Month: April 2014

The Eastern Sabah Security Command (Esscom) might as well close down if after the Malaysian taxpayers spending RM300 million on it, all it could do is to admit that it is “powerless” following the abduction of two women from a resort off Semporna on Wednesday.

Not only Sabahans, but all Malaysians, are outraged at today’s Malay Mail Online report on the statement by the Esscom corporate communication head Newmond Tibin who said it had “no power” over the 10 districts in the Eastern Sabah Safety Zone (Esszone) and that it was under police jurisdiction.

The 10 districts are Kudat, Kota Marudu, Pitas, Beluran, Sandakan, Kinabatangan, Lahad Datu, Kunak, Semporna and Tawau.

“Each district in the Esszone has its own OCPD and they take orders from the police chief. Thus allegations that Esscom is not doing anything is unfair,” said Newmond.

He said Esscom’s role was to coordinate with various agencies. Continue reading “Parliament should close down ESSCOM next week if after spending RM300 million, all it could say after the latest abduction in Semporna is that it it is “powerless in Esszone””

It is my pleasure to be with all of you today for this meaningful event. Soon we will get down to the ground, or rather the mudflats, to plant 500 mangrove seedlings, marking the start of coastal mangrove rehabilitation in this area.

This is a collective effort of different organisations and individuals present here today. The Green Team under the Malaysian Dream Movement, and the NGO J.A.R.I.N.G are the co-organisers. But perhaps more encouraging is to see many of you volunteers, from Pontian as well as other parts of Johore, to join us here on this faithful morning.

You are all agents for change for a better Malaysia. Continue reading “Invitation to Minister in Prime Minister’s Department and Deputy Environment Minister to visit “Pulau Ubah” to ascertain whether large-scale land reclamation in accordance with the law”

Today, 29 planes and 11 ships are scouring a search area of about 217,000 square kilometres 1,700 kilometres north west of Perth in a desperate race against time to retrieve the missing MH370-200 Boeing 777-200 aircraft’s blackbox before its batteries run out.

The CNN report that the aircraft’s black box battery life may be shorter than expected, lasting only 20 to 25 days, as flight MH370’s black box pingers have not been replaced in 2012, is most shocking news.

Monday in two days’ time will be the full month of the tragedy of the missing Malaysian Airlines (MAS) MH370 Boeing 777-200 aircraft which took off from the KLIA on March 8 at 12.41 am for a six-hour flight to Beijing but which disappeared within the first hour with no clue discovered so far as to its whereabouts despite the longest and largest-ever multi-national air-sea-undersea-satellite search. Continue reading “Candlelight vigil on Monday midnight which marks full-month of disappearance of MH370 in prayer and hope for the 239 passengers and crew on board and in support and solidarity with their loved ones in their anguish and suffering”

The 28-day Malaysian Airlines (MAS) disaster of the missing MH370 Boeing 777-200 aircraft with 239 passengers and crew on board is both a national and international disaster, and this is why it has spawned the longest and largest multi-national air-sea-undersea-satellite search for the missing plane, at one time involving 26 nations.

Today, a United States underwater drone has joined the race against time in the eight-nation search involving 14 planes, ten ships and a submarine in an area of around 86,000 square miles some 1,000 miles west-north-west of Perth, Australia as there are only two days left to retrieve MH370 black boxes as their battery-powered signal usually last only about 30 days.

At a press conference in Parliament yesterday, I had urged all MPs, whether Pakatan Rakyat or Barisan Nasional, to think hard and fast whether Parliament should adjourn next Thursday utterly lost and indecisive if it becomes increasingly unlikely that the black boxes of the missing Malaysian Airlines (MAS) aircraft MH370 is going to be retrieved in the coming weeks and months.

As the current meeting of Parliament adjourns next Thursday, April 10, I suggest that Parliament should reserve next Thursday for a special debate on the MH370 disaster and what MPs should do to help restore national and international confidence in the transparency, good governance and reputation of Malaysia. Continue reading “Parliament should reserve next Thursday for a special debate on the MH370 disaster and what MPs should do to help restore national and international confidence in the transparency, good governance and reputation of Malaysia”

Koon Yew Yin
4.4.2014

The independence and integrity of Malaysian Judiciary are now at the tipping point. During the past few years the attention of Malaysians has been riveted by the exposure to an unprecedented number of court cases with important political ramifications. These cases include the following

• Altantuya Shaariibuu’s murder case

• N.Kugan’s death during police custody

• Teoh Beng Hock’s death

• the PKFZ scandal

• the NFC scandal

• various election appeal cases arising from the 2013 general elections

• Anwar’s Sodomy I and II case

• Karpal Singh’s conviction for alleged sedition

At no time in the country’s history has there been such a large and wide variety of politically charged cases being brought to the country’s courts of law.

