Links - 6th March 2019 (2)

Malaysia to train Bumiputera to be more competitive rather than spoon-feed them: Mahathir - "In the past, Dr Mahathir said business opportunities had been given to bumiputeras under the NEP, but many had sold their contracts and approved permits (AP) for quick money instead of investing in the business.This clearly did not help the community in the long run as those who took over the contracts and APs became successful, while the original owners were left out after spending their quick profits from selling on the contracts.“We (the government) have tried our best, but we found that the culture (among Malays) to make a quick profit had contributed to their own failure.“The ones who succeeded were the non-bumiputeras, if you know what I mean,” he added... Dr Mahathir said he had visited many construction sites and noticed that not many bumiputera, especially Malays, were seen working there as engineers or hard labourers.This, he said, raises the question of whether the bumiputera are willing to do the "dirty" job."

Pro-bumiputera policy tough to scrap - "Malaysia introduced its affirmative action New Economic Policy (NEP) in 1971 after deadly race riots in 1969, with then Prime Minister Abdul Razak Hussein saying the policy would end in 1990... But today, 27 years after 1990, no end is in sight for the policy. Worse, the NEP has led to a sense of entitlement among many Malays and their leaders... Centre for Policy Initiatives chief executive Lim Teck Ghee - whose 2006 paper claimed bumiputera corporate equity had far surpassed the NEP's 30 per cent target - told The Straits Times that the "Chinese bogeyman" is trotted out so that the "gravy train" for Umno's political elite "keeps chugging along".The government itself admitted that by 2005, the bumiputera had sold off RM52 billion of the RM54 billion worth of shares reserved for them by public-listed companies, instead of reaping the longer-term rewards of capital... even state-funded Khazanah Research Institute (KRI) found last October that Malaysian Indians - not Malays or the other bumiputera races - had the worst upward mobility."

SingPost apologises after getting caught trying to trick man who paid S$7,000 to distribute flyers - "SingPost didn’t manage to end the year 2018 right: Man rushes down block to confront SingPost postman who allegedly left delivery note after a few knocks on door
And it seems like they’re having trouble starting 2019 well too, unfortunately. A massage parlour owner in Singapore alleges that he engaged a service from SingPost that prints and distributes flyers, getting them to print and deliver 65,000 copies for S$7,000, only for the mail company to fail to fulfil their end of the commercial agreement. To make matters worse, 32-year-old Chen Rong Sheng claims that SingPost tried to dupe him into thinking that the task had indeed been carried out."

U.S. Marshals Exaggerated A Recent ‘Child Recovery’ Sweep in Michigan. Here’s Why That Matters. - "Experts say playing up the risk of sex trafficking fuels anxiety and criminalization... The 123 children were not “recovered,” as the Detroit News later reported. More than 100 were with their parents, relatives, guardians, or at school, according to the Michigan State Police, and the agency is still investigating if any trafficking occurred. Law enforcement anti-trafficking operations often attract strong media interest, especially if they appear to involve helping children trafficked for sex. But that coverage can distort the public’s understanding of sex trafficking, according to Amy Farrell and Rachel Austin of Northeastern University, who have studied the issue. Misrepresentation of trafficking, they write, “becomes problematic when government actors such as police and political figures use these distorted images as their reference to make decisions about arrests and victim services.” Kate D’Adamo, a consultant at Reframe Health and Justice who advises anti-trafficking groups, said exaggerating the risk of trafficking often diverts attention from more pervasive dangers. “Obscuring the lives of young people who are experiencing poverty, homelessness, and who are often being failed by the system with flashy headlines means we end up serving the headlines and not those young people”"

Having Handsome Husbands Could Lead To Women’s Unhealthy Eating Habits, Study Finds - "women whose husbands were deemed more attractive were prone to develop unhealthy eating habits. They were found to have a higher motivation to diet and seek a thin body compared to women who were evaluated as more attractive than their husbands... “having a physically attractive husband may have negative consequences for wives, especially if those wives are not particularly attractive.”... women who were deemed more attractive than their spouses did not have that extra motivation to diet. As for the husbands, their motivation to diet remained low whether they were more attractive than their wives or not."

Chinese envoy accuses Canada of ‘white supremacy’ for demanding release of Canadians
The Chinese learn fast

FACT FAIL: CBS Deletes 'Fact-Check' That Proved Trump Right - "CBS was running a live "fact check" of Trump's speech, and posted this:
Fact check: 1 in 3 women sexually assaulted while traveling to cross the border
CLAIM: The president claimed one in three women have been sexually assaulted traveling to the border.
FACT: Between 60 percent and 80 percent of female migrants traveling through Mexico are raped along the way, Amnesty International estimates.
That's right, Trump said 33%, but the real number is at least twice that."

WaPo Fact-Check: Trump's Illegal Immigrant Arrest Numbers 'Right' But 'Misleading' - "The Washington Post produced a quick fact-check Tuesday night on a key Trump claim: that there were "266,000 aliens arrested in the past two years." The outlet admits that the number is "right," but says it's also "misleading." In the post dedicated to that claim, the paper fails to clearly address the second half of Trump's claim: that those 266,000 arrests include "those charged or convicted of 100,000 assaults, 30,000 sex crimes and 4,000 violent killings."

