Liverpool: life after Suarez |
- Liverpool: life after Suarez
- David Cameron: Combat Islamic extremists before they reach Britain
- Driving the Google car is ‘utterly unremarkable’
- Keep politics out of GLCs
- Kurdish forces push to retake Mosul Dam with US air support
- Mr Google goes to Washington to tame technology monsters — Bloomberg Editors
| Posted: 17 Aug 2014 05:51 PM PDT
Uruguay striker Suarez departed Liverpool for Barcelona during the close season and there were question marks over how Liverpool would cope in his absence. Liverpool were far from their best against Southampton in their opening Premier League game of the season at Anfield yesterday. But victory was secured courtesy of Daniel Sturridge's winner 11 minutes from time after Nathaniel Clyne had cancelled out Raheem Sterling's first-half strike. "Our ambitions here at Liverpool have to be bigger than one player," Rodgers said. "Luis sent us a lovely text (message) this morning wishing us all the best, which was a great gesture. He is a friend now of Liverpool. He's a great boy, but he is gone now. "We are bigger than any player. We do still want another striker, but that will depend on the availability. It was all about winning against Southampton and we got there. "As much as the good football we play, it was about grinding it out so I am really happy with that determination and character. "It was very hard-fought. Just because Southampton have lost players, it's not going to be a walkover. "The players are still searching for their fitness, they are still getting their condition and getting themselves back into it. We weren't as fluent, but it was about the win." Sterling put Liverpool ahead with a composed finish from Jordan Henderson's sublime through-ball, but Clyne fired in Southampton's equaliser following a clever flick from debutant Dusan Tadic. However, Liverpool secured maximum points when Southampton failed to clear a cross, allowing Sterling to head the ball into the path of Sturridge, who scruffily nudged it past Fraser Forster. 'Don't think we'll struggle' Despite a second-placed finish last season, Liverpool are not among the sides widely expected to challenge for the title in this campaign, with Chelsea and Manchester City considered more likely winners. But Rodgers said that his squad would thrive on being written off. "We believe in the way we work," he said. "I don't think anyone is giving us any hope of getting in the top four, but that was the expectancy last season as well. "We love the challenge. We go into that, look to recreate that, by winning games and performing. "We are bringing in young players who are ready to go in the team, but there is still a lot of improvement." Southampton's new manager Ronald Koeman has had to contend with the departures of five key players during the close season. But the Dutchman, who replaced Mauricio Pochettino at St Mary's after the Argentine left for Tottenham Hotspur, claimed Southampton showed at Anfield that they are still a competitive side. "It is between the white lines of the pitch to show the people and first to show ourselves that we have to believe in our quality," he said. "That was one of the messages we gave the boys. We played an impressive second half and that is how we like to play. If we play like that, I don't think we will struggle." Koeman also said that he had no concerns over the selection of Morgan Schneiderlin—who has been also linked with a move away from Southampton—and will continue to pick the France midfielder. "Morgan is a player of Southampton and will continue playing for Southampton," the former Ajax coach said. "He changed his mind and mentality and he showed that this week. He showed his qualities and he is very strong for the team. It was normal for me to put him in the line-up." — AFP  |
| David Cameron: Combat Islamic extremists before they reach Britain Posted: 17 Aug 2014 05:48 PM PDT
Cameron said that while it would not be right to send an army into Iraq, some degree of military involvement was justified due to the threat that an expanding "terrorist state" would pose to Europe and its allies. "If we do not act to stem the onslaught of this exceptionally dangerous terrorist movement, it will only grow stronger until it can target us on the streets of Britain," Cameron wrote in The Sunday Telegraph. "I agree that we should avoid sending armies to fight or occupy, but we need to recognise that the brighter future we long for requires a long-term plan." Cameron argued that security could only be achieved "if we use all our resources — aid, diplomacy, our military prowess" and said he planned to send a British representative to the Kurdish region. He did not spell out how Britain's military could be used, but said he was considering sending body armour and counter-explosive equipment to arm Kurdish forces against the jihadists. So far, Britain has