VOI - Voice of Indonesia | RRI - Radio Republik Indonesia

VOINews, Jakarta - The Indonesian government has proposed the development of integrated ports at the 45th Meeting of ASEAN Maritime Transport Working Group (45th MTWG) in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, according to an official.

"Indonesia proposes to take a collaborative and competitive approach to improve coordination between port development and road access to ports in the ASEAN region," said Lollan Panjaitan, Secretary of the Directorate General of Sea Transportation at the Ministry of Transportation, in a statement received on Wednesday.

He remarked that during the meeting, it was also conveyed that Indonesia is currently in the process of preparing a national port master plan.

The master plan aims to increase the role and function of ports in supporting national development that is expected to be published by the end of 2023.

He also highlighted several important aspects that were discussed, including the agenda related to the ASEAN Single Shipping Market (ASSM), where Brunei Darussalam presented an analysis of port network performance and port efficiency in ASEAN based on data submitted by other member countries.

The session also approved the proposal of the Agence Française de Développement (AFD) to provide full technical support for the Sustainable Ship Waste Management Strategy for ASEAN Project for two years in 2023-2025.

The meeting was also attended by leading maritime organizations, including the International Maritime Organization (IMO), ASEAN Ports Association (APA), Federation of ASEAN Shipowners' Associations (FASA), World Shipping Council (WSC), Digital Container Shipping Association (DCSA), and Partnership for Infrastructure (P4I) Australia. (Antaranews)

VOINews, Jakarta - The Agriculture Ministry and the National Research and Innovation Agency (BRIN) have agreed to collaborate on developing postharvest technology that can be applied to reduce the amount of food loss and waste in Indonesia.

Both parties signed an agreement on Tuesday (October 17) at BRIN's office in Jakarta.

"The postharvest technology will help manage the life of food products, from the time of being harvested until being served on tables," said Acting Agriculture Minister Arief Prasetyo Adi in a statement on Wednesday.

He highlighted that some 14 percent of the total global food produced is lost along production and supply processes, and 17 percent of it is wasted after being served.

Adi also noted that Indonesia had been suffering annual economic losses of approximately Rp550 trillion (US$35 billion) due to food loss and waste.

In an effort to boost the efficiency of Indonesia's agricultural results, the Agriculture Ministry and BRIN have signed an agreement on creating innovation in the agriculture sector, both in its upstream and downstream, he remarked.

"We aim to not only create agricultural innovation in the upstream but also in the downstream," he said, adding that BRIN has promised to develop irradiation technology.

"I want to use the technology to extend the shelf life of food products," Adi stated.

According to research conducted by the National Development Planning Agency (Bappenas) in 2021, the combined total amount of food loss and waste during the 2000-2019 period in Indonesia was recorded at 23-48 million tons, resulting in economic losses of up to Rp551 trillion per year.

The food irradiation technology currently being developed by BRIN constitutes one of Indonesia's strategies to reduce the amount of food loss and waste.

Food irradiation is a method of exposing food either to radioactive substances or accelerators to prevent it from being spoiled and damaged while protecting it from pathogenic microorganisms.

Meanwhile, BRIN Head Laksana Tri Handoko explained that his agency is conducting research to develop food irradiation technology, with the end goal of extending the shelf life of food products and minimizing economic losses.

"Our research focuses both on (agricultural) extensification and intensification. We aim to develop postharvest technology that can be used to extend the durability of food after being harvested," he stated.

Irradiation technology will be used to extend the shelf life of 12 food commodities, including chili, shallots, and eggs, he added. (Antaranews)

VOINews, Jakarta - A strike on a Gaza hospital killed hundreds of Palestinians, deepening tensions in the Middle East and raising the stakes for U.S. President Joe Biden as he flies to Israel on Wednesday to signal support for its war against Hamas.

CONFLICT

* The blast at Al-Ahli al-Arabi hospital killed between 300 and 500 people, according to health ministry sources and a civil defence chief in Gaza. Palestinian officials said an Israeli air strike hit the hospital, while Israel blamed the blast on a failed rocket launch by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad group, which denied responsibility.

* The entire world should know: It was barbaric terrorists in Gaza that attacked the hospital in Gaza, and not the IDF," Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, referring to the Israel Defense Forces.

* Daoud Shehab, a spokesman for Islamic Jihad, told Reuters: "This is a lie and fabrication, it is completely incorrect. The occupation is trying to cover for the horrifying crime and massacre they committed against civilians."

* The Israeli military urged Gaza City residents to relocate southward, saying in a new evacuation advisory there was a "humanitarian zone" with down the coast of the Palestinian enclave.

* Yossi Landav, 55, has worked in search and rescue for 33 years but nothing could prepare him for what he saw in the aftermath of a Hamas attack in southern Israel which killed at least 1,300 people.

DIPLOMACY AND PROTESTS

* Biden will pose "tough questions" and seek a sense of Israel's plans and objectives in the days and weeks ahead in meetings with Netanyahu, the Israeli war cabinet and other Israeli leaders.

* "He'll be asking some tough questions, he'll be asking them as a friend, as a true friend of Israel, but he'll be asking some questions of them," White House spokesperson John Kirby told reporters on Air Force One during the flight to Tel Aviv.

* Jordan cancelled a summit it was to host in Amman on Wednesday with Biden and the Egyptian and Palestinian leaders to discuss Gaza, Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi said.

