Mismanagement and political wrestle ― Sin Chew Daily |
- Mismanagement and political wrestle ― Sin Chew Daily
- Mozambique’s Frelimo picks presidential candidate
- Stoke defeat a major blow, admits Wenger
- Musk’s Tesla is a niche car not a revolution ― Edward Niedermeyer
- Why do so many foreign directors win Oscars?
- Pearl Jam’s former manager sentenced to prison for theft
| Mismanagement and political wrestle ― Sin Chew Daily Posted: 01 Mar 2014 05:01 PM PST
The little rainfall over the past two months has caused a sharp drop in the water levels at rivers and dams in Selangor, Negeri Sembilan, Malacca and Johor. This is undoubtedly related to climate problem but if we analyse deeply, the water supply problem in Selangor also involves political factors. Before the water rationing is implemented, residents in Selangor and Kuala Lumpur have first been confused by the statements issued by three water supply related units, namely the National Water Services Commission (SPAN), Syarikat Bekalan Air Selangor (Syabas) and the Selangor state government. Obviously, the three units are still busy engaging in the wrestling and have completely ignored the people's suffering. Although the water rationing decision has been finalised, it has at the same time reflected that with poor coordination and communication, and if the involved units prioritise their own interests rather than the people, many livelihood issues will then become more complicated and the people have always been the ultimate victim. Poor communication and the attitude of shirking responsibility have led to the outbreak of water crisis this time. All the people hope is a professional water supply management and no more water shortage problem, after the Selangor state government and the Federal Government signed a memorandum of understanding yesterday. The water crisis this time has reminded the people of the 1988 water supply crisis. The situation is quite similar and in addition to political factors, mismanagement is the biggest problem. Malaysia enjoys abundant rainfall and thus, there should be no water shortage problem here. If the people immediately face water shortage once there is no rain for two months, the biggest factor is because water supply management units lack the preparedness for crisis management. Water levels at rivers and dams are expected to drop in dry season and thus, water supply management companies should have a plan for it, instead of using the water level as a bargaining chip to wrestle with the state government. Other related units, including SPAN, Energy, Green Technology and Water Ministry, and Selangor Water Management Authority (LUAS) have also failed to fulfil their duties well. If these administration and management drawbacks are avoided, water shortage problem can then be prevented. In addition, the great loss of non-revenue water (NRW) is also a problem. The lack of a proper management and the failure to overcome the loss of water through old water pipes have resulted 36 per cent of NRW. Water supply companies must reduce the NRW to increase the amount of water supply and prevent water disruption. Water supply is a basic facility and if a significant waste of water resources is found due to mismanagement, the water supply companies must be severely punished and required to make compensation for the affected users, to avoid more water wastage. * This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malay Mail Online.  |
| Mozambique’s Frelimo picks presidential candidate Posted: 01 Mar 2014 04:47 PM PST
"Filipe Nyussi won with 68 per cent," party spokesman Damiao Jose told AFP early today following two rounds of voting. Members of the party's powerful central committee burst into song and jostled to congratulate the minister after its caucus ended at midnight in the city Matola outside the capital Maputo. "Congratulations Frelimo," Nyussi told AFP after his win. When asked how he felt he said: "I am from Frelimo," referring to a long history with the former liberation movement. Frelimo ― a formerly Marxist-Leninist but now avowedly capitalist party ― has won every election since Mozambique's civil war ended 21 years ago, and is expected to do so again in October. This means Nyussi is effectively president-in-waiting. Armando Guebuza is set to step down as president of the resource-rich country after his two terms are up, but retains the party leadership. The 1980s ex-Marxist won 2009 polls with 75 per cent of the vote and while in power has expanded his business empire to media, mining, construction and fishing sectors. Detractors have suggested he plans to follow the example of Russian leader Vladimir Putin and cling to power from behind the scenes after his presidential mandate ends. Nyussi, a Guebuza loyalist, has eight months to prepare for presidential polls set for October 15. The 55-year-old former state railway employee emerged as the front-runner amongst three "pre-candidates." A last minute push by influential figures inside Frelimo widened the field to five, but dark horse former prime minister Luisa Diogo won only 31 percent in the final round of voting yesterday. Born in 1958 to independence fighters in Frelimo's battle against Portuguese colonial rule, Nyussi literally grew up inside the party. "He is umbilically attached to Frelimo," one insider said. Nyussi moves easily between all factions inside Frelimo, having spent his early years in camps for exiled fighters