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London Olympics stadium decorative wrap given green light Posted: 04 Aug 2011 08:36 AM PDT LONDON, Aug 4 — London's £500 million (RM2.4 billion) Olympic Stadium will have a glossy makeover for next year's Games, with the steel girders and grey concrete that form its exterior being covered by a decorative wrap, organisers said today. Chemical giant Dow, the newest worldwide partner of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), will foot the bill for a temporary fabric wrap that will consist of 336 individual 25-metre-high vertical panels. The Games stadium in east London, which celebrated the year-to-go milestone on July 27, 2011, with the official opening of the Aquatics Centre. — Reuters pic The sleek 80,000-seat bowl-like stadium, completed in May, was originally designed to be covered by a wrap but the plan was ditched last October to save around £7 million from the project unless a private partner could be found. Dow would be allowed to advertise on the wrap until a month before the Games, after which all venues must be clean, organisers said. "Having the wrap is the icing on the cake," London Organising Committee (LOCOG) chairman Sebastian Coe said in a statement. "The stadium will look spectacular at Games time." In an image released by LOCOG, the wrap resembles a series of white vertical blinds. A spokesman said exactly how they would be decorated was still being discussed. However, after criticism in some quarters that the stadium looked rather stark compared with the eye-catching Bird's Nest in Beijing, the wrap will allow coloured lights and images to illuminate the structure that has now become a landmark on the east London skyline. In line with London's emphasis on providing a "green" Games, organisers said Dow's Performance Plastics Division were working on resins that would make the wrap 35 per cent lighter than using conventional materials. The wrap would also include post-industrial recycled material and environmentally friendly inks. Vice-president of Dow Olympic Operations, George Hamilton, said the company was investigating "several options" for the post-Games use of the wrap, which will adorn the stadium by early 2012. London celebrated the year-to-go milestone last week with the official opening of the Aquatics Centre — the last of the five permanent Games venues in the park to be completed. Organisers are now in the middle of a series of test events although the stadium, which is yet to have the track installed, will not see its first action until next May, with the British Universities and College Sport Championships. — Reuters Full Feed Generated by Get Full RSS, sponsored by Used Car Search.

Motivated Tiger a ‘scary’ prospect on return, says Mahan Posted: 04 Aug 2011 06:45 AM PDT AKRON, Ohio —Tiger Woods may have been sidelined by injury for three months but fellow American Hunter Mahan expects the 14-times major winner to return to form with a vengeance at this week's WGC-Bridgestone Invitational. The spark returns for Tiger Woods at practice on the driving range at Firestone, August 3, 2011. — Reuters pic While Woods is likely to be rusty on his return to competition following a lengthy layoff, Mahan believes the former world No. 1 will have extra motivation after being written off by many as a shadow of his former dominant self. "I've never seen anyone like Tiger," Mahan told reporters yesterday ahead of his title defence at Firestone Country Club. "He's one of those 'once-an-era' type of guys who's kind of changing the game forever. It's great that he's back. "He was the standard of the game that we've never seen before, getting his game back there and back to where he knows he's capable of doing because it was pretty special for a while. I think he's very motivated and that's very scary." Asked why the prospect of Woods being extra motivated was scary, Mahan replied: "Because there's so much doubt now. We always used to doubt him and he'd always prove us wrong. "But this is serious doubt because we have no idea how healthy he is. I don't think anyone knows except him and probably his physicians." Woods, a seven-times winner at Firestone, hurt his left knee ligaments and Achilles tendon during the Masters in April. He has not competed since he withdrew from the Players Championship at Sawgrass on May 12 after completing just nine holes and later said he had made a mistake in deciding to play that PGA Tour event. Ready to go "Tiger's been sitting on his rear end for a few months trying to get healthy again," said Mahan, who won last year's WGC-Bridgestone Invitational by two shots. "He's ready to go. "I think he's just focused about trying to get back and win. I'm guessing he's finally healthy. I don't think he'd come back if he was not healthy again. I just don't think you'd want to go through that setback again. "This is a great place for him. I know he didn't play well (here) last year, but I don't expect that to happen again. It's just good timing for him to come back and start really playing good golf." Mahan felt Woods had added incentive at Firestone with so much recent media speculation on players such as US Open champion Rory McIlroy of Northern Irishman being the "next Tiger". "There's a lot of talk of all these other players — this guy is going to be this guy, he's going to step right in there — which is kind of crazy," said Mahan, a three-times winner on the PGA Tour. "For some of the young guys, they've never seen Tiger Woods play 'Tiger Woods' golf. They've never even come close to seeing it. "I don't think Tiger has to prove anything but . . . he takes every single thing that someone says and he's going to turn it into this massive gas on a fire that he's got burning right now. I think he's ready, man." — Reuters Full Feed Generated by Get Full RSS, sponsored by Used Car Search.

