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Tuesday, March 13, 2012

NFCorp Boss Charged With CBT in 'Cowgate' scandal!

Day in court: Datuk Seri Dr Mohamad Salleh Ismail (above) leaving the courthouse after being charged. Also present were his wife Datuk Seri Shahrizat Abdul Jalil and their son Wan Shahinur Izmir Salleh (below).

By MAIZATUL NAZLINA and TERENCE TOH newsdesk@thestar.com.my

KUALA LUMPUR: The executive chairman of the National Feedlot Corporation Sdn Bhd has claimed trial at the Sessions Court here to two counts of committing breach of trust and two counts of violating the Companies Act 1965 involving RM49.7mil.

Datuk Seri Dr Mohamad Salleh Ismail, 64, arrived in court at 2.15pm accompanied by his wife Datuk Seri Shahrizat Abdul Jalil, their eldest son Wan Shahinur Izmir and other family members.

The charges were read to Dr Mohamad Salleh at 2.27pm before judge S.M. Komathy Suppiah in a packed courtroom.

The proceedings yesterday marked a new chapter in the NFCorp controversy which arose after the Auditor-General's 2010 Report highlighted the failure of the National Feedlot Centre to achieve its target, and which grew with revelations that the company had used the government-funded soft loan for purposes not related to cattle breeding.

Dr Mohamad Salleh was charged with dishonestly misusing funds amounting to RM9,758,140 through four cheques to partly finance the purchase of two units of One Menerung Condominium in Block B here for the National Meat and Livestock Corporation Sdn Bhd, which he owns with one of his sons.

According to the charge, he committed the offence in his capacity as an NFCorp director entrusted with control over the company's assets.

He is said to have committed the offence at CIMB Islamic Bank Bhd in Jalan Burhanuddin Helmi, Taman Tun Dr Ismail, here between Dec 1 and 4, 2009.

Dr Mohamad Salleh was charged under Section 409 of the Penal Code which carries a jail term of up to 20 years, a fine and whipping.

He is also accused under Section 132(2)(a) of the Companies Act 1965 of committing the offence without approval from an annual general meeting of NFCorp to gain profit directly.

He is also accused of transferring NFCorp's funds of RM40mil through a cheque into the National Meat and Livestock Corporation's account at the same bank from May 6 to Nov 16, 2009.

For this, he faces charges of criminal breach of trust and violating the Companies Act.

Deputy Public Prosecutors Dzulkifli Ahmad, Awang Armadajaya Awang Mahmud and Azimul Azami prosecuted while the defence was led by Badrul Munir Bukhari.

Pleading for a lower bail, counsel Badrul Munir said Dr Mohamad Salleh had given his full cooperation to the police and prosecution, and his client was in court to clear his name. He applied to release the accused on a RM50,000 personal bond for each charge.

Dzulkifli said the prosecution had no objection to the application as they did not see why Dr Mohamad Salleh would flee the country. He, however, said the accused should surrender all his travel documents to the court.

Dzulkifli applied to the court under Section 165 of the Criminal Procedure Code for a single trial for all the charges.

Judge Komathy agreed to a single trial and set bail of RM500,000 with one surety for all four charges.
She also ordered Mohamad Salleh to surrender his passport pending mention of his case on April 13.

Wan Shahinur Izmir paid the bail.

Shahrizat was impassive in court and declined to speak to reporters after the proceedings.

Malaysian minister to step down in midst of 'Cowgate' scandal
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, right, is greeted by Malaysian Minister of Women, Family, and Community Development Shahrizat Abdul Jalil before a town hall event at the International Institute of Islamic Thought and Civilization on Tuesday, Nov. 2, 2010, in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. (EVAN VUCCI / AP)

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia — A Malaysian minister said Sunday she will step down amid accusations that her family misused a 250 million ringgit ($83 million) government loan meant for a cattle project to purchase condominiums, vacations and a Mercedes.

The scandal, dubbed "Cowgate,'' has greatly embarrassed Prime Minister Najib Razak ahead of general elections widely expected to be called by June.

After months of resisting calls from critics to step down, Shahrizat Abdul Jalil said she will resign as minister of women, family and community on April 8 once her term as senator ends.

Shahrizat said her decision had nothing to do with the cattle project run by her husband and three children but that she is stepping down as a "responsible member of the government.'' She will, however, stay on as chief of the women's wing of the ruling Malay party.