If we take these cases individually and collectively, the overall impression that can be obtained from the many articles and analysis which have appeared in the internet media is that the Malaysian judiciary has come under tremendous political pressure when arriving at their judgements. Continue reading “Malaysian Judiciary: How Low Can It Go?”

by V Anbalagan
The Malaysian Insider
April 04, 2014

Veteran lawyer Karpal Singh, who was fined RM4,000 for sedition last month, could now be jailed after prosecution filed a cross appeal, urging the court to impose a stiffer penalty.

Karpal was found guilty of sedition and fined by the Kuala Lumpur High Court on March 11.

However, he told The Malaysian Insider yesterday that he received a copy of the notice of appeal filed by the prosecution, urging the Court of Appeal to enhance the sentence.

“They want me in jail,” said Karpal, who stepped down as DAP chairman following the conviction and sentence last month.

“Well, they are entitled to file a cross appeal.” Continue reading “Putrajaya seeks stiffer penalty against Karpal for sedition”

by Joseph Sipalan
Malay Mail Online
4 April 2014

KUALA LUMPUR, April 4 — “Haywire” implementation of the New Economic Policy (NEP) was the cause of the rampant cronyism and rent-seeking now ailing Malaysia, said veteran lawmaker Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah.

The former finance minister said the practice of patronage in implementing the policy had undermined the “just and noble” philosophy that underpinned the social engineering programme that was mooted in the aftermath of the May 13, 1969 racial riots.

“The entrenchment of rent-seeking and patronage system into the fabric of Malaysian life begs the question: How did this come to pass?” he said in his keynote address at the launch of the book “Rich Malaysia, Poor Malaysians” last night.

“Much as this sounds like a blame game and much as this is distasteful to swallow, the answer lies in the New Economic Policy; or rather, the NEP that had gone wrong in its implementation,” he added.

Tengku Razaleigh, or Ku Li as he is popularly known, said the country has fallen victim to the machinations of politicians habitually lining their own pockets and colluding with businessmen who were uncompetitive without preferential treatment. Continue reading “Chronic rent-seeking due to corrupted NEP, says Ku Li”

By Ross Kelly in Perth, David Winning in Sydney
Wall Street Journal
April 3, 2014

The Australian head of the international search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 has called the operation one of the “most challenging” he has ever seen.

As the chances dim for finding Malaysia Airlines 370’s “black box” flight recorders before the batteries in their locator beacons run out, Malaysian and Australian leaders sought to inject new momentum into a search of the southern Indian Ocean that has yet to find plane wreckage.

Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak met aircrews involved in the multinational search for Flight 370 at Pearce air base, near Perth, on Thursday. The visit is Mr. Najib’s first to Australia since the focus of the search swung abruptly to the southern Indian Ocean on March 20, based on satellite images of possible plane debris. So far, nothing related to the missing plane has been found. Continue reading “Time, Batteries Running Out on Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 ‘Black Box’”

Kathy Marks
Sydney
The Independent
03 April 2014

With as little as two days left in which to recover the black box of Flight MH370, Malaysian police have warned that the mystery of the plane’s disappearance nearly four weeks ago may never be solved.

The country’s Prime Minister, Najib Razak, who visited the headquarters of the multinational search in Perth today, promised relatives of the 239 passengers and crew that “we will not rest until answers are… found”. However, batteries in the locator beacons of flight recorders only last about 30 days, which means MH370’s will die next Monday, or even this weekend.

The hunt for wreckage of the Malaysian Airlines Boeing 777 continued in the Indian Ocean, with two British Royal Navy vessels joining seven other ships and eight planes. But since the search switched to the remote waters a fortnight ago, not a single piece of debris linked to the doomed flight has been found, despite exhaustive efforts. Continue reading “Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370: Mystery of missing aircraft ‘may never be solved,’ police warn”

By Mary-Ann Russon
International Business Times
April 2, 2014

Unmanned robot submarines will need to be brought in to locate wreckage of the missing Malaysia Airlines plane in the Indian Ocean once the search zone has been narrowed down.

Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 took off from Kuala Lumpur Ifor Beijing with 239 people onboard on 8 March but lost contact with air traffic control 50 minutes later.

After 26 days of searching there continues to be no sign of the wreckage. It is now assumed that the plane crashed into the Indian Ocean without survivors and the search for the plane has now been classified as a criminal investigation.

Unmanned submarines, which are known as Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUV), were crucial in finding the black box recorders from Air France Flight 447 after it crashed into the Atlantic Ocean in 2009, killing all 228 people onboard.