sent a spy plane to monitor for attacks on minorities in northern Iraq and Tornado fighter jets to help with the humanitarian mission to aid thousands of fleeing refugees. Chinook helicopters are on standby in the region in case needed for aid work, and Britain has already delivered weapons from other states to Iraq. Conservative MP and chair of parliament's Defence Committee Rory Stewart said Islamic State fighters were using sophisticated United States-made weaponry seized from Iraqi troops. "If we're as serious as we need to be about defending Kurdistan, defending the minorities from this incredibly brutal regime... we need to make sure the Kurds have the equipment with which to defend themselves," Stewart told Sky News. "That isn't about British boots on the ground, but it's about when the peshmerga troops are out there, they at least out-gun the people who are coming up against them and hold their territory." Threat at home Cameron said the fight against the extremists would also take place in Britain, and anyone who tried to recruit people to the movement or flew the black flag of IS would be arrested. The government has removed 28,000 pieces of "terrorist-related material" from the internet, including 46 videos related to IS. British authorities were particularly concerned about fighters travelling from the country to join extremist causes in the Middle East, fearing they could be a danger if they return to Britain. Cameron's plans for military action in Syria were rejected by parliament last year and he would likely struggle to gain support for sending troops back to Iraq after a controversial US-led invasion in 2003. But opposition Labour MP Ann Clwyd said "it is just a matter of time" before Britain sends in troops. "We cannot stand by and watch a genocide take place," she said. Politician Nadhim Zahawi, a Conservative member of parliament who is of Kurdish Iraqi descent, said following a trip to the region that between 500 and 750 fighters had joined the Islamic state from Britain. "A senior Kurdish leader reported to me that one dead jihadi was found with a Liverpool FC membership card in his wallet," Zahawi wrote in The Mail. Cameron said the fight could require unorthodox alliances, and that Britain needed to work with countries like Saudi Arabia and Qatar, Egypt, Turkey "and perhaps even with Iran". "We are in the middle of a generational struggle against a poisonous ideology, which I believe we will be fighting for the rest of my political lifetime," Cameron wrote. His comments came after the Church of England slammed the government for not having "a coherent or comprehensive approach to Islamic extremism" in a letter in The Observer newspaper. On Friday, the European Union agreed to support member states' arming of Iraqi Kurdish fighters, who have military equipment dating back to the Soviet era. — AFP |
| Driving the Google car is ‘utterly unremarkable’ Posted: 17 Aug 2014 05:43 PM PDT
This isn't damning with faint praise. It's actually high praise for the car in question: Google Inc's driverless car. Most automotive test drives (of which I've done dozens while covering the car industry for nearly 30 years) are altogether different. There's a high-horsepower car. A high-testosterone automotive engineer. And a high-speed race around a test track by a boy-racer journalist eager to prove that, with just a few more breaks, he really could have been, you know, a NASCAR driver. This test drive, in contrast, took place on the placid streets of Mountain View, the Silicon Valley town that houses Google's headquarters. The engineers on hand weren't high-powered "car guys" but soft-spoken Alpha Geeks of the sort that have emerged as the Valley's dominant species. And there wasn't any speeding even though, ironically, Google's engineers have determined that speeding actually is safer than going the speed limit in some circumstances. "Thousands and thousands of people are killed in car accidents every year," said Dmitri Dolgov, the project's boyish Russian-born lead software engineer, who now is a US citizen, describing his sense of mission. "This could change that." Dolgov, who's 36 years old, confesses that he drives a Subaru instead of a high-horsepower beast. Not once during an hour-long conversation did he utter the words "performance," "horsepower," or "zero-to-60," which are mantras at every other new-car test drive. Instead Dolgov repeatedly invoked "autonomy," the techie term for cars capable of driving themselves. Google publicly disclosed its driverless car program in 2010, though it began the previous year. It's part of the company's "Google X" division, overseen directly by co-founder Sergey Brin and devoted to "moon shot" projects by the Internet company, as Dolgov puts it, that might take years, if ever, to bear fruit. So if there's a business plan for the driverless car, Google isn't disclosing