Archive for May, 2014
Malaysia gets ‘D’, South Korea ‘A-’ in handling of tragedies, says Bloomberg columnist
The Malaysian Insider
MAY 02, 2014
Putrajaya was once again slammed by a Bloomberg columnist who compared Malaysia’s handling of the MH370 saga with South Korea’s response to the recent Sewol ferry tragedy.
In a scathing attack, columnist William Pesek said he would give top marks to South Korea for their handling of the ferry tragedy but found Malaysia sorely lacking in handling the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370.
He said the incidents could be described as tests for the two governments, if not of Malaysian and South Korean societies.
“The grades so far? I’d give Korea an A-, Malaysia a D,” he said in his Bloomberg column titled “One missing jet, one sunken ferry, two responses”.
Read the rest of this entry »
Irregularities in MH370 audio recordings indicate possible editing, say experts
The Malaysian Insider
MAY 03, 2014
Audio forensic experts spotted several irregularities in audio recordings from the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 which suggested they may have been edited, a United States news network reported.
According to NBC News, the experts said at least two different audio sources recorded the tapes, wherein one of those recordings may have been a digital recorder held up to a speaker.
The Malaysian Transport Ministry on Thursday released a 5-page preliminary report on the missing plane along with the audio recording.
Analysts who listened to the recordings also told NBC that they noticed four clear breaks in the audio that indicated edits, NBC reported. Read the rest of this entry »
Hishamuddin’s reiteration umpteenth time yesterday that “we have nothing to hide” is most potent proof he realizes he is fighting losing battle in the credibility war both nationally and internationally because of lack of openness and accountability in MH 370 disaster crisis management
Acting Transport Minister Datuk Seri Hishammddin Hussein in his statement yesterday repeated ad nauseum that “we have nothing to hide” demonstrating a grave guilt complex on this issue.
In fact, Hishammuddin’s reiteration umpteenth time yesterday that “we have nothing to hide” is the most potent proof that he realizes that he is fighting a losing battle in the credibility war both nationally and internationally because of lack of openness and accountability in the MH 370 disaster crisis management.
While continuing to declare that “we have nothing to hide”, he continues to evade accountability and responsibility for what happened in the crucial and critical first few hours of the first day of the missing MH 370 tragedy on March 8, and even enlisted the help of Australia’s Joint Agency Coordination Centre (JACC) chief Angus Houston in the latter’s first public appearance in Malaysia yesterday since heading the multinational search for MH370.
I could not believe it when I read the media report that when asked about the Malaysian government’s preliminary report on the missing MH 370 made public on May 1 and how much attention should be given to past mistakes, Houston parroted Hishammuddin saying that efforts should be focussed “wholly and solely” on the ongoing search. Read the rest of this entry »
Karpal thrilled us with his delivery in court, former judge recalls
by Anisah Shukry
The Malaysian Insider
May 02, 2014
Judges at the Court of Appeal used to eagerly anticipate Karpal Singh’s presence before them, and news of his appearance would immediately give them a ‘lift’, a former appellate court judge recalled this evening.
Speaking at a memorial service for Karpal in Petaling Jaya, Datuk Mahadev Shankar remembered how the fiery lawyer was popular with the judges, all of whom held him in high esteem.
“After I became a judge, I had the opportunity to watch Karpal in action, and I found that he was the best lawyer who ever appeared before me.
“I would rank him the best lawyer in the country,” Mahadev told some 100 people at the memorial organised by Karpal’s former schoolmates from SMK La Salle and St. Xavier’s Institution.
Other speakers at the memorial were Karpal’s son and Puchong MP Gobind Singh Deo, DAP advisor and Gelang Patah MP Lim Kit Siang and former deputy minister of Land and Cooperative Development and former Penang deputy chief minister Dr Goh Cheng Teik.
“He never wasted the court’s time. When he came into court, he went straight for the jugular, without mincing his words.
“More often than not, I agreed with him. Other times, I did not, and I judged against him.
