Source: NyTimes...More,,,
OVER 8,000 PRISONERS CANED LAST YEAR IN MALAYSIA
KUALA LUMPUR - A total of 8,481 prisoners, most of them
foreigners, were caned last year as punishment for criminal offences, said
Datuk Seri Dr Ahmad Zahid Hamidi(photo).The Home Minister said of the total number, 5,968 were foreigners while the remaining 2,483 were Malaysians.
"As for the death sentence, three convicts were hanged to death between 2012 and 2013. Two of the three were Malaysians.
"Meanwhile, 975 prisoners have been sentenced to death
by the courts but are currently undergoing the appeal process," he said
during question time in the Dewan Rakyat on Wednesday.Dr Ahmad Zahid was answering a question from Liew Chin Tong (DAP - Kluang) who asked the minister about the number of people who had been sentenced to death and were awaiting execution, as well as their nationalities.
He said the ministry did not have plans to replace caning with a lighter form of punishment but would follow any amendments in policy by the Attorney-General.
"However, the caning sentence has successfully reduced repeat offenders, especially those involved in drug trafficking," Dr Ahmad Zahid said.
Source: AsiaOne
BRITAIN’S MOST JEALOUS WOMAN FINALLY GETS MARRIED
A woman who has been called the most jealous in the UK has finally married her man.
Debbi Wood, 31, previously told how she forces partner Steve Wood to take a lie detector test every time he returned to the house in case he'd been unfaithful.
The couple walked down the aisle on Halloween and Steve made it plain on Facebook that his wife was worth it despite all her insecurity.
Debbi, from Dunoon, Argyll , who now lives in Shepshed, near Leicester, also changed her relationship status to inform pals of her nuptials.
Paranoid Debbi — who has delusional disorder Othello syndrome — even trawls Steve's phone, email and bank statements and put filters on his laptop.
Source: Mirror UK
FAMILIES FURIOUS OVER THE ‘LOST’ REPORT OF MH370 BY MALAYSIAN AIRLINES
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia - - Relatives of MH370 passengers have criticised
beleaguered Malaysia Airlines after an official reportedly said authorities
would set a date to announce the plane "lost", with an industry
source saying such a declaration would see the search called off.Both Malaysia Airlines and officials in Australia - which is leading the search for the missing jet far off its western coast - have denied the reported comments by the carrier's commercial director Hugh Dunleavy.
But Voice370, an association of MH370 victims' relatives,
said in a statement late Monday that it was "bewildered" by the
report last week."Such unilateral declaration brings intense agony and confusions to family members and makes us lose faith in the search effort," it said.
A New Zealand Herald article, citing Dunleavy, said authorities were working to set a date - likely by the end of the year - to formally announce the loss of the Boeing 777, which vanished off radars on March 8 with 239 people aboard.
- "We don't have a final date but once we've had an official loss recorded we can work with the next of kin on the full compensation payments for those families," he was quoted as saying.
- An industry source familiar with the MH370 saga said once the plane is declared lost, all search efforts will be stopped.
- "The talk has been that the search has been futile so far and it's unlikely to bring anything," he said.
- In a statement on Monday, Malaysia Airlines distanced itself from Dunleavy's comments, saying it was his personal opinion and "ongoing search and recovery operations will remain and will not be discontinued".
- It said any information regarding MH370 will only be communicated by the Joint Agency Coordination Centre (JACC) in Australia.
- Officials at the JACC said yesterday that Dunleavy's comments were "greatly disturbing for the families and loved ones of the passengers and crew on board MH370", reiterating Australia's commitment to the search.
- MH370 inexplicably disappeared en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing in what remains one of history's great aviation mysteries.
Australia has been spearheading the hunt for the plane,
which is believed to have crashed in the southern Indian Ocean off western
Australia.Some next-of-kin bitterly accuse the Malaysian government and airline of a bungled response and cover-up, charges that they have strenuously denied.
A Malaysian family last month sued the government and the airline for negligence in what is believed to be the first lawsuit filed over the disaster.
Source: AFP
US TOP SECRET MISSION TO NORTH KOREA HIT AN EMBARRASSING SNAG
A secret mission by America’s spy chief to free two US
citizens held by North Korea hit an embarrassing snag when his plane broke down
while refueling, a US official said yesterday.Director of National Intelligence James Clapper(photo) was sent to Pyongyang last week as the personal envoy of President Barack Obama to bring back detainees Kenneth Bae and Matthew Miller.
But his arrival in Pyongyang was delayed when his Pentagon plane broke down while refueling en route to the North Korean capital.
State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki would not go into the specifics of the technical woes that beset Clapper’s plane, or where he was held up.
