A giant leap for angel investing in Malaysia |
- A giant leap for angel investing in Malaysia
- US regulators failed to spot deadly GM defects that others saw
- Australia-led jet search aided by China as weather worsens (VIDEO)
- Up to 18 unaccounted for in deadly US landslide (Video)
- Venezuela police facing murder probe, says attorney general
| A giant leap for angel investing in Malaysia Posted: 23 Mar 2014 05:45 PM PDT
After nursing the fledging Malaysian Business Angels Network (MBAN) since it was announced in May 2012 and then officially launched in December that year, Cradle Fund Sdn Bhd chief executive officer Nazrin Hassan (pic below) posted on Facebook in late February that Cradle had officially handed over the running of MBAN to the private sector. The inaugural MBAN committee will be under the leadership of Richard Wong, founder and 'chief listener' of Vistage Malaysia. Vistage is a US-based organisation that helps CEOs and entrepreneurs develop themselves. Under Wong's leadership since 1994, Vistage Malaysia has grown to be the most active Vistage chapter in Asia. It has 430 members with combined annual sales of US$9.1 billion (RM30 billion) and employing over 60,000 people. Wong's track record and Vistage's strong membership of high net worth individuals leads Nazrin to say, "I believe that the inaugural MBAN committee under Wong's leadership and the Vistage Angels Club will do well and provide a firm foundation for angel investment to grow in Malaysia." "We hope to have 200 angels by the end of the year, between 50 to 100 of them have registered with MBAN. Cradle will assist on matching the deals with angels, other than being the permanent secretariat," Nazrin says. When MBAN was first launched, its target was to get 50 angel investors registered by the end of 2013. Registering with MBAN is a prerequisite for any angel investor to qualify for the angel tax incentive. "From all our events in Cradle and MBAN, we have identified more than 60 angels who have participated in our activities, but we have only about 20 who have registered under MBAN to qualify for the angel tax incentive so far. "I think the rest will register … to participate in our angel education roadshows, or when they are about to make an investment and would like to qualify for the incentive," he adds. Cradle is also giving MBAN "a small amount" to kick-start its operations for the first year, after which the organisation is expected to be self-sustaining. MBAN is expected to generate its own revenue via membership and programme fees, external sponsorship, and so on. The amount Cradle will be providing MBAN includes RM15, 000 for its council to operate its core activities, but does not include some of the allocation Cradle has put aside for the angel education roadshow and various marketing efforts, according to Nazrin. "Cradle is also providing the MBAN Secretariat support, which also doubles up as the Angel Tax Incentive Office (ATIO) at Cradle, and is in charge of administering the angel tax incentive," he adds. Wong himself tells Digital News Asia (DNA) that he sees synergy in Vistage's own role as an organisation helping CEOs and entrepreneurs in transforming their businesses, with MBAN's. "I feel that we can play a role in promoting and encouraging angel investing among our member's, especially in early start-ups. Beyond that, we can also mentor and develop the start-ups to grow personally and professionally into successful businesses," he says. Cradle's Nazrin has always recognised that for MBAN to be successful as an umbrella organisation for angel investors, it has to be led by groups and networks of angels, to be able to attract more private investments. Incidentally, the Vistage Angels Club was formed after Nazrin approached Wong to assist in promoting the Angel Tax Incentive among Vistage members. The response was overwhelming with 180 members responding positively. Another factor that encouraged Wong to play a more meaningful role was Cradle's willingness to listen to Vistage members' feedback that the MBAN application was too cumbersome. "They responded promptly to simplify the application and process to encourage applicants. I then decided to play a more active role," says Wong. It also helps that Wong himself has long been involved in helping entrepreneurs, and not just in the brick and mortar space. "I was impressed by a group of young men who initiated Startup Street whilst still studying and working, and I have been advising them since 2013," he says. Startup Street was born out of the idea of creating an avenue for students to gain some insight into entrepreneurship via internship with start-ups. Aside from the Vistage Angels Club, MBAN already has representatives of various angel clubs like, Pikom Angels, Angels Den, TPM Angels and others. [Pikom is the National ICT Association of Malaysia.] With the wide representation, MBAN will also be the voice representing the interests of angel investors and act as the policy spokesperson for the industry in engaging with the Malaysian Government. MBAN will set out to create greater public awareness on angel investing and the angel tax incentive, educating angels and guiding them to set up their own angel clubs or networks, or to join existing ones. These building blocks would be crucial to tackle what Wong sees as the biggest hurdle: "Educating and inculcating the mind-set of angel investment in those high-income earners and/ or high net-worth individuals who are new and/ or more risk-averse to investing in start-ups, particularly in technology-related or