KUALA LUMPUR: A virtual friendship cost a 47-year-old housewife a very real RM1.2mil.
The con man she had befriended on the Internet did not just wipe out her savings but also that of her mother, sister, niece and her husband’s funds for investments.
The woman, who only wanted to be known as Madam Lee, said a man who claimed to be a British offshore engineer named Jeff Brian Manik had added her to his list of online friends last year.
Serious matter: Chong speaking to reporters at Wisma
MCA in Kuala Lumpur on Wednesday. On his right is Lee.
Lee said the man told her that he was sending 10 gifts for Easter, including a designer wrist watch, perfume, a Louis Vuitton bag, jewellery, a laptop computer, a camera and his latest picture through a courier service in April.
“He asked me to pay RM16,500 as a deposit to claim those gifts, which I did by banking the money into two local bank accounts, but I did no see any gifts in the end,” she told a press conference held by MCA Public Services and Complaints Department head Datuk Michael Chong yesterday.
She said she received an e-mail from a man said to be Manik’s agent about two weeks later who told her Manik wanted to invest in property in Malaysia and needed her help to handle his £2.3mil for the transaction. “I was convinced after I met the agent at a hotel with a suitcase of pound sterling notes,” she said.
Lee said she deposited cash close to RM400,000 with various agents via various account names between April 20 and May 11 for the transfer of the money here.
She said she deposited RM586,000 into a company account on May 16 after she received a call from one of the agents that there was a 5% tax charge on the £2.5mil.On May 26, Lee said she paid another RM258,000 to the same company.
Lee said she felt something was amiss when she never received the gifts but she was convinced by the so-called agent about the so-called Manik’s interest in investing in Malaysia.
“I just wanted to help a friend but I did not expect it to turn out like this, I just want the money back to repay my family and friends,” she said, adding that she had never met Manik.
This week, she lodged a police report. Chong said he had received complaints from 18 women of a similar cheating scam with losses amounting to more than RM2.4mil since 2007.
“Please be wary of these con men,” he said. “Some of these women were not only cheated of their hearts but all their money, too.”
Chong said the British High Commission had received many complaints of such cases where a man with a British accent would befriend a woman through the Internet.
Lawyers suing Google claimed Thursday they have discovered evidence in a patent application that Google deliberately programmed its Street View cars to collect private data from open Wi-Fi networks, despite claims to the contrary.
“At this point, it is our belief that it is not an accident,” said Brooks Cooper, an Oregon attorney suing Google in one of several class actions lawsuits around the country arising from Google’s disclosure that its Street View cars intercepted Wi-Fi traffic around the world. Google has described the sniffing as a coding error.
The evidence, the relevance of which Google disputed Thursday, is a 2008 Google patent application (.pdf) describing a method to increase the accuracy of location-based services — services that would allow advertisers or others to know almost the exact location of a mobile phone or other computing device. The patent application involves intercepting data and analyzing the timing of transmission as part of the method for pinpointing user locations.
The so-called “776″ patent application, published by U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in January, describes “one or more of the methods” by which Google collects information for its Street View program, Cooper’s legal team said in court documents filed late Wednesday in federal court in Oregon.
Google spokeswoman Christine Chen said in an e-mail that the patent in question “is entirely unrelated to the software code used to collect Wi-Fi information with Street View cars.” In a follow up e-mail, Chen added that Google files “patent applications on a variety of ideas that our engineers come up with. Some of them mature into real products or services, and some of them don’t.”
Chen did not immediately respond to an e-mail asking whether Google has performed the “776″ method in practice.
Whether Google willfully sniffed out internet traffic on unsecured Wi-Fi hotspots in dozens of countries is an enormous public relations headache. It also carries huge legal and monetary ramifications in the United States, where the Mountain View, California, internet giant is being sued for privacy violations in multiple federal courthouses.
Among other reasons, Google might escape liability if it accidentally collected and never divulged the data, which includes web pages users visited or pieces of e-mail, video, audio and document files.
Google must turn over the U.S. data it siphoned to a federal judge in Oregon by Friday. The data will remain under lock and key.
Street View is part of Google Maps and Google Earth, and provides panoramic pictures of streets and their surroundings across the globe.
The internet giant has maintained the collection of data was inadvertent –- the result of a programming error with code written for an early experimental project that wound up on the Street View code. Google said it didn’t realize it was sniffing packets of data on unsecured Wi-Fi networks in dozens of countries for the last three years, until German privacy authorities began questioning what data Google’s Street View cameras were collecting.
