Your vote makes the difference

Why do we want to change the most successful political entity in our country’s history? Umno has never failed itself!

Like him, hate him; whatever you may think of Anwar Ibrahim, you cannot ignore him. His presence is overwhelming.

For his detractors, he is the very personification of the excesses of Umno during his time as deputy prime minister and yet for those that have given up on Umno, he is the rising phoenix.

And having risen from the ashes, he now soars like an eagle above everything else and waits to land. When and where will that eagle land?

For those of you who are now in doubt about what good your vote can do in the millions to be cast during the 13th general election, I ask that you think again.

How do you think Anwar was able to keep his sanity and the fire burning within him to bring much- needed change to the way our government works throughout his solitary confinement in Sungai Buloh?

You and I have not reached the heights of office that he has, so we would never know what really went through his mind through the years of incarceration, but this much I know: he would have had enough time to reflect on the future – his and ours.

His future and ours will be determined by that vote you will cast among the millions on polling day. If you have persuaded yourself that you want our government to do things differently, then you can be rest assured that there will be others of similar mind.

If enough of us are persuaded thus, there we have it, our ability to make change happen.

Umno won’t change

But what do we want to change? Umno? Why do we want to change the most successful political entity in our country’s history? Umno has never failed itself.

Every political pundit, every analyst worth talking to, every authority worth his salt and every expert on the future of Malaysia, most of them confidently say that the time for Umno’s demise is nigh.

Are any of them aware that Umno has won all of the last 12 general elections?

At every twist and political turn, Umno has emerged victorious. How can you say Umno has failed itself when it has been the only government in Malaysia since independence? Every prime minister has been from Umno.

What has Umno set out to do, it has done.

Make every Umno president, their families, relatives, cronies, peers and sahabats wealthy beyond their wildest dreams? Done!

Make Ketuanan Melayu its cornerstone for political survival? Done!

Ensure that ethnicity – namely the Malays – will numerically outnumber the others through dedicated “pendatang asing” policies that welcome these immigrants and grant them citizenship – and in this way – ensures that the Malays now make up 60% of Malaysia’s population? Done!

Cement this numerical superiority by propagating a race-based “Ketuanan Melayu” policy that gives priority, economic advantage and “first among equals” advantage to the Malays in education, work opportunities and in all things Malaysian? Done!

Ensure that all government departments and agencies, MACC, EPF, police, Rela and the armed forces are at the beck and call of their political masters? Done!

Institutionalised money politics and endemic corruption into every nook and cranny of politics and into every facet of government functions? Done!

Power of our vote

It would be hard to persuade Umno and those that support Umno that we need to change the Umno-led Barisan Nasional government because it has been very successful in doing what it has wanted to do for itself.

And there are many millions that think that there is no need to change this BN government.

So the question we must ask ourselves today is this: are there enough of us out there who want change the way our government works? Are there enough of us to ensure that this happens?

And we want change not through an armed insurrection, not through the winds of change that the Arab Spring blew violently across the Middle East, no, not through any other way but through the ballot box – our votes – if we are allowed to cast it freely at this 13th general election.

That is why every one of your votes counts.

That is why we want to change this Umno that has never failed itself but has certainly failed the people of Malaysia too many times in too many ways and for too long a time.

Banned antibiotic in food product

Chicken frankfurter from Ayamas Food Corporation found to have prohibited substance ‘chloramphenicol’

KUCHING: A sample of chicken frankfurter product produced by Ayamas Food Corporation Sdn Bhd was found to contain the prohibited antibiotic ‘chloramphenicol’ during random testing by the State Veterinary Authority last week.

The detection of the substance has been confirmed by the Veterinary Authority in Kuala Lumpur, said Datuk Mong Dagang, Assistant Minister for Agriculture (Research and Marketing).

Chloramphenicol was previously used to treat diseases in chicks.

However, its use on food-producing animals was not permitted because harmful residues may remain in food products.

Mong told The Borneo Post on Saturday that the batch of chicken frankfurter tested had entered the state from Peninsular Malaysia through Bintulu.

