The dry season is expected to peak soon in the province, prompting the authorities to increase their fire-fighting efforts.

Two helicopters were deployed on Tuesday to Palangkaraya, the provincial capital, for water-bombings runs to remote areas.

“We have started water bombings in Central Kalimantan. The ground and air teams are ready in five provinces,” Mr Dody Ruswandi, the secretary-general of Indonesian disaster mitigation agency, told The Straits Times.

Fires have also occurred in Sumatra and Java.

“The situation in Sumatra is under control,” Mr Dody said.

Three areas in Central Kalimantan with forest and plantation fires are Palangkaraya, and the regencies of Pulang Pisau and Gunung Mas.

Other Indonesian areas vulnerable to fire are West Kalimantan province and three provinces in Sumatra: Riau, Jambi and South Sumatra. The haze from forest fires that affects Singapore is usually from Sumatra.

Haze pollution caused by these large fires from Kalimantan are unlikely to reach Singapore unless there is strong wind blowing towards Singapore from the area.

On Monday, each of the five provinces prone to fire received a deployment of about 1,500 military personnel and police officers to help with fire-fighting efforts, Mr Dody said.

The peak of the dry season is usually August and September in South and Central Kalimantan.

Fire-prone Riau province, the part of Indonesia closest to Singapore, has two dry seasons a year – February-March and June-August – and the wind direction in the latter season would be towards the north-east, or in the direction of Singapore and the Malaysian peninsula, according to Indonesian weather agency BMKG.

President Joko Widodo’s administration has been resolute in tackling forest and plantation fires as well as illegal logging, following fires in 2015 which caused more than 500,000 Indonesians to suffer respiratory ailments after being exposed to the choking haze that travelled across borders and blanketed parts of Singapore and Malaysia.

Stepped-up law enforcement – including a shoot-on-sight order against fire-starters – and better fire-fighting equipment mandated for plantation firms have resulted in a significant decline in the scale of the fires, an annual phenomenon usually in the dry season.

Mr Joko has cracked the whip on local officials, too, issuing an unprecedented threat to sack any provincial police chief or local military commander in areas where fires spread uncontrollably.

But still, the spreading fires in Central Kalimantan this week came as Mr Joko lost a Supreme Court appeal in a case where a group of citizens filed a class-action suit accusing the President’s administration of negligence that led to the 2015 fires.

Indonesia’s highest court upheld an earlier ruling that parts of the government were negligent. The Supreme Court decision means the government has to step up fire-prevention measures.

The ruling, as requested in the citizens’ class-action suit, orders the government to issue more restrictive regulations to prevent fire, draw up a road map on forest-fire mitigation and emergency response, give compensation to victims as well as review concessions given to recalcitrant plantation companies.

Responding to the court’s latest ruling, Ms Nur Hidayati, the national executive director of the Indonesian Forum for the Environment, said: “Every year, new generations of Indonesians are exposed to fires and haze while palm and pulp companies benefit from poorly enforced laws and a lack of transparency, allowing them to continue clearing forests and draining peatlands.”

Liu Ke, deputy general manager of the Shenzhen branch of China International Travel Service, told China Daily about 10 percent of their clients have so far decided to cancel or put off plans to visit Hong Kong, but they’re relatively rational.

Shuwa travel agency, which offers high-end products under the branch, organizes trips to Hong Kong and Macao for some 200,000 tourists from across the country each year with average per capita spending reaching 1,000 yuan ($128), many during the summer vacation.

Liu said tourists’ sentiment has been negatively affected and they’re paying close attention to developments in Hong Kong. But, the agency has told clients that the SAR remains safe for travel.

However, he said it’s hard to predict what would happen during the summer vacation period as the protests are still going on, disrupting public order.

The summer months of June and July have traditionally been a golden season for the travel industry, but Hong Kong saw its number of tourists fall by 13 percent in June, compared with the previous month, according to the Hong Kong Tourism Board.

Data from a leading Chinese online travel agency show that the number of Hong Kong-bound tourists in July has expanded by 12 percent compared to last month, while that to Southeast Asian countries expanded by half. The most popular destinations in Southeast Asia are Thailand, Singapore and Malaysia.

Overall, the travel market is still on the rise. The number of people who had booked for group, individual and customized tours to Hong Kong from June 15 to July 31 through the travel agency has shown a year-on-year increase of 25 percent.

The protests in Hong Kong have also affected travel to the city by tourists from countries like Japan, the United States, South Korea and Ireland, which have warned their citizens about visiting the SAR due to security concerns.

No casualties or damages were reported and the earthquake did not cause a panic, as Balinese continued to observe Galungan solemnly throughout the day.

