Rabu, 27 Mac 2013

The Malaysian Insider :: Sports

0 ulasan 3:26 PTG Dicatat oleh blog2

Klik GAMBAR Dibawah Untuk Lebih Info

Sumber Asal Berita :-

The Malaysian Insider :: Sports

Webber’s future not decided, say Red Bull

Posted: 27 Mar 2013 08:30 AM PDT

March 27, 2013

Red Bull Formula One driver Mark Webber of Australia leaves after performing a pit stop during the Malaysian F1 Grand Prix at Sepang International Circuit outside Kuala Lumpur, March 24, 2013. – Reuters picLONDON, March 27 – Red Bull have dismissed reports that Australian Mark Webber is certain to leave the Formula One world champions at the end of the season after Sunday's Malaysian Grand prix team orders furore.

"It's pure speculation that Mark will not drive with the team in 2014," Red Bull said when asked about comments by Webber's manager Flavio Briatore that he was sure the current lineup would not continue.

"Mark's contract has been renewed for the last few years on an annual basis – he has continually chosen to drive for the team each year and the team has similarly wanted to continue working with him as he is an excellent driver and a competitive racer.

"We are two races into the current season and it's far too early to be talking about 2014."

Webber's future at a team who have won the last three championships has been called into question after Sunday's race led to a breakdown in trust between the drivers.

World champion Sebastian Vettel overtook Webber, despite being instructed not to by the team because of the need to look after the tyres and save fuel.

Webber, at 36 the oldest driver in Formula One, had turned his engine down in response to the orders from the pitwall and was furious with the 25-year-old German for putting himself above the team.

Others, including Briatore, questioned who was really in charge at Red Bull.

The Italian, who was banned from Formula One after the Renault team he led were found to have ordered Brazilian Nelson Piquet junior to crash deliberately to help his team mate Fernando Alonso, accused Horner of weakness in a RAI radio chatshow in Italy.

Red Bull pointed out that a weak principal would not have steered the team to three successive titles – a feat only ever managed by three other outfits – while managing such a competitive pairing.

The team added that the pairing of Webber and Vettel had won 35 races, taken 80 podiums and 13 one-two finishes since their first season together in 2009.

"This successful period includes some spells of intense on-track rivalry between the two drivers, which began in Turkey 2010 and has seen both drivers ignoring team orders at different times," it said.

"The team has managed the situation each time in its own way behind closed doors." – Reuters

Melbourne to host 2015 Asian Cup opener, final in Sydney

Posted: 27 Mar 2013 07:58 AM PDT

March 27, 2013

MELBOURNE, March 27 – The 2015 Asian Cup will kick off in Melbourne on Jan. 9 with local organisers confident the event can showcase Australia's capability of hosting world class sporting events.

Melbourne would also host the opening ceremony before the three-week, 32-match tournament culminates in the final at Sydney's Stadium Australia on Jan. 31, the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) said today.

"Looking at the progress made so far and Australia's rich sporting culture, I expect this AFC Asian Cup to be better than all previous editions," AFC vice president Tengku Abdullah Sultan Ahmad Shah said in a statement.

Brisbane, Canberra and Newcastle are the three other venues for the 16th edition of the tournament, which Australian Sports Minister Kate Lundy believes will strengthen the country's image as a major sporting nation.

"The spin-off from the cup will be enormous for Australia with a global TV audience of more than 2.5 billion people expected and an estimated 45,000 international visitors set to visit our shores," she said.

As well as the hosts, North Korea, reigning champions Japan and 2011 third-placed finishers South Korea have already booked their places at the 16-team finals. – Reuters

Kredit: http://www.themalaysianinsider.com

The Malaysian Insider :: Breaking Views

0 ulasan 1:20 PTG Dicatat oleh blog2

Klik GAMBAR Dibawah Untuk Lebih Info

Sumber Asal Berita :-

The Malaysian Insider :: Breaking Views

Kampung Tanduo ditutup, penduduk dipindah ke lokasi baharu, kata polis

Posted: 27 Mar 2013 08:49 AM PDT

March 27, 2013

LAHAD DATU, 27 Mac — Pasukan keselamatan memutuskan bahawa Kampung Tanduo yang menjadi lokasi pendaratan kumpulan penceroboh militan Sulu akan ditutup dan tidak lagi menjadi kawasan petempatan penduduk.

Pesuruhjaya Polis Sabah Datuk Hamza Taib berkata semua penduduk kampung itu yang kini menghuni pusat pemindahan sementara akan dipindahkan ke satu lokasi baharu yang akan diputuskan kemudian.

