GEORGE TOWN: The scarcity of land on Penang island and its lure as a tourist destination and a second home for foreign retirees have caused residential property prices to soar by more than 25% over the past five years.
According to real estate valuers, the prices are among the highest in Malaysia, which is why the Consumers Association of Penang claimed that only the rich could live on the island a world heritage city.
A survey by The Star revealed that condominium units in Batu Ferringhi, Tanjung Bungah and Gurney Drive which front the sea are being sold at astronomical prices, in some cases beginning with RM2mil for a 1,000 sq ft unit.
Crowded skyline: High-rise buildings dot Gurney Drive, which was once a sedate, low-density area where locals came to relax. — K.T. GOH / The Star
Even pre-war houses in the inner city for example, in Campbell Street have been snapped up mostly by non-Penangites, who have turned them into boutique hotels or simply kept them because of their architectural beauty.
The prices of the houses have rocketed from about RM500,000 in 2007 to approximately RM800,000 today an increase of about 30%.
Raine & Horne Malaysia director Michael Geh said the increase was among the steepest in the Pulau Tikus, Gurney Drive, Tanjung Tokong, and Tanjung Bungah residential neighbourhoods, which experienced a rise of over 25% in prices of condominium units.
Other areas where prices of condominium units and terrace and semi-detached houses have shot up by at least 25% are Bayan Baru, Sungai Ara, Minden Heights and Batu Maung.
The medium-range housing schemes in George Town neighbourhoods of Perak Road, MacCallum Street, Burmah Road, Jelutong Road and Sungai Pinang have not been spared.
“These have seen over a 25% increase in prices over the past five years,” Geh said.
An apartment located in such a neighbourhood cost RM180,000 in 2007 but is now RM250,000,
Geh said the rise in property prices had driven many people to buy homes in Seberang Prai, where property prices are a third of those on the island.
“But we are seeing property prices on the mainland rising as well,” he added.
An apartment in Butterworth town is now selling for RM250,000, compared to RM180,000 five years ago, while a terrace house now costs RM500,000, compared to RM300,000 in 2007.
Mushroo ming buildings : A file picture showing Penang’s Gurney Drive in 2008. Many high-rise projects have sprouted there since.
Given the rise of raw materials prices and the scarcity of land, property prices in Penang were expected to continue rising, Geh added.
Meanwhile, Penang Barisan Nasional chairman Teng Chang Yeow said there were only one or two major hillslope projects during the previous administration. Now, there were hillslope projects all over the island.
He said the present guidelines on hillslope development were adequate, but the state government should be more stringent in enforcing them.- The Star/Asia News Network
Don't blush, but chances are the magazines you read are getting sexier.
Sexy advertisements are up in magazines from Playboy to Time and Newsweek to Esquire, according to new research from the University of Georgia. Since 1983, the percent of ads using sex to sell products rose from 15 percent to 27 percent by 2003.
Though sexual imagery is used to sell almost everything, even banking services, the bulk of the increase has come in ads for impulse buys: alcohol, entertainment, beauty supplies. These products have long clung to the "sex sells" maxim, said study researcher Tom Reichert, a professor of advertising and public relations at the University of Georgia.
"Advertisers use sex because it can be very effective," Reichert said in a statement. (Past research has suggested, however, that sex doesn't sell to female readers, with sensual advertising images leaving women bored and uninterested.)
Sex sells
Reichert and his colleagues analyzed 3,232 ads published between 1983 and 2003 in six magazines: Cosmopolitan, Redbook, Esquire, Playboy, Newsweek and Time. These magazines were chosen because they have large circulations, include titles that appeal to both men and women, and because they have been included in past studies, allowing for easy comparison across time.
About half of the advertisements included models. Researchers analyzed these ads based on how sexily the models were dressed and whether they were engaging in physical contact, such as kissing or simulated sex, with another model. [Sex Quix: Myths, Taboos & Bizarre Facts]
The ads for health and hygiene products were the sexiest of all ads, with 38 percent containing sexual imagery across the three-decade study period. Beauty came in second, at 36 percent. Drugs and medications, which include weight-loss supplements, came in third with 29 percent of ads containing sexy models.
Just more than a quarter, or 27 percent, of clothing ads showed sex appeal during the study period, compared with 23 percent of travel ads and 21 percent of entertainment ads.