high-tech businesses." He says that the immediate nine months will see the following types of training: · Why and how to become an angel with the Angel Tax Incentive Scheme? · How do you become better angel investors? · Pitching events – where are the good deals? · Angel's Day – inviting local and overseas experienced angel investors to share their experiences. · Networking events among MBAN members and/ or approved investee companies. · Promoting the formation of angel clubs among associations like SME organisations, the Federation of Malaysian Manufacturers, the Malaysian Biomass Industries Confederation, the various Chambers of Commerce, etc. MBAN will focus on the qualifying activities approved by the Ministry of Finance: · Advanced electronics and information technology · Telecommunications · Equipment/instrumentation, automation & flexible manufacturing systems · Healthcare · Electro-optics, non-linear optics and optoelectronics · Advanced materials · Transportation · Value-add services · Emerging technologies If MBAN, under Wong's leadership, is successful, Nazrin's quip at the time of its official launch – "With MBAN, figuratively, angels will finally have wings to fly" – will probably come true. ― Digital News Asia  |
| US regulators failed to spot deadly GM defects that others saw Posted: 23 Mar 2014 05:33 PM PDT
Young said the couple turned to each other immediately. That's just like that crash over in St. Croix County in 2006, they thought. The October 2006 crash of a Chevy Cobalt stayed with Young, who spent 20 years as a specialist in accident reconstruction. The car, driven by 17-year-old Megan Ungar-Kerns, lurched and hit a telephone box and two trees. No airbags deployed, and her two passengers were killed. None was wearing a seatbelt. Young sent a report to the US vehicle safety agency, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, with his finding that the ignition had been turned from "run" to the "accessory" position prior to the crash, shutting off the car's engine and disabling the airbags.
The agency now finds itself under intense scrutiny for failing to spot a defect blamed for at least 12 deaths since 2005. Consumer safety groups say NHTSA should have pressured GM to order a recall as early as 2007. The agency's acting chief, David Friedman, has been called to testify before a House of Representatives panel in April looking into whether NHTSA failed to heed warning signs. A Senate panel is also planning hearings. Feds say reports 'inconclusive' Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx, whose sprawling department oversees NHTSA, has defended the agency, saying data about the ignition switch were "inconclusive". "It just didn't point to an investigation" by NHTSA, he said, describing the broad probe that companies fear. That evidence included two reports completed in 2006 and 2007 by outside investigators hired by NHTSA. The reports zeroed in, as Young had, on the ignition problem. Both were the results of so-called Special Crash Investigations, which the agency initiates when it wants to take a deeper dive into accidents and their underlying causes, to help see if a wider NHTSA investigation is warranted. After the 2006 Wisconsin crash, the Chevy Cobalt driven by Megan Ungar-Kerns, now Megan Phillips, was taken to an impound lot. Former state trooper Young met a NHTSA contractor from Indiana University and shared his findings. "I made them aware," he said. The team from Indiana University searched NHTSA's own database in 2006 and found at least six consumer complaints of the ignition switch cutting off the engine. Their report included a service bulletin GM had sent to its dealers in October 2006 alerting them to the defective part. "This investigation revealed that inadvertent contact with the ignition switch or a key chain in the 2005 Chevrolet Cobalt can in fact result in engine shut-down and loss of power," the report said. An earlier Special Crash Investigation report, begun in 2005 and completed in 2006 by Calspan Corp, focused on a July 2005 accident in Maryland that killed 16-year-old Amber Marie Rose, whose airbag failed to deploy after her Chevrolet Cobalt hit a tree at 69 mph (111 km/h). Investigators said the ignition key was in the "accessory" position. Rose was not wearing a seat belt and was legally drunk at the time of the accident, according to the report. Despite the two reports by outside investigators that drew similar conclusions, NHTSA did not move to open a formal investigation. If NHTSA had taken that step, it might have put pressure on GM to consider a recall, said retired NHTSA lawyer Allan Kam, who has been hired as an expert by a plaintiff's lawyer in a lawsuit against GM. Kam said it would be "a fair criticism" to say the agency needed better internal coordination. General Motors says it first learned about the ignition defect in 2001. The automaker says the weight of the key ring or jostling of the key can cause the ignition to shut off suddenly, and the company has apologised repeatedly for its slow response. It has launched an internal probe. NHTSA said in a statement that in both Special Crash Investigations the results were inconclusive. "In this case, the data available to NHTSA at the time did not contain sufficient evidence of a possible safety defect trend that would warrant the agency opening a formal investigation," the agency said. 