The Star Metro
11 October 2008
Health risks on young h/phone users

THE Consumers Association of Penang is appealing to the state government to recognise the potential side effects of mobile phone usage on young children.

It urged the state government to issue a warning to parents to stop children under the age of 12 from using mobile phones as well as run campaigns to warn the public of the possible dangers of radiation exposure.

CAP president S.M. Mohamed Idris claimed that new research from Sweden had found that younger people were five times more likely to develop brain cancer if they were mobile phone users.

“Children are especially vulnerable to radiation from mobile and cordless phone, Wi-Fi and other electromagnetic signal devices.

“It is because their brain and nervous systems are still developing and since their heads are smaller and their skull thinner, the radiation penetrates deeper into the brain,” he told a press conference in George Town yesterday.

Hazlin Hassan takes stock of the Malaysian economy.

WHILE the world is reeling from what is possibly the worst global economic crisis since The Great Depression, most Malaysians have been too preoccupied with its own political drama to pay much attention to the financial meltdown.

Everyone is busy talking about politics. The opposition taking over, the opposition not taking over; the PM stepping down, the PM not stepping down; who will become the new PM’s deputy, who will not; is Anwar guilty of sodomy, is he innocent. 

Based on the newspaper headlines, many seem to think that it only affects the US, Europe, and other countries in the region. Malaysians tend to think that based on strong commodities and crude oil prices that Petronas is selling, we are somehow insulated from what is happening elsewhere.

Well, if they have been reading reports closely, they would see that palm oil and crude oil prices have plunged also.

Local newspapers have not been reporting the meltdown on a big scale. The coverage is still mainly limited to the business or foreign sections, and tend to present the ‘official’ side of things. 

In today’s publication of The Star, the biggest English daily, a story on local banks focused on the positives.

The lead story of the business section of The Star said that banks were turning cautious but have not put the brakes on lending to businesses.

It also stressed that the country’s high savings rate and healthy foreign reserves would enable local banks to weather the global credit squeeze.

As a result, perhaps not many Malaysians are even aware of the spreading fear in global markets. 

This sort of thinking is perhaps further boosted by the country’s leaders who kept insisting that Malaysia’s economic fundamentals are strong, rather than preparing the ground for what is to come — slower economic growth, and perhaps job losses.

Second Finance Minister Nor Mohamed Yakcob was quoted in today’s papers as saying that Malaysia is unlikely to enter into a recession. He did admit however that “if the crisis creates a recession in the US and Europe, all countries will be affected.”

Mass-selling Malay-language Utusan Malaysia played up Nor Mohamed’s comments and made it their lead story for the business pages, with the headline saying “Malaysia confident will not fall into recession.”

Quoting the central bank, the government has said that both direct and indirect exposure of Malaysian financial institutions in terms of holding of securities linked to the US sub-prime mortgages and lending to entities associated with them, accounted for only 0.3 per cent of the banking system’s capital base.

Further supporting this argument is the fact that the Malaysian bourse also has not plunged to the depths seen by neighbouring Indonesia, which was forced to close for two days this week after huge falls.

But observers cautioned that Malaysians must pay careful attention to events happening elsewhere before they end up being taken by surprise.

Some say this time, if the recession lands on Malaysian shores, it might well be worse than the 1997-98 Asian Financial Crisis. 

First to go could be Malaysian exports, 20 per cent of which go to the US. A drop in exports could cause major job losses. This would then affect consumer spending and curtail growth.

We are already seeing the prices of commodities fall, particularly fuel and palm oil, two commodities which Malaysia depends on heavily for its earnings. This could result in a vicious bite soon enough unless prices recover.

A big chunk of the Malaysian government annual revenue, about 46 per cent, comes from the petroleum funds. So falling oil prices could mean the government might have to crimp on building infrastructure and rural projects, like schools and drainage.

Also, many palm oil growers are rural Malays in the government-backed Felda estates. During the Asian financial crisis, the sentiment against the government in the rural areas were negative because many growers found it tough to make ends meet. 

