Chronic rent-seeking due to corrupted NEP, says Ku Li
Posted by Kit in Corruption, Education, NEP, Razaleigh Hamzah on Friday, 4 April 2014, 8:30 am
by Joseph Sipalan
Malay Mail Online
4 April 2014
KUALA LUMPUR, April 4 — “Haywire” implementation of the New Economic Policy (NEP) was the cause of the rampant cronyism and rent-seeking now ailing Malaysia, said veteran lawmaker Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah.
The former finance minister said the practice of patronage in implementing the policy had undermined the “just and noble” philosophy that underpinned the social engineering programme that was mooted in the aftermath of the May 13, 1969 racial riots.
“The entrenchment of rent-seeking and patronage system into the fabric of Malaysian life begs the question: How did this come to pass?” he said in his keynote address at the launch of the book “Rich Malaysia, Poor Malaysians” last night.
“Much as this sounds like a blame game and much as this is distasteful to swallow, the answer lies in the New Economic Policy; or rather, the NEP that had gone wrong in its implementation,” he added.
Tengku Razaleigh, or Ku Li as he is popularly known, said the country has fallen victim to the machinations of politicians habitually lining their own pockets and colluding with businessmen who were uncompetitive without preferential treatment. Read the rest of this entry »
Time, Batteries Running Out on Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 ‘Black Box’
By Ross Kelly in Perth, David Winning in Sydney
Wall Street Journal
April 3, 2014
The Australian head of the international search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 has called the operation one of the “most challenging” he has ever seen.
As the chances dim for finding Malaysia Airlines 370’s “black box” flight recorders before the batteries in their locator beacons run out, Malaysian and Australian leaders sought to inject new momentum into a search of the southern Indian Ocean that has yet to find plane wreckage.
Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak met aircrews involved in the multinational search for Flight 370 at Pearce air base, near Perth, on Thursday. The visit is Mr. Najib’s first to Australia since the focus of the search swung abruptly to the southern Indian Ocean on March 20, based on satellite images of possible plane debris. So far, nothing related to the missing plane has been found. Read the rest of this entry »
Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370: Mystery of missing aircraft ‘may never be solved,’ police warn
Kathy Marks
Sydney
The Independent
03 April 2014
With as little as two days left in which to recover the black box of Flight MH370, Malaysian police have warned that the mystery of the plane’s disappearance nearly four weeks ago may never be solved.
The country’s Prime Minister, Najib Razak, who visited the headquarters of the multinational search in Perth today, promised relatives of the 239 passengers and crew that “we will not rest until answers are… found”. However, batteries in the locator beacons of flight recorders only last about 30 days, which means MH370’s will die next Monday, or even this weekend.
The hunt for wreckage of the Malaysian Airlines Boeing 777 continued in the Indian Ocean, with two British Royal Navy vessels joining seven other ships and eight planes. But since the search switched to the remote waters a fortnight ago, not a single piece of debris linked to the doomed flight has been found, despite exhaustive efforts. Read the rest of this entry »
Malaysia Airlines MH370: Unmanned Robot Subs Needed for Search
By Mary-Ann Russon
International Business Times
April 2, 2014
Unmanned robot submarines will need to be brought in to locate wreckage of the missing Malaysia Airlines plane in the Indian Ocean once the search zone has been narrowed down.
Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 took off from Kuala Lumpur Ifor Beijing with 239 people onboard on 8 March but lost contact with air traffic control 50 minutes later.
After 26 days of searching there continues to be no sign of the wreckage. It is now assumed that the plane crashed into the Indian Ocean without survivors and the search for the plane has now been classified as a criminal investigation.
Unmanned submarines, which are known as Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUV), were crucial in finding the black box recorders from Air France Flight 447 after it crashed into the Atlantic Ocean in 2009, killing all 228 people onboard.
Although some major wreckage was removed from the sea within five days of the crash, it took another two years and €32m spent on four deep water search missions before the black boxes were located at roughly 12,800 feet below sea level. Read the rest of this entry »
MH370: What Do We Know? What Will We Ever Know?
