Defending drivers’ world champion Kimi Raikkonen bounced back to form and back into the scrap for this year’s title when he won the Malaysian Grand Prix for Ferrari on Sunday. But the Italian team’s hopes of a dream one-two finish were wrecked by Brazilian Felipe Massa spinning off while running second.
It has only taken two races of the new season for McLaren to get on the wrong side of Formula One officials — and Fernando Alonso — again. The team — kicked out of last year’s constructors’ championship — were back in trouble on Saturday, penalised for their drivers causing interference during qualifying for the Malaysian Grand Prix.
Brazilian Felipe Massa secured pole position for the Malaysian Grand Prix on an all-Ferrari front row on Saturday. Driving in hot and humid conditions under heavy cloud cover, Massa was joined at the head of the field by Formula One world champion team mate Kimi Raikkonen, who lapped 0,482 seconds slower than the pole sitter’s time of 1,35.748.
Formula One championship leader Lewis Hamilton expects conditions for this weekend’s Malaysian Grand Prix to be the toughest he faces this year. Days after his brilliant win for McLaren at the season-opening Australian Grand Prix, where the race-time temperature was 39 degrees Celsius, he said it could be even more sweltering at the Sepang circuit.
Malaysians awoke on Sunday to the biggest sea-change in politics in almost 40 years, with opposition Islamists and reformists winning control of five states and giving the government a wake-up call. Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi’s multiracial National Front coalition won just a simple majority in Parliament, and his future as leader is in doubt.
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/ 19 February 2008
A devastating spell of swing-bowling by Pradeep Sangwan was too much for South Africa to handle in what had been billed as the big match of Group B, as India beat South Africa by six wickets in their International Cricket Council Under-19 World Cup match at the Kinrara Stadium in Kuala Lumpur on Tuesday.
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/ 18 February 2008
An unbeaten 58 by Rilee Rossouw led South Africa to a three-wicket victory over the West Indies on Monday, while New Zealand defeated Zimbabwe by 98 runs in first-round matches of the Under-19 Cricket World Cup. Meanwhile, Bangladesh hammered Bermuda by 178 runs while Sri Lanka defeated Nepal by 61 runs.
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/ 5 February 2008
Malaysian police have arrested a thief who fell asleep after snacking on cookies in the home of his victim and was discovered curled up in bed clutching a stolen purse, a newspaper said on Monday. V Sathya said his nine-year old son was startled to find the intruder sleeping in his bed after the family returned from a shopping trip.
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/ 26 December 2007
Malaysia’s drive to woo investment is losing traction, as efforts to get rid of red tape and inept bureaucrats falter, threatening to put it further behind neighbouring Singapore. A year after the authorities vowed to speed up the business approval process, businessmen are still battling unwieldy procedures and inert government staff.
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/ 25 December 2007
A Malaysian referee took out his gun and fired warning shots in the air after a local soccer match turned unruly following the suspension of a player, a newspaper said on Tuesday. The referee, who was also a policeman, ran to his patrol car to get his gun after players mobbed him for showing the red-card to one of them.
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/ 22 November 2007
World number one Roger Federer defeated retired United States legend Pete Sampras on Thursday for the second straight time in three days at an exhibition match in Kuala Lumpur. Both men held serve to take the first set to a tie-break, with the Swiss maestro inching ahead when Sampras hit a forehand into the net.
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/ 31 October 2007
United States warships are monitoring a Japanese tanker that was hijacked by pirates last weekend off the coast of Somalia. "The pirates are still in control of the ship. They are believed to be armed," Noel Choong, the head of the International Maritime Bureau’s Malaysia-based Piracy Reporting Centre, said.
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/ 27 September 2007
People in Burma were already living on the edge before the government doubled fuel prices, raising the cost of just about everything and shoving many over the precipice. The sudden announcement of fuel price hikes on August 15 became the tipping point of a crisis that had been building for a long time.
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/ 20 September 2007
Malaysia’s first astronaut will blast off into space next month armed with guidelines from Muslim authorities on how to pray, wash and even be ”buried” in space. Two Malaysian candidates are undergoing training in Russia with the winner expected to be announced on Friday, ahead of an 11-day mission.
Six months after sniffing their way to fame in Malaysia, Labrador crime dogs Lucky and Flo were awarded medals on Monday for "outstanding service" in tracking down pirated discs. The exploits of the canine sleuths, who nosed out about $6-million in illegal merchandise, endeared them to Malaysians and regularly landed them on the front pages in the country.
Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe criticised what he called unfair media reports aimed at muddying the image of developing countries, as Asian and African leaders held talks on Monday on fighting poverty. Mugabe slammed news reports that are ”quite often deliberately intended to tarnish and mislead”.
Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, criticised for driving his country to economic ruin, on Monday received a cordial welcome at an anti-poverty summit in this Malaysian resort. "Mugabe is actually participating in all the events," a delegate said, adding that the latter was "hugged and kissed" by some participants.
what could have been a scene from car-heist movie <i>Gone In 60 Seconds</i>, a brazen Malaysian Porsche thief has struck again. After crashing the car, worth more than $280 000, out of an auto showroom, then abandoning it when fuel ran out, the thief returned with a can of petrol and stole it again — this time from the police, reports said on Wednesday.
The Malaysian state of Melaka is upset that scientists have named a new bat-borne virus after it, news reports said on Sunday. Australian and Malaysian scientists announced last week they had discovered a new virus likely carried by bats that can cause respiratory illness in humans.
Pirates are operating freely in waters off Somalia, an international maritime watchdog warned on Wednesday, calling for immediate assistance from the world’s naval forces. ”We are appealing for urgent intervention by international navies …,” Pottengal Mukundan, the London-based director of the International Maritime Bureau, said.
Iran is in discussions to store strategic oil in China and to build refineries around Asia, Oil Minister Kazem Vaziri-Hamaneh said on Monday, as it seeks secure outlets for its crude in the face of Western economic sanctions. China’s crude imports from Iran are up 11% in the first four months of the year.
A court has ordered Malaysia’s national airline to pay a Brahmin Hindu 20 000 ringgit ( 775) to compensate him for mental anguish suffered as a result of being served a chicken meal during a flight, local media reported on Saturday.
Tennis legend Pete Sampras on Wednesday categorically ruled out making a Wimbledon comeback this year, but admitted he was curious about how he would perform if he did stage a return. ”I’m not doing it,” the 36-year-old told reporters in Kuala Lumpur in a telephone interview from Los Angeles.
A South African vet will perform in Malaysia what is being described as the world’s first cataract surgery on an orangutan, an official said on Tuesday. Animal ophthalmologist Izak Venter will perform the two-hour surgery early on Wednesday, said an official at the Matang Wildlife Centre in Sarawak state on Borneo island.
Fifa president Sepp Blatter insisted Tuesday that South Africa will definitely host the 2010 World Cup barring a natural disaster. South Africa will be the first African nation to host football’s showpiece event, but reports of delays in stadium construction have raised questions as to whether the tournament would go ahead.
World champion Fernando Alonso won the Malaysian Grand Prix on Sunday to hand new team McLaren-Mercedes their first Formula One (F1) win since 2005. Rookie Lewis Hamilton, F1’s first black driver, added to the McLaren resurgence by finishing second ahead of Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen, who won the Australian Grand Prix last month.
Ferrari’s Felipe Massa snatched pole position for the Malaysian Grand Prix with a scorching last lap in Saturday’s qualifying. The Brazilian, with a time of one minute, 35,043 seconds, was almost three-10ths of a second quicker than double world champion Fernando Alonso’s McLaren.
Malaysia’s deputy premier has told the country’s civil servants they need to work harder and spend more time at their desks, according to a report on Tuesday. Deputy Prime Minister Najib Razak told a gathering of civil servants, who are frequently criticised for their seven-hour days, to condition their minds to see work as a virtue, not a punishment.
French "Spiderman" Alain Robert escaped a jail sentence after prosecutors decided not charge the daredevil for scaling Malaysia’s tallest buildings, a senior police official said on Monday. Government lawyers also allowed Robert to leave the country after finding no grounds to charge him in court, the official said.
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/ 27 February 2007
Malaysia’s three main hill resorts, popular draws for tourists escaping the tropical heat, are warming up, mainly due to deforestation, environmentalists said this week. Faizal Parish, director of the Malaysia-based Global Environment Centre, said some bird and plant species are disappearing as the mountainous areas became hotter, and called on the government to stop forest clearing.
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/ 8 February 2007
Malaysia is to introduce college courses in toilet management as part of a battle against the nation’s notoriously filthy public restrooms, a report said on Thursday. Deputy Housing and Local Government Minister Robert Lau said similar efforts had yielded clean toilets in Britain and squeaky-clean Singapore.
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/ 26 January 2007
Malaysia has launched its biggest tourism drive since independence under its famous slogan ”Malaysia: Truly Asia”, but it may as well read ”truly bizarre”. Recent visitors to the South-East Asian nation have read serious newspaper articles about miracle healers and a mysterious giant ape in the country’s southern jungles.