FMT News |  |
- Sarkozy’s Big Apple bite sparks debate on political comeback
- Britain can rise again, Cameron says
- Leave me in peace, France’s Strauss-Kahn begs media
- China to collect samples from Mars by 2030
- Nobel winners describe getting the news
- Candid Obama says ‘hand wringing’ after debate will ebb
- Diplomatic security in Benghazi ‘weak’: US team chief
- Russia frees Pussy Riot member, keeps two in jail
- Brazil sets up special security force to protect Amazon
- US man plotted to decapitate judge
- Obama camp assails Romney’s move to center
- Russia wants end to US arms disposal programme
- Dua kertas putih dibentang untuk isu air, Talam
- Anwar shadows Najib to drum change for Sabah
- Bursa Malaysia ends on weaker note
- MP BN, Pakatan tolak AES
- Umno to the ‘rescue’ of Genneva gold buyers
- ICC bans “spot-fixing” umpires, boards to investigate
- Govt defends RM16b investment outflow
- Tyson granted Australia visa but warned to behave
- Blackheads, be gone!
- Stopped at KLIA: Ambiga cries harassment
- Asian markets hit by IMF growth revision
- Electronics hit as Philippine exports plunge
- Bkt Jalil residents to meet PM’s special officer again
- IMF: Debt-hit Europe must ‘restore confidence’
- Filipino peace means nothing to immigrants
- Perkasa vs Suaram: Of demons and lies
- DAP-Kristian: PAS kecewa dengan Nasha
- AMK pertahan Anwar
- Birmingham City in talks over club sale
- Indonesia on top alert over threat to Bali ceremony
- Ketua Umno Padang Besar dipanggil Lembaga Disiplin parti
- Fifa: Diving becoming a cancer in football
- Devamany up the wall over Cameron mess
- Pakistan to decide if girl needs treatment abroad
- AirAsia founders to kick off IPO spree in 2013
- Pussy Riot appeal hearing opens at Moscow court
- Restaurant removes urinals shaped like woman’s mouth
- Japan’s Toyota to recall 7.43m vehicles globally
- Something ‘foul’ in Malindo joint venture
- Kuantan court keeps Lynas TOL on hold
- Greek reform pledge on trial as state sales resume
- DAP slams ‘malicious’ PAS leader
- Presidential race now a dog fight as Romney surges
- NATO makes plans to back Turkey over Syria spillover
- Vice presidential debate could be a tale of two Ryans
- Voters most battered by the economy still favor Obama
- Floods kill seven in Russia’s Dagestan region
- ‘Nasha jurucakap Umno dalam Pakatan’
| Sarkozy’s Big Apple bite sparks debate on political comeback Posted: 10 Oct 2012 10:41 AM PDT  PARIS: Nicholas Sarkozy was due in New York today to address a banking conference, with opinion split on whether this is the start of a post-presidential career on the lecture circuit or if the French right-winger has secret plans to make a political comeback.Sarkozy himself was giving nothing away. The US trip is so hush-hush that his entourage refused to even confirm the former French president’s appearance at the conference at the Waldorf Astoria hotel hosted by Brazilian investment bank BTG Pactual. But an agenda posted Tuesday in a conference room at the posh Manhattan hotel showed the 57-year-old politician was to speak on Thursday at lunchtime. Sarkozy has stayed out of the limelight since losing the presidential election to the Socialist Francois Hollande in May, spending a lot of his time on holiday in Canada, Morocco and on the French Riviera with his ex-supermodel wife Carla Bruni. He has made just one one public statement, criticising Hollande’s policy on the conflict in Syria. So his trip to New York has sparked speculation that he may be following the example of Tony Blair or Bill Clinton and aiming to earn big money on the lecture circuit. Clinton, US president from 1993 to 2001, last year made $13.4 million (10.4 million euros) in speaking fees alone, according to his wife’s tax returns, while Blair, British prime minister from 1997 to 2007, earns up to $250,000 a speech. Sarkozy is seen domestically as having failed to deliver much of the radical reform he promised, and was accused by many in his UMP party of taking it too far to the right in a bid to draw voters from the anti-immigrant, anti-EU National Front. But he also steered France through its biggest economic crisis in decades, and notched up foreign policy successes in Libya last year and during Georgia’s brief war with Russia in 2008. Such experience is eminently bankable in the post-dinner speech world, even if Sarkozy is already in fine financial health, with an heiress wife, a generous presidential pension and income from his part-time job on France’s Constitutional Council. He has recently appeared on magazine covers looking tanned, unshaven and relaxed, and media reports quote associates saying he has been busy perfecting his until now broken English to get ready for his speaking engagements. But if he does embark on the lecture circuit, he risks damaging his political prospects, warned Frederic Dabi of the IFOP polling institute. He believes that a deepening economic crisis could play in favour of Sarkozy, who despite record unpopularity when he was president, is currently more popular than Hollande, according to a survey by Harris Interactive. “He could bet on the difficulties of the executive (Hollande’s government) to one day appear as a saviour,” said Dabi. A career on the lucrative lecture circuit, “far from national realities”, would however go against him if he decided to try to return to domestic politics, he said. But Sarkozy’s former interior minister and friend, Brice Hortefeux, said Wednesday that speaking at conferences abroad in no way meant that Sarkozy had ruled out a return to French politics. Politics, he said, was a “matter of desire, of duty and of circumstances”. Last week Le Canard Enchaine weekly reported that Sarkozy had told a friend, former minister Bruno Le Maire: “Given the disastrous condition France is likely to be in five years from now, I will have no choice in 2017.” That is when the next presidential election is due. Whichever path he takes until then, he still has a slew of legal woes to deal with. These deepened Wednesday when French anti-graft campaigners said they had lodged a complaint against him for allegedly misusing public funds to pay for opinion polls. Sarkozy lost his presidential immunity from prosecution in June and is now faced with several legal probes into corruption and campaign financing violations. - AFP |
| Britain can rise again, Cameron says Posted: 10 Oct 2012 10:38 AM PDT  BIRMINGHAM: Prime Minister David Cameron urged Britain yesterday to work harder to rise above its economic woes, warning that it faced a sink or swim moment in the face of global competition.The struggling Conservative leader admitted in a crucial speech to his party’s annual conference that it was taking longer than expected to cut the budget deficit and warned that more austerity was in the pipeline. But with New York’s billionaire mayor Michael Bloomberg turning up to lend international support, Cameron said Britain should follow the entrepreneurial example of countries such as China, India and Brazil. “Let us here in this hall, here in this government, together in this country make this pledge, let’s build an aspiration nation. Let’s get Britain on the rise,” Cameron said to a standing ovation from activists in the industrial city of Birmingham. The speech was billed as a make or break moment for Cameron’s leadership, with the centre-right Conservatives behind in the opinion polls and divided over their coalition with the smaller centrist Liberal Democrats. The coalition came to power in May 2010 but halfway through their five-year term the deficit is still high and the country is in a double dip recession. Cameron said there were more “painful decisions” awaiting Britain. “Now I know you are asking whether the plan is working. And here’s the truth: the damage was worse than we thought, and it’s taking longer than we hoped,” he said. “We’re in a global race today, and that means an hour of reckoning for countries like ours. Sink or swim, do or decline.” His speech in front of around 2,000 activists tried to strike a balance between pleasing restive right-wing Conservatives and rejecting the Labour opposition’s claims that they are a party of the rich. Resurgent Labour leader Ed Miliband stole the Conservatives’ traditional “one nation” slogan in a conference speech last week, but Cameron joked that his rival’s “one notion” was borrowing more money. Cameron warned of cuts to the welfare system but said he was a “compassionate” Conservative, adding that recovery would build on “hard work, strong families, taking responsibility and serving others”. The Conservative leader, 46, also struck an unusually personal note, becoming visibly emotional when he spoke of his severely disabled son Ivan, who died in 2009 at the age of six. He also said he had been inspired by his father Ian, who died just months after Cameron took office in 2010, and who overcame being born without heels to become a successful stockbroker. “Not a hard luck story, but a hard work story,” Cameron said. “Work hard. Family comes first. But put back into the community too.” The prime minister also tried to turn his education at the exclusive public school Eton to his advantage, saying he was “not here to defend privilege, I’m here to spread it.” His speech blamed the eurozone debt crisis for some of the British economy’s problems but apart from recalling how he vetoed the European Union’s fiscal pact last year he made little mention of Europe. Cameron on Tuesday hinted at holding a referendum on Britain’s relationship with it amid pressure from Tory right-wingers. Bloomberg, the independent mayor of New York, took to the podium before Cameron to praise his seconomic policies, adding in a reference to this summer’s London Olympics that he was a “gold medal prime minister.” Cameron’s speech was welcomed by many in the audience. “It was inspirational,” said Rod Laight, a local Conservative councillor from Bromsgrove, near Birmingham. “To reach out to the people who are feeling the pinch is a wonderful message.” The address came after finance minister George Osborne said on Monday the government will slash Britain’s welfare bill by a further £10 billion (US$16 billion, 12.5 billion euros) by 2016-17. - AFP |
| Leave me in peace, France’s Strauss-Kahn begs media Posted: 10 Oct 2012 10:35 AM PDT
Strauss-Kahn, who is trying to make a comeback as a conference speaker while fighting two legal cases over alleged sexual misconduct, said since he had not been convicted of any crime he should be left alone. “I no longer have public duties, I am not a candidate for anything. I have never been convicted in this country or any other,” Strauss-Kahn, once tipped to win the May presidential election, told the weekly Le Point. “Nothing justifies the fact I have become the target of a media hunt which sometimes ends up resembling a manhunt.” Strauss-Kahn, a former finance minister, was days away from announcing a bid for the 2012 presidential election when he was pulled off a plane on a New York runway by police and briefly jailed after a hotel maid accused him of trying to rape her. The ensuing scandal, and a media frenzy that raked up grubby details of his private life and other allegations of misconduct, turned him from being one of the world’s most influential economic thinkers to a man millions now know best for being photographed in handcuffs with thick stubble. Friends say he spends much of his time closeted at home playing online computer games, while his art heiress wife Anne Sinclair, has rekindled her career as a high-profile editor at the Huffington Post’s French edition. A source recently confirmed media reports that the couple has separated. Despite protests by feminists during his first sorties on the international conference circuit, the former International Monetary Fund chief recently appeared at events in Ukraine and Morocco and has set up a business consulting firm in Paris. Strauss-Kahn is being investigated in France over alleged links to a prostitute network in the northern city of Lille, although prosecutors recently shelved a more serious investigation into accusations of group rape. He is also fighting a U.S. civil case brought by the hotel maid who says he assaulted her in May 2011. Strauss-Kahn, 63, told Le Point he was not a celebrity or politician and so was entitled to privacy like anybody else. Instead, photographers frequently stand guard outside the apartment he recently moved to in Montparnasse, he said. “I cannot stand people abusing my situation and the judicial inquiries that are, wrongly, targeting me to ridicule my private life and throw about scraps, real or invented, on the pretext of goodness knows what moralizing transparency.” - AFP |
| China to collect samples from Mars by 2030 Posted: 10 Oct 2012 10:33 AM PDT  BEIJING: China is planning to collect samples from the surface of Mars by 2030, according to the chief scientist of the country’s lunar orbiter project, state media reported yesterday.Ouyang Ziyuan said the mission would have three stages – remote sensing, soft-landing and exploration, and return after automatic sampling, Xinhua news agency quoted him as saying in a lecture organised by the Chinese Society of Astronautics. Ouyang also briefed attendees on the tests and work to be carried out by China’s lunar probe, the Chang’e-3, which is expected to touch down on the moon in the second half of 2013. He said the probe could help build a telecommunications network that would cover a future Mars probe and said samples taken from the moon would be returned to earth, Xinhua reported. The landing planned for next year would be China’s first on the lunar surface and mark a new milestone in its space development. Beijing sees its multi-billion-dollar space programme as a symbol of its rising global stature, growing technical expertise, and the Communist Party’s success in turning around the fortunes of the once poverty-stricken nation. The Asian superpower has been ramping up its manned activities as the United States, long the leader in the field, has scaled back some of its programmes, such as retiring its iconic space shuttle fleet. - AFP |
| Nobel winners describe getting the news Posted: 10 Oct 2012 10:30 AM PDT  STOCKHOLM: Some Nobel laureates find out while on a plane, others think it’s a hoax, and some don’t even hear the phone ring.On Tuesday, French physicist Serge Haroche was out walking with his wife when his cell phone rang. He saw the 46 country code on the display and recognised it immediately as a call from Sweden. For a top scientist, a call from Sweden in early October can mean only one thing: a Nobel dream come true. “I was in the street, passing near a bench, and was able to sit down immediately,” he told journalists via a live link to Stockholm, describing the honour as “fairly overwhelming”. US researcher Robert Lefkowitz (photo), who won the chemistry prize yesterday, admitted he had not heard the phone ringing when the all-important call came through. “I was fast asleep and the phone rang. I did not hear it. I must share with you that I wear ear plugs to sleep, and so my wife gave me an elbow: ‘phone for you.’ And there it was. A total shock and surprise,” he told reporters. The prize-awarding academies make every effort to contact the winners about a half an hour before the official announcement is made. The work honoured in the science fields – medicine, physics and chemistry – is often groundbreaking research done decades ago that has over the years led to advances in the respective areas. As a result, the top scientists in their fields have an inkling their work may win, though the honours could come many years later. After their revolutionary 1983 discovery that ulcers were mainly caused by a bacteria and not stress, Australia’s Barry Marshall and Robin Warren began a tradition of meeting up at the pub on the day the Nobel Medicine prize was announced – primarily to drown their sorrows over not winning. But in 2005, the magical call did finally come. “Once a year I’d round (Warren) up and we’d go and have fish and chips and a few beers,” Marshall later said in an interview. “So we received a phone call on his cell phone about half an hour before the official announcement… was going to come out.” “I think you’re just frozen – it’s the sort of thing that you can’t really say that you felt a lot of emotion,” he said. The 1991 chemistry prize laureate, Richard Ernst of Switzerland, was on a plane when he got the news from Stockholm. “The captain came to me and told me I had won the prize,” Ernst said in an interview on the Nobelprize.org website. “I went to the cockpit and spoke to Swiss radio and to my family,” he said. Louis Ignarro of the US, who won the 1998 medicine prize, was just about to board a plane at the airport in Nice, France, when a colleague known for pranks told him on a cell phone handed to him by an airport official that he had won the Nobel prize. “Then I lost the connection. And I had to board the plane to Naples. So I never really knew if I had won it,” he said. “I thought that maybe if I had really won it, my picture would be in the papers, so I looked around. I thought maybe people would recognise my face. But no,” he said. When the plane landed, a professor from the university where he was going to hold a lecture met him on the tarmac with the printed announcement from the Nobel committee. “It was in Swedish but I saw the word ‘Nobel’,” he said. “I actually dropped to the ground, I was so surprised and so jubilant.” Despite the committees’ best efforts, there have been times they have failed to reach the winners. The 2007 Nobel literature laureate Doris Lessing and the 1994 economics winner Reinhard Selten were both out food shopping when the prize was announced and only learned the news when they returned to their homes and were met by throngs of journalists. Disbelief was the reaction Britain’s James Mirrlees had to the phone call informing him he won the economics prize in 1996. “I suggested possibly it wasn’t true and needed some proof,” he said, recalling he only believed it when a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences whom he knew personally came on the line and confirmed it. And for the Austrian 2004 literature laureate Elfriede Jelinek, the call from Stockholm “felt like having a black hole in my head.” - AFP |
| Candid Obama says ‘hand wringing’ after debate will ebb Posted: 10 Oct 2012 10:26 AM PDT
