Rabu, 1 Januari 2014

The Star Online: Metro: Sunday Metro

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The Star Online: Metro: Sunday Metro

Musharraf fails to show up in court
Labour costs could soar as much as 20%
Scientist starts Asia's first science magazine

Musharraf fails to show up in court

Posted: 01 Jan 2014 08:00 AM PST

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan's former military ruler Pervez Musharraf failed to show up for a hearing in the treason case against him, with his lawyers citing security threats.

The 70-year-old stands accused over his imposition of emergency rule in November 2007, but he and his legal team have dismissed the charge as politically motivated.

Conviction could mean the death penalty or life imprisonment for Musharraf, who has faced a series of criminal cases since returning from self-imposed exile in March.

His defence team said he could not attend the special treason tribunal yesterday because security arrangements were inadequate. They also complained that lawyers in the case had been threatened.

The delay comes a week after a bomb scare forced the hearing to be adjourned.

"He is unable to appear before the court because of security hazards," lawyer Ahmed Raza Kasuri told the tribunal.

The Taliban have made repeated threats to kill Musharraf, who led Pakistan into its alliance with Washington's "war on terror", and he lives under heavy guard at his farmhouse on the edge of Islamabad.

The case was adjourned on Dec 24 after explosives were found along the route he was to take to court and on Monday more explosives were discovered on the same road.

Musharraf is the first former army chief to go on trial in Pakistan, setting up a potentially destabilising clash between the government and the all-powerful military. — AFP

Labour costs could soar as much as 20%

Posted: 01 Jan 2014 08:00 AM PST

THE double whammy of higher foreign worker levies and a manpower crunch could send labour costs in some sectors soaring by as much as 20% this year.

The hit will come on July 1 when companies in the services, manufacturing and construction sectors face levy hikes of between S$15 (RM39) and S$200 (RM519) for each foreign worker on staff.

"The tighter labour market and the full force of levy measures are going to make it a pressuring environment for companies," said Kurt Wee, president of the Association of Small and Medium Enterprises.

The pain will be felt particularly in the building game. Monthly levies will increase to a record S$950 (RM2,465) for each lower-skilled foreign worker hired by construction firms.

OKP Holdings group managing director Or Toh Wat described the increase as "an all-time high", and firms that hire more lower-skilled construction workers will be harder hit.

Or expects the company's overall labour costs to go up by 10% to 20%.

Service sector firms like restaurants will continue to face "a tremendous labour crunch", warned DBS economist Irvin Seah. — The Straits Times / Asia News Network

Scientist starts Asia's first science magazine

Posted: 01 Jan 2014 08:00 AM PST

AN AWARD-WINNING Singaporean scientist has started what could be Asia's first science magazine, which aims to showcase research done in this part of the world.

Dr Juliana Chan, 30, an assistant professor at Nanyang Technological University, has roped in other full-time scientists and doctors from around the world – from Singapore, the Philippines and India to the United States and Britain – to contribute to the quarterly magazine, Asian Scientist.

"From the very start, my goal has always been to publicise the excellent science coming from Asia, and there was no such magazine on the market focusing on the region."

Dr Chan has won several awards such as the Singapore Youth Award last year for her work in nano-medicine and tissue engineering, and for founding and editing an online version of the magazine for the past two years. — The Straits Times / Asia News Network

Kredit: www.thestar.com.my

The Star eCentral: Movie Buzz

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The Star eCentral: Movie Buzz

Films that changed cinema

Posted: 01 Jan 2014 08:00 AM PST

Gravity makes a swath of films seem redundant. Here are some past movies that have altered forever what we watch on the big screen.

EVERY now and then a film comes along that totally changes everything: whether it is expensive new technology or a cute talking pig, nothing can be the same again.

Gravity is the latest film that makes a whole swath of cinema look and feel redundant: its hard-won sense of documentary realism means everyone attempting to film a spacewalk or satellite explosion will have to raise their game massively.

This is by no means a definitive, historical list – you would have to go back to the Lumiere brothers for that – but we have narrowed it down to the six films that have made the biggest impact on movies in their current form and obsessions.

Batman (1989)

The game: Superhero films were traditionally camp, trashy affairs – even Superman: The Movie, the first big-budget comic book film of the modern era played it mostly for yuks. Batman, of course, had been mercilessly satirised in the counterculture 1960s via the pop art TV series starring Adam West, and comic book fans were used to being a subculture that was sneered at and looked down on.

How it changed: Batman's comic book writers – Frank Miller and Alan Moore among them – had left campness far behind, and Tim Burton picked up where they had left off. With his background in ghoulish animation and goth-lite comedy, Burton brought an intense, design-heavy brilliance to proceedings, overhauling the genre thoroughly and treading a careful line between high-voltage visuals and savage humour. With unparalleled merchandising opportunities alongside it, Batman took off, and Hollywood is still profiting from the consequences.

What followed: Everything from X-Men to Sam Raimi's Spider-Man trilogy to Christopher Nolan's Batman reboot to Marvel's seemingly endless conveyor belt.

James Cromwell in Babe

Babe (1995)

The game: You want talking animals? Before Babe, that meant – basically – a cartoon. Or puppets. Your Air Buddies, your Homeward Bounds – they were either barking to command or supplied with voiceovers by standup comics. No one could take them seriously.

How it changed: Mad Max director George Miller spent seven years developing an adaptation of Dick King-Smith's The Sheep-Pig. Using enormous numbers of animatronics, CGI lower-jaw movements and the like,Babe blew every previous animal movie out of the water: they were talking! All the time! Incredible. The seven Oscar nominations it got were a suitable recognition of its envelope-pushing status.