it. Dolgov, who recently "drove" one of his autonomous creations the 450 miles (725 km) or so from Silicon Valley to Tahoe and back for a short holiday, simply says his mission is to perfect the technology, after which the business model will fall into place. Not wining beauty contests, yet Judging from my non-eventful autonomous trek through Mountain View, the technology easily handles routine driving. The car was a Lexus RX 450h, a gas-electric hybrid crossover vehicle - with special modifications, of course. There's a front-mounted radar sensor for collision avoidance. And more conspicuously, a revolving cylinder perched above the car's roof that's loaded with lasers, cameras, sensors and other detection and guidance gear. The cylinder is affixed with ugly metal struts, signaling that stylistic grace, like the business plan, has yet to emerge. But function precedes form here, and that rotating cylinder is a reasonable replacement for the human brain (at least some human brains) behind the wheel of a car. During the 25-minute test ride the "driver's seat" was occupied by Brian Torcellini, whose title, oddly, is "Lead Test Driver" for the driverless car project. Before joining Google the 30-year-old Torcellini, who studied at San Diego State University, had hoped to become a "surf journalist." Really. Now he's riding a different kind of wave. He sat behind the test car's steering wheel just in case something went awry and he had to revert to manual control. But that wasn't necessary. Dolgov, in the front passenger's seat, entered the desired destination to a laptop computer that was wired into the car. The car mapped the route and headed off. The only excitement, such as it was, occurred when an oncoming car seemed about to turn left across our path. The driverless car hit the brakes, and the driver of the oncoming car quickly corrected course. I sat in the back seat, not my usual test-driving position, right behind Torcellini. The ride was so smooth and uneventful that, except for seeing his hands, I wouldn't known that the car was completely piloting itself - steering, stopping and starting - lock, stock and dipstick. Google's driverless car is programmed to stay within the speed limit, mostly. Research shows that sticking to the speed limit when other cars are going much faster actually can be dangerous, Dolgov says, so its autonomous car can go up to 10 mph (16 kph) above the speed limit when traffic conditions warrant. 'Not a toy' In addition to the model I tested - and other such adapted versions of conventional cars - Google also has built little bubble-shaped test cars that lack steering wheels, brakes and accelerator pedals. They run on electricity, seat two people and are limited to going 25 mph (40 kph.) In other words, self-driving golf carts. Google's isn't the only driverless car in development. One of the others is just a few miles away at Stanford University (where Dolgov did post-doctoral study.) Getting the cars to recognise unusual objects and to react properly in abnormal situations remain significant research challenges, says professor J. Christian Gerdes, faculty director of Stanford's REVS Institute for Automotive Research. Beyond that, there are "ethical issues," as he terms them. "Should a car try to protect its occupants at the expense of hitting pedestrians?" Gerdes asks. "And will we accept it when machines make mistakes, even if they make far fewer mistakes than humans? We can significantly reduce risk, but I don't think we can drive it to zero." That issue, in turn, raises the question of who is liable when a driverless car is involved in a collision - the car's occupants, the auto maker or the software company. Legal issues might be almost as vexing as technical ones, some experts believe. Self-driving cars could appear on roads by the end of this decade, predicted a detailed report on the budding driverless industry issued late last year by investment bank Morgan Stanley . Other experts deem that forecast extremely optimistic. But cars with "semi-autonomous" features, such as collision-avoidance radar that maintains a safe distance from the car ahead, are already on the market. And the potential advantages - improved safety, less traffic congestion and more - are winning converts to the autonomy cause. "This is not a toy," declared the Morgan Stanley research report. "The social and economic implications are enormous." — Reuters |