Although some major wreckage was removed from the sea within five days of the crash, it took another two years and €32m spent on four deep water search missions before the black boxes were located at roughly 12,800 feet below sea level. Continue reading “Malaysia Airlines MH370: Unmanned Robot Subs Needed for Search”

By TODD PITMAN
Associated Press
April 3, 2014

Bangkok: At the time — the evening of March 24 — it seemed like the breakthrough the world was waiting for.

In a hastily called speech, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak announced that an unprecedented analysis of satellite signals concluded that Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 “ended” deep in the Indian Ocean, far from any possible refuge for the 239 souls aboard.

Finally, there was a solid explanation for what happened to the aircraft. A much more focused search could begin, and so perhaps could the grieving process for families from 14 countries. Najib’s announcement quieted wild speculation about desert islands and terrorists and covert operations.

But four weeks after the plane disappeared, the apparent pivot in the search is proving to be not much of a pivot at all.

Not a single piece of wreckage from the lost plane has been found, not even after a new analysis led investigators to change the focus of their search yet again. The latest search area is based on extremely limited satellite data combined with radar data taken some five hours before the plane is believed to have gone down. It is, as one search official said, “a very inexact science.”

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott, whose country is coordinating the current search effort, spoke of “very credible leads” and “increasing hope” a day before Najib’s announcement. But on Thursday he said the search has become “the most difficult in human history.” Continue reading “MH370: What Do We Know? What Will We Ever Know?”

By Ludovica Iaccino
International Business Times
March 12, 2014

Missing Malaysian airlines flight crash

Saturday 8 March

Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 takes off at 12:21am local time (16:21 GMT) from Kuala Lumpur with 227 passengers and 12 crew members on board.

Flight MH370 was supposed to arrive at Beijing Capital International Airport at 6:30am but two hours after takeoff, air traffic control loses contact with the plane. It is last heard of 120 nautical miles off the east coast of the Malaysian town of Kota Bharu.

No panic call is received from the crew and weather in the flight path is clear.

The Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam (CAAV) confirms the jetliner never registered entering the airspace between Malaysia and Ho Chi Minh City.

Fear of a crash grow as Malaysia and Vietnam launch a search and rescue operation in the South China Sea. China dispatches two maritime rescue ships.

Terrorist plot, engine failure, disintegration, hijacking and pilot suicide all under consideration as the cause of the disappearance.

Malaysia Airlines releases the passenger list which includes 154 people from China and Taiwan, 38 from Malaysia, seven from Indonesia and six from Australia

Chinese premier Li Keqiang appeals to the Malaysian government to speed up the search operation.

Vietnam confirms seeing a giant oil slick and column of smoke in its waters. The slick is not connected to the missing aircraft, it is discovered.

Terror attack theory strengthens when two “missing” passengers of the flight MH370 reveal that their passports were stolen last year in Thailand. Continue reading “Malaysia Airlines’ Missing Flight MH370: Timeline of an Air Mystery”

The Malaysian Insider
April 03, 2014

As the search continues in the Indian Ocean for signs of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, the staggering amount of rubbish in the sea is hampering efforts to find possible debris from the missing aircraft.

Among those who had highlighted this problem is Fairfax writer Greg Ray whose article “The Ocean is Broken”, written last year went viral on social media, reported The Maitland Mercury.

In the article, Ray had quoted Newcastle yachtsman Ivan Macfadyen who had sailed from Melbourne to Osaka and from there to San Francisco who expressed his sadness and horror at the astounding volume of garbage he encountered in the ocean during his journey.

Ivan told Ray that one of the things he noticed was the absence of the cries of the seabirds which, on all previous similar voyages, had surrounded the boat.

The birds were missing because the fish were missing.

Instead, in its place was a huge amount of garbage floating in the ocean. Continue reading “MH370 lost in a ‘broken ocean’, says daily”

After 27 days of the longest and largest ever multi-national sea-air-satellite search of the missing MAS Boeing 777 from South China Sea to the Straits of Malacca; from the Andaman Sea to the Northern and Southern corridors; and now to the Indian Ocean, no clue has been uncovered with regard to the whereabouts of MH370.

The MH 370 “black boxes” – which records flight data and cockpit voice communications – is now the only hope for clues to the mystery of the flight’s March 8 disappearance or the mystery may never be solved.
Time is fast running out as there are only three days left to retrieve MH370 boxes as their battery-powered signal usually last only about 30 days.

The entry of the British nuclear submarine, HSM Tireless, to join the search for Flight MH370 from Perth, has made it an eight-nation sea-undersea-and-air search involving Australia, Malaysia, China, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea, the United States and United Kingdom.