What followed: the Doctor Dolittle remake, Alvin And The Chipmunks, G-Force.

The Blair Witch Project (1999)

The game: Since the advent of the slasher film in the late 1970s, horror films tended to be rigidly formulaic affairs – remorseless killers, screeching music, screaming teenagers. The Kevin Williamson-inspired wave of post-modern semi-spoofs in the mid-1990s – Scream, I Know What You Did Last Summer, The Faculty – helped to loosen things up a little, but horror was locked into an aesthetic artifice that appeared unbreakable.

How it changed: Directors Eduardo Sanchez and Daniel Myrick, in trying to make a decent film to sell for cable TV, inadvertently triggered a wave of found-footage horror movies. Virtually abandoning their actors in the forest, they achieved an unprecedented level of snot-dribbling realism, which creeped out multiplex audiences to a staggering US$140mil (RM 460.7mil).

What followed: Paranormal Activity, Rec, Quarantine, Cloverfield.

Festen (1998)

The game: In the old days, no one went to the cinema to watch a video – least of all chin-stroking art cinema types, who tended to prized Bessonian lushness and painterly Jarmanisms. But by the mid-1990s the art house circuit was under siege from smart-alecks such as Quentin Tarantino on one side, and Hollywod FX behemoths on the other. Something had to give.

How it changed: Along came arch-prankster Lars von Trier – already a big noise after Breaking The Waves – and his acolytes, who came up with a "movement", Dogme 95, espousing stripped-down technology and unvarnished naturalism. Despite its built-in irony and over-before-it-began PR, Dogme 95 did one big thing: it made digital video a viable cinematic force. Festen, a knotty family melodrama that benefited from its home-video visuals, was the forerunner: a bona fide worldwide critical and commercial success, it overnight gave artistic credibility to what had hitherto been considered – technologically speaking – the preserve of poverty-stricken film students and pornographers.

What followed: Dancer In The Dark, Ivans xtc, 28 Days Later, Star Wars Episodes I and III, Zodiac ... and then everything.

A secret service officer confronts filmmaker Michael Moore across the street from the Saudi embassy in Washington, D.C. in a scene from Moore's new documentary film

Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004)

The game: Lots of people made campaigning documentaries, but cinema didn't pay a great deal of attention. Countries with state-funded TV – like Britain – found a place for them there, but in the US especially docs tended to shrivel and die a lonely death without the sports/music/human-interest angle.

How it changed: Michael Moore bucked the trend, releasing first Roger And Me (1989) and then Bowling For Columbine (2002) to acclaim and some success, largely because of Moore's avuncular, engaging personality. But Fahrenheit 9/11, in which he basically blamed the Bush family for enabling Osama bin Laden's assault on the United States, put documentaries over the top. It may not have dislodged George W Bush from the presidency, but it attracted huge audiences (taking US$119mil/RM392mil in the US alone), and lit a rocket under the entire documentary-making scene.

What followed: An Inconvenient Truth, Enron: The Smartest Guys In The Room, Religulous, Inside Job. Actors Sam Worthington (L) and Zoe Saldana as their digital characters Jake and Neytiri are shown in a scene from the upcoming James Cameron film

Avatar (2009)

The game: Spectacle was key, thought the film industry, under siege from a string of home-delivery formats from DVD to YouTube. The late 1990s was the age of CGI-burnished extravaganzas – chief among them was James Cameron's Titanic – and the industry had been talking up 3D for some time, aware of the potential to charge more for a fancy format that couldn't be ripped off by the Internet. But so far it had been largely confined to Imax documentaries, family-friendly animated films and the odd gimmicky genre piece. Anything bigger tended to have an opportunist conversion from 2D.

How it changed: Cameron had been working on Avatar for years, intended as a groundbreaking visual extravaganza with full CGI characters. By the time it finally hit cinemas in 2009, no one was all that impressed with CGI – but the 3D looked fantastic, and gave the whole format a massive shot in the arm. That it became the biggest grossing film of all time helped too; filmmakers embraced 3D, and audiences did too.

What followed: Alice In Wonderland, Transformers: Dark Of The Moon, A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas, Prometheus. – Guardian News & Media

Kredit: www.thestar.com.my

The Star Online: World Updates

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The Star Online: World Updates

China sacks former aide to retired domestic security chief
Antarctic helicopter rescue of trapped ship passengers delayed due to sea ice
China's first aircraft carrier completes South China Sea drills

China sacks former aide to retired domestic security chief

Posted: 01 Jan 2014 08:35 PM PST

BEIJING (Reuters) - A former aide to China's retired security tsar Zhou Yongkang has been sacked for suspected corruption, state media said on Thursday, the latest move against people close to Zhou who is himself subject of a graft investigation.

The ruling Communist Party's anti-corruption watchdog said on Sunday that the former aide, Li Chongxi, was being investigated for corruption.

On Thursday, the official Xinhua news agency said Li had been removed from his post as head of an advisory body to the legislature in the southwestern province of Sichuan "for suspected severe violations of discipline", a euphemism for corruption.

"Authorities are investigating his case according to procedure," Xinhua said, citing a statement from the Communist Party's powerful Organisation Department.

It provided no further details and it was not possible to reach Li for comment.

President Xi Jinping has launched a sweeping crackdown on corruption since taking power, warning that the problem is a threat to the Communist Party's very survival and vowing to go after powerful "tigers" as well as lowly "flies".