| Posted: 17 Aug 2014 05:39 PM PDT AUG 18 — Scrolling through my news feed on Sunday night, one headline commandeered my attention — "Umno Youth eyes posts in government-linked companies, says chief". According to the Bernama report, Umno Youth chief Khairy Jamaluddin is suggesting that its qualified members be considered for appointments to government-linked companies so as to prepare them for leadership before taking the jump to candidacy for the general elections. "We want to see rejuvenation of the party as they (youths) cannot become candidates straight away and without experience, they are bypassed. So we have to give them the exposure before considering them as potential general election candidates," Khairy was quoted as saying. I was both encouraged and alarmed by the suggestion. The idea was encouraging because, as one politician tipped for the future, Khairy is making the right noises: future leaders should be groomed and prepared for responsibility by placing them into positions that demand accountability. Hopefully this would in turn grow our pool of leaders and give us candidates with intelligence, effectiveness and integrity among other virtues, sadly qualities which may not be as common in Malaysia's political scene. There had been some noise from the other side along the same lines and we can only hope that this sentiment catches on further — the old must eventually make way for the new and the latter must be sufficiently well-equipped and able to take over, lest Malaysia slip into an abyss it cannot climb back out of. Yet at the same time, is it right to allow government-linked companies — in other words, ultimately the people's resources — to be the training ground for political leaders in such a way? State investment fund Khazanah Nasional Berhad defines government-linked companies as those "that have a primary commercial objective and in which the Malaysian Government has a direct controlling stake", further defining a direct controlling stake as an ability to appoint board members, senior management and make major decisions for any such company. In other words, government-linked companies are ultimately owned by the government of Malaysia. By extension, these companies are owned by the Malaysian public — ruling political parties of the day are no more than caretakers, subject to re-election every few years, of the governance machinery that is, already and permanently, in place. As I have written about before, and as have been lamented continuously by many others, we are in dire need of a clear-cut separation between public assets and institutions from political parties in this nation. This is made worse by politicians who seem to be confused themselves, equating public ownership with that of their political parties by virtue of being elected to rule in the most recent general election. Despite the misconceptions of such politicians, however, the fact remains that public assets belong to the public at large, not to the ruling political parties of the day. These include government-linked companies. With this in mind, appointing Umno Youth members, qualified as they may be, to government-linked companies on the basis of grooming them as political leaders raises the question of misuse. I say misuse because, in effect, this would be tantamount to a political party tapping into public resources to give their members leadership training — training that comes with salary, and other employment benefits that ultimately come out of the public's pockets. Is that not abuse of public resources for non-public gains? It may be argued here that the public at large would gain should the exercise create a good leader for the future, because the leadership, in theory, would be to the benefit of those who are led — voters and other members of the public. But this in turn is unfair as such opportunities would not, I imagine, be equally available to every politician out there, especially if they are on the wrong side of the political divide. Additionally, what about the interests of Malaysians who support the other side, the one without such opportunities? Who is to say that every Malaysian consents to their ultimate interests to be channelled in such a way for the benefit of political factions that they may not necessarily support? It would be fairer and simpler to keep government-linked companies out of the equation. Keep politics out of it — if political parties want to stay relevant and contribute to the nation, they should invest their own resources to groom their next generation of leaders. Government-linked companies are supposed to maximise their gains for the benefit of their ultimate shareholder — the public. Therefore any appointments should emphasise on proper qualifications and track record alone. Political alignment should never be a factor, especially not a qualifying reason. Even if, by some miracle, budding leaders from both sides of the political line are given equal access to such appointments, it would still raise the issue of whether these appointments are objectively and ultimately in the best interests of the government-linked company involved, which ultimately affect the public's interests. Appointing qualified professionals who happen to have a particular political leaning is one thing; appointing qualified politicians based on their membership of any particular political party is quite another. The reality of such appointments happening in abundance at present does not change the fact that it is wrong. If anything we should be working to reduce such misuse, not exacerbate them. This is the personal opinion of the columnist. |
