Misteri tandas berkunci

Mangsa ditemui mati terlentang dalam salah sebuah tandas di stesen minyak Batu Ferringhi.

Penemuan mayat seorang lelaki mengungkai misteri sebuah tandas berkunci selama tiga hari di sebuah stesen minyak di Batu Ferringhi, semalam.

Salah seorang kakitangan berkata, ia adalah kejadian pertama kali yang berlaku di situ sejak stesen berkenaan dibuka dua tahun lalu. Menurutnya, salah seorang rakannya terhidu bau busuk dari dalam tandas berkenaan dan berasa tidak sedap hati.

“Lalu kami mengambil langkah memecahkan pintu tandas kerana ia terkunci dari dalam tandas.

“Rupa-rupanya ada mayat dalam tandas tersebut dan kelihatan sudah lama kerana mukanya seperti kebiru-biruan, kemudiannya kami menghubungi anggota polis,” katanya kepada Sinar Harian.

Kakitangan tersebut turut memaklumkan kerja pembersihan tandas dilakukan setiap hari tanpa gagal.

Namun ketika kerja pencucian hendak dilakukan, pekerja pembersihan mendapati salah satu tandas berkenaan dikunci dari dalam dan menyangka ada orang yang sedang menggunakannya.

Tambahan pula, stesen berkenaan sememangnya menjadi tumpuan berikutan terletak berhampiran restoran makanan segera 24 jam.

Sementara itu, Ketua Polis Daerah Timur Laut, Asisten Komisioner Gan Kong Meng berkata, mangsa, Wong Nun Hwa, 42, dari Mount Erskine itu didapati mati akibat penyakit sawan.

Menurutnya, tiada unsur jenayah direkodkan dan mangsa hanya mati disebabkan serangan sawan berkenaan.


Sumber

BR1M tak perlu diteruskan, kata Dr Mahathir

Bekas Perdana Menteri Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad hari ini berkata Bantuan Rakyat 1Malaysia (BR1M) tidak perlu diteruskan dalam Belanjawan 2014, dan ini sekali gus mengurangkan kebergantungan rakyat kepada kerajaan.

Kerajaan sebaliknya perlu mencari jalan untuk melatih golongan kurang berkemampuan itu dengan sesuatu kebolehan supaya dapat menjadi sumber pendapatan mereka, katanya kepada pemberita selepas berucap di majlis Program Bicara Petang Bersama Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad di sini hari ini.

"Sepatutnya dalam masyarakat kita, kita tak suka jadikan orang kita ini, orang yang selalu bergantung kepada kerajaan dan tak mahu membuat kerja.

"Apa yang kita dapat secara percuma tidak akan dihargai sebab itu walaupun banyak BR1M diberi," katanya sambil menambah: "Kalau betul-betul daif, miskin dan tak berupaya barulah boleh diberi bantuan."

Beliau berkata demikian apabila ditanya mengenai cadangannya untuk Belanjawan 2014 yang akan dibentangkan Perdana Menteri Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak di Parlimen pada 25 Oktober ini.


- BERNAMA

Kenduri racun libat tetamu petang

Zulkifli (kanan) menceritakan keadaan bapanya selepas mengalami muntah-muntah.

SUNGAI PETANI – Mangsa terbaru keracunan makanan, Ibrahim Mohamad, 62, disahkan meninggal dunia lebih kurang jam 6.30 petang tadi di Hospital Sultan Abdul Halim (HSAH) Sungai Petani.

Jenazah yang dituntut keluarga akan dibawa pulang ke kampung halaman di Kampung Alor Jejawi, Kuala Besut, Terengganu sebaik sahaja selesai bedah siasat di HSAH.

Anak mangsa, Zulkifli, 31, berkata, bapanya dikatakan mengalami cirit-birit sejak pagi Ahad lalu akibat dipercayai keracunan makanan selepas dikatakan menghadiri majlis perkahwinan berdekatan rumahnya di Kampung Huma, Tanjung Dawai, jam 6 petang Sabtu lalu.

