VOI - Voice of Indonesia | RRI - Radio Republik Indonesia

The skyline with its banking district is photographed in Frankfurt, Germany, January 7, 2020. REUTERS/Kai Pfaffenbach/File Photo - 

BERLIN : Germany's IT and telecommunication (ITC) sector is expected to speed up its growth this year and clearly outperform Germany's ailing economy, a study by German digital association Bitkom showed on Wednesday.

According to the study, the sector's revenues are expected to rise by 4.4 per cent to 224.3 billion euros ($245.09 billion), compared to a 2.0 per cent increase last year.

"Even under difficult economic conditions, characterised by geopolitical crises and budget cuts, sales and employment (within the sector) are increasing," said Bitkom President Ralf Wintergerst.

The industry's predicted growth for this year is, however, slow in comparison to other countries, including India, seen up 7.9 per cent, the U.S. expected to increase 6.3 per cent and China, estimated to grow 5.7 per cent.

"In order for Germany to catch up in terms of digitalization, companies and administrations need to ramp up their investments more decisively," Wintergerst said, urging the government to put digitalization and economic growth at the centre of its policies.

According to estimates of the International Monetary Fund, Germany's economy as a whole is expected to grow only 0.9 per cent in 2024, which remains well below the average of 1.4 per cent for advanced economies//CNA-VOI

NASA's Artemis 1 Space Launch System launches at NASA's Kennedy Space Center on Nov 2022 in Cape Canaveral, Florida. (Photo: AFP/Getty Images North America/Red Huber) - 

WASHINGTON: The United States is pushing back its planned return of astronauts to the surface of the moon from 2025 to 2026, NASA administrator Bill Nelson said Tuesday (Jan 9) amid technical challenges and delays.

Artemis, named after the sister of Apollo in Greek mythology, was officially announced in 2017 as part of the US space agency's plans to establish a sustained presence on Earth's nearest space neighbour and apply lessons learned there for a future mission to Mars.

Its first mission, an uncrewed test flight to the moon and back called Artemis 1, took place in 2022, after several postponements. Artemis 2, involving a crew that doesn't land on the surface, has been postponed from later this year to September 2025, Nelson told reporters.

Artemis 3, in which the first woman and first person of colour are to set foot on lunar soil at the moon's south pole, should take place in September 2026.

"Safety is our top priority, and to give Artemis teams more time to work through the challenges," said Nelson.

NASA is also looking to build a lunar space station called Gateway where spacecraft will dock during later missions. Elon Musk's SpaceX has won the contract for a landing system for Artemis 3 based on a version of its prototype Starship rocket, which remains far from ready. Both of its orbital tests have ended in explosions. 

Delays to Starship have knock-on effects because the spacesuit contractor needs to know how the suits will interface with the spacecraft, and simulators need to be built for astronauts to learn its systems. 

The Artemis 1 mission itself revealed technical issues, such as the heat shield on the Orion crew capsule eroded in an unexpected way, and the ground structure used to launch the giant SLS rocket sustained more damage than expected.

As of March 2023, NASA has agreed to pay about US$40 billion to hundreds of contractors supporting Artemis, the same watchdog found.

A key difference between the 20th-century Apollo missions and the Artemis era is the increasing role of commercial partnerships, part of a broader strategy to involve private companies in space exploration to reduce costs and to make space more accessible//CNA-VOI

Solar panels on Southeast Asia's first zero energy building in Singapore. (File photo: TODAY) - 

SINGAPORE: Singapore is more than halfway to its solar power deployment target of at least 2,000 megawatt-peak by 2030, said Minister for Sustainability and the Environment Grace Fu on Wednesday (Jan 10).

The country has doubled its solar power deployment since 2021 to over 1,000 megawatt-peak currently, she added.

The minister gave the updated figures in parliament in response to questions on Singapore's progress in transitioning towards renewable energy. 

During the UN Climate Change Conference 2023 (COP28), Singapore co-facilitated negotiations on mitigation and the first global stocktake that contributed to the successful adoption of the UAE Consensus, which calls on countries to transition away from fossil fuels, said Ms Fu.  

The UAE Consensus also calls on countries to triple renewable energy and double energy efficiency globally by 2030. 

At the conference, Singapore signed the Global Renewables and Energy Efficiency pledge. 