Google's Street View probe joined by Spain, Italy, France
Google, under investigation in Germany for the data-gathering practices of its Street View mapping service, now faces probes in Spain, France and Italy for possible violation of privacy laws.
Google, under investigation in Germany for the data-gathering practices of its Street View mapping service, now faces probes in Spain, France and Italy for possible violation of privacy laws.
Spain's Data Protection Authority on Tuesday ordered an investigation of whether Google breached national privacy rules by collecting and storing data from Wi-Fi networks and information sent over these networks. Italy and France also ordered inquiries.
The Spanish agency "will call on Google to explain whether it has captured data without the consent of citizens in Spain," it said in an e-mailed statement May 19. It sent a formal request urging Google "to block the data associated with wireless networks gathered in Spanish territory."
The Hamburg Prosecutors' Office said it is investigating people at Google on suspicion of criminal-data capture. German data regulators are already looking into how cars that Google used to take pictures for Street View ended up with private data from Wi-Fi networks that weren't password-protected.
Google co-founder Sergey Brin said Wednesday that the company "screwed up" by collecting and storing information from Wi-Fi networks while gathering data for its Street View mapping service. The company is imposing more internal controls after it mistakenly captured the data, Brin said at a news conference in San Francisco. Street View allows Google users to click on maps to see photographs of roadsides. Officials from 30 European countries on May 11 adopted a common approach to keep Google from infringing privacy rights as the service is rolled out in Europe. They want Google, owner of the world's biggest search engine, to improve blurring techniques used to disguise images.
"The product as such is not in breach, but more measures have to be taken to improve how images are gathered and used," Gerard Lommel, a Luxembourg member of the so-called Article 29 Data Protection Working Party, said May 11. The group is made up of the European Union's 27 nations, plus Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway.
Switzerland's data-protection agency sued Google in November for allegedly failing to comply with proposals to make it harder to identify people and cars on Street View. That case is pending.
Google will open an online-applications store for Web browsers including its own Chrome offering, as it works to make more software accessible via the Internet.
The store, slated to open later this year, will provide free and paid apps, Sundar Pichai, a Google vice president, said Wednesday at the company's developers conference in San Francisco. Magazines, games and music providers will be among the offered applications.
Subsidy cuts will not hamper bid to remove wastage or curb inefficiencies
PETALING JAYA: The proposed subsidy reduction will not deter the Government from fighting corruption, removing wastage and curbing inefficiencies.
Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Datuk Seri Idris Jala said this was clearly spelt out in the Government Transformation Plan (GTP), where one of the national key result areas (NKRAs) was to combat corruption.
He cited the approval of the Whistleblower Protection Act in Parliament and the conviction of 97 offenders for corruption as examples of work in progress.
In an interview, Idris reassured low-income earners that the poor would continue to be protected. The Performance Management and Delivery Unit’s (Pemandu) proposal to reduce subsidy last week had stirred a strong reaction from Malaysians, with many questioning the Government’s rationale. Idris, who is also Pemandu CEO, took the questions head on as he explained the rationale behind the recommendations.
Q: Why did you say that Malaysia will go bankrupt in 2019? Have you misled us?
A: During the Open Day, I presented some salient facts about the economy. For the last 10 years, we have been running a fiscal deficit which has been growing progressively from RM5bil in 1998, to a record high of RM47bil in 2009. This was due to Government expenditure, including subsidies, escalating whereas Government revenue has not kept pace as our GDP grew at only 3% per annum. Consequently, the Government has to borrow a lot of money to cover for the shortfall. Our Government debt in 1997 was RM90bil and has grown at a rate of 12% per annum to reach a record RM362bil in 2009.
In addition, as a proportion to GDP, Malaysia is one of the world’s highest subsidised countries with 4.7% of GDP compared to Indonesia 2.7%, Philippines 0.2% and OECD countries at 1.5% on average. (See chart 1) To be clear, I said we could go bankrupt IF, and I repeat the word IF, we continue with the same trend as in the past 10 years. Based on an annual increase of 12%, our debt will reach 100% of GDP in 2019 (a staggering RM1.158 trillion) and we could potentially go bankrupt then. Together with escalating fiscal deficit exceeding 10%, we could end up in a similar economic situation like Greece. (See chart 2)
According to studies conducted by Boston Consulting Group (BCG), countries get into sovereign crisis (bankruptcy) when: > Government debt is more than 100% of the GDP, > Fiscal deficit is more than 10% of GDP.
This is because Government revenue is not enough to service its debt and it does not have any money to operate.
