VOI - Voice of Indonesia | RRI - Radio Republik Indonesia

Jakarta. The Virtual Seminar and Live "Kolintang Goes to UNESCO: Towards UNESCO's Intangible Cultural Heritage" took place at the Yusuf Ronodipuro Auditorium, on Thursday (25/3/2021).

The Director of Program and Production for the Public Broadcasting Institute (LPP) of Radio Republik Indonesia (RRI) stated that RRI wanted to encompass all cultures including kolintang from Minahasa.

"We have an art gallery, and with this kolintang, now there are almost 100 traditional musical instruments that we should promote, so we can achieve promoting them to UNESCO," he said at the seminar.

The Director of Manpower and Cultural Institutions Development, Ministry of Education and Culture (Kemendikbud) Judi Wahjudin said that the data to apply Kolintang musical instrument to UNESCO has completed.

"The Ministry of Education and Culture have completed the data to propose Kolintang as world inheritance," he said.

The seminar was opened with the appearance of Debora and Master of Kolintang singing Poco-poco and Ondel-ondel medley with kolintang accompaniment.

The event was attended by several panelists, such as; Chairman of DPP Pinkan Indonesia Penny Iriana Marsetio, Director of Manpower Development and Cultural Institutions of the Ministry of Education and Culture Judi Wahjudin, M.Hum, Governor of North Sulawesi Olly Dondokambey, Chairman of DPD Pinkan Indonesia, North Sulawesi Province Joune JE Ganda, Ambassador EU Ambassador to Indonesia HE Vincent Piket, Advisor Pinkan Admiral TNI (Ret.) Prof. Dr. Marsetio, Humanist Prof. Ir. Wendu Nuryanti. (VOI)

Jakarta. Thailand has granted emergency authorisation to Janssen, the single-dose coronavirus vaccine of Johnson & Johnson, the country’s health minister said on Thursday, the third vaccine to be cleared for local use.

Anutin Charnvirankul told reporters the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had approved the vaccine, in addition to those of AstraZeneca and Sinovac Biotech, which have already been administered in the country.

J&J’s vaccine is called COVID Vaccine Janssen after the J&J unit that developed it.

China’s Sinopharm and the makers of Russia’s Sputnik V and are preparing to submit requests for approval, Paisal Dunkhum head of Thailand’s FDA said.

Moderna has said it would submit an application for approval while India’s Bharat Biotech is in the process submitting documents for vaccine registration, Paisal said.

Thailand, which has recorded just over 28,000 coronavirus cases overall, has administered about 100,000 doses of vaccines among medical workers and high-risk groups so far.

It’s main vaccine drive is expected to start in June, using locally-produced AstraZeneca shots and it plans to inoculate half of its adult population by the end of the year. (Reuters)

Jakarta. Deadly heatwaves in South Asia are likely to become more common in the future, with the region’s exposure to lethal heat stress potentially nearly tripling if global warming isn’t curbed, researchers said.

But the threat could be halved if the world meets a goal set under the Paris Agreement on climate change to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial times, researchers said in a study published this week by the American Geophysical Union, an international scientific association.

“The future looks bad for South Asia, but the worst can be avoided by containing warming to as low as possible,” Moetasim Ashfaq, a climate scientist at the U.S.-based Oak Ridge National Laboratory, said in a statement.

Still, with global temperatures already having risen more than 1C, “the need for adaptation over South Asia is today, not in the future. It’s not a choice anymore,” said Ashfaq, the study’s author.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has said global climate-heating emissions must fall by about 45% by 2030, compared to 2010 levels, to limit warming to below 2C, the higher temperature goal in the Paris Agreement.

But updated plans to reduce emissions, submitted by at least 75 nations ahead of planned COP26 U.N. climate talks in November, barely made a dent in the huge cuts needed to meet the global climate goals a U.N. report said last month.

The new study used climate simulations and projected population growth to estimate the number of people who could experience dangerous levels of heat stress at warming levels of 1.5C and 2C.

It looked at the predicted “wet bulb temperature”, which accounts for humidity and temperature and aims to more accurately reflects what people experience on a hot day.

Health experts and scientists say that at a wet bulb temperature of 32C labour becomes unsafe and at 35C the body can no longer cool itself.

If warming hits 2C, the number of South Asians exposed to unsafe temperatures could rise two-fold, and nearly three times as many people could face lethal heat, the study said.

In a region home to a quarter of the world’s population that could have a big impact on the ability of workers to produce crops in breadbasket regions such as West Bengal and Uttar Pradesh in India and Punjab and Sindh in Pakistan, study authors said.

Workers in increasingly steamy cities such as Karachi, Kolkata, Mumbai and Peshawar could also be affected, particularly as many do not have access to air conditioning, the study noted.

Pakistan and India already experience deadly heatwaves, with one in 2015 causing about 3,500 deaths, the study noted.

As temperatures rise as a result of climate change, “a policy framework is...needed to fight against heat stress and heat wave-related problems,” said T.V. Lakshmi Kumar, an atmospheric scientist at India’s SRM Institute of Science and Technology, who was not involved in the study. (Reuters)

Jakarta. Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte expressed concern to China’s ambassador about Chinese vessels massing in the South China Sea, his spokesman said, as Vietnam urged Beijing to respect its maritime sovereignty.

International concern has grown in recent days over what the Philippines has described as a “swarming and threatening presence” of more than 200 Chinese vessels that it believes were manned by maritime militia.

The boats were moored at the Whitsun Reef within Manila’s 200-mile exclusive economic zone.

“The president said we are really concerned. Any country will be concerned with that number of ships,” Duterte’s spokesman, Harry Roque, told a regular news conference.

Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan, China and Vietnam have competing territorial claims in the South China Sea, through which at least $3.4 trillion of annual trade passes.

Roque said Duterte reaffirmed to China’s ambassador, Huang Xilian, that the Philippines had won a landmark arbitration case in 2016, which made clear its sovereign entitlements amid rival claims by China.

China’s maritime assertiveness has put Duterte in an awkward spot throughout his presidency due to his controversial embrace of Beijing and reluctance to speak out against it.

He has instead accused close ally the United States of creating conflict in the South China Sea.

China’s embassy in Manila did not respond to a request for comment on Duterte’s meeting.

On Wednesday it said the vessels at Whitsun Reef were fishing boats taking refuge from rough seas. A Philippine military spokesman said China’s defence attache had denied there were militia aboard.

Vietnam’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Le Thi Thu Hang on Thursday said the Chinese vessels at the reef, which Hanoi calls Da Ba Dau, had infringed on its sovereignty.

“Vietnam requests that China stop this violation and respect Vietnam’s sovereignty,” Hang told a regular briefing.

A Vietnamese coastguard vessel could be seen moored near the disputed area on Thursday, according to ship tracking data published by the Marine Traffic website.

Hang said Vietnam’s coastguard was “exercising its duties as regulated by laws”, including international law. (Reuters)