Share prices were higher in early trade today in line with Wall Street which posted gains last Friday driven by optimistic economic expectations, dealers said.
At 9am, the FTSE Bursa Malaysia KLCI (FBM KLCI) opened 0.6 point to 1,772.87 and rose 1.63 points to 1,773.9 at 9.23am.
HwangDBS Vickers Research said the leading US equity bellwethers rose one per cent at the closing bell as investors cast aside a possible scaling back of the quantitative easing programme by the Federal Reserve.
"This may pave the way for our Malaysian bourse to extend its recovery today," it said.
The benchmark FBM KLCI -– after losing momentum last Friday afternoon –- could rebound and stage an upward bias towards the immediate resistance level of 1,785 ahead, the research house said.
On the scoreboard, the Finance Index added 24.711 points to 17,018.91 and the Industrial Index rose 0.52 point to 3,000.89.
The Plantation Index increased 8.47 points to 8,421.1 and the FBM Ace Index went up 13.62 points to 4,788.43.
Gainers led losers 216 to 86, while 145 counters were unchanged, 1,122 untraded and 19 others suspended.
Volume stood at 205.3 million shares worth RM121.2 million.
Among actives, Scomi Energy slipped eight sen to 90 sen, Tanjung Offshore added two sen to 64 sen and TH Heavy Engineering rose three sen to 81.5 sen.
As for heavyweights, Maybank increased four sen to RM10.42, CIMB gained six sen to RM8.33 and Sime Darby slipped one sen to RM9.45.-- Bernama
Air traffic control recordings reveal what pilots on a nearby plane saw after Asiana Flight 214 crashed at San Francisco International Airport.
Federal crash investigators are eager to interview the pilots and review the flight-data recorders that were recovered Saturday from the Asiana crash in San Francisco.
The cockpit voice recorder and the flight-data recorder were each recovered hours after the crash and flown to Washington for examination by the National Transportation Safety Board.
Deborah Hersman, the board chairman who traveled to the accident scene, said the recorders will provide hundreds of pieces of information about the flight in the moments and hours before the crash.
"I am confident in the ability of our investigators to get to the bottom of this," Hersman said on NBC's Today show. "We need to take a look at it and see what it tells us."
Federal law-enforcement officials had initial conversations with the pilot, but the Federal Aviation Administration and NTSB still expect to speak with him within days, Hersman said.
"There are a lot of systems to help support the pilots as they come into airports, especially busy commercial airports like this one in San Francisco," Hersman told CNN's State of the Union.
"It's also about the pilots' recognition of the circumstances and what's going on, and so for them to be able to assess what's happening and make the right inputs to make sure they're in a safe situation," Hersman said. "That's what we expect from pilots. We want to understand what happened in this situation."
The tail of the Boeing 777 struck the end of the runway and fell off as it was landing, and the plane struck the ground and spun around before coming to rest and burning. Two passengers died and 187 were injured, but 307 were on the plane.
"What you can't see if the damage internally, and that is really striking," Hersman told CNN after visiting the plane. "And so I think when we look at this accident, we're very thankful that we didn't have more fatalities and serious injuries and we had so many survivors."
The president of Asiana, Yoon Young-doo, said at a televised news conference that it will take time to determine the cause of the crash. But when asked about the possibility of engine or mechanical problems, he said he doesn't believe they could have been the cause.
Hersman said investigators needed to study the plane, the recorders and crew to learn what happened.
"We really prefer to base statements on facts, and we've got to review the flight data recorder, the cockpit voice recorder, and document the scene before we draw any conclusions," Hersman told ABC's This Week.
Eyewitnesses say the streets "were filled with fire"
Police have said they expect more people to be found dead after a runaway train carrying light crude oil exploded in the Canadian town of Lac-Megantic.
The blast sent a fireball and black smoke into the air, killing one and forcing the evacuation of 1,000 people.
Dozens of buildings were destroyed in the town, about 250km (155 miles) east of Montreal.
They include a bar full of customers. Police are trying to account for dozens of missing people.
The train's cars reportedly uncoupled from a parked engine and derailed early on Saturday.
Rail company officials said the train had been immobilised in a neighbouring village before a scheduled crew change, but for an unknown reason had then started rolling downhill into Lac-Megantic.
Eyewitnesses said that by the time the driverless train reached the town it was travelling at considerable speed.
'Like a movie'
The search for more bodies is expected to continue at dawn.
Local media have reported up to 100 people missing.
"We have already confirmed one death and we expect there will be others," said police spokesman Guy Lapointe.
"We also expect that the number of people reported missing will be greater than the final death toll."
He said some people had been reported missing several times by different family members.
Some 120 firefighters have been fighting the blaze, which has continued for more than 24 hours.
Firefighters from across the border in the US are assisting.
Eyewitnesses reported that the town centre - where there are a number of bars - was crowded at the time of the blast, and that "chaos" ensued.
Firefighters fought the blaze for more than 24 hours
Bernard Theberge, who was on the patio of the Musi-Cafe at the time, said he was lucky to escape and feared for those inside the bar.
"It was like a movie," he said, quoted by the Associated Press news agency. "Explosions as if it were scripted - but this was live."
A woman described how close she was to one of the wagons.
"There were some sparks, and the car lifted and came to lie on its side in front of me, but I turned around and ran without stopping," she told the CBC TV.
Brakes 'tight'
The Montreal, Maine & Atlantic train had five locomotive engines and 73 cars filled with light crude oil, and was parked in the village of Nantes - about 7km (four miles) from Lac-Megantic - during an overnight driver shift-change, a company spokesman told Canada's La Presse newspaper.
The railway's chairman, Edward Burhardt, quoted by CBC, said an engineer had parked the train and put the brakes on "properly" before going to a local hotel for the night.
The cars filled with fuel somehow became uncoupled, causing them to roll downhill into the town and derail, said the spokesman, Joe McGonigle.
Canadian PM Stephen Harper: "What has happened is shocking and truly devastating"
"It seems that the brakes were tight on locomotives," Mr McGonigle told La Presse. "We found the locomotives higher up, half a mile (800m) away."
Some of the cars exploded, creating a massive fireball and setting fire to nearby homes and businesses.
A one-kilometre exclusion zone was set up amid fears of more pressurised containers exploding.
"When you see the centre of your town almost destroyed, you'll understand that we're asking ourselves how we are going to get through this event," an emotional Mayor Colette Roy-Laroche told a televised news briefing.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper said in a statement: "Our thoughts and prayers go out to the families and friends of those affected by this morning's tragic train derailment and subsequent fires in Lac-Megantic, Quebec.
Some of the train's cargo spilled into the nearby Chaudiere river, said Environment Quebec spokesman Christian Blanchette, adding that communities downstream of Lac-Megantic had been warned to take care if using river water.
A mobile laboratory had been set up to monitor the quality of the air, he added.
The train was carrying the crude oil from the Bakken Field in North Dakota. Montreal, Maine & Atlantic owns more than 800km (500 miles) of track serving Maine, Vermont, Quebec and New Brunswick.
A lakeside town that is home to some 6,000 people, Lac-Megantic is close to the US border with Vermont and 210 km (130 miles) north of Maine's capital, Augusta.
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