'More than enough information' Transportation Secretary Foxx on Friday said "out of an abundance of caution" he had asked the department's inspector general to review whether NHTSA had properly investigated reports of ignition problems. Some consumer groups say the conclusion is clear. "They had more than enough information," said Clarence Ditlow, executive director of the independent Centre for Auto Safety. "They could have issued a recall as early as 2007." The centre conducted a study analysing all fatal accidents in 2003-07 Saturn Ions and 2005-07 Chevy Cobalts and found that in 303 front-end collisions, the airbag did not deploy. GM called the report "pure speculation". With a staff of 600, NHTSA has struggled to uphold its mandate of policing auto manufacturers over dangerous defects at a time when advanced electronics make today's cars more complex, safety advocates say. "The agency is certainly understaffed and outgunned," said Sean Kane, founder of Safety Research & Strategies Inc and a regular expert witness for plaintiffs lawyers. Still, Kane said he found the agency's actions in the GM case "hard to fathom" given the amount of information available to it. NHTSA has faced criticism before for its oversight. It came under fire for waiting to open an investigation into blowouts of Firestone tyres in Ford Explorers until 2000, about 10 years after initial reports of accidents. That controversy prompted Congress to pass the TREAD Act, which ordered manufacturers to report additional information on defects to NHTSA, much of which is not made public. NHTSA has several databases it uses to find patterns in reports of defects. The Early Warning Reporting system draws from information supplied by manufacturers on deaths and injuries. The Fatal Accident Reporting System is based on police reports. Those tools, and the 40,000 complaints NHTSA receives each year, are used by the agency to spot a defect or enough of a pattern to warrant further investigation. The tools also provided the data that the Centre for Auto Safety used for some of its reports. Flat airbags Even if NHTSA found the data inconclusive, others investigating crashes were suspicious. Tennessee state trooper Michael Marvin immediately noticed something unusual when he was called to the scene of an accident on New Year's Eve 2009, and he looked inside a 2006 Chevy Cobalt that had hit a tree. Inside, he found the body of Hasaya Chansuthus, a 25-year-old woman who was killed upon impact with no airbags to cushion the blow. "If you hit something head on like that — and it wasn't a really old car — the airbags should have deployed," Marvin said. And a mechanic who earlier this year looked at a 2006 Chevy Cobalt owned by Walter Luba also noticed a problem. Luba, of Mount Morris, Illinois, had the car looked at after an incident in which it suddenly locked up, hitting a snow bank and flipping into oncoming traffic. He escaped and survived. His neighbourhood mechanic later told him it was a power loss to the engine that caused his wheels to lock, and Luba has since confirmed his car was included in the recall. For former state trooper Young, the evidence was there all along. "I'm not here to critique their work. I'm here to do my job," Young said of federal regulators. "When I detected something that was a little unusual, I passed that information on, and it apparently took them eight or 10 years." — Reuters |
| Australia-led jet search aided by China as weather worsens (VIDEO) Posted: 23 Mar 2014 05:29 PM PDT SYDNEY, March 24 — Air patrols led by Australia to find the missing Malaysian jetliner are being bolstered by a pair of Chinese planes as a forecast for worsening weather conditions threatened to hamper search efforts. China's aircraft will be among 10 flying off Australia's west coast today in a zone covering 68,000 square kilometres (26,250 square miles), Australian Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss said. Eight planes came up empty yesterday trying to locate a floating object spotted by a Chinese satellite. Those images rekindled prospects for a breakthrough in the Malaysian Air Flight 370 mystery, only to be tempered today when Truss said French radar scans suggesting possible drifting objects were in a "completely different location." He also warned of the advance of an Indian Ocean storm toward seas in the search zone already known for high swells. "Today we expect the weather to deteriorate and of course the forecasts ahead are not all that good," Truss said in an Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio interview. The French sighting is about 850 kilometres (528 miles) north of investigators' current focus "and is not in the area that's been identified as the most likely place where the aircraft may have entered the sea." Severe Tropical Cyclone Gillian is tracking slowly south from a location about 2,500 kilometres northwest of Perth, Malaysian authorities said yesterday. The Australian Maritime Safety Authority said rain is likely in the search area today. Remote waters Searchers are focused about 2,500 kilometres southwest of the western Australia city in remote ocean waters in pursuit of the Boeing Co. 777-200ER flown by Malaysian Airline System Bhd. that vanished March 8 with 239 people aboard on a flight to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur. Its intended path shouldn't have gone anywhere near the southern Indian Ocean. About two-thirds of the passengers were Chinese, spurring the government in Beijing to rush assets to help solve what has become the longest-running disappearance of an airliner in the modern era. The Chinese aircraft are Ilyushin Il-76 jets, a four-engine model that has seen service as a transport and military airborne command centre.