The earthquake happened at 9:29 a.m. local time, when most people flocked to temples across the island. “I was at a temple when I felt something, like shaking. Apparently, it was an earthquake,” Putu Deny, a Denpasar resident, said.

The Meteorology, Climatology, and Geophysics Agency (BMKG) reported that the epicenter of the earthquake was at sea, 84 kilometers southwest of Jembrana in west Bali and 71 km deep.

The quake was felt in Denpasar, Gianyar, Tabanan, Buleleng and North Lombok as well as Banyuwangi and Jember in East Java. “No tsunami warning has been issued,” the head of the BMKG’s Denpasar branch, Taufik Gunawan, said in a statement.

“We urged all people to keep calm,” Taufik added.

Bali Disaster Mitigation Agency (BPBD) head Made Rentin said there were no reports of casualties or any damage as a result of the natural disaster.

“The Balinese are continuing to take part in Galungan prayers at their respective family temples,” Rentin said.

Tourist activities and operations at I Gusti Ngurah Rai International Airport ran as normal.

A Chinese map of the stars is among a collection of old maps showcased by Cambridge University in the United Kingdom to mark 50 years since the moon landing.

A selection of moon and star maps have been featured in social media posts by Cambridge University Library to coincide with the Apollo 11 launch.

These include a rubbing, or a precise copy, of the Chinese map Tianwen tu, made around 1190 by Huang Shang, a cartographer, during the Shaoxi reign (1190-1194) of the Southern Song Dynasty (1127-1279).

The original map is now lost but the university said that in 1247, a copy was engraved on a stone slab by Wang Zhiyuan, an official in charge of legal matters during the Chunyou reign (1241-1252) of Southern Song Dynasty.

It is the 19th century rubbing from this stone copy that is held in the collection.

In the 1990s, the Chinese government authorized 10 rubbings to be made from carved stone. Nine went to the Chinese museums and institutions, leaving only one available for private sale.

The History of Chinese Science and Culture Foundation in London believes it held the only original rubbing of the map in the West which was acquired by the Purple Mountain Observatory in Nanjing in the 1990s. The slab is now preserved at the Chinese observatory.

On July 10, a Tianwen tu showed up at a Christie’s auction in London with a high estimate of 600,000 pounds ($760,000), but it failed to find a buyer.

The auction house said rubbings taken from the stones are now highly regulated by the Chinese government in order to preserve the stones from further damage. Most of the existing rubbings are held in institutions within China.

According to the foundation, the text on the map says 1,565 stars are known, but only 1,440 of them have been depicted.

“The representations of the planets have an astrological rather than an astronomical purpose,” the foundation said on its website.

Another map featured on the library’s social media is Mare Tranquillitatis, a lunar mare, shown on the 1742 edition of Atlas Coelestis, which translates to Atlas of the sky.

The map was created by Johann Gabriel Doppelmayr, a German mathematician, astronomer and cartographer.

Another image shows the John F. Kennedy Space Center, from where NASA launched Apollo 11 on July 16, 1969.

According to library assistant Priyanka Pais, “These maps show iterations of the lunar landing site documented at different points in history.”

As well as the digital display, the library will hold a small exhibition, only for the library’s card holders, showcasing the maps shown online and some others from the library’s collection on Friday.

Fifty years ago, an estimated 600 million people watched Apollo 11, carrying Neil Armstrong, Edwin Buzz Eldrin and Michael Collins, become the first manned spacecraft to land on the moon.

As the images were beamed across the world, Armstrong’s words, “one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind”, were etched into history.

The library’s digital exhibition also features copies of national and local newspaper coverage from the time of the mission.

It will also host a program in August for visitors to discover space facts and science fictions from the modern collections, including early science fiction, reporting of the first moon landing and children’s books relating to space travel.

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/201907/19/WS5d311c29a310d830563ffe0a.html

A Russian military aircraft intruded into South Korea’s airspace above the East Sea twice on Tuesday, prompting Air Force fighter jets to fire warning shots in response, military officials said.

Two other Russian warplanes and two Chinese bombers also entered South Korea’s air defense identification zone without prior notice.

According to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Russian warplane, identified as an A-50 — an airborne early warning and control aircraft — entered South Korea’s territorial airspace, some 12 to 13 kilometers away from Dokdo, at 9:09 a.m.

South Korean F-15K fighter jets sent warnings, dropped some 10 flares, and fired 80 warning shots into the air close to the Russian aircraft. The Russian warplane left the area at 09:12 a.m. and exited the KADIZ at 9:15 a.m.