“Pagi itu (Ahad), ayah dah mengalami cirit-birit serta beberapa kali masuk ke tandas, bagaimanapun keadaannya masih baik serta boleh bercakap seperti biasa,” katanya ketika ditemui Sinar Harian di HSAH hari ini.

Menurut Zulkifli, keadaan Ibrahim dilihat semakin tidak bermaya beberapa jam selepas itu menyebabkan ahli keluarga membawanya ke Hospital Daerah Yan tengah hari semalam bagi mendapatkan rawatan.

“Walaupun dibenarkan pulang selepas ditambah air dalam badan, keadaan ayah semakin lemah serta tidak mampu berjalan menyebabkan ayah terus ditahan wad.

“Disebabkan makin kritikal, ayah kemudian dirujuk ke HSAH lebih kurang jam 2 petang tadi,” katanya.

Bagaimanapun, mangsa kemudian disahkan meninggal dunia jam 6.30 petang.

Sementara itu, penduduk, Puan Md Noor, 55, berkata, anaknya yang berusia 25 tahun juga menerima rawatan di HSAH akibat keracunan selepas menghadiri kenduri yang sama.

“Anak kelima saya, Mohd Nazri Deraman, turut mengalami loya dan muntah serta cirit-birit dipercayai selepas makan kenduri.

“Nazri terlebih dahulu menerima rawatan di sebuah klinik di Semeling pada jam 9 malam semalam.

“Tetapi, keadaan kesihatan yang tidak mengizinkan menyebabkan keluarga membawanya ke HSAH pada jam 2 petang tadi,” katanya.

Mohd Nazri dikatakan makan kenduri pada jam 3 petang Sabtu lalu dan mula mengadu sakit pada jam 7 pagi keesokan hari.

“Tetapi Alhamdulillah selepas dimasukkan air dalam badan, dia dibenarkan pulang jam 7 malam tadi,” katanya.

Puan berkata, dia juga menghadiri majlis kenduri yang sama tetapi makan masakan yang disediakan lebih awal pada tengah hari.

“Saya juga ada cubit sikit ayam yang dimasak itu tetapi mujur tidak sakit,” katanya.

Difahamkan, majlis kenduri yang diadakan Sabtu lalu disediakan secara bergotong-royong tetapi dikatakan hanya tetamu yang menghadiri jamuan sebelah petang mengalami keracunan.

Sumber mengatakan, lebih ramai mangsa yang telah mendapatkan rawatan di klinik berhampiran serta hospital berdekatan, namun jumlah sebenar masih belum dapat dipastikan berikutan tiada pengesahan dari mana-mana pihak.

Kejadian turut dipercayai meragut dua nyawa lain termasuk Mohd Noor Rahmat, 11, dari Kampung Singkir Laut, Yan dan Nor Syazana Mohd Rashid, 24, dari Kampung Tempoyak, Merbok.

Sumber

Bung Mokhtar: Saya membawa pistol untuk pertahan diri

Ketika Parlimen hangat membahaskan usul pindaan Rang Undang-undang Pencegahan Jenayah (PCA), Ahli Parlimen Kinabatangan, Bung Mokhtar Radin berkongsi bahawa beliau ada membawa pistol.

Beliau berkata pistol tersebut adalah untuk keselamatan diri sendiri.

“Saya tidak suka membawa pistol kerana berat tetapi melihat keadaan sekarang dengan jenayah rompakan dan kes tembak mati yang meningkat.… pendirian saya berubah,” kata Bung di Dewan Rakyat.

"Daripada mati ditembak, saya lebih rela mati bertembak, oleh itu saya membawa pistol untuk mempertahankan diri saya,” kata Bung.

Bung berkata keselamatan orang ramai perlu diberi perhatian walaupun berlainan latarbelakang politik.

Semasa perbahasan pindaan PCA, Bung juga menyoal mengapa Pakatan Rakyat tidak bersetuju dengan undang-undang tersebut.

Beliau juga menambah bahawa pihak pembangkang mungkin mempunyai kaitan dengan geng kongsi gelap.