Zhou, who sources have told Reuters has been put under virtual house arrest, was party boss of Sichuan from 1999-2002, and it became one of his powerbases.

During Zhou's tenure in Sichuan, Li was promoted to a deputy provincial party boss and head of the province's anti-graft body, according to his official biography.

Two other senior Sichuan officials are being investigated, including Li Chuncheng, another former deputy Sichuan party chief.

Several of Zhou's political allies have been taken into custody and questioned for corruption, including former Vice Minister of Public Security Li Dongsheng and Jiang Jiemin, the top regulator of state-owned enterprises for just five months until September.

In a separate case, Xinhua said a senior official in the southern province of Hunan had been sacked and expelled from the party for his role in an election bribery scandal.

More than 500 lawmakers in Hunan's Hengyang city resigned last month after being implicated in the scandal.

Xinhua said Tong Mingqian was fired as deputy head of Hunan's advisory body to parliament "for dereliction of duty which caused major electoral fraud", and will be prosecuted.

(Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Robert Birsel)

Antarctic helicopter rescue of trapped ship passengers delayed due to sea ice

Posted: 01 Jan 2014 08:21 PM PST

SYDNEY (Reuters) - A planned helicopter rescue of 52 passengers on a Russian ship stranded in Antarctic ice since Christmas Eve was delayed on Thursday due to unfavourable sea ice conditions in the area.

The helicopter on the Chinese icebreaker Snow Dragon had planned to lift passengers from the trapped Akademik Shokalskiy on Thursday and then use a barge to transport them to the nearby Aurora Australis, Australia's Antarctic supply ship.

"Current sea ice conditions prevent the barge from Aurora Australis from reaching the Chinese vessel Xue Long (Snow Dragon) and a rescue may not be possible today," the Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA), which is coordinating the rescue, said in a statement.

It was not safe for the helicopter to land either on the Aurora Australis or next to the vessel, the agency added.

"It is now likely the rescue will not go ahead today. The preferred option is to wait for conditions that will allow the rescue to be completed in a single operation to reduce unnecessary risk," AMSA said.

The Russian ship left New Zealand on November 28 on a private expedition to commemorate the 100th anniversary of an Antarctic journey led by famed Australian explorer Douglas Mawson.

It became trapped on December 24, 100 nautical miles east of French Antarctic station Dumont D'Urville and about 1,500 nautical miles south of Australia's southern island state of Tasmania.

The Chinese ship got within sight of the Akademik Shokalskiy on Saturday, but turned back after failing to break the ice, which was more than 3 metres (10 feet) deep in places.

Two other vessels, Australia's Aurora Australis and a French flagged ship, also tried to help but failed to reach the ship due to high wind and heavy snow.

China's first aircraft carrier completes South China Sea drills

Posted: 01 Jan 2014 08:20 PM PST

BEIJING (Reuters) - China's first aircraft carrier has successfully finished a series of tests during a training mission in the disputed South China Sea and has returned to port, state media reported.

Last month's drills off the coast of Hainan Island marked not only the first time China has sent a carrier into the South China Sea but the first time it has manoeuvred with the kind of strike group of escort ships U.S. carriers deploy, according to regional military officers and analysts.

After two decades of double-digit increases in the military budget, China's admirals plan to develop a full blue-water navy capable of defending growing economic interests as well as disputed territory in the South and East China Seas.

The aircraft carrier Liaoning carried out more than 100 tests, including of its combat systems, and has now docked at port in the northern city of Qingdao, the official Xinhua news agency said late on Wednesday.

"The aircraft carrier underwent a comprehensive test of its combat system and conducted a formation practice during its 37-day voyage," Xinhua said, citing an unnamed naval source as saying.

The tests "attained the anticipated objectives", the report added. "All tests and training programmes went well as scheduled."

The carrier was escorted by two destroyers and two frigates, and aircraft and submarines also participated in the drills.

The Liaoning - a Soviet-era ship bought from Ukraine in 1998 and re-fitted in a Chinese shipyard - has long been a symbol of China's naval build-up.

Carrier strike groups sit at the core of China's naval ambitions and successfully operating the 60,000-tonne Liaoning is the first step in what state media and some military experts believe will be the deployment of locally built carriers by 2020.

Friction over the South China Sea has surged as China uses its growing naval might to assert a vast claim over the oil-and-gas-rich area, raising fears of a clash between it and other countries in the region, including the Philippines and Vietnam.

The USS Cowpens narrowly avoided colliding with a Chinese warship escorting the Liaoning while operating in international waters on December 5, the U.S. Navy has said.

Xinhua said the Cowpens was "warned" by the carrier task force, adding the U.S. vessel was "intentionally" putting the Liaoning under surveillance.

(Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Michael Perry)

Kredit: www.thestar.com.my

The Star eCentral: Movie Reviews

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The Star eCentral: Movie Reviews

Films that changed cinema

Posted: 01 Jan 2014 08:00 AM PST

Gravity makes a swath of films seem redundant. Here are some past movies that have altered forever what we watch on the big screen.

EVERY now and then a film comes along that totally changes everything: whether it is expensive new technology or a cute talking pig, nothing can be the same again.

Batman (1989)

What followed: Everything from X-Men to Sam Raimi's Spider-Man trilogy to Christopher Nolan's Batman reboot to Marvel's seemingly endless conveyor belt.

James Cromwell in Babe

Babe (1995)

What followed: the Doctor Dolittle remake, Alvin And The Chipmunks, G-Force.