By TODD PITMAN
Associated Press
April 3, 2014
Bangkok: At the time — the evening of March 24 — it seemed like the breakthrough the world was waiting for.
In a hastily called speech, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak announced that an unprecedented analysis of satellite signals concluded that Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 “ended” deep in the Indian Ocean, far from any possible refuge for the 239 souls aboard.
Finally, there was a solid explanation for what happened to the aircraft. A much more focused search could begin, and so perhaps could the grieving process for families from 14 countries. Najib’s announcement quieted wild speculation about desert islands and terrorists and covert operations.
But four weeks after the plane disappeared, the apparent pivot in the search is proving to be not much of a pivot at all.
Not a single piece of wreckage from the lost plane has been found, not even after a new analysis led investigators to change the focus of their search yet again. The latest search area is based on extremely limited satellite data combined with radar data taken some five hours before the plane is believed to have gone down. It is, as one search official said, “a very inexact science.”
Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott, whose country is coordinating the current search effort, spoke of “very credible leads” and “increasing hope” a day before Najib’s announcement. But on Thursday he said the search has become “the most difficult in human history.” Read the rest of this entry »
Malaysia Airlines’ Missing Flight MH370: Timeline of an Air Mystery
By Ludovica Iaccino
International Business Times
March 12, 2014
Missing Malaysian airlines flight crash
Saturday 8 March
Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 takes off at 12:21am local time (16:21 GMT) from Kuala Lumpur with 227 passengers and 12 crew members on board.
Flight MH370 was supposed to arrive at Beijing Capital International Airport at 6:30am but two hours after takeoff, air traffic control loses contact with the plane. It is last heard of 120 nautical miles off the east coast of the Malaysian town of Kota Bharu.
No panic call is received from the crew and weather in the flight path is clear.
The Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam (CAAV) confirms the jetliner never registered entering the airspace between Malaysia and Ho Chi Minh City.
Fear of a crash grow as Malaysia and Vietnam launch a search and rescue operation in the South China Sea. China dispatches two maritime rescue ships.
Terrorist plot, engine failure, disintegration, hijacking and pilot suicide all under consideration as the cause of the disappearance.
Malaysia Airlines releases the passenger list which includes 154 people from China and Taiwan, 38 from Malaysia, seven from Indonesia and six from Australia
Chinese premier Li Keqiang appeals to the Malaysian government to speed up the search operation.
Vietnam confirms seeing a giant oil slick and column of smoke in its waters. The slick is not connected to the missing aircraft, it is discovered.
Terror attack theory strengthens when two “missing” passengers of the flight MH370 reveal that their passports were stolen last year in Thailand. Read the rest of this entry »
MH370 lost in a ‘broken ocean’, says daily
The Malaysian Insider
April 03, 2014
As the search continues in the Indian Ocean for signs of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, the staggering amount of rubbish in the sea is hampering efforts to find possible debris from the missing aircraft.
Among those who had highlighted this problem is Fairfax writer Greg Ray whose article “The Ocean is Broken”, written last year went viral on social media, reported The Maitland Mercury.
In the article, Ray had quoted Newcastle yachtsman Ivan Macfadyen who had sailed from Melbourne to Osaka and from there to San Francisco who expressed his sadness and horror at the astounding volume of garbage he encountered in the ocean during his journey.
Ivan told Ray that one of the things he noticed was the absence of the cries of the seabirds which, on all previous similar voyages, had surrounded the boat.
The birds were missing because the fish were missing.
Instead, in its place was a huge amount of garbage floating in the ocean. Read the rest of this entry »
Members of Parliament must think hard and fast whether Parliament should adjourn next Thursday utterly lost and indecisive if it becomes increasingly unlikely that the black boxes of MH370 is going to be retrieved in the coming weeks and months?