Three civilian planes — two Bombardier Inc. Global business jets and an unspecified Airbus Group NV aircraft — are part of the task force today as well, with 20 volunteer civilian observers on board. Australia, New Zealand, the US, China and Japan are operating military aircraft in the search.
China satellite China's satellite imagery depicted a floating object 22.5 metres (74 feet) long. Malaysia's transport ministry disclosed the existence of French data yesterday showing "potential objects in the vicinity" of the surveillance zone, without giving any coordinates. The Chinese picture, taken March 18, is focused 90 degrees east and almost 45 degrees south, versus almost 91 degrees east and 44 degrees south for similar items on a March 16 satellite image, according to China's State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defence. That put the object 120 kilometres southwest of the earlier sighting, the administration said. The dimensions appear similar to those of the larger of two objects seen previously, said to be 24 meters long. A Boeing 777-200 is 63 metres long, with a wingspan of 61 meters and a diameter of 6.2 metres. Separately, the wooden pallet spotted from a civil search aircraft was among a number of small objects spread over 5 kilometres and could be of the kind used in planes, Mike Barton, an official with the Australian Maritime Safety Authority, Barton told reporters yesterday. The pallet appeared to show evidence of multicoloured strapping belts, he said. Cargo pallets "The use of wooden pallets is quite common in the industry," Barton said. "They're usually packed into another container which is loaded in the belly of the aircraft." A New Zealand P3 Orion surveillance plane dispatched to the scene found only clumps of seaweed. Yesterday's use of eight planes marked an increase from six previously, and included four long-range civil aircraft and a US Navy P-8 Poseidon. There were "no sightings of significance" before nightfall, AMSA said. Sea fog impaired the air search for part of the day as a growing fleet of surface vessels converged on the area. HMAS Success from the Royal Australian Navy has joined the hunt, while the Ocean Shield, equipped with a subsea remotely operated vehicle, is on its way to the zone, as is HMS Echo, a specialist ship from Britain's Royal Navy that's fitted with underwater listening gear and devices to survey the seabed. Ping analysis The US was asked by Malaysia to provide similar search technology, the Defence Department said in a statement. An analysis of satellite pings shows that the Malaysian Airline System Bhd. 777 may have flown steadily across the ocean after diverting from its scheduled route to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur. That assessment gave the clearest idea yet on how investigators pinpointed a search zone. Malaysian Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak has said that the jet emitted pulse-like signals to a satellite about seven hours after last making voice contact, shifting the focus of the search to two arcs, one extending north to Kazakhstan and the other into the southern Indian Ocean. The bulk of search efforts are focused on the south. In the northern zone, there have been no indications of the missing airplane on radar in China, India, Pakistan, Myanmar, Laos, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan, Malaysia's Acting Transport Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein said. FBI involvement Hishammuddin said a home-computer flight simulator belonging to the jet's captain, Zaharie Ahmad Shah, has produced no clear leads for investigators. The US Federal Bureau of Investigation has received "digital media" from Malaysian authorities, including information from the simulator's hard drive, and technicians are examining the data, according to a law enforcement official who asked not to be named because the probe is active. Michael Kortan, an FBI spokesman, declined to comment. Some US lawmakers renewed criticism of Malaysia's government yesterday, saying they saw too little evidence of cooperation and too much emphasis on searching along a putative northern route taken by Flight 370. "Across the board people are looking for more in the way of openness from the Malaysian government in terms of sharing the information they have in a timely manner," Representative Patrick Meehan, a Pennsylvania Republican and a former federal prosecutor, said on CNN's "State of the Union" programme. Through March 21, the US spent US$2.5 million (RM8.27 million) on the hunt, according to a Defence Department spokesman, Army Colonel Steve Warren. The Pentagon has set aside US$4 million, a sum that includes the expense for sending two destroyers, helicopters and patrol aircraft, Warren told reporters in Washington. — Bloomberg |