The A-50, however, again entered South Korean airspace at 9:33 a.m. for the second time, prompting Korean fighter jets to fire 280 warning shots and 10 flares. The warplane left the area at 9:37 a.m. and flew toward the Northern Limit Line, exiting the KADIZ at 9:56 a.m.

The JCS said it is the first time any foreign military aircraft has violated South Korea’s territorial skies, and also the first time the Air Force has fired warning shots.

The Russian aircraft is assumed to have been participating in a joint military exercise with China, as two other Russian warplanes were also found entering into the KADIZ along with two Chinese bombers.

“While more time is needed to clarify the purpose of these violations, it is the first time that warplanes from the two countries have entered the KADIZ at the same time,” the JCS said.

The Chinese H-6 bombers were first found entering the KADIZ at 6:44 a.m. before flying out to the Japanese air zone and then reentering the KADIZ. Flying around the KADIZ near Ulleungdo and Dokdo, they were joined by two Russian bombers identified as TU-95, which came down from the Northern Limit Line, the de facto maritime border with North Korea.

The Chinese aircrafts appear to have left the KADIZ at around 1:11 p.m., while the two Russian bombers reentered at 1:11 p.m. and finally left KADIZ at 1:38 p.m. The Russian A-50 left KADIZ earlier at 9:56 a.m., after it flew out of South Korea’s territorial skies.

The route of the Russian plane’s incursion

South Korea’s Air Force deployed 18 fighter jets, including the F-15K and KF-16, which sent 20 warning signals to Chinese aircrafts and 17 warnings to Russia’s A-50 and TU-95s.

Japan also also taken similar measures inside their ADIZ, South Korea’s JCS said.

While the warplanes were flying above the South Korean waters, two Chinese warships were also found nearby — some 80 nautical miles east of Pohang, and 30 nautical miles from Jeju Island, respectively.

Territorial sky differs from the air identification zone, as it is considered a country’s sovereign territory, under international law. Territorial airspace, as is the territorial sea, is set as 12 nautical miles or 22.2 kilometers out from the coastline of the land.

An ADIZ, on the other hand, is not defined by any law or treaty, but is declared by a state, so that it can detect foreign planes approaching its territorial airspace early to prevent infiltration and accidental clashes.

http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20190723000808

The figure included the $885 million equity purchase of South Korean KEB HANA Bank for a 15 per cent stake by the Bank for Investment and Development of Vietnam (BIDV) announced on Monday.

Since 2018, Vietnam has emerged as a major M&A market in the Southeast Asian region with many big value deals. Total M&A value last year reached $7.64 billion, down 25 per cent compared to 2017’s record value of $10.2 billion. However, if the $5 billion deal from ThaiBev’s purchase of Sabeco’s equity in 2017 is excluded, the 2018’s M&A value still increased by 41.4 per cent year-on-year.

Dang Xuan Minh, general director of AVM Vietnam, said foreign investors were seeking opportunities in the consumer goods manufacturing and real estate industries in Vietnam to capitalise on the huge market of more than 96 million people.

“At a Bloomberg’s investment conference in Thailand recently, many foreign investors expressed their keen interest in Vietnam’s market and said they want to seek opportunities here,” Minh told the meeting to introduce the Vietnam M&A Forum 2019 on Tuesday.

Interested industries included consumer goods, retail, real estate, education and logistics, Minh said, while also pointing out the obstacles that might hinder foreign investment including slow state-owned enterprise (SOE) equitisation process, high State holding ratio in equitised companies, overvalued assets and the lack of transparency and English proficiency in Vietnamese firms.

Minh predicted the M&A value could reach $6.7 billion by year-end, but left open the possibility of higher value if big deals like KEB HANA Bank in BIDV were to be concluded.

Michael DC Choi, deputy general director of Korea Trade Investment Promotion Agency (KOTRA) told Vietnam News that valuation was one of the biggest obstacles to seek investment in small companies in Vietnam.

“There’s no clear standard to value the company properly. You have to trust and take all risks in the deal,” he said.

After a decade of strong growth, Vietnam’s M&A market value reached nearly $50 billion and is predicted to enter a new era with various opportunities.

Deputy Minister of Planning and Investment Vo Thanh Thong said Vietnam was promoting M&A activities in tandem with SOE equitisation in various sectors like transportation, infrastructure, food, agriculture, telecommunications, trade, services and tourism.

Thong said recent new policies such as the draft amendments and supplementations to some important laws (the Law on Investment, Law on Enterprises and Law on Securities), the draft resolution on attracting new-generation foreign investment and newly-signed free trade agreements would help lure more investment, including M&A deals.

He said the Politburo would for the first time issue a separate resolution on attracting foreign investment in the future.

