Current Affairs

The Malaysian government became the latest target of international hacker group Anonymous, which resulted in the disruption of 51 government websites. Anonymous are protesting against the censorship of the Internet in Malaysia. 

Kathleen Tan speaks to Gareth Davies, consulting director at open source software house Omnilogic, who specialises in information security, on the recent hacker threats and its implications on Internet censorship.

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Recently, the Tourism Ministry said that close to RM1.8 million was spent on developing six Facebook pages to promote Malaysia, drawing criticism from the public for what many believe to be a waste of taxpayers’ money.

Deputy Tourism Minister James Dawos Mamit said that each application cost around RM293,000, and that the total RM1.8 million included costs for designing, flash programming and coding, testing and debugging, uploading and launching the application, system server deployment and campaign management.

BFM’s Kathleen Tan speaks to Liew San Yen, creative director of digital agency IF Interactive about his take on the Tourism Ministry’s spend on Facebook pages.

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Amidst falling home prices and a sluggish labour market, the US economy is set to recover at a slower, moderate pace, said the US Federal Reserve. Like the US, other market economies are feeling the effects of the Japanese disaster as well as volatile commodity prices, moving forward into 2H 2011.With QE2 set to end in June, analysts have mixed views as to whether the Fed will launch a third round of quantitative easing.

BFM’s Kathleen Tan speaks with Rajiv Biswas, senior director and Asia chief economist at IHS Global Insight on the possibility of QE3, the outlook on oil prices, as well as the impact of the slower than expected US recovery in Europe and Asia.

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Melisa Idris digs deeper into the issues surrounding rare-earth production. She discusses this with Jack Lifton, a consultant, author, and lecturer on the sourcing and end use trends of rare & strategic metals. Mr Lifton is also the Founding Principal of Technology Metals Research.

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James Douglas, the Southeast Asia Director of CfBT Education Trust, explains CfBT's work in the education sector, and its interest in managing private schools in Malaysia.

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The World Competitiveness Yearbook, which is released annually by the Switzerland-based Institute for Management Development (IMD), analyses and ranks the competitiveness of 59 economies.

Melisa Idris speaks to Suzanne Rosselet, Deputy Director of IMD's World Competitiveness Centre and co-author of the WCY2011, on Malaysia's ranking and what this could mean for foreign investor perception.

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Gaming revenue at Macau, which is currently about four times larger than Las Vegas’, has hit record highs over the past year, driven by strong demand in China. Meanwhile, Singapore’s first two casinos opened last year but is making waves as the rising challenger in Asia.

BFM’s Kathleen Tan speaks with Tan Teng Yee of CIMB Research Hong Kong about gaming trends in Asia, and the prospects for the Malaysian gaming sector.

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?The global airline industry outlook for the first half of this year is reported to be relatively bleak. Air travel markets have been affected due to the natural disaster in Japan and political unrest in the Middle East and North Africa. And as airlines try to maintain passanger capacity and keep profit margins up, oil price volatility continues to plague the industry.

Melisa Idris gets the views of Andrew Herdman, director general of the Association of Asia Pacific Airlines (AAPA) on the outlook of the aviation industry in Asia. He discusses the profit outlook for Asia, the rising price of jet fuel and the impact on ticket prices, and the emission's trading system.

AAPA is the trade association of ??17 scheduled international airlines based in the Asia-Pacific region.

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There is a water crisis looming in the developed west coast states of Malaysia, as cities become more and more densely populated and water demand continually increases.

Today on Current Affairs, Melisa Idris talks to Prof Chan Ngai Weng, President of Water Watch Penang and Professor with the School of Humanities in University Sains Malaysia, on water conservation efforts in Malaysia, as well as the feasibility of using alternative water sources, such as desalination and recycled wastewater.

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The northeast of Japan remains a disaster zone, with over 24 thousand people dead or missing, and more than 100 thousand others still in temporary shelters, three months after a massive earthquake and tsunami struck on March 11th. One could argue that the last thing the staggering country needs now is a political power struggle.

On June 2nd, Prime Minister Naoto Kan survived a no-confidence motion brought against him, buying himself more time in office to focus on the post-tsunami recovery operation. 

Melisa Idris gets the views of Hugo Restall, the Editorial Page Editor for The Wall Street Journal Asia in Hong Kong, on the implications of the no-confidence vote on the ruling party Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) and the future of the Japanese political landscape, as it struggles to get the country’s worst crisis since World War II under control.

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