* The hospital blast drew condemnation across the Arab world, and protests were staged at Israel's embassies in Turkey and Jordan and near the U.S. embassy in Lebanon, where security forces fired tear gas toward demonstrators.

* Palestinian security forces in Ramallah fired tear gas and stun grenades to disperse protesters throwing rocks and chanting against President Mahmoud Abbas as popular anger boiled over after the deadly Gaza hospital attack.

* Lebanon's Iran-backed Hezbollah militant group denounced what it said was Israel's deadly attack on the Al-Ahli al-Arabi hospital in Gaza, which is run by the Anglican church, and called for "a day of unprecedented anger" against Israel and Biden's visit.

* The United Nations Security Council will now vote on Wednesday on a Brazilian-drafted resolution that calls for humanitarian pauses in the conflict between Israel and Palestinian militants Hamas to allow humanitarian aid access to the Gaza Strip.

* The U.S. State Department will continue to offer government-sponsored charter flights to Europe from Tel Aviv to help Americans leave Israel through at least Sunday.

* The U.S. State Department raised its travel alert for Lebanon to "do not travel," citing the security situation related to rocket, missile, and artillery exchanges between Israel and Hezbollah.

* Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau cited a marked rise in antisemitism in Canada after Palestinian Islamist group Hamas' attack on Israel and Israel's subsequent deadly air strikes in Gaza. (Reuters)

VOINews, Jakarta - One Israeli cabinet minister was barred from a hospital visitors' entrance. Another's bodyguards were drenched with coffee thrown by a bereaved man. A third had "traitor" and "imbecile" shouted at her as she came to comfort families evacuated during the horror.

The shock Oct. 7 massacre by Hamas gunmen has rallied Israelis to one another. But there is little love shown for a government being widely accused of dropping the country's guard and engulfing it in a Gaza war that is rattling the region.

Whatever ensues, a day of judgment looms for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, after a record-long career of political comebacks.

Public fury over some 1,300 Israeli fatalities has been further fuelled by Netanyahu's signature self-styling as a Churchillian strategist who foresaw national-security threats.

Another backdrop is social polarisation this year over his religious-nationalist coalition's judicial overhaul drive, which triggered walkouts by some military reservists and raised doubts - now borne out in blood, some argue - about combat-readiness.

"October 2023 Debacle" read a headline in top-selling daily Yedioth Ahronoth, language meant to recall Israel's failure to anticipate a twin Egyptian and Syrian offensive in October 1973, which eventually led then-Prime Minister Golda Meir to resign.

That ouster put paid to the hegemony of Meir's centre-left Labour party. Amotz Asa-El, research fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem, predicted a similar fate for Netanyahu and his long-dominant, conservative Likud party.

"It doesn't matter if there's a commission of inquiry or not, or whether or not he admits fault. All that matters is what 'middle Israelis' think - which is that this is a fiasco and that the prime minister is responsible," Asa-El told Reuters.

"He will go, and his entire establishment along with him."

An opinion poll in Maariv newspaper found that 21% of Israelis want Netanyahu to remain prime minister after the war. Sixty-six percent said "someone else" and 13% were undecided.

Were an election held today, the poll found, Likud would lose a third of its seats while the centrist National Unity party of his main rival Benny Gantz would grow by a third - setting the latter up for top office.

ISRAEL FORMS EMERGENCY WAR CABINET

But Israelis do not now want a ballot. They want action, and as the counter-offensive builds into a potential ground invasion, Gantz, a former military chief, has set aside political differences to join Netanyahu in an emergency cabinet.

Busy with the top brass and foreign emissaries, Netanyahu has limited his encounters with the public. He met relatives of some 200 hostages taken to Gaza, without TV cameras present. Amid a mounting outcry, his wife visited one family in mourning.

Netanyahu has also yet to make any statements of personal accountability - even as his top general, defence minister, national security adviser, foreign minister, finance minister and intelligence chiefs acknowledged failure to anticipate and prevent the worst attack on civilians in Israel's history.

Israel has won vocal Western support for its counter-offensive. That may fade if a Gaza ground invasion bogs down with rising Palestinian casualties and military losses.

The war could also shred two planks of Netanyahu's foreign policy: peace with Saudi Arabia, which is now on ice, and restraining Iran, which is hailing the Hamas mini-invasion as a victory for a Middle East axis sworn to Israel's destruction. 

Military planners say the Gaza war, whose stated goal is Hamas' annihilation, could last months. Netanyahu would enjoy a political truce for the duration, Asa-El said. Whether the prime minister's health will endure is another question. In July he was fitted with a pacemaker as judicial protests surged. He will turn 74 on Saturday.

Some commentators have suggested that rifts within Israeli society, and the degree to which they sapped national security, should be attributed more broadly than to Netanyahu alone.

"We forgot to be brothers, and got a war," Amit Segal, political analyst for the top-rated Channel 12 TV, said on Telegram. "It's not too late to repair. Stop quarrelling - now."

Noting the scorn heaped on some cabinet ministers, Asa-El said fissures seemed already to be appearing within the government coalition.

"You hear people in the street who are natural Likud supporters speaking about them with unequivocal hostility," he said. "The wrath is only going to grow, and this apparent effort by Netanyahu to evade his own responsibility only makes people angrier. He just can't bring himself to say: 'We screwed up.'" (Reuters)