“The State Health Department has been alerted and further action on the sales of products from Ayamas Food Corporation Sdn Bhd is up to them,” he said.

Mong added that following the shocking find, the state immediately suspended import of Ayamas products, while the State Veterinary Authority forwarded a notice of the suspension of importation of products from this company to importers on Nov 1.

The notice stated that the importation of whole chicken, poultry meat, poultry meat cut, and poultry meat value-added products (nugget, shelf-stable, bone-in, chunky meat, sausage, burger and meatball) from Ayamas had been suspended with immediate effect, until further notice, due to the detection of the banned substance.

On locally produced chicken products and products, Mong said they were safe for consumption.

“The Veterinary Authority will continue to remain vigilant, and so far locally produced chicken products are safe for consumption. That goes for those from Peninsular Malaysia too … but not from Ayamas.”

Meanwhile, Ayamas products were still on sale yesterday as the Health Department and Agriculture and Agro-Based Industry Ministry have not given directives for them to be removed.

When met at Giant Hypermarket in Tabuan here yesterday, Deputy Minister of Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs, Datuk Rohani Karim, said that the matter was “quite serious”, but it needed to be probed further.

“We (ministry) have not gotten any letter from the (state) ministry responsible. When we are notified, we will instruct our officers to act. If this is true, it is a serious case because it involves human health.”

Rohani, who is Batang Lupar MP, cautioned that offenders might be prosecuted under the Consumer Protection Act, which carries a maximum penalty of RM100,000 fine or three years in jail.

As for the Health Department, its director Datu Dr Zulkifli Jantan said on Saturday that his department would conduct another round of tests on Ayamas products to confirm the presence of Chloramphenicol.

“We will have to do some more tests for further confirmation, and if there were Chloramphenicol, then we shall seal the affected products.”

Prior to these official statements, the issue had gone viral in Facebook.

source: http://www.theborneopost.com/2012/11/05/banned-antibiotic-in-food-product/ 

鹅肝酱

鹅肝酱是法国大餐中的顶级美食，口感细腻入口即化，昂贵的价格更让普通人难得一品其美味。但是法国却不是鹅肝生产的第一大国，因为其残忍的生产过程引起了法国国内动物保护组织的强烈反对，因此拥有悠久养鹅历史的匈牙利就成为了鹅肝的生产的第一大国。鹅肝的生产过程到底有多残忍呢?估计看过的人都不会对这个美食那么趋之若鹜了。

这些鹅，它们除了嘴巴受损，喉咙受伤，还必须每天都要忍受胃痛、脚痛，而且被逼不可睡觉，又不准它们随意动弹，就算连看一眼天空或河水的机会都没有。这些鹅每天都被逼不停食，为了得到比正常体积大很多倍的鹅肝，养殖场的工人用高压插管从鹅嘴直接插入鹅的食道，压入远远超过鹅所需要的食物，肝脏因超负荷工作体积异常增大，鹅的食道也因为一天三次反复插管早早溃烂，以至于喝的水都会从溃烂处变成血水流出来。。。

当你跟你的恋人坐在高级餐厅，谈情说爱时，谈论鹅肝的口感美味时，可曾听到一生都在受尽折磨的动物的哭泣。。。

Extreme Workouts: When Exercise Does More Harm than Good

Getting at least some moderate exercise is good for us, and more is even better, doctors and public health experts say. But is there such a thing as too much exercise?

Apparently, yes, according to researchers led by Dr. James O’Keefe, a cardiologist at the Mid America Heart Institute of St. Luke’s Hospital in Kansas City, Mo. Reporting in the journal Mayo Clinic Proceedings, O’Keefe and his colleagues found that physical activity, like any medical treatment, can be harmful if it’s overdone.

“As great as exercise is, it’s like a powerful drug,” he says. “More is better up to a certain dose, but after that there is a point of diminishing returns, and it may actually detract from [heart] health and even your longevity.”

