Sports gambling/betting must be regulated and strictly managed

Public outcry on proposed move to legalise sports betting in M'sia




Malaysia's Prime Minister Najib Razak

	Public outcry on proposed move to legalise sports betting in M'sia

Public outcry on proposed move to legalise sports betting in M'sia

KUALA LUMPUR : A proposed move by the Malaysian government to legalise sports betting has triggered a huge public outcry.

Public opinion remains split, but Prime Minister Najib Razak is facing objections not just from the opposition but also within his own ruling party.

The fiery protest from the opposition Islamic party and Muslim NGOs did not come as a surprise.

This came after news that Malaysian Chinese tycoon Vincent Tan was reportedly issued a licence to operate sports betting in some of his lottery outlets across the country.

Malaysia, a predominantly Muslim country, has one casino resort and several lottery companies, and some Muslim NGOs said that is sufficient.

Ibrahim Ali, MP of Pasir Mas, said: "It just creates a gambling culture in this country. It creates a lot of social problems because a lot of people are involved in this activity. They become lazy and really rely on this kind of thing, I think it's not good for the country."

Ibrahim Ali heads Perkasa, one of Malaysia's largest Muslim NGOs. He also feels that non-Muslims should not indulge in gambling, which is "haram" or forbidden in Islam.

Under pressure from within and outside his own ruling party UMNO, Prime Minister Najib is re-considering the whole issue of sports betting.

Billions of dollars were said to have changed hands in each World Cup season through illegal bookies who could be operating from anywhere in the world.

Authorities here said there is no way they can effectively curb illegal betting without legalising it, which at least allows them to better regulate the activities and save the government millions of dollars in tax revenues that could otherwise be lost.

The three opposition controlled states have said they will ban sports betting if it is legalised. They said giving out more gaming licences is not the way to raise money.

Lim Guan Eng, Chief Minister of Penang, said: "It's a question of enforcement. If you have proper enforcement, you can regulate it. We are not talking about banning gambling, we are talking about reducing the increasing prevalence of gambling."

Public reaction is mixed.

"At least the government can get some money out of it," one said.

"As a Muslim, how can you legalise something (that) is illegal," another added.

While the debate continues, it is business as usual for many Malaysian sports fans who continue to place their bets regardless of whether it is legal or not.

By Melissa Goh |- CNA/al

MCA backs legal sports betting -It must be regulated

KUALA LUMPUR: Sports gaming should be allowed but it must be regulated and strictly managed.
“MCA proposes strict and stringent conditions to be imposed in sports betting, including the age of punters, operating hours and others,” said party president Datuk Seri Dr Chua Soi Lek.

He said in developed countries, sports gaming industries were well managed and regulated.

Party matters: Dr Chua (centre), MCA Youth chief Datuk Dr Wee Ka Siong (left) and MCA deputy president Datuk Seri Liow Tiong Lai (right) leaving after attending the presidential council meeting Tuesday.

 

“They have been rather successful in dealing with social ills that arise as a result of excessive betting.
“The Government should conduct an in-depth study of legalised sports betting in other countries,” said Dr Chua at a press conference after chairing the MCA presidential council meeting here yesterday.

At the same time, the Government must conduct public awareness and education programmes on the social ills of gambling.

“MCA discourages any form of betting. It is well-known that the illegal sports betting syndicates are out of control and have played an increasing role in the black economy of our country – involving money laundering and funding many undesirable business activities,” he said.

The Government, added Dr Chua, must step up enforcement in combating illegal sports betting the way it weeds out illegal 4D businesses.

Meanwhile, the issue continues to get attention in the Dewan Rakyat. Arau MP Datuk Ismail suggested that sports betting be legalised since it involved billions of ringgit and the Government could not gain revenue from the underground economy.

How Fathers Influence Their Daughters' Careers

When it comes to women's career paths, dad's influence plays an increasingly weighty role.

In Photos: Celebrity Fathers And Daughters

Last Father's Day, President Barack Obama published a column in Parade magazine about every father's most fundamental duty: "Show their children, by example, the kind of people they want them to become." 

He praised his own daughters for their poise and patience while reflecting on his own promise to them to be the kind of father he had never had. At 11 and 8, first daughters Malia and Sasha are already showing signs of taking cues from their father. Both are involved in community service projects, including filling backpacks with school supplies, toys and healthy snacks for children whose parents are serving overseas.

All children are shaped by their parents and/or other caregivers, of course, but when it comes to women's career paths, dad's influence plays an increasingly weighty role.

According to a 2009 study from the University of Maryland, women are three times as likely to follow in their father's career footsteps these days than they were a century ago: Only 6% of women born between 1909 and 1916 went into their father's business, compared with roughly 20% of Gen X and Y.