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Child marriage a scourge for millions of girls Posted: 04 Aug 2011 04:43 AM PDT Child bride Krishna, 12, poses for a photograph at her house in a village near Baran, located in the northwestern state of Rajasthan, in this July 30, 2011 file photo. The legal age for marriage in India is 18, but weddings like these are common, especially in poor, rural areas where girls in particular are married off young. – Reuters pic NEW YORK, Aug 4 – Child marriage, which steals the innocence of millions of girls worldwide and often condemns them to lives of poverty, ignorance and poor health, is one of the biggest obstacles to development, rights groups say. A girl under the age of 18 is married every three seconds – that's 10 million each year – often without her consent and sometimes to a much older man, according to the children's charity Plan UK. Most of those marriages take place in Africa, the Middle East or South Asia. "This is one of the biggest development issues of our time and we're committed to raising the voices of millions of girls married against their will," Plan UK head Marie Staunton said in her introduction to "Breaking Vows", a recent global report on child marriage. From horrific childbirth injuries to the secret sale of "drought brides", the consequences of child marriage are explored in a multimedia documentary by TrustLaw, a legal news service run by Thomson Reuters Foundation (http://childmarriage.trust.org). "Young children have babies – your life is ruined, your education is ruined," said Kanta Devi, who was 16 when she married in Badakakahera village in India's Rajasthan state. "You become upset with everything in your life," she told TrustLaw. The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child considers marriage before the age of 18 a human rights violation. But according to the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW), there are more than 50 million child brides worldwide, a number that is expected to grow to 100 million over the next decade. RIPPLE EFFECT Rights activists say six of the eight UN Millennium Development Goals to be achieved by 2015 are directly affected by the prevalence of child marriage – the eradication of extreme poverty and hunger; achievement of universal primary education; promotion of gender equality and empowerment of women; reduction in child mortality; improvement in maternal health; and combating HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases. The ripple effect is devastating, experts say. Girls forced into early marriage rarely continue their education, denying them any hope of independence, the ability to earn a livelihood or of making an economic contribution to their households. The practice also reinforces the concept of girls as worthless burdens on their families to be jettisoned as soon as possible. Girls who complete secondary school are six times less likely to become child brides than contemporaries with less or no education, according to the ICRW, a Washington-based think tank. But distance from schools and a lack of school fees often preclude education for the poorest girls, who are twice as likely to marry young as those from wealthier homes. In Niger, Chad and Mali, more than 70 per cent of girls are married before the age of 18, according to ICRW analysis of demographic and health data last year. Bangladesh, Guinea, Central African Republic, Mozambique, Burkina Faso and Nepal have child marriage rates over 50 per cent, the data showed. Ethiopia, Malawi, Madagascar, Sierra Leone, Cameroon, Eritrea, Uganda, India, Nicaragua, Zambia and Tanzania are all above 40 per cent. The reasons child marriages occur vary with the country and are rarely simple. "Very often people are sort of quick to demonise, in some ways, the family members and the people who make the decisions about the marriage of girls," Jeffrey Edmeades, a social demographer with ICRW, told TrustLaw. "But we're finding, for the most part, that people are making these decisions because they feel it's best for their daughters. Parents love their children and they do want the best for them. They're just not sure what the best is." Edmeades, who has been working with aid agency CARE on a project to tackle child marriage in Ethiopia, gave the example of children in that country being betrothed before birth to cement strategic alliances between families. In other cases, girls are married off early to ensure that their virginity, and thus their economic value as brides, is intact and the honour of the family is protected. Meanwhile, debts and natural disasters, such as tsunamis and drought, can lead to girls being sold off as brides as families scramble for survival. 