Clapper returned to the United States in the Air Force plane on Saturday, landing at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington state and bringing home Bae and Miller, who had both served lengthy sentences in a North Korean hard labor camp.
It’s not the first time that American diplomacy has been stalled by the technical troubles of the US Air Force fleet put at State
Department’s
disposal.
- Twice this year, Secretary of State John Kerry has been forced to fly home commercially after his plane broke down – once after a round-the-world trip in August, and then again in Vienna last month.
On two other occasions in 2014 – in Switzerland and London –
Air Force aviation experts had to scramble to fix Kerry’s Boeing’s C-32, the
military version of the Boeing 757, and get it back into the air.
There’s no question it presents technical and logistical
challenges, Psaki conceded.
There are several planes in rotation and it was not
immediately clear if Clapper’s plane was the same one that Kerry has used in
the past.
Source: AFP.
IMMIGRANT CRACKDOWN WILL HIT MALAYSIA'S WORKFORCE AND HARM PRODUCTIVITY?
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia — Farmers here say the authorities’
efforts to round up immigrants will ultimately deprive them of their main workforce
and harm productivity.This follows the government’s decision to launch wide-scale operations against illegal immigrants who were allegedly responsible for encroaching some 6000ha of land in the highlands.
One farmer, who only wanted to be identified as Lim, claimed that the authorities were barking up the wrong tree because only a small portion of the land was actually encroached by illegal immigrants.
“Most of the immigrants do not even own the land unless they have some sort of sharing deal with the farm owners, which is uncommon,” he said.
- “I can tell you that most of the immigrants here are hired to carry out manual labour and heavy work.”
- Lim said many farmers were forced to hire foreign workers because the local residents were not interested in working the farmlands.
- He said the immigrants were willing to do heavy work such as fertilising and planting the crops.
He said he could not confirm whether the vegetable produce
would be dropping significantly but noted the lack of foreign workers would
have an impact on productivity.Another farmer, who only wanted to be known as Khoo, said it was difficult for farmers like him to make ends meet without hiring foreign workers.
Another farmer, who wished to be known as Cheng, advised the authorities to look into more long-term solutions to help the farmers survive while maintaining the highlands’ environment.
Meanwhile, the Home Ministry has proposed mandatory whipping as punishment to be meted out for illegal agents bringing in immigrants into the country.
Its minister, Datuk Seri Dr Ahmad Zahid Hamidi (pic), said such punishment will serve as a lesson for illegal agents as they were seen to be indifferent towards enforcement action taken by authorities.
Source: Agencies
ISRAELI WOMAN KILLED IN WEST BANK STABBING
JERUSALEM — An Israeli woman has been killed and three other people wounded in separate stabbing incidents in Tel Aviv and the occupied West Bank, Israeli police have said.
Monday's incidents came amid continuing tension in parts of Israel and the occupied territories following the storming of the Al-Aqsa Mosque by Israeli soldiers last Wednesday.
On Monday evening, a Palestinian man stabbed three Israelis at the entrance of Alon Shvut settlement in the West Bank, Israeli police said, adding that the attacker was shot dead by a guard.
A 25-year-old Israeli woman died in the incident.
Source: Al Jazeera...More...
MORE YOUTHS IN MALAYSIA HEADING FOR BANKRUPTCY?
Malaysia can be considered a success story in terms of
economic development. It successfully transformed itself from being a backwater
undeveloped economy to a middle income country.It managed to do that by transforming its resource based economy into a manufacturing economy and was also able to reposition itself by attracting much of the world's Foreign Direct Investments during the 1970s and 1980s.
However as reported recently, bankruptcy among youths below the age of 25 is increasing at an alarming rate.
From 2007 until June this year, a total of 1,940 youths under 25 years old had been declared bankrupt, about one-third (579) of whom became bankrupt in the first half of this year.
Minister in the Prime Minister's Department Nancy Shukri, who oversees the Department of Insolvency (MDI), believes many others are on the brink of bankruptcy for "spending more than they earn" and drowning in debt.
Echoing her comments, many "experts" raised the same old arguments - our young cannot differentiate a "necessity" from "luxury", confusing their "needs" with their "wants".
Many young people, however, argue that they are not living beyond their means.
Johan*, 25, points to the economy as the reason why many young people are accumulating debt.
"Our pay is peanuts, not enough for us to have a comfortable life, especially with the unexpected price hikes. How can we pay our bills like we planned when things keep going up?
"It's like one morning you wake up and something new is now more expensive. We can only survive if every day we eat Maggi," Johan, who has been working in sales for a year, complains.
Others say that times have changed and they need to spend a lot to stay ahead of the game.
"I need a car to get to work on time and my smartphone is essential for me to stay connected and relevant.