Obama, in his broadest comments yet on a debate that apparently turned the White House race towards Mitt Romney, told rattled supporters to focus and promised victory on November 6, with the words “I got this.” “At the debate, I think it is fair to say, I was too polite,” Obama said of a performance that was widely panned as listless and lacking passion. “It is hard to sometimes keep on saying, ‘What you’re saying isn’t true,’ it gets repetitive. The good news is, that it’s just the first one,” Obama said in an interview on the Tom Joyner Radio Show. “I think it is fair to say we will see a little more activity at the next one,” Obama said on the show, which has a large following among African Americans. “We have got four weeks left in the election and we are going to take it to them,” Obama said, before going on to reassure supporters, who Joyner said were “scared to death” after Romney’s polling surge after the debate. He argued that the race was always going to be tight. The damage control effort came as the impact of last week’s debate in Denver reverberated through a race in which Romney now leads national polls. “Governor Romney kept on making mistakes, month after month, so it made it look artificially that it would end up being a cakewalk. “We understood internally that it never would be, that it was going to tighten. It tightened over the last three or four days, but it could have tightened after the convention if they (Republicans) had not had such a bad convention.” “This is a long haul. It is very important for folks, that they understand as long as folks stay focused, we will win this thing.” Obama predicted that his vice president Joe Biden would do a “terrific” job in Thursday night’s debate clash with Republican vice presidential nominee and seemed stoked up for his next debate with Romney on Tuesday. “By next week I think a lot of the handwringing will be complete because we are going to go ahead and win this thing,” Obama said, arguing that many of his supporters had repeatedly doubted he would actually triumph in 2008. “I got this.” - AFP |
| Diplomatic security in Benghazi ‘weak’: US team chief Posted: 10 Oct 2012 10:24 AM PDT  WASHINGTON: Diplomatic security in Benghazi was weak and deteriorating, a former special forces soldier who was the head of a US security team in the Libyan capital was to tell lawmakers yesterday.In Benghazi “the situation remained uncertain and reports from some Libyans indicated it was getting worse. Diplomatic security remained weak,” Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Wood said, in remarks prepared for a congressional hearing. Wood said he had come forward as a private citizen to reveal what he knew about the situation in Libya from the time he spent as commander of a 16-strong site security team based in Tripoli from mid-February to mid-August. He visited Benghazi twice and was there in June when the British ambassador’s convoy was attacked and had helped provide medical and security help afterwards. Appearing before the first special congressional hearing into the September 11 attack on the US consulate, Wood said: “The security in Benghazi was a struggle and remained a struggle throughout my time there.” “Fighting between militias was still common when I departed. Some militias appeared to be degenerating into organizations resembling freelance criminal operations” the Utah National Guard member said, in prepared remarks. “Targeted attacks against westerners were on the increase,” Wood said, adding that in June there had been a direct threat made against ambassador Chris Stevens on Facebook, mentioning that he liked to jog regularly. In April, there was only one US diplomatic security agent based in Benghazi and the regional security officer “had struggled to obtain additional personnel there but was never able to attain the numbers he felt comfortable with.” Wood, who spent 24 years in the special services, was to appear at a hearing of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee amid allegations that President Barack Obama’s administration failed to protect its diplomats. Four Americans, including ambassador Stevens, were killed in the attack, now believed to be have been carried out by militants with Al-Qaeda ties. Three top State Department officials were also due to address the committee to explain how the attack unfolded and what security was in place. Amid a bitter campaign ahead of the November 6 elections, Republicans have denounced the Obama administration, accusing it of trying to cover up what really happened. “We need to be dedicated to understanding the problems that surround this attack in order to find a solution. Our failure to do so will result in repeated instances that allow our adversaries an advantage over us,” Wood said in his prepared testimony. “My purpose in conveying this information is to prevent their ability to take the life of another Ambassador or kill other valuable and talented public servants working in the diplomatic service of their country.” - AFP |
| Russia frees Pussy Riot member, keeps two in jail Posted: 10 Oct 2012 10:20 AM PDT  MOSCOW: A Russian appeals court yesterday unexpectedly ordered the release of one member of anti-Kremlin punk feminist band Pussy Riot but upheld the two-year prison camp sentences against her two bandmates.In a major surprise, Yekaterina Samutsevich, 30, was released in the courtroom after her lawyer successfully argued she was not fully involved in the group’s cathedral performance of a song opposing President Vladimir Putin. Samutsevich, who the court gave a two-year suspended prison camp sentence, walked out into the crush of waiting reporters and hugged her friends and her father, looking dazed and calling the decision completely unexpected. “Of course, I am glad but I am upset because of the girls, that their sentences have not been changed,” she said, before being quickly ushered by her friends into a waiting car. Samutsevich, Maria Alyokhina, 24, and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, 22, were contesting their conviction for hooliganism motivated by religious hatred over performing the song in the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in February. The judge at the Moscow city court Larisa Polyakova gave Samutsevich the suspended term but upheld the two-year prison camp sentences of Alyokhina and Tolokonnikova. The decision was met by cheers in the courtroom and the girls hugged in their glass cage as they said farewell. “This is of course unexpected,” Yekaterina’s father Stanislav Samutsevich told AFP after the ruling. “This is a great happiness.” Samutsevich at the first appeals hearing on October 1 announced she was changing her lawyer and the new lawyer argued she had been apprehended before taking part in the performance. Irina Khrunova said a security guard had grabbed her client and her electric guitar as soon as the performance began. “The Punk Prayer took place without Samutsevich. She had already been taken out of the church,” Khrunova said. Some sort of political game The decision sparked speculation as to what led the judge to free Samutsevich but not the other defendants, who are both mothers of young children. “We are glad that (Samutsevich) was freed,” said Tolokonnikova’s lawyer Mark Feigin, but added that the decision may make things harder for the two jailed convicts. “It would seem that we are dealing with some sort of political game. It entails of breaking up the members of Pussy Riot, of forcing them to relate differently to the conviction,” he said. He said the defence next plans to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights. It was not clear Wednesday in which prison camp the two women will serve their term but it is likely to be far from Moscow. Their request to stay in the Moscow jail was denied. Amnesty International said the yesterday decision is a “half-measure”. “No-one should be fooled – justice has not been done today,” the rights group said in a statement. Calls for releasing the women have been made by world figures from Madonna to Myanmar democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi while the women have been nominated for the EU parliament’s prestigious Sakharov prize for freedom of thought. The women have been held in a Moscow prison since their March arrest and will only be transferred to a prison camp – likely far from the Russian capital – after the confirmation by the Moscow city court. Earlier, all three had defiantly maintained their innocence, telling the court their cathedral performance of “Virgin Mary, redeem us of Putin!” was aimed at the Russian president and not religious believers. “There is nothing anti-religious in the actions of Pussy Riot, it was political,” Tolokonnikova told the court in her remarks. Alyokhina said: “If the verdict remains unchanged we will go to the prison camp and we will not stay silent even if we are in Siberia.” Samutsevich also denied there was a split in Pussy Riot after her decision to hire different lawyers. Putin’s latest comments in a television documentary last week gave little hint that he wanted to see any mercy for the women, saying “it was right to arrest them and it was right that the court took the decision that it did.” In a special film made by state-owned NTV and aired on Putin’s 60th birthday Sunday, the Russian leader laughed when the interviewer asked him about Pussy Riot, calling the band “talented” for making everyone repeat its “indecent” name. - AFP |
| Brazil sets up special security force to protect Amazon Posted: 10 Oct 2012 10:18 AM PDT  BRASILIA: Brazil said yesterday it was setting up a special environmental security force to combat soaring illegal deforestation in the Amazon region.Environment Minister Izabella Teixeira said the new unit will conduct “permanent” surveillance of the Amazon, where illicit deforestation grew 220 percent in August compared with the same month in 2011. The force will be backed by the army, the federal police and the Brazilian Environment Institution (IBAMA), which has its own police unit. Currently authorities are focusing their operations during the dry season when illicit logging increases. “Environmental crime is becoming more sophisticated. To combat it, we must modernize our surveillance system,” Teixeira said. In August, logging affected an area of 522 square kilometers, up 220 percent from August last year, according to official figures. That dropped to 282 square kilometers in September. The ministry cited drought, the pressure of international commodity (mainly soybean) prices and land grabs by settlers along the Trans-Amazonian highway currently being asphalted as key factors behind the devastation of the Amazon rainforest. Sixty percent of the Amazon, home to the world’s largest tropical rainforest, is located within Brazil’s borders. Large-scale deforestation has made this continent-sized country one of the world’s top greenhouse gas emitters, but the government has vowed to curb it and has made significant strides in the past decade. Brazilian authorities confirmed earlier this year that deforestation fell to a record low of 6,418 square kilometers in 2011, down from a peak of 27,000 square kilometers in 2004. - AFP |
| US man plotted to decapitate judge Posted: 10 Oct 2012 10:15 AM PDT
Joseph Romano, 49, was charged Tuesday with plotting to pay a contract killer US$40,000 for the heads of Judge Joseph Bianco and Lara Gatz. According to the criminal complaint filed in federal court on Long Island, New York, Romano and a former business partner in Florida tried to recruit the hit man, with detailed instructions “regarding the manner in which the murders should take place. “Romano requested that the heads of both the Judge and the AUSA (prosecutor) be preserved in formaldehyde as souvenirs.” Senior prosecutor Loretta Lynch said “Romano thought he was buying revenge” against the judge and prosecutor presiding over his previous conviction and 15-year prison sentence for fraud. However, the supposed hit man was an undercover cop and the grisly plan was thwarted, court papers say. - AFP |
| Obama camp assails Romney’s move to center Posted: 10 Oct 2012 10:12 AM PDT  MOUNT VERNON, (Ohio): President Barack Obama’s campaign yesterday accused Republican Mitt Romney of cynically hiding “extreme” stances on women’s rights and other issues to win voters in the vital political center.The sharp counter-attack came 26 days before the election and after the president fell behind his challenger in national polls and saw his margin in vital swing states splintered following his drowsy debate performance. Top Obama aides seized on remarks by Romney on the culture wars issue of abortion, grappling with the Republican’s bid to soften the edges of positions he took to win the support of conservatives in the Republican nominating race. “We know that the real Mitt Romney will say anything to win, with just 26 days left to the election, he is cynically hiding his positions,” said Obama’s deputy campaign manager Stephanie Cutter on a conference call with reporters. “Governor Romney has been dishonest about his plans on issue after issue, he is trying to close the deal just like he did in the board room. “He is trying to soften his image, not just with women but with all voters,” Cutter said. The assault came after Obama left smooth maneuvers by Romney unchallenged in his listless showing at their debate a week ago in Denver, and as the president comes under extreme pressure for a better showing in the next clash next week. Romney told the editorial board of the Des Moines Register newspaper Tuesday that he had no plans to introduce legislation restricting abortion if he is elected president on November 6. “There’s no legislation with regards to abortion that I’m familiar with that would become part of my agenda,” he said. But Romney has said that if he is president, he would appoint judges who would support the repeal of Roe v Wade legislation legalizing abortion to the Supreme Court, where the issue could come up for consideration. He has also said he would ban the use of US aid to organizations abroad which provide abortion services as part of family planning policy. Presidential candidates frequently tack to the political center ground to appeal to moderate voters once they have solidified support in the own party base after winning their nominating contests. But for Romney, who struggled to cement support among conservatives earlier this year, the process has come late, and was not truly underway until his performance in the debate in Denver. Romney has tried to moderate his positions on issues including taxation for the rich, immigration and health care as well as on abortion. Democrats see this as evidence of a cynical appeal to key voting blocks, including women, who will help decide the election and among whom the Republican has trailed in a flurry of polling. “He has been incredibly dishonest about where he stands … there is no way for him to hide from the positions he has taken over the years,” said Cecile Richards, president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, referring to Romney’s beliefs on abortion, contraception and family planning. Tuesday’s assault was the latest sign of an awakening in the Obama campaign as the president’s prospects of a second term appear in increasing peril. Romney now tops the average of polls by the RealClearPolitics website by 0.8 percent after trailing for months, and there were new signs of Obama’s vulnerability in swing states Nevada and Ohio in new polls Wednesday. Attention is increasingly turning to Vice President Joe Biden’s attempt to turn the tide for his boss in his debate clash on Thursday night with Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan. Romney and the 12,000-strong crowd in Ohio taunted Obama on Tuesday night with chants of: “Four more weeks! Four more weeks!” “We’re going to do it. Ohio’s going to elect me the next president of the United States,” Romney said. Romney had three Ohio events on Wednesday, beginning with a discussion with voters in Mount Vernon, followed by a meet-and-greet at a bakery in the town of Delaware, and an evening rally at a fairgrounds in Sidney. Obama was off the trail, with meetings planned at the White House, including with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as new controversy rages over the administration’s handling of the assault on the US consulate in Benghazi. - AFP |
| Russia wants end to US arms disposal programme Posted: 10 Oct 2012 10:08 AM PDT MOSCOW: Russia said yesterday it had notified the United States it no longer wanted to extend a two-decade-old US-funded arms disposal initiative that has helped Moscow decommission thousands of nuclear warheads. The unexpected announcement came just weeks after the Kremlin asked a key US democracy development programme to leave Moscow in the latest deterioration in relations under President Vladimir Putin’s new term. The so called Nunn-Lugar programme — named after former Senator Sam Nunn and current member Richard Lugar – had been due to expire in May 2013 after last being extended in 2006, said Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov. “The American side knows that we do not want another extension,” Ryabkov told Russia’s Interfax news agency. “This is not news to the American side.” The report said Ryabkov was responding to Russian newspaper speculation that the initiative had been shut down as a consequence of the Kremlin’s decision to kick out the USAID development programme organised by the US embassy in Moscow. USAID has been ordered out of the country over accusations it supported opposition leaders who helped organise a wave of demonstrations against President Vladimir Putin’s rule. But Ryabkov said the Nunn-Lugar decision was in no way related to the USAID case. “There is no connection,” he said. The Nunn-Lugar plan was created in 1992 after the breakup of the Soviet Union – an era of strong international worries over the fate of the USSR’s vast arsenal of nuclear as well as chemical and biological weapons. Nunn-Lugar helped by doing both the simple and the complex: it started out by installing fences around some of the most dilapidated Russian storage facilities and worked all the way up to arranging actual arms elimination work. But a large part of the initiative involves simple surveillance – an agreement letting Washington know how much of each material an ex-Soviet nation has and what progress it is making in its reduction commitments. Ryabkov suggested that Moscow was starting to feel constrained by the deal because it gave Washington additional access to sensitive information that should be shared only on a mutual basis. “We are interested in fair, normal and mutually-beneficial cooperation with third parties,” the diplomat told Interfax. He noted that the deal was originally negotiated in a different era when an independent Russia was much poorer and far less able to fend for itself. “This agreement does not suit us – especially when one takes new the realities into account,” Ryabkov said. The programme had been hailed as one of Washington’s most successful post-Soviet initiatives related to Russia and supported by both Democratic and Republican administrations. The Kommersant business daily said both the Pentagon and the State Department had been pushing strongly for an extension despite signs of Russia seeking a way out as early as last expiration date five years ago. The respected paper added that Lugar had himself raised the issue when leading a top US delegations to Moscow this year. “However, the guests left empty-handed,” Kommersant wrote. “Moscow informed them that it does not see the expedience of extending the agreement.” The programme’s website said it has helped Russia organise and pay for the decommissioning of more than 6,000 nuclear warheads as well as ex-Soviet chemical and biological weapon stockpiles. - AFP |
| Dua kertas putih dibentang untuk isu air, Talam Posted: 10 Oct 2012 05:13 AM PDT
