KUALA LUMPUR (BERNAMA) – The first locally developed tactical Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) was unveiled yesterday on the opening day of the four-day 17th Defence Services Asia 2022 (DSA 2022) and National Security Asia 2022 (NATSEC Asia) exhibitions, held at the Malaysia International Trade and Exhibition Centre (Mitec) in Dutamas.
The UAV, known as the Intelligence Surveillance Reconnaissance Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (ISR UAV), has the capacity to operate day and night for a duration of 10 hours and is capable of flying at a distance of 100 kilometres. It was designed by DEFTECH Unmanned Systems Sdn Bhd, a subsidiary of DRB-HICOM Defence Technologies Sdn Bhd.
DEFTECH group Chief Executive Officer Fazley Ariffin said the development of the tactical UAV marked a proud achievement for the local defence industry.
He said autonomous technologies such as the UAV or drones could double the capabilities of the defence and security forces by providing a secure platform to handle dangerous and challenging situations or environments.
“This development will mark new steps ahead for DEFTECH in exploring the field of defence technology,” he said in a statement following the launch of the UAV yesterday.
Air Force Chief General Dato’ Sri Mohd Asghar Khan Goriman Khan at the unveiling. PHOTO: BERNAMA
ISR UAV, with a maximum take-off weight of 120 kilogrammes and payload capacity of 15 kilogrammes was unveiled by Air Force Chief General Dato’ Sri Mohd Asghar Khan Goriman Khan.
Fazley said it was 100 per cent a local effort thus ensuring technical support and quick response at a competitive cost. “It was fully customised specific operation requirements of the user.”
He said the development of this ISR UAV was the result of experience learned while working with defence and security forces in operating drones for different operations.
“The use of UAVs by the military and public security will definitely be an asset for Malaysia’s national security, especially for critical and time-sensitive situations, such as border surveillance and control.
“DEFTECH will continue to develop local driverless system technology to reduce dependence on outsiders, and build local capabilities in the national defence system,” he added.
Meanwhile, a DEFTECH official source told Bernama that the ISR UAV was currently awaiting the final flight test.
According to the source, they have received a good response to the UAV from users on the first day of DSA 2022.
MADRID (AP) – Spain’s government is readying a package of emergency economic measures worth EUR6 billion in direct aid and tax breaks and EUR10 billion in loans for families and businesses affected by the fallout from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said yesterday.
The emergency plan aims to “protect economic growth and jobs” and is to be unveiled after the government’s weekly Cabinet meeting today, Sánchez said in a speech to a business conference in Madrid.
“This emergency plan in response to the war (in Ukraine) includes a set of measures that will protect economic sectors and Spaniards who are being most affected,” Sánchez said.
Like the rest of Europe, Spain has been struggling since last year with soaring energy prices, with households and businesses struggling to pay electricity bills. Since Russia invaded Ukraine last month, oil prices have spiked, and Spain’s transport and farm sectors have demanded help with crippling gasoline prices. As the war has worsened an energy crunch in Europe, many other countries also have passed support packages. The European Union’s (EU) 27 leaders last Friday reached an energy compromise, including a special dispensation for Spain and Portugal because they have weathered exceptional price surges.
Sánchez said his centre-left Socialist-led government plans “exceptional, temporary measures,” including price caps for natural gas, that will “significantly and immediately” push down electricity prices.
The measures, intended to remain in place through June 30, will be assessed by EU authorities before being enacted to ensure they don’t provide an unfair advantage.
Among other measures, the government is to provide an across-the-board discount of EUR0.20 euros per litre of gas, with the government meeting three-fourths of that cost and gas companies the rest, Sánchez said in a preview of the plan.
A man wheels a butane gas bottle from a delivery truck in Madrid, Spain. PHOTO: AP
THE STRAITS TIMES – Yemen’s government said talks over the exchange of thousands of prisoners with Houthi rebels are still ongoing.
The rebels said on Sunday they reached a deal with the government, which will see 1,400 Houthi prisoners swapped for 804 from government forces and allies.
