SEMPORNA, Oct 28 — Sabah’s first agriculture development blueprint, which aims to enhance the involvement of village folks and university graduates in agricultural and fisheries activities, will be launched next week.

Sabah Chief Minister Datuk Seri Mohd Shafie Apdal said the blueprint will assist the target group in terms of advice and guidance, including on marketing their products.

“We will launch the first agriculture blueprint, involving the Sabah Agriculture and Food Industry Ministry next month, where we will provide TOL (Temporary Occupation Licence) land for  village youths or university graduates to encourage them to venture into fishery activities,” he said in his speech when opening the “Sahabat Amanah Ikhtiar Malaysia (AIM)” Fiesta here today.

He said further discussions will be held with the District Officers, Sabah Land and Survey Department, as well as with the State Secretary on the TOL permit.

“We may provide land of about seven hectares for them (target group) to rear fish, guide them with the project, like the type of fish to rear, the market price and demand for the fish,” he added.

He said the blueprint was formulated to boost the contributions of the agriculture and fisheries sector to the state’s economy, as well as increase the income of the target group.

Later, when met by reporters, Mohd Shafie expressed his gratitude to AIM for helping to develop women entrepreneurs, with RM17 million for 3,000 small entrepreneurs in Semporna.

AIM has helped a lot in boosting the income of the B40 households, taking them out of the cycle of poverty, he added.

He also thanked Bank Islam for its contribution of RM241,490 to build houses for five “Sahabat AIM” (Friends of AIM), comprising three in Semporna and two in Lahad Datu.

Meanwhile, AIM managing director Mohamed Shamir Abdul Aziz said as of September this year, the agency had disbursed RM208 million to 62,059 Sahabat AIM in Sabah. — Bernama

LONDON: Horse power has a different meaning at the Helsinki International Horse Show as the electricity needs for the FEI World Cup Jumping qualifiers comes entirely from horse manure.

More than 100 tons of manure from 370 horses was used to create 150 megawatt hours of energy that not only provided electricity for the four-day event but also heated homes in the Finnish capital.

The event has generated its own electricity from manure – used to power lights, scoreboards and even charging stations – for the fifth year in a row thanks to a manure-to-energy system developed by the aptly named Fortum HorsePower.

“The manure-to-energy system holds immense potential for countries with large horse populations,” Fortum HorsePower vice-president Anssi Paalanen said.

“(It) has shown that out-of-the-box solutions are needed if we are to move away from our reliance on fossil fuels.

“It’s possible to charge a phone with only 0.2 decilitres of horse manure and the manure produced daily by two horses can generate heat for a single family home for a year.”

Since the system was installed in 2015, around 70,000 tons of manure have been collected, providing heat to 1,250 customers and electricity to the national power grid.

“The use of horse manure to produce electricity on such a large scale is unique to the FEI event in Helsinki,” a spokeswoman told Reuters.

“But at the FEI World Cup Finals in Gothenburg (Sweden) in April, horse manure was also burned on a small scale to produce electrical energy.”

FEI President Ingmar De Vos said the initiative was proof that the equestrian community is serious about the environment.

“The manure-to-energy system has demonstrated that ideas for alternate energy solutions can come from the most unexpected places,” De Vos said.

BEIJING: A sell-off in China’s government bonds is getting worse by the day.
The plunge in the sovereign notes accelerated on Monday, pushing the benchmark 10-year yield up by the most since April.

Selling momentum surged to the strongest since late 2017, according to the 14-day relative strength index on the rate.

Risk appetite has returned as traders become increasingly optimistic that China and the US will sign a partial trade deal next month.

Meanwhile, bets for aggressive monetary easing have waned as the Asian nation’s inflation grew at a faster-than-expected pace in September.

The People’s Bank of China skipped open-market operations and refrained from using a targeted tool to add one-year cash on Monday, effectively draining a net 50 billion yuan (US$7.1 billion) from the financial system as previously issued reverse repurchase contracts came due.

Officials will provide a hint on whether they are willing to keep borrowing costs low as another 540 billion yuan of short-term funds mature over the rest of the week.