Bagaimanapun Menteri Besar Selangor, Tan Sri Abdul Khalid Ibrahim berkata pihaknya masih menunggu perkenan Sultan Selangor, Sultan Sharafuddin Idris Shah untuk mengadakan sidang khas lebih awal. “Tuanku Sultan sudah tandatangani watikah untuk diadakan sidang Dun bermula 19 November ini. Kita tengok keadaan sama ada boleh buat dua minggu lebih awal sebelum 19 Novermber tersebut,” katanya dalam sidang media selepas mempengerusikan mesyuarat mingguan exco di sini hari ini. Katanya, kertas putih itu juga akan dihebahkan kepada orang ramai selepas dibentang dalam sidang Dun dan sebarang permohonan perlu dibuat di pejabat Dun. Selain dua kertas putih tersebut, satu laporan mengenai Program Pendemokrasian ‘Selangorku Bersih’ dijangka dibentangkan pada sidang khas dewan tersebut. Menyentuh mengenai empangan Sungai Sireh, Abdul Khalid berkata paras air surut disebabkan ban pecah dan agensi berkaitan serta Jabatan Pengaliran Selangor (JPS) diarah untuk memperbaikinya “Exco negeri dan pegawai pertanian turun padang untuk membuat kajian kesan kekurangan air dan jika keadaan kekurangan air berterusan,” katanya. Ditanya mengenai isu Setiausaha Politiknya, Faekah Husin, beliau menyifatkan ia sebagai komen biasa dalam politik dalaman Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR). Beliau berpendapat perkara ini boleh diselesaikan mengikut prosedur dalaman parti. |
| Anwar shadows Najib to drum change for Sabah Posted: 10 Oct 2012 03:08 AM PDT
Opposition Leader Anwar Ibrahim is due in Sabah this Friday on a weekend visit a day ahead of a two-day visit by the premier who will be in the state to shore up support for his Barisan Nasional coalition. However, while the state administration has announced Najib’s itinerary in Penampang, Kundasang and Kudat, Anwar’s visit is lower-profile. According to PKR vice president Tian Chua, he will accompany Anwar this Friday to visit the interior Sabah parliamentary districts of Keningau, Tenom and Pensiangan. “Anwar and I are coming this Friday to Tenom, Pensiangan and Keningau to rally support for the party,” he texted in reply to a FMT query on whether opposition leaders would be in Sabah at the same time as Najib as has been the practice. According to local PKR leaders, Anwar will reiterate Pakatan’s pledges to Sabah it made in its shadow budget for 2013 if it wins the coming general election. “They are expected to mount assaults against the Umno regime and the leadership of Musa Aman as Sabah’s Chief Minister,” said a PKR leader here. The opposition party leaders are also expected to drag Umno’s strongest ally in the Sabah BN government, Parti Bersatu Sabah, into the conflict. “It will definitely be along those lines. We will expose more wrong-doings and yes PBS leaders including (Joseph) Pairin will be dragged in as accomplices and accessories to all the abuse of power and public funds by virtue of their support for Umno,” said another PKR leader. Najib is on his fifth visit to Sabah this year. His previous visits to the state also corresponded with that of Pakatan leaders Lim Kit Siang of DAP and Awang Hadi of PAS. BN leaders worried The indications that opposition is gaining growing support in the BN’s ‘fixed deposit’ state is reflected in Najib’s repeated visits to Sabah where 25 parliamentary seats are up for grabs in the looming elections. Local and national leaders have also grown more sensitive to allegations of corruption and arrogance as the countdown to the elections that must be called by April next year begins. Anwar and his Pakatan coalition on the other hand have announced sweeteners for the state to ditch the ruling coalition as they have done in the past. Umno and BN leaders know that there is little love lost in Sabah for the ruling coalition as people continue to feel the effects of having to pay more for food and basic items as the government cuts back on subsidies in response to a slowing global economy. Pakatan has promised to increase of oil royalty payment to the poverty-stricken state from 5% to 20% if it forms the federal government and is something Sabahans have been demanding for decades after state leaders inexplicably surrendered the state’s resources. Meanwhile, it is rumoured that scores of Sabah leaders including another corporate leader, would announce their entry into PKR during Anwar’s visit. Top of the list is Dr Richard Gunting, a Murut leader, who was the general manager of state-owned Koperasi Pembangunan Desa (KPD). According to insiders, Gunting is a potential PKR candidate for the Tenom seat. |
| Bursa Malaysia ends on weaker note Posted: 10 Oct 2012 03:08 AM PDT
At 5 pm, the benchmark FTSE Bursa Malaysia KLCI (FBM KLCI) lost 3.92 points to 1,659.4 after hovering in a narrow range of between 1,657.19 and 1,661.59 throughout the day. A dealer said losses on the FBM KLCI, however, were limited by gains in selected bluechips. On regional sentiment, another dealer said Asian stock markets were traded mostly lower due to concerns over the European debt crisis and signs of weaker global economy. “Regional investors’ risk appetite were hit by concerns over the Spain debt crisis as the outcome remain gloomy while the International Monetary Fund has also cut its estimates for global economic growth, warning that mature economies are at risk of recession,” he said. The Finance Index improved 20.01 points to 14,77.8 but the Industrial Index slipped 7.83 points to 2,851.47 and the Plantation Index fell 1.66 points to 8,167.76. The FBM Mid 70 Index added 14 points to 12,162.8 but the FBM Emas Index dipped 19.81 points to 11,269.24 and the FBM Ace Index shed 9.18 points to 4,217.8. Losers beat gainers by 380 to 302, while 345 counters were unchanged, 619 untraded and 18 others suspended. Turnover dropped to 912.5 million shares worth RM1.41 billion from 1.1 billion shares worth RM1.6 billion yesterday. Among actives, Pesona Metro rose five sen to 30 sen, MAS-CK added one sen to 8.5 sen but Scomi Group eased half-a-sen to 42.5 sen and Asia Media fell 16 sen to 42 sen. Of the heavyweights, Maybank, CIMB and Maxis were flat at RM8.96, RM7.78 and RM7.04, respectively, while Sime Darby lost six sen to RM 9.72 and Axiata Group slipped two sen to RM 6.71. Volume on the Main Market declined to 696.99 million units valued at RM1.37 billion from 910.31 million units valued at RM1.57 billion yesterday. Turnover on the ACE Market advanced to 123.68 million shares worth RM26.73 million from 107.67 million shares worth RM24.06 million yesterday. Warrants jumped to 81.59 million units valued at RM5.03 million from 75.63 million units valued at RM5.17 million previously. Consumer products accounted for 33.56 million shares traded on the Main Market, industrial products 104.68 million, construction 109.82 million, trade and services 297.45 million, technology 24.91 million, infrastructure 19.34 million, finance 46.68 million, hotels 322,700, properties 36.86 million, plantations 15.74 million, mining 688,600, REITs 6.72 million and closed/fund 944,900. - Bernama |
| Posted: 10 Oct 2012 03:07 AM PDT
KUALA LUMPUR: Majoriti Ahli Parlimen Barisan Nasional (BN) dan Pakatan Rakyat menolak pelaksanaan Sistem Penguatkuasaan Automatik (AES) yang dianggap sebagai menyusahkan pengguna lebuh raya. Ketika membahaskan Rang Undang-Undang Perbekalan 2013, Ahli Parlimen DAP-Kota Melaka Sim Tong Him berkata beliau meragui sama ada pelaksanaan AES itu hanya untuk mendapat keuntungan semata-mata “Kita tahu AES adalah untuk mengurangkan kemalangan tetapi adalah wajar juga untuk mendapatkan pandangan pelbagai pihak mengenainya. “Kita tidak mahu ia menjadi satu perangkap untuk mengaut keuntungan,” katanya dalam Dewan Rakyat di sini hari ini. Beliau berkata, adalah suatu yang sia-sia jika punca utama kemalangan, iaitu sikap pemandu masih tidak berubah malah merisikokan pengguna lain apabila wujud papan tanda amaran yang mengelirukan. Fong Po Kuan (DAP-Batu Gajah) pula berkata, beliau juga berharap kerajaan dapat mengkaji semula AES supaya ia tidak memberi tekanan kepada pemandu. Gesaan itu turut disokong Ahli Parlimen BN-Sri Gading Datuk Mohamed Aziz yang mahu pelaksanaannya ditangguhkan sementara satu kajian menyeluruh dibuat supaya tidak membebankan rakyat. “Kita berharap perkara ini ditangguhkan…jangan menganiaya rakyat. “Kalau boleh kita harap kerajaan juga dapat mansuhkan saman lebih 60,000 pesalah trafik yang dikenal pasti menerusi AES ini,” katanya. Papan tanda amaran
AES adalah sistem kamera penguatkuasaan automatik berteknologi tinggi yang dipasang di lokasi yang dikenal pasti sering berlaku kemalangan. Sebelum ini Menteri Pengangkutan Datuk Seri Kong Cho Ha berkata, kerajaan berpuas hati dengan penggunaan kamera AES yang dipasang di beberapa lokasi tertentu. Kong berkata, rekod Jabatan Pengangkutan Jalan (JPJ) juga membuktikan berlaku pengurangan dalam kesalahan lalu lintas di beberapa kawasan di mana 14 kamera AES ditempatkan. Fasa pertama pelaksanaan AES berjaya mengenal pasti 63,558 pesalah trafik setakat ini, sama ada memandu melebihi had laju atau melanggar lampu merah. |
| Umno to the ‘rescue’ of Genneva gold buyers Posted: 10 Oct 2012 03:05 AM PDT
Its public complaints bureau, swarmed by hundreds of Genneva customers and agents this afternoon at Solaris Dutamas, said that it would urge the authorities to “immediately” un-freeze and liquidate assets that belonged to these customers. Muhammad Khairun Aseh, the head of the bureau and Umno Youth executive council member, said that he would be writing an official letter to BNM seeking a guarantee that the millions worth of assets of all the buyers will be returned. He said that Umno has got itself involved because it received close to 10,000 complaints from buyers seeking its help. “Many have expressed to us their stressful situations and we hear you. We recognise that these gold bar buyers are bona fide investors and were never an accomplice, or broke any laws,” Khairun, a lawyer, told a room packed with journalists and Genneva supporters. “They never thought of breaking any banking or money laundering law.” “Umno wishes to express our deepest regret that the authorities have failed to be more proactive and effective in resolving this issue,” he said. Khairun asked why when the directors of Genneva Sdn Bhd (the predecessor to the current Genneva) was charged, the operations were not immediately stopped. “I’m sure if the authorities had exercised their full powers then, these problems would not have reached this stage,” he said, referring to the 800 charges of illegal deposit-taking of the former directors of Genneva in 2010. “Don’t allow your inability to provide clear regulatory measures victimised us!” he said, to cheers from the gold buyers. Khairun also said he will seek a meeting with BNM to discuss the matter so that the issue can be settled as soon as possible. He also urged BNM to disseminate its “investor alert list” so that more people can be more wary about their investment. Wrongly labelled
Meanwhile, a Genneva consultant and buyer, Aljazzura Khan, who represented the group that was here today, said that the buyers have been wrongly labelled as investors. “Genneva is not an investment but a gold trader, just like Poh Kong and Habib. It is just that our business model is more innovative,” he said. He said that the company had in the past been guided by BNM officers to make sure it complies with the law. Another buyer, Suri Jusoh, said that she was using the returns from Genneva to donate to several orphanages. “Right now, I’m being asked by these homes, which have thousands of children, if the donations will continue to come in,” she said. Wheelchair-bound S Ramesh said that besides his monthly payment of RM1,000 from Socso, he also gets RM400 "rebate" from the gold he bought from Genneva. “My mother and college-going nephew depend on me. I hope the government can help,” he said. Last week, BNM, together with police, the Domestic Trade, Cooperatives and Consumerism Ministry and the Companies Commission of Malaysia, carted away boxes of documents and gold bars from the Genneva Malaysia's headquarters in Kuchai Lama, near here. The Singapore office was also raided at the same time. Similar raids were conducted last Friday on the other three companies – Pageantry Gold Bhd, Caesar Gold Sdn Bhd and Worldwide Far East Bhd here. The companies were listed under BNM's financial consumer alert list of known companies and websites that were not authorised or approved under relevant laws and regulations. The suspected offences the companies are being investigated are illegal deposit-taking, money-laundering, tax evasion and avoidance, false description, including misrepresentation and appointment of agents without licence. Action taken to protect investors
"Based on surveillance and examination conducted on these companies, it has been discovered that these companies are operating schemes that are believed to be not sustainable to provide the promised high monthly returns, nor would they be able to provide the buy back guarantee of gold," said the statement. The statement added that such schemes were not sustainable because the returns promised were not funded through gold trading, but from the monies invested into such schemes. "The investigations have also revealed that the amount of assets and monies held by these companies do not commensurate with the amount collected from their investors. "Prior to the joint raids, it has been noticed that these companies have delayed in returning gold or money to the investors within the stipulated time as promised. "Such signs are early warning indications prior to the collapse of such schemes that would result in significant losses to investors," added the statement. |
| ICC bans “spot-fixing” umpires, boards to investigate Posted: 10 Oct 2012 02:25 AM PDT
Footage screened on the Hindi-language India TV on Monday showed what the news channel said was officials from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka negotiating deals with under-cover reporters to affect the outcome of matches. Pakistan’s Nadeem Ghauri and Anees Siddiqui, Nadir Shah of Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka’s Gamini Dissanayake, Maurice Winston and Sagara Gallage were all seen agreeing to give favourable decisions in exchange for umpiring contracts and money. The global governing body said in a statement on Wednesday that investigations would be conducted by the respective boards of each country while the umpires remained barred from officiating in any matches. “The ICC and its relevant full member boards have agreed not to appoint any of the umpires named in a sting operation recently conducted by India TV to any domestic or international cricket matches pending the outcome of the ongoing investigations into the allegations made,” the ICC said. “The officials named are not contracted by the ICC and those boards who employ and nominate the umpires directly will conduct the investigations as a matter of urgency.” In the sting operation, conducted in July and August, the reporters said they belonged to a sports management company and promised the umpires assignments in different events around the world, largely domestic Twenty20 leagues. In May, the same television channel’s sting operation prompted the Indian cricket board (BCCI) to ban one uncapped cricketer for life and hand out lesser punishments to four others for involvement in corruption in domestic cricket. Last year, Pakistan players Salman Butt, Mohammad Asif and Mohammad Amir were jailed in Britain following a sting operation for their role in a spot-fixing scandal relating to a test match against England at Lord’s in August 2010. -Reuters |
| Govt defends RM16b investment outflow Posted: 10 Oct 2012 02:20 AM PDT
Earlier, PAS MP Dzulkefly Ahmad raised concerns that Malaysia only received RM9.43 billion in foreign direct investment (FDI) in the first quarter, as opposed to the investment outflow worth more than RM16 billion. The Kuala Selangor MP also asked the International Trade and Industry Ministry on how it planned to address the situation. In a written reply to Parliament, the ministry said that there were many reasons on why Malaysian companies invest out of the country; among them is to expand their businesses overseas. "The companies are also looking for places with low labour cost, on top of trying to gain access to foreign technology and brand to expand their ventures," said the ministry. It also said that taking invetsments to the global arena would help Malaysian companies to be more competitive and bring better profit margins back to the country. Meanwhile, Dzulkefly rebuttted the ministry’s statement, saying the companies were not taking their investments to benefit from cheap labour cost. "Those investing outside Malaysia are from the oil and gas industry, financial companies and those involved in wholesale and retail. These companies are not labour-intensive types," he said. |
| Tyson granted Australia visa but warned to behave Posted: 10 Oct 2012 02:18 AM PDT
Tyson, who was sentenced to six years in prison in 1992 for raping an 18-year-old woman, is scheduled to visit Australia in November as part of his Day of the Champions speaking tour. The Immigration Department said it weighed up the pros and cons and decided it was appropriate to allow him into the country with an entertainment visa. But it cautioned him that he must abide by Australian laws. “Mr Tyson has been formally warned that coming to Australia is a privilege,” an immigration department spokeswoman said. “Non-citizens need to be aware of expectations on their behaviour while they are in Australia, they need to be law-abiding and respect important institutions and not cause or threaten harm to individuals in our community,” she added. Tyson is due to arrive in Brisbane on November 16, before travelling to Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth. “We are thrilled and are very grateful to the Australian government for granting Mike Tyson a visa and allowing him to visit Australia for the very first time,” said Max Markson, chief of tour promoter Markson Sparks. Tyson had also originally been granted a visa to visit New Zealand, despite opposition from Prime Minister John Key. But New Zealand’s associate Immigration Minister Kate Wilkinson last week said the visa had been cancelled after the show sponsor, the Life Education Trust, made clear it “no longer wants to have any involvement” with Tyson’s visit. “Given that the Trust is no longer supporting the event, on balance, I have made the decision to cancel his visa to enter New Zealand for the Day of the Champions event,” the minister said. Under New Zealand law anyone sentenced to more than five years in jail is denied a visa, although this can be waived in certain circumstances. Having a criminal conviction does not necessarily stop people from getting an Australian visa as long as all offences are disclosed. -AFP |
| Posted: 10 Oct 2012 02:09 AM PDT The good news is, blackheads, like any skin problems, can be tackled with regular skincare. The bad news is, you can't banish them forever. Regardless of what beauty claims some brands may have, blackheads can never go away as they involve your sebum production and cell turnover. You may notice as you get older however, that you'll tend to have lesser encounters with blackheads as your oil production slows down. The downside to this, of course, is dry and dehydrated skin.