Meanwhile, Le Trong Minh, chief editor of Vietnam Investment Review, the event organiser, said Vietnam also faced challenges from domestic and international factors such as rising trade tension in the world, slow equitisation and divestment of state-owned enterprise and modest local market value.

The 11th annual Vietnam M&A Forum 2019 themed “Going for breakthrough” will take place in GEM Conference Centre in HCM City on August 6. The forum will assess the M&A trends in the next few years, analyse new capital flows, opportunities and driving forces for M&A in Vietnam, Minh said.

West Philippine Sea is the local name of the waters within the Philippines’ 370-kilometer exclusive economic zone (EEZ) in the South China Sea, nearly all of which China claims.

Esperon, a former military chief of staff, said China was just “in position,” as it had established a presence in parts of the South China Sea claimed by its smaller neighbors in the region.

Besides the Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia, Taiwan and Vietnam also have competing claims in the South China Sea.

‘Positional advantage’

“I think the President did not say that they are ‘in possession’ but they are ‘in position,’” Esperon told reporters.

He said China’s militarization in the South China Sea from 2012 to 2016 enabled it to take “positional advantage” over its rivals for territory in the strategic waterway.

“Admittedly, China has built islands, artificial islands, in the West Philippine Sea and in the South China Sea starting from 2012 to 2016 and up to now. But the construction of islands there were completed as of 2016, so they are in position in such islands,” Esperon said.

“They have the positional advantage right now and they have the equipment to reinforce their position, so what is our answer there? Our response is to also strengthen our position,” he said.

Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana agreed with Esperon, noting that President Duterte could be just referring to Panatag Shoal, internationally known as Scarborough Shoal, when he said China was “in possession” of the West Philippine Sea.

“They are in position on their islands, but they are not in possession of the West Philippine Sea because we are also claiming it,” Lorenzana said.

No, ‘in possession’

Presidential spokesperson Salvador Panelo, however, said what the President said was that China was “in possession” of the West Philippine Sea and that as far as he was concerned, China owned those waters.

“Maybe it’s the pronunciation. Possession. And his position is, ‘as far as I’m concerned, they own that,’” Panelo told reporters.

According to a Palace transcript of the 2019 State of the Nation, the President said: “China also claims the property and he is in possession. That is the problem. They are in possession and claiming all the resources there as an owner.”

Panelo said China’s military presence in the South China Sea showed that it was in possession of the heavily disputed waterway.

Supreme Court Senior Associate Justice Antonio Carpio, who has done an extensive study of the territorial dispute between the Philippines and China in the South China Sea, also challenged the President’s claim that China was in possession of the West Philippine Sea.

“China is in possession of seven features in the Spratlys plus Scarborough Shoal. In addition, during the Duterte administration, China seized Sandy Cay from the Philippines. The total area of these geologic features, including their territorial seas [if any], is less than 7 percent of the West Philippine Sea,” Carpio said in a television interview on Tuesday.

Freedom of navigation

Carpio, part of the legal team that successfully argued the Philippines’ challenge to China’s sweeping claim in the UN-backed Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, said the regular freedom of navigation operations and naval drills of the United States, United Kingdom, France, Australia, Japan and Canada in the South China Sea also “demonstrate that China is not in possession of the West Philippine Sea.”

But Panelo insisted that China was in possession of the West Philippine Sea.

“When you’re in possession, do you only possess one portion? If you have military installations there, in other words you are showing that you can guard the entire area. It means they are in possession,” he said.

Carpio, in his television interview, said the Senate could either ratify or reject the Pr’s supposed verbal agreement with Chinese President Xi Jinping allowing the Chinese to fish in the West Philippine Sea and the Filipinos to fish at Panatag Shoal, a traditional fishing ground in those waters that belonged to no particular country but that China seized in 2012.

“The Senate has to act now and either ratify or repudiate that fishing agreement. If you allow China to fish, that is a treaty or international agreement and that requires concurrence of the Senate,” Carpio said.

Fair agreement

The Senate owes it to the public to find out if the President struck a “fair agreement” with Xi, Carpio said, stressing that foreign nations may be allowed by agreement to fish in one another’s EEZ but only if there is a “surplus.”

“If the Chinese are allowed to fish in the West Philippine Sea, they will take all the fish because they have a huge fishing fleet, the largest in the world,” Carpio said, adding that China has about 200,000 large motorized fishing vessels.

“They can scoop the fish there in less than a year. And the fish will be gone, it would be depleted. And we cannot compete with China because we have small bancas, wooden boats,” he said.

“How did he know that?” Panelo countered. “If his point is that fish will run out, how did he know that we will run out of fish there? Don’t fish reproduce?”