The Blair Witch Project (1999)

What followed: Paranormal Activity, Rec, Quarantine, Cloverfield.

Festen (1998)

What followed: Dancer In The Dark, Ivans xtc, 28 Days Later, Star Wars Episodes I and III, Zodiac ... and then everything.

Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004)

Avatar (2009)

What followed: Alice In Wonderland, Transformers: Dark Of The Moon, A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas, Prometheus. – Guardian News & Media

Kredit: www.thestar.com.my

The Star Online: Entertainment: TV & Radio

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The Star Online: Entertainment: TV & Radio

A Noble cause

Posted: 31 Dec 2013 08:00 AM PST

Fan favourite John Noble makes an appearance in today's episode of the drama Sleepy Hollow.

Sleepy Hollow is a sleeper hit.

After just a few episodes, the new drama is Fox's highest-rated series, and one of network TV's top newcomers among young-adult viewers. And its 13-episode first season has already been extended for a second.

The episode The Sin Eater (shown tonight on Fox) is a pivotal one that introduces John Noble as Henry Parrish, a recluse who fills that life-saving title role. "He's like the sage, the elder statesman who gets brought in rather reluctantly and agrees to help," says Noble, a fan favourite who starred in the Sleepy producers' previous Fox series, Fringe.

Who's he helping? Ichabod Crane (Tom Mison), the long-dormant hero, who's gone missing again? Abbie Mills (Nicole Beharie), his detective partner, who has her own haunted past?

The episode also begins a series of extended flashbacks that fill in the details of Crane's past: How he switched sides from British to colonial soldier; how he met his future wife Katrina, whose spell revived him more than two centuries after he was killed by a Headless Horseman; and how his past ties into the show's mythology – and his ability to solve crimes in the present.

"It's nice to explore a different side of Ichabod. He was responsible for some bad things when he was fighting for the wrong side," says British actor Mison (Parade's End), who plays him, quickly adding, "Don't tell my mother I called the British the wrong side."

Future episodes this season, ending Jan 20 in the United States, will rely more heavily on flashbacks and the show's core characters. And Noble, who starred as Fringe's breakout character, addled scientist Walter Bishop, returns twice more – including the season finale – and is on board for next season.

"I have to sense there's a connection with Ichabod that will play out," Noble says. Are there similarities (apart from looks) between Parrish and his Fringe character? "Both are complex men with big secrets, and both have a certain charm about them."

Mison calls Noble "perfect for this type of show: You can throw the most absurd line of dialogue at him and he'll sell it instantly."

That isn't what was expected of Sleepy itself: "I thought this show was meant to be a hard sell, that we were meant to spend ages convincing people to watch," Mison says of the concept, which blends the sturdy procedural format with a fanciful, and original, historical drama. "There's not very much like it on telly. We went straight in with as many outlandish things as we could."

Adds executive producer Alex Kurtzman: "We kind of knew how insane it was up top, and that's why we loved it so much."

But Sleepy quickly proved an unlikely hit: Original episodes are averaging 12.3 million viewers in the US, including big gains from DVR-delayed viewing, a feat that sparked "shock and surprise and delight," Kurtzman says.

The show combines elements of two Washington Irving stories – The Legend Of Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle – published around 1820 and set near the time of the Revolutionary War.

In this version, Crane awakens in present-day Sleepy Hollow, and is threatened by his tie to "Headless", one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, who also finds his way into the future. (Wilmington, North Carolina, where the series is filmed, is a stand-in for the upstate New York town).

In teaming Crane with Abbie, Kurtzman and co-creator Roberto Orci took inspiration from The X-Files' pairing of investigator opposites Mulder and Scully. But they wanted to avoid casting them as believer and skeptic, as that earlier Fox show did.

"Abbie's past and backstory is as fraught and complicated as Crane's," Kurtzman says. As viewers learned in the first four episodes, "she's trying to function as a normal person, knowing she's been touched by something abnormal."

Crane's "emergence into her world forces her to confront a past she's been running from. And it takes her a while to get her head around the idea of being chosen to thwart the apocalypse."

One thing fans haven't gotten their heads around is when Crane will shed his colonial garb, a rather obvious contrast with the Sleepy locals that was joked about in an early episode.

"That will be addressed very soon," teases Mison. "We quite like that there is an iconic look to our Ichabod, that we don't want to deviate from too much," he says. But "seeing him wash clothes in the sink isn't quite enough." – USA Today/McClatchy-Tribune Information Services

Sleepy Hollow airs every Wednesday at 9.50pm on Fox (Astro Ch 710).

Kredit: www.thestar.com.my

The Star Online: Business

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The Star Online: Business

Stung by curbs, Indian iron ore companies throw in towel
Scarred US consumer a hard sell for traditional retail
Cypark slips on weaker earnings

Stung by curbs, Indian iron ore companies throw in towel

Posted: 01 Jan 2014 06:45 PM PST

INDIA/SINGAPORE: Top Indian trader MMTC's US$80mil iron ore export terminal, ready since 2010, has never handled a cargo. Now the company wants to spend US$16mil to convert the terminal to ship coal.

Bans on iron ore mining and exports in India's top producing states of Karnataka and Goa have choked the industry so hard that MMTC is one of many firms exiting. Even if efforts to fully lift the bans make it past the many bureaucratic and legal hurdles, iron ore miners do not expect complete resumption of production until late 2014.

The bans, put in place as the government tried to clamp down on illegal mining, have cut India's iron ore exports by around 85%, or 100 million tonnes, over the past two years.