'SILENT HEALTH EMERGENCY' Girls under 15, their bodies still developing and their pelvises narrow, are five times more likely to die during pregnancy or childbirth than women over 20, the US Agency for International Development estimates. The vast majority of those deaths are in the developing world, where a lack of pre- and post-natal care and advanced procedures such as Caesarean sections makes pregnancy and childbirth far more risky than in rich countries. In Africa, for example, 60 per cent of women and girls give birth without a skilled medical professional present, according to the UN World Population Fund. Worldwide, 70,000 girls aged 15-19 die each year during pregnancy or childbirth, UNICEF says. The UN World Population Fund considers pregnancy the leading cause of death in that age group, citing complications of childbirth and unsafe abortions as major factors. Children of child brides are also at risk. Babies born to mothers younger than 18 are more likely to be underweight or stillborn, Plan UK says. Girls forced into early marriage are also at an increased risk of contracting sexually transmitted diseases and HIV/AIDS because they are unlikely to be able to negotiate safe sex with their husbands. "Child marriage is a silent health emergency in the sense that it's often overlooked as a root cause of maternal mortality and morbidity (illness)," the ICRW's Edmeades said. DRAWING MORE ATTENTION While it is a subject still little known and rarely discussed in much of the Western world, the issue of child marriage is drawing greater attention from international aid and humanitarian organisations, as well as governments. In the United States, where child marriage is rare, the US Senate has reintroduced legislation aimed at curbing global child marriage that was unanimously passed in the Senate in 2010 but blocked in the House of Representatives. The International Protecting Girls by Preventing Child Marriage Act would establish a strategy over several years to prevent child marriage in developing countries. It would also require the State Department to report on child marriage in its annual human rights report and integrate efforts to prevent the practice into current development programmes. The bill will be reintroduced in the House this autumn, according to Betty McCollum, a Democrat representative from Minnesota, who is its lead sponsor there. It was blocked in the House last December primarily due to Republican concerns that it would help organisations supplying abortions, which "couldn't have been farther from the truth", McCollum told TrustLaw. "It has nothing to do with abortion," she said. "It has everything to do with saving 12-year-old girls from being sold into slavery or sold to settle a family debt." Not only will it make aid dollars more effective, she added, but "it's a win for the child, it's a win for the community the child lives in and it's a win for the international community". The Elders, an influential group of global leaders founded in 2007 by former South African President Nelson Mandela, gathered dozens of organisations for a two-day meeting in Ethiopia in June and have launched a campaign called "Girls Not Brides: the Global Partnership to End Child Marriage". – Reuters Full Feed Generated by Get Full RSS, sponsored by Used Car Search.

Chrysler roars ahead as US car sales stall Posted: 03 Aug 2011 11:15 PM PDT A Chrysler logo is seen atop a New York City car dealership in this file photo. — AFP pic DETROIT, Aug 4 — America's consumers held back on buying new cars due to economic uncertainty last month, figures released by automakers this week have shown. Car sales in the US rose by just one per cent, according to calculations by Automotive News, as consumers held off buying in the face of high oil prices, the debt crises and low inventory caused by the Japanese earthquake. General Motors, America's largest automaker, managed an eight per cent gain in sales and rival Ford was up by six per cent, figures showed. Toyota, traditionally in third spot, saw its vehicles less popular than ever, with sales plunging by 23 per cent, although it insists that it can recover in the coming months as production in Japan restarts. In fourth place was Chrysler, which managed an outstanding sales gain of 20 per cent on the back of new models, followed by Hyundai-Kia which was also up, by 17 per cent. Chrysler said that its Jeep Wrangler model set a monthly sales record, while the new Chrysler 200 rose 111 per cent in July compared to its predecessor. Honda, meanwhile, fell from fourth place last July to seventh this year on the back of a 28 per cent drop in sales, which meant Hyundai-Kia and Nissan could leapfrog it. The most popular automakers in the US — July 2011 1. General Motors 2. Ford 3. Toyota 4. Chrysler 5. Hyundai-Kia 6. Nissan 7. Honda Data from automakers/Automotive News. — AFP-Relaxnews Full Feed Generated by Get Full RSS, sponsored by Used Car Search.

