Two Sabahans meet Namfrel reps in Manila for polls obervation

By Jerry Ombou

Manila trip... Jerry Ombou (left) and Kanul Gindol (right)
after their final preparation meeting for the Manila trip
in Kota Kinabalu yesterday.

KOTA KINABALU : Two Sabahans of the Sabah chapter of Malaysians for Free and Fair Elections (MAFREL) will be in Manila for four days starting tomorrow, holding discussions and sharing notes with the world-renown NAMFREL (National Citizen's for Free Election), in relation to the coming Malaysian general election.

Chairman of Gindol Initiative for Civil Society Borneo, Mr Kanul Gindol, and myself, both as MAFREL volunteers, would learn from the Philippines' experience in election observatory works of which NAMFREL is known to have been doing since early 1980's soon after it was incepted in 1983.

NASA rover Curiosity makes historic Mars landing, beams back photos

One of the first images from a second batch of
images sent from the Curiosity rover

PASADENA, California (Reuters) - NASA's Mars science rover Curiosity performed a daredevil descent through pink Martian skies late on Sunday to clinch an historic landing inside an ancient crater, ready to search for signs the Red Planet may once have harbored key ingredients for life.

Mission controllers burst into applause and cheers as they received signals confirming that the car-sized rover had survived a perilous seven-minute descent NASA called the most elaborate and difficult feat in the annals of robotic spaceflight.

Just who is jumping here?

Once again it is the season for political frogs to jump in the Wild Wild East. To be fair to these politicians, they don’t see themselves as “political amphibians”.

If you know Lajim, you would know that he is not that smart with smartphone. Earlier this year, he joked that he owned three smartphones – one for personal use, one for Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak and one for Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim. And when one of the phones rang, he did not know who was calling him – his wife, Najib or Anwar.

ONE MAN'S MEAT By PHILIP GOLINGAI, The Star

THIRTEEN more Sabah politicians will jump. That was the rumour in Sabah after Umno’s Datuk Seri Lajim Ukin and Upko’s Datuk Wilfred Bumburing announced they had become PKR friendly MPs.

“Who?” I asked when told on Monday, a day after the weekend jumps.

Bersih Sabah makes recommendations for RCI

KOTA KINABALU:Bersih Sabah calls on the government to allow views from civil society to be considered in the formation of the Royal Commision of Inquiry (RCI) and the drafting of the Terms of Reference (TOR).

According to Bersih Sabah spokesperson Andrew Ambrose (also known as Atama), "While we welcome the announcement, we also wish that the government would listen to its own people. We want to contribute and help the government in its effort in establishing a comprehensive and all-encompassing RCI."

Who Created God?

If something comes into being, it must have been prompted by something else. A book has an author. Music has a music artist. A party has a party-thrower! All things that begin, that have a start, have a cause to their beginning.

Consider the universe. Scientists once held to the "steady-state" theory, that the universe has always existed without beginning.

Cosmological evidence now refers to the "Big bang" as the point in time that the universe came into being. Our space-time-matter-energy universe had a distinct and singular beginning.

Was There Ever Nothing?

A thought journey on the
beginning of time and
the origin of the universe

Have you ever thought about the beginning? What is that, you say? You know -- whatever it was that showed up first. Or whatever it was that was here first, at the earliest moment in time. Have you ever strained your brain to think about that?

Wait a minute, you say, isn't it possible that in the beginning there was nothing? Isn't it possible that kazillions of years ago, there wasn't anything at all? That's certainly a theory to consider. So let's consider it -- but first by way of analogy.

Let's say you have a large room. It's fully enclosed and is about the size of a football field. The room is locked, permanently, and has no doors or windows, and no holes in its walls.

Angry natives to sue over ‘access fee’ order

A plantation company owned by an Sarawak
ex-assemblyman has ordered natives to pay
an 'access fee' to enter their own farms.

Source

KUCHING: Native landowners of Kampung Danau, Melikin, Serian are preparing to sue an oil palm company which is allegedly using gangsters to threaten them and prevent them from entering their gardens and farms.

The natives have instructed lawyer Baru Bian to file a legal suit against United Teamtrade Sdn Bhd for asking them to pay for access into their own lands.

“We will file the suit very soon, maybe next week against the oil palm company,” said Bian.

According to Bian, the natives received a letter signed by one Ha Haw Kong, who is a director of United Teamtrade Sdn Bhd, claiming that the lands now belonged to the company as they had been awarded provisional leases and that villagers wanting to enter the land must now pay an accessibility fee.

Near brawl at Sarawak polls briefing

PKR has rapped Sarawak's Assistant Minister of
Youth Development Karim Hamzah for "opening his
shirt" and daring a party official to a fight.

Source

KUCHING: A ruckus at an Election Commission briefing has left the opposition here seething.

Shocked state PKR leaders who attended the briefing said Assistant Minister of Youth Development Abdul Karim Hamzah had behaved “like a gangster” towards the party’s Senadin candidate Dr Michael Teo.

According to one of the leaders who declined to be named, during the question and answer session, Teo had claimed that the postal votes cast by uniformed personnel could be manipulated if the ballot boxes were not placed at the tallying centres after voting process. Teo also alleged that it might lead to vote tampering.

“Karim became angry and told Teo to stop asking stupid questions. Teo then replied that he was not talking to him but to the Election Commission chairman and other officials.

‘Defection decision won’t help Sabah’

Political maverick Jeffrey Kitingan is disappointed
in Lajim Ukin and Wilfred Bumburing's decision to
align themselves with Pakatan Rakyat.

By Luke Rintod of FMT

KOTA KINABALU: Sabah opposition leader Jeffrey Kitingan has likened Lajim Ukin and Wilfred Bumburing’s decision to align themselves with PKR instead of state-based parties to that of “subconsciously perpetuating a subservient political mentality” in Sabah.

“I would have preferred them to be with me in State Reform Party (STAR) as it is better for us Sabahan leaders to be in our own strength to correct the situation we are in,” he said here.

Bumburing and Lajim had on July 29 officially aligned themselves with Pakatan Rakyat, especially with PKR, in a move many see as a selfish effort to prolong their respective stay in politics.

Both leaders were openly known to be on Barisan Nasional’s drop-list as candidates in the impending general election. Lajim had openly accused Sabah Umno head and Chief Minister Musa Aman of dropping him.

UN General Assembly now asks Syria's Bashir Assad to step down

By PETER JAMES SPIELMANN of Associated Press

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Arab countries pushed ahead Wednesday with a symbolic U.N. General Assembly resolution that tells Syrian President Bashar Assad to resign and turn over power to a transitional government. It also demands that the Syrian army stop its shelling and helicopter attacks and withdraw to its barracks. A vote is set for Friday morning.

The draft resolution circulated up through Wednesday takes a swipe at Russia and China by "deploring the Security Council failure" to act. Moscow and Beijing have used their veto in the smaller, more powerful Council three times to kill resolutions that could have opened the door to sanctions on Syria.