Posted by Kit in MH 370, Parliament on Thursday, 3 April 2014, 11:38 am
After 27 days of the longest and largest ever multi-national sea-air-satellite search of the missing MAS Boeing 777 from South China Sea to the Straits of Malacca; from the Andaman Sea to the Northern and Southern corridors; and now to the Indian Ocean, no clue has been uncovered with regard to the whereabouts of MH370.
The MH 370 “black boxes” – which records flight data and cockpit voice communications – is now the only hope for clues to the mystery of the flight’s March 8 disappearance or the mystery may never be solved.
Time is fast running out as there are only three days left to retrieve MH370 boxes as their battery-powered signal usually last only about 30 days.
The entry of the British nuclear submarine, HSM Tireless, to join the search for Flight MH370 from Perth, has made it an eight-nation sea-undersea-and-air search involving Australia, Malaysia, China, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea, the United States and United Kingdom.
However, despite a search involving 12 planes and 10 ships and now one submarine, with more than 100 men and women in the air and more than 1,000 at sea, the prospects of the 27-day search of the missing MH370 Boeing 777 have become increasingly pessimistic, forlorn and desperate with no one any the wiser as to where the Malaysia Airlines jet hit the sea. Read the rest of this entry »
First signs of MH370 crash may be found on Australian shore
Danny Lee in Kuala Lumpur
South China Morning Post
03 April, 2014
The first pieces of evidence that Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 crashed into the ocean may come to light when they are washed up on a beach, possibly within weeks, experts said yesterday.
Oceanographers said that currents and prevailing winds would likely push any floating debris towards Australia’s vast west coast.
In the event that the huge ongoing Indian Ocean search turns up nothing, small, buoyant items could appear before the wreckage of the plane itself is located.
An assortment of aircraft and ships scouring the ocean some 2,000 kilometres off the coast of Perth have so far found no sign of the missing Boeing 777. Read the rest of this entry »
A Timeline of the Malaysian Government’s Many, Many MH370 Screw-Ups
By Adam K. Raymond
New York Times
1st April 2014
Three and a half weeks after Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 vanished from the sky, the world is still waiting to find out what happened. Searching millions of square miles for broken plane parts is, of course, no simple task, but it’s only been complicated by the Keystone Cops routine put on by the Malaysian government. Upon news that officials couldn’t even correctly quote the four words uttered by the co-pilot before all communication with MH370 was lost, here’s a timeline of Malaysia’s mistakes since the plane disappeared.
March 8: Immigration officials allow two passengers to board flight MH370 with stolen passports.
March 8: The Malaysian military fails to notice that that the plane has made a sharp left turn, even though it flew over a radar facility. Read the rest of this entry »
Analysis: Pessimism Grows as Search for Missing MH370 Drags On
By Bill Neely
NBC News
April 1, 2014
PERTH, Australia – The signs aren’t good. The search coordinators aren’t optimistic. And the chief of the new group heading the search for missing Flight MH370 is warning that the days of intensive searching might be numbered.
“Inevitably, if we don’t find any wreckage on the surface we are eventually going to have to, probably in consultation with everybody who has a stake in this, review what to do next,” retired Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston said.
That day may come soon.
The new search zone is yielding no results after more than 500 hours of searching by dozens of aircraft. Read the rest of this entry »
Three things we learned about: MH370
By Justin Ong
The Malay Mail Online
April 2, 2014
KUALA LUMPUR, April 2 — It is nearly a month since the words “missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370” were seared into our consciousness on March 8.
Along the way, we have learned the word “unprecedented” and all its other variations, but not the actual answers to what happened to MH370 and the 239 souls on board.
Here are three things that we gleaned from the story so far. Read the rest of this entry »
Admit your mistake over MH370, Pakatan tells Najib
Posted by Kit in MH 370, Najib Razak on Wednesday, 2 April 2014, 2:49 pm
by Jennifer Gomez
The Malaysian Insider
April 02, 2014
Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak must admit that he made a mistake when he announced on March 24 that MH370 had ended in the southern Indian Ocean and later attempted to imply that he did not mean that the plane had crashed or that there were no survivors, opposition politicians said today.