Why the increase? The American Psychological Association says that the changing economic role of women has greatly impacted the role of fathers in their children's lives. Women now comprise over 50% of the workforce, leaving fewer families than ever in traditional "women raise the children" households. Fathers are now spending more time with their children than ever, and experts say that a "father's love" plays a much different role in childhood development. Most specifically, that it develops a child's sense of place in the world.

By Meghan Casserly and Caroline Howard, 06.14.10, 07:30 PM EDT
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Dr. Meg Meeker, author of Strong Fathers, Strong Daughters, is a firm believer that a father's influence is a major factor--if not the single most important one--in the development of women. "A father has authority with a capital A," says Meeker, who says she was influenced by her own father to go into medicine. "From the first years of a girl's life her father is larger than life. She looks up to him, and for the rest of her life she craves his admiration, his respect and his affection." Meeker believes that if admiration, respect and affection are present and reciprocated in the father-daughter relationship, they are the recipe for a successful woman.

These trends by themselves don't tell us which force (paternal, societal or otherwise) is pushing and pulling daughters down one career path or another. But they do tell us today's dads are spending more time with their children--and their daughters are paying attention. Continue on to our photo gallery of 10 successful daughters who have followed in their father's footsteps. Some might even go so far to say daughters who have eclipsed their dad's careers.

In Photos: Celebrity Fathers And Daughters

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Reinventing the wheel -- naturally

June 14, 2010 Enlarge

This is a fanciful rendering of Leonardo da Vinci's Vetruvian Man as a wheel. Credit: Adrian Bejan
  
Humans did not invent the wheel. Nature did. While the evolution from the Neolithic solid stone wheel with a single hole for an axle to the sleek wheels of today's racing bikes can be seen as the result of human ingenuity, it also represents how animals, including humans, have come to move more efficiently and quicker over millions of years on Earth, according to a Duke University engineer.

Adrian Bejan, professor of mechanical engineering at Duke's Pratt School of Engineering, argues that just as the design of wheels became lighter with fewer spokes over time, and better at distributing the stresses of hitting the ground, animals have evolved as well to move better on Earth. In essence, over millions of years, animals such as humans developed the fewest "spokes," or legs, as the most efficient method for carrying an increasing body weight and height more easily.

"This prediction of how wheels should emerge in time is confirmed by the evolution of wheel technology," Bejan said. "For example, during the development of the carriage, solid disks were slowly replaced by wheels with tens of spokes."

The advantage of spokes is that they distribute stresses uniformly while being lighter and stronger than a solid wheel. "In contrast with the spoke, the solid wheel of antiquity was stressed unevenly, with a high concentration of stresses near the contact with the ground, and zero stresses on the upper side," Bejan said. "The wheel was large and heavy, and most of its volume did not support the load that the
vehicle posed on the axle.

"If you view animal movement as a 'rolling' body, two legs, swinging back and forth, perform the same function of an entire wheel-rim assembly," Bejan said. "They also do it most efficiently - like one wheel with two spokes with the stresses flowing unobstructed and uniformly through each spoke. The animal body is both wheel and vehicle for horizontal movement."

Bejan's analysis was published early online in the American Journal of Physics. His research is supported by the National Science Foundation and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research.

"An animal leg is shaped like a column because it facilitates the flow of stresses between two points - like the foot and hip joint, or paw and shoulder," Bejan said. "In the example of the Neolithic stone wheel, the flow of stresses is between the ground and the whole wheel."

Bejan believes that the constructal theory of design in nature (www.constructal.org), which he started describing in 1996, predicts these changes in the wheel and animal movement. The theory states that for a design (an animal, a river basin) to persist in time, it must evolve to move more freely through its environment.

Since animal locomotion is basically a falling-forward process, Bejan argues that an increase in height predicts an increase in speed. For a centipede, each leg represents a point of contact with ground, which limits the upward movement of the animal. As animals have fewer contacts with ground, they can rise up higher with each stride.

"The constructal theory shows us this forward-falling movement is dictated by the natural wheel phenomenon, which is required for the minimal amount of effort expended for a certain distance traveled," Bejan said.

An earlier analysis by Bejan showed that larger human swimmers are faster because the wave they create while swimming is larger and thus carries them forward faster.

While wheel-like movement evolved naturally, it also describes what Bejan likes to call "nature's gear box." Humans have two basic speeds, Bejan said - walking and running. A running human gets taller, or higher off the ground, with each stride, which increases his speed.

A horse has three speeds - walk, trot and gallop.

"The horse increases its speed by increasing the height from which it falls during each cycle," Bejan said. "Then, from the trot to the gallop, the body movement changes abruptly such that the height of jump increases stepwise for each stride. Nature developed not only wheel-like movement but also mechanisms for changing speeds."

Provided by Duke University (news : web)

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