Sementara itu, Speaker Tan Sri Pandikar Amin Mulia memberi amaran kepada ahli-ahli parlimen yang membawa usul yang boleh menimbulkan kekecohan di dalam Dewan.

Komen Pandikar juga dituju kepada Ahli Parlimen PAS (Sepang) Hanipa Maidin yang menyebut tentang kes Altantuya Shaariibuu

“Jika dalam kes Altantuya, kita boleh adakan perbicaraan bagi yang tertuduh, kenapa tidak bagi kes-kes lain? Kenapa perlu ada perbezaan?” tanya Hanipa,  di mana persoalan tersebut membawa kepada reaksi berlainan daripada ahli-ahli parlimen BN dan Pakatan.

- ASTRO Awani 

Operasi kerajaan Amerika Syarikat ditutup

WASHINGTON DC:  Operasi  kerajaan Amerika Syarikat terpaksa dihentikan secara rasmi selepas Kongres menolak rancangan pelan kesihatan yang dibawa pentadbiran presiden Barack Obama.

Ia pertama kali berlaku dalam tempoh 17 tahun.

Dewan Senat yang diketuai Demokrat enggan menyokong cadangan Dewan Rendah yang diketuai Republikan dengan undian 54 menolak 46 menyokong.

Dewan Rendah pada Jumaat menyertakan pindaan bersama bajet yang diluluskan Senat meminta agar perlaksanaan pelan kesihatan Obama ditunda untuk tempoh setahun.

Perkembangan yang berlaku menyebabkan kakitangan kerajaan persekutuan terpaksa menghentikan kerja mereka kecuali untuk beberapa sektor kritikal.

Perkhidmatan seperti kawalan sempadan, pemeriksaan daging dan trafik udara akan kekal beroperasi namun, pengeluaran pasport akan tergendala.

Dalam meraih sokongan pentadbiran Barack Obama sebelum ini berusaha untuk memujuk rakyat berpendapatan rendah dan sederhana membeli skim insurans kesihatan baru yang disubsidi kerajaan.

- ASTRO Awani 

Windows Phone nears double digit share across Europe

The latest smartphone sales data from Kantar Worldpanel ComTech, for the three months to August 2013, shows Windows Phone has posted its highest ever sales share of 9.2% across the five major European markets* and is now within one percentage point of iOS in Germany. 

Android remains the top operating system across Europe with a 70.1% market share, but its dominant position is increasingly threatened as growth trails behind both Windows and iOS.

Windows Phone has hit double digit sales share figures in France and Great Britain with 10.8% and 12% respectively – the first time it has recorded double digits in two major markets.

Dominic Sunnebo, strategic insight director at Kantar Worldpanel ComTech, comments: "After years of increasing market share, Android has now reached a point where significant growth in developed markets is becoming harder to find. 

Android's growth has been spearheaded by Samsung, but the manufacturer is now seeing its share of sales across the major European economies dip year on year as a sustained comeback from Sony, Nokia and LG begins to broaden the competitive landscape." 

Dominic continues: "Windows Phone's latest wave of growth is being driven by Nokia's expansion into the low and mid range market with the Lumia 520 and 620 handsets. 

These models are hitting the sweet spot with 16 to 24 year-olds and 35 to 49 year-olds, two key groups that look for a balance of price and functionality in their smartphone'.


Across the globe

In the United States, Apple continues to grow strongly year on year and now makes up 39.3% of sales. This is set to spike in the coming months with the release of the iPhone 5S & 5C.
Apple and Android have recorded almost identical shares of sales in Japan – 48.6% and 47.4% respectively. 

However, news that the new iPhone range will be available on Japan's largest carrier, NTT DoCoMo, for the first time, makes it likely that Apple will pull ahead of Android in this key market.

BlackBerry's troubles continue; the operating system now accounts for just 2.4% of sales across the big five European markets* and 1.8% in the United States.

Smartphone % penetration in Great Britain stands at 67% in August, with 85% of devices sold in the past three months being smartphones.