All economists make assumptions and I did not say Malaysia will go bankrupt without qualifying it with certain assumptions. These assumptions are: – The GDP continues at a rate of 3% per annum; – Our deficit continues to balloon; and – Our Government debt continues to increase at a rate of 12% per annum.
The outcome of this projection is that by the year 2019, our debt will be 103% of GDP and our fiscal deficit will reach RM449bil (38% of GDP).
Unfortunately, some of the reports about Pemandu’s bankruptcy projections did not state these assumptions and therefore can be taken out of context.
Some people question whether our assumptions are realistic. I think it is fair to make projections into the future based on our historical trends over the last 10 years.
It is on this basis that Pemandu made its assumptions and therefore its projections.
These assumptions are used by Pemandu to make forecast about the future.
In reality, as a country, we will have to do everything we can to avoid this from happening. The Prime Minister has laid out four strategic pillars which make up the country’s roadmap to achieving Vision 2020 i.e.
> 1 Malaysia, People First, Performance Now; > Government Transformation Programme; > New Economic Model; and > 10th Malaysia Plan.
The future is clearly in our hands. And if all of us Malaysians work together, we can achieve Vision 2020. This involves concerted effort to grow our economy and be prudent in our spending.
> Surely there must be some positive things that are happening in our economy? Why are you not highlighting them?
Actually I highlighted those positive aspects of the economy. Firstly, I said our economy is rebounding in the first quarter of this year by 10.1%. This is the highest quarterly result in a decade. Our international competitiveness ranking has improved from 18th to 10th position. This is a phenomenal jump of eight places in one year. This should give us, as Malaysians, the comfort that we can shape a better future for our country.
> The Government should focus on growing the economy (thereby increasing Government revenue) rather than reducing the subsidies.
As I explained during the presentation, the Government will conduct 12 laboratories on National Key Economic Areas (NKEAs) to recommend ways for us to increase our economic growth (GNI per capita) from US$7,000 to US$15,000 by the year 2020. This will help to potentially increase Government revenue in the next 10 years. These laboratories, which run from June 1 until the end of July 2010, comprise more than 400 representatives from the private and public sector, facilitated by Pemandu. Once these laboratories are completed, we will conduct open days to exhibit the labs’ recommendations to the public. (See chart 3)
The Subsidy lab’s view is that growing the economy is necessary, but not sufficient.
We have to take a holistic approach by addressing both economic growth as well as expenditure/subsidy reduction.
> The Government should cut its expenditure rather than focus on subsidy reduction.
As part of the measures to reduce Government expenditure in the 2010 budget, the prime minister has announced a RM24bil reduction in expenditure and a projected reduction in fiscal deficit from 7.6% to 5.5% of GDP.
The prime minister also emphasised that all Government projects deliver “value for money”. Going forward, the Government will continue to adopt a prudent approach in terms of its spending and this will be apparent in the 10th Malaysia Plan.
> Why didn’t the Government conduct independent polls from the rakyat to gauge public feedback on the subsidy rationalisation?
That was exactly what we did. Before the Open Day, we asked Maxis to send an SMS blast to their phone subscribers asking whether Malaysia needs to reduce its subsidy bills.
Some 190,152 people responded, which showed that 115,246 people (61%) agreed for Malaysia to reduce subsidies and 123,557 people (67.5%) suggested to reduce subsidies gradually over three to five years.
During the Open Day, 1,899 people who attended responded. Of which, 1,712 people (90%) agreed that we should reduce subsidies and only a small minority (187) opposed the subsidy reduction.
> Why are we not protecting the poor and the low income in this Subsidy Rationalisation proposal?
For every subsidy reduction proposal, the lab has recommended mitigation measures to protect the rakyat, particularly the poor.
For example, in the case of increases in the electricity tariff, the mitigation measures are as follows: For those whose electricity consumption is less than 100 kWh per month, the Government will continue with the current practice of giving it free of charge. For those who consume between 101-200 kwH per month, the existing tariff apply (no change). Based on our statistics, these two categories constitute 56% of all consumers.
In the case of fuel price increase, the mitigation measures include cash rebate of RM126 per year for owners of cars less than 1,000cc and RM54 per year for owners of motorcycles less than 250cc.
Car and bike capacity is used as a proxy to determine the low income and the poor category.
In the case of flour, sugar and cooking oil and LPG cooking gas, the mitigation measure will include a cash rebate of RM20 per person per year. For a family of five, they will receive RM100 cash per year.
> We should not remove subsidy on Education, Health and Agriculture.