The absence of an “official resistance” from the Duterte administration would have a long-lasting impact on the Philippines’ footing in asserting its sovereignty and sovereign rights in the West Philippine Sea, Jay Batongbacal, director of the University of the Philippines’ Institute for Maritime Affairs and Law of the Sea, said on Tuesday.

Critics’ point

“He still does not understand that the point of critics is not to go to war, but rather come up with a better and stronger negotiating strategy and position in dealing with China, instead of simply acquiescing to everything that China wants,” Batongbacal said.

Pertamina was ranked 175th, a leap of 78 slots from 253rd the previous year. The state-owned oil and gas company was ranked above the Alibaba Group at 182nd and Facebook at 184th.

State-Owned Enterprises Minister Rini Soemarno said the success of Pertamina of seven consecutive years on the Fortune 500 list was thanks to the company’s hard work in serving the people. “I congratulate Pertamina for its success in joining the Fortune Global Top 500 list again,” she was quoted as saying by kompas.com.

The yearly list is based on revenue in the past twelve months. In 2018, Pertamina booked revenue of $57.93 billion, a 34.9 percent increase year-on-year. The company’s net profits totaled $2.52 billion, while its assets stood at $64.7 billion.

In the mobile technology world, Apple is still the leader, sitting at 11th place overall, followed by Samsung in 15th, while Google’s parent conglomerate Alphabet is 37th.

In 2018, four state-owned companies, namely Bank Mandiri, Telkom Indonesia, Bank Negara Indonesia and Bank Rakyat Indonesia, as well as two private companies, Bank Central Asia and Gudang Garam, joined the global 2000 List of the World’s Best Employers in 2018 issued by Forbes magazine.

Hotels in various districts across the city will be affected at varying degrees, and the average hotel room rate is likely to drop by 10 percent, predicted Michael Li Hon-shing, executive director of the Federation of Hong Kong Hotel Owners.

He said on Tuesday the impact on high-end hotels would be particularly obvious amid depressed investment sentiment, with fewer businesspeople coming to Hong Kong.

According to the Hong Kong Tourism Board, average hotel room rates per night in the first five months of this year rose by 0.6 percent from the same period a year ago. But, upscale hotels recorded a 0.4 percent drop in average nightly room rates year-on-year to HK$2,141 ($274).

The special administrative region received 5.14 million tourists last month — down 13 percent from a month earlier. Visitors from the Chinese mainland accounted for nearly 70 percent of the total number of tourist arrivals during the same period, but the number of mainland tourists dwindled by 3.6 percent and 2.5 percent in the third and fourth week of June, respectively, as large-scale protests broke out.

Li said potential visitors would balk at coming to Hong Kong after watching the demonstrations on television.

He said he will discuss with others in the hotel industry about ways of overcoming the problems. He suggested the tourism board explain Hong Kong’s latest situation to countries in the region, including Japan, South Korea and those in Southeast Asia, with the message that Hong Kong remains safe for tourists as the protests occur only during weekends.

Li believes it’s necessary to keep people in foreign countries informed about developments in Hong Kong, and strive to minimize the negative impact on the city’s tourism business.

The SAR government is in touch with various sectors, he said, and hopes Hong Kong people could resolve their differences in a peaceful and rational manner.

In his view, Sunday night’s attacks on bystanders and commuters by groups of men armed with sticks and metal rods at Yuen Long MTR station was an isolated incident.

Li believes the SAR government, the police and people from all walks of life do not condone such violent acts.

The comments by an office spokesperson came after the US Department of State made false remarks on Hong Kong one day earlier.

The office’s spokesperson stated that it is widely recognized that the principles of “one country, two systems”, “Hong Kong people administering Hong Kong” and a high degree of autonomy in the SAR have been faithfully implemented since the return of Hong Kong to its motherland.

Hong Kong people now enjoy unprecedentedly extensive democratic rights and freedoms in accordance with law, the spokesperson said. The US accusation of the so-called “erosion of Hong Kong’s autonomy” is a biased and groundless smear attempt driven by political motives, the spokesperson added.

The office expressed strong disapproval and firm opposition against the US Department of State’s remarks on Hong Kong.

The spokesperson emphasized that the recent extreme and violent acts in Hong Kong have seriously undermined the foundation of the rule of law in Hong Kong, posed a grave threat to public security and order, and trampled on the red line of “one country, two systems”.

“We again urge the US side to avoid applying double standards, immediately stop sending out any wrong signal on illegal violence, and immediately refrain from interfering in Hong Kong affairs and China’s domestic affairs as a whole under any pretext,” the spokesperson said.