Beliau berkata keputusan itu dibuat selepas pihak keselamatan mendapati kawasan yang menjadi kubu pengganas sejak pencerobohan 12 Feb lepas itu terjejas teruk susulan gerakan ofensif yang dilancarkan 5 Mac lepas.

"Setakat ini, itu yang kita putuskan, kita akan bincang perkara ini lagi tetapi perbincangan di peringkat pasukan keselamatan mendapati lebih sesuai penduduk kampung itu yang jumlahnya tidak begitu ramai ditempatkan di satu tempat yang akan dikenal pasti kemudian," katanya pada sidang akhbar di Markas Operasi Felda Sahabat 16, dekat sini hari ini.

Beliau berkata penempatan semula penghuni 12 rumah di kampung itu akan dibuat di kawasan berdekatan Kampung Tanduo dan lokasinya akan dikenal pasti dengan kerjasama pengurusan Felda Sahabat. -

Hamza turut memaklumkan kawasan Kampung Tanjung Batu kini bebas daripada ancaman pengganas dan pihaknya akan bermesyuarat bersama Majlis Keselamatan Negara, Pejabat Daerah Lahad Datu dan ketua masyarakat kampung berkenaan bagi membincangkan proses membenarkan penduduk untuk kembali ke rumah masing-masing.

Proses penggeledahan dan pembersihan kini diteruskan ke Tanjung Labian dan Tanagian sebelum memasuki kawasan Sungai Bilis dan beliau yakin proses itu mampu diselesaikan segera sebelum memutuskan untuk membenarkan penduduk kembali ke rumah atau sebaliknya, katanya.

Terdahulu, Hamza berkata pasukan keselamatan merampas sepucuk pistol, enam butir peluru dan sebilah parang yang ditinggalkan militan selepas berlaku pertempuran di kawasan Sungai Bilis, Gugusan Labian pagi ini.

Beliau berkata kejadian pada 7.30 pagi itu berlaku ketika pasukan keselamatan sedang menjalankan operasi pembersihan di kawasan itu sebelum terserempak dengan tiga pengganas yang bertindak melepaskan tembakan ke arah anggota keselamatan.

Pengganas kemudian melarikan diri apabila diserang balas dan tiada kecederaan dilaporkan di kedua-dua pihak, katanya. — Bernama

Apple to launch ultra-high definition TV, says report

Posted: 27 Mar 2013 08:36 AM PDT

March 27, 2013

SAN FRANCISCO, March 27 — New rumours emerge from the company's supply chain partners that the Apple TV is real and could go into production before the end of the year

The news, from Digitimes, a news site with a mixed track record when it comes to Apple rumors but with excellent sources within the company's Asian supply chain partners, suggests the TV set will feature voice and motion control functions and will have a resolution of 3840x2160 pixels.

Digitmes' sources claim that the project has been in development for some time but is being delayed by the fact that the best display manufacturers in the region are already working at full capacity to meet demand for ultra-high definition TVs in China. As a result the TV's launch could be postponed until early 2014 when capacity returns to the supply chain.

Rumors have been circulating for nearly two years now that Apple is about to move into the TV business but most experts agree that there are insufficient profit margins or room for innovation within that market segment to suit

Apple's business model. What's more, the ultra-high-definition TV market is still in its very early stages — TVs that support the technology currently retail for US$20,000 (RM60,000) and there is very little native content of a sufficiently rich definition available. Yet, despite these very real issues, tech sites, hedge fund managers and analysts alike persist in their claims that an Apple TV is only months away. — AFP/Relaxnews

Kredit: http://www.themalaysianinsider.com

The Malaysian Insider :: Features

0 ulasan 1:15 PTG Dicatat oleh blog2

Klik GAMBAR Dibawah Untuk Lebih Info

Sumber Asal Berita :-

The Malaysian Insider :: Features

Saudi’s illegal immigrants draw fear of ‘infiltrators’

Posted: 27 Mar 2013 07:43 AM PDT

March 27, 2013

Immigrant women sit on a doorstep in the Jeddah slum of Karantina, February 12, 2013. Jeddah has attracted outsiders for centuries, being the main port of arrival for Muslims making the haj pilgrimage to Mecca. – Reuters picJEDDAH, March 27 – Down a narrow alleyway deep in the Jeddah slum of Karantina, three women from Sudan have set up stalls under colourful parasols, selling peanuts, hibiscus petals, dried pulses, baskets, frankincense, calabashes and sandalwood.

They laugh and gossip in the sunshine, swathed in bright printed cloth, while a scrawny black cat picks its way between piles of rubbish. But when approached by a stranger, they are cautious.