The lab agrees. Education is indeed an investment in Human Capital. We will continue to provide subsidies on education such as scholarship, text book assistance, food, etc. However, we will remove wastage and abuse, such as abolishing the subsidised fee for foreign students. For Health, we will continue to provide subsidies but with nominal outpatient fee of RM3, which incidentally is one of the lowest outpatient fees in the world.
For Agriculture and Fisheries, the subsidies will continue but we will improve implementation so that the subsidies will reach the target audience.
> Instead of subsidy reduction, the Government should focus on fighting corruption, removing wastage and improving efficiencies.
Under the Government Transfor-mation Programme (GTP), one of the six National Key Result Areas (NKRAs) is fighting corruption. To date, we have implemented several key initiatives to address this. For example, since January this year, we have passed the Whistleblower Protection Act in the Parliament, we have convicted and published 97 offenders in the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) website.
In the spirit of transparency, we have published 2,665 Government contract awards in the procurement portal and we have issued clear guidelines to prevent supporting letters from being abused.
In addition, we are implementing the Integrity Pact as recommended by Transparency International in Government procurement contracts. The Government is following up on the findings and recommendations of the Auditor General’s report.
> The Government should app-oint a high-powered team to renegotiate existing contracts with the Independent Power Producers (IPPs) and Highway Toll Conces-sionaires.
This is a fair suggestion. The lab will recommend this to the Cabinet.
> Don’t you realise that this is a very unpopular action by the Government that will cause Barisan Nasional to lose votes.
During the Open Day, we acknowledged this is the most unpopular action that the Government would have to take since independence and understandably, people will be shocked and angry.
The lab is of the opinion that we should not be partisan in addressing the issue of subsidy rationalisation. Indeed, in our panel discussion during the Open Day, we also invited DAP’s Tony Pua as a panellist.
However, we have to face realities and now we have to make the sacrifice for our future generations.
If we ask all Malaysians who are not yet born to participate in a public vote, we are sure that all of them would ask us to implement subsidy rationalisation now and they will condemn us for not having the courage and foresight to take this bold step.
The lab’s view is that we must take into account the views of both the existing and future generations of Malaysians.
ScienceDaily (June 2, 2010) — The size of tumors in prostate cancer patients is directly linked to their weight, according to a new six-year study conducted by researchers at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit.
The research team, led by Nilesh Patil, M.D., of Henry Ford's Vattikuti Urology Institute and Department of Radiology, found heavier patients, or those with the highest body mass index (BMI), also had the largest tumors. They discovered the connection after studying 3,327 patients who had undergone robotic removal of their cancerous prostate glands and surrounding tissue.
"As the patients body mass index increased, the tumor volume increased synchronously," says Dr. Patil. "Based on our results, we believe having a larger percentage of tumor volume may be contributing to the aggressive nature of the disease in men with a higher BMI."
The study will be presented June 2 at the 2010 American Urology Association's annual meeting in San Francisco.
Working from a well-established link between aggressive prostate cancer and higher BMI, the team set out to find if overweight and obesity specifically affects the tumor volume in cancerous prostates.
The BMI measures body fat based on combined height and weight in adult men and women, and sets a number that defines underweight, normal weight, overweight, and obesity -- from 18.5 or less for underweight to 30 or higher for obesity. Tumor volume is the size of a malignant tumor as a percentage of the space it takes up in the affected tissue, in this case the prostate gland.
Patients were studied from October 2001 to October 2007. They were divided into six categories based on their BMI -- 24.9 or less (normal or underweight), 25 to 29.9 (overweight), 30 to 34.9 (obese), and 40 or higher (morbidly obese). In each category, the mean age was about 60.
After their tumors were removed, each was weighed and compared to a categorized database of prostate weight. In each BMI category, they found the weight of the patient to be directly correlated to the size of the tumor (i.e. the smaller the patient, the smaller the tumor, and the heavier the patient, the larger the tumor).
In addition to Dr. Patil, study co-authors at Henry Ford Hospital included Sanjeev Kaul, M.D.; Akshay Bhandari, M.D.; James Peabody, M.D.; and Mani Menon, M.D.
The Greek sovereign-debt crisis and the attempts of the European Union to quell the simmering pot before it boils over is commanding the attention of the international community.
The sovereign-debt problem isn’t in any sense the end of the euro zone; not even the beginning of the end. The foreign- exchange rate of the euro may fluctuate against other leading currencies, as is to be expected in a floating-rate regime, but Greece isn’t going to withdraw from the euro zone, nor is it likely to be expelled by the other members.