Still, chief of the government prisoners committee Hadi Haig said there’s no final agreement and the deal continues to be discussed.
Once there is final approval, the United Nations (UN) envoy to Yemen will be informed through an official letter, Haig said in a statement.
The rebels on Saturday announced a three-day halt to hostilities and offered to release coalition detainees in return for Houthi prisoners. The truce began at 6pm local time on Sunday, the rebel-controlled Saba news agency said.
In his earlier statement, chief of the Houthi prisoners committee Abdulqader Al-Murtadha said the deal will see 1,400 Houthi prisoners swapped for 804 from government forces and allies.
You do not even have to prick your finger to test your blood with these continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) methods.
CGM works through a tiny sensor inserted painlessly under your skin, usually on your belly or arm.
The newer ones don’t even have to penetrate your skin. Some of them are metal patches that can monitor your glucose levels just by being taped and strapped to your skin.
The sensor measures your interstitial glucose level, which is the glucose found in the fluid between your cells.
The sensor tests the glucose every few minutes.
A transmitter then wirelessly sends the information to a monitor or an app installed in your smartphone.
Poking your finger every day may soon become a thing of the past for diabetics as there are a number of devices that can monitor your blood glucose levels continuously with just one prick, or even none at all. PHOTO: THE STAR
The information is uploaded to a data “cloud”, where it can be accessed and monitored in real time by your doctor.
Glucose monitoring is indeed very advanced these days.
There is one shoebox-sized blood glucose monitor that beams an infrared laser through the skin of your finger.
This causes the glucose in your skin to convert the light to heat.
The machine then calculates your glucose levels based on how much heat is generated by your skin.
Don’t worry, you won’t even feel this laser’s heat, or the increase in your skin temperature, as it is so minute. Then there is a subcutaneous implant that continuously monitors your blood glucose levels.
It needs to be installed under the skin by a doctor.
This is one of those devices that monitor the interstitial fluid under the skin of your upper arm.
It does so by using a polymer that fluoresces in response to your blood glucose level. The data is sent to a transmitter that displays those levels in real time. The sensor can last for up to three months before needing a replacement. There are some devices in development that measure the sugar in your tears – yes, you read that right, the tears from your eyes! One startup working on a blood sugar monitor that is placed under your lower eyelid.
It consists of a flexible metal coil of about two centimetres with nanosensors inside. The coil is covered by a protective layer of soft hydrogel.
This coil can measure minute- to-minute changes in the glucose levels of your tear fluid by using the same enzyme technology that conventional glucose strip tests use. It will then wirelessly send the glucose measurements directly to your smartphone.
Another device works on the scientific basis that the eyeball is a transparent and stable environment whose glucose levels correlate with those of the blood.
It sends a faint beam of light into your eyeball and measures the light that bounces back into the device.
The glucose levels in the eye are inferred based on the refraction of the returning light.
PARIS (AFP) – Portugal have been well and truly warned not to take the threat of North Macedonia lightly as they face Italy’s conquerors in a decisive World Cup qualifying play-off today.
The Balkan nation stunned Italy in their play-off semi-final in Palermo on Thursday, winning 1-0 thanks to an Aleksandar Trajkovski goal in stoppage time, meaning the reigning European champions failed to qualify for a second consecutive World Cup.
Cristiano Ronaldo’s Portugal side, who preceded Italy as European champions in 2016, might have been bracing themselves for the prospect of a decisive showdown with the Azzurri but instead North Macedonia will be the visitors to the Estadio do Dragao in Porto, with the winners going to Qatar.
“At the moment football is different. Anybody can beat anybody. Names, numbers and statistics don’t matter,” warned veteran Portugal midfielder Joao Moutinho when asked about facing the country of two million people ranked a modest 67th in the world.
“We have to show on the pitch that we have more quality and impose our own game.”
Portugal survived a scare to beat Turkey 3-1 in their semi-final, almost throwing away a two-goal lead as Burak Yilmaz missed a late penalty for the visitors before Matheus Nunes secured the hosts’ victory.