A good way to combat blackheads is a combination of cleanser, scrub and blackhead-specific treatments. When choosing a cleanser, look for one with blemish-fighting ingredients. This helps get rid of acne-causing bacteria, dirt and excess oil. The creamy texture of Vichy Normaderm helps dissolve bacteria and cleanses skin of impurities without drying it out. Exfoliating can help loosen blackheads, ridding skin of dead cells and impurities that often cause blackheads. Peter Thomas Roth Buffing Beads for Face & Body is gentle enough yet works wonderfully. The jojoba bead dissolves itself as you cleanse, making it less irritating to the skin.
The question often posed over blackheads is whether to extract or not. If you have a good facialist, then extraction can be a good way to get rid of blackheads. Never, ever attempt to squeeze blackheads at home on your own as you may end up tearing the skin. For a good at-home remedy, consider Dr. Brandt Pores No More Vacuum Cleaner – a kind of heavy duty pore strip. It works like a facial mask for oily skin, with silicone dioxide to extract dirt and excess oil and salicylic and glycolic acids to exfoliate. A thin layer on the affected area is all you need (skin will tingle a bit), leave it on for 10 minutes and rinse. The crisp scent is pleasant, and you'll see your blackheads significantly reduced. |
| Stopped at KLIA: Ambiga cries harassment Posted: 10 Oct 2012 02:03 AM PDT
The former Bar Council president told FMT that she was stopped at the auto-gate for about 10 minutes. And when she questioned their reason for doing so, Ambiga, who was to board a flight to Australia, said the officers could not provide an answer. The Bersih leader was convinced that it was nothing short of deliberate harassment on the part of the authorities. "I see no rational basis for the way in which Bersih steering committee members are being treated. This is harassment, pure and simple," she added in a text message. On a lighter note, Ambiga, who has become a household name after spearheading two mammoth protests for electoral reforms, also dismissed the possibility that the immigration officers were deliberating on whether to request for an autograph. Ambiga was the fifth Bersih steering committee member to be stopped by immigration officers while travelling overseas. Last week, Bersih steering committee member Andrew Khoo was also stopped on his way to Bangkok. Steering committee members Maria Chin Abdullah, Yeo Yang Poh and Wong Chin Huat had also been subjected to similar treatment in September. It was also reported that Khoo was stopped again when returning from Bangkok last night. Speaking to FMT on the harassment, Wong said such acts of intimidation would not deter the spirit of Bersih’s leaders. "Let the government do what it wants and bear the consequences. Intimidating us will not work as we are not afraid. But we want the Malaysian public to know what is happening. "And if [Home Minister Hishammuddin Hussein] does not understand what democracy is, then the people of Malaysia should send a strong message to him and his party in the next polls," he said. |
| Asian markets hit by IMF growth revision Posted: 10 Oct 2012 01:52 AM PDT
Japanese shares were also hit by the strengthening yen, with selling fuelled by news the country’s top carmakers saw sales in China slump in September owing to a diplomatic spat between Tokyo and Beijing. Tokyo tumbled 1.98%, or 173.36 points, to 8,596.23 – its lowest since Aug 3. Sydney lost 0.32%, or 14.6 points, to close at 4,490.7 and Seoul was off 1.56%, or 30.82 points, at 1,948.22. The International Monetary Fund yesterday further cut its growth estimates for the world economy this year and next, citing the ongoing European debt crisis and stuttering US growth. The latest Global World Outlook, which noted that Asia was being hit by a slowdown in China, also warned that conditions could worsen if the eurozone problems were not dealt with. It followed a similar downward revision for Asia’s growth by the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank. “Markets have gone a bit too far and people are starting to get worried about the growth outlook,” said Matthew Sherwood, head of investment market research at Perpetual in Sydney. On Wall Street the Dow lost 0.81%, the S&P 500 slid 0.99 percent and the Nasdaq shed 1.52%, with sentiment also depressed by concerns over the upcoming corporate earnings season. Global markets have enjoyed strong gains recently after the US, Japanese and European central banks unveiled monetary easing schemes to kickstart lending and jobs. Japanese shares were hit again as the IMF report led dealers to buy the safe-haven yen. “Japan got its first ‘IMF shock’ Tuesday, but the fallout in the US market will serve as a ‘double whammy’,” said Hiroichi Nishi, general manager of equities at SMBC Nikko Securities. On currency markets the euro slipped to US$1.2860 and 100.70 yen in afternoon Asian trade from US$1.2881 and 100.77 yen in New York late yesterday. The dollar was at 78.25 yen from 78.23 yen. Toyota saw monthly sales in China, the world’s biggest car market, slump 48.9% year-on-year last month, while Nissan sales there tumbled 35.3% and Honda dropped 40.5%. On Tokyo’s Nikkei index, Toyota Motor ended down 1.9%, with news also emerging that it had recalled more than seven million cars over a fire risk from its electric windows. Honda Motor lost 1.1% but Nissan Motor added 1.2%. Oil prices were lower. New York’s main contract, light sweet crude for delivery in November, fell 37 US cents to US$92.02 a barrel in the afternoon and Brent North Sea crude for November delivery shed 44 US cents to US$114.06. Gold was at US$1,763.10 at 0820 GMT compared with US$1,772.30 today. In other markets, Wellington lost 0.51%, or 19.85 points, to 3,888.14. Fletcher Building dipped 1.92% to NZ$7.16 and Chorus slipped 1.19% to NZ$3.32. Manila closed 0.47^\% lower, shedding 25.30 points to 5,369.60. Philippine Long Distance Telephone lost 0.22% to 2,724 pesos and Ayala Corp fell 1.38% to 430 pesos. Taipei was closed for a public holiday. - AFP |
| Electronics hit as Philippine exports plunge Posted: 10 Oct 2012 01:50 AM PDT
Exports totalled $3.8 billion in August, down 9.0 percent from a year earlier, the National Statistics Office said in a statement, making it unlikely the government will achieve its target of 10 percent growth for the year. Electronic products, which make up about half of the country’s shipments overseas, dropped 14.9 percent year on year in August to $1.8 billion, according to the statistics office. The setback is only the second time exports have fallen this year, after lacklustre economic growth in the West had seen demand for Filipino products slump 6.7 percent in 2011. The only other decline this year came in March, and that was by just 0.8 percent. Total exports for the first eight months of the year were up 5.4 percent, at $35.28 billion, and analysts said there was little chance of achieving the government’s target for the whole of 2012. “We expect flat to about five percent growth for the entire year,” Accord Capital Equities analyst Justino Calaycay told AFP. Total shipments to Japan, the top export market for August, rose 4.6 percent to $686.7 million with wood products and electronics the two main items, the statistics office said. However, exports to the United States, made up mostly of electronics, fell 18.7 percent to $499.3 million and shipments to debt-wracked Europe slumped 14.3 percent to $440 million. Exports to China, where electronics are also the main item, dropped 42.0 percent to $376.6 million. Exports to East Asia as a whole fell 13.7 percent to $1.7 billion in August, the statistics office said. -AFP |
| Bkt Jalil residents to meet PM’s special officer again Posted: 10 Oct 2012 01:38 AM PDT
Bukit Jalil estate workers committee treasurer K Balakrishnan said this was conveyed to him when he and four other committee members delivered a memorandum to the PMO this morning. It is learnt that Najib had offered a low-cost flat and an additional RM35,000 to each family of the former estate as compensation as the land they are staying has been earmarked for development. The offer was RM9,000 more than the previous offer by the government. However, the estate committee representing 250 members from 41 families are not happy with the latest government offer. “The fundamental issue here is not about money but the land which we have been staying for more than four generations,” Balakrishnan told reporters when met outside the PMO. Also present to pledge their support were Sungai Siput MP Michael Jayakumar, Teluk Intan MP M Manogaran, Party Sosialis Malaysia (PSM) secretary-general S Arut Chelvan, Hindraf leader P Waythamoorthy and members from Jerit, Hindraf and several other non-governmental organisations. Balakrishnan said the committee had met the prime minister on July 10, 2012, to brief him about their predicament. He said during the meeting, they had asked for four acres from the 1,800-acre land, which would be developed. The development includes a golf course, stadiums and luxury bungalows. On Oct 2, the estate workers met Ravin and were informed that the government has agreed to increase their compensation from RM26,000 to RM35,000. “We had a meeting on Oct 2, where all the 41 families disagreed with the government offer. As an alternative, the estate committee suggested that the government build 41 terrace houses in the existing land. Give us four acres or build 41 terrace houses for all the 41 families,” Balakrishnan said, adding that the former estate workers would not budge from their stand. Meanwhile, Arutchelvan said the prime minister should reconsider the estate workers’ request for land or terrace houses. “It would only cost the prime minister four minutes of his time to end out plight,” he added. |
| IMF: Debt-hit Europe must ‘restore confidence’ Posted: 10 Oct 2012 01:36 AM PDT
Despite some new policy measures, among them a bond-buying programme aimed at helping debt-riddled nations tame their borrowing costs, the risks of a world credit crunch and recession loom, the IMF said in a new report. “(European) policymakers need to take additional measures to restore confidence,” said the Fund’s Global Financial Stability Report ahead of its annual meeting this week in Tokyo and a day after cutting its global growth forecasts. “Risks to global financial stability have increased and financial markets have been volatile as European policymakers grapple with the ongoing crisis,” it added. The report comes a week after IMF head Christine Lagarde urged eurozone leaders to move fast to resolve the bloc’s debt crisis. “No one has the luxury of time, this is really urgent,” she told the French daily Le Figaro. “The cost of solutions increases as time passes,” she added. The European Central Bank last month announced a programme to buy the government bonds of debt-ridden eurozone nations under strict conditions but it remained unclear whether troubled countries, notably Spain, would accept the offer. “If there is no demand and if this is related to domestic political considerations, that would be unfortunate,” Jose Vinals, director of the IMF’s monetary and capital markets department, told a news briefing in Tokyo as the report was released Wednesday. The eurozone launched Monday its much-awaited 500-billion-euro ($643 billion) European Stability Mechanism rescue fund, which is seen as a major step in the bloc’s defences against a debt crisis that has pushed it back into recession. “(It) gives a lot of comfort that the size of the firewall has become sufficiently flexible and that makes a big difference,” Vinals said. The report’s recommendations include cutting public debt and deficits “in a way that supports growth” and a “clean-up of the banking sector, including recapitalising or restructuring viable banks and resolving non-viable ones”. It also warned that a “further deterioration in the euro area crisis is the biggest risk to global financial stability, but rising imbalances elsewhere are also a cause for concern”. The United States and Japan both face looming fiscal hurdles, which, if not cleared, could upset the world financial system, the report said. “Both countries require medium-term deficit reduction plans that protect growth and reassure financial markets,” it said. “The key lesson of the last few years is that imbalances need to be addressed well before markets start signalling credit concerns.” Emerging economies have fared relatively well through the several tumultuous years of global economic uncertainty, but they “need to guard against potential shockwaves from the euro area crisis, while managing slowing growth in their own economies”. On Tuesday, the IMF added to concerns about the health of the global economy as it warned of a possible recession and cut its growth forecast for this year to 3.3 percent, from July’s estimate of 3.5 percent. Growth will only hit 3.6 percent next year — lower than the 3.9 percent predicted in July — as even powerful emerging economies like China, India and Brazil hit the brakes, the Fund said in its latest World Economic Outlook. But those assumptions are based on Europe’s leaders tackling the debt crisis and US politicians backing off harsh spending cuts and tax hikes slated for January 2013. “Failure to act on either issue would make growth prospects far worse,” the outlook said. -AFP |
| Filipino peace means nothing to immigrants Posted: 10 Oct 2012 01:28 AM PDT
The exodus back simply won’t happen, said Kota Kinabalu-based social activist Marcel Jude. This, he added, was because many Filipinos had flocked to Sabah for economic reasons. Jude was asked his views following the signing of a peace agreement between Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) rebels and the Philippine government last Sunday. Pundits generally felt that the peace agreement would mean little to the Filipinos who fled to East Malaysia in fear for their lives. “In the 70s, there were war refugees…,” Jude, a the lawyer, told FMT referring to the Islamic insurgency which has reigned in the Southern Philippines since 1969. “But that was only the tip of the iceberg. People came here because Malaysia was economically better. “Whatever happens in the Southern Philippines will not see the lessening of illegal immigrants to Sabah. It will continue to have this,” he said. The large number of immigrants have been a contentious issue for local Sabahans. Many groups have raised concerns of becoming minorities in their state, due to the huge influx of foreigners over the years. Recent records have put this number at 889,700, which is at least 25% of the state’s 3.2 million population. Others have estimated this figure to be higher. More than 150,000 people were estimated to have been killed during the Philippines’ 53-year-long insurgency. Things, Jude added, were also complicated by children born to immigrants staying here, many of whom had no connection to the Philippines. To make matters worse, some of the Filipino immigrants were even supposedly given Malaysian identity cards over the years, certifying many as Sabah-born natives. The federal government has set up a Royal Commission of Inquiry (RCI) to look into the issuance of citizenships to illegal immigrants, a matter that allegedly took place during prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s reign. But legalised or not, Jude said that these people would eventually take over the state’s economy, bit by bit. “Before, during Chinese New Year, all the shops would be closed because the Chinese [would go on holiday]. Now if these people closed shop, the whole economy here would come to a standstill.” “I don’t see why they would want to go back when they’re all making good money. Why would they want to go back?” he said, alluding to the immigrants. Local State Reform Party (STAR) politician Awang Ahmad Shah was just as pessimistic about the whole idea. He alleged that poor economic conditions in the Philippines would not attract Filipinos to go back home. Himself married to a Filipino, Awang said: “The problem in the Philippines is that although the amount of land is huge, it is all owned by the elites and those in power.” “So the village people don’t even have land to buy a house. And the cost of living is just too high. Petrol, diesel and cooking oil is just so expensive.” ‘They will never leave Sabah’ Malaysia’s seemingly lax restrictions on immigration, he added, were also a factor. According to him, the government was not making it difficult for Filipinos to stay in Sabah. “We have to make their life tough. If they are illegal, we must send them home. It is not a question of being inhumane… chasing them out. But if we don’t do that, they will never leave Sabah,” he said. Universiti Teknologi Mara Sabah political analyst Arnold Puyok was similarly doubtful of the idea of Filipino immigrants leaving the state. He said that it was a debatable matter even if peace came to the Southern Philippines and economic development there in full sway. “We have to know the reasons why the immigrants are here. It boils down to the issue of whether they feel safe to go back to their own country,” he said. Puyok added that the only way to solve Sabah’s immigrant problem was to have a “concrete” bilateral agreement between the Filipino and Malaysian governments. Aside from the RCI, the federal government has said little on what it intends to do with Sabah’s immigrants, a population which appears to be rising in number every year. |
| Perkasa vs Suaram: Of demons and lies Posted: 10 Oct 2012 01:20 AM PDT
