Pirates reportedly kidnap three on Japanese tanker off Malaysia

Pirates reportedly kidnap three on Japanese tanker off Malaysia
Three killed, three hurt in Kunak, Lahad Datu collisions
Jihadist group in Mali announces death of French hostage
Israel to send call-up papers to Christian Arabs
Death toll in ferry disaster crosses 100
Study on wind, waves as renewable power sources

Posted: 22 Apr 2014 06:35 PM PDT

Armed pirates boarded a Japanese oil tanker in the Strait of Malacca, kidnapping three Indonesian crew and stealing some of the vessel's shipment of diesel fuel, Malaysian media said Wednesday.

KUALA LUMPUR: Armed pirates boarded a Japanese oil tanker in the Strait of Malacca, kidnapping three Indonesian crew and stealing some of the vessel's shipment of diesel fuel, Malaysian media said Wednesday.

The ship of 18 crew was reportedly on its way from Singapore to Myanmar with five
million litres of the fuel.

The attack occurred early Tuesday about 16 nautical miles off Malaysia's west coast, The Star quoted Malaysian authorities as saying.

"The incident occurred at about 1 am (1500 GMT) and it was only realised by the crew members when they saw about five or six men armed with a pistol and a (machete) aboard the ship," Norzaid Muhammad Said, police commander of nearby Port Klang, was quoted as saying.

The report said the pirates subdued and tied up the crew, robbed the vessel and brought in two other tankers that pumped out a large quantity of the Japanese vessel's diesel.

After the attackers fled several hours later, the crew discovered three shipmates were missing.

Police suspect they were kidnapped by the pirates, the report said.

The crew comprised Indonesian, Thai, Myanmar and Indian nationals.

No further details on the vessel were provided.

A separate report by the New Straits Times said no one was hurt in the incident.

Norzaid said the captain, after freeing himself, informed the diesel supplier in Singapore of the robbery.

The supplier lodged a report at the Johor Bahru police station which relayed the information to the marine police in Port Klang.

"We sent our personnel to the location and found the Japanese vessel at Pulau Angsa. The ship was brought to the North Port here for further investigation," said Norzaid.

The Strait of Malacca is a key highway for sea traffic between and Asia, Europe and the Middle East, and has long been a hunting ground for pirates due to the large numbers of cargo and other vessels passing through.- AFP

Three killed, three hurt in Kunak, Lahad Datu collisions

Posted: 22 Apr 2014 05:51 PM PDT

KUNAK: Three men were killed, two other men and a woman were injured in two road accidents in the east coast on Monday.

In one of the accidents, two of the men were killed and another man was seriously injured when the car they were travelling in collided with a four-wheel drive vehicle at Km 5, Kunak-Tawau road.

Kunak district police chief Supt M Radzali Mahmud said Pangkuma Bedie, 42, a police sergeant from Sarawak, and his friend Wong Hon Sung, 71, died on the spot in the 11.27pm incident.

"One of their friends Richard, 51, who was driving the car was seriously injured and is being treated at the Tawau General Hospital, while another friend only sustained minor injuries," he said.

However, the driver of the other vehicle did not suffer any injuries.

"Initial investigations showed that the accident occurred when the car driven by Richard had tried to turn into a junction when it was hit by a four-wheel drive that was coming from Tawau," he said.

In the other accident, a resident of Lahad Datu was killed while his wife and a friend suffered minor injuries when the Proton Saga BLM car they were travelling in collided with an oil tanker at Km 78, Lahad Datu-Felda Sahabat road on Monday.

District police chief ACP Shamsudin Mat said the deceased was identified as Abdul Wahab bin Ali, 44.

"Initial police investigation revealed that the oil tanker, which was heading towards Lahad Datu from Felda Sahabat, collided with the Proton Saga coming from the opposite direction around 3.30pm. The oil tanker driver reportedly lost control of his vehicle and veered into the path of the oncoming Proton Saga," Shamsudin said.

The impact of the crash caused both vehicles to skid onto the road shoulder with the driver of the Proton Saga trapped in his seat.

The driver of the Proton Saga was killed on the spot while two other passengers were taken to the nearest hospital for treatment.

"This case would be investigated under Section 41(1) of the Road Transport Act 1987," Shamsudin said, adding that the tanker driver had escaped unhurt.

Jihadist group in Mali announces death of French hostage

Posted: 22 Apr 2014 05:49 PM PDT

One of Mali's top jihadist groups said on Tuesday a French hostage it had kidnapped in November 2012 was dead.

The Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO), a splinter group of Al-Qaeda's regional branch, told AFP Gilberto Rodrigues Leal "is dead, because France is our enemy".

Yoro Abdul Salam, a spokesman for the group, gave no details on the date or circumstances of Rodrigues' death during a brief telephone exchange.

Pressed for evidence, he said that "in the name of Allah, he is dead", before hanging up. -AFP

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Israel to send call-up papers to Christian Arabs

Posted: 22 Apr 2014 05:47 PM PDT

Israel is to start sending call-up papers to all Christian Arabs of military service age, army radio reported Tuesday, angering Arab lawmakers who accused the government of seeking to divide Christians from Muslims.

Military service will remain voluntary for Israel's 130,000 Christian Arabs as it is for its more than 1.3 million Muslim Arabs.

But commanders hope that the routine sending out of call-up papers will help boost the numbers volunteering from around 100 a year at present to 1,000, the radio reported.

"Under these new arrangements, they will no longer have to submit their own enlistment request and expose themselves to potential pressure from their Christian coreligionists or from Muslims, who are overwhelmingly hostile to conscription," the radio said.

An army spokesman had no immediate comment when contacted by AFP.

The reported move came just two months after parliament approved a law giving Muslim and Christian Arabs separate representation on a national employment commission and drew fire from Arab lawmakers.

"The measure was to be expected following the campaign by the Israel right to divide Christians from their own people by encouraging them to think that they are not Arabs," said Bassel Ghattas, a member of parliament for the communist Hadash party.

He urged Christians who received call-up papers to "send them back or publicly burn them, because the next step could be compulsory military or community service."

Not all Christian Arabs are opposed to serving in the Israeli army.

Father Gabriel Nadaf, a Greek Orthodox priest from the northern city of Nazareth, welcomed the move by the military.

"Young people in the Christian community need to understand the importance of serving and getting involved in the country in which they live and which protects them, and in which we are full citizens," he said.

Israel's Arab minority, which makes up some 20 percent of the population, are the descendants of the 160,000 Palestinians who remained on their land when Israel was created in 1948.

They complain of routine discrimination, particularly in housing, land access and employment. -AFP

Death toll in ferry disaster crosses 100

Posted: 22 Apr 2014 05:46 PM PDT

Nearly one week after the ferry disaster, almost 200 of the 476 people on board are still unaccounted for

JINDO , South Korea: The confirmed death toll from South Korea's ferry disaster passed 100 yesterday as divers, under growing pressure from bereaved relatives, speeded up the grim task of recovering scores more bodies from the submerged ship.

Improved weather and calm seas spurred their efforts, but underwater visibility was still very poor, requiring divers to grope their way blindly though the corridors and cabins of the ferry that capsized and sank last Wednesday.

Nearly one week after one of South Korea's worst peacetime disasters, almost 200 of the 476 people who were aboard the 6,825-tonne Sewol – most of them schoolchildren – are still unaccounted for.
The official toll stood at 108, with 194 still missing.

Distraught families of victims gathered in the morning at the harbour on Jindo island – not far from the disaster site – awaiting the increasingly frequent arrival of boats with bodies.

In the initial days after the Sewol went down, the relatives' anger was focused on the pace of the rescue effort.

With all hope of finding any survivors essentially gone, this has turned to growing impatience with the effort to locate and retrieve the bodies of those trapped.

"I just want my son back," said the father of one missing student. "I need to be able to hold him and say goodbye. I can't bear the idea of him in that cold, dark place."

The disaster has profoundly shocked South Korea, a proudly modernised nation that thought it had left behind large-scale accidents of this type.

The sense of national grief has been underwritten by an equally deep but largely unfocused anger that has been vented towards pretty much anyone in authority.

Coastguard officials have been slapped and punched, senior politicians – including the prime minister – pushed and heckled, and rescue teams criticised for their slow response.

If there is a chief hate figure, it is the ferry's captain Lee Joon-Seok, who was arrested at the weekend and charged with criminal negligence and abandoning his passengers.

Six members of his crew are also under arrest.

President Park Geun-Hye, who faced a hostile crowd when she met relatives on Jindo last week, has described the actions of Lee and his crew as being "tantamount to murder".

Four of the detained crew were paraded – heads bowed and faces hidden – before TV cameras yesterday, and asked why only one of the Sewol's 46 life rafts had been deployed.