Sell-off in China’s government bonds deepens as yield surges most since April
“Sovereign notes could drop more toward the confirmation of a trade deal in November,” said Stephen Chiu, an Asian currency and rates strategist at Bloomberg Intelligence.

The debt will look attractive when the yield is close to 3.4%, he said, adding the rate could fall to 3.2%-3.3% by year-end. “I don’t think the risk-on mood could last. It’s too early to call it a happy ending of the trade war.”

The yield on China’s 10-year government bonds rose 6 basis points to 3.3% as of 4:50 pm in Shanghai. The cost has jumped 29 basis points since hitting a nearly three-year low in early September, making the notes some of the worst-performing in Asia.

The yuan’s 12-month interest-rate swaps climbed to 2.84%, the highest since May, suggesting traders are pricing in tighter liquidity.

KOTA KINABALU, Oct 28 — Two oil palm plantations in Kinabatangan, Sabah are collaborating with a French wildlife and environmental conservation non-governmental organisation (NGO), known as HUTAN, to establish an elephant corridor in an effort to help reduce conflict between humans and wildlife.

HUTAN director Dr Isabelle Lackman said the collaboration, which also involves the Sabah Wildlife Department, aims to strengthen human-wildlife co-existence and further enhance conservation efforts to protect endangered species.

She said one of the plantations is considering setting up a corridor that will link the Lot 2 Kinabatangan Wildlife Sanctuary to the other plantation because of regular elephant sightings in the area.

The collaboration will allow a 100-meter-wide and three-kilometre long corridor for the pilot project, she added.

“This wildlife corridor pilot project is the first of its kind. Oil palm harvesting operations will continue as usual but with very stringent standard operating procedures (SOP), including chemical usage,” she told Bernama here.

Dr Lackman said the SOP will also include training programmes for farm workers as well as the formation of an elephant warden team to effectively manage wildlife in the area.

“We hope the establishment of this pilot corridor project will provide a comfortable and safer route for the elephants. We also hope that by this, the elephants would be able to roam along the corridor and not in the other parts of the plantation so that crop damage could be reduced,” she explained.

Dr Lackman is aware that one of the oil palm companies already has plans to create a harmonious living environment with wildlife in Sukau, Kinabatangan.

Among others, there is no fencing mounted, allowing elephants to roam freely in their plantation, except in their re-planting area, she said.

Based on the frequency of elephant movement sightings to the area last year, Dr Lackman said an estimated 150 elephants use the oil palm plantations as a route to look for food.

“So far, we have found that crop damage caused by the elephants is much smaller than before, there may still be some damage caused, but not as significant,” she said.

Dr Lackman said the plantation companies also organise many awareness programmes on elephant conservation, not only for their staff but also for students.

Also, Dr Lackman said HUTAN, which has been working on the Kinabatangan Orang Utan Conservation Programme since 1998 also found that other wildlife such as the Orang Utan and Maroon Langurs, a type of monkey, had also made the plantations as routes to forage for food.

As such, she added the plantation managements have set aside an area of 380 hectares for a replanting project of native forests trees over the next five years.

The project will create a network of 325 hectares of forest corridors along 60 kilometres of rivers and tributaries throughout the plantation which will be connected with high biodiversity areas. It will also cover an area with Orang Utan nests totalling 56 hectares.

Dr Lackman also believed that if the pilot project of the Kinabatangan elephant corridor is successful, it would set as an example to prove that oil palm plantations can be directly involved in wildlife conservation efforts.

She said this cooperation between NGO, scientists, researchers and the plantation managements in Kinabatangan proves that there is a win-win situation to create a better future for all. — Bernama

NICOSIA: From organising mass protests in Baghdad and Beirut to coordinating rescue missions amid grinding conflict in Syria, WhatsApp has become an indispensable connector for millions across the Arab world.

In Lebanon, where telecommunications are highly regulated and expensive, citizens have increasingly relied on WhatsApp for free calls.

When the government announced a tax on these calls on Oct 17, it sparked protests that grew to an unprecedented scale.