| Kurdish forces push to retake Mosul Dam with US air support Posted: 17 Aug 2014 05:38 PM PDT
Islamic State militants have seized several towns and oilfields as well as the Mosul Dam in recent weeks, possibly giving them the ability to flood cities or cut off water and electricity supplies. Asked about a Kurdish push to dislodge the Sunni fundamentalist militants yesterday, a Kurdish official said the dam had not been retaken but "most of the surrounding area" had been seized. The United States said it conducted 14 air strikes yesterday against Islamic State fighters near the dam. US Central Command said the latest strikes destroyed three armed vehicles, a vehicle-mounted anti-aircraft and an emplacement of the Islamic State as well as one of the militants' checkpoints. The strikes followed nine US air strikes on Saturday near the dam and the Kurdish capital, Arbil. The White House said yesterday that President Barack Obama had informed Congress he authorised US air strikes to help retake control of the dam. "The failure of the Mosul Dam could threaten the lives of large numbers of civilians, threaten US personnel and facilities — including the US Embassy in Baghdad — and prevent the Iraqi government from providing critical services to the Iraqi populace," the White House said in a statement. The US air strike campaign against the Islamic State militants began earlier this month in the first direct US military action in Iraq since the end of 2011, when Washington completed the withdrawal of its troops from the country. Islamic State militants have told residents in the area of the Mosul Dam to leave, according to an engineer who works at the site. The engineer said the militants told him they were planting roadside bombs along roads leading in and out of the facility, possibly in fear of an attack by Kurdish fighters. US officials said last week the US government was directly supplying weapons to Kurdish peshmerga fighters. Witnesses said Kurdish forces had recaptured the mainly Christian towns of Batmaiya and Telasqaf, 30km from Mosul, the closest they have come to the city since Islamic State insurgents drove government forces out in June. The insurgents have also tightened their security checkpoints in Mosul, conducting more intensive inspections of vehicles and identification cards, witnesses said. Independence ambitions The Kurds, who live in a semi-autonomous region in the north of Iraq, have long dreamed of independence from central governments in Baghdad that oppressed the non-Arab ethnic group for decades under former dictator Saddam Hussein. Tensions were also high under outgoing Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki who clashed with them over budgets and oil. The Kurds since June have capitalised on the chaos in northern Iraq, taking over oilfields in the disputed city of Kirkuk. Iraq's new prime minister, Haider al-Abadi, a Shiah, faces the task of reducing Sunni-Shiah tensions that have revived a sectarian civil war and addressing the Kurdish independence ambitions. German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier has warned against the formation of an independent Kurdish state, saying that would risk further destabilising the region. "An independent Kurdish state would... create new tensions, possibly also with the states neighbouring Iraq," Steinmeier said in an interview with Germany's Bild am Sonntag newspaper published yesterday. Proclaiming a caliphate straddling parts of Iraq and Syria, Islamic State militants have swept across northern Iraq, pushing back Kurdish regional forces and driving tens of thousands of Christians and members of the Yazidi religious minority from their homes. Steinmeier, who met the new Iraqi prime minister in Baghdad on Saturday, said the formation of a new government that all regions and religions could identify with "is perhaps the last chance for cohesion in Iraq". Arms supplies The European Union has allowed individual EU governments to supply arms and ammunition to Iraqi Kurds, provided there is the consent from the authorities in Baghdad. Washington is already supplying weapons. In a televised statement apparently referring to that action, the office of the Iraqi army command yesterday evening said: "We warn all parties not to exploit the current security situation in the north of Iraq and violate sovereign airspace to ship arms to local parties without approval of the central government." Asked about possible German deliveries, Steinmeier said: "We're not ruling anything out. We're looking at what's possible and doing what is necessary as quickly as