"Singapore supports the UAE Consensus. As part of our long-term low-emissions development strategy, Singapore has committed to achieving net zero emissions by 2050, despite being a small, alternative energy disadvantaged city-state with many natural limitations on our climate action measures," said the minister. 

The country has been accelerating its energy transition, with solar energy as one of its key pushes. 

Solar energy is one of the four "switches" that Singapore is deploying to achieve its net-zero target by 2050. The other three are natural gas, regional power grids and low-carbon alternatives. 

Solar energy will eventually allow Singapore to meet about 10 per cent of its projected electricity demand in 2050, the Energy Market Authority (EMA) said in November last year. 

The country is on track to meet the 1,500 megawatt-peak goal of solar deployment by 2025. 

According to EMA's Singapore Energy Statistics 2023 report, the private sector has been the driving force behind the growth in solar deployment, accounting for 63.5 per cent of the total installed capacity.

Apart from solar energy, Singapore is working towards importing low-carbon electricity from the region. 

In their supplementary questions, Members of Parliament asked about timelines and net-zero strategies moving forward. 

MP Liang Eng Hwa (PAP-Bukit Panjang) asked if Ms Fu was satisfied with the overall outcome of COP28 and if Singapore's position on nuclear energy has changed following other countries' call to triple the world's nuclear energy capacity by 2050. 

Answering Mr Liang's first question, Ms Fu noted several improvements and movements in negotiations. 

With the global stocktake, there was a "louder" and "more concerted call" to accelerate action in this decade due to climate projections that indicate the world needs to do more in the near term, said Ms Fu. 

It is no longer about setting net-zero targets but charting a pathway to limit global temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius, said Ms Fu, adding that there were "very specific recommendations and agreements".

"And there are many other details, it's a very extensive and comprehensive process ... It deserves a much more extensive discussion."

On nuclear energy, the government has not changed its position. It has yet to make a decision on adopting nuclear energy as a potential source of renewable energy, but is instead keeping tabs on how the technology develops. 

"We think the advanced nuclear technology offers us some potential. In terms of safety, there's better safety in these technologies and also in terms of cost competitiveness, these are very ... important decision metrics that feed into our energy decision," said the minister.

"So we have not made a decision on adopting nuclear energy, but we are building capabilities to understand how this technology is advancing and also how these technologies can potentially be of help to Singapore."//CNA-VOI

Tohoku Power Electric Co.'s Onagawa Nuclear Power Plant is seen in Onagawa town, Miyagi Prefecture, September 7, 2011. REUTERS/Issei Kato/File Photo - 

TOKYO : Japan's Tohoku Electric Power said on Wednesday it will delay the restart of reactor No. 2 at its Onagawa nuclear station due to additional safety construction works, keeping all its nuclear power plants shutdown since the 2011 earthquake.

Japan is gradually bringing nuclear power back to its energy mix in a move to reach carbon neutrality goals and to reduce imports of liquefied natural gas (LNG) which it imports from elsewhere including from Russia.

Tohoku, whose Onawaga plant was closest among Japan's nuclear stations to the epicentre of the magnitude-9 quake in March 2011, received a regulatory approval to restart the No. 2 reactor in 2020 but has seen a delay in completion of safety construction measures.

On Wednesday, it said it expected a delay of several months in finishing safety construction measures earlier targeted for February. Timing of the reactor restart, set for May, will also be changed, Tohoku said, without providing a new timeline.

The station was swamped by the 2011 tsunami, but survived with its cooling system intact, saving its reactors from the threat of meltdowns similar to those that occurred at Tokyo Electric Power's Fukushima Daiichi plant to the south.

Japan's Hokuriku Electric Power on Sunday reported a small oil leak from its Shika nuclear power station, which was shaken by a powerful earthquake on New Year's Day, but said external radiation levels were not affected and there were no adverse impacts on the environment or human health.

Days before the magnitude 7.6 quake, which has killed over 200 people in the Hokuriku region, Japan's nuclear power regulator lifted an operational ban on Tokyo Electric Power's Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant, the world's biggest.

Resumption of the plant, offline following the Fukushima disaster, needs consent from the local governments of Niigata prefecture, Kashiwazaki city and Kariwa village, where it is located, and its timing is unknown//CNA-VOI