“But this was the opinion of all the judges that time: we put him as number one. When we heard he was coming to court that day, we immediately got a lift,” said the former judge. Read the rest of this entry »
Hudud, Islamic State and Malaysia’s future
Posted by Kit in DAP, Islamic state, Pakatan Rakyat, PAS on Saturday, 3 May 2014
Neil Khor
Malaysiakini
May 2, 2014
COMMENT Come June 2014, some 56 years after independence, Malaysian parliamentarians will decide whether we are going to evolve into an Islamic State as a private members bill allowing the implementation of Hudud Laws in Kelantan is put to them.
For those committed to secularism like this writer, the mind boggles with questions of how we came to this cross-roads after half a century of urbanization and industrialization?
Did Globalization pass us by and left us more conservative or did we take a peek at the world and have decided to reject it.
Confucius said that one has to walk in the shoes of others to understand their perspective. To some Malaysians, the journey from independence through nation building is only meaningful if we recover our full integrity by returning this land to its original state prior to Western colonialism.
To them, Malaya continues to be defined not by its multiculturalism but by its Islamic heritage. Society can only fully recover if Muslims live by the laws of their religion. Read the rest of this entry »
A year after GE13, Malaysia remains in a political rut
Posted by Kit in Najib Razak on Saturday, 3 May 2014
by Sheridan Mahavera
The Malaysian Insider
May 03, 2014
As the country marks one year after arguably the most fiercely fought general election, The Malaysian Insider takes a step back to look at how the country has come since then. In this first part, we look at what has changed since then and if we are better off under the second Barisan Nasional administration of Datuk Seri Najib Razak.
One year after winning an even smaller majority and his first personal mandate, Datuk Seri Najib Razak and his Barisan Nasional (BN) find themselves in the same position as before GE13 – running a country divided by race and religion, and a majority dissatisfied with the ruling government.
Islamic fundamentalists want the Shariah criminal law, hudud, which prescribes amputation for theft; racial friction remains as right-wing groups stoke issues; inflation spiked to 3.5% in March; while three out of five people surveyed are against a 6% consumption tax due April 2015.
Loss-making flag carrier Malaysia Airlines has mysteriously lost a Boeing 777-200ER with 239 on board without any trace after a hunt that now enters its 57th day after days of confusion over its location. It has yet to be found.
Political scientist Dr Wong Chin Huat has described the atmosphere of the past year after the May 5 general elections as being the same as the first four years when Najib took over in 2009 from predecessor Tun Abdullah Badawi who quit over BN’s historic loss of the two-thirds parliamentary super-majority in Election 2008.
“The Najib government in the year after May 5 is characterised by both active suppression of dissents and minorities and passive failure in governance.
“(This is) represented by the persecution of Pakatan Rakyat (PR) leaders and marginalisation of non-Muslims, and its failure in managing the MH370 crisis,” Wong told The Malaysian Insider. Read the rest of this entry »
Guan Eng: Seah a resolute defender of the underdog
Posted by Kit in DAP, Parliament on Saturday, 3 May 2014
Malaysiakini
May 2, 2014
Deceased Teluk Intan MP Seah Leong Peng was a true party loyalist who had stood by the DAP in its darkest days since he became a member in 1995, said secretary-general Lim Guan Eng.
Lim said Seah had stood by the DAP whether from crushing electoral reverses or from the mindless persecution and prosecution of party leaders by the BN “totalitarian” government.
“He was an idealist and a fighter, who refused to bow down to threats and a determined defender of the underdog in his 19 years with the party and 15 years as a wakil rakyat,” the Penang chief minister added.
Seah, 48, died of cancer yesterday after he was diagnosed of the sickness in February. Read the rest of this entry »
GLC dominance disproves Dr M’s claim of non-Malay stranglehold, says DAP MP
Posted by Kit in Brain drain, DAP, Mahathir, NEP on Friday, 2 May 2014
by Joseph Sipalan
The Malay Mail Online
May 2, 2014
KUALA LUMPUR, May 2 ― The economic dominance of government-linked corporations (GLCs) negates Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s assertion of a non-Malay monopoly over the country’s wealth, a DAP MP said yesterday.