in neighbouring Tanzania and later trained in mechanical engineering in then-Czechoslovakia. He is particularly well-liked amongst the powerful war veterans' lobby even though he ― as all the other candidates ― comes from the post-colonial generation. Nyussi's Maconde origins from the far northern Cabo Delgado Province have helped him garner support from amongst powerful Frelimo generals from the north. The party is sensitive to the need to placate its northern members now that huge natural gas reserves have been discovered off Cabo Delgado's shores. President Guebuza picked Nyussi as Defence Minister in 2008 after he had made a name for himself inside the state-owned ports and railway company CFM, where he was executive director of its northern branch in 1995 and served on the board from 2007. While on the board, Nyussi founded a freight handling and stowage company, Somoestiva, which critics decried as a conflict of interests. He has been hailed in some quarters for revitalising a moribund army with the recent purchase of fighter jets and other heavy military equipment. However, the Guebuza administration's handling of a revived Renamo insurgency earned a backlash from the public who viewed military intervention as too heavy handed. If elected later this year, Nyussi will become the country's fourth president since independence from Portugal in 1975. He will preside over one of Africa's most promising economies, with seven per cent annual growth in recent years on the back of new coal mines and vast gas reserves. But together with that comes the challenge to distribute wealth to the country's 24 million people, over half of whom lived under the poverty line in 2009, according to the World Bank. He will also have to manage fraught relations with Renamo, the rebel movement which became the official opposition after a peace treaty in 1992 ended its 16-year civil war against Frelimo. But as Renamo's power has waned it remobilised its veterans, killing dozens of mostly civilians in attacks on highways, demanding a more equitable spread of the country's wealth and a change to electoral laws. ― AFP |
| Stoke defeat a major blow, admits Wenger Posted: 01 Mar 2014 04:46 PM PST
Jon Walters' second-half penalty handed Stoke a famous win at the Britannia Stadium yesterday and left the Gunners four points behind Premier League leaders Chelsea in third place. The north Londoners have now won just once in their last eight trips to Stoke and Wenger admitted it was the worst possible start to what he had branded a season-defining month. "It is not slightly worrying, it is a big worry for us to lose a game like that. It's a massive setback," Wenger said. "In a game like that, we didn't produce the performance we wanted. To win a title when you are expected to perform you have to perform. It's as simple as that." Although it was Mark Hughes, as opposed to predecessor Tony Pulis in the Potters' home dugout, the game retained the same feisty edge so memorable from these teams' recent meetings. Glenn Whelan and Charlie Adam both escaped without sanction from referee Mike Jones despite controversial challenges on Olivier Giroud, much to the French striker's frustration. "I have nothing to say about that. I am long enough in the game to make my own judgement," Wenger said. Potters boss Mark Hughes said of the incidents: "It would be a shame if people highlight that as it wasn't that type of game." However, the Arsenal manager was unimpressed by Jones' decision to point to the spot after adjudging Laurent Koscielny handled inside the penalty area as Walters attempted to lift the ball over him. "We conceded a goal that was a nice gift from the referee but that can happen," Wenger added. "He was one yard away. How could he take his hand away in time? There was no intention at all." Wenger's side could have few complaints with the outcome, however, after serving up a sub-standard display which left big question marks hanging over their seemingly faltering title challenge. "We had a good defensive performance and overall we are unlucky to lose this game but offensively we did not create enough," Wenger said. "Our offensive game was poor considering our standards. You have to give credit to Stoke, they defended well, with resilience. "They made the game very physical but we knew that before the game. They have the highest number of fouls in the Premier League. "We didn't cope well enough with it and at the end of the day we were punished." The win continued Stoke's excellent record at home against the Premier League's big sides as they made the Gunners their latest scalp, having previously beaten Manchester United and Chelsea and drawn with Manchester City this season. There is now a six-point cushion between them and the relegation zone and Hughes said: "The stars were aligned and it came together. "We were excellent on the day to be perfectly honest. "I've been made aware that Arsenal felt it wasn't a just penalty but I'm a bit bemused by that as it was clear-cut to most people. "Regardless of that we deserved the victory by virtue of what we produced and our general play." Having missed four of his previous six penalties, Republic of Ireland international Walters showed nerves of steel to slot home with 14 minutes remaining. "That is what you get from Jon," Hughes said. "He is mentally very strong and is a senior player in the group. "He takes responsibility every day so it didn't surprise me that he grabbed the ball, he wasn't going to give it to anyone else. "I was really pleased for him that he was able to dispatch it as it was a pressure kick." — AFP |