(MORE: Is Exercise Harmful for Some People?)
O’Keefe reviewed studies of people who trained and participated in marathons, triathalons, ultramarathons or long bike races — people who exercised at extreme levels. Overall, people who exercised regularly reaped significant benefits, tending to live seven years longer than those who are physically inactive. But when O’Keefe focused only on the extreme athletes themselves, he found that the healthy effect of all their activity tended not only to wane, but to actually reverse itself and turn toxic.

Studies showed that during and immediately following a marathon, runners showed up to a 50% increase in levels of an enzyme called troponin, which signals damage to the heart (it’s the same enzyme that shoots up in patients having heart attacks). Troponin is released when heart muscle is in distress, and in the case of lengthy extreme exercise sessions, it may start to climb as heart muscle fibers start to tear under the intense burden of pumping continuously at a high level.

“When you’re sitting around, you heart is pumping about five quarts of blood a minute, and if you run up the stairs or hard or push yourself physically, it can go up 35 or 40 quarts a minute,” says O’Keefe. “If you go and run for 26 miles, or do a full-distance triathalon, it completely overtaxes the heart. The heart is pumping 25 quarts a minute for hours and hours, and that starts to cause muscle fibers to tear, which leads to a bump in troponin and other enzymes associated with inflammation, and it causes the death of some muscle cells in the heart.”

(MORE: When Mom Exercises in Pregnancy, Her Baby Benefits)
Over time, that damage can cause scar tissue on the heart, and a thickened and scarred heart is more vulnerable to abnormal heart rhythms, says O’Keefe. Indeed, people who chronically exercise at extreme levels tend to have thicker right atria (which receive deoxygenated blood from the veins) and larger right ventricles (which pump this blood out to the lungs to be oxygenated and circulated). Studies show that endurance athletes have a five times higher risk of atrial fibrillation, or fluctuations in the heartbeat that can trigger more serious heart problems.

In the new data, presented at the annual meeting of the American College of Sports Medicine, one of the study co-authors, Dr. Carl Lavie, medical director of cardiac rehabilitation and prevention at the John Ochsner Heart and Vascular Institute in New Orleans, reported on the optimal “dose” of running for increasing life expectancy. Among 14,000 runners, the optimal amount of exercise appeared to be about 10 to 15 miles per week. “We were thinking that we would see progressively more benefit the more you ran,” says Lavie. “We thought it would level off at some point. But not only did the runners not get more benefit, but the more they did, the faster they ran, the more frequently they ran, the more miles they ran, they actually seemed to lose any benefit to the heart.”

No matter how much they ran, however, they didn’t do worse than non-runners when it came to longevity, Lavie says. But there was a limit to how much exercise contributed to life span. Beyond that point, he says, physical activity started to have a negative, or harmful effect and cut away at any improvement the runners may have accumulated to that point.

(MORE: How Exercise Can Change Your DNA)
The damage doesn’t happen overnight; rather, it builds up over years of training. That’s why O’Keefe, an avid exerciser himself, doesn’t discourage patients who are interested in participating in marathons from trying them. But he counsels hopeful marathoners to consider their race experience a once-in-a-lifetime thing. “If they want to train for a marathon, to cross it off their bucket list, I tell them okay, but it’s not a healthy long term habit to get into,” he says.

Given the results from O’Keefe’s analysis, it makes more sense to exercise at moderate levels. “We have people who are more and more on the extremes. Over the last 35 years, obesity rates have tripled in America, and the number of people completing marathons has gone up 20-fold,” he says. “What we need are more people doing moderate exercise daily, and not running heroic distances. You can get 70% to 80% of the benefit of exercise from doing it 15 to 30 minutes a day.”

And that’s the real lesson from the study. It’s not that exercise is bad for the heart or that it’s better to sit on the couch than go for a run — it’s that the heart and longevity benefits of exercise don’t require extreme efforts. When it comes to exercise, a Goldilocks approach is probably best: too little isn’t good for heart, but neither is too much. Moderate physical activity — anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour a day, several days a week — is just right.

VIDEO: Walking While Working
Alice Park is a writer at TIME. Find her on Twitter at @aliceparkny. You can also continue the discussion on TIME’s Facebook page and on Twitter at @TIME.

