VOI - Voice of Indonesia | RRI - Radio Republik Indonesia

A number of companies from Indonesia collected trade transactions worth IDR215.9 billion from the China-ASEAN Expo in Nanning, Guangxi Autonomous Region, on November 27-30 2020.

"Indonesia's participation in this year's exhibition is quite successful," said the Indonesian Ambassador to China Djauhari Oratmangun in Beijing, Thursday.

In the annual event which has been held for the 17th time, Indonesia occupies two platforms, one each for trade commodities and tourism culture.

"The transaction value is accumulated from direct trade, business agreements, and MoUs," he said.

According to the Ambassador, Indonesia's participation in the 2020 CAExpo is a commitment to continue to encourage increased cooperation between ASEAN and China.

The event was opened by Chinese President Xi Jinping who gave a speech via video channel on Friday (27/11).

President Joko Widodo also delivered his remarks by saying that CAExpo is an important platform to promote trade and investment in Asia as well as a model for good cooperation between China and ASEAN member countries.

President Jokowi also hopes that these activities can improve post-pandemic regional economic recovery and deepen ASEAN-China cooperation in the fields of trade, tourism, investment, and others. (Antaranews)

Jakarta, Voice of Indonesia. The Iran Embassy in Jakarta releases a statement condemning the terrorist attack and against Iranian scientist Prof. Mohsen Fakhrizadeh on Nov. 27, 2020.

“The Embassy of the Islamic Republic of Iran condemns this brutal murder and inhumane act, and calls out the international community, countries that defend human rights, and independent media to condemn this criminal, terroristic attack,” the statement says as received by Voice of Indonesia on Thursday.

Fakhrizadeh, who is the head of Organization of Defensive Innovation and Research and a senior official in the nuclear program of Iran, was murdered brutally from gunshot attack while he was traveling in a car in Absard, Tehran. The assailants were not identified, but Iranian officials blamed Israel.

“For the last year, several Iranian scientists and heroes becomes the target and getting murdered by various terrorist attacks. The recent murder of our senior nuclear scientist have the same characteristic and method which usually used by the Israeli terrorists,” the release says.

Rear Admiral Shamkhani, head of the Supreme National Security Council, confirmed that the scientist was killed by a remote-controlled weapon, that "It was a very complex mission using electronic equipment”, as BBC reported.

The statement claimed that the murder aims to create a major crisis to prevent Iran’s nuclear agreement Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). They also claimed that Israel, the only other country who holds a nuclear weapon in the Middle East, designed the attack.

They added that since 2015, Israel have been persuading US to leave the deal and sanction Iran again. US finally left the deal in 2018 under Donald Trump presidency, saying it was “defective at its core”.

Aside from being an instrumental agent to Iranian nuclear program, Fakhrizadeh had a major role in developing Covid-19 test kit and vaccine for Iran. The country has no access to humanitarian and medical aids due to sanctions from the United States.

The number of polymerase chain reaction (PCR) swab tests carried out in Indonesia has reached around 90 percent of the target set by the World Health Organization (WHO), the COVID-19 Handling Task Force stated.

"In the last week, we were able to break the targeted figure of 90 percent of the WHO target," said the head of data and information technology at the COVID-19 task force, Dr. Dewi Nur Aisyah, at an online press conference originating from Jakarta on Wednesday.

The WHO has prescribed one thousand tests per one million population per week, she informed.

Based on the target set by the WHO, the COVID-19 task force said it had calculated that around 276 thousand people out of 267 million Indonesians need to be tested per week.

Based on this calculation, the task force noted, Indonesia’s national PCR testing levels were just 30 percent in July 2020. The figure rose to 40 percent in August, 70 percent in September, 82 percent in October, and finally, 90 percent on November 28, this year.

"If we look at the progress, it is apparent that it is going quite well. This (number of tests) did go down in the third and fourth weeks of October, during a long holiday, and because there were still obstacles or challenges in the field, so the number of our examinations decreased at that time," Aisyah observed.

However, she said, the testing level rose again and continued to increase until it reached 90 percent of the WHO target.

The rates were obtained from reports from 465 laboratories included in network laboratories. However, Aisyah stressed that it could not be ascertained whether all 465 laboratories have handed in their reports on PCR testing.

Considering the possibility that there may be private hospitals and laboratories that are also conducting examinations and that have not been included in the reports received by the task force, she concluded that the percentage of PCR tests carried out in Indonesia could actually be higher than the WHO's target. (Antaranews)

Indonesia has targeted to produce a prototype of an intelligent radiation monitoring system at the end of 2024, Minister of Research and Technology Bambang PS Brodjonegoro said.

“At the end of 2024, the prototype for the intelligent radiation monitoring system will be ready for trial and operation," Brodjonegoro, who is also chief of the National Research and Innovation Agency (BRIN), said during an online symposium, which was held to mark the anniversary of the National Atomic Energy Agency (Batan) here on Wednesday.

With the increasing use of nuclear technology and radioactive substances in Indonesia, an integrated radiation monitoring system for nuclear safety and security is needed at the national level, he observed at the Indonesia-Japan Joint Symposium on Nuclear Research and Development, Safety and Education.

At the symposium, Batan chief Anhar Riza Antariksawan said setting up an integrated national radiation monitoring system is among the National Research Priorities (PRN) for 2020-2024 in the industrial sector.

Batan is the national coordinator for implementing the National Research Priorities, he added.

The activity is aimed at developing a wide range of radiation monitoring systems such as radiological data monitoring systems (RDMS), radiation portal monitors (RPM), and mobile radiation detectors, he said.

In addition, there are plans for developing an information technology-based communication system to connect all radiation detectors and compile them into a database, which will be operated by the Nuclear Energy Supervisory Board (Bapeten), he informed. (Antaranews)