| Up to 18 unaccounted for in deadly US landslide (Video) Posted: 23 Mar 2014 05:25 PM PDT LOS ANGELES, March 24 ― Up to 18 people were unaccounted for more than 24 hours after a massive landslide slammed into a mountainside community killing four in the northwestern United States, officials said yesterday. Eight people were injured, including a six-month-old infant, when mud, water and rock smashed into the rural town of Oso, northeast of Seattle, on Saturday, police and firefighters said. Six homes and much of a highway were destroyed. "There is a full-scale, 100-per cent, aggressive rescue effort," Washington state Governor Jay Inslee told reporters, adding that helicopters, hovercrafts and rescue personnel had rushed to the scene. "There's no missing piece in this rescue effort," he added, saying he had declared a state of emergency. Snohomish County spokeswoman Shari Ireton told AFP: "We are able to confirm we know that 18 people who may have been in the area are unaccounted for. We do not have identification for those people that we are releasing at this time." The search and salvage operation in the mud-covered terrain was extremely dangerous, the unstable, rain-saturated surface putting emergency personnel at risk of further mudslides. "Some (rescue workers) went in and got caught literally up to their armpits" in mud and had to be pulled out themselves, Inslee said.
Some survivors had been hoisted to safety in the air, as others described the landslide as huge. "All of a sudden there was a wall of mud" about 25 feet (almost eight metres) high, Robin Youngblood told The Seattle Times newspaper. "Then it hit and we were rolling. The house was in sticks. We were buried under things, and we dug ourselves out." The landslide destroyed her home, she said. Three people were confirmed dead in the hours after the landslide hit, and yesterday the Snohomish Sheriff said on Twitter that the death toll had risen to four. One survivor was driving on the highway just as the mudslide hit. "I was coming down the hill and I just saw the darkness," Paulo Falco said on a local news report. "And everything was gone." Rain has been especially heavy in the Cascade Mountains region in the past weeks, officials said. The forecast is for a break in the rain yesterday, but more heavy downpours throughout the week. Authorities were keeping careful watch on a nearby dam, over fears pressure from the flooded river behind it could wash it away, inundating downriver communities. However, Inslee said geological surveys of the site suggested the water would be safely diverted over the coming days and evacuated residents were being allowed back home. Senator Patty Murray gave assurances that federal resources would be made available, as she offered thanks to rescue workers and her prayers to the families of the ravaged community. ― AFP |
| Venezuela police facing murder probe, says attorney general Posted: 23 Mar 2014 05:14 PM PDT
"Yes, there has been police excess, we are not going to deny that... we are investigating," Luisa Ortega Diaz told local television station Televen. Among the 60 possible cases, "there are three police officers from Chacao who are accused of having allegedly committed murder," she said. Ortega added that authorities have detained 15 officials, but stressed that instances of abuse were isolated and not a result of orders from above. Venezuela has been shaken by near daily protests that began on February 4, fuelled by public anger over violent crime, inflation, shortages of such basic goods as toilet paper and further stoked by often heavy-handed police tactics. At least 31 people have been killed and hundreds wounded in the student-led protests that represent the biggest challenge yet to President Nicolas Maduro, the elected socialist heir to late president Hugo Chavez. The top prosecutor added that, of those killed in the violence, "six were public officials, one of whom one was a public prosecutor." Several weeks ago, the government reported that five intelligence agents had been detained for their alleged involvement in the deaths of two protesters after Caracas's first massive demonstration on February 12. The Foro Penal rights group, meanwhile, has said it has found 59 cases of possible torture by security agents against protesters. Meanwhile, the National Union of Press Workers yesterday said a total of 74 media members were abused by police during the more than six weeks of anti-government protests. The union voiced "concern at repeated human rights abuses in recent weeks in Venezuela especially attacks and other violence against journalists, cameramen, photographers and other media." It also denounced police aggression at protests during which journalists were detained and equipment was destroyed. The organisation said two journalists were detained on Saturday in the Altamira region of Chacao during a police and national guard operation against protesters who attempted to block roads. Only one of the journalists was later released. Police fired tear gas and made several arrests as 20,000 people marched in Caracas on Saturday. ― AFP |
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