possible." Masoud Barzani, president of Iraqi Kurdistan, reiterated his call for weapons from Germany and other Western countries in an interview with Bild am Sonntag. Fears of Islamic State militants — who Iraqi officials say have massacred hundreds of Yazidis — have driven thousands of people to the Kurdish region. In the town of Dohuk, about 100 Yazidis held demonstrations yesterday, complaining that they had given up on Iraq and wanted to travel to Turkey but were prevented from doing so by Kurdish security forces. "They can't protect us. The Islamic State came to our villages and killed hundreds. We don't want to stay in Iraq, they will kill us sooner or later," said a 20-year-old woman named Nadia. "I want America to help me. The peshmerga are not letting us through." — Reuters |
| Mr Google goes to Washington to tame technology monsters — Bloomberg Editors Posted: 17 Aug 2014 05:27 PM PDT AUG 18 — Every president has his method of taming the leviathan of bureaucracy. Harry Truman tried vast reorganisations. Lyndon Johnson preferred cerebral task forces. Jimmy Carter tried feeding the beast, George W. Bush starving it. President Barack Obama likes to appoint "czars." The idea is to give a smart and worthy mandarin — often from the consulting world — a small budget, an intractable problem and the mandate to fix it. About two dozen of them now roam Washington, by one count. The latest is Mikey Dickerson, a celebrated Google engineer, appointed to lead a new team that will try to improve the government's archaic computer systems and impenetrable websites. (Inevitably, he's the "digital services czar.") The assignment results from Dickerson's success in helping salvage HealthCare.gov after its ruinous rollout. The plan is to eventually give Dickerson a team of perhaps two dozen to consult with the vast government IT bureaucracies, work to make their websites more appealing and user-friendly, and generally improve the way federal employees approach technology. They'll have their work cut out for them. The government spends some US$80 billion (RM252 billion) a year on information technology, much of it apportioned among hundreds of contractors. Buying new equipment and services is a Byzantine undertaking that ensures that influential vendors, wise to the ways of Washington, often outmuscle smaller and more innovative competitors. Contracts tend to be long-term, while technology evolves by the day. Red tape abounds (the fearsome Federal Acquisition Regulation is 1,800 pages), and most agencies adhere to old-fashioned development models that typically result in slow, cumbersome, expensive systems. Making things worse, top technology workers generally avoid government. It doesn't pay much by Silicon Valley standards, its culture tends to reward clock-punching and box-ticking over innovation and risk, and the hiring process at the Office of Personnel Management can take months. The results are predictable. In a recent study of large government IT projects, only 6.4 per cent were successful. The rest were late, over budget or deficient. Almost half were outright failures. Anecdotes about distinctive catastrophes — such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation's US$170 million unworkable computer upgrade — are legion. A czar can't do much to fix such problems. To the extent that appointing one convinces people otherwise, it can actually make things worse by sapping the urgency for reform. The Obama administration, to its credit, at least recognises the problem. But a more comprehensive cure for the government's digital infirmities will require, first, overhauling the procurement process for technology. A document the White House recently put out called the TechFAR Handbook has some good suggestions. The guiding principles should be flexibility and experimentation — neither typically in the bureaucrat's comfort zone — and smaller companies and start-ups should get more consideration for contracts. Second, some cultural changes could lure more digital talent to government work. A smart model is the UK's Government Digital Service — a savvy and centralised in-house consultancy that works with agencies to cut tech costs and apply private-sector ideas. (Dickerson's team is partly based on it.) Yet even that strategy won't get far unless the government's hiring practices can be accelerated for technologists, who can get private-sector job offers merely by showing up to the interview fully clothed. So good luck to Mikey Dickerson. If nothing else, maybe he can import some Silicon Valley vigor and optimism to the capital. But one man with a hazy budget and a hypothetical staff won't make much progress against the leviathan. That will take more ingenuity than even a Google prodigy has to offer. — Bloomberg View * This is the personal opinion of the columnist. |
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