Swatting aside Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamed’s claims of Chinese dominion over the country’s wealth and Indian command of its professions to justify pro-Bumiputera affirmative action, Kluang MP Liew Chin Tong argued that GLCs masked the community’s true control on the economy.
“Look at most of the private hospitals, any of the big ones you can name. Take Subang Jaya Medical Centre, that is owned by Sime Darby,” he said, referring to the now renamed Sime Darby Medical Centre.
“Prince Court, which is the country’s most expensive hospital, is owned by Petronas. Pantai hospital and Gleneagles are owned by Kazanah through its subsidiaries.
Sime Darby and Petronas are both state-owned corporations while Khazanah Nasional is state asset manager; these and other GLC’s come under the control of the government headed by Malay nationalist party Umno.
A steadily growing force since the Mahathir administration, GLCs such as Khazanah Nasional, Sime Darby and DRB-Hicom have amassed overflowing war chests and built networks that far surpass that which smaller firms and start-ups can muster.
Putrajaya estimates that firms linked to it employ around 5 per cent of the national workforce, and hold 36 per cent market capitalisation of Bursa Malaysia and 54 per cent of the Kuala Lumpur Composite Index (KLCI) respectively. Read the rest of this entry »
Not a good day to be a Malaysian as the world wakes up to critical and adverse media headlines that nobody noticed MH 370 was missing for 17 minutes and no search was launched for another four hours
Today is not a good day to be a Malaysian as the world wakes up to critical and adverse media headlines on the Malaysian preliminary report on the missing MH370 Boeing 777-200 completing its eighth week of vanishing into the air with 239 passengers and crew on board without leaving any wreckage or clue as to what had happened on the fateful morning of March 8.
All over the world, the media splashed the shocking headlines of the admission from the first Malaysian official report that nobody noticed that Flight MH370 was missing for 17 minutes and no search was launched for another four hours.
Instead of answering the many questions that have been raised in the past eight weeks of the MH 370 disaster, both the preliminary report and the statement by the Acting Transport Minister, Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein, accompanying it have only provoked more questions.
Firstly, the five-page preliminary report on the missing MH 370 had been described as “scant at best” in contrast to the preliminary report into Air France 447 which was released one month after the plane disappeared and which was 128 pages long, while a preliminary report into the Qantas engine explosion over Singapore in 2010 was more than 40 pages with diagrams and charts. Read the rest of this entry »
Investigation Finds 17-Minute Delay in Reporting Missing Plane
By CHRIS BUCKLEY and MICHAEL FORSYTHE
New York Times
1st May 2014
HONG KONG — Seventeen minutes passed after Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 disappeared from civilian radar screens before air traffic controllers in Vietnam and Malaysia raised any concerns about it, according to a Malaysian government report released on Thursday that described confusion and miscommunication in the hours that followed.
The details of delays and miscues came in a preliminary report by Malaysia’s chief inspector of air accidents on the investigation into the missing jet, which left only tantalizing clues to its likely whereabouts that were not recognized or understood for days after it disappeared on March 8. Experts eventually concluded that the plane must have fallen into the southern Indian Ocean off the coast of Western Australia, thousands of miles from its planned route to Beijing over the Gulf of Thailand, where searchers initially wasted crucial days on a fruitless hunt. Read the rest of this entry »
MH370: Compilation of Bizarre Conspiracy Theories – Aliens, Pilot Suicide, Rapper Pitbull’s Prediction, Bermuda Triangle, and More Mind-Boggling Ideas
International Business Times
Thursday, May 1, 2014
The question still remains – will the Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 ever be found? A number of conspiracy theories with capricious notches of reputation regarding the disappearance of Malaysia Ailrines Flight MH370 have spread online ever since the jetliner went missing on March 8. Some people have rich imagination to propose such mind-boggling ideas and suggest the most enduring conspiracy theories about the Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370.