Described as an opposition-infiltrated NGO, Suaram was also accused of orchestrating a mission towards regime change in this nation under the guise of championing human rights. The article was responding to French government prosecutor Yves Charpenel who told Bernama that there was no ongoing trial in France with regard to the controversial Scorpene submarine deal. He said that the matter was still being probed by two French judges. "I am aware about all the fuss kicked up by certain media [organisations] in Malaysia over this matter but what I can say is that this is nothing more than a trial by the media," he had added. In an immediate reaction, Suaram’s lawyer William Bourdon said that there had never been a question of an ongoing trial as the investigating judges were still continuing their inquiry. "The Tribunal deGrande Instance has convened a criminal inquiry of which Suaram has been accepted as a civil party since March 2012. Upon completion of the inquiry, the investigating judges will make the decision of whether the case goes to full trial," he had explained. The Perkasa article, however, claimed that Charpenal’s statement could be considered as the full-stop for Suaram’s web of deceit. "Despite faltering numerous times, the thick-skinned Suaram will issue denials and is not ashamed to face the media, and the people of Malaysia, continuing with their lies and charades. "Perhaps because Suaram has received enormous [foreign] funds, it has no choice but to continue peddling lies with the hope that Malaysia’s Islamic government will eventually collapse," it read. The article also noted that Charpenel had said that the investigating judges had no right to conduct cross-border probes or interrogations. Launching a regime change mission It pointed out that Suaram had, however, claimed in the past that a trial was underway and certain high-profile figures could be slapped with subpoenas as well as released documents in the French language purportedly as evidence to substantiate its accusations. "This proves how low are the characters of those who are behind Suaram, which calls itself a defender of human rights. "It is as if Suaram has made a fool of everyone and spat on their faces with its willingness to lie in order to fulfil the agenda of the ‘syaitan’ [demon] which brings destruction through war and murder with the help of another ‘syaitan’ which manipulates the world’s currency market," it read. In line with the "arrogance of the Zionist and Soros", the article said that Suaram had also shown disrespect towards the Malaysian and French governments. Even now with Charpenel’s statement, according to the article, the opposition refused to accept the fact that their lies had hit a brick wall. "On the contrary, Opposition Leader Anwar Ibrahim is attempting to bring in [Suaram's lawyer] Bourdon into the country… "The attempt strengthens the fact that Suaram and the opposition are not championing human rights but are in the midst of launching a ‘regime change’ mission for Soros and the Jews to conquer the world through a strategy of unbridled lies," it claimed. The Scorpene submarine contract continued to be a thorn in the flesh for Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak, who was serving as the defence minister when the deal was inked. Apart from allegations of corruption, the deal had also been linked to the gruesome murder of Mongolian national Altantuya Shaariibuu. Despite Najib’s repeated denials of any wrongdoing on his part, the issue remained a potent weapon in the opposition’s arsenal. |
| DAP-Kristian: PAS kecewa dengan Nasha Posted: 10 Oct 2012 01:01 AM PDT
Ahli Jawatankuasa PAS Pusat Khalid Samad berkata, kenyataan Nasharudin itu tidak ada kena mengena dengan pendirian parti, malah perkara itu tidak pernah dibangkitkannya dalam Majlis Syura mahu pun Mesyuarat Jawatankuasa Tertinggi PAS. “Sekiranya DAP nak buat laporan, (Lim) Kit Siang nak saman itu hak mereka. “Tindakan Nasha tiada kena mengena dengan PAS kerana tak pernah dibawa berbincang,” katanya dalam sidang media bersama Naib Presiden PAS Salahuddin Ayub dan Ahli Parlimen Jerai Mohd Firdaus Jaafar. Beliau berkata, pihaknya kecewa kerana kebelakangan ini hubungan Nasharudin dengan PAS kelihatan tidak serapat hubungannya dengan kerajaan Barisan Nasional (BN). Katanya, ini terbukti apabila kenyataan Nasharudin jika dilihat dari sudut politik jelas bertujuan menguntungkan BN dan sengaja mahu mewujudkan ketegangan antara parti dalam Pakatan Rakyat. “Saya secara peribadi mempertikaikan niat dan tujuan beliau mendedahkan perkara ini kepada media tanpa mengemukakan kepada PAS seolah-olah beliau mempunyai agenda politik tertentu. “Saya yakin sekiranya dia ada bukti untuk dikemukakan kepada DAP dan PAS, maka tindakan yang sewajarnya terhadap orang-orang yang terbabit (sekiranya benar) akan diambil. “Tetapi oleh kerana ingin menjadikannya sebagai sensasi dengan tujuan politik yang jelas, ianya tak dilakukan dengan cara yang bertanggungjawab sebaliknya bila dah dekat pilihan raya baru dia dedahkan kepada umum,” katanya. Beliau turut mengecam Nasharudin kerana mengamalkan politik murahan apabila sengaja menimbulkan ketegangan dan mendakwa ianya satu tindakan terancang yang didalangi Umno. “Kita tahu bila dia buat (kenyataan) dia akan sedia disambut (baik) oleh Umno. “Mungkin dah pakat dah pun, dah bincang, ini politik murahan…dia duduk di Majlis Syura sejak dulu diam seribu bahasa…kita bekerja dengan DAP ni bukan semalam. “Tindakannya direncanakan Umno dengan tujuan nak timbulkan masalah dalam PAS,” dakwanya. Beliau turut mempertikaikan tindakan Nasha yang selama ini hebat mengkritik pemimpin DAP sedangkan Presiden MCA Datuk Seri Dr Chua Soi Lek juga sebelum ini lebih lantang membantah dasar PAS termasuk isu pelaksanaan hukum hudud. “Cukup pelik kenapa DAP sentiasa jadi sasaran Nasha sedangkan Soi Lek mengeluarkan kenyataan terhadap hudud dan negara Islam yang jauh lebih teruk daripada Kit Siang,” katanya. Sementara itu, Salahuddin berkata pihaknya menyerahkan isu ini kepada Majlis Syura untuk menentukannya. Turut baca: DAP slams ‘malicious’ PAS leader |
| Posted: 10 Oct 2012 01:01 AM PDT
Timbalan Ketua Penerangan Angkatan Muda Keadilan, Rozan Azen Mat Rasip berkata, kenyataan bekas Timbalan Presiden PAS Nasharudin Mat Isa terhadap Anwar adalah tidak berpatutan. "Ramai yang beranggapan bahawa tindakan Nasha itu disengajakan dan secara kasarnya mungkin mendorong untuk dipecat daripada PAS. Beliau dilihat seperti mencabar PAS dan Majlis Syura untuk memecatnya", katanya. "Kenyataan beliau mengundang konflik dan prejudis di antara parti, kaum dan bangsa. Nasha yang dilihat sebagai ulama muda harapan bangsa mungkin akan menghiris sensiviti orang bukan Islam. Persoalannya sekarang, mengapakah beliau mencipta kontroversi ini? Ditanya adakah pihak pimpinan Pakatan Rakyat akan mengambil tindakan terhadap Nasha, Rozan berkata, beliau percaya pihak atasan PAS dan Pakatan Rakyat lebih arif dalam perkara itu untuk membincangkan dan menegur tindakan Nasha yang boleh mewujudkan salah faham dalam parti. Tidak terkejut dipecat "Saya tidak terkejut jika Nasha dikenakan tindakan disiplin, seperti dipecat atau seumpamanya kerana ini sudah ke sekian kalinya beliau bertindak sedemikian. “Bukan pertama kali berlaku, sudah banyak kali. "Saya percaya jika beliau dikenakan tindakan disiplin, itu adalah disebabkan oleh keceluparan mulut beliau sendiri dan komen beliau yang pada saya tidak Islamik. “Nasha patut sedar risiko yang beliau hadapi kerana mengeluarkan kenyataan yang tidak sepatutnya", katanya ketika dihubungi hari ini. Ahad lepas, Anwar telah melancarkan buku tulisan Mobashar yang berfahaman liberal. Semalam, Nasharudin mempersoalkan tindakan Anwar itu ketika membentangkan kertas kerja pada Seminar Dakwah Islamiyyah Sebagai Tonggak Kekuatan Ummah di Pusat Dagangan Dunia Putra (PWTC). |
| Birmingham City in talks over club sale Posted: 10 Oct 2012 12:54 AM PDT
Discussions are still in the early stages and all parties have signed confidentiality agreements, said the club’s parent company Birmingham International Holdings in a filing to the city’s stock exchange on Tuesday. The latest talks come after the Hong Kong-based firm said in a statement last month that it had rejected an offer, from an unnamed party, which it deemed as “not attractive”. Local daily the South China Morning Post named the failed buyer as an Italian consortium led by Gianni Paladini, the former chairman of Premier League club Queens Park Rangers, which had offered £12 million ($19.2 million). Birmingham City — which was relegated from the Premiership last year, three months after winning the League Cup — is owned by hairdresser-turned-football tycoon Yeung, who has been charged with money laundering in Hong Kong. Yeung was arrested on five counts of offences in June last year after investigations revealed around HK$720 million ($93 million) passed through his accounts, but the exact nature of the allegations remain unclear. Little known before his emergence in English football, Yeung took control of Birmingham in October 2009 in an £81 million ($130 million) takeover from David Sullivan and David Gold, now the co-owners of West Ham United. -AFP |
| Indonesia on top alert over threat to Bali ceremony Posted: 10 Oct 2012 12:48 AM PDT  DENPASAR, (Indonesia): Indonesia declared its top security alert today, saying it has “credible information” of a threat to a ceremony later this week marking the 10th anniversary of the Bali bombings.Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard will attend Friday’s service in Bali for the 202 people including 164 foreigners killed in the suicide attacks against two packed nightspots on October 12, 2002. The bombings, by the Al-Qaeda-linked group Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), opened an Asia front in the war on terrorism one year after the 9/11 attacks on the United States and dealt a crushing blow to Australia which lost 88 nationals. “Based on credible information, the terrorists have planned to target the Bali bombing commemoration event with a terror attack,” Bali deputy police chief I Ketut Untung Yoga Ana told AFP. “Security at all entry points to Bali, such as airports and seaports will be intensified,” he said, adding that security was at “the highest level”. “We are taking extraordinary security measures following this threat,” he said, after earlier announcing that 1,000 security personnel including snipers and intelligence agents had been deployed. Gillard is due to give an address to commemorate the Australians who were among the victims of the strike against the Sari Club and Paddy’s Bar in the tourist island’s nightlife strip of Kuta. An Australia-based spokesman for Home Affairs Minister Jason Clare said “we are aware of security risks” and are working with Indonesia to ensure “all necessary precautions are taken”. Friends and families of victims have also poured into Bali for Friday’s service, some meeting at the “ground zero” site of the attacks or laying flowers at an adjacent stone memorial inscribed with the names of the dead. Indonesia’s deadliest terror attack plunged the nation into the war on militancy and battered Bali’s tourist-reliant economy. The attacks in 2002, and a suicide blast in 2005 that killed 20 as they dined at the beachfront Jimbaran district, devastated the island’s tourism industry. A decade on, Bali’s fortunes have recovered and Indonesia has won praise for a crackdown on militants that has left all the leading Bali perpetrators either executed, killed by police or jailed. The nation has not seen a major attack since 2009 when blasts at two five-star hotels in Jakarta killed nine, and more than 700 JI members have been killed or put behind bars. Bali is on track to lure a record million Australian arrivals this year as tourists flock back to the Hindu-majority island which is renowned for its pristine beaches, wild nightlife and welcoming locals. But despite the apparent recovery, the 2002 atrocity is seared into the memory of Indonesians – 38 of whom perished in the blasts — and Wednesday’s terror threat quickly rekindled dark memories of the previous attacks. “Bali used to be safe but you never know anymore,” said hotel developer Boy Harlin, whose friend was badly burned in the 2002 bombings. “I’m in the hospitality industry and all my buyers ran away after the attacks, so another attack is the last thing I want to happen.” For many Australians the bombings were a direct attack on their country. Gillard recently described the event as “a moment of horror that had a profound effect on Australia as a nation”. “This memorial is just another step in the journey, because it’s something that will never go away,” said Keith Pearce, 65, who flew from Perth with around 30 members of his Australian Rules football club which lost seven young men. “Each year when we have an anniversary, you look into the boys’ eyes and you can see it’s still very raw for them.” There are also fears that although crippled, Jemaah Islamiyah is far from defeated, with old names cropping up in new terror cells that aspire to impose an Islamic caliphate across Southeast Asia by violent means. “The current threat in Indonesia is at a different scale from what it was a decade ago,” said International Crisis Group Southeast Asia project director Jim Della-Giacoma. “But recent police raids on suspected terrorists show that the threat continues and that there’s still a lot of radical thought and ideology.” - AFP |
| Ketua Umno Padang Besar dipanggil Lembaga Disiplin parti Posted: 10 Oct 2012 12:44 AM PDT
Turut dipanggil ialah Syed Atif Syed Abu Bakar, ketua Pemuda Umno cawangan Bandar Arau yang membuat laporan tersebut di Ibu Pejabat Polis Daerah (IPD) Kangar, 25 Jun lalu mengenai status ijazah PhD milik Menteri Besar. Zahidi dipanggil kerana membuat kenyataan media mengenai PhD itu manakala Syed Atif membuat laporan polis terhadap Menteri Besar. Ketiga-tiga mereka untuk diambil kenyataan oleh Lembaga Disiplin Umno pada hari Isnin lalu, bagaimanapun belum ada hukuman dikanakan. “Menteri Besar telah menggunakan gelaran itu dalam dokumen dan majlis rasmi kerajaan negeri dipercayai diperolehi dari sebuah institusi pengajian tinggi yang tidak mendapat tauliah atau akreditasi daripada agensi pemberi tauliah yang diamanahkan oleh kerajaan Malaysia mahupun kerajaan Amerika Syarikat,” kata Syed Atif dalam laporan polis tersebut. Seorang pemimpin Umno negeri ketika dihubungi mengkritik tindakan Lembaga Displin memanggil pemimpin Umno berkenaan. Katanya, mereka membuat laporan terhadap Menteri Besar dan bukannya kepada Umno. “Tindakan mereka itu semata-mata untuk kebaikan parti (Umno), bukannya menjatuhkan Menteri Besar. “Kita sepatutnya merasa malu jika rakyat mempersoalkan kesahihan PhD Menteri Besar,” katanya. Zahidi ketika dihubungi mengesahkan beliau dipanggil Lembaga Disiplin Umno . |
| Fifa: Diving becoming a cancer in football Posted: 10 Oct 2012 12:35 AM PDT
He made his comments after watching footage of Liverpool’s Luis Suarez going to ground during Sunday’s 0-0 draw with Stoke at Anfield. “I have seen several incidents and the Suarez incident, and to me it is nothing less than cheating,” he said. “It’s becoming a cancer within the game. If it is clear it’s simulation, they should be severely punished.” In September, Stoke boss Tony Pulis called for the Football Association to punish those found guilty of diving with three-match bans . Then on Sunday, he said striker Suarez deserved to be suspended for what he deemed to be diving during the draw at Anfield. Boyce also thought action was necessary, even if the initial incident had been missed by the match officials. “It can be dealt with retrospectively by disciplinary committees – it is done so in some associations – and I believe that is the correct thing to do,” added the 68-year-old from Northern Ireland. “It can at times be very, very difficult for referees to judge whether something is a foul or a fair tackle and if players are diving then it makes their job even harder.” An FA spokesman said: “Simulation is not something that the FA currently take retrospective action over but it is an issue that is often reviewed and discussed by the game’s stakeholders.” Liverpool manager Brendan Rodgers defended Suarez following the accusations from Pulis. “At this moment, there seems to be one set of rules for Luis and another set for everyone else,” he said. |
| Devamany up the wall over Cameron mess Posted: 10 Oct 2012 12:31 AM PDT
Its MP, MIC's SK Devamany, says the issue is driving him up the wall. He has warned of the need to save the iconic holiday destination before it is too late. “It is a constant war against deforestation and overdevelopment in Cameron Highlands,” he said, adding that these had been ongoing for the past few decades. He complained of vast clearing of land, poor farming practices, growers overstepping their boundaries and issues associated with these, such as soil erosion and siltation. He spoke of the failure of the responsible parties to abide by the Development Masterplan, a document that states how construction can take place in the area. “Even though the structure plan is very clearly laid out, a lot of requirements for hill resorts are not followed,” he said. He said the government was aware of these problems, but he admitted that enforcement was lacking, especially where land clearing was concerned. One reason for this, he added, was that the law was not strong enough to deal with land clearers. “If somebody clears land during the weekend, the land office might pull all the machines back from there,” he said. “But who is going to go to court because of this?” Apparently, it does not do much good to seize the machines and arrest the arrest the persons handling them because the masterminds do not worry about losing their equipment.
