Archive for August 8th, 2014

Najib must personally speak up and explain why he had reneged on two specific promises of “no toll charges for non-users of EDL” and “No toll for EDL” and whether future Prime Ministerial pledges are any more credible and believable!

The Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department, Datuk Seri Abdul Wahid Omar, failed big time in Johor Bahru on Tuesday when he tried to explain the rationale for the astronomical, unconscionable and unjust 480% causeway toll hike at the Johor causeway from August 1.

All he could say was that the decision to increase the Johor causeway toll at the Customs, Immigration and Quarantine (CIQ) Complex at the Sultan Iskandar Building in JB was made after a two-year study following the government’s decision not to impose toll at the Eastern Dispersal Link (EDL).

Wahid said toll collection at the EDL by its concessionaire, Malaysian Resources Corp Bhd (MRCB) was supposed to have started in 2012, and the government is paying the concessionaire RM11 million a month in compensation.

After a two-year study, it was decided that there was no requirement for the government to take over the EDL.

Wahid has not given any rationale or reason whatsoever to justify the Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak breaking two public and solemn pledges to the people of Johor Bahru in 2012, viz “No toll charges for non-users of EDL” and “No toll for EDL”! Read the rest of this entry »

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Pilots Say U.S. Failed to Assess Ukraine Threat

By ANDY PASZTOR
Wall Street Journal
Aug. 7, 2014

WASHINGTON—U.S. pilot union leaders alleged that federal agencies failed to promptly assess and publicize potential threats posed to airliners flying over eastern Ukraine before the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 last month.

The criticism comes as several federal agencies have begun in recent days to look at possible improvements to the process for identifying and responding to significant threats to civilian aircraft, people familiar with the talks said.

It isn’t clear what changes are being discussed, and officials of the Federal Aviation Administration and intelligence agencies declined to comment on the discussions.

In a speech and separate interview on Wednesday, Lee Moak, president of the Air Line Pilots Association, asserted that U.S. and other governments didn’t properly fulfill their “duty to warn” airlines about the possible hazards of flying over areas where fighting between Ukrainian forces and Russian-backed separatists raged on the ground.

Flight 17 was “a watershed event” and was “uniquely different” from other airliners brought down by hostile fire in earlier decades, Mr. Moak said in the interview. As a result of what occurred over Ukraine last month, he said, “the federal government has to come up with a dynamic process” to alert airlines about such future threats.

When intelligence is available about flying over hostile airspace, he added, “there has to be a timely process to notify” the industry, and then carriers have to more effectively share information between themselves.
Read the rest of this entry »

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Putrajaya salah strategi isu kenaikan tol Tambak Johor: Bahagian 2

Nur Jazlan
The Malaysian Insider
8 August 2014

Kenyataan Menteri di Jabatan Perdana Menteri Datuk Seri Abdul Wahid Omar, Selasa lalu, mengenai kajian untuk menaikkan kadar tol Tambak Johor pada 1 Ogos, sudah dilakukan sejak dua tahun lalu bagi menampung kos pembinaan Lebuhraya Penyuraian Timur (EDL) sebenarnya, membuktikan betapa kerajaan terus ‘berahsia’ kepada rakyat.

Pada masa sama kenyataan menteri yang bertanggungjawab untuk Unit Perancang Ekonomi (EPU) itu mengesahkan segala telahan dan andaian rakyat Johor selatan sebelum ini, mengenai kenaikan kadar tol Tambak Johor adalah untuk menampung pembinaan EDL yang siap sepenuhnya pada 2012.

Bagaimanapun, timbul pula persoalan mengapa syarikat MRCB yang diberikan konsesi membina EDL tidak dibenarkan mengutip tol pada lebuh raya sepanjang 8 kilometer itu? Sedangkan menjadi amalan dalam konsesi lebuh raya di negara ini, syarikat yang membina lebuh raya boleh mengenakan tol kepada penggunanya. Read the rest of this entry »

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Islamic State persecution of Yazidi minority amounts to genocide, UN says

By Jane Arraf, Correspondent
AUGUST 7, 2014
Christian Science Monitor

Tens of thousands of Yazidis have taken refuge on a mountain in Sinjar province after Islamic State fighters overran their town and other areas, pushing out Kurdish paramilitary forces.

BAGHDAD — Sunni Arab militants in northern Iraq are hunting down and killing large numbers of minority Yazidis, acts which amount to genocide, according to a senior United Nations official.

On Sunday, fighters from the self-declared Islamic State overran the city of Sinjar, part of a widening offensive that on Thursday saw IS take control of other Christian and Yzedi towns on the Nineveh plains. According to UN officials and Yazidi elders, the militants have killed hundreds of Yazidis, a secretive faith with pre-Islamic roots. Others have been taken as slaves. Tens of thousands have taken refuge on Sinjar Mountain, their traditional refuge over centuries of persecution, and are appealing for emergency aid.

Unlike Christians, who have been told they must either pay a religious tax or convert to Islam to avoid death, the Yazidis are considered by Sunni militants to be infidels who deserve extermination.

“We believe that what they have done may be classified as genocide and a crime against humanity,” Gyorgy Busztin, the deputy special representative in Iraq of the UN secretary general, tells the Christian Science Monitor. “Regrettably the information indicates that they are not even given the choice of life or conversion but they are being treated as a group to be eliminated from the face of the earth.” Read the rest of this entry »

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