Here, we round up the most controversial theories that had beleaguered the search for the missing jetliner. Read the rest of this entry »
MH370: Malaysia report indicates plane flew route to avoid detection
By Jonathan Pearlman, Sydney
Telegraph
01 May 2014
Map released as part of government findings on flight disappearance suggest it deliberately evaded military radars
Malaysia on Thursday released a preliminary report on the missing Flight MH370 which confirmed that the plane avoided flying over land after an unexplained westward turn and flew along a route apparently designed to prevent it being detected by military radars.
Releasing its first findings on the aviation mystery, the Malaysian government provided a detailed map showing the flight’s unusual path after it disappeared from the screens of air traffic controllers on March 8.
The map indicated that the plane did not – as previously believed – follow a series of predetermined navigational waypoints but instead flew directly above the Strait of Malacca and then turned again and travelled south above seas for about seven hours before crashing in the Indian Ocean. This route would have ensured the plane avoided flying over Indonesian territory – thereby reducing the risk of detection – though it may have passed over the northern tip of Sumatra.
David Learmount, an aviation expert, said the route suggested the aircraft was trying to evade detection and to ensure it was not tracked or targeted by the Indonesian air force. Read the rest of this entry »
British marine archaeologist claims to have found flight MH370 3,000 miles from the search zone after spotting debris painted in the colours of Malaysia Airlines
Tim Akers believes he has discovered MH370 debris off the coast of Vietnam
He says satellite images appear to show tail, wings and other debris
Claims it is more likely plane crashed in South China Sea than Indian ocean
Authorities have been searching for aircraft off coast of Western Australia
Mr Akers had previously been studying Australian waters off Perth for years in search for remains of lost WWII ship – the HMAS Sydney
It comes as airline boss tells relatives of passengers onboard MH370 to go home and wait for further news
By JAMES RUSH and RICHARD SHEARS
Daily Mail
1 May 2014
A British marine archaeologist claims to have found the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 more than 3,000 miles from where authorities are currently searching.
Tim Akers, 56, had been studying Australian waters off Perth for years in a search for the remains of the country’s lost WWII ship – the HMAS Sydney.
The search for the vessel was in the same waters that are believed to contain the missing flight MH370 off the coast of Western Australia.
British marine archaeologist Tim Akers believes he has discovered debris from the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 more than 3,000 miles from where everyone has been looking
A massive search operation involving satellites, aircraft, ships and sophisticated underwater equipment capable of scouring the ocean floor has failed to turn up any trace of the Boeing 777, which disappeared on March 8.
But Mr Akers, of North Yorkshire now thinks he might have discovered where the flight, carrying 227 passengers and 12 crew, went down after it went missing en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.
He claims to have identified what he believes is part of the tail of the jet off the coast of Vietnam – just around 1,000 miles from where the plane took off.
His findings appear to support reports this week from a US former pilot Michael Hoebel, from New York, who believes he found the wreckage of the flight off the coast of Thailand. Read the rest of this entry »
First official report into missing MH370 reveals nobody noticed the plane was missing for 17 minutes and no search was launched for another four hours
Five-page report details last known moments of doomed jet on March 8
It was released by Malaysian government in response to families’ anger
Document reveals first query about whereabouts was at 1.38am local time
But a rescue team was only alerted four hours later at 5.30am
Report recommends new worldwide standard of real-time plane tracking
Search is being scaled down and family help centres will close next week
By DAN BLOOM
Daily Mail
1 May 2014
Air traffic controllers did not notice Flight 370 was missing until 17 minutes after it vanished from radar, an official report has confirmed.
And they did not dispatch a rescue team until almost four hours later – despite contacting staff in Malaysia, Hong Kong and Singapore.
The first official report on the plane’s disappearance was released by the Malaysian government today after politicians came under intense pressure from passengers’ families.
Written almost a month ago and dated April 9, the preliminary report has already been sent to the International Civil Aviation Organisation.
It was meant to stay confidential but Malaysian Prime Minister bowed to demands of families who complained the government had not done enough.