The overall uptick in sexiness was driven by increasingly sex-obsessed ads for alcohol, entertainment and beauty products. In 1983, only 9 percent of alcohol ads used sex to sell booze. Today, that number stands at 37 percent. Sexually arousing entertainment ads increased from 10 percent in 1983 to 33 percent today, and 51 percent of beauty ads now include sexiness, compared with 23 percent in 1983.
Modeling sexuality
Women are overwhelmingly the vehicles by which advertisers portray sexuality, the researchers found. That trend has held for three decades. In 1983, 11 percent of all advertisements contained sexy women, and only 3 percent contained sexy men. As of 2003, 22 percent of ads included sexy ladies, while only 6 percent featured smoldering hunks.
Sexy images popped up in odd places, including in 5 percent of advertisements for financial products in 2003. But for the most part, advertisers use sex to sell products that people might buy on a whim, such as a new flavor of vodka or a papaya-scented lotion. Only two categories — charities and computer companies — never used sex in their ads in this sample.
"Sex is not as effective when selling high-risk, informational products such as banking services, appliances and utility trucks," Reichert said.
The researchers reported their results online in May in the Journal of Current Issues & Research in Advertising
Self-styled porn star Luka Rocco Magnotta has been arrested in a Berlin internet café, where he was identified while watching pornography and reading news stories about the global effort to track him down. His capture came as a relief to Montreal’s Chinese community, following the identification late last week of Wuhan-born student Lin Jun, whom Magnotta allegedly murdered, dismembered and mailed parts of to political parties.
The murder of Mr. Lin has provoked widespread shock and anger in China, where many believe the crime was racially motivated. The Chinese embassy in Ottawa has warned citizens living or travelling in Canada to “strengthen their personal security” in the wake of the deadly attack.
Mr. Lin’s death is the second killing of a Chinese student in Canada in just over a year, following last April’s murder of York University studentLiu Qian, part of which was watched on Skype by her boyfriend back in China.
[…] A makeshift memorial to Mr. Lin sprang up in downtown Montreal in front of the statue of Norman Bethune, the Canadian surgeon regarded as a hero in China. The foot of the statue was covered with bouquets along with a note in English, French and Chinese that summed up the sense of relief over Mr. Magnotta’s arrest: “We got that beast.”
“The Chinese Embassy in Canada reminds Chinese citizens traveling in Canada, as well as students and the staff of Chinese organizations in Canada, to improve their self-protection [and] awareness, and to strengthen their personal security,” reads the final paragraph of the Embassy’s Chinese-language statement on Mr. Lin’s murder, which called condemned the “heinous criminal act.” A similar warning was posted on the webpage of the Chinese consulate in Montreal.
[…] “The impact of the case will be very bad on Canada,” Meng Xiaochao, the boyfriend who witnessed the attack on Ms. Liu, said in an interview. “Last year when Liu Qian’s case happened, many parents said they were no longer willing to send their children to Canada. Now here comes this other case.”
More than 50,000 Chinese students currently live and study in Canada. Like all foreign students, they pay higher tuition than their Canadian-born classmates, making them highly sought-after by cash-strapped universities. Another 242,000 Chinese came to Canada as tourists last year, a number the travel industry had been hoping would increase by as much as one-fifth this year.
Porn star accused of killing gay ex-lover ate victim's body parts, claim police
Video footage of the suspected Montreal murderer Luka Rocco Magnotta show him eating the body parts of his alleged victim, police said yesterday.
Montreal Police Commander Ian Lafrenière said that while it could not be confirmed, his officers suspected Magnotta of eating parts of the lover he is accused of killing and dismembering.
German prosecutors further revealed yesterday that they intended to extradite Magnotta to Canada following his surprise arrest in Berlin on Monday.
The pornographic-film actor and model, 29, is wanted on suspicion of murdering and dismembering his male Chinese student lover and sending his victim's body parts to political parties in one of Canada's most gruesome killings.
Magnotta fled from Montreal to Berlin via Paris. He was arrested in an internet café in the German capital on Monday morning. Yesterday he appeared before a judge and was remanded in custody until further notice.
Prosecutors said they were awaiting a request from Montreal Police for his extradition. A spokesman said the process could take "several days".
Canadian police have confiscated a film of a man killing his victim with an ice pick. The video is thought to show Magnotta murdering his 33-year-old lover, Jun Lin. His motive is said to have been jealousy. The killer is suspected of dismembering his victim's body and posting parts of the corpse to Canada's Conservative and Liberal parties.