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Oprah, James Earl Jones to receive Oscars Posted: 04 Aug 2011 07:03 AM PDT Oprah at an appearance as chairman, CEO, and chief creative officer of OWN: Oprah Winfrey Network, during the OWN session at the 2011 Summer Television Critics Association Cable Press Tour in Beverly Hills, California, July 29, 2011. — Reuters pic LOS ANGELES, Aug 4 — Actor James Earl Jones will receive an honorary Oscar this year and Oprah Winfrey will be presented with a humanitarian award, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced. Winfrey and Jones, both past Oscar nominees, will receive their awards at the academy's annual Governors Awards on November 12, along with makeup artist Dick Smith, who will also be honoured with an Oscar. James Earl Jones: Veteran of more than 50 films. — Reuters pic Jones, a veteran of more than 50 films starting with "Dr Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb", was nominated as best actor in 1970 for "The Great White Hope". Younger fans know him as the voice of Darth Vader in the "Star Wars" franchise. Winfrey, who will be honoured with the Jean Hersholt award, was nominated as best actress in her debut film, "The Color Purple", in 1985. Smith, who is known as the "godfather of makeup", won an Oscar in 1984 for "Amadeus". His other noteworthy films include "The Godfather", "The Exorcist" and "Taxi Driver". Both honorary awards, as well the Jean Hersholt award, are in the form of Oscar statuettes. — Reuters Full Feed Generated by Get Full RSS, sponsored by Used Car Search.

Calls in UK to have CNN host quizzed on hacking Posted: 04 Aug 2011 04:02 AM PDT LONDON, Aug 4 — British lawmakers today called for US talk show host Piers Morgan to return to Britain to answer questions about phone-hacking after allegations made by the ex-wife of former Beatle Paul McCartney. Heather Mills' claims that a journalist had listened to voicemail messages on her mobile phone has added fuel to the flames of a scandal that has engulfed Rupert Murdoch's News Corp empire and much of the British establishment. Piers Morgan denies any wrongdoing. — Reuters pic In an interview with the BBC yesterday, Mills said a journalist working for British publisher Trinity Mirror, owner of the Daily Mirror tabloid newspaper, had confronted her with details of a message left by McCartney on her phone in early 2001 following a row. She said the journalist — who was not Morgan, a former newspaper editor — had admitted hacking her phone. So far, allegations about the hacking scam have been mainly limited to the News of the World newspaper, owned by News Corp's British newspaper arm News International. The Sunday tabloid was closed last month amid public fury after it emerged that hacking victims included a missing schoolgirl later found murdered, and other victims of crime. Mills' claim widened the hacking scandal to other titles, and turned the spotlight on Morgan, who once edited the News of the World and then the Daily Mirror until 2004. He said in a 2006 article for Britain's Daily Mail newspaper that he had listened to one of Mills' phone messages. Morgan, now a chat-show host for CNN in the United States, issued a statement denying any wrongdoing. "Heather Mills has made unsubstantiated claims about a conversation she may or may not have had with a senior executive from a Trinity Mirror newspaper in 2001," he said, describing her claims as "somewhat extravagant". "To reiterate, I have never hacked a phone, told anyone to hack a phone, nor to my knowledge published any story obtained from the hacking of a phone," he added. Therese Coffey, a Conservative legislator who sits on a parliamentary committee investigating phone-hacking, said Morgan needed to do more than issue statements from the United States. "I just hope that the police take the evidence and go with it and if Mr Morgan wants to come back to the UK and help them with their inquiries — and I don't mean being arrested in any way — I'm sure he can add more light," she told the BBC. Harriet Harman, deputy leader of the opposition Labour Party, said Morgan had questions to answer. "It's not good enough for him to say, or somebody to say on his behalf, I always comply with the law, the Press Complaints Commission (newspaper watchdog) code of conduct," she told Sky News. — Reuters Full Feed Generated by Get Full RSS, sponsored by Used Car Search.