Jeddah has attracted outsiders for centuries, being the main port of arrival for Muslims making the haj pilgrimage to Mecca. It is this history that gives Karantina its name: older residents can remember when it was "quarantine" for pilgrims.

But the people who now live in this slum in the south of Saudi Arabia's second biggest city were drawn not only by religious devotion but also the top oil exporter's wealth. They live in a legal limbo, sometimes for generations.

"This is the forgotten area," said a bearded Sudanese man in his 40s. "Here are many illegal immigrants who don't have official papers. Government supervision is scarce."

Saudi Arabia's hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants are not counted among the millions of expatriates who reside legally in the Arab kingdom, working as everything from maids to finance executives.

Instead they live on the margins, ineligible for government services and outside of the law, but often unofficially tolerated because of the expense and administrative obstacles in the way of expelling them.

In recent months, however, their status has caught the attention of Saudi media, who have been calling them "infiltrators" and warning readers of their supposed links to crime, disease and militancy.

"The infiltrators will carry with them all their social ills including security threats, criminal behaviour and ethical issues," wrote commentator Hamoud Abu Talib in an opinion piece in Okaz daily this month.

A spokesman for the Interior Ministry, Mansour al-Turki, said the media has exaggerated the number of crimes committed by illegal immigrants and added that Saudi citizens themselves contributed to the problem by using them for cheap labour.

Many illegal immigrants have now lived in Saudi Arabia for decades, having children and grandchildren who now live without nationality or residence papers, and prompting government officials to speak of a "humanitarian crisis".

Some risked a perilous journey through volatile Somalia and Yemen, others overstayed work visas or came to perform the annual haj and never went home.

In 2008, Saudi officials told American diplomats that around 10 per cent of pilgrims overstayed their visas each year, a US embassy cable released by WikiLeaks revealed. Last year more than two million people came on haj from overseas.

Last week local media reported police in Asir Province bordering Yemen as saying 1,470 illegal immigrants had been arrested in just two days.

"Dealing with these problems is not easy once they're in the country ... Sometimes you can't prove their nationality," Turki said. "You cannot send them back to Yemen. They will not take them."

Turki was not able to estimate the number of illegal immigrants in the country.

FORGOTTEN AREA

In Karantina, people sit out on doorsteps or high metal benches covered with strips of loose carpet, chatting with neighbours. Old sofas and armchairs sit propped against houses.

Rubbish carpets both sides of the road, and abandoned, broken-down cars and trucks gather dust, sinking onto flat tyres.

In a large open space near a highway where trucks park, old cars lie in deep puddles of water and mud, some submerged up to their axles, while wading birds strut between them on long legs.

One 15-year-old girl, speaking as she watched a television soap opera in a room choked with wood smoke, said her family came from Chad before she was born.

The girl's family – mother, brother, father, his three other wives and their children – are among the luckier residents of Karantina, giving out food as charity to those in need.

"I'm happy. There is nothing more that I can ask for. My father provides me with everything. I have a television," she said.

Like the other residents approached, the family members declined to give their names for fear of attracting the attention of the authorities and having to leave the country.

Immigrants who do not have a residency permit, known as an iqama, face restricted access to medical care and other services. Residents of Karantina said they have to pay more for treatment, which by law should only be provided to people who can show valid identification papers.

A small private school in Karantina teaches the Koran to local children, but it is unregulated. Prince Khaled al-Faisal, governor of Mecca Province, which includes Jeddah, said last year there were around one million illegal residents in the province's slums.

For the government, the presence of so many undocumented people has a big impact on its efforts to strengthen labour laws. The country is trying to encourage firms to hire more Saudi citizens, who now make up only about a tenth of private-sector employees.

This month the Labour Ministry said it would fine companies found employing illegal immigrants. It also offered incentives to firms that employed Palestinian and Burmese refugees with legitimate residency papers.

On Sunday, Prince Khaled said the government would give legal residency to 250,000 Burmese Muslims already living as refugees in Saudi Arabia.

As holders of the iqama they will be able to access government services more easily and work, drive and rent accommodation legally, in common with millions of other foreigners living in Saudi Arabia.

Even for those with residency, however, life as an immigrant in the kingdom can be tough.

"I never thought of returning to Burkina Faso. All my children were born here. Thank God, we live with the help of charitable people," said Sadiq Basheer al-Sadiq, who came to Saudi Arabia on haj by sea in 1970 and is now the patriarch of a family 60 strong.

He said he and all his family members, including 15 children by four wives, had legal residency.

They live in a small plot of land in the Ruweis district of central Jeddah, their open-air rooms covered by aluminium roofs and divided by wooden beams and cement bricks.