Fernando Santos’ team had already squandered first place in their qualifying group by conceding in the last minute to lose 2-1 at home to Serbia in November.
For Portugal, failing to qualify for the World Cup would be little short of a scandal given the quality in their ranks – Atletico Madrid’s Joao Felix was only on the bench against Turkey, for example.
For Ronaldo, the all-time leading international goal-scorer at the age of 37, this will surely be his last World Cup if Portugal do get there.
They have veteran defender Pepe available again after a bout of COVID-19, while Joao Cancelo is also set to return.
“We have a responsibility to get to the World Cup so that means the pressure is there regardless of who we are playing. We know perfectly well that we have to be in Qatar,” said Manchester City star Bernardo Silva.
Portugal, who are set to be among the top seeds if they qualify, have not missed a World Cup since 1998, while Euro 2020 was the first major tournament appearance of any sort for
North Macedonia.
They have already defeated Germany as well as Italy away in this campaign, while they drew 0-0 in a friendly on their one previous visit to Portugal, in 2012.
Working together and following the standard operating procedures (SOPs) will ensure safety for students and teachers.
Minister of Education Dato Seri Setia Awang Haji Hamzah bin Haji Sulaiman said this at the daily press conference yesterday in response to the concern of the safety of students when schools are set to re-open on April 4.
“The current trend of the high decrease in positive cases is a good sign, providing confidence for the safety of students as long as every-one strictly follows the SOPs put in place,” said the minister.
The Ministry of Education urges parents and guardians to practise the guidelines including conducting the antigen rapid test (ART) of their children twice a week and ensure that they go to clinics or hospitals if they show signs of any illnesses.
“By everyone working together, Insya Allah we are able to ensure a safe educational environment for the students,” the minister said.
PARIS (AP) — Without Russian help, climate scientists worry how they’ll keep up their important work of documenting warming in the Arctic.
Europe’s space agency is wrestling with how its planned Mars rover might survive freezing nights on the Red Planet without its Russian heating unit.
And what of the world’s quest for carbon-free energy if 35 nations cooperating on an experimental fusion-power reactor in France can’t ship vital components from Russia?
In scientific fields with profound implications for mankind’s future and knowledge, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine is causing a swift and broad decaying of relationships and projects that bound together Moscow and the West. Post-Cold War bridge-building through science is unraveling as Western nations seek to punish and isolate the Kremlin by drying up support for scientific programmes involving Russia.
The costs of this decoupling, scientists said, could be high on both sides. Tackling climate change and other problems will be tougher without collaboration and time will be lost. Russian and Western scientists have become dependent on each other’s expertise as they have worked together on conundrums from unlocking the power of atoms to firing probes into space. Picking apart the dense web of relationships will be complicated.
The European Space Agency’s (ESA) planned Mars rover with Russia is an example. Arrays of Russian sensors to sniff, scour and study the planet’s environment may have to be unbolted and replaced and a non-Russian launcher rocket found if the suspension of their collaboration becomes a lasting rupture. In that case, the launch, already scrubbed for this year, couldn’t happen before 2026.
“We need to untangle all this cooperation which we had, and this is a very complex process, a painful one I can also tell you,” ESA Director Josef Aschbacher said in an Associated Press (AP) interview.
“Dependency on each other, of course, creates also stability and, to a certain extent, trust. And this is something that we will lose, and we have lost now, through the invasion of Russia in Ukraine.”
ABOVE & BELOW: An illustration of the European-Russian ExoMars rover; and the ITER Tokamak machine is pictured in Saint-Paul-Lez-Durance, France. PHOTOS: AP
A Russian Soyuz rocket lifting off from the Kourou space base, French Guiana
International indignation and sanctions on Russia are making formal collaborations difficult or impossible. Scientists who became friends are staying in touch informally but plugs are being pulled on their projects big and small. The European Union (EU) is freezing Russian entities out of its main EUR95 billion (USD105 billion) fund for research, suspending payments and saying they’ll get no new contracts. In Germany, Britain and elsewhere, funding and support is also being withdrawn for projects involving Russia.