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8TV, Karl Popper and the two racisms Posted: 03 Aug 2011 11:52 PM PDT AUG 4 — On the bright side, at least 8TV has finally managed to produce some worthwhile entertainment. Okay, so maybe it wasn't entertaining in the intended way, and maybe it only involved 90 seconds of actual content, but it's still an order of magnitude more engaging than the rest of the network's dopey and misshapen brainchildren. Still a long way off from the stuff they buy in from overseas, but hey — progress is progress. The furore over the network's Homerically misguided Ramadan "public service" campaign is easy to understand (unless you're Ahmad Izham Omar, 8TV's CEO). The protagonist of said ads is a young, female, Chinese intruder making a spectacle of herself in a reassuringly Malay pasar Ramadan. She squeals and gorges herself and flaunts her shoulders and armpits like a common hussy; basically she's well out of order, but still not so bad that any of the nice normal folk around her are going to get angry. No, they just stare, as though at a misbehaving child, while the viewer is treated to various slapstick sound effects that would've sounded out of date to Charlie Chaplin. Chinese people — they do the darndest things. The train-wreck is then consummated by a trio of friendly human facades — I'm guessing they're famous — who grin and plead with us all not to get carried away this Ramadan. Please don't get carried away. All we ask is that you stop being such loud, obnoxious, insensitive idiots for one month. Just one lousy month. Please. Never mind the ads, though, and their amazing ability to offend both Chinese and Malay people — even more galling was the network's subsequent reaction. First Ahmad Izham took to Twitter to tell everyone to chillax and stop "over-thinking." You could reasonably sum up his argument as: "Aww, come on! Really? Come on!" After figuring out that this might have fallen a little bit short, he then announced that the ads had been pulled and, maintaining the sullen and mutinous air of a reprimanded 12-year-old, followed this with a tweet about trombones, prefaced with "And now to more important things." In footballing circles this is referred to as "an own goal", or alternatively "so brainless as to defy biology." That tweet has since joined the offending ads in pulled-land, and the network and its CEO have ventured a little further into damage-limitation territory, with tweets and Facebook page updates containing unqualified apologies. But not for the ads. No, instead they thought it would be a better idea to apologise for an alleged "misinterpretation" perpetrated by offended viewers. Most of Malaysia's broadcast media is run based on the premise that the public is about as smart as a collection of sheds. This is probably why 8TV issued an apology which basically amounts to: "We're sorry you're too stupid and thin-skinned to fathom our creative genius." Of course, the public isn't actually as idiotic as your average media exec, so it didn't take long for a new backlash to sweep in, this time against the apology. By the way, if you're reading this, 8TV folk: while the misunderstood-genius apology is valid in theory, for it to work in practise you'd have to be, I don't know, Bill Hicks. Now, before you get carried away, I feel it's only responsible of me to point out that you're not Bill Hicks. No. Nope. Not a chance. All is not lost, though — there's always Michael Richards and the temporary insanity plea. While I've got your attention, 8TV people who for some reason thought these ads were a good idea — I don't actually think you're proper racists. No, I understand why you're so bewildered by the backlash, because, bless your hearts, you harboured no ill-will towards any ethnic group in coming up with those ads. Unfortunately, from your reaction so far I get the feeling that you haven't worked out that there are, in fact, two kinds of racism. The one kind, the kind you think you're being accused of, is the preserve of the Ku Klux Klan and Ibrahim Ali — nasty, malicious stuff. The other kind, the kind you're actually being accused of, is the domain of embarrassing grandmothers and Silvio Berlusconi — people who are just too ignorant, or set in their ways, or stupid, or up their own backsides, to realise the implications of what they're saying. And since you guys are a largely young and multiracial group and, like your CEO, probably consider yourselves enlightened liberals, you can't really claim to be ignorant or set in your ways — so unfortunately I guess this means you're just stupid and up yourselves. But — crucially — you're not malicious. The ads were still insensitive, though, so you really should apologise properly. And on air this time, please. Everybody knows that Twitter and Facebook are ancillary. Since the fruits of your idiocy were broadcast, that's how you should hawk the fruits of your contrition. To be honest, though, the viewers aren't the ones who ought to be most outraged by your antics. No, that dubious honour falls to the estate of the late Austro-British philosopher Karl Popper, who is quoted in your first laughable attempt at a statement of apology, issued via your Facebook page. The quote in question is from Popper's Unended Quest: "It is impossible to speak in such a way that you cannot be misunderstood." Your "apology" builds on this hilariously grandiose opening by asserting that "this is the unfortunate situation that has resulted from the 8TV Ramadan public service announcement (PSA)." Seriously, guys. Right now, thanks to you, poor Karl is kicking and screaming in the hereafter. I mean, this is the guy who argued that tolerance is so important that to preserve it you can be intolerant of intolerant people. He wrote "The Open Society and its Enemies", for crying out loud. That's basically like a thousand pages about how the 8TV Ramadan ads are stupid and bad. If you 8TV types want to be racist that's one thing, but for the love of all that's holy just leave Karl Popper out of it. The man's dead. What did he ever do to deserve being dragged down into your little underworld of ineptitude? If you want a noted quotation which will help you feel justified in these troubled times, I suggest you try this one from Bill Hicks: "I can't watch TV longer than five minutes without praying for nuclear holocaust." Whatever people might say, it takes skill to inspire that same reaction in only 90 seconds, and that's something you can be proud of. * The views expressed here are the personal opinion of the columnist. Full Feed Generated by Get Full RSS, sponsored by Used Car Search.

Crime grows in times of unfairness Posted: 03 Aug 2011 05:29 PM PDT AUG 4 — During the usual workday, my mom is at home with my 10-month-old nephew, little Tarzan, and they grapple for control of the living room. It's amusing. However, at the same time I worry about their safety in a Malaysia where a chasm — between what people need and what those in power want for the same people and themselves — grows. My friend got hit last week repeatedly with a baseball bat by three assailants outside his condo unit while they tried to push his wife into a waiting car. His persistence to persevere under great physical abuse forced the attackers to flee. They are recuperating today, reconsidering their stay in Malaysia since they are both expatriates. And if you — the reader — pause, you too will have an inexhaustible list of your own, of victims and crimes. Malaysians across the political divide are in consensus that something needs to be done, but what? In cycles there are stories of snatch thieves being mauled by a frenzied crowd. People lose control when they outnumber criminals, but being brutal does not end crime. Actually nothing does, crimes will go on. However, some societies are faced with fewer crimes than others — Malaysia would gladly slide itself to the better end of the spectrum. But how? Response to crime is dual, to establish the criminal acts, bring perpetrators to justice and rehabilitate them, and the second which is usually the far more important objective, to regain the trust lost to the crime. The victims lose the most individually, but society as a whole loses more collectively when aggregated. It is not just my British friend and wife who will not be OK to walk down the stretches around their condo for some time, a whole lot of people will be. The usual turn an analysis like this takes at this juncture would be to look at the underlying causes of crime. However, in this case, there is a need to debunk long-standing fallacies in regards to criminal acts in Malaysia. Like my prime minister claiming that if there was rampant cheating in previous general elections his coalition would not have lost six states out of 14 states. Nothing criminal occurred, he claims. First, he is implicitly conceding cheating only is likely to benefit his own side, which means he is conceding these "hypothetical" cheatings are carried out by friendly forces to him. Second, there are all kinds of problems postulating that if there was no absolute gain by a person, then there was fairness. Meaning if the victor does not get everything his way despite winning, then he had not cheated to win. That is to say if my pub football team was made to play a team of equal ability with conditions, you then use the scoreline to determine fairness. The conditions being my team is forced to play barefooted, our hands tied to our backs and the goalkeeper blindfolded. Just because the football score was 8-6 does not mean there was no cheating. It just means we played our asses off despite the conditions, and