The Land Conservation Act 1960, which covers the conservation of hill land and the prevention of soil erosion, provides for a fine not exceeding RM5,000. The default jail term is six months or less. Devamany said he had spoken to Attorney-General Abdul Gani Patail and National Resources and Environment Minister Douglas Uggah Embas about the need for a “serious review” of legislation and enforcement. The Star today quoted district officer Ahmad Daud as saying that his officers were finding it hard to catch the culprits involved in illegal land clearing because "district office personnel are in cahoots with the culprits". According to the daily, Ahmad had said that his officers had been monitoring land clearing and had conducted raids of such activity. "However, we suspect someone from within is leaking information to the culprits, resulting in unsuccessful raids," he had said. |
| Pakistan to decide if girl needs treatment abroad Posted: 10 Oct 2012 12:28 AM PDT  PESHAWAR, (Pakistan): Pakistani doctors were to decide today whether to fly abroad a 14-year-old child activist in a critical condition after being shot in the head by the Taliban, in a case that has horrified the country.Malala Yousafzai was shot on her school bus with two friends in the former Taliban stronghold of Swat yesterday, then flown to the main northwestern city of Peshawar to be admitted to a military hospital. Malala spent yesterday night in intensive care, where doctors at the Combined Military Hospital (CMH) described her condition as critical. A military officer told AFP that a team of top doctors had flown to Peshawar to assess her condition today. “They have a two-point agenda – to determine if Malala Yousafzai’s condition allows her to be shifted abroad for treatment or if she needs surgery here,” the officer said. Last night, a doctor at CMH told AFP that the bullet had travelled from her head and then lodged in the back shoulder, near the neck. “She is in the intensive care unit and semi-conscious, although not on the ventilator,” he told AFP on condition of anonymity because he is not authorised to speak to the media. The next three to four days would be crucial, he added. State carrier Pakistan International Airlines told AFP that it had a Boeing 737 ready at Peshawar airport to fly Malala abroad if necessary, most probably to Dubai. “We are waiting for new orders and as soon as we get the instruction she will be flown abroad,” PIA chief Junaid Yusuf told AFP. Malala won international recognition for highlighting Taliban atrocities in Swat with a blog for the BBC three years ago, when the Islamist militants led by radical cleric Maulana Fazlullah burned girls’ schools and terrorised the valley. Her struggle resonated with tens of thousands of girls who were being denied an education by Islamist militants across northwest Pakistan, where the government has been fighting local Taliban since 2007. She received the first-ever national peace award from the Pakistani government last year, and was nominated for the International Children’s Peace Prize by advocacy group KidsRights Foundation in 2011. Yesterday’s shooting in broad daylight raises serious questions about security more than three years after the army claimed to have crushed a Taliban insurgency in the valley. The Pakistani Taliban claimed the attack in a series of telephone calls to reporters and then issued a strongly-worded statement justifying the attack on a child on the grounds that Malala had preached secularism “and so-called enlightened moderation”. The Taliban controlled much of Swat from 2007-2009 but were supposedly driven out by an army offensive in July 2009. “It’s a clear command of sharia that any female, that by any means plays a role in war against the mujahedeen, should be killed,” said spokesman Ehsanullah Ehsan. He accused the media of pouring out “smelly propaganda” against the Taliban, saying that women had also been killed in Pakistan military operations and were detained by the intelligence services. Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf telephoned Malala’s father to condemn the attack and promise that the government would pay for all medical treatment. President Asif Ali Zardari said the shooting would not shake Pakistan’s resolve to fight Islamist militants or the government’s determination to support women’s education. The United States denounced the “barbaric” and “cowardly” attack. Amnesty International condemned the “shocking act of violence” against a girl bravely fighting for an education, saying that female activists in northwest Pakistan “live under constant threats from the Taliban and other militant groups”. Malala was 11 when she wrote the blog on the BBC Urdu website, which at the time was anonymous. She also featured in two New York Times documentaries. English-language Pakistani newspapers also reacted with horror to the shooting, which it said once again spotlighted the Islamist militancy scourge in Pakistan. “Malala Yousafzai is in a critical condition today and so is Pakistan. We are infected with the cancer of extremism and unless it is cut out we will slide ever further into the bestiality that this latest atrocity exemplifies,” wrote The News. Despite sporadic outbreaks of violence, the government is trying to encourage tourists to return to Swat, which had been popular with holiday makers for its stunning mountains, balmy summer weather and winter skiing. Today, state carrier took journalists on a test flight to Saidu Sharif, Mingora’s twin town, for the first time since flights were suspended due to the insurgency. - AFP |
| AirAsia founders to kick off IPO spree in 2013 Posted: 10 Oct 2012 12:25 AM PDT
The plan comes at a time when privatisation schemes and economic growth have cemented Malaysia’s position as Asia’s top destination for IPOs, accounting for US$7.9 billion of the US$30.03 billion worth of new listings in Asia-Pacific this year, according to Thomson Reuters data. By comparison, IPOs in Hong Kong have raised US$1.81 billion and those in Singapore have raised US$3.44 billion so far this year. Malaysia’s Tune Group, a financial services-to-discount hotel conglomerate owned by Fernandes and Kamarudin, is expected to launch US$65 million IPO of its insurance arm, Tune Insurance, not later than the first quarter of 2013, according to two sources with direct knowledge of the deal. “They are looking at a market capitalisation of US$260 million,” one of the sources told Reuters today, declining to be named as the matter is still private. CIMB Group Holdings Bhd, ECM Libra Financial Group Bhd and RHB Capital Bhd are involved in the flotation, said the second source. Fernandes and officials with Tune were not available to comment. Meanwhile, AirAsia’s long-haul arm, AirAsia X, recently hired CIMB, Malayan Banking Bhd and Credit Suisse Group AG for a US$250 million IPO expected early next year. The group is looking to list its Indonesia operations, Indonesia AirAsia, by the first quarter of next year in a deal that could raise up to US$200 million. The listing plans also come at a time when Fernandes is stepping down as the CEO of the Malaysian-listed airline to focus on regional growth through Indonesia. The group’s plan to buy up to 100 Airbus jets, potentially worth around US$9 billion, is designed to fuel the growth of what is becoming a cluster of related airlines under Fernandes, who placed a record order for Airbus jets last year. With an operating fleet of more than 116 aircraft, AirAsia has ordered a total of 375 Airbus jets as part of dramatic expansion plans that include the acquisition of Indonesia’s Batavia Air. AirAsia has said it will accelerate deliveries as rising demand helps it offset high fuel costs. Not all analysts are convinced by AirAsia’s expansion plans. Some local bankers say profits could be crimped by pressure from potential losses at start-up units in the Philippines and Japan and competition from new players such as Malaysia’s Malindo Airways next year. AirAsia’s shares have fallen 20.26% in the past three months. AirAsia made a net operating profit of RM130.94 million (US$42.64 million), excluding one-off items, in the second quarter this year, down slightly from the same quarter last year. Net profit was boosted by a one-off gain of RM1.16 billion following a share sale at its Thai unit. - Reuters |
| Pussy Riot appeal hearing opens at Moscow court Posted: 10 Oct 2012 12:21 AM PDT  MOSCOW: A Russian court today opened a hearing into the appeal of three members of punk band Pussy Riot who were sentenced to two years in prison camp for performing an anti-Kremlin song in a cathedral.Maria Alyokhina, 24, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, 22, and Yekaterina Samutsevich, 30, were all present in the glass-fronted defendants’ cage as the hearing began in the packed Moscow city court. The trio were found guilty in August of hooliganism motivated by religious hatred for storming into Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in February and staging their performance. They have been held in detention since March. An earlier appeal hearing on October 1 was adjourned when Samutsevich unexpectedly announced that she wanted to replace her lawyer due to differences of opinion on the case. - AFP |
| Restaurant removes urinals shaped like woman’s mouth Posted: 10 Oct 2012 12:12 AM PDT SYDNEY: A sumptuous new French restaurant in Sydney said today it would remove two urinals designed to resemble a woman’s lipsticked mouth, apologising for any offence they have caused. The Ananas Bar and Brasserie said the bright red-lipped urinals shaped like an open mouth were “a commonly used European design piece from female Dutch artist Meike van Schijndel”. “We sincerely apologise if they have caused offence. They are being removed today,” a spokeswoman said in a statement. The stylish restaurant opened three weeks ago, with the Sydney Morning Herald’s food reviewer describing the urinals as “no real surprise here at Ananas, merely adding to the extraordinary collision of statements and intent”.