"And these days, if you don't look or act the part, you won't become successful, so sometimes you have to meet clients and friends at that cool coffee shop," a 24-year-old entrepreneur, shares.
Malaysian Employers Federation executive director Datuk Shamsuddin Bardan thinks the young could live within their means if they wanted to.
FBI IS INVESTIGATING RETIRED US DIPLOMAT?
WASHINGTON, USA - FBI counter-intelligence agents
are investigating a veteran US diplomat suspected of taking classified
information from the State Department home, and have searched her house
and office for evidence, government officials said Friday.
The diplomat, Robin L.
Raphel, is a retired ambassador and an expert on Pakistan who until
recently was an adviser to the State Department’s special representative
for Afghanistan and Pakistan. The officials said that after the FBI searches, Raphel was put on leave and her contract was allowed to expire.
The nature of the
investigation is unclear, but officials said the FBI was trying to
determine why Raphel appears to have brought classified information
home, and whether she had passed, or was planning to pass, the
information to a foreign government.FBI counterintelligence agents have a broad mandate — including tracking foreign spies inside the United States, investigating US citizens suspected of spying for other nations, and examining the mishandling of classified information.
The officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, did not give details about why they were examining Raphel’s activities.
- Nor did they say whether she was officially a target of the investigation.
- It is extremely rare for the FBI to open a counterintelligence investigation into such a prominent Washington figure.
Any decision by the Justice Department to open the
inquiry would have had to take into account that an investigation -
whatever its outcome — will have a lasting impact on Raphel’s ability in
the future to operate within US diplomatic circles. One official said Friday that Raphel had been stripped of her security clearances as part of the investigation.
Source: NyTimes...More,,,
CHRISTIAN BIGOTS A THREAT TO MALAYSIAN PM’S MODERATION?
Tan Sri Zainuddin Maidin, a former information minister said
Malays and Islam were under pressure due to the concept of moderation
introduced by Najib, although there were signs the concept was on the wrong
track.
He cited a recent statement by Johor Umno youth vice-chief
Khairul Anwar Rahmat, who said that moderation was unsuitable for certain
issues, saying it reflected the thoughts and opinions of the Umno grassroots.
Khairul said the concept of moderation must be placed in the right place and used at the right time.
Khairul said the concept of moderation must be placed in the right place and used at the right time.
"The concept of moderation is not suitable to be used
when it involves religious struggle and the upholding of shariah law," he
quoted as saying by Utusan Malaysia.
Zainuddin said brave and courageous voices to defend the
character and pride of the Malays were no longer coming from Umno, but from non-governmental
organisations.
"The likes of Ikatan Muslimin Malaysia and Perkasa have
taken up the fight for Malay rights as the voices from Umno, including Umno
Youth, have fallen silent.
"Umno members and leaders have been intimidated into
keeping mum for fear of being seen as extremists or irrelevant on the global
stage."
Zainuddin said Khairul was right in saying it was better to
fight till the bitter end as being too engrossed in moderation would result in
average, instead of devout, Muslims.
"While Najib has succeeded in his efforts to promote
Malaysia as a moderate Muslim country to the global community, it has had a
negative impact internally.
- "The character and tradition of Islam, as well as its position as the official religion of Malaysia, has been challenged by various provocations with the intention of denting the pride of the religion."
- In a comment on Attorney-General’s decision not to prosecute Perkasa president Ibrahim Ali, Zainuddin said: "What is the motive of the opposition in questioning the decision not to prosecute Ibrahim?
- “They claim that there is no justice or Islamic moderation in Malaysia.”
- He said The Star managing director Datuk Seri Wong Chun Wai had come forward and questioned the apparent double standards involved in the non-prosecution of Ibrahim.
- "Of course, The Star has been given the trust by Najib to champion the cause and concept of moderation."
- Zainuddin said many did not understand that the concept of moderation had placed Umno and Malays in a difficult position.
- "They are afraid of being seen as extremists, hence they keep mum while Islam comes under attack from various individuals and groups," Zainuddin said.
- "Even Najib was afraid of defending Minister in the Prime Minister's Department Nancy Shukri when she revealed the Attorney-General's decision not to prosecute Ibrahim."
He added that recent negative developments had made Muslims
feel empty when Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein(photo) promised that Umno would
continue to champion Islam, the Malays and the
Malay rulers.
"Hishammuddin's promise has invited various problems as
the concept of moderation has put Malays and Islam in a defensive position with
attacks coming from all sides.
"In a war, when one side has been put in a defensive
position, it means that it is already on the verge of defeat," he said,
adding that was how Malays and Islam felt right now.
Source: The Malaysian Insider
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