Magnotta is nicknamed "psycho killer" because the soundtrack to the video allegedly showing the murder carried excerpts from the film American Psycho.
Canadian porn actor who killed man and mailed body parts arrested
Berlin: A Canadian porn actor suspected of murdering and dismembering a Chinese student and mailing his body parts to Canada's top political parties was reading about himself on the internet when he was arrested on Monday at a cafe in Berlin.
Canadian investigators say 29-year-old Luka Magnotta's obsessions led him to post internet videos of his killing kittens, then a man, and finally to his arrest at the cafe where he had spent two hours reading media coverage of himself.
An international manhunt set off by a case of internet gruesomeness that captured global attention ended quietly in the working-class Neukoelln district of the German capital when a cafe employee recognised Magnotta from a newspaper photo and flagged down a police car.
Confronted by seven officers, "He tried at first giving fake names but in the end he just said: 'You got me’," said police spokesman Guido Busch. "He didn't resist."
Magnotta is wanted by Canadian authorities on suspicion of killing Jun Lin, a 33-year-old man he dated, in Canada, and mailing his body parts to two of Canada's top political parties before fleeing to Europe.
They say Magnotta filmed the murder of the Chinese student in his Montreal studio apartment and posted it online. The video shows a man with an ice pick stabbing another naked, bound male. He also dismembers the corpse and performs sexual acts with it in what police called a horrifying video.
The warning signs apparently were already there. For nearly two years animal activists had been looking for a man who tortured and killed cats and posted videos of his cruelty online. Since Lin's murder, Montreal police have released a photo from the video which they say is of Magnotta.
In 2005, Magnotta was accused of sexually assaulting a woman, but the charges were dropped, the lawyer who represented him at the time said.
Magnotta is believed to have fled to France on May 26, based on evidence police found at his apartment and a blog he once posted about disappearing.
In Germany, surveillance camera footage of the internet cafe, obtained by the Associated Press, showed Magnotta casually walking in to the shop at noon local time, wearing jeans, a green hoodie sweater and sunglasses.
He briefly spoke to the internet cafe's desk person, then walked off to his assigned computer with the number 25 where he would later be spotted reading the news about his case.
About two hours later, seven German police officers are seen walking into the shop, without any haste or arms.
On the camera footage, three police officers are seen accompanying the handcuffed Magnotta a couple of minutes after they first entered the cafe. Magnotta calmly walks alongside them, again wearing sunglasses.
In Germany, police spokeswoman Kerstin Ziesmer said Magnotta is being questioned, and will be brought before a judge behind closed doors.
"He says he is the wanted person," she added, while cautioning that his identity must still be independently confirmed by German authorities.
Canada, like Europe, has no death penalty, making extradition more likely. Quebec bureau of prosecutions spokesman Rene Verret said it could still take a long time to get him back to Canada, but he said if Magnotta doesn't contest the order he could be returned within a couple of weeks.
The case's full horror emerged when a package containing a severed foot was opened at the ruling Conservative Party headquarters on May 29. That same day a hand was discovered at a postal facility, addressed to the Liberal Party of Canada. And a torso was found in a suitcase on a garbage dump in Montreal, outside Magnotta's apartment building. Police in masks combed through the blood-soaked Montreal studio apartment last Wednesday.
As they unraveled his background, police discovered that Luka Magnotta changed his name from Eric Clinton Newman in 2006 and that he was born in Scarborough, Ontario. He is also known as Vladimir Romanov.
His mother, Anna Yourkin in Peterbourgh, Ontario, said she had no comment, apologised and hung up the phone.
Toronto lawyer Peter Scully said he represented Magnotta in a fraud case in 2004 and a sexual assault case in 2005.
He said Magnotta was charged with a dozen counts of fraud and impersonation for using a woman's credit card to buy about $17,000 worth of goods, including a television, DVD player and several cellphones. He said he pleaded guilty to four fraud-related charges after serving 16 days in pre-trial custody. He received a nine-month conditional sentence and a year of probation.
Scully said Magnotta was charged with sexually assaulting a woman in 2005, but the prosecution decided to withdraw the charges. The woman's father became so irate and threatening that Scully said he wrote a letter to police and the prosecutor, telling them about it.
Scully remembered Magnotta as soft spoken and polite.
"I've had lots of creepy characters and Eric did not stand out as one of them," he said. Scully refers to his client by his previous name, Eric Newman.