The scandal emerged last year after the auditor-general's annual report said the National Feedlot Center run by Shahrizat's family had not met its goal of making the country 40 per cent self-sufficient in beef production by 2010.

Since then, opposition parties have accused the company of using a government loan allocated for cattle rearing to purchase property including luxury condominiums in Malaysia and Singapore and other personal items. Shahrizat's family has denied any wrongdoing, saying the company was allowed to use the loan at its discretion and that the properties would earn it rental income.

Police have recommended that the company's directors be charged with criminal breach of trust but the attorney-general has asked police to conduct further investigations.

Najib said Shahrizat's resignation was a sacrifice in the interest of the government and party.

"Although there is no proof so far that she had committed any offence in terms of law, because the (project) has drawn controversy and dispute, she was willing to withdraw from the government,'' the national Bernama news agency quoted him as saying.

Analysts said Shahrizat's resignation wasn't surprising as Najib isn't likely to renew her senatorship.

"Cowgate is a big blow to Najib as it shows he is slow to act on allegations of high-level corruption,'' said James Chin, a political science lecturer at Monash University in Malaysia.

Najib's National Front coalition suffered its worst performance in 2008 polls, losing more than a third of Parliament's seats to a resurgent opposition amid widespread discontent over the government's handling of problems such as corruption and racial discrimination.

While the ruling coalition isn't expected to lose power in upcoming polls, scandals such as Cowgate make it tougher for Najib to consolidate his power. General elections are not due until 2013 but are widely expected in the next few months.

Monday, March 12, 2012

Fukushima nuclear meltdown - one year later

GLOBAL TRENDS By MARTIN KHOR

As the world marks the first anniversary of Japan’s triple tragedy, lessons are still being drawn from the Fukushima nuclear accident and the dangers of nuclear power plants.

IT’S been a full year since Japan’s triple disaster of earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdown, and the reverberations are still being felt.

The tsunami on March 11, 2011, caused around 19,000 deaths (16,000 known dead, 3,000 missing) and 320,000 were made homeless.

The nuclear disaster alone created 100,000 nuclear evacuees.

The lesson, only partially learnt in Japan itself and hardly learnt in other countries, is that natural disasters can come in many unexpected forms and governments must put aside considerable resources and facilities to prepare for and manage them.

The lesson usually becomes obvious when a disaster occurs.

After that, a pledge is made to be better prepared and much of that is not implemented until the next disaster and the cycle begins again.

While the tsunami caused the most immediate damage, it was the nuclear incidents at the Fukushima power plant that were the most shocking and may have the most long-term repercussions.

The nuclear disaster blew away a lot of myths.We now know, again, that nuclear power plants are not safe.

The claim by Tepco – the Japanese company operating the Fukushima plant – that the reactors were fail-safe and could withstand earthquakes, was proven to be wrong.

The ability of the regulatory authorities to monitor and check for risks and ensure safety was near absent.
An independent commission, which was set up by the Rebuild Japan Initiative Foundation to investigate the nuclear incident, shows how close Japan came to a catastrophe.

Its chairman Yoichi Funabashi, in an article in last Saturday’s Financial Times, said that Japan was on the edge of an “existential crisis”.

As the tsunami knocked out the Fukushima plant’s cooling systems, the Tepco president indicated his company’s intention to abandon the plant and evacuate its workers.

Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan personally intervened, ordering the company not to abandon ship and form a “death squad” to continue the battle and inject water into the reactor vessels.

A worst case scenario, prepared for the prime minister by the Japan Atomic Energy Commission, envisioned a hydrogen explosion, a succession of meltdowns and such extensive radiation that the whole of Tokyo would have to be evacuated.

Funabashi said: “The truth is that the imagined ‘worst-case scenario’ was closer than anyone would wish to admit; but for the direction of the wind (towards the Pacific, not inland, in the four days after the earthquake); but for the manner in which the gate separating the reactor-well and the spent-fuel pool in Unit 4 broke (presumably facilitating the transfusion of water into the pool). Luck was undeniably on our side.”

Funabashi’s commission found that the nuclear industry had become ensnared in its twisted myth of “absolute safety”, propagated by interest groups seeking to gain broad acceptance of nuclear power.

He also found that “Japan’s nuclear safety regulatory regime was phoney. Regulators pretended to regulate; utilities pretended to be regulated. In reality, the latter were far more powerful in expertise and clout”. He offers two lessons to be learnt.

