[unable to retrieve full-text content]
Mr Mohd Ali Hanafiah, an officer from the Raub Department of Agriculture (DOA), said a smaller harvest is expected in the coming months due to the unpredictable weather.
“If the weather in May is good, we could get a harvest in November. For now, it is hard to estimate. The weather has been a challenge for the farmers,” he said, adding that it takes about 150 days from flowering to the ripening of the fruit.
Raub, a town in Pahang, is one of the main areas for the production of durian in Malaysia.
Malaysian Durian Exporters Association president Sam Tan told CNA that the typical durian season around June and July would be delayed because of the weather.
He estimated a decrease of almost 80 per cent in production this season.
“It usually starts to get hot in January but this year, it has always been raining.
“The season will be delayed to October and prices are expected to go down then. There will still be durian in June, but little compared to usual,” he said.
He said that prices will be about 30 per cent higher than usual, with the IOI variety costing about RM 30 per kilogram, compared to about RM22 last year.
Mr Tan predicted that the costs of durian will go down in a few years, as many people had started to grow durian in the past several years.
“There will be a huge supply in the coming years as the newly planted trees will be able to produce fruit,” he said.
WASHINGTON: A swarm of 10 bright blue drones lifts off in a bamboo forest in China, then swerves its way between cluttered branches, bushes and over uneven ground as it autonomously navigates the best flight path through the woods.
The experiment, led by scientists at Zhejiang University, evokes scenes from science fiction - and the authors in fact cite films such as Star Wars, Prometheus and Blade Runner 2049 in the opening of their paper published Wednesday (May 4) in the journal Science Robotics.
"Here, we take a step forward (to) such a future," wrote the team, led by Xin Zhou.
In theory, there are myriad real world applications, including aerial mapping for conservation and disaster relief work. But the technology has needed to mature so that flying robots can adapt to new environments without crashing into one another or objects, thus endangering public safety.
Drone swarms have been tested in the past, but either in open environments without obstacles, or with the location of those obstacles programmed in, Enrica Soria, a roboticist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne, who was not involved in the research, told AFP.
"This is the first time there's a swarm of drones successfully flying outside in an unstructured environment, in the wild," she said, adding the experiment was "impressive".
The palm-sized robots were purpose-built, with depth cameras, altitude sensors and an on-board computer. The biggest advance was a clever algorithm that incorporates collision avoidance, flight efficiency and coordination within the swarm.
Since these drones do not rely on any outside infrastructure, such as GPS, swarms could be used during natural disasters.
For example, they could be sent into earthquake-hit areas to survey damage and identify where to send help, or into buildings where it's unsafe to send people.
It's certainly possible to use single drones in such scenarios, but a swarm approach would be far more efficient, especially given limited flight times.
Another possible use is having the swarm collectively lift and deliver heavy objects.
There's also a darker side: Swarms could be weaponised by militaries, just as remote-piloted single drones are today. The Pentagon has repeatedly expressed interest and is carrying out its own tests.
"Military research is not shared with the rest of the world just openly, and so it's difficult to imagine at what stage they are with their development," said Soria.
But advances shared in scientific journals could certainly be put to military use.
The Chinese team tested their drones in different scenarios - swarming through the bamboo forest, avoiding other drones in a high-traffic experiment, and having the robots follow a person's lead.
"Our work was inspired by birds that fly smoothly in a free swarm through even very dense woods," wrote Zhou in a blog post.
The challenge, he said, was balancing competing demands: The need for small, lightweight machines, but with high-computational power, and plotting safe trajectories without greatly prolonging flight time.
For Soria, it's only a matter of a few years before we see such drones deployed in real-life work. First, though, they will need to be tested in ultra-dynamic environments like cities, where they'll constantly come up against people and vehicles.
Regulations will also need to catch up, which takes additional time.
COLOMBO: Crisis-struck Sri Lanka's vital tea exports have dropped to their lowest level in 23 years, official figures showed on Wednesday (May 4), hit by a fertiliser ban and the war in Ukraine.
Tea is the island nation's biggest export commodity, bringing in about US$1.3 billion annually before the current economic downturn, the worst since independence in 1948.
But a bungled ban on fertiliser imports last year - introduced in a doomed effort to save foreign currency and avoid a debt default - hit growers hard, with production falling 18 per cent on-year for the period from November 2021 to February 2022.
Customs data showed that first-quarter exports in 2022 correspondingly plunged to 63.7 million kilograms, down from 69.8 million kilograms in the January-March period last year.
The tally was the lowest since the first quarter of 1999, when the country shipped out 60.3 million kilograms of tea.
Export earnings for the first quarter also declined, to US$287 million from US$338 million.
Tea brokering firm Asia Siyaka blamed the drop on the agro chemical ban, which was portrayed by the government as a push to turn Sri Lankan farming 100 per cent organic.
The ban was lifted by October following backlash from the industry, but farmers were left unable to access imported fertiliser as the country simultaneously ran out of dollars.
Industry officials added that about 10 per cent of Sri Lanka's tea exports had also been affected by Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Both countries are top buyers of the island's aromatic black tea.
The country of 22 million lacks enough foreign currency to finance even the most essential imports such as food, fuel and medicines.