*The big five European markets includes Great Britain, Germany, France, Italy and Spain.

The cost of healthcare in Malaysia

Source: ASTRO Awani

Football: Singapore gang rigged 100-plus games

A notorious Singaporean match-fixing gang rigged more than 100 football games worldwide in a scam worth millions of dollars, before it was busted this month, a source said Monday.

The source, who has direct knowledge of the case, added there were signs that the syndicate, allegedly led by Singaporean businessman Dan Tan, was involved in violent activity.

However, the source played down suggestions that the gang was responsible for a greater share of the 680 suspicious games reported by European investigators earlier this year.

And the source added that there was no evidence that the gang linked to Dan Tan, full name Tan Seet Eng, was involved in a fixing ring uncovered this month in Australia.

The details have emerged two weeks after Singaporean authorities rounded up 14 people in the wealthy Asian city-state's biggest operation yet against international match-fixing.

The five alleged members still in custody include Dan Tan, according to the source.

They are being held under a section of the criminal code usually employed against criminal gangs which allows for up to a year's detention without trial.

Experts say gangs in Singapore have cultivated links with foreign criminals to fix games in different countries, for the purpose of illegal gambling.

Interpol chief Ronald Noble has said the industry has revenues of billions of dollars a year.

After the arrests in Singapore, Noble said the gang was the world's "largest and most aggressive match-fixing syndicate, with tentacles reaching every continent".

Noble, who had previously called for Dan Tan's arrest, added that "the mastermind was someone many believed was untouchable".

European police agency Europol reported in February that hundreds of games worldwide, including World Cup qualifiers and UEFA Champions League ties, had been targeted by fixers.

Tan has been assisting investigators in Singapore since February. He is wanted in Italy and Hungary over match-fixing allegations.

The source said Singaporean investigators had reviewed Europol's evidence and found that much of it was "circumstantial" or included inadmissible items such as wiretaps.

The source could not confirm whether there were other Singapore-based match-fixing rings.

The city-state's links with match-fixing have been in the spotlight since the arrest and jailing of Singapore's Wilson Raj Perumal for match-fixing in Finland.

Perumal, who claims to be a former associate of Tan's, is now reportedly under police protection in Hungary.

However, reports have named him as a suspect in a multi-million-dollar fixing ring revealed this month in Australia's state league.

- AFP

'Women-only' spaces grow in India

In the months since a gruesome gang rape riveted India, a "women-only" culture has been on the rise here, with Indians increasingly seeking out women-only buses, cabs, travel groups and hotel floors.

One city is preparing to open a women-only park. And in November, the government is launching a women-only bank it hopes will empower women financially.

In a country where reported sexual violence is increasing — despite heightened attention to the problem — many say the women-only spaces are a welcome refuge from lewd looks, groping and unwanted male attention. The concept appeals to women across a broad spectrum of Indian society, including a 60-year-old named Sarita, who recently traveled to New Delhi from a village in Maharashtra by train and said she still had to squabble with male passengers who tried to sit next to her in the women's coach.

"It's the ways of men," Sarita said. "They're not good. How can we coexist?"

But critics argue that the trend toward separation threatens the gains that women have made in education and access to new career fields over the past two decades, as the economy has rapidly modernized. It's the men who need to change their behavior, they argue, not women.

"It's appalling," said Jayati Ghosh, an economics professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi. "It's a way for a patriarchal society to announce it's not going to protect women. It's simply going to segregate women and restrict their freedom, instead of securing it."

"Must banks too go pink?" the headline of an editorial in the Hindu, a leading newspaper, asked recently.

Some women-only spaces — in trains, on Delhi's Metro system — already had existed before December, when a 23-year-old physical therapy student was gang-raped and injured so severely she later died. The country's male-dominated culture is rooted in religious customs and societal norms that date back centuries, and the sexes were long kept separate in schools and temples.

But the Dec. 16 rape and subsequent death penalty sentences for the four attackers drew intense attention to the problem of sexual violence against women in India, where reports of rape have increased more than 25 percent in recent years, statistics show.