"We tried to gain access to the rafts but the whole ship was already tilted too much," one of them responded.

The Sewol capsized after making a sharp right turn – leading experts to suggest its cargo manifest might have shifted, causing it to list beyond a critical point of return.

The large death toll has partly been attributed to the captain's instruction for passengers to stay where they were for around 40 minutes after the ferry ran into trouble.

By the time the evacuation order came, the ship was listing so badly that escape was almost impossible.

A transcript released Sunday of the crew's final communications with marine transport control illustrated the sense of panic and confusion on the bridge before the ferry sank.

Captain Lee has insisted he acted in the passengers' best interest, delaying the order to abandon ship because he feared people would be swept away and drowned.

Nearly 750 divers, mostly coastguard and military, are now involved in the operation.

"The weather is better, but it's still very difficult for the divers who are essentially fumbling for bodies in the silted water," a coastguard official told reporters.

A priority for yesterday was to access the ferry's main dining hall. — AFP

Study on wind, waves as renewable power sources

Posted: 22 Apr 2014 05:45 PM PDT

by Murib Morpi. Posted on April 23, 2014, Wednesday

KOTA KINABALU: Study is being conducted on the potential of harvesting energy from wind and waves for electricity generation in Sabah.

Energy, Green Technology and Water Minister Datuk Seri Dr Maximus Johnity Ongkili said the study on wind potential was being carried out jointly by Sustainable Energy Development Authority (SEDA) and SIRIM.

"SEDA, in collaboration with SIRIM, has set up a small station at Simpang Mangayau, Kudat to monitor and study wind potential. SEDA has also commissioned an overall mapping of wind speed and consistency in all areas in Sabah, which was done jointly by SIRIM and a university," he said to reporters after officiating at the opening of SEDA branch office here yesterday.

According to Ongkili, studies by the Meteorology Department showed that the potential for wind harvesting in Malaysia was generally on the low end.

He explained existing conventional technologies required a minimum of two-meter per second (mps) wind to efficiently generate electricity.

In this regard, there are only three places with potential in Sabah, namely Kudat, around Mount Kinabalu and somewhere near Sipitang.

However, he said technologies were improving and some developers believed even 0.8 mps wind could be harvested for electricity.

"But until then we'll have to wait for the study to be completed. It is not just the speed but also consistency of the wind. Studies are also being carried out on the potential to harvest electricity from waves in Kudat by the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation and a group from UK.

"It's a bit too early to say how much electricity can be generated from wind in Sabah but we are following the study closely," he said.

Earlier in his speech, Ongkili said Malaysia needed to venture further into renewable energy to supplement its conventional fossil-fuelled electricity generation.

He noted that the country's electricity generation capacity as of last year was 25,388 MegaWatt (MW) and its power demand was projected to grow by 3.6 per cent annually until 2016.

To meet the increasing demand, he said an additional generating capacity of 7,446MW needed to be installed from now until 2030.

"We are currently depending on fossil fuel to provide 87 per cent of our fuel mix. Apart from having environmental implication, fossil fuel also has fluctuating prices. Last year alone, the government spent RM24.42 billion to subsidize fossil fuel.

"Out of this, RM13.73 billion was for electricity generation. For Sabah alone, the subsidy for diesel needed for power plants was RM598 million. As such, we need to reduce dependency on fossil fuel and move towards renewable energy.

"In this respect, the government has set a target of increasing renewable energy contribution to the country's fuel mix from 1.5 per cent to five per cent by 2015. We are currently lingering at three to four per cent," he said.

Meanwhile, Ongkili said the power margin in Sabah was still at a discomfort level, with only five per cent reserve at any one time.

However, the reserve level is expected to go up significantly once independent power plants in Sipitang and Kimanis have come online to provide a minimum of 100MW additional generation capacity each by June.

"Assuming we can export all this additional capacity into the grid, there will be an increase in power margin. In the meantime, we would have to manage with the existing generation capacity, where we may need to implement load shedding whenever several power plants need to be shut down for maintenance. But other than that, especially during the May festive season, I have asked Sabah Electricity Sdn Bhd (SESB) to ensure that there will be as little disruption as possible.

"Otherwise all the Unduk Ngadau in the district may have melting make-ups and disappearing lipsticks due to heavy sweating. Instead of smiling they will be frowning in the heat. But we are aware of this and we are doing the best we can," he said.