Read more: http://healthland.time.com/2012/06/04/extreme-workouts-when-exercise-does-more-harm-than-good/#ixzz2AIz95ZhF

Top 10 cities with the WORST taxi drivers

 

Somehow I couldn't agree more on the No.1, well done "taxi drivers"

GSC Online – Buy 1 Free 1 Movie Tickets with Visa (ends 31 October 2012)

GSC Buy 1 Free 1 Movie Tickets with Visa (ends 31st October 2012) – Any Class any Day – Great offer for anyone with a Visa Credit or Debit Card; Online Purchases included!

Drawbacks: You can only buy 4 tickets (ie Buy2Free2) per day per card (can get more if you have more than 1 card!); free ticket must be the same movie as the paid ticket; online booking fee of RM1
 
Cinema: GSC
Promotion Period: 17 September – 31st October 2012
Promotion Highlight: Buy 1 Free 1 on any day for any class, and you can do it online!
T&C:
1. Maximum of 4 tickets per card (B2F2)
2. Valid for online purchases only.



Got a Visa Credit or Debit Card from any bank? GSC’s widest offer yet, offering anyone with a Visa card Buy 1 Free 1 on any movie class tickets on any day! This certainly sounds good, but given that you can only do this online, you have to stump up the booking fee of RM1 (which is not discounted, predicatably) for the convenience of booking online.

RM1 booking fee aside, the main gripe we have with this promotion is that its not entirely clear that you get the discount until the very end! We had to go right down to the confirmation page to make sure that we do get the discount. Here is a snapshot of what you expect to see.

Still, we’re picking at straws here for a really bad drawback, and definitely welcome this kind of promotion where the TnCs are not that restrictive!

Apple's iOS6 a Laughing Stock

APPLE, the world's most loved and valuable brand, has been put on notice by customers frustrated with its latest operating system, iOS 6.
Apple maps has become the butt of online jokes after it misplaced towns, cities and buildings as well as displaying roads that defy the laws of gravity and physics.

The app, which replaced Google Maps, is so bad it even inspired a Tumblr blog which documents all the mistakes it has so far made.

The update has caused several address book contacts to be wiped, seemingly at random.

"After updating the iOS6 update on my iPhone 4S, I lost several contacts," wrote on iOS 6 user on the Apple support forum. "Has anyone experienced this same problem?"

Another user, "dianothony", reported that the speakers on her iPhone 4S stopped working after the upgrade.
Other users have reported problems connecting to the internet, uploading photos to social networks and app lock. The further integration of Facebook and the Apple address book is causing user emails to be automatically replaced with their @facebook email address.

One Apple app developer who wished to remain anonymous said if former Apple CEO, Steve Jobs were still alive, "he would never have allowed iOS6 to fail".

"It's the little things I miss about Steve's influence - apps locking up while loading ... incorrect map data, and a few other small graphical user interface issues that cause me to think about getting a Samsung Galaxy 3," the developer said.

President of mobile product manufacturer, Decoder and CEO of mobile start-up, Beaucoo, Christian MacLean told News Ltd that though iO6 was "a little bit unrefined", it wasn't broken. Rather, he said the new operating system represented a significant "transition period" in the smartphone industry.

"What we're starting to see is every man for himself and less collaboration across devices," Mr MacLean said.

At the beginning of the smartphone era, tech companies like Google and Apple worked together, combining their talents in order to release the very first iPhone.

"Now companies are creating competition and Google is nipping at Apple's heels," he said.

The tech expert said the iOS 6 operating system did feel a bit like a "land grab" but that it was inevitable that at some point it would need to temporarily inconvenience users in order to develop a product that was "wholey Apple".

He also acknowledged that Apple didn't understand social media deeply enough to get it right, yet.

Google is reportedly planning to release a maps app that is iOS6 compatible in the near future, though no formal announcement has been made.

There are questions whether Apple would even approve the app as it may be able to argue that it competes with an existing Apple app.

-News Limited Network