VOI - Voice of Indonesia | RRI - Radio Republik Indonesia

Archive : Australian Embassy to Indonesia logo - 

Voinews, Jakarta - Celebrating 75 years of Australia and Indonesia diplomatic relations, the Australian Embassy in Jakarta, together with the Indonesian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the Embassy of the Republic of Indonesia in Canberra, is conducting a logo design competition.

The winning design will be used as the official logo of the 75th Anniversary of Australia – Indonesia Diplomatic Relations campaign throughout 2024. A series of activities will be held as part of the celebration, including a mural art collaboration, our annual Festival Sinema Australia Indonesia, Taste of Australia culinary festival, historical exhibition, and much more.

According to a release received by Voice of Indonesia on Friday (16/02/24), Indonesian and Australian creative talents are invited to submit up to three designs which reflect and represent the 75 years of close friendship and strong partnership between Australia and Indonesia. The design may be inspired by elements of both countries’ national emblems, culture and identity.

With the support and sponsorship from Qantas, the creator of the winning logo will receive one return economy ticket for Jakarta - Sydney/Melbourne or Sydney/Melbourne - Jakarta.

The competition is open for Indonesian and Australian citizens and residents, aged at least 18 years old at the time of submitting their valid entry.

Designs are accepted from 15 February until 3 March 2024//VOI

The South Kalimantan (Kalsel) Library Development Coordination Meeting took photo after the disscusion (Photo : Perpusnas) - 

Voinews, Jakarta - The National Library of the Republic of Indonesia (Perpusnas) initiated a program for 10 thousand libraries throughout Indonesia. This is done as an effort to build a reading culture in the community.

Acting Director of the National Library, E. Aminudin Azis, stated that the National Library has three priority programs that will be implemented in 2024, namely strengthening reading and literacy culture, mainstreaming Indonesian manuscripts, and library standardization and development.

"A reading culture must be built, because someone can be said to be literate after he can read well, read critically. "So, this reading culture must be developed early," he said at the South Kalimantan (Kalsel) Library Development Coordination Meeting held in Banjarmasin, South Kalimantan, on Thursday evening (15/2/2024).

He said that the National Library would create 10 thousand village libraries throughout Indonesia, where each library would receive a thousand books along with shelves for storage.

"We base it on existing data and proposals from districts/cities. The condition is that they have to assign people who will manage the library. The regional library will be the one to develop it in the future," he continued.

In the presentation presented, the village libraries are 600 village/subdistrict libraries for Social Inclusion Based Library Transformation (TPBIS), 4,604 TPBIS replication village/subdistrict libraries, 2,409 libraries proposed by the district/city government, as well as 2,387 community reading parks (TBM).

He explained that in this program village libraries and TBM would collaborate with school libraries. The hope is that children can take advantage of books from both places.

“Because the books in the village library and those at school are of course different. So, we hope that everyone can use this," he explained.

Collaboration between the village library and the school library is carried out with activities to increase interest in reading, such as holding a week program of reading two books, reading aloud, or storytelling.

"Building literacy is building a generation, so building literacy and a reading culture must be instilled from childhood," he added.

According to a release received by Voice of Indonesia on Friday (16/02/24), in accordance with the national priority program resulting from the arrangement, in 2024, the focus on strengthening community literacy skills will be carried out in village/sub-district libraries.

Responding to this, South Kalimantan Province Assistant for Government and Social Welfare Nurul Fajar Desira expressed budget support for the 10 thousand village libraries program. This project will involve the head of the library, local government and the local community.

“We will discuss the details of this plan with the heads of libraries in the districts/cities. We will also prepare to identify the number of villages in South Kalimantan that can participate in this program. "Discussions with friends in districts and cities will be the first step in preparing to implement this program," he said.

He emphasized the importance of thorough preparation, considering the expected positive impact of this program.

"We believe that as time goes by, other regions in Indonesia will adopt similar programs. Therefore, we are committed to ensuring that we are fully prepared to implement this program," he stressed.

Meanwhile, Head of the South Kalimantan Province Library and Archives Service, Nurliani, said that as many as 10 percent of villages in South Kalimantan Province already have libraries built using village funds.

"To create this program, we will collaborate with related agencies. We also collaborate with other stakeholders, such as PT PLN (Persero) Central Kalimantan Distribution Main Unit which has built two village libraries," he said//VOI

FILE PHOTO: EU flag and TikTok logo are seen in this illustration taken, June 2, 2023. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration - 

Voinews, Brussels - ByteDance-owned social media platform TikTok said on Wednesday it will ramp up its fight against fake news and covert influence operations in the run-up to European Parliament elections in June with a local language app in all 27 countries.

Tiktok said the individual local language "election centres" build on work it first started in 2021, which accelerated last year when Greece, the Netherlands, Poland, Slovakia and Spain went to the polls.

Quoted from CNA News, The app is designed to better inform Europeans about the electoral process.

Governments and politicians around the world are concerned about the spread of misinformation and the use of AI-generated deepfakes to influence elections and especially the role of social media platforms.

Some 30 per cent of European Parliament lawmakers use TikTok, the company said.

"Next month, we will launch a local language Election Centre in-app for each of the 27 individual EU member states to ensure people can easily separate fact from fiction," TikTok's head of trust & safety EMEA Kevin Morgan said in a blogpost.

"Working with local electoral commissions and civil society organisations, these Election Centres will be a place where our community can find trusted and authoritative information," he said.

The company worked with news checkers to produce educational videos about the electoral process and misinformation via the election centres during national elections in previous years.

Morgan said TikTok, which currently works with nine fact-checking organisations in Europe, plans to expand its fact-checking network and launch nine additional media literacy campaigns this year.

It will introduce dedicated covert influence operations reports in the coming months to increase transparency and accountability//(CNA-VOI)

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida attends a bilateral meeting with Kenyan President William Ruto at the prime minister's office in Tokyo, Japan, Thursday, Feb. 8, 2024. Shuji Kajiyama/Pool via REUTERS/File Photo - 

Voinews, Tokyo - In a world first, Japan auctioned sovereign climate transition bonds on Wednesday although the bonds met with slightly weaker-than-expected demand.

Quioted from CNA News, Climate transition bonds are a relatively new class of bonds which aim to fund shifts by companies, or in this case a government, to having a lesser impact on the environment.

They are distinct from green bonds where the proceeds are earmarked for a specific project or are focused on the profile of the issuer.

The sale of 800 billion yen ($5.3 billion) in 10-year transition bonds was the first in Prime Minister Fumio Kishida's plan to sell 20 trillion yen of climate bonds over the next decade to help the nation with its goal of cutting greenhouse gases to zero by 2050.

The proceeds are expected to go towards projects such as low-cost wind power generators and airplanes that use alternative fuels.

The bonds were priced to yield 0.74 per cent on Wednesday, with pricing somewhat lower than expected. Yields on the bonds were 0.655 per cent a day earlier in the so-called "when-issued" market, which is a market for securities yet to be issued. Yields on bonds move inversely to prices.

"I would say expectations prior to the auction were too high. Still the yield on climate bonds was little lower than the yield for 10-year JGBs, which means the bonds enjoyed a premium," said Keisuke Tsuruta, a fixed income strategist at Mitsubishi UFJ Morgan Stanley Securities.

Regular 10-year Japanese government bonds were yielding 0.755 per cent on Wednesday.

Japan's finance ministry plans to sell 800 billion yen of five-year transition bonds on Feb. 27, which will be followed by 1.4 trillion yen of transition bonds in the fiscal year starting in April//(CNA-VOI)