First, is the need to overcome the myth of “absolute safety”, shatter the taboo that surrounds the concept of risks in the nuclear energy business and the need to prepare for the unthinkable and unanticipated.

Second, is the need for an independent regulatory body.

A major fallout from the Fukushima accident is the blow it has dealt to the nuclear industry.

It highlighted the danger a country faces when something goes wrong.

Of its 52 nuclear plants, Japan has now shut down 50 plants. The remaining two may also be shut down next month.

Although the government may try to reopen some of them, the public revulsion against nuclear plants could mean that their days are numbered.

There has also been a global backlash, with Germany, Italy, Belgium and Switzerland declaring that they will phase out their nuclear plants.

The situation in Asia, however, is mixed. China has suspended the building of new nuclear plants pending changes in safety standards.
India, Vietnam and Korea are going ahead with their nuclear power programmes.

“If more nuclear power plants are built in developing countries with little experience of operating a reactor, or bordering a region where terrorism is a concern, or without sufficient financial resources to import state of the art technology, then the chance of a major nuclear accident hitting the developing world will loom large in the coming decades,” said Kevin Tu, senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Meanwhile The Economist magazine, in its latest cover story, “Nuclear Energy: The dream that failed” is pessimistic about the future of the nuclear industry.

Nuclear plants are costly to build and operate. British studies put the overnight cost of new power plants at US$2,233 (RM6,720) for every kilowatt of capacity in 2004 and US$3,000 (RM9,028)/kw in 2008, according to The Economist.

Capacity fired by gas turbines cost less than one-fifth of that. The cost of renewable energy (wind and solar, in particular) is, however, getting cheaper every year.

Perhaps, the most intractable problem is nuclear waste. As The Economist noted, building a nuclear plant that can last 100 years is one thing, but creating waste that will be dangerous for 100 times as long is another.

So far, countries have failed to create a long-term repository for nuclear waste.

As the public has become intensely more aware of the dangers of radiation, the resistance to locating nuclear plants in their neighbourhood has grown fiercer.

No doubt the Fukushima meltdowns and its aftermath have contributed to increased awareness and to the bad name that nuclear power has acquired.

P/S: We sympathize with Japan's sufferings from earthquake, tsunami caused by nature that resulted in Fukushima nuclear meltdown a year ago.

How Japan feels when we remember the victims of its Nanjing Massacre committed and occupied by Japanese troops on Dec 13, 1937, China's former capital city suffered a six-week massacre in which more than 300,000 Chinese were Killed, 20,000 Women Raped ... ?

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The dark side of Facebook; Link to socially aggressive narcissism

Our social networking pages are being policed by outsourced, unvetted moderators.

The invisible army policing Facebook has access to our most intimate secrets - The dark side of Facebook

The invisible army policing Facebook has access to our most intimate secrets Photo: Reuters

By Iain Hollingshead, and Emma Barnett

For most of us, our experience on Facebook is a benign – even banal – one. A status update about a colleague’s commute. A “friend” request from someone we haven’t seen for years (and hoped to avoid for several more). A picture of another friend’s baby, barely distinguishable from the dozen posted the day before.

Some four billion pieces of content are shared every day by 845 million users. And while most are harmless, it has recently come to light that the site is brimming with paedophilia, pornography, racism and violence – all moderated by outsourced, poorly vetted workers in third world countries paid just $1 an hour.

In addition to the questionable morality of a company that is about to create 1,000 millionaires when it floats paying such paltry sums, there are significant privacy concerns for the rest of us. Although this invisible army of moderators receive basic training, they work from home, do not appear to undergo criminal checks, and have worrying access to users’ personal details. In a week in which there has been an outcry over Google’s privacy policies, can we expect a wider backlash over the extent to which we trust companies with our intimate information?

Last month, 21-year-old Amine Derkaoui gave an interview to Gawker, an American media outlet. Derkaoui had spent three weeks working in Morocco for oDesk, one of the outsourcing companies used by Facebook. His job, for which he claimed he was paid around $1 an hour, involved moderating photos and posts flagged as unsuitable by other users.

“It must be the worst salary paid by Facebook,” he told The Daily Telegraph this week. “And the job itself was very upsetting – no one likes to see a human cut into pieces every day.”