“The concept is pretty challenging and confronting. They’re asking men to put their dicks in these mouths as urinals.” Australia is the grip of a fierce political debate about sexism after Prime Minister Julia Gillard, the nation’s first woman leader, accused opposition leader Tony Abbott of being a misogynist. The unmarried Gillard said yesterday she had been personally offended by many of Abbott’s remarks over the years – from urging her to “make an honest woman of herself”, to his cat-calling at her in parliament. “If he wants to know what misogyny looks like in modern Australia, he doesn’t need a motion in the House of Representatives, he needs a mirror,” she said in stinging comments. - AFP |
| Japan’s Toyota to recall 7.43m vehicles globally Posted: 09 Oct 2012 11:56 PM PDT
The recall is the latest to hit the firm after it called back millions of other vehicles in recent years, which dealt a heavy blow to its once-stellar reputation for safety. About 2.47 million vehicles will be recalled from the United States, said a spokeswoman for the firm. Another 2.8 million cars would be recalled from Europe and China while the remainder were spread over the world including Japan, Canada, Australia and the Middle East, she said. The latest recall comes about two months after Toyota added two models to a controversial 2009 recall launched after floor mats became trapped under the accelerator and were linked to accidents that allegedly caused dozens of deaths. Toyota’s mishandling of the initial problem and other reports of sudden, unintended acceleration led to the recall of more than 12 million vehicles worldwide, a US congressional probe, more than $50 million in fines from US regulators and public apologies by its chief. Toyota has since worked hard to regain its reputation for safety, while at the same time suffering from the impact of the economic crisis, a strong yen and the devastating 2011 quake and tsunami. The Japanese firm managed to regain its position as the world’s number one automaker in the first half of 2012, stealing back the lead from US giant General Motors. - AFP |
| Something ‘foul’ in Malindo joint venture Posted: 09 Oct 2012 11:53 PM PDT
DAP MP Tony Pua claimed there were many “questionable circumstances” surrounding the companies involved in the international partnership, including a European Union (EU) ban on one of its subsidiaries. One of the partners, Indonesia’s PT Lion Group, runs Mentari Air which is now completely banned in Europe after it was found violating the EU’s safety regulations. It also ran into several disciplinary problems with the Indonesian authorities including drug abuse by its pilots. Most were caught either positive or in possession of crystal methamphetamine. There were also cases of several accidents in the past, with the most recent one in 2010 when one of its planes overshot the runway on landing at Supadio Airport, Pontianak, damaging its nose gear. Meanwhile, its Malaysian partner, the National Aerospace and Defence Industries Sdn Bhd (Nadi), was recently censured for its failure to observe financial regulations. The company, which “monopolises” the country’s aerospace industry and small-to-medium-sized military contracts had allegedly failed to file its accounts with the Companies Commission of Malaysia. It also has no experience in the aviation industry. Najib has hailed the new budget carrier’s entry into the market as a healthy step towards creating better competition. Industry analysts said Malindo’s presence could spark a price war in the race to win market share with its local counterpart AirAsia, which is currently the region’s biggest budget carrier. Lion Air president Rusdi Kirana had said Malindo would offer fares as low or even lower than AirAsia but Tony Fernandes, AirAsia’s boss, brushed off the suggestion, saying Malindo will not be able to “pull it off”. Fernandes suggested that Malindo will likely pose a threat to MAS, which could spell more uncertainty for the national carrier which is struggling to make a comeback into the market. Pua said Pakatan Rakyat is all for competition but questioned if Najib had made a due diligence in awarding the licence to Malindo. “There is genuine concern over the financial integrity and credibility of a company which has failed to submit audited accounts over the past five years as well as the operational credibility of Lion Air in ensuring efficiency and, most importantly, safety of our passengers”. Najib announces setting up of new low-cost airline |
| Kuantan court keeps Lynas TOL on hold Posted: 09 Oct 2012 11:51 PM PDT
Hon Kai Ping, a lawyer for the environmental group involved in the case, said the decision had been delayed by the court until Nov 8. Activists linked to the environmental group Save Malaysia Stop Lynas want the Kuantan High Court to suspend the licence until two judicial review cases challenging the government’s decision allowing the plant to operate are heard. The temporary operating licence granted to Lynas has been on hold since Sept 25. The rare earth plant – the biggest outside China – has been ready to fire up since early May, but the company has been embroiled in environmental and safety disputes with local residents since construction began two years ago. - Reuters |
| Greek reform pledge on trial as state sales resume Posted: 09 Oct 2012 11:45 PM PDT
Greek politicians are under intense pressure at home to resist foreign calls to sell state assets on the cheap and raise fast cash to pay down government debt. More challenging still will be efforts to use privatisation as a tool to uproot corrupt business practices and restore foreign investors’ confidence in Greece. The 15-month-old Hellenic Republic Asset Development Fund aims to transform dozens of state businesses to increase value before leasing or selling them through a series of tenders. The first major sales – gambling company OPAP, state gas business DEPA and several prime real estate projects – could be completed as early as the first quarter of 2013, putting the fund back on track after wildly missing a 3 billion euro target this year. It now expects to generate just 300 million in 2012. Many hope privatisation proceeds will help break the cycle of austerity and recession in Greece, where economic output has declined by almost a quarter since 2008 and unemployment is nearing 25%. Greece, the most indebted euro zone nation relative to GDP, has repeatedly missed targets set under its EU/IMF bailouts and risks being forced out of the single currency. If successfully executed, economists say the privatisations could add an annual 3.5% to GDP from 2013, enough to return Greece to growth, and create 150,000 long-term jobs. A leading fund official said the delays had been largely down to the need to get companies in a state to sell. “As the interest for Greece is waning, you can’t proceed with tenders where the assets are not 100% clean and attractive,” the official said on condition of anonymity. “We’re having a deep dive in all the companies to single out all the major issues the companies have, to deliver them to the market,” he said. Wooing foreign investment To create greater transparency and attract foreign investors, the fund was set up in July 2011 as an independent agency, with English as its official language. Its core task is raising 19 billion euros by 2015, but more important will be how Greece is perceived by international markets to be meeting criteria for its 173 billion euro bailout. “It is absolutely critical we send a signal of change,” the top official said. The privatisation fund got off to a rocky start, with repeat general elections in May and June having stalled activity by more than five months. Its first head, Costas Mitropoulos, quit less than a year into the job, citing a lack of political will. “The newly elected government has not given… the necessary level of support,” he wrote in a July resignation letter. “On the contrary, in an indirect but systematic manner, the government has acted to undermine the authority and credibility of the fund.” A high-level Greek official speaking on condition of anonymity said the current privatisation target, down from an initial 50 billion euros, is still unrealistic because “the credibility of Greece is at a low”. Investors are more interested in high-yield government bonds than sinking money into 30-year infrastructure projects with uncertain outcomes, the official said, citing conversations with major US fund managers. Winds of change Still, there are signs business practices are changing for the better in a country one official jokingly called “the last Soviet-style economy in Europe”. One good example came early this year. Russian oil executive and former energy minister Igor Yusufov strolled into the fund’s Athens office “with a buxom blonde woman on one arm and a gold watch on the other. He offered 250 million euros in cash (to buy the entire Greek gas network)”, said a person who was in the room. In pre-crisis Greece, a deal might have followed, enriching powerful individuals but robbing the Greek people of the true value of the state assets. Instead, Yusufov’s investment vehicle, Fund Energy, was dropped from the tender process for DEPA, the public gas corporation 14 companies are now bidding for, which is expected to fetch more than four times that amount. Fund Energy did not confirm the details of its prior involvement. It complained at the time that its exclusion from the tender process was “unlawful”, but said this week it was still interested in Greek energy assets. The privatisation programme requires a raft of bureaucratic reforms. At least 77 technical regulations, government decrees and ministerial guidelines must pass through Greece’s notoriously slow legislature, including the creation of new market regulators. In September, the first small deal was reached when the fund said it would raise at least 81 million euros from the long-term lease of a shopping mall that once housed the broadcast centre for the Athens 2004 Olympics. Next month, the sale of the highly profitable State Lotteries operator is expected, followed by the state’s remaining 33% in football betting monopoly OPAP and a controlling stake in DEPA. Other businesses and properties slated for privatisation are regional ports, airports and a multi-billion-euro, top seaside property at the site of the former Athens airport of Hellenikon. “The finance minister and the prime minister are very keen to show the Europeans things are moving ahead, and a key priority is to show privatisation is being accomplished,” said Wolfango Piccoli of Eurasia, the political risk consultancy. “It’s a huge priority for the government. Not just revenue, but most important is to send a signal.” - Reuters |
| DAP slams ‘malicious’ PAS leader Posted: 09 Oct 2012 11:35 PM PDT
Speaking at a press conference at Parliament, Sarawak DAP chairman Wong Ho Leng said they merely held several thanksgiving dinners as gratitude to those who had helped them during the state election. “We held dinners in Kuching, Sibu, Sarikei, Bintangor, Bintulu and Miri after the state election. Nasharuddin did not even identify in which event the alleged prayer was made,” said Wong. Also present were DAP advisor Lim Kit Siang, national publicity chief Tony Pua, Sarawak DAP secretary Chong Chieng Jen and Bukit Bintang MP Fong Kui Lun. Yesterday, Nasharuddin accused DAP of holding a prayer session to turn Malaysia into a Christian state after the party won 12 seats in the Sarawak state election. He made the allegation during the National Islamic Missionary Movement Seminar held at the Putra World Trade Centre. In his rebuttal, Wong said that many other leaders from Pakatan Rakyat attended the dinners and could confirm that Nasharuddin’s allegation was untrue.
“Sarawak DAP will not condone attempts by anyone to disrupt the peace and harmony enjoyed by people of various faiths in the state. “Besides, Christians only constitute nine percent of the country’s population so there is no question of turning the country into a Christian state,” he said. He also urged Nasharuddin to withdraw his remarks and apologise to DAP for his wrongful accusation. Whether they have spoken to PAS on the matter, Wong said they have yet to do so. "We will leave it to PAS to take action against him," said Wong. Also read: Mat Sabu comes to DAP's defence 'Nasha jurucakap Umno dalam Pakatan Rakyat' |
| Presidential race now a dog fight as Romney surges Posted: 09 Oct 2012 11:24 PM PDT
In a clear shift four weeks before Election Day on November 6, a new round of opinion polls showed essentially a dead heat after a strong debate performance by Romney last week. A Reuters/Ipsos daily tracking poll yesterday found Obama and Romney tied among likely voters at 45 percent each, ending a month during which Obama led the survey. Other polls also reflected the Romney surge. He led by 2 percentage points in Gallup’s daily tracking poll and 4 points in a Pew Research Center poll. Romney sounded confident at a rally attended by an estimated 12,000 people on a cool autumn evening in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, telling them he had been watching some of Obama’s rallies and heard the president’s supporters chanting “four more years.” “I think the right chant for them ought to be “four more weeks, four more weeks,” Romney said. The crowd picked up on it and chanted “four more weeks,” repeating it occasionally throughout his stump speech. “Ohio is going to elect me the next president of the United States,” Romney said. Strategists say Obama still holds an advantage in the handful of contested states that will decide the election, but there were signs that Romney may be able to expand the battlefield to states that had been considered beyond his reach. Pennsylvania and Michigan – regarded until this week as sure bets for Obama – suddenly do not look so safe for him as several polls showed his lead in both states shrinking to 3 percentage points. A victory in either of those states would multiply Romney’s possible pathways to victory and reduce his need to carry make-or-break states like Virginia or Florida. Both campaigns downplayed the significance of the polls and said they have always believed the race would be close. In one of the most important swing states, Obama urged supporters to register to vote and to get to the polls. “I need you fired up, I need you ready to go vote. Because we’ve got some work to do. We’ve got an election to win,” he told some 15,000 people at a rally at Ohio State University. A CNN poll showed Obama’s lead tightening in Ohio to 4 points. No Republican has won the presidency without also taking the Midwestern state. The plethora of poll results more accurately reflect the dynamic of a closely divided electorate and a lackluster economy, said Ipsos pollster Cliff Young. Obama’s earlier wide lead likely would have narrowed regardless of last week’s debate. “Things are probably back to where they should be. This is a race where Romney should be up sometimes,” Young said. Big bird bites back In an embarrassment for Democrats, the creators of Big Bird asked the Obama campaign to scrap an anti-Romney ad featuring the popular TV children’s character. Obama’s team had used Big Bird to attack Romney for vowing during the debate to cut funding for public television, but is now considering the request to pull the ad. Romney said the flap showed Obama was not taking his duties seriously. “These are tough times with real serious issues, so you have to scratch your head when the president spends the last week talking about saving Big Bird,” he said in Iowa. With early voting already taking place in some form in 40 states, Obama is trying to mobilize the coalition of minorities, women and younger voters that powered him to victory in 2008. However, his supporters have grown increasingly distraught in recent days as Obama has largely stayed out of the public eye after his lackluster debate performance. “I’ve never seen a candidate self-destruct for no external reason this late in a campaign before,” pundit Andrew Sullivan wrote in The Daily Beast. Romney’s speech on foreign policy on Monday is likely to be followed by other policy addresses that lay out his views broadly for those who are only now paying attention to the election, aides said. The former Massachusetts governor is showing a softer, more personal side on the campaign trail which seems to be working for him. At a rally in Van Meter, Iowa, he told a story of meeting a young man at a Christmas party who turned out to be one of the former Navy SEALs who died in an attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya last month. “It touched me, obviously, as I recognized that this young man that I felt was so impressive had lost his life in the service of his fellow men and women,” Romney said. “This is the American way. We go where there’s trouble. We go where we’re needed. And right now we’re needed. Right now the American people need us,” he said. - Reuters |
| NATO makes plans to back Turkey over Syria spillover Posted: 09 Oct 2012 11:20 PM PDT
Fighting between Syrian rebels and government forces could be heard from this Turkish border town following on from several days of clashes in the past week. One Syrian villager said a rebel push on the town of Azmarin was expected soon. In Damascus, rebel suicide bombers struck at an Air Force Intelligence compound used as an interrogation centre – the latest attack to bring the conflict close to President Bashar al-Assad’s power base. “Assad…is only able to stand up with crutches,” Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan told a meeting of his ruling AK Party. “He will be finished when the crutches fall away.” Erdogan, reacting to six consecutive days when shells fired from Syrian soil have landed on Turkish territory, has warned Ankara will not shrink from war if forced to act. But his government has also stressed it would be reluctant to mount any big operation on Syrian soil and then only with international support. It was not clear whether the shells hitting Turkish territory were aimed to strike there or were due to Syrian troops overshooting as they attacked rebels to their north. NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said in Brussels the 28-member military alliance hoped a way could be found to stop tensions escalating on the border. “We have all necessary plans in place to protect and defend Turkey if necessary,” he said. Elsewhere in Syria, rebels took control of the town of Maarat al-Nuaman, which lies on the main north-south highway in the northern province of Idlib, after a 48-hour battle with soldiers, according to rebels and activists. Video sent to Reuters, which activists said was filmed in Maarat al-Nuaman on Monday, showed dozens of fighters on a main street. Other footage purported to show fighters taking over a prison and army-held buildings in the town. The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the violence, said 90 people had been killed so far on Tuesday, including 29 soldiers, compared to a death toll of 210 on Monday. Activists estimated more than 100 dead or wounded in the bombing of the intelligence compound in Damascus. The militant Islamist group al-Nusra Front said it had mounted the attack because the base was used a centre for torture and repression. “Big shockwaves shattered windows and destroyed shop facades. It felt as if a bomb exploded inside every house in the area,” said one resident of the suburb of Harasta, where the compound was located. The sharp rise in casualties in the past month indicates the growing intensity of the war, which developed from peaceful protests against Assad in March 2011 into a full-scale civil war. An estimated 30,000 people have been killed as main cities such as Aleppo, Homs and the capital itself are savagely contested. UN special envoy Lakhdar Brahimi will go to Syria soon to try to persuade the Assad government to call an immediate ceasefire. On the border In the border area, there was no sign of any breakthrough by either side though activists said rebels killed at least 40 soldiers on Saturday in a 12-hour battle to take the village of Khirbet al-Joz. Just outside Hacipasa, nestled among olive groves in Turkey’s Hatay province, the sound of mortar fire could be heard every 10 to 15 minutes on Tuesday from around the Syrian town of Azmarin. A Syrian helicopter flew over the border. Villagers used ropes and boats to ferry the wounded across a river into Turkey. Rebels with AK-47s slung over their shoulders carried an Free Syrian Army officer down to the river bank on the Syrian side, using a carpet and two poles as a makeshift stretcher. He had been shot in the chest and had a chest drain and drip attached. The rebels said they had dealt with roughly 20 wounded people and two dead on Tuesday. The seriously wounded are ferried across to Turkey, while those less severely hurt are patched up at a makeshift first aid centre on the river bank and sent back into Syria. Musana Barakat, 46, an Azmarin resident who makes frequent trips between the two countries, pointed at plumes of smoke in the distance and said Assad’s troops were burning houses there. “There are rebels hiding in and around the town and they are going to make a push tonight to drive Assad’s forces out,” he said, a Syrian passport sticking out of his shirt pocket. A crowd gathered around a saloon car, the blood-stained body of a man who had been pulled wounded from the fighting slumped across its back seat. Those with him said he had been rescued alive but died after being brought over the border. Turkish President Abdullah Gul said on Monday the “worst-case scenarios” were now playing out in Syria and Turkey would do everything necessary to protect itself. Gul and Erdogan, in seeking Western and Arab support, have repeatedly warned of the dangers of fighting in Syria spilling over into a sectarian war engulfing the entire region. Turkey’s chief of general staff, General Necdet Ozel, flew by helicopter to several bases in Hatay province on Tuesday, part of Turkey’s 900-km (560-mile) border with Syria. The shelling of the Turkish town of Akcakale last Wednesday, which killed five civilians, marked a sharp escalation. Turkey has been responding in kind since then to gunfire or mortar bombs flying over the border and has bolstered its military presence along the frontier. “We are living in constant fear. The mortar sounds have really picked up since this morning. The children are really frightened,” said Hali Nacioglu, 43, a farmer from the village of Yolazikoy near Hacipasa. Unlike the flat terrain around Akcakale, the border area in Hatay is marked by rolling hills with heavy vegetation. Syrian towns and villages, including Azmarin, are clearly visible just a few kilometers away. “It’s only right that Turkey should respond if it gets fired on but we really don’t want war to break out. We want this to finish as soon as possible,” said Abidin Tunc, 49, a tobacco farmer also from Yolazikoy. Turkey was once an ally of Assad but turned against him after his violent response to the uprising. It has nearly 100,000 Syrian refugees in camps on its territory, has given sanctuary to rebel leaders and has led calls for Assad to quit. - Reuters |