Dire shortages and galloping inflation have led to widespread protests calling for President Gotabaya Rajapaksa to step down.
LONDON: British energy giant BP said Tuesday (May 3) that its decision to pull out of Russia as a result of the war in Ukraine pushed it deep into the red in the first three months of this year.
BP said in a statement it booked net loss of US$20.4 billion (€19.4 billion) in the period from January to March compared with a bottom-line profit of $4.7 billion a year earlier.
The huge loss was attributable to the group's decision in February to pull its 19.75 per cent stake in energy group Rosneft, ending more than three decades of investment in Russia, BP said.
"Our decision ... to exit our shareholding in Rosneft resulted in the material non-cash charges and headline loss," BP chief executive Bernard Looney said in a statement.
BP said the charges connected to the break with Rosneft amounted to $25.5 billion before tax.
That wiped out the positive effect of rising energy prices, driven by concerns of tight supplies following the invasion by major oil and gas producer Russia, the group said.
First-quarter revenues jumped by 40 per cent to $51 billion.
"In a quarter dominated by the tragic events in Ukraine and volatility in energy markets, BP's focus has been on supplying the reliable energy our customers need," Looney said.
Later on Tuesday, the European Commission will propose to member states a new package of sanctions against Russia over President Vladimir Putin's decision to invade Ukraine, including an embargo on Russian oil, officials said.
Already on Monday, the EU had warned member states to prepare for a possible complete breakdown in gas supplies from Russia, insisting it would not cede to Moscow's demand that imports be paid for in rubles.
Despite the massive first-quarter loss, BP's share price jumped by 1.9 per cent to 399 pence in early trading on London's FTSE 100 index, which was down overall.
CMC Markets UK analyst, Michael Hewson, attributed the share's strong performance to an announcement that BP will buy back another $2.5 billion in shares, and further reduce its net debt.
SYDNEY: Australia's central bank raised interest rates for the first time in more than a decade on Tuesday (May 3), a pre-election hike designed to curb soaring consumer prices.
The Reserve Bank of Australia raised the main lending rate by 25 basis points to 0.35 per cent, the first increase since November 2010.
Ending record-low rates, the bank said inflation had "picked up significantly and by more than expected", while signalling that "further increases in interest rates" would come.
The move plunged the bank into the centre of a fierce political debate about the health of Australia's economy, just weeks before a May 21 election.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison, who is trailing in the polls, said he sympathised with mortgage borrowers who would now face rising costs.
But he insisted Australia is faring better than its peers and that rising inflation is a result of worldwide trends.
Like consumers around the world, Australians have been hit by soaring prices for food and fuel. Australia's annual inflation rate is currently at 5.1 per cent.
But house prices have been rising for years even as wages have stagnated. Sydney and Melbourne are among the most expensive cities in the world to live.
Morrison pointed to the impact of supply chain constraints caused by the pandemic and a war in Ukraine that has caused "the single largest energy shock we've seen around the world since the 1970s".
The opposition Labor party painted the rate rise as evidence of a weakening economy and the conservative government's economic maladministration.
"If only you could pay your mortgage with Scott Morrison's excuses," said opposition economic spokesman Jim Chalmers.
The rate rise is expected to be the first of several, which could have serious implications for Australia's once-perennially growing economy.
Higher interest rates will spell higher borrowing costs for millions of already heavily indebted Australians, in a country where real estate market speculation is something like a national pastime.
SHANGHAI: Some of Shanghai's 25 million people came out for brief walks and grocery shopping on Tuesday (May 3) after enduring more than a month under a COVID-19 lockdown, while China's capital Beijing embarked on another round of mass testing to control a nascent outbreak.
Social media posts showed Shanghai residents strolling in their suburbs, or queuing up at supermarkets that have been allowed to reopen. One picture showed two women carrying a pole with four bulky bags of groceries on their shoulders.
That was the result of an incremental easing of curbs in five of the city's 16 districts from Sunday, home to about a fifth of Shanghai's population, where some people were allowed to leave their housing compounds for the first time in weeks.
The level of the restrictions varied from one residential complex to another. In many compounds, a single person from each household could go out at a time, for a maximum of three hours.
Most do not get permission to drive or even ride a bike, prompting jokes on social media.
One WeChat page used to organise group orders for basic necessities during the lockdown listed a donkey priced at 88,888 yuan ($13,450) with a delivery date set after 365 years as an alternative to using vehicles to transport groceries.
"Please count me in for one of those donkey group buys," one resident commented on the post.
In China, the number eight is associated with prosperity.
Increasingly out of step with most other countries which have significantly eased or even completely lifted coronavirus restrictions, China has given no hint of deviating from its zero-COVID policy.
China has accepted a heavy economic cost and demanded huge personal sacrifices from millions forced into prolonged isolation.
Many of these people have struggled with lost income, difficulty sourcing food and severe delays in access to emergency healthcare and other basic services. This has led to rare outbursts of anger in a sensitive year for President Xi Jinping, who is widely expected to secure a precedent-breaking third leadership term this fall.
Chinese authorities say their COVID-19 policies aim to save as many lives as possible, pointing to the millions of deaths COVID-19 has caused outside China.
Authorities reported 20 new COVID-19 deaths on May 2, all in Shanghai, taking China's total to 5,112 since the pandemic began.