Fishball company painstakingly compiles almost every fishball noodle stall in S’pore, all 181 of them - "Peng Wang Fish Product is a family-run fish produce business that’s been around since 1973.And if you didn’t already guess, they sell fishballs."
Maybe these are all the stalls that buy their fishballs

Father learnt that three sons from 20-year-marriage were not his after doctor told him he was infertile - "A man discovered the three children he had had with his ex-wife were not his when his doctor told him he had been infertile since birth.Richard Mason sued Kate, his wife of 20 years, when a doctor told him in 2016 that he suffered from cystic fibrosis and was incapable of having children. That meant the children he had raised as his own since 1995 must have been conceived during an affair.The 55-year-old businessman, who co-founded Moneysupermarket.com, tried to get a £4 million cash sum paid as part of his divorce settlement in 2008 returned, while also pursuing his ex-wife for paternity fraud.Mrs Mason agreed at the end of November to settle matters with a payment of £250,000 - on condition the biological father remained anonymous."

DNA proves man isn't girl's father but he must pay support anyway - "A Texas man who's finally no longer required to pay child support after 13 years of bank-breaking wage garnishment still owes the state $21,000 in back payments.And the girl isn't even his.Willie Carson says he suffered for years as he struggled to make monthly payments and now that it's been proven he can't possibly be father to the girl, who he's also never even met, he may still be forced to pay up. According to Texas state law, he's required to pay any outstanding payments owed, as well as any accrued interest.All this, despite DNA tests proving unequivocally Carson is not the father and all because he was initially named on the birth certificate by the mother."

‘World’s most identical twins’ plan to get pregnant at same time - "Anna and Lucy DeCinque, the women dubbed the “world’s most identical twins”, have revealed the surprising reason they want to both to get pregnant at the same time by their shared boyfriend. The Perth women explained the idea, which would make their future children both half-sibling and cousin, actually came from their mum Jeanna... The pair met their boyfriend Ben in 2012, explaining to The Sun that they came as a “package”.“We were upfront that we came as a package, and he insisted that was fine with him,” Anna said.“Being a non-identical twin himself, he said that he understood our bond.”The trio now do everything together, including sharing a super king-sized bed as well as their moments of passion."

British Muslim YouTuber receives abuse and death threats after removing her hijab - "British Muslim YouTube star and fashion blogger Dina Tokia has received a wave of abusive and death threats after she decided to stop wearing her hijab full time... the vlogger had referred to the ‘hijabi community’ as a ‘toxic cult’ but explained her words by saying: ‘I’m referring to the onslaught of slander and insults I’ve received from a community that I was very much a part of and helped build… all because of my personal decision to basically wear it when I want to.’"
"the most feminist religion"

French Arab writer gets threats of death, rape for saying Islam is not above criticism, humor or law - "Zineb el Rhazoui, a French journalist who used to work for Charlie Hebdo, is dealing with an avalanche of online abuse from Muslims, for saying that Islam should submit to French law. She says she has no intention of backing down. “Islam must submit to criticism, submit to humor, submit to the laws of the Republic, submit to French law,” el Rhazoui said in a recent interview. For that, she’s been called a whore and threatened with violence, murder and rape."

Swiss woman is charged with assault after slapping Afghan migrant who kept groping her - "A Swiss woman has been charged with assault after slapping an Afghan migrant who allegedly groped her during a New Year's Eve street party.The unnamed woman, 21, was said to have left the man with a broken nose when he reportedly groped her during a party at the City Hall in the Austrian capital Vienna.After news of the charges against her were made public, a wealthy Swiss businessman has stepped in with an offer to pay the fine on her behalf."

Artificial Sweeteners Aren’t Killing Us All - "It turns out that the science is more complicated than you’ve heard, and the real story is also a bit less terrifying and a bit more boring...
Some of the positive findings of the study:
Sweeteners are better for weight-loss than sugar
Sweeteners may reduce blood pressure in people at risk
Sweeteners may help obese people lose weight
No evidence that sweeteners cause cancer
No evidence that sweeteners make you hungrier/eat more
No evidence that sweeteners cause kidney disease
No evidence that sweeteners cause headaches
No evidence that sweeteners are bad for kids
Some evidence that sweeteners help kids to avoid obesity...
There were actually dozens of positive findings, including reasonably good evidence that artificial sweeteners don’t make you feel hungrier, eat more, or feel cravings for sweets, flying in the face of the common line that sweeteners make you guzzle food like there’s no tomorrow... The big caveat is that it really depends on what you are replacing with sweeteners: when you compare artificial sweeteners to sugar, people who take the sweetener lose weight. When you compare them to water, or a placebo, artificial sweeteners don’t do much at all. This is in line with previous evidence, which showed that artificial sweeteners probably help you to lose a little bit of weight, but only if you are using them to replace calories that you would’ve otherwise eaten.So how did the media narrative become so twisted? The problem here is that this science is really complicated. The Cochrane foundation is known for being the final word on a topic: this review is the “gold standard” of evidence on artificial sweeteners. What this means is that it is very conservative — any evidence not graded as very good quality is not considered adequate to make recommendations."