They have also reduced foreign exchange earnings by more than US$17bil in the same period, according to the Federation of Indian Mineral Industries (FIMI).

The structural shift in India's iron ore industry could be a blessing for other suppliers, as demand growth from top market China slows and Australian miners Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton ramp up output. It will also make it harder for India to regain its spot as the world's No 3 exporter of the steel-making raw material.

"It's pretty evident that there's lasting damage to the industry," said R. K. Bansal, a secretary general at FIMI. "But if the government of the day at the state and central level, as well as other authorities, stick their neck out and take decisions then this paralysis can go."

Mining in Goa was banned in September 2012, freezing shipments that reached about 50 million tonnes in the 2010-11 fiscal year. In neighbouring Karnataka, where the ban started in 2011, exports remain frozen even though it was lifted in April. In both states, the bulk of mining was done by private companies, which were accused of mining outside lease areas and in excess of set limits.

MMTC was banking on business from Karnataka when it invested along with Indian partners Sical Logistics Ltd and L&T Infrastructure Development Projects in an iron ore terminal in Ennore Port in the southern Tamil Nadu state.

"We think that at least in the next five to six years there will be no exports of iron ore," said SM Babu, general manager at MMTC's Chennai office. Instead the joint venture company hopes to tap growing demand for coal-fired power plants in Tamil Nadu.

Only 16 out of 115 mines have resumed mining in Karnataka. For those keen on returning, the bureaucratic hurdles can be overwhelming.

"There are about 30 or 40 companies whose quantities are so low that they will never restart," said Basant Poddar, owner of Mineral Enterprises Ltd, which has four mining leases in Karnataka but none operating currently.

"For those willing, the issue is with forest clearances. The whole process goes through about 50 levels or officers for stage one clearance, and for stage two it's cut down to about 20."

On Monday, Vedanta Resources Plc, a London-based mining conglomerate controlled by Indian tycoon Anil Agarwal, said its Sesa Sterlite unit had resumed operations in Karnataka after clearance from a court-appointed panel.

CHINA APPETITE WANING

Jiro Iokibe, analyst at Daiwa Securities in Tokyo, sees Indian iron ore exports of 15 million tonnes next year, rising to 20 million tonnes in 2015. This is well below the record of more than 117 million tonnes in 2009-2010.

Lower Indian supply has eased pressure on a market seen moving to surplus given expansion by low-cost producers such as Rio Tinto, BHP Billiton and Brazil's Vale while growth in Chinese demand eases.

India's exports to China reached just over 10 million tonnes in January-November, down 68% from a year earlier.

"Definitely people are not depending now on Indian material," said a trader in Shanghai who is among a few left selling only Indian iron ore to Chinese mills. "Most traders have switched to mainstream cargoes from Australia and Brazil and cargoes from India are going at a discount of maybe up to US$4 a tonne."

India's central and state governments, which put in place the various bans under direction from a Supreme Court determined to clamp down on illegal mining, appear keen on getting the iron ore sector back on its feet.

"We have placed all the regulatory measures we have undertaken in front of the Supreme Court so that we can resume mining operations," Prasanna Acharya, mines director in Goa, said in November.

The court has set up a panel that will determine a limit on Goa's production. The panel is expected to submit an interim report by Feb 15, but Acharya has said he does not expect a resumption in mining before October at the earliest.

COLLATERAL DAMAGE

When the iron ore miners give up, so do businesses relying on the raw material.

Out of the 53 sponge iron making plants in Karnataka with annual production capacity of about 3 million tonnes, 19 have closed and 27 are operating at half their capacity due to a shortage of iron ore, said Deependra Kashiva, executive director of the Sponge Iron Manufacturers Association.

India is the world's top producer of sponge iron, an alternative steelmaking ingredient that is economically viable where natural gas is abundant and cheap.

At Sesa Sterlite's 7 million-tonnnes-per-year mine in Codli Village, about 50km east of Goa's capital Panaji, machinery operator Lakshdeep Asrekar is among a few who still report to work.

Asrekar is lucky because many have lost their jobs, with industry group FIMI estimating job cuts at 200,000 across Goa and Karnataka.

"We come and start our machinery and dumpers and keep them running for 15-20 minutes so that they are in working condition," said Asrekar – Reuters.

Scarred US consumer a hard sell for traditional retail

Posted: 01 Jan 2014 06:27 PM PST

NEW YORK: If there was one lesson from this year's holiday shopping season, it is that many traditional retailers have to work a lot harder to persuade Americans to open their pocketbooks.

A lot of stores had to discount heavily to eke out a modest increase in sales, likely squeezing profit margins in the process.

Some improvement in the US economy and declines in the jobless rate, plus gains in stock and home prices, are failing to resonate with many Americans whose incomes are struggling to catch up to where they were before the financial crisis.

But to many retail experts and economists there are other less cyclical factors at play. Consumers are spending more. Government figures show monthly personal consumption has risen for seven straight months, with November's outlay marking the fastest increase in five months.

But they are not spending in the shopping malls like they used to.

And that means that, even if the economy picks up significantly, retailers of many products could still struggle.

"We are in a something of an evolutionary process, said Bill Martin, founder of data firm ShopperTrak, which monitors foot traffic in about 60,000 retail stores. Americans are spending more online and becoming more careful about what they buy, he said.

Some of this has been unfolding over a long period, although the changes might be picking up pace.

For example, department stores have found themselves on the wrong end of trends for some time. According to data compiled by Reuters, they now capture just US$3.37 of every US$100 of US retail spending, the lowest since records began in 1992, when the number was nearly US$9.