DAP adviser Lim Kit Siang told reporters at the Parliament lobby that the mistake was obvious when Najib tabled a motion of sympathy for the families the day after making the announcement, implying that there were no survivors.
He said text messages were also sent out by MAS while its chief executive Ahmad Jauhari Yahya had mentioned in a press conference that there were no survivors.
After the announcement caused anger and frustration among mainly families of the Chinese passengers, acting Transport Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein defended Najib by saying the prime minister did not say the plane had crashed or there were no survivors. Read the rest of this entry »
Malaysia ranks 39 out of 44 countries in problem-solving test for 15-year-olds, says report
by Elizabeth Zachariah
The Malaysian Insider
April 02, 2014
Malaysia once again fared poorly in a world student performance assessment test conducted in 2012, ending up in the bottom quarter among 44 countries – a result that reinforces the concern that the country’s education system is in tatters.
Malaysia ranked 39 with a mean score of 422 in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) first assessment on creative problem-solving, while neighbouring Singapore came out tops with a mean score of 562, said the report released yesterday by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
The overall mean score for all countries was 500.
Malaysia had more than half of the share of low achievers, which means the students tested lacked the skills needed in a modern workplace.
In contrast, Singapore only had 8% share of low achievers. The mean share was 21.4%.
On the other hand, Malaysia only had 0.9% share of top performers compared with Singapore’s 29.3%. Malaysia’s share was below the average percentage of 11.4%.
This showed that only one out of 10 Malaysian students, aged 15, is able to solve the most complex problems, compared with one in five in Singapore, Korea and Japan. Read the rest of this entry »
The eye-witness testimony of the Baling OCPD during the Memali Incident and the need to end political interferences in national institutions are extra potent reasons why there should be a RCI to revisit the 1985 tragedy which cost 18 lives
Following the revelation last week by former Deputy Prime Minister and Home Minister Tun Musa Hitam that the then Prime Minister Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad was in Malaysia during the bloody Memali Incident on November 19, 1985, and not in China as it has been believed in the past three decades, I had called for a Royal Commission of Inquiry to ascertain the truth as Mahathir had absolved himself of the death of 18 people, including four policemen, in the Memali tragedy.
Another reason I had given for a RCI to revisit the Memali Incident is because the protagonists of the Memali Incident like former Prime Minister, Tun Dr. Mahathir, former Deputy Prime Minister, Tun Musa Hitam, former Inspector-General of Police, Tun Hanif Omar, former Acting Inspector-General of Police,Tan Sri Dato’ Mohd Amin bin Osman, the then Information Minister Tan Sri Rais Yatim, Deputy Home Minister at the time, Tan Sri Radzi Sheikh Ahmad, the then UMNO Secretary-General Tan Sri Sanusi Junid, the OCPD Baling during the Memali incident, Tunku Muszaffar Shah and a follower of Ibrahim Libya who is now Senator Muhamad Yusof Husin from Baling, Kedah are still alive and can testify on the avoidable tragedy.
In fact, the eye-witness testimony of the Baling OCPD at time of Memali Incident, Tunku Muszaffar Shah, is itself an extra potent reason why there should be a RCI to revisit the 1985 tragedy which cost 18 lives so that the real truth could be uncovered for the nation and people. Read the rest of this entry »
After tourism, MH370 fallout in China set to hit Malaysian property
The Malay Mail Online
April 2, 2014
KUALA LUMPUR, April 2 — Growing acrimony in China over Malaysia’s handling of the MH370 crisis could jeopardise Chinese buyers’ appetite for property development here, according to the Wall Street Journal.
The news comes as rancour in Beijing over the Malaysia’s continued inability to find the missing Malaysia Airlines plane that carried 153 Chinese nationals among the 239 people on board has already torpedoed the Visit Malaysia Year 2014 promotions in the country.