Derkaoui is not exaggerating. An articulate man, he described images of animal abuse, butchered bodies and videos of fights. Other moderators, mainly young, well-educated people working in Asia, Africa and Central America, have similar stories. “Paedophilia, necrophilia, beheadings, suicides, etc,” said one. “I left [because] I value my sanity.” Another compared it to working in a sewer. “All the ---- of the world flows towards you and you have to clean it up,” he said.

Who, one wonders, apart from the desperate, the unstable and the unsavoury, would be attracted to doing such an awful job in the first place?

Of course, not all of the unsuitable material on the site is so graphic. Facebook operates a fascinatingly strict set of guidelines determining what should be deleted. Pictures of naked private parts, drugs (apart from marijuana) and sexual activity (apart from foreplay) are all banned. Male nipples are OK, but naked breastfeeding is not. Photographs of bodily fluids (except semen) are allowed, but not if a human being is also shown. Photoshopped images are fine, but not if they show someone in a negative light.

Once something is reported by a user, the moderator sitting at his computer in Morocco or Mexico has three options: delete it; ignore it; or escalate it, which refers it back to a Facebook employee in California (who will, if necessary, report it to the authorities). Moderators are told always to escalate specific threats – “I’m going to stab Lisa H at the frat party” is given as the charming example – but not generic, unlikely ones, such as “I’m going to blow up the planet on New Year’s Eve.”

It is, of course, to Facebook’s credit that they are attempting to balance their mission “to make the world more open and connected” with a willingness to remove traces of the darker side of human nature. The company founded by Mark Zuckerberg in his Harvard bedroom is richer and more populated than many countries. These moderators are their police.

Neither is Facebook alone in outsourcing unpleasant work. Adam Levin, the US-based chief executive of Criterion Capital Partners and the owner of British social network Bebo, says that the process is “rampant” across Silicon Valley.

“We do it at Bebo,” he says. “Facebook has so much content flowing into its system every day that it needs hundreds of people moderating all the images and posts which are flagged. That type of workforce is best outsourced for speed, scale and cost.”

A spokesman for Twitter said that they have an internal moderation team, but refused to answer a question about outsourcing. Similarly, a Google spokesperson would not say how Google+, the search giant’s new social network, will be moderated. Neither Facebook nor oDesk were willing to comment on anything to do with outsourcing or moderation.

Levin, however, estimates that Facebook indirectly employs between 800 to 1,000 moderators via oDesk and others – nearly a third of its more handsomely remunerated full-time staff. Graham Cluley, of the internet security firm Sophos, calls Silicon Valley’s outsourcing culture its “poorly kept dirty secret”.

Lack of security

The biggest worry for the rest of us, however, is that the moderation process isn’t nearly secretive enough. According to Derkaoui, there are no security measures on a moderator’s computer to stop them uploading obscene material themselves. Despite coming into daily contact with such material, he was never subjected to a criminal record check. Where, then, is the oversight body for these underpaid global police? Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

Facebook itself is guarding them, according to a previous statement to which the Telegraph was referred. “These contractors are subject to rigorous quality controls and we have implemented several layers of safeguards to protect the data of those using our service,” it read. “No user information beyond the content in question and the source of the report is shared. All decisions made by contractors are subject to extensive audits.”

And yet in the images due for moderation seen by the Telegraph, the name of anyone “tagged” in an offending post – as well as the user who uploaded it – could be clearly discerned. A Facebook spokesman said that these names are shared with the moderators to put the content in context – a context sufficient for Derkaoui to claim that he had as much information as “looking at a friend’s Facebook page”. He admits to having subsequently looked up more information online about the people he had been moderating. Cluley is worried that Facebook users could be blackmailed by disgruntled moderators – or even see pictures originally intended for a small circle of friends pasted all over the web.

Shamoon Siddiqui, chief executive of Develop.io, an American app-building firm that employs people in the developing world for a more generous $7 to $10 an hour, agrees that better security measures are needed. “It isn’t wrong for Facebook to have an Indian office,” he says. “But it is wrong for it to use an arbitrary marketplace with random people it doesn’t know in that country. This will have to change.”

In Britain, for example, all web moderators have to undergo an enhanced CRB check. eModeration, whose clients range from HSBC to The X-Factor, pays £10 an hour and never lets its staff spend too long on the gritty stuff. They wouldn’t go near the Facebook account. The job, says Tamara Littleton, its chief executive, is too big, the moderating too reactive, and they couldn’t compete on cost with the likes of oDesk.