In the United States (US), the Massachusetts Institute of Technology severed ties with a research university it helped establish in Moscow. The oldest and largest university in Estonia won’t accept new students from Russia and ally Belarus. President of the Estonian Academy of Sciences Tarmo Soomere said the breaking of scientific connections is necessary but also will hurt.
“We are in danger of losing much of the momentum that drives our world towards better solutions, (a) better future,” he told the AP. “Globally, we are in danger of losing the core point of science – which is obtaining new and essential information and communicating it to others.”
Russian scientists are bracing for painful isolation. An online petition by Russian scientists and scientific workers opposed to the war said it now has more than 8,000 signatories. They warn that by invading Ukraine, Russia has turned itself into a pariah state, which “means that we can’t normally do our work as scientists, because conducting research is impossible without full-fledged cooperation with foreign colleagues”.
The growing estrangement is being pushed by Russian authorities, too. An order from the Science Ministry suggested that scientists no longer need bother getting research published in scientific journals, saying they’ll no longer be used as benchmarks for the quality for their work.
Leading physicist at the Space Research Institute in Moscow Lev Zelenyi, who was involved in the now-suspended collaboration on the ExoMars rover, described the situation as “tragic” and said by email to the AP that he and other Russian scientists must now “learn how to live and work in this new non-enabling environment”.
On some major collaborations, the future isn’t clear. Work continues on the 35-nation ITER fusion-energy project in southern France, with Russia still among seven founders sharing costs and results from the experiment. ITER spokesman Laban Coblentz said the project remains “a deliberate attempt by countries with different ideologies to physically build something together”.
Among the essential components being supplied by Russia is a massive superconducting magnet awaiting testing in St Petersburg before shipment – due in several years.
Researchers hunting for elusive dark matter hope they’ll not lose the more than 1,000 Russian scientists contributing to experiments at the European nuclear research organisation CERN. Director for Research and Computing Joachim Mnich said punishment should be reserved for the Russian government, not Russian colleagues. CERN has already suspended Russia’s observer status at the organisation, but “we are not sending anyone home”, Mnich told the AP.
In other fields as well, scientists said Russian expertise will be missed. Professor at London’s Imperial College Adrian Muxworthy said that in his research of the Earth’s magnetic field, Russian-made instruments “can do types of measurements that other commercial instruments made in the West can’t do”. Muxworthy is no longer expecting delivery from Russia of 250 million-year-old Siberian rocks that he had planned to study.
In Germany, atmospheric scientist Markus Rex said the year-long international mission he led into the Arctic in 2019-2020 would have been impossible without powerful Russian ships that bust through the ice to keep their research vessel supplied with food, fuel and other essentials. The Ukraine invasion is stopping this “very close collaboration”, as well as future joint efforts to study the impact of climate change, he told the AP.
“It will hurt science. We are going to lose things,” Rex said. “Just lay out a map and look at the Arctic. It is extremely difficult to do meaningful research in the Arctic if you ignore that big thing there that is Russia.”
“It really is a nightmare because the Arctic is changing rapidly,” he added. “It won’t wait for us to solve all of our political conflicts or ambitions to just conquer other countries.”
GHARYAN, LIBYA (AFP) – The Libyan city of Gharyan sculpted a reputation for ceramics generations ago, but fragile demand is forcing potters to seek new markets on Instagram and Facebook.
Muayyad al-Shabani didn’t even start out in the craft. He earned a physics degree but struggled to find a job in a country whose economy has been battered by a decade of war and instability since the fall of dictator Moamer Kadhafi.
Then Shabani started, almost by chance four years ago, to sell ceramics online from Gharyan, high in the Nafousa mountains south of Tripoli.
Operating out of a Gharyan workshop, his firm with around 10 employees takes orders directly through dedicated Facebook and Instagram pages, packages each item and despatches them around the world.
“First we tried to get ceramics delivered to Libyans living overseas, in the United Kingdom, Germany, the United States, and it was a great success,” he said.