Families of the Chinese passengers on the doomed flight and their countrymen became hostile towards Malaysia following its announcement on March 24 that satellite data showed the plane “ended somewhere in the middle of the Indian Ocean”.
The absence of physical evidence of the flight led some families to label the Malaysian government “murderers” for implying that all those aboard were dead.
“For now, marketing homes in Malaysia is going to be a bit awkward. It’s just like how we don’t market homes in Japan to Chinese customers,” an anonymous Beijing-based real estate consultant told the WSJ.
But the expected drop-off will not only hit Malaysian property developers; Chinese real estate firms who invested heavily in the market here could now end up with lots for which they might find fewer buyers. Read the rest of this entry »
More cracks found in klia2, a month before starting business
The Malaysian Insider
April 02, 2014
Newly found cracks on the klia2 apron and building have cast doubts on the RM4 billion budget airport terminal’s safety, weeks before it is due to begin operations and at a time of global scrutiny after flight MH370 vanished, aviation industry sources say.
The sources passed a set of 13 photographs taken yesterday to The Malaysian Insider, revealing cracks on the apron and also rectified cracks on walls of the two-storey budget terminal.
“The photos tell the story of whether klia2 is ready or not to be used,” an aviation source told The Malaysian Insider.
This is the second set of photographs sent to The Malaysian Insider about the condition of the new terminal, which can cater for up to 45 million passengers through its 64 gates.
It is understood that klia2 operator Malaysia Airports Holdings Bhd (MAHB) has assured the government that it would carry out remedial works that would not affect the terminal’s opening and operations from May 2. The opening date has been delayed at least five times. Read the rest of this entry »
Six Reasons To Explain Mystery Of Flight MH370
By Alex Watts, Sky News
01 April 2014
The mystery of what made flight MH370 crash thousands of miles off route in the middle of the southern Indian Ocean has filled news websites and TV bulletins for the past three weeks.
But despite the huge interest and speculation, are we any nearer to finding out what happened to the doomed Boeing 777 than when it vanished from radar on March 8?
What we do know is both the plane’s transponder and Aircraft Communication Addressing and Reporting System (ACARS), an in-flight digital system that helps track planes after they have gone out of radar coverage, were disabled or stopped working less than an hour into the flight.
The Malaysia Airlines jet carrying 239 people then flew west for at least five hours before crashing somewhere in the Indian Ocean.
Six theories remain for why the plane disappeared – cabin depressurisation, toxic fumes, fire, hijacking, pilot murder-suicide, or simultaneous failures. Read the rest of this entry »
Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370: Search reveals extent of ocean garbage
By Noelle Swan, Staff writer / April 1, 2014
The Christian Science Monitor
The search for Malaysia Flight 370 is complicated by the wide spread of ocean garbage, much of which looks just like plane crash debris in satellite images.
It’s a wing.… It’s a seat cushion.… It’s an icebox lid?
The search for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 has turned up a lot of debris. Unfortunately, so far at least, none of it appears to belong to the missing Boeing 777.
Vast quantities of trash bobbing around the ocean have made the Sisyphean search for wreckage from Flight 370 all the more complicated.
In the weeks since the March 8 disappearance of the plane, searchers have darted about the Indian Ocean, following evolving analyses of radar data and potential clues offered by satellite imagery.
Unfortunately, garbage floating on the ocean waves looks an awful lot like plane debris, says Malcom Spaulding, a former oceanography professor at the University of Rhode Island who has been involved in search and rescues since the 1970s.
“We essentially have had satellite-based images that give us tantalizing information that there might be a debris field,” says Mr. Spaulding. “But we don’t know whether anything in the debris field is associated with the accident.” Read the rest of this entry »
MH370: UK submarine joins search for missing plane
BBC News
1 April 2014
British submarine HMS Tireless has joined the hunt for missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370.
The Ministry of Defence said the Trafalgar class submarine had arrived in the southern Indian Ocean and would help search for the plane’s black box recorder.
It will soon by joined by Royal Navy coastal survey ship HMS Echo. Read the rest of this entry »