Whatever the legal position, the view that Greece, or any other country in the throes of recession, should withdraw in order to benefit from devaluation of their currencies, is simply ludicrous. It is difficult to introduce a new currency at the best of times. But when the first item on the agenda of a new currency is likely to be a substantial devaluation, the mere suggestion might be sufficient to spark a civil war between creditors and debtors.
Given that all public as well as private-sector debts are denominated in euros, or other hard currencies, the introduction of a new drachma would provide little respite. It would probably cause the domestic banking system to collapse as its assets were devalued relative to its liabilities, and the government to default as the international community would hardly perceive such a move as being in its interests.
Long for Safety
The trend is actually going in the opposite direction as small countries, whose currencies lack credibility and stability in unregulated foreign-exchange markets, long for the safety of a major currency with deep reserves.
Nor is the euro zone likely to expel Greece, or any other aberrant member, notwithstanding the acknowledgement of cooked books as the latest addition to Greek fiscal cuisine.
A more pertinent question is whether the euro zone was wise to adopt measures to avert a Greek default. Two issues are pre- eminent here.
First, a bailout provides a classic case of moral hazard, both for other governments as well as for banks, which knowingly buy high-yielding, but risky assets.
Second, even after all the political grumbling and foot- dragging, the euro-zone governments had little option but to bail out Greece. Such is the involvement of German, French, Austrian and other banks in the Greek sovereign-debt market that the alternative would have been a rescue operation of domestic euro-zone banks. The motive was self-interest, not altruism.
Greatest Achievement
We need to consider that the European Union was conceived as a political entity, with the primary goal of eliminating warfare in Europe. The instruments of choice were closer integration of national economies, and political cooperation between national governments. Against this background, the single market has to be regarded as the greatest achievement of the EU to date.
Less well understood is that a single market, as a structure, can only work effectively and efficiently if supported by a number of complementary systems. One of these is undoubtedly the single currency and monetary union. Another is fiscal union: the public sector is too large a participant in the economy, creating incentives that may carry powerful externalities, to leave fiscal policy the autonomous concern of component member states. This piece of the jig-saw is missing.
Inevitable Phase
We need to view the current sovereign-debt problem as a second, inevitable phase of the international financial crisis, whose major eruption followed the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. in September 2008.
At that time, the interbank market was paralyzed due to increased credit risk and excessive leveraging, combined with an overextending of the maturity mismatch that lies at the heart of the financial system. The preceding decades of economic prosperity had been wasted; budget surpluses, inflated by the boom, became instruments of public largess or political adventurism. Cyclical correction was largely ignored; structural problems arising from demographic change, untenable pension systems and bloated public sectors, were confronted half- heartedly, if at all.
The stimulus packages to inflate economies sliding into recession, along with supportive monetary policies, were an unavoidable policy response. For reassurance, we need look no further than the decline in real income and the increase in unemployment in this crisis; painful as these have been, they pale into insignificance compared with the Great Depression. This was achieved at a cost of growing budgetary deficits and spiraling debt ratios, but surely it is worth the price.
Market Verdict
So why are the markets unimpressed? Why is the market verdict unfavorable?
This is a clear vote of no confidence in the political management and fiscal administration of our economies. The wasted opportunities in the past; the delusion that deregulation was all that was required to ensure prosperity; the public promotion of an incentive structure that juxtaposed personal enrichment with the public good and the self-laudatory conceit during the good times, are all now coming home to roost.
It was always clear that the financial crisis couldn’t be confined to a single market, if only because of the close linkages between such markets when regulatory hurdles have been removed. Once more, we must confront the issue of “too big to fail,” but this time in relation to sovereign governments. Once more, we must consider to what extent the European Central Bank should pump public-sector liquidity into a market when private- sector liquidity has dried up.
Prosperity With Growth
As for fiscal policy, it is imperative to restructure public-sector revenue and expenditure, as soon as developments allow, in order to regain the long-term path of sustainability. Prosperity can only come from economic growth, and this requires that we focus on investment in education, training and research.
We must be prepared to bite the bullet with regard to pensions and social services, something our governments have shown little appetite for to date. Sooner or later, we will have to stop trying to plug every leak in the dyke, permit some flooding if necessary, and be prepared to start again. The longer we wait, the more our economies are likely to underperform, relative to potential, for the foreseeable future.
(Hannes Androsch was Austria’s finance minister from 1970 to 1981. He is founder of AIC Androsch International Management Consulting in Vienna. The opinions expressed are his own.
Serious matter: Chong speaking to reporters at Wisma 