So, if no one can undercut the likes of oDesk, could they not be undermined instead? If Mr Zuckerberg will not dig deeper into his $17.5 billion pockets to pay the street-sweepers of Facebook properly, maybe he could be persuaded by a little moral outrage?

Levin disagrees. “Perhaps a minute percentage of users will stop using Facebook when they hear about this,” he says. “But the more digital our society becomes, the less people value their privacy.”

Perhaps. But maybe disgruntled commuters, old schoolfriends and new mothers will think twice before sharing intimate information with their “friends” – only to find that two minutes later it’s being viewed by an under-vetted, unfulfilled person on a dollar an hour in an internet café in Marrakech. - The Daily Telegraph

Facebook's 'dark side': study finds link to socially aggressive narcissism

By Damien Pearse, guardian.co.uk,

Psychology paper finds Facebook and other social media offer platform for obsessions with self-image and shallow friendships

Too many 'friends'? A psychology paper has found a link between Facebook and other social media and socially disruptive narcissism. Photograph: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Researchers have established a direct link between the number of friends you have on Facebook and the degree to which you are a "socially disruptive" narcissist, confirming the conclusions of many social media sceptics.

People who score highly on the Narcissistic Personality Inventory questionnaire had more friends on Facebook, tagged themselves more often and updated their newsfeeds more regularly.

The research comes amid increasing evidence that young people are becoming increasingly narcissistic, and obsessed with self-image and shallow friendships.

The latest study, published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences, also found that narcissists responded more aggressively to derogatory comments made about them on the social networking site's public walls and changed their profile pictures more often.

A number of previous studies have linked narcissism with Facebook use, but this is some of the first evidence of a direct relationship between Facebook friends and the most "toxic" elements of narcissistic personality disorder.

Researchers at Western Illinois University studied the Facebook habits of 294 students, aged between 18 and 65, and measured two "socially disruptive" elements of narcissism – grandiose exhibitionism (GE) and entitlement/exploitativeness (EE).

GE includes ''self-absorption, vanity, superiority, and exhibitionistic tendencies" and people who score high on this aspect of narcissism need to be constantly at the centre of attention. They often say shocking things and inappropriately self-disclose because they cannot stand to be ignored or waste a chance of self-promotion.

The EE aspect includes "a sense of deserving respect and a willingness to manipulate and take advantage of others".

The research revealed that the higher someone scored on aspects of GE, the greater the number of friends they had on Facebook, with some amassing more than 800.

Those scoring highly on EE and GG were also more likely to accept friend requests from strangers and seek social support, but less likely to provide it, according to the research.

Carol Craig, a social scientist and chief executive of the Centre for Confidence and Well-being, said young people in Britain were becoming increasingly narcissistic and Facebook provided a platform for the disorder.

"The way that children are being educated is focussing more and more on the importance of self esteem – on how you are seen in the eyes of others. This method of teaching has been imported from the US and is 'all about me'.

"Facebook provides a platform for people to self-promote by changing profile pictures and showing how many hundreds of friends you have. I know of some who have more than 1,000."

Dr Viv Vignoles, senior lecturer in social psychology at Sussex University, said there was "clear evidence" from studies in America that college students were becoming increasingly narcissistic.

But he added: "Whether the same is true of non-college students or of young people in other countries, such as the UK, remains an open question, as far as I know.

"Without understanding the causes underlying the historical change in US college students, we do not know whether these causes are factors that are relatively specific to American culture, such as the political focus on increasing self-esteem in the late 80s and early 90s or whether they are factors that are more general, for example new technologies such as mobile phones and Facebook."

Vignoles said the correlational nature of the latest study meant it was difficult to be certain whether individual differences in narcissism led to certain patterns of Facebook behaviour, whether patterns of Facebook behaviour led to individual differences in narcissism, or a bit of both.

Christopher Carpenter, who ran the study, said: "In general, the 'dark side' of Facebook requires more research in order to better understand Facebook's socially beneficial and harmful aspects in order to enhance the former and curtail the latter.

"If Facebook is to be a place where people go to repair their damaged ego and seek social support, it is vitally important to discover the potentially negative communication one might find on Facebook and the kinds of people likely to engage in them. Ideally, people will engage in pro-social Facebooking rather than anti-social me-booking."

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