Some of that is explained by the rise of Wal-Mart Stores Inc and other big box discount retailers. But the pace of decline has picked up, with department stores losing about 0.28 percentage points of market share at an annualised rate between 2002 and 2011, compared with 0.22 in the prior 10 years.

The problem is two-fold. The middle class consumers, to whom the likes of JC Penney Co Inc and Kohl's Corp cater, have struggled with stagnant wages and a payroll tax rise, prompting them to reduce spending on apparel, said Scott Tuhy, a retail analyst at Moody's Investors Service in New York.

People have also gravitated toward spending on services such as travel – airline ticket prices and hotel room rates are up – as well as movie downloads and other content for their TVs, smartphones and tablets.

Prices to attend live sports events, theme parks, movies and rock concerts have also been rising.

In addition, increasing healthcare costs have been eating up discretionary income, with many employers seeking higher contributions from their staff.

According to the Commerce Department, spending on services hit an annual rate of US$7.1tril in November, by far the biggest slice of overall consumption

"There was a day when you bought your TV, refrigerator, furniture, everything in a department store, whereas today, it's really just apparel and maybe jewellery," said Stuart Hoffman, an economist at PNC Financial Services Group in Pittsburgh.

"But as incomes rise over time, people spend more on services – travel, entertainment."

As data from MasterCard showed last week, it took deep discounts and hefty promotions to spur a 2.3% rise in holiday sales between Nov 1 and Dec 24 compared with a year earlier. The figures include apparel, jewellery, electronics, luxury goods and home furnishings.

"Given how promotional the season turned out to be, profits are likely to be flat because retailers had to provide quite a lot of discounts to get those sales," said Moody's Tuhy.

And it's not as if people aren't doing some serious shopping.

US sales of big-ticket items such as autos and home-related goods such as washing machines, as well as purchases in home-improvement stores, surged in 2013, boosting overall retail sales. Homes sales also increased pretty steadily from mid-2012, although a summer spike in mortgage rates cooled things off a bit this fall.

Some of the gains reflected a long-anticipated release of pent-up demand as the economic recovery has gained momentum, but it might also be partly a reflection of changing attitudes, with the focus on more practical purchases.

According to the National Association of Realtors, more than half of home buyers between July 2012 and June 2013 made some sacrifices, such as reducing spending on luxury items, entertainment and clothing.

"Pent-up demand has helped on housing and autos, but consumers are still cautious. Things are getting better, yes, but even if you have a job, things are still tight," said Sam Bullard, an economist at Wells Fargo in Charlotte.

In its 2014 retail industry outlook, Moody's said it expects the auto and home improvement sectors to outperform again in 2014, good news for Home Depot Inc and General Motors Co , whose stocks are up 32% and 41%, respectively, this year.

It's been a different story with more ordinary purchases.

An Ipsos/Reuters poll released just ahead of the Christmas holiday found consumers plan to spend about a third less this year than last year on items such as jewellery, toys and electronics.

Sluggish sales of toys and packaged foods pushed down sales at Wal-Mart's US stores in the third quarter and prompted the company to forecast disappointing holiday sales results, while Target Corp blamed "constrained" consumer spending for a tepid rise in quarterly sales.

One factor is that the giant TV is much cheaper than it was, and tablets and many of today's laptop and desktop PCs are cheaper than their predecessors of a few years ago, again not helping store sales. Shoppers are also increasingly likely to buy such items online from the likes of Amazon.com Inc and Apple Inc.

Participants in Deloitte's 2013 holiday shopping survey for the first time named the Internet as their number one shopping venue, with 68% of smartphone users and 63% of tablet users planning to use their devices to help them.

As people check out goods online before heading to the store impulse buying can take a hit, said Martin. ShopperTrak data shows mall shoppers visited an average of 3 to 3½ stores this year, down from 4½ to 5 in 2007.

The improvement in the economy and gains in asset prices have also clearly not trickled down to large segments of the broader population.

Hiring has picked up, helping to push the jobless rate to a five-year low of 7% in November, but some 11 million Americans are still unemployed, and many are earning less than before the recession. When adjusted for inflation, average weekly wages have barely budged since late 2008.

That has made Americans, particularly those in middle- and lower-income brackets, far more discerning when it comes to their spending.

"There's been psychological scarring for people from this recession, much like how some people who lived through the Depression said they were scarred," said Hoffman.

"There are still a lot of people who can't afford to do much, and those who can are holding back" – Reuters.

Cypark slips on weaker earnings

Posted: 01 Jan 2014 06:19 PM PST

KUALA LUMPUR: Shares of Cypark Resources fell to a low of RM2.46 on Thursday after it reported lower-than-expected earnings.

At 10.04am, it was down seven sen to RM2.48. There were 131,300 shares done.

The FBM KLCI slipped 0.64 point to 1,866.32. Turnover was 272.71 million shares valued at RM212.92mil. There were 233 gainers, 177 losers and 220 counters unchanged.

CIMB Equities Research is maintaining its target price of RM2.78 for Cypark after its earnings fell due to start-up costs for its new renewable energy (RE) capacity.

The research house said on Thursday Cypark's FY10/13 net profit was below its and consensus expectations, accounting for only 81% and 85% of full-year estimates, respectively.

"Despite the disappointing results, Cypark remains an Add as we remain positive on its longer term outlook, underpinned by more RE capacity coming up," said CIMB Research.

