Briefly

INDONESIA

Divers retrieve crash jet's voice recorder

Indonesian navy divers have recovered the cockpit voice recorder of a Sriwijaya Air jet that crashed into the Java Sea in January, killing all 62 people on board, officials said on Wednesday. Divers retrieved the voice recorder at about 8 pm local time on Tuesday, near where the flight data recorder was recovered three days after the accident. The contents of the recorder were not immediately available but the device could help investigators determine what caused the Boeing 737-500 to nosedive into the ocean in heavy rain shortly after it took off from Jakarta on Jan 9.

UNITED STATES

Tropical forests shrink 12 percent

Losses in tropical forests hit their third-highest level in almost two decades last year, rising about 12 percent higher than in 2019, researchers said on Wednesday. They warned of rising deforestation risks as nations restart pandemic-hit economies. The loss in 2020 of 4.2 million hectares of primary forest－intact areas of old-growth trees－equaled the size of the Netherlands, according to data from Global Forest Watch and the University of Maryland. The top three countries for primary forest loss last year were Brazil, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Bolivia.

PAKISTAN

Sugar, cotton imports from India to resume

Pakistan lifted a nearly two-year-old ban on Indian sugar and cotton imports, government sources said, a step toward reviving suspended trade between the two neighbors. Pakistan's Economic Coordination Council, a top decision-making body, on Wednesday allowed the private sector to import 0.5 million metric tons of white sugar as Islamabad tries to keep soaring domestic prices in check, government officials told Reuters. India is the world's biggest producer of cotton and the second biggest sugar producer. Exports to its neighbor will reduce surpluses that are weighing on its local markets, while helping Pakistan to lower soaring sugar prices ahead of Ramadan.

SYRIA

$6b donor pledges fall short of UN goal

The European Union, the United States and dozens of other nations pledged $6.4 billion in aid on Tuesday to help tackle war-ravaged Syria's deepening humanitarian and economic crises and assist neighboring countries hosting refugees. But they came up short of the $10 billion the United Nations had hoped for. The promise of aid came on the final day of an annual conference co-hosted by the UN and the EU. The global pledges were lower than last year's total of $7.7 billion. Before the conference, the UN and other aid groups had said they were seeking more than $4 billion for aid to Syria. A further $5.8 billion was requested for nearly 6 million Syrian refugees who fled their homeland.

Agencies via Xinhua