Sadiq, now 85, has retired after working as a construction worker in Mecca, and is now dependent on his children.

His son, Ibrahim, was born in Saudi Arabia but has no hopes of ever qualifying for citizenship of a country where local passport holders qualify for substantial state benefits.

"We did not even try," he said. – Reuters

China firm says first lady’s style not for sale

Posted: 27 Mar 2013 05:00 AM PDT

March 27, 2013

Chinese President Xi Jinping and his wife Peng Liyuan at Vnukovo airport outside Moscow. Imitations of Peng's clothes were being offered on Taobao, China's biggest online marketplace, within hours of her stepping off the plane in Moscow.BEIJING, March 27 – The Chinese fashion brand that designed bags and clothes for the country's new first lady has turned down the chance to make a fortune from her endorsement, saying today no similar items will be on offer.

Peng Liyuan, long a household name in China as a military folk singer, has set off a media and Internet frenzy with her elegant style as she accompanies husband President Xi Jinping on a state visit to Russia and African countries.

Photographs of the couple were plastered across state media front pages. Picture slide shows on major Chinese web portals put the focus on Peng instead of her husband, an unusual approach to political news coverage in the country.

Her prominence is a marked contrast to recent first ladies, who were rarely seen, and commentators have proclaimed it a step forward for Beijing's "soft power".

Even though none of Peng's apparel bore conspicuous logos, intrigued Internet users still managed to identify one manufacturer as Exception, a Chinese brand based in the southern city of Guangzhou.

For days the company kept silent despite its apparent publicity windfall, declining repeated requests for comment.

Finally today it confirmed in a statement posted on its verified weibo, a Chinese equivalent of Twitter, that it made some of Peng's clothes, together with Wuyong, another Chinese label.

Her choice showed "trust and support for national brands", it added.

But it had no plans to offer Peng's admirers the opportunity to imitate her, it said.

"On this occasion the design and manufacturing are specialised and custom-made and the items are not for sale publicly," it said.

But other business-minded Chinese vendors are cashing in on the enthusiasm. Imitations of Peng's clothes were being offered on Taobao, China's biggest online marketplace, within hours of her stepping off the plane in Moscow.

A trenchcoat resembling the one she wore then was available for 1,822 yuan (RM899.29) in a Taobao shop today. – AFP/Relaxnews

Kredit: http://www.themalaysianinsider.com

The Malaysian Insider :: Showbiz

0 ulasan 1:08 PTG Dicatat oleh blog2

Klik GAMBAR Dibawah Untuk Lebih Info

Sumber Asal Berita :-

The Malaysian Insider :: Showbiz

‘Avatar’ director donates dive craft, says 3D movie due in autumn

Posted: 27 Mar 2013 12:52 AM PDT

March 27, 2013

Cameron expects to release a long-awaited 3D movie of the dive in cinemas in the fall of this year. - Reuters picLOS ANGELES, March 27 — Film director James Cameron is donating the Deepsea Challenger craft he used to make a record-setting solo dive a year ago to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution to speed research into the deepest parts of the world's oceans.

Cameron, who is focused now on pre-production for the sequels to his blockbuster movie "Avatar", said he hoped the donation to the non-profit research facility in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, would bring the technology he developed for the undersea craft into the mainstream.

In a telephone interview marking the one-year anniversary of his nearly 11.2-km-deep dive in the western Pacific, the Oscar-winning director said that scientists had identified more than 60 new species, including bacteria, from material he brought back.

Cameron expects to release a long-awaited 3D movie of the dive in cinemas in the autumn of this year.

Cameron also directed the 1997 movie "Titanic" as well as undertaking and filming several underwater expeditions exploring the wreck of the ship in the North Atlantic.

Q: What impact do you hope the Deepsea Challenger's transfer to Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) will have on continued research?

A: It drives public attention to the need for new technology and funding for deep ocean work, which WHOI is the leader of in this country. It will have a very specific and immediate effect of new vehicles and new vehicle platforms, our cameras, our communications, our syntactic foam and battery systems, they'll incorporate into their future stuff. The way we solved problems is so outside the box, they're eager to bring that into their projects.

I could leave the sub in my barn, but that's not going to do anybody any good while I'm off making "Avatar" films for the next few years. I want this technology to be out there and dynamic and adaptive.

Q: What are some of the new species and findings that have come from this dive?

A: I met with Doug Bartlett out of the Scripps Institute of Oceanography (who was the chief scientist on the dive expedition) and he said there are at least 68 new species coming out of this, and that includes a number of arthropods and invertebrate animals and a lot of new bacteria.