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The Star Online: Entertainment: Movies

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Denzel Washington courted to play Green Lantern

Posted: 31 Dec 2013 05:55 PM PST

The actor is reportedly being courted to play the superhero in 'Batman vs. Superman.

ACCORDING to Nukethefridge.com, Warner Bros has its sights on Denzel Washington for the role of John Stewart, an ordinary man who becomes a member of the intergalactic police known as the Green Lanterns.

If he accepts the role, Washington will follow in the footsteps of Ryan Reynolds, the Canadian actor who played Hal Jordan, another Green Lantern, in the 2011 film on the superhero.

Wonder Woman, to be played by Gal Gadot, is the only other superhero whose appearance alongside the titular characters of Batman vs. Superman has been officially confirmed. Ben Affleck and Henry Cavill will portray the superheroes of Gotham City and Metropolis, facing off against one another for the first time. Zack Snyder will direct the blockbuster, which is slated to arrive in theatres in mid-July 2015. – AFP Relaxnews

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The Star Online: Nation

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Malacca CM steps in to solve Chitty village row
JB Sentral: Our emergency team helped escalator victim
Man jailed for raping 7-year-old girl

Malacca CM steps in to solve Chitty village row

Posted: 31 Dec 2013 08:00 AM PST

MALACCA: Chief Minister Datuk Seri Idris Haron has stepped into the controversy at Kampung Chitty in Gajah Berang here, ordering a probe into the approval of a high-rise condominium project at what is arguably the oldest settlement in the historical city.

According to a state government source, Idris wanted a thorough investigation to identify those responsible for the approval of the project in 2009.

The project is within the buffer zone of an area recognised by Unesco as a heritage site.

The village was gazetted as a heritage village in July 2002.

The project, involving two 22-storey condominium blocks, a 12-storey hotel annex and a six-storey car park, was believed to have been shelved but was later found to have been approved.

The developer is said to have resumed work six months ago.

The source said Idris was upset as the settlement of "Indian Peranakans" was part of the city's heritage.

It was learnt that the state government might have to fork out about RM30mil in compensation if it re-acquires the land.

The source revealed that Idris had told his officers to look into solving the issue immediately as it was causing a major "headache" to the administration.

"My boss wants to re-examine the documents pertaining to the project and see how it can be resolved without affecting the heritage site.

"He is serious about resolving the matter but he has to manage it carefully as the approval was granted before he was appointed as Chief Minister," the source said.

Kampung Chitty's Welfare and Cultural Association' president K. Supramania slammed the state government for reneging on its promise made during a Deepavali open house in 2012.

He said former Chief Minister Datuk Seri Mohd Ali Rustam had told the community the project would not go on.

"Despite feeling disappointed, we still have trust in the state government to resolve the issue," he said.

Supramania said the settlement preceded other ethnic enclaves in the city, adding that the state government should not neglect the welfare of one of the earliest communities in Malacca.

"There are many ways for the state government to acquire the land, including getting funds allocated under the National Heritage Act 2005, if it really wants to save the village from development.

He said the approval of the project should be re-evaluated based on the principles of Operational Guidelines for World Heritage by Unesco, ICCROM (International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property) and Icomos (International Council on Monuments and Sites).

He said three Hindu temples, dating back to more than 300 years, were at risk if piling work begins.

"Our only hope now is that the Chief Minister will intervene and stop the project," he added.

JB Sentral: Our emergency team helped escalator victim

Posted: 31 Dec 2013 08:00 AM PST

JOHOR BARU: Contrary to some claims, an emergency response team was promptly dispatched to the scene of an escalator accident involving a four-year-old boy last week, said the management of the JB Sentral complex.

Last Saturday, Hudhayfah Ismath's left foot got stuck in the side of an escalator at JB Sentral, which is next to the Johor Customs, Immigration and Quarantine (CIQ) Complex.

The boy's parents had claimed that several Immigration Department officers who were nearby did not come to their rescue, and they had to rely on members of the public for help instead.

Hudhayfah at the paediatric ward in Johor Specialist Hospital.

However, the spokesman of the building management declined to elaborate further on the incident.

In relation to this matter, Johor state Public Works executive councillor Datuk Hasni Mohammad has urged the management of public buildings to be more proactive towards safety and security issues.

Hasni also advised the building's management to improve the delivery of services for the hundreds of thousands of people who pass through the facility on a daily basis.

"Proper warning signage should be put up to remind the people of the hazards, as well as to ask them to be be more careful.

"Besides that, an emergency response team should be on standby in the event of such unfortunate situations," he said.

In reply to the parents' outrage, Hasni said that Immigration officers were not obliged to provide aid as they were not trained to respond to such emergencies.

"Even if the officers did come to their aid, they would be doing it on their own," he added when contacted here yesterday.

Hasni explained that the maintenance of the facility was under the state's Public Works Department, but added that the complex's security officers played a bigger role in ensuring the public's safety.

Man jailed for raping 7-year-old girl

Posted: 31 Dec 2013 08:00 AM PST

KUALA LUMPUR: A sub-contractor was sentenced to 18 years' jail and ordered to be whipped eight times by the Ampang Sessions Court for raping and sodomising his former girlfriend's underage daughter, who called him Papa.

Upon hearing the verdict, Nazarul Rizman Mohd Tartip, 31, sighed and covered his face with his handkerchief.

After court adjourned, Nazarul cried in the dock when approached by his mother.

"Why has this happened to me, mother? I did not do it. What is this test from God? Forgive me, mother," he shouted.