inevitably lost. Or when the police and road transport authorities set up roadblocks to penalise motorists but do little about the smoke-belching, overage and unreliable heavy transport vehicles driven my many irresponsible and unfit drivers. Again I am not asking for more drivers to be sent to prison, but why is it those who manage transport vehicles in a way they expect their trailers to break down are not investigated when a family dies when their car rams into the parked vehicle at highway exits? They cannot selectively prosecute people and then preach to the people that generally motorists should show better care on the roads. They are right in asking motorists to be careful, it is great advice to be careful, but when they are seen to be partial to some and not to others, the advice becomes coloured. It might seem far-fetched that isolated and low-impact crimes have origins from the prime minister's politics and enforcement agencies being tactically selective. But it is not. It underlines a national think, our attitude. Crime thrives in a place of low trust. We do not trust the police will come and gather evidence at the crime scene. Nor will they talk to residents to have a better description of the perpetrators. Nor expect them to sit down and come up with a plan to nab the wrongdoers. No one who lives in the city would believe the police will respond adequately to the crime. If the crime was serious and of news interest then there will be presence. But the presence during the news-cycle does not guarantee an outcome after the cameras leave.   The feeling in the country is that you have to be somebody for your safety to matter or your opinion to count. There is no collective well-being in education, healthcare or safety. The accelerating drop in law and order is more primal and headline grabbing. But the malaise is universal. The rich can afford gated communities and worry when they have to leave their compounds. Alarmingly even the middle class has to cough up for security guards these days. It is one thing for the millionaire to install security features because they possess enough for burglars to connive to rob them. It is abject when regular Malaysian homes have to pay small operators so that they can keep their basic things safe from the most resource-starved criminals. Are they in real terms paying "protection money" to the security firms? Drawing back to the earlier position that only the "haves" matter, would that not mean everyone including politicians, civil servants and businessmen look at Malaysia as a place to take what you can, when you can? Would that national attitude lead to more gaps where crimes will not only fester but thrive in. That the success stories are made of those who think less of others, but more of themselves. And since what is wrong or right is determined by "select" people and not by principle and reason, the general population slips in priority to those "select" people? We are at an alarming point in our history to create a just and reasonable society. Crime shows societal shortcomings in the crudest and scariest way. Our society must reclaim a greater share of trust, with our political leaders leading the way. The ingredients of trust are honesty, communication and ownership. Which means leaders must be more concerned about speaking about things in the right way rather than being bent — come what may — that they are right. They have to concede mistakes have occurred, priorities misplaced and justice overlooked. People have to be re-convinced that no crime is too small and all persons are equal under the law, if anything the weak come first in consideration.  Our long-term solution to our abysmal crime situation is to reshape our society so justice — codifying, adjudicating and implementing it — does not distinguish the "haves" and "have-nots". When being fair and right is paramount, then the crime ratio falls. Confidence to get away with any criminal action will drop, which will lead to less crimes. Because we will all know by heart that no one is above the law. That has to be a holding principle as we set forward to keep all our lives safe.  * The views expressed here are the personal opinion of the columnist. Full Feed Generated by Get Full RSS, sponsored by Used Car Search.

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Isu Ku Li-Anwar: Kami tak pernah bincang, kata SU Agung PAS Posted: 04 Aug 2011 12:43 AM PDT [unable to retrieve full-text content]KUALA LUMPUR, 4 Ogos — PAS menegaskan pihaknya tidak membincangkan atau ada sebarang idea mahu menggantikan Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim sebagai Ketua Pembangkang sebagaimana dibangkitkan oleh Umno dan wakil rakyat Bebas. “Kami (Pakatan Rakyat) tidak pernah membincangkan siapa yang perlu menggantikannya (Anwar). Kami belum menyeberang jambatan... ...