| Musk’s Tesla is a niche car not a revolution ― Edward Niedermeyer Posted: 01 Mar 2014 04:42 PM PST
Starting with his Moores Law-like product strategy (halving costs and doubling volume with each new car), and continuing through the Hyperloop and now the electric-battery "Gigafactory" proposal, Musk has dumbfounded the entire auto industry. Not because of the proposals themselves ― most car industry executives expect overblown hype from Silicon Valley types. Rather, they are shocked that that Wall Street is buying that hype and pouring money into Musk's dream factory. Tesla's market capitalization is hovering around US$30 billion (RM98.3 billion), about half that of General Motors and Ford. Tesla has sold a grand total of 25,000 Model S sedans around the world over three years. GM and Ford deliver upwards of 200,000 vehicles in the US alone each month. When you extend the comparison to financial performance, with US$2 billion in sales last year, Tesla's relative market valuation appears even more overblown. "But wait," cry the market and financial press with one voice, "Tesla now has the potential to disrupt both the auto industry and the power utilities." Which is true enough, in the sense that I have the potential to disrupt world curling rankings. What gets lost are the huge improbabilities that this potential will ever be realised. In the case of the Gigafactory, Tesla's ability to disrupt lithium-ion battery production is severely limited to two major factors: first, Tesla itself has no experience manufacturing battery cells; second, Tesla depends on very companies Musk wants to "disrupt." Panasonic, Tesla's main battery supplier and Musk's "default assumption" for his Gigafactory partner, has (for fairly obvious reasons) not committed to Musk's vision of a plant designed to lower the market price of its product by 30 percent. Which brings us to Tesla's ability to disrupt the car market. If Panasonic believed sales of electricified vehicles held the sort of growth promise Musk anticipates, it would far more likely pursue that opportunity with Toyota, its electric- battery partner since 1996. Toyota, the world's most valuable automaker and the industry leader in hybrid electrification, announced last year that it would increase joint lithium-ion battery production with Panasonic to 200,000 units per year. Having also owned a stake in Tesla since 2010, Toyota could easily have offered to cut Tesla into that deal. The fact that it didn't supports the long-standing perception among Toyota- watchers that chief executive officer Akiyo Toyoda invested in an exciting car and brand four years ago, not a potential industry disruptor. Toyota is no stranger to disruption, having overturned the global car business over the course decades. But rather than high-concept, visionary technology and hype, it was Toyota's mastery of the culture of manufacturing that drove it from bit player to industry titan. Toyota emphasizes kaizen, or continuous improvement, not Musk's mercurial style. And based on a scan of quality complaints at various Tesla owner forums, it seems Musk could learn more from Toyota's automotive disruptions than the other way around. Auto industry success is a marathon, not a sprint ... and at current volumes, Tesla is barely walking. Indeed, Musk's major announcements seem to increasingly reflect basic problems with Tesla's business more than any penetrating insight into the future. The laughably "cost- estimated," supposedly earthquake-proof "Hyperloop" was Musk's attempt to address near-impossibility of going to Los Angeles to San Francisco in a single day in a Tesla. Similarly, the Gigafactory proposal reflects Tesla Motors' dependence on Panasonic for battery cells. If Toyota and Panasonic decide it's not in their interest to spend billions to flood the lithium-ion market on Elon Musk's behalf, the Gigafactory has as much chance of being built as the Hyperloop. For the moment, however, Musk's market-moving magic continues to defy reality. The recent revelation of a months- old, totally inconsequential meeting between Tesla and Apple is the kind of news that moves Tesla's buoyant share price, not economic reality. Morgan Stanley is now hyping Tesla's (undemonstrated) autonomous car technology as the key to a "utopian society," but we know that Wall Street's bubbles are not immune to conflicts with reality. If Tesla remains focused on building the first electric luxury brand, a kind of Silicon Valley Porsche or Jaguar, it can easily earn a sustainable niche in a profitable market. If the Gigafactory is just a negotiating tactic with battery suppliers, and all the rest of Musk's performance is just brand-building, perhaps someday Tesla will live up to its current valuation. But if Musk really believes the Wall Street-Silicon Valley line that Tesla position to seriously "disrupt" decades-old relationships like Toyota-Panasonic, let alone the auto industry more broadly, he's headed for a stunning fall. ― Bloomberg View * This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malay Mail Online. |
| Why do so many foreign directors win Oscars? Posted: 01 Mar 2014 04:41 PM PST