After more than a week of demonstrations, protesters have rejected the term “WhatsApp revolution”, saying the phrase diminishes what is a demand for drastic political change.

But they acknowledge the technology is instrumental in mobilising rallies that have attracted hundreds of thousands from a population of about six million.

Yasmine Rifaii, 24, a protest organiser from Tripoli in northern Lebanon who works at a local NGO, said WhatsApp was operating as a virtual “backstage for the revolution”.

“We are connected to all of these WhatsApp groups – Lebanon is a small country, everyone knows someone else from another city. We are reaching out across religions and locations,” she told AFP.

Over the border in Syria, Whatsapp can be the difference between life and death.

Mustafa al-Hajj Younes, who heads a group of first responders in Idlib province, said civilians use group chats to appeal for help from rescue teams.

“We coordinate on these groups whenever there is a need for our services,” he said.

WhatsApp is especially useful because of weak telecommunications infrastructure in areas under opposition control. “People can only contact us through WhatsApp or cell phones,” he said.

‘Most dangerous app’ 

Across the region, digital authoritarianism is increasing, with some governments regularly blocking popular social media applications including WhatsApp, especially its free calls feature.

Users in Gulf countries such as the United Arab Emirates cannot make internet calls without a proxy server. Messages deemed offensive in court have even landed some users in jail in the UAE.

It is a similar story in Morocco, where the government banned free voice over internet protocol (VoIP) calls in 2016.

A 26-year-old Moroccan journalist who relies on the app to liaise with officials and sources told AFP it was a “national drama” when the decision came into effect, provoking a swift public backlash.

In the wake of small-scale protests in Egypt, police have randomly stopped and frisked people to examine social media content on their phones.

Police arrested many on the spot after inspecting their mobiles, AFP witnessed in September.

That month, the attorney-general’s office said prosecutors had orders to “inspect the social media accounts and pages of those detained”.

In Iraq, where nearly 200 people have died in protests during October, another battle is being waged online.

When anti-corruption demonstrations broke out in many cities early this month, authorities cut internet services in an attempt to quell unrest – a tactic they have used in the past.

“We consider Whatsapp to be the most dangerous application at this stage,” a well-placed security source who preferred to remain anonymous told AFP.

“Cutting the connection to WhatsApp was meant to prevent these gatherings from happening”, he bluntly admitted.

Yasser al-Joubouri, an Iraqi activist who participated in the protests in Baghdad, said the app was crucial for forming activist groups to disseminate details about protests.

“We created (WhatsApp) groups specifically to share information quickly and distribute it on social networks like Facebook and Twitter,” he said.

This sharing of information provokes an “existential fear” for governments that were caught off-guard by the Arab Spring uprisings, said Adel Iskandar, a media studies professor at Simon Fraser University in Canada.

But governments also see that such apps could be beneficial, he added.

“The state sees these platforms not merely as a threat but rather as an opportunity to supplant critical messages with supportive ones,” Iskandar told AFP.

‘Making things easier’

With over 1.5 billion users worldwide, WhatsApp remains the most popular social media programme in terms of usage in the youthful, tech-savvy region, according to a recent survey by Northwestern University in Qatar.

Aside from sharing harrowing content and connecting protesters from turbulent hotspots via in-built encrypted messages, the app is also used for everyday conversations, like elsewhere in the world.

Jordanian officials, as well as other policymakers across the region, regularly communicate with journalists in groups broadcasting statements; they even give sensitive interviews on the freely available instant messaging service.

Jamila Sharaf, a mother-of-two from east Jerusalem, keeps up with activities for her children with the school’s administration informing her and other parents in a group.

“The application makes things easier and helps to spread information very quickly,” she said.

In Iran, officials banned the more secure app Telegram, saying it was used to fuel unrest during a wave of protests in January 2018.

This has driven many young people to Whatsapp.

“The ban on Telegram has made me use WhatsApp more,” said Ramin, a 26-year-old from Tehran.

She described the idea of taxing social media to plug budget shortfalls as “ridiculous”.

“I would (be prepared to) help my government in that situation, but not by paying for something which is meant to be free.”