The report confirms the plane disappeared from Malaysian radar at 1.21 am on March 8 with 227 passengers and 12 crew on board, and no trace of it has been found since. Read the rest of this entry »
Wee Ka Siong has finally asked the right question although he is still quite blur about the answer – that MCA cannot say “No” to UMNO because of the latter’s hegemony in Barisan Nasional while DAP and PAS can say “No” to each other as Pakatan Rakyat is a coalition of equals
Posted by Kit in Islam, MCA, Pakatan Rakyat, UMNO on Thursday, 1 May 2014
MCA Deputy President, Datuk Dr. Wee Ka Siong has finally asked the right question although he is still quite blur about the answer.
Yesterday, Wee posed the question to me why I dare not say “No” to PAS President, Datuk Seri Hadi Awang but want MCA to say “No” to UMNO on the issue of hudud.
The answer which Wee is too blind to see or accept is that MCA cannot say “No” to UMNO because of UMNO’s hegemony in Barisan Nasional while DAP and PAS can say “No” to each other as Pakatan Rakyat is a coalition of equals.
Wee must belong to the infinitesimally small group of Malaysian politicians who do not know that the DAP has said “No” to Hadi and the PAS leaders about implementation of hudud as it is against the secular Malaysian Constitution and inappropriate for a modern, multi-racial and multi-religious nation like Malaysia.
This is why hudud is not part of the Pakatan Rakyat agenda or common policy platform, and is only the policy programme of PAS and which could undermine or even destroy the Pakatan Rakyat coalition if this agenda is pursued in utter disregard of the sensitivities, principles and objectives of the other Pakatan Rakyat parties. Read the rest of this entry »
Hudud has no place in present constitutional structure, say legal experts
Posted by Kit in Constitution, Islam on Thursday, 1 May 2014
by V. Anbalagan
The Malaysian Insider
May 01, 2014
Hudud can be enforced in Malaysia only after a new constitution is drawn up to make the nation an Islamic state, constitutional law experts said.
They said the 1957 Merdeka constitution declared that Malaysia was a secular state and Islamic criminal law cannot co-exist with other federal penal legislation.
The lawyers said a legal challenge could be mounted even if the constitution was amended to implement hudud as this would amount to causing irreparable damage to the basic structure of the supreme law.
Furthermore, they said any attempt to introduce a private member’s bill to implement hudud in Kelantan could be legally challenged for going against the constitution. Read the rest of this entry »
U.S. begins to back away from soaring MH370 search costs
by Matt Siegel
The Globe and Mail
Apr. 30 2014
SYDNEY — Reuters
With the search for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 entering a new, much longer phase, the countries involved must decide how much they are prepared to spend on the operation and what they stand to lose if they hold back.
The search is already set to be the most costly in aviation history and spending will rise significantly as underwater drones focus on a larger area of the seabed that Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said on Monday could take six to eight months to search.
But despite U.S. President Barack Obama publicly promising to commit more assets, the United States appears keen to begin passing on the costs of providing sophisticated sonar equipment that will form the backbone of the expanded hunt.
That means Australia, China and Malaysia – the countries most closely involved in the operation – look set to bear the financial and logistical burden of a potentially lengthy and expensive search.
“We’re already at tens of millions. Is it worth hundreds of millions?” a senior U.S. defense official told Reuters last week. “I don’t know. That’s for them to decide.” Read the rest of this entry »
Malaysian universities not among world’s top ‘young’ institutions, global survey shows
Posted by Kit in Education, university on Thursday, 1 May 2014
by Elizabeth Zachariah
The Malaysian Insider
MAY 01, 2014
Malaysian public universities have once again failed to measure up to higher learning institutions around the world, this time being left out of the latest ranking of the annual Times Higher Education (THE) Top 100 Universities under 50 years old.
Four Asian universities are ranked among the top 10 of the world’s young universities, including South Korea’s Pohang University of Science and Technology which took the top spot, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (3), Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (4) and Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (5).
Malaysia, however, failed to get on the list for the second year running. In the first rankings list in 2012, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) was ranked 98th.
This is despite Putrajaya’s claim that Malaysia has one of the best education systems in the world – better than United States, Britain and Germany. Read the rest of this entry »
-
You are currently browsing the archives for May, 2014