However, despite a search involving 12 planes and 10 ships and now one submarine, with more than 100 men and women in the air and more than 1,000 at sea, the prospects of the 27-day search of the missing MH370 Boeing 777 have become increasingly pessimistic, forlorn and desperate with no one any the wiser as to where the Malaysia Airlines jet hit the sea. Continue reading “Members of Parliament must think hard and fast whether Parliament should adjourn next Thursday utterly lost and indecisive if it becomes increasingly unlikely that the black boxes of MH370 is going to be retrieved in the coming weeks and months?”

Danny Lee in Kuala Lumpur
South China Morning Post
03 April, 2014

The first pieces of evidence that Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 crashed into the ocean may come to light when they are washed up on a beach, possibly within weeks, experts said yesterday.

Oceanographers said that currents and prevailing winds would likely push any floating debris towards Australia’s vast west coast.

In the event that the huge ongoing Indian Ocean search turns up nothing, small, buoyant items could appear before the wreckage of the plane itself is located.

An assortment of aircraft and ships scouring the ocean some 2,000 kilometres off the coast of Perth have so far found no sign of the missing Boeing 777. Continue reading “First signs of MH370 crash may be found on Australian shore”

By Adam K. Raymond
New York Times
1st April 2014

Three and a half weeks after Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 vanished from the sky, the world is still waiting to find out what happened. Searching millions of square miles for broken plane parts is, of course, no simple task, but it’s only been complicated by the Keystone Cops routine put on by the Malaysian government. Upon news that officials couldn’t even correctly quote the four words uttered by the co-pilot before all communication with MH370 was lost, here’s a timeline of Malaysia’s mistakes since the plane disappeared.

March 8: Immigration officials allow two passengers to board flight MH370 with stolen passports.

March 8: The Malaysian military fails to notice that that the plane has made a sharp left turn, even though it flew over a radar facility. Continue reading “A Timeline of the Malaysian Government’s Many, Many MH370 Screw-Ups”

By Bill Neely
NBC News
April 1, 2014

PERTH, Australia – The signs aren’t good. The search coordinators aren’t optimistic. And the chief of the new group heading the search for missing Flight MH370 is warning that the days of intensive searching might be numbered.

“Inevitably, if we don’t find any wreckage on the surface we are eventually going to have to, probably in consultation with everybody who has a stake in this, review what to do next,” retired Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston said.

That day may come soon.

The new search zone is yielding no results after more than 500 hours of searching by dozens of aircraft. Continue reading “Analysis: Pessimism Grows as Search for Missing MH370 Drags On”

By Justin Ong
The Malay Mail Online
April 2, 2014

KUALA LUMPUR, April 2 — It is nearly a month since the words “missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370” were seared into our consciousness on March 8.

Along the way, we have learned the word “unprecedented” and all its other variations, but not the actual answers to what happened to MH370 and the 239 souls on board.

Here are three things that we gleaned from the story so far. Continue reading “Three things we learned about: MH370”

by Jennifer Gomez
The Malaysian Insider
April 02, 2014

Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak must admit that he made a mistake when he announced on March 24 that MH370 had ended in the southern Indian Ocean and later attempted to imply that he did not mean that the plane had crashed or that there were no survivors, opposition politicians said today.

DAP adviser Lim Kit Siang told reporters at the Parliament lobby that the mistake was obvious when Najib tabled a motion of sympathy for the families the day after making the announcement, implying that there were no survivors.

He said text messages were also sent out by MAS while its chief executive Ahmad Jauhari Yahya had mentioned in a press conference that there were no survivors.

After the announcement caused anger and frustration among mainly families of the Chinese passengers, acting Transport Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein defended Najib by saying the prime minister did not say the plane had crashed or there were no survivors. Continue reading “Admit your mistake over MH370, Pakatan tells Najib”

by Elizabeth Zachariah
The Malaysian Insider
April 02, 2014

Malaysia once again fared poorly in a world student performance assessment test conducted in 2012, ending up in the bottom quarter among 44 countries – a result that reinforces the concern that the country’s education system is in tatters.

Malaysia ranked 39 with a mean score of 422 in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) first assessment on creative problem-solving, while neighbouring Singapore came out tops with a mean score of 562, said the report released yesterday by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

The overall mean score for all countries was 500.

Malaysia had more than half of the share of low achievers, which means the students tested lacked the skills needed in a modern workplace.

In contrast, Singapore only had 8% share of low achievers. The mean share was 21.4%.

On the other hand, Malaysia only had 0.9% share of top performers compared with Singapore’s 29.3%. Malaysia’s share was below the average percentage of 11.4%.

This showed that only one out of 10 Malaysian students, aged 15, is able to solve the most complex problems, compared with one in five in Singapore, Korea and Japan. Continue reading “Malaysia ranks 39 out of 44 countries in problem-solving test for 15-year-olds, says report”