Day: December 20, 2016

New York Times
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
DEC. 20, 2016

SYDNEY — For two years, a handful of ships have diligently combed a remote patch of the Indian Ocean west of Australia in a $160 million bid to find Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. On Tuesday, investigators made what was surely a painful admission: They have probably been looking in the wrong place.

The latest analysis by a team of international investigators concluded the vanished Boeing 777 is highly unlikely to be in the current search zone and may instead be in a region farther north. But though crews are expected to finish their deep-sea sonar hunt of the current search area next month, the possibility of extending the search to the north appeared doubtful, with Australia’s transport minister suggesting the analysis wasn’t specific enough to justify continuing the hunt.

The latest twist in the search for Flight 370 highlights the extraordinary difficulty officials have faced in their attempts to find the aircraft based on the faintest scraps of data. All along, officials have said they are not simply looking for a needle in a haystack — they are looking for the haystack.

On Tuesday, the haystack was poised to shift again, with the release of a report by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau, which is leading the search for the plane. The report is the result of a November meeting of international and Australian experts who re-examined all the data used to define the search area for the aircraft, which vanished during a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8, 2014, with 239 people on board.

Since the plane disappeared, experts have analyzed a series of exchanges between the aircraft and a satellite to estimate a probable crash site along a vast arc of ocean in the southern hemisphere. A deep-sea search of a 120,000-square kilometer (46,000-square mile) stretch of water along the arc has so far come up empty. Continue reading “After 2 Years, Experts Say MH370 Likely North of Search Area”

Yesterday, I put to the Minister for Communications and Multimedia, Datuk Seri Salleh Said Keruak a second tranche of five questions to answer so that he could restore his right to ask questions and demand answers from others, as he had forfeited such right when as a Minister responsible for the portfolio of information, had failed to answer numerous questions about government scandals and failings.

Today, I put to Salleh a third tranche of five questions for him to answer to perform his Ministerial duty before he could start asking questions and demanding answers from others.

My third tranche of five questions are:

Question 11:

One of the questions posed in an electronic media today is as follows:

“If 1MDB is squeaky clean, why are people charged abroad?”

In Singapore, bank officer Yvonne Seah was jailed for two weeks, while her supervisor Yaw Yee Chee was jailed for 18 weeks for abetting businessman Jho Low to launder funds linked to 1MDB.

While the Singapore government has prosecuted the few private investment bankers and closed BSI Bank and Falcon private bank, nothing seems to have happened in Malaysia to the few, untouchable men, namely Jho Low and the prime minister’s stepson Riza Aziz, without whom this massive financial scandal could not have taken place, causing US$3.5 billion to be stolen from the Malaysian people, as alleged by US attorney-general Loretta Lynch.

Can Salleh explain the unending reverberations in other countries of the roiling international 1MDB kleptocratic money-laundering scandal, when the Malaysian government continues with its pretence that there is nothing wrong with 1MDB.

Are Yvonne Seah and Yaw Yee Chee wrongly convicted and jailed in Singapore? Continue reading “Third tranche of questions for Salleh – from 1MDB, PISA 2015 to Aleppo”

The saying “Once bitten twice shy” means nothing to leaders of MCA, Gerakan, MIC and other Barisan Nasional component parties in Sabah and Sarawak who seem to be singing to a new mantra of “Once bitten, twice not shy and thrice still willing”.

This sums up the sorry saga of the seven-month long Barisan Nasional crisis, which is compounded by the fact that the Barisan Nasional leaders, especially from the 13 other Barisan Nasional component parties, have been acting like ostriches with heads buried in the sand – who do not know or do not want to admit even to themselves that UMNO’s axis with PAS over Datuk Seri Abdul Hadi Awang’s private member’s bill to amend the Syariah Courts (Criminal Jurisdiction) Act (Act 355) had plunged Barisan Nasional into its worst crisis since its formation 43 years ago in 1973.

In response to remarks by the Deputy International Trade and Industry, Datuk Ahmad Maslan on Sunday, MCA Secretary-General and Second Minister for International Trade and Industry, Datuk Ong Ka Chuan, declared that any Government Bill to be tabled before the Dewan Rakyat must take into account the Barisan Nasional spirit of consensus.

He said a final decision of those Bills can only be made after consultation and deliberation among all component parties.

He said: “There is no such thing that Barisan component parties must support the Government Bill.”

It is noteworthy that Ka Chuan was trying to rebut a statement by his own Deputy Minister – clear evidence of the topsy-turvy world in the political hierarchy in Barisan Nasioanal where the MCA secretary-general although second Minister for International Trade and Industry is politically subordinate and subservient to the Deputy Minister in his own Ministry, who is just an UMNO Supreme Council member!

Ahmad had said that all Barisan component parties cannot object to proposed amendments to the Syariah Courts (Criminal Jurisdiction) Act 1965 if becomes a Government Bill.

Ahmad was not merely giving his personal view but disclosing an elaborate UMNO strategy to “cement UMNO’s unity with PAS”, and the first step for UMNO support of Hadi’s private member’s bill motion is a government takeover of Hadi’s private member’s bill when the private member’s motion is passed in the March Parliament – which would be equivalent to the first reading of Hadi’s private member’s bill. Continue reading ““Once bitten twice shy” means nothing for leaders of MCA, Gerakan, MIC and other BN component parties in Sabah and Sarawak who are singing to a new mantra of “Once bitten, twice not shy and thrice still willing””