But Nina Arsenault, a Toronto transsexual who said she had a relationship with Magnotta over a decade ago, described him as a drug user with a temper, who sometimes turned his anger on himself, hitting himself on the head, and other parts of his body.
While Magnotta described himself in an online video interview with a site called "Naked News" as a stripper and male escort, Lin, who was from Wuhan, China, was registered as an undergraduate in the engineering department and computer science at Concordia University in Montreal. Police have confirmed Magnotta is a porn actor and that he and Jun had a relationship.
Zoya De Frias Lakhany, 21, a fellow Concordia student in some of Lin's classes, said he was an excellent student who was shy and humble. She said she cried all weekend.
"He was happy here, he would take pictures of the snow and post them," she recalled. "He was sweet, never complained and smiled all the time."
Montreal Police Cmdr Ian Lafreniere said investigators are extremely relieved and pleased about the arrest.
"We said from the beginning that the web has been used to glorify himself and we believe the web brought him down," said Lafreniere. "He was recognised because his photo was everywhere."
Costs billions ... the DDG-1000, the US Navy's next-generation destroyer. Photo: AP
A super-stealthy warship that could underpin the US Navy's China strategy will be able to sneak up on coastlines virtually undetected and pound targets with electromagnetic "railguns" right out of a sci-fi movie.
But at more than $US3 billion a pop, critics say the new DDG-1000 destroyer sucks away funds that could be better used to bolster a thinly stretched conventional fleet. One outspoken admiral in China has scoffed that all it would take to sink the high-tech American ship is an armada of explosive-laden fishing boats.
With the first of the new ships set to be delivered in 2014, the stealth destroyer is being heavily promoted by the Pentagon as the most advanced destroyer in history - a silver bullet of stealth. It has been called a perfect fit for what Washington now considers the most strategically important region in the world - Asia and the Pacific.
Though it could come in handy elsewhere, like in the Gulf region, its ability to carry out missions both on the high seas and in shallows closer to shore is especially important in Asia because of the region's many island nations and China's long Pacific coast.
"With its stealth, incredibly capable sonar system, strike capability and lower manning requirements - this is our future," Admiral Jonathan Greenert, chief of naval operations, said in April after visiting the shipyard in Maine where they are being built.
On a visit to a major regional security conference in Singapore that ended on Sunday, US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta said the Navy will be deploying 60 per cent of its fleet worldwide to the Pacific by 2020, and though he didn't cite the stealth destroyers he said new high-tech ships will be a big part of its shift.
The DDG-1000 and other stealth destroyers of the Zumwalt class feature a wave-piercing hull that leaves almost no wake, electric drive propulsion and advanced sonar and missiles. They are longer and heavier than existing destroyers - but will have half the crew because of automated systems and appear to be little more than a small fishing boat on enemy radar.
Down the road, the ship is to be equipped with an electromagnetic railgun, which uses a magnetic field and electric current to fire a projectile at several times the speed of sound.
But cost overruns and technical delays have left many defence experts wondering if the whole endeavour was too focused on futuristic technologies for its own good.
They point to the problem-ridden F-22 stealth jet fighter, which was hailed as the most advanced fighter ever built but was cut short because of prohibitive costs. Its successor, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, has swelled up into the most expensive procurement program in US Defence Department history.
"Whether the Navy can afford to buy many DDG-1000s must be balanced against the need for over 300 surface ships to fulfill the various missions that confront it," said Dean Cheng, a China expert with the Heritage Foundation, a conservative research institute in Washington. "Buying hyperexpensive ships hurts that ability, but buying ships that can't do the job, or worse can't survive in the face of the enemy, is even more irresponsible."
The Navy says it's money well spent. The rise of China has been cited as the best reason for keeping the revolutionary ship afloat, although the specifics of where it will be deployed have yet to be announced. Navy officials also say the technologies developed for the ship will inevitably be used in other vessels in the decades ahead.
But the destroyers' $US3.1 billion price tag, which is about twice the cost of the current destroyers and balloons to $US7 billion each when research and development is added in, nearly sank it in Congress. Though the Navy originally wanted 32 of them, that was cut to 24, then seven.
Now, just three are in the works.
"Costs spiraled - surprise, surprise - and the program basically fell in on itself," said Richard Bitzinger, a security expert at Singapore's Nanyang Technological University. "The DDG-1000 was a nice idea for a new modernistic surface combatant, but it contained too many unproven, disruptive technologies."