Some women believe the harsh sentences will have little impact and feel the harassment problem is getting worse, forcing them to retreat.

After the gang rape, state governments across India scrambled to do something — anything — that would calm a public increasingly agitated about sexual violence. They installed help lines for crime victims, more street lighting, better surveillance cameras.

But it was the idea of creating more safe places for women that really caught the attention of bureaucrats. The city of Coimbatore, in the southern part of the country, announced plans to spruce up a decrepit park and limit it to women, who would also have access to a gym with a female fitness trainer. Localities from Assam to Odisha created women-only bus lines. The ministry of tourism began pushing even small hotels to add female-only floors.

And the government announced plans for a $161 million banking system exclusively for women, the Bhartiya Mahila Bank, with a predominantly female staff and 25 branches across the country. It is set to be launched Nov. 19, the birthday of Indira Gandhi, the former prime minister and the country's most revered female icon.

A spokesman for the finance ministry, D.S. Malik, said that the new bank is a "major step" toward correcting the gender inequity in credit and banking in India, where only 26 percent of women have a bank account, compared with 44 percent of men.

- ASTRO Awani 

412,245 peminjam PTPTN tidak buat bayaran balik

Seramai 412,245 peminjam tidak membuat bayaran balik kepada Perbadanan Tabung Pendidikan Tinggi Nasional (PTPTN) sehingga 31 Ogos lepas, kata Menteri Pendidikan Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin.

Beliau berkata daripada jumlah itu, kaum Melayu mencatatkan jumlah tertinggi, iaitu seramai 328,550 diikuti Cina (55,445) dan India (28,250).

Katanya jumlah keseluruhan peminjam PTPTN ialah 1.24 juta orang.

Perkara itu dinyatakan beliau dalam jawapan bertulis kepada soalan Lim Lip Eng (DAP-Segambut) di Dewan Rakyat di sini hari ini.

Lim dalam soalannya meminta Menteri Pendidikan menyatakan statistik peminjam mengikut bangsa, jantina dan negeri yang tidak membayar balik pinjaman PTPTN sehingga 16 September lepas.

Muhyiddin berkata tindakan penguatkuasaan yang dilaksanakan dengan menyenaraihitam peminjam ke luar negara dan tindakan saman adalah antara langkah PTPTN untuk meningkatkan tahap kesedaran, kefahaman dan tanggungjawab peminjam terhadap kewajipan membayar balik pinjaman.

Beliau menjelaskan tindakan sedemikian juga tidak dibuat secara sewenang-wenangnya tanpa memberi ruang kepada peminjam.

Katanya berdasarkan prosedur kerja sedia ada, PTPTN telah melaksanakan pendekatan fleksibel dalam mendapatkan bayaran balik pinjaman sebelum menyenarai hitam peminjam.

Katanya tindakan menyenaraihitam di Jabatan Imigresen adalah sebagai langkah terakhir dalam memberi peringatan kepada peminjam tegar selepas mereka tidak mempedulikan ingatan supaya membayar balik pinjaman.

Katanya PTPTN telah membuka 12 pejabat PTPTN negeri, dua buah one stop centre dan empat pejabat cawangan di lokasi strategik bagi membolehkan peminjam mengadakan rundingan untuk penyelesaian hutang.

Selain itu, katanya PTPTN turut memberi insentif kepada peminjam di bawah insentif mengurangkan kos pembelajaran pelajar yang diperkenalkan Perdana Menteri Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak pada pembentangan Belanjawan 2013 tahun lepas.

Insentif itu meliputi diskaun 20 peraus ke atas baki pinjaman mereka yang menyelesaikan hutang sekaligus dalam temmpoh setahun bermula 1 Okt 2012 hingga hari ini (30 Sept 2013).

PTPTN turut memberi diskaun 10 peratus setahun kepada peminjam yang membayar pinjaman secara konsisten mengikut jadual mulai 1 Okt 2012.

- BERNAMA