And job losses jumped as electronics factories closed or pared operations.

All these means that, like it or not, whether they pay attention to it or not, the global meltdown will soon enough knock on the doors of many Malaysians.

Party insiders tell Malaysiakini plans are afoot to expand the number of vice-presidencies in Umno from three to five to reflect the party’s rapidly growing member base, which has shot up to about 3.4 million from just under 2 million in 1989.

191 division heads aka warlords, and very soon there will be 189 positions for the VP post.

For what?

“If you could live your life all over again, what would you do differently?”

• If I had to do it over again, I would REFLECT more.
• If I had to do it over again, I would RISK more.
• If I had to do it over again, I would DO MORE things that would live on after I am dead.

- Datuk Zaid Ibrahim - 

The Malaysian Insider, 30 Sep 2008
More Malaysians fret over economy

KUALA LUMPUR, Sept 30 - Malaysians are increasingly worried about their economy in the light of the global financial crisis and continuing political turmoil on the domestic front.

More than half of the respondents to a survey just conducted by the independent Merdeka Centre said they were worried about the prospects for the economy, a sharp jump from the 25 per cent recorded a year ago.

Fifty per cent of the 1,002 respondents said economic issues, such as price hikes, inflation and unemployment, were most important to them. Twenty-one per cent cited political issues as most important, up from one per cent when another survey was conducted in March.

Forty per cent of respondents also said they were “very dissatisfied” with the government’s performance on licking inflation and curbing price hikes, while 41 per cent were ‘very dissatisfied’ with its performance over the economy in general.

Bank Negara governor Zeti Akhtar Aziz warned yesterday that the country’s growth might be affected by the continuing financial crisis in the United States, adding that this was in its early stages.

She said that growth had become ‘more of a concern’ because of falling commodity prices coupled with the US crisis.

The Kuala Lumpur Composite Index, which reached an all-time high of 1,524 points in January, fell to 1,157 after the March elections, which saw the ruling Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition lose its traditional two-thirds majority in Parliament.

Earlier this month, the bourse tumbled to a two-year low of 963, and ended last week at 1,020.53.

The political turmoil, combined with the turbulence in the US financial markets, offered “not much hope” for the market to revive before year end, according to Stephen Soo, a senior analyst at local brokerage TA Securities.

“Investor sentiment is still weak and foreign funds have been pulling out of the market. The political scenario is definitely a deterrent to foreigners,” he added.

Yeonzon Yeow, Kenanga Investment Bank’s head of research, said the country’s economic outlook should be positive, given that the government had presented an economic development blueprint until 2010 under the Ninth Malaysia Plan.

But the continuing turbulence on the political scene has meant that the implementation of projects has been delayed. Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi has also come under intense pressure to step down after the BN’s poor showing in the general elections.

“The economy has been on a downtrend since the general elections. Political uncertainties result in economic paralysis. A lot of time is spent on politics instead of economics. That will slow down the whole process,” Yeow said.

A decision by Umno - the main component in the ruling coalition - to postpone party polls to next year will serve only to further prolong the uncertainty over the country’s leadership and economic situation, he added.

“For the market to revive by the year end would require some form of resolution on the political front,” he said.

But others were more sanguine about prospects, with an editorial in The Edge financial weekly saying that a “significant improvement in growth” was expected next year.

Indeed, the government still expects growth to reach 5.7 per cent this year, despite recent economic woes.

However, the Malaysian Institute of Economic Research - a government think-tank - has cut its growth projection for this year to 4.6 per cent, partly due to the domestic political turmoil. - The Straits Times

Here’s wishing everyone a SELAMAT HARI RAYA AIDIL FITRI.

Well done.

Remember the Kulim Wonder Boy? Of course, you do.

“I think I speak for the country when I say we are embarrassed at the sight of two grown men playing this endless children’s game of ‘yours and mine’ with the most important responsibility in the land, oblivious of the law, oblivious to the damage they are doing to the nation.”

- Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah -