay voters.

Malaysian social media users on Monday reported a slew of posts on short video platform TikTok after the election that mentioned a deadly race riot in Kuala Lumpur on May 13, 1969.

Around 200 people were killed in those clashes, which took place after opposition parties supported by the ethnic Chinese community made inroads in a general election three days earlier. (Reuters)

Environment and Forestry Ministry highlighted the government's stance on the  Bill on Conservation of Biological Natural Resources and Their Ecosystems, including nullifying need to regulate transference of conservation areas from central to regional government.

At a meeting with Commission IV of the House of Representatives here on Tuesday, Environment and Forestry Minister Siti Nurbaya stated that Law Number 23 of 2014 on Regional Government stipulated that the authority of central and regional governments pertaining to conservation of biological natural resources and their ecosystems had been regulated.

Thus, there was no need to regulate transference in this bill that will revise Law Number 5 of 1990 on conservation.

"Hence, in the revision of Law 5 of 1990, we see no need to regulate the mechanism for delegating conservation areas from the central government to regional governments," the minister noted during the meeting.

This is because conservation forests are the last defence of forest areas, and the delegation of authority can be made through cooperative procedures between the central and regional governments, deconcentration and/or devolution systems.

The minister explained that in Law No. 23 of 2014, the central government's authority had been stipulated with regard to forestry affairs and that the management of nature reserve areas and nature conservation areas, the sustainable utilization of conservation areas' environmental conditions, and the utilization of wild plant and animal species were the central government's authority.

Thus, the management was conducted by the ministry.

"Regarding the role and authority of the provincial and district and city governments, their authority in the conservation had been strictly regulated, which is the authority to manage large forest parks by the regional government," she noted.

The provincial government is also given authority over implementing steps for the protection of wild plants and animals that are not protected.

She also highlighted views regarding the proposed division of the conservation status of wild plant and animal species into three categories.

Minister Nurbaya stated that the intended categorization would complicate the identification process, control of utilization, supervision, and law enforcement.

"The stipulation of wild plant and animal species' conservation status that has been regulated in Law 5 of 1990 focuses on aspects of protection and utilization, while the proposed categorization of wild plant and animal species' conservation status in the House of Representatives' initiated draft bill focuses on utilization aspects," she explained.

Thus, the government has set that wild plant and animal species remain under the protected and unprotected status. (Antaranews)