Over the last 20 years, 11 winners of the best director Academy Award—arguably second in prestige to best picture at Tinseltown's biggest annual show—have been from outside the United States. And if Mexican Alfonso Cuaron wins the coveted prize for space thriller "Gravity," as many predict, he will be the fourth non-American in a row to win in the category. The same would be true for fellow frontrunner Steve McQueen, the British filmmaker behind "12 Years a Slave," a best picture frontrunner. They would follow Briton Tom Hooper for "The King's Speech" in 2011, Frenchman Michel Hazanavicius for "The Artist" in 2012 and Taiwan-born Ang Lee for "Life of Pi" last year. The success of foreign directors in Tinseltown is in fact nothing new—it's been a constant since the 1920s, when Germans Ernst Lubitsch and F.W. Murnau settled in the United States. "We've always had lots of British directors. Alfred Hitchcock is just one of many and there's always been an exchange between British cinema and American cinema," film historian Jonathan Kuntz told AFP. "And then of course, depending on world circumstances, we had a lot of filmmakers driven to the US. Of course the Nazis drove most of the good filmmakers out of Europe." Kuntz, an associate professor at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), added: "Then, Eastern Europe during the 60s and 70s—a lot of filmmakers fled from there essentially, (Milos) Forman, (Roman) Polanski and many ended up in Hollywood." But experts say the wave of foreign filmmakers pouring into Hollywood since the turn of the millennium is above all motivated by the changing economic model of movie studios. "Fifty years ago, the industry was making roughly 70 per cent of its revenue on domestic sales. Now, 80 per cent is coming on foreign sales and only 20 per cent is domestic sales," said history professor Steve Ross. "So part of the reason, I think, they are going for foreign directors is also to appeal to their new base, who is a foreign base," the University of Southern California (USC) academic told AFP. Bottom line: profits Laura Isabel Serna, assistant professor at USC's School of Cinematic Arts, added: "This is part of Hollywood's global marketing strategy that encourages audience identification with 'their' directors or actors. "What is interesting is that, whereas in the past Hollywood has turned to Europe, studios are increasingly turning to other parts of the world as well, which is a testament to the vibrancy of film production in places like Latin America." But while European, Asian or Latin American filmmakers are welcomed here for their "sensibility," studios don't want them to bring too much of their own national perspective to the screen. "American directors know what American audiences want, but a foreign director coming in is going to have a sensibility that has to appeal to a larger audience," said Ross. In most cases it works fine: "Gravity," written by Cuaron and his son Jonas, has made over US$700 million (RM2.2 billion) at the global box office. His compatriot Guillermo Del Toro earned nearly US$410 million last year with sci-fi blockbuster "Pacific Rim". "Del Toro is an amazing guy," said Kuntz. "He's Mexican through and through and at the same time he grew up on American pop culture, he's obsessed with it, clearly. He knows American pop culture better than almost any American. "And the kind of filmmaking he does—horror, science-fiction and genre—that's something Hollywood loves also. He seems to fit right into the system." Cuaron "is a great artist," he added. "This is one of the great cinema masters of the world right now. You have to admire his accomplishment." Ultimately though, the only real common denominator between filmmakers who succeeded in Hollywood in cinema's golden age, the 1970s and those of the 21st century, is commercial success, said Ross. "The bottom line in Hollywood is always the bottom line, the profit," he said, stressing: "The ultimate aim of the studios is to bring in personnel who can expand their markets and increase their profits." "Now if these foreign directors were making films that didn't make money, believe me, they'd go back to American directors again," he added. — AFP |
| Pearl Jam’s former manager sentenced to prison for theft Posted: 01 Mar 2014 04:37 PM PST
Rickey Charles Goodrich, 55, had initially faced 33 theft charges but in December he pleaded guilty to six counts of first-degree theft, King County Prosecuting Attorney's Office spokesman Dan Donohoe said. "(Goodrich) will remain out of custody for the next two weeks to get his business affairs in order so he can continue to pay restitution," Donohoe said. "He begins serving the sentence on March 14." The quintet rose to prominence in the early 1990s grunge-rock movement and has sold millions of records worldwide. Goodrich was chief financial officer at its Seattle-based management company, Curtis Management, before he was fired in September 2010. Goodrich, who had oversight over finances related to Pearl Jam's tours, was found to have made wire transfers from the firm to pay his personal debts and used the company credit card for unwarranted expenses. He was caught after the band's manager reviewed suspicious transactions from 2009 at the band's touring company and their fan group Ten Club. Goodrich was sentenced on Friday by King County Superior Court Judge Roger Rogoff. William Morris Endeavor, which represents the band, and Curtis Management did not immediately return emails. — Reuters |
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