Kebebasan suara segar di Umno, kata pemimpin Posted: 03 Aug 2011 11:40 PM PDT KUALA LUMPUR, 4 Ogos — Kebebasan bersuara dalam Umno masih wujud malah segar dalam era transformasi dan model baru politik pada masa ini, kata beberapa pemimpin Umno pelbagai peringkat bagi menyangkal kenyataan bekas Menteri Penerangan Tan Sri Abdul Kadir Sheikh Fadzir kononnya Umno kini sudah tidak lagi menyediakan ruang untuk anggotanya memberi perbezaan pendapat. Di laman sosial pula, terdapat penyokong Umno yang mencabar supaya Abdul Kadir, yang kini Bendahari Umno Bahagian Kulim-Bandar Baharu, supaya keluar parti dan menegur Umno dari luar seperti yang pernah dilakukan oleh Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad semasa Tun Abdullah Ahmad Badawi menjadi Perdana Menteri dan Presiden Umno. Timbalan Pengerusi Tetap Umno Datuk Mohamed Aziz menolak keras pendapat Abdul Kadir itu, dengan berkata Umno tidak pernah menyekat anggotanya untuk bersuara selama ini. "Kita bebas bercakap. Saya hormati beliau tetapi janganlah apabila kita sudah tidak berada dalam arus perdana parti, parti pula dikritik dan diburukkan. "Umno yang membela bangsa dan agama selama ini, dan sedikit sebanyak membantu beliau," katanya dipetik Bernama Online. Mohamed, yang juga Ketua Umno Bahagian Sri Gading berkata, beliau sendiri adalah antara orang yang lantang bersuara dalam Umno tetapi tidak pula pernah dikenakan tindakan. "Dalam mesyuarat Majlis Tertinggi pun ada yang sampai merah-merah muka (kerana berbeza pendapat). Adakah ini bukan satu bentuk kebebasan bersuara?" katanya. Anggota Majlis Tertinggi Veteran Umno Datuk Mustapha Yaakub juga tidak bersetuju dengan pandangan Abdul Kadir. "Dalam mesyuarat bahagian baru-baru ini, anggota parti membuat tuntutan-tuntutan yang radikal supaya pihak atasan boleh mengambil kira, malah dalam Veteran Umno sekalipun mereka masih bertindak membuat teguran namun kurang mendapat liputan media," katanya. Ketua Puteri Umno Datuk Rosnah Abdul Rashid Shirlin berpendapat apa yang katakan oleh Abdul Kadir itu hanyalah pendapat peribadinya dan tidak mencerminkan keadaan sebenar yang ada sekarang. "Saya kurang bersetuju dengan beliau. Kalau nak dikirakan, pelbagai transformasi sudah dilaksanakan dalam kerajaan dan juga politik. Lihat sahaja di mana Perdana Menteri dan Presiden Umno Datuk Seri Najib Razak merombak pemilihan Umno. "Perubahan ini meletakkan beliau sendiri boleh dicabar kedudukannya sebagai presiden dengan hanya dua pencalonan," katanya. Ahli Parlimen Kota Belud Datuk Abdul Rahman Dahlan menggangap kenyataan Abdul Kadir adalah tuduhan melulu, tidak berasas dan memperlekehkan usaha presiden parti untuk mendemokrasikan Umno. "Perdana Menteri faham bahawa gagasan 1Malaysia hanya boleh berjaya dengan adanya budaya keterbukaan dan mengkritik secara membina," katanya. Abdul Rahman berkata akhbar kini juga lebih terbuka manakala blog, portal berita dan laman sosial seperti Facebook dan Twitter yang digunakan oleh jutaan rakyat Malaysia begitu bebas. "Saya cadangan beliau membuka blog beliau sendiri agar senang orang ramai membalas hujah-hujah beliau. Nanti bila beliau baca komen-komen dalam blog beliau, saya rasa beliau jugalah orang pertama yang akan meminta Perdana Menteri mengekang kebebasan bersuara di negara ini," katanya. Full Feed Generated by Get Full RSS, sponsored by Used Car Search.

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