| Vice presidential debate could be a tale of two Ryans Posted: 09 Oct 2012 11:16 PM PDT
But since Romney tapped him in August to join his campaign, the vice presidential candidate has become more prudent, avoiding detailed discussion of his budget plan and earning the nickname “mini-Mitt” for displaying a cautious streak like his boss. For Vice President Joe Biden, a major question heading into his debate with Ryan in Kentucky on Thursday is “a choice of which Ryan we’re going to see,” a Biden adviser said. Instead of promoting his own budget plan, which includes caps on future Medicare spending, Ryan is talking up Romney’s more voter-friendly version, which has no spending limits, at campaign events. “The vice president has been studying up on (Ryan’s) real positions and is prepared to call him out on his actual positions,” said the adviser, who warned that “maybe there will be some dishonesty,” from the Republican. The stakes are high for Biden, who is charged with righting a listing ship after President Barack Obama’s disastrous first debate against Romney in Denver last week, which lost him the momentum in polls ahead of the November 6 election. Democrats have targeted Ryan’s budget, a severe series of spending cuts, as proof that he would hurt seniors and the middle class. One top Republican strategist said the best way for Biden to battle his opponent is to tease out the “wonky” Ryan, the congressman who loves mind-numbing fiscal details. “If I was prepping against Ryan, I would be looking for issues that Romney and Ryan disagree on and try and pull out Ryan the wonk, as opposed to Ryan the running mate,” the strategist said. That would turn off television viewers not used to detailed policy arguments, and could give Biden a chance to paint the Republican team as holding different positions on Medicare. The Romney campaign has worked overtime to emphasize that House Budget Committee chairman Ryan has fallen in line with the presidential candidate on fiscal issues. “You have to remember this is a Romney-Ryan ticket, and there’s one presidential candidate, there’s one person at the top of the ticket,” Romney spokesman Kevin Madden told reporters on Tuesday. No Ryan doctrine An image of Ryan as a congenial Midwesterner rather than a congressional budget hawk has been enhanced on the campaign trail, where he has worked to build a reputation for an easy manner with voters. Much was made in the media of Ryan cutting short an interview this week with a local television reporter whose questions he did not like, but the Wisconsin congressman was in good spirits immediately after the interview, and did not storm off as was suggested. Economic issues aside, Ryan is clearly taking his lead from Romney on foreign policy, a weak spot for the 42-year-old congressman against Biden, who spent more than 10 years on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. In Ohio on Monday, Ryan echoed much of the language and themes that the former Massachusetts governor laid out in an attack on Obama’s handling of world events during a speech at the Virginia Military Institute. “The president is not offering the kind of spirited and principled leadership we need to create jobs here at home or to keep us safe,” Ryan said. At a rally, he pressed home criticism of Obama over the killing of four Americans in Libya, a favorite foreign policy attack line of Romney. Ryan told voters to just turn on their televisions: “You will likely see the failures of the Obama foreign policy unfolding before our eyes,” Ryan said. “You see if you look around the world, what we are witnessing is the unraveling of the Obama foreign policy.” Leading up to Thursday’s debate, Ryan retreated to Florida to prepare, spending Tuesday morning focused on policy briefings before switching to debate prep. Ryan aides in recent days have begun the typical campaign ritual of playing up your opponent before a debate, portraying Biden as a seasoned professional. “Vice President Biden has done 18 presidential or VP debates over the years – 14 in 2008,” said one Ryan aide. “He’s always a focused debater. It’s not a setting in which he makes gaffes.” Brendan Buck, a Ryan spokesman, noted that Thursday night will be Ryan’s “first time on the big stage.” “After the president’s performance last week, we know Joe Biden will (be) coming at us like a cannonball,” Buck said. -Reuters |
| Voters most battered by the economy still favor Obama Posted: 09 Oct 2012 11:13 PM PDT
Hubert Pereira, a cook, was in the front row that day. “It was great,” he said, beaming as he recalled that the president had shaken his hand and hugged his companion, Felisa Medalla. But a year after the speech, the handshake and the hug, Pereira and Medalla are far from convinced that happy times are here again. Pereira, 50, recently switched his registration from Democrat to “nonpartisan” after suffering a yearlong bout of unemployment. Medalla, a waitress who was laid off seven months ago, complained: “People say Obama is doing good. But how can he be doing good when I don’t have a job?” Her question goes to the heart of why, despite Obama’s recent uptick in the polls, his battle for reelection against Republican nominee Mitt Romney remains too close to call. In nationwide Reuters/Ipsos surveys, conducted over nine months, a startling 35 percent of households have suffered a major economic setback in the past four years. They have either lost a house to foreclosure or are in the middle of losing one. Or they have lost a job or taken a pay cut. Almost 96,000 adults were polled. The disillusion among voters in this group is extreme: Only 21 percent think the national economy is going in the right direction, while 73 percent say it is on the wrong track (click here for the poll data:tinyurl.com/economytrack). Strikingly, many don’t seem to blame the president. They divide about evenly on which candidate has the better plan for the economy: Forty percent pick Obama and 42 percent choose Romney (click here for the poll data: tinyurl.com/economyplan). Out of work and underwater At the edge of Las Vegas, miles from its garish casinos and peep shows, acres of dun-colored stucco homes, once mostly owner-occupied, are pimpled with “For Rent” signs. U-Haul vans wind in and out of dusty lanes with jaunty names: Rosy Sunrise Street, American Beauty Avenue, Glory Rise Court. In Nevada, one of a handful of swing states that could affect the election’s outcome, the recession has hardly receded. The state’s 12.1 percent unemployment is the nation’s highest. Experts say another foreclosure wave is in the offing, as 59 percent of Nevada homeowners still owe more on their houses than the value of their property – as compared to 22 percent nationwide. La Placita, a one-block street with Hispanic, Caucasian and African-American residents, has seen its share of suffering, before and since Obama’s visit. Tinfoil covers the windows of several homes, an effort to cut the cost of air-conditioning. A red, white and blue flier tucked in a door jamb reads “Obama fights for our American Dream,” but the house is empty due to a recent foreclosure. Pereira and Medalla, who lost a home before moving to a rental at the foot of La Placita, are undecided about how they will vote on November 6. But many of the street’s residents who have lost jobs and homes since Obama was elected nonetheless plan to cast ballots for him. “Everything is slowly getting better,” said Joseph Wozniak, 29, who shares a La Placita rental with two housemates. “I didn’t expect miracles.” Wozniak lost a job installing electronics in spec homes when the housing market imploded. He survived on food stamps and unemployment benefits for a year until he found work at a music store. A few months later the store went under. But Wozniak, who plays in two bands, used the months of unemployment to hone his skills repairing electric guitars and programming lights for art shows. He now makes about $25,000 a year as an independent contractor. “Obama is responsible for extending unemployment benefits,” he said. “I used that time to build a network.” The main reason he plans to vote for the president is healthcare, he added. Wozniak has no insurance and is hoping that under the Affordable Health Care Act, informally known as Obamacare, he can afford the asthma medicine he needs. A more robust safety net is one reason many voters give for supporting Obama. In Reuters/Ipsos surveys of those whose families have suffered from the recession, the president outpolls Romney, 47 percent to 43 percent. I dont know who to blame Romney supporters say continuing job losses and foreclosures are reasons to vote for the GOP nominee. At a recent rally in the University of Nevada’s Cox Pavilion, Romney told 3,000 cheering Las Vegans that he would ease regulations on banks “to reignite the housing economy” and would get the federal government to sell more than 200,000 vacant, foreclosed homes it owns. He reiterated his pledge to create 12 million jobs over four years, as supporters, many of them wearing “Nobama” buttons, shouted “USA! USA!” With both presidential candidates touting plans to boost employment, voters whose families have been most affected by the recession remain sharply divided over who would best protect American jobs. In Reuters/Ipsos surveys, 42 percent pick Obama and 41 percent choose Romney. In the top row of the pavilion, Andrew Bateman, 35, with his 8-year-old son in tow, was vigorously applauding the GOP nominee. Romney, a former private equity executive, “has a good track record in turning businesses around,” he said. “Obama could have done a lot more on the economy.” In an interview after the rally, Bateman, a single father, said his business selling life insurance to teachers had dried up in 2010 after budget cuts to local schools. He and his son moved in with his parents and went on food stamps. In February his father lost his job as a piano salesman. Bank of America foreclosed on their home, and his father moved to Spokane, Washington, for another job. Bateman went back to college to get an accounting degree and now survives on college loans, splitting the rent on a condo with his girlfriend. But he expects to drop out by the end of the year because, he said, he has hit the ceiling for Pell grants and colleges are making it harder to borrow money. “I don’t know who to blame,” he said, “but Obama was supposed to be the education president.” The healthcare divide Nevada, where the most recent polls show Obama leading by several points, is awash with campaign advertising. In one TV spot, the Obama campaign overlays photos of veterans, senior citizens, factory workers and families with Romney’s recorded comments at a fundraiser that 47 percent of Americans “who believe they are entitled to healthcare, to food, to housing” will vote for Obama. “My job is not to worry about those people,” Romney said. Obama also seeks to contrast Romney’s more laissez-faire approach to housing with his own efforts to push banks to modify mortgages. A union-funded TV spot features Romney’s comments to a Las Vegas newspaper: “Don’t try and stop the foreclosure process. Let it run its course and hit the bottom.” Meanwhile, Romney is taking aim at the president’s healthcare reform. “Some think Obamacare is the same as free healthcare,” the 30-second ad says. “But nothing is free. Obama is raiding $716 billion from Medicare, changing the program forever.” The spot taps into deep divisions over the 2010 Affordable Care Act. Even among those whose families have lost jobs, lost income or suffered foreclosures, only 48 percent support the law, and 52 percent oppose it in Reuters/Ipsos’ surveys. Paradoxically, when asked which candidate has the better approach to healthcare, they prefer Obama to Romney 44 percent to 38 percent. Romney backers are also running spots capitalizing on an Obama remark that infuriated many Nevadans. It features a sentence plucked out of context from a 2010 speech to a New Hampshire crowd: “You don’t blow a bunch of cash in Vegas when you’re trying to save for college.” That ad, which ran on Spanish-language TV, nevertheless made an impression on Uziel DeLeon, a laid-off housekeeper who was checking out a rental near La Placita on a recent morning. “Obama told people not to waste their money coming to Vegas,” he said incredulously. “But without tourists, there’s no work here.” So would he vote for Romney? DeLeon, a Guatemalan immigrant who became a U.S. citizen three months ago, shook his head dismissively. “Romney wants to kick out people who are not from here,” he said. “Obama would do more for Latinos.” Hispanics, who accounted for 16 percent of the Nevada electorate in 2008 and 2010, haven’t forgotten Romney’s support for Arizona’s restrictive immigration law and his suggestion during the GOP primaries that some 12 million undocumented workers should “self-deport.” Among Reuters/Ipsos’ surveys of voters whose families have lost jobs, income or suffered foreclosures, Obama beats Romney among Hispanics by 78 percent to 19 percent and among African-Americans by 89 percent to 1 percent. Among whites, Romney retains a clear advantage of 52 percent to 36 percent. Faith in the America In swing states such as Nevada, Florida and Colorado, the Latino vote could prove decisive. A few blocks from La Placita on a recent afternoon, Luisa Garay, 26, unpacked groceries in the kitchen as her mother cooked chicken tacos. A sister was ironing in the living room, a brother was watching TV. Small children darted about. Garay’s father immigrated legally from Honduras and worked his way up from busboy to civil engineer with the Nevada Department of Transportation. He bought a home and, during the housing bubble, refinanced it to buy another, which he rented to Garay and several roommates. When the recession hit, Garay, the single mother of an 8-year-old, lost her job as a college counselor. She and her roommates couldn’t afford to cover the mortgage. What with other job losses and some illness in the family, “Everything fell apart,” Garay said. “We hired a lawyer, but the bank foreclosed on both homes. I’ve never seen my dad so sad. We all fell into depression.” Like Romney, the Garays are Mormons, as is about 7 percent of the Nevada electorate. And while most Mormons vote Republican, the Garays support Obama. “Romney seems to think we are lazy,” Garay said. “But when I lost my job, I worked seven days a week to make ends meet – cleaning offices, tutoring, caring for disabled kids.” She sees Obama as supportive on healthcare (she has no insurance), food stamps (she got them after losing her job) and student loans (she owes US$15,000). “Obama is for the working class,” she said. Despite the family’s troubles, Garay’s lot is improving. She found another full-time job, leading college workshops for high school students, and qualified for an FHA loan to buy an US$80,000 home. Her parents have moved in with her. “We’re all struggling to make it to the American Dream,” she said. Whether Americans see themselves as achieving that dream – and whether they think Obama or Romney might make it easier to get there – is fundamental to the election. In Reuters/Ipsos surveys, when those whose families have suffered job losses, income cuts or foreclosures were asked if “people in this country can still live the American Dream,” 53 percent agreed they can. It is a slim majority, but it suggests that on La Placita Avenue, in the surrounding streets and across the United States, the strivers outnumber the skeptics. - AFP |
| Floods kill seven in Russia’s Dagestan region Posted: 09 Oct 2012 11:08 PM PDT
About 320 homes in the Caspian Sea coastal city of Derbent close to the Caucasus Mountains were flooded and seven bodies were found, the ministry said. A flash flood killed 171 people in August in the Caucasus in the Krasnodar region town of Krymsk, where residents said they had no warning of the danger. President Vladimir Putin visited the area and several local officials were sacked and detained. In Derbent, warnings were issued from loudspeakers at mosques and mounted on cars dispatched around the city in the mostly Muslim province, Ekho Moskvy radio reported. - Reuters |
| ‘Nasha jurucakap Umno dalam Pakatan’ Posted: 09 Oct 2012 10:31 PM PDT
Ketua DHPP, Hu Pang Chow berkata, sepatutnya ahli Parlimen Bachok itu menyertai Umno. “Adakah kenyataan ini ada agenda tersembunyi? Kalau dia (Nasha) nak pertahankan Islam, nak tunjuk alim, dia sepatutnya dia perbetulkan orang Umno,” kata Hu. Nasharudin petang kelmarin dilaporkan berkata, dalam menghadapi PRU13 mengingatkan parti itu agar tidak mengutamakan kuasa semata-mata dan sehingga sanggup meletakkan prinsip Islam di tempat kedua. Beliau yang juga ahli Majlis Syura PAS berkata, dalam konteks politik hari ini, masalah perpecahan umat sering dilupakan sedangkan ia adalah masalah utama yang perlu diselesaikan terlebih dahulu. Kata Nasharudin, beliau turut hairan mengapa usaha untuk membincangkan masalah umat Islam terutamanya melibatkan dua parti terbesar orang Melayu Islam iaitu parti Umno dan PAS sering dilihat ‘taboo’. Beliau berkata demikian pada seminar dakwah Islamiyyah sebagai tunggak kekuatan umah di PWTC, semalam. Menang sendiri Katanya lagi, kemenangan Islam terletak di tangan umatnya sendiri tanpa bantuan dari bukan Islam. PAS berada dalam Pakatan Rakyat (PR) yang turut dianggotai DAP. Bagaimanapun, Hu menegaskan jika PAS bergabung dengan Umno ini bermakna parti Islam itu bersekongkol dengan penyalahguna kuasa, rasuah dan kezaliman yang dilakukan oleh Umno. “Orang Melayu banyak yang miskin, terlibat dengan jenayah dan gejala sosial. Adakah Nasharuddin mahu PAS terbabit sama?” tanya Hu. Dalam perkembangan lain, Timbalan Mursyidul Am PAS, Datuk Dr Haron Din dilaporkan mempersoalkan Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim yang menghadiri pelancaran buku bertajuk Tinderbox: The Past and Future of Pakistan yang ditulis oleh bekas ahli Parlimen India, Mobashar Jawed Akbar yang dikatakan pernah menghina Islam.Sementara bekas ahli Parlimen PAS Sik, Datuk Shahnon juga mempersoalkan hubungan PAS dengan DAP. |
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