The US Defence Department is concerned that China is modernising its navy with a near-term goal of stopping or delaying US intervention in conflicts over disputed territory in the South China Sea or involving Taiwan, which China considers a renegade province.
China is now working on building up a credible aircraft carrier capability and developing missiles and submarines that could deny American ships access to crucial sea lanes.
The US has a big advantage on the high seas, but improvements in China's navy could make it harder for US ships to fight in shallower waters, called littorals. The stealth destroyers are designed to do both. In the meantime, the Navy will begin deploying smaller Littoral Combat Ships to Singapore later this year.
Officially, China has been quiet on the possible addition of the destroyers to Asian waters.
But Rear Admiral Zhang Zhaozhong, an outspoken commentator affiliated with China's National Defence University, scoffed at the hype surrounding the ship, saying that despite its high-tech design it could be overwhelmed by a swarm of fishing boats laden with explosives. If enough boats were mobilised some could get through to blow a hole in its hull, he said.
AP
China laughs at Planned American Stealth destroyer "It really sucks"
The US Navy is readying a $7 billion boat that can launch attacks faster than the speed of sound and is practically invisible to detection. Even with that hefty cost, however, China says it will only take a few fishing boats to blow up the DDG-1000.
The chief of US naval operations says that the DDG-1000 super-stealth destroyer warship is the “future” of America’s on-the-water weaponry, and at that price tag it better be. Right now the ship is costing taxpayers around $3.1 billion but the price of research and development is likely to bring the tally to more than double. The ship is several years in the making and the first of its kind is expected to be ready by 2014, but critics in China — the very place Uncle Sam plans to send his up and coming fleet — are laughing at America’s latest endeavor.
"It would be a goner," Rear Adm. Zhang Zhaozhong of China's National Defense University tells the nation’s CCTV military channel.
The US intends on sending its newest ship towards China’s Pacific Coast where it will be able to monitor activity in the budding region without being easily detected. The boat’s wave-piercing hull will leave almost no wake in the water, reports the Associated Press, and upgrades to the ship will eventually equip it with electromagnetic railguns that can shoot projectiles by using an electric current and magnetic field to fire at enemy targets. Zhaozhong warns, however, that where the US invests in unnecessary weaponry and sleek, stealth technology, it fails to properly outfit the ship with the material to keep it from going kerplunk.
According to the AP, Zhaozhong claims that the DDG-1000’s impressive design could be easily overwhelmed by a mere fleet of fishing boats that are laden with explosives. If enough of those boats could be mobilized around the stealth ship, says Zhaozhong, its high-tech hull could be blown apart sending the boat straight to the bottom of the sea.
That, of course, is not how the Pentagon wants to spend a few billion dollars. "Whether the Navy can afford to buy many DDG-1000s must be balanced against the need for over 300 surface ships to fulfill the various missions that confront it," Dean Cheng, a China expert with the Heritage Foundation, adds to the AP. "Buying hyper-expensive ships hurts that ability, but buying ships that can't do the job, or worse can't survive in the face of the enemy, is even more irresponsible."
A 2008 report on the ship from US Navy Vice Admiral Barry McCullough revealed that “the DDG-1000 cannot perform area air defense” and that the ship essentially lacked any ability to fire at enemies located above, making it a sitting duck for air attacks. At the time, a naval source with Defense News said that the ship "could carry and launch standard missiles, but the DDG 1000 combat system cant guide those missiles onward to a target."
Off the sea and in the air, the Pentagon is having other problems with costly crafts that aren’t operating up to snuff. After a serviceman was killed on board an F-22 Raptor stealth jet in 2010, the Air Force has repeatedly grounded the fleet over security concerns. Recently, several pilots announced that they would refuse to board the craft until all of its kinks were worked out. The Air Force has spent around $77.4 billion on its F-22 fleet so far — the cost of building and maintaining around 11 of the DDG-1000s — but has been forced to ground them time and time again. Around $400billion worth of high-tech F-35 fighter jets have been grounded no fewer than three times as well.
Although the Navy first ordered 32 of the DDG-1000s, they have slashed that figure three times; once the first boat is finished, only two more are currently slated to join it.
Crowded skyline: High-rise buildings dot Gurney Drive, which was once a sedate, low-density area where locals came to relax. — K.T. GOH / The Star 
Mushroo ming buildings : A file picture showing Penang’s Gurney Drive in 2008. Many high-rise projects have sprouted there since. 