Nazarul was found guilty of raping and sodomising the girl, who was then seven years old, at his ex-girlfriend's apartment unit in Taman Bukit Indah between Sept 3 and Sept 16 last year.

The accused, who had stayed with the girl's mother from June 2011 to Sept 16 last year, was convicted after the court heard evidence from 11 prosecution witnesses and three defence witnesses in April this year.

In her judgment yesterday, Sessions Court judge Manira Mohd Nor held that the defence had failed to raise a reasonable doubt in the prosecution's case.

Manira said Nazarul had merely denied the charges and testified that the girl's mother was vengeful and had threatened him.

"His evidence was bare denial," she said.

Pleading for leniency, Nazarul's lawyer Muhammad Zaim Azfar Jalaludin said his client was a first offender who had to support his child and elderly parents.

Manira sentenced him to 10 years' jail and five lashes for rape, and another eight years' jail and three lashes for sodomy. She ordered the jail terms to run consecutively from the date of sentencing.

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Indonesian police kill six suspected militants in shootout

Posted: 31 Dec 2013 07:57 PM PST

SOUTH TANGERANG, Indonesia: Indonesian police shot dead six suspected terrorists and arrested another in a New Year's Eve raid near the capital that broke out into an hours-long gun battle, police said Wednesday.

A police squad led by the counter-terrorism unit Detachment 88 Tuesday evening surrounded a house in South Tangerang city, on the outskirts of the capital Jakarta, where there was a gathering of suspected militants, National Police spokesman Ronny Sompie said.

"We told them to surrender but they resisted. They shot at police and we had to open fire. The operation ended only early this morning," Sompie told AFP, saying the shootout lasted hours.

"They are suspected of being involved in several terror activities in 2013, including the shooting of police officers," he said.

Police seized explosive materials and firearms from the house, Sompie said, confirming that six men had been killed and one was arrested.

Police said the men were connected to Abu Roban, a suspected militant who was killed in an anti-terror raid in May 2013 and previously led a religious-study group in Tangerang.

The men targeted in the raid are suspected of orchestrating an attack on a Buddhist temple last August, where a low-intensity bomb went off and lightly injured one person, Sompie said.

About 6,500 police have been deployed for security on New Year's Eve and New Year's Day in Jakarta and surrounding areas.

Indonesia has been rocked by several deadly terror attacks over the past decade, including the 2002 bombings on the resort island of Bali that killed 202 people, mostly foreigners.

Since then the country has waged a long crackdown on terrorism, dismantling some of the deadliest networks, and only low-impact attacks have been executed.

Police officers have become the main target for some active terror groups. -AFP

N. Korea warns of nuclear disaster, threatens US

Posted: 31 Dec 2013 06:03 PM PST

SEOUL: North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un said Wednesday the Korean peninsula would be engulfed by "massive nuclear disaster" if war breaks out there again, warning the US it will not be safe in the event of a conflict.

"If the war breaks out again in this land, it will bring about a massive nuclear disaster and the US will never be safe," Kim said in his New Year message, broadcast on state TV.

"We are faced with a dangerous situation in which a small, accidental military clash can lead to an all-out war," he said.

Kim added he would not beg for peace and vowed to protect the impoverished but nuclear-armed North with strong self-defence measures against enemies.

The young leader also hailed the recent execution of his powerful uncle as a "resolute action," labelling Jang Song-Thaek "scum".

"Our party took resolute action to remove... scum elements within the party last year," Kim said, accusing Jang of trying to build his own powerbase within the ruling party.

"Our party's timely, accurate decision to purge the anti-party, anti-revolutionary elements helped greatly cement solidarity within our party," he said.

It was the first time Kim has publicly criticised his disgraced uncle, who was executed on December 12 on charges including treason and corruption.

Jang, 67, played a key role in cementing the leadership of the inexperienced Kim Jong-Un, who took power after the death of his father and longtime ruler, Kim Jong-Il, in December 2011.

But Jang's growing political power and influence drew resentment from his nephew barely half of his age, analysts said. -AFP

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New Museum invites public to paint gallery space

Posted: 26 Dec 2013 10:20 PM PST

Visitors can paint or draw all over the gallery to their hearts' content.

Wannabe artists will get the chance to leave their mark on New York's contemporary art venue the New Museum in 2014, with the opening of an interactive exhibition.

The Manhattan art space will present the first ever US exhibition dedicated to Polish sculptor Pawel Althamer, and the show will include a blank gallery space which visitors can paint or draw all over to their hearts' content.

Pawel Althamer: The Neighbors will also feature a series of live sculptural workshops in which the artist and his collaborators will create new pieces, in order to further blur the boundaries between public and official space.

Althamer plans to interact even further with visitors and his surrounding environment by arranging for street musicians to play outside the museum throughout the exhibition and broadcasting their music throughout the third-floor gallery.

The Polish artist's most recent body of work, the Venetians, a sculpture series created for the 55th Venice Biennale, will make its US debut.

The work saw Althamer cast the faces of various individuals he encountered on the streets of the Italian city.

His videos, So-Called Waves And Other Phenomena Of The Mind, in which he explores the depths of his mind through drug use, and his work Draftsmen's Congress, originally presented at the 7th Berlin Biennale in 2012, will also be on show.

The exhibition is being held in partnership with the Polish Cultural Institute New York.

Pawel Althamer: The Neighbors will run from Feb 12 to April 13, 2014. For more information head to www.newmuseum.org. — AFP Relaxnews

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Rabu, 1 Januari 2014