“Then we started tackling the problems linked to transport, like a lack of decent packaging. So we invested in packaging machines.”
ABOVE & BELOW: A potter makes ceramic pots at a workshop; and locally made ceramics displayed in front of a shop in Gharyan. PHOTOS: AFP
The 35-year-old said he wants to stake out a corner on a market with no borders, and compete with products made in China, Turkey and Libya’s neighbours.
But he knows potters in Gharyan face a competitive disadvantage against rivals from more politically stable countries.
Potteries in Gharyan, a city of 160,000 people, essentially stopped developing in the 1980s and are struggling to keep pace with modernisation, he said.
Businesses across Libya face daunting logistical challenges and an archaic banking system – a challenge Shabani overcomes by receiving payment through an account in Europe.
The money is then withdrawn in cash and delivered to merchants by hand.
At a neighbouring studio, Ali al-Zarqani would like to move online but is not yet equipped to do so and struggles to reach his markets.
Every morning he heads to the family’s workshop in the centre of town.
The road is lined with shops selling a range of pottery creations – dishes, jugs, pitchers, tajines and flower pots, enamelled and hand-decorated with traditional designs.
Some display hundreds of earthenware jugs, used for storing olive oil or cool drinking water in the baking Libyan summers.
Zarqani, 47, learned the craft from his father a quarter of a century ago.
He starts by crushing and sieving clay-rich earth then kneading it to make it easier to sculpt, before efficiently crafting each piece on his wheel then leaving it to dry for up to 12 hours.
Once decorated with natural pigments, the piece is then baked at more than 1,000 degrees Celsius in an electric kiln.
“There’s a lack of basic materials, which we have to import at high prices, and there are also few workers because of a lack of craft schools,” said Zarqani.
“And moreover, demand isn’t stable.”
Still, he hopes “the new generation will take over” to safeguard this “link to our land”.
Shabani, with his online business, is part of that new era and has found ways around the challenges which have left Gharyan’s once-prosperous potteries struggling.
He plans to keep expanding.
“Ceramics are part of our identity,” Zarqani said. “We’re attached to it because it represents the identity of Libya.”
Children aged five to 11 who have been infected with COVID-19 are encouraged to take their vaccine six weeks after recovery, said Minister of Health Dato Seri Setia Dr Haji Mohd Isham bin Haji Jaafar during the special press conference on children’s vaccination programme yesterday.
Deputy Permanent Secretary (Professional) at the Ministry of Health Dr Ang Swee Hui also assured that post-COVID children have an immunity towards the previous and current variants of COVID-19.
YANGON (AFP) – Detained former Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi has skipped three days of her trial in a junta court after COVID-19 was detected among her staff and she was placed in quarantine, a source with knowledge of the case said yesterday.
The 76-year-old’s civilian government was ousted in a coup last year that triggered mass protests, and she faces a raft of charges that could see her jailed for more than 150 years.
Currently on trial for alleged corruption, breaching Myanmar’s official secrets act and pressuring the election commission, Aung San Suu Kyi has not appeared in court since last Thursday, the legal source told AFP.
“Some people in her company have been infected by COVID-19… and so she’s kept in quarantine, although she’s not infected,” the source said.
“We are worried because we haven’t been able to see her.”
Former president Win Myint – charged alongside Aung San Suu Kyi – appeared at the court yesterday via video conferencing, the source added. Aung San Suu Kyi and her personal staff have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19 since being taken into military custody, her lawyer told AFP last July.
She missed a hearing in September due to illness, and in October, her lawyer said her health had suffered from her frequent appearances before the junta-run court.
Journalists are barred from the proceedings in the military-built capital Naypyidaw, and her lawyers have been banned from speaking to the press.
Aung San Suu Kyi was previously sentenced to a total of six years in jail for incitement against the military, breaching COVID-19 rules and breaking a telecommunications law, although she remains under house arrest while she fights other charges.
File photo shows Aung San Suu Kyi in quarantine after her staff tested COVID-19 positive. PHOTO: AFP