Q: What will audiences experience when your 3D movie of this dive is released?

A: "The Deepsea Challenge" is coming out this fall. You go on the journey. It's about the team of these young guys and how they tackled the problems and overcame a lot of hurdles and setbacks. They got to see some pretty amazing stuff and got to bring back the footage in 3D. You'll feel like you've been through the whole thing, including actually diving inside the sub. I was jammed into this 42-inch (106cm) sphere with all this equipment and a 3D camera with me at all time.

Q: How has filming underwater in 3D with this dive and past Titanic dives helped you as a Hollywood director?

A: There's always been a good synergy between the technology that's been developed for these expeditions and the technology that's used for the films. "Avatar" was shot with a second generation of the 3D cameras that were built for my 2001 Titanic expedition. We're constantly building and improving the technology.

Some of the things that went into building the Deepsea Challenger cameras, which had to be so tiny, will probably be used in action cameras in the next "Avatar" films.

The odds are other filmmakers will use this technology before me because my company, Cameron Pace Group, supplies cameras to most of the big movies that are shooting in 3D.

We develop something new, I use it on an expedition, and while I go off and write and design and fool around in pre-production, five other movies have gone out and used the cameras in the meantime. That was the case even when I had made "Avatar", a number of other films had already used those cameras. — Reuters

Judi Dench rules on stage despite age taking toll

Posted: 26 Mar 2013 07:01 PM PDT

March 27, 2013

LONDON, March 27 — Actress Judi Dench may be battling deteriorating eyesight and a failing memory but the veteran performer showed no sign of faltering when she teamed up with fellow James Bond star Ben Whishaw on a London stage.

Dench, 78, one of Britain's most-respected actresses, has tackled a list of stage and film roles over her career, at ease with Shakespeare as in Hollywood, playing M in seven Bond movies before bowing out of 007's life in last year's "Skyfall".

It emerged a year ago that Dench was suffering from macular degeneration, the leading cause of severe vision loss in people over 60, and she relied on friends to read scripts to her.

This month she said on a television interview that she took fish oil tablets daily to boost her memory and remember her lines, but said she had no intention of slowing down or stopping acting.

Dench won nothing but praise yesterday for joining 32-year-old Whishaw, the gadget guy Q in James Bond, on Monday in a new play, "Peter and Alice", by American playwright John Logan who co-wrote "Skyfall".

"(Dench) lends to Alice her brilliance at combining a sense of tart, witty combativeness with a reverberant depth of bruised humanity," wrote critic Paul Taylor in the Independent although he was less enamoured with the play, giving it three stars out of five.

"Dench is unmatchable," raved the Times critic Libby Purves, giving the play that "breaks your heart open" five stars.

Judi Dench: Rave reviews. — Reuters file picLogan's play imagines a real-life meeting between an elderly Alice Liddell Hargreaves and 30-something Peter Llewellyn Davies at a Lewis Carroll exhibition in 1932, the people who inspired Carroll's "Alice in Wonderland" and J.M. Barrie's "Peter Pan".

As the two start talking and look back to their respective childhood, the gaps start to emerge between the fantasies of the stories they inspired and the harsh reality they faced as adults, confronting loss, death, illness and alcoholism.

The 90-minute play, painfully moving, was described as a tenderly sketched portrait of life's challenges.

Tragedy

"No one expresses that pain and resilience quite as acutely yet stoically as Judi Dench, and she is ideally partnered by the more depressively hang-dog presence of Ben Whishaw for a beautiful study in contrasts of how they deal with life's blows," wrote critic Mark Shenton in the Stage.

The true story of the five Davies brothers, whom Barrie befriended, is tragic. The eldest, George, died in the trenches of World War I, while Michael, the second youngest, committed suicide aged 20, and Peter, the middle child, killed himself by throwing himself in front of a London train in 1960 aged 63.

The case of Alice Hargreaves (nee Liddell) is almost as sad. She lost two of her three sons in World War I and ended up broke after her husband's death, selling off the original 1864 "Alice" manuscript to raise cash. She died in 1934.

"One of Judi Dench's great strengths, seen in countless Shakespearean heroines such as Viola and Beatrice, is her ability to combine ecstasy and melancholy, witnessed in abundance here," wrote the Guardian's critic Michael Billington, giving the play four stars.

"Peter and Alice", running at London's Noel Coward theatre until June 1, is Logan's first new play since "Red", which opened in London in 2009 and went on to win six Tony awards, Broadway's highest honours, in 2010. — Reuters

Kredit: http://www.themalaysianinsider.com

Rabu, 27 Mac 2013