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Rabu, 24 April 2013

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KL shares opens weaker on mild profit taking

Posted: 24 Apr 2013 06:44 PM PDT

[unable to retrieve full-text content]Bursa Malaysia opened lower this morning on mild profit taking after its recent gains, dealers said. At 9.05am, the FTSE Bursa Malaysia KLCI (FBM KLCI) stood at 1,702.09 points, down 5.26 points, from yesterday's close of 1,707.35 points. The key index opened 4.68 points weaker at 1,702.67 points. HwangDBS Vickers said in a research note that after posting a gain of seven points yesterday, the key FBM KLCI could gyrate sideways today. "On the chart, the benchmark index may be locked inside a narrow trading range as it continues to tread above the psychological support level of 1,700," it said. Meanwhile, major US equity bellwethers ended between flat and marginally weaker last night in spite of better corporate results announcements. On the scoreboard, the Finance Index dropped 84.801 points to 15,917.14, the Industrial Index was down 13.02 points to 2,828.49 while the Plantation Index eased 27.43 points to 8,125.72. The FBM Emas Index declined 28.569 points to 11,622.24 and the FBM Mid 70 Index eased 0.58 of a point to 12,835.15. The FBMT100 Index fell 28.03 points to 11,458.62 but the FBM Ace Index added 8.45 points to 3,979.87. Turnover amounted to 15.178 million shares worth RM24.378 million. Gainers led losers 63 to 52 with 63 counters unchanged, 1,433 counters untraded and 30 others were suspended. Among actives, AE Multi Holdings added two sen to 24.5 sen, Solution Engineering earned half-a-sen to 23 sen and MISC erased 15 sen to RM4.37. Heavyweights, Maybank rose 10 sen to RM9.51, Axiata fell two sen to RM6.72 and CIMB added three sen to RM7.76.-- Bernama

Dow falls on P&G, AT&T earnings

Posted: 24 Apr 2013 04:39 PM PDT

NEW YORK: Sharp earnings-related falls in AT&T and Procter & Gamble pulled the Dow lower on Wednesday while the other main indices closed flat.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 43.16 points (0.29 percent) to 14,676.30.

The broad-based S&P 500 was essentially flat at 1,578.79, while the Nasdaq Composite Index added 0.32 (0.01 percent) to 3,269.65.

Dow component AT&T sank 5 percent after profit margins in both the wireline and wireless businesses came in lower than expected in its first quarter earnings report. Citigroup slashed its recommendation to "neutral" citing slower expected revenue growth in 2013.

Consumer goods giant Procter and Gamble, another Dow member, reported higher quarterly profits, but fell 5.9 percent after revenue figures disappointed. A Morgan Stanley note rued the poor "quality" of the results, citing weak organic sales growth.

Other blue-chip losers included Cisco (down 2.5 percent) and Walmart (down 1.3 percent).

Among those gaining were Alcoa (up 3.6 percent), Microsoft (up 3.8 percent) and General Electric (up 2.1 percent).

Technology giant Apple took an erratic trajectory, rising and falling throughout the day on the heels of its first drop in quarterly earnings in nearly 10 years.

But that was mitigated by plans to double to US$100 billion by 2015 the sum it spends on buybacks and dividends.

Apple shares traded between US$392.50 and US$415.25, before settling at US$405.46, down 0.2 percent.

Auto giant Ford dipped 0.2 percent despite reporting stronger profits due to growth in North America. But the company's European division turned in another loss.

Boeing jumped 3 percent after besting analyst expectations by a wide margin. The company said the retrofitting costs of resolving the battery problems on the grounded 787 aircraft would have only a minor impact on financials.

Yum! Brands, the parent of Taco Bell and other fast food franchises, gained 7 percent after net income bested expectations by a wide margin. -- AFP

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5 reportedly dead in Illinois shooting; suspect reportedly caught after high-speed ... - Fox News

Posted: 24 Apr 2013 08:27 AM PDT

  • shootinggrabs2.jpg

    April 24: Authorities investigate the scene where local reports say five people were fatally shot in thee early morning hours on Wednesday. Police reportedly say the suspect is in custody.KTVI

Five people were reportedly killed in a shooting in Manchester, Ill., Wednesday morning prompting the closure of three area schools, Fox2Now.com reports.

WLDS, a radio station in the area, reports that the suspect attempted to run from the scene, got into a high-speed chase with police and shots were fired while the suspect was taken into custody.

One person was injured in the shooting, but the injuries remain unclear. The Chicago Tribune reports that a young girl survived and the victims may be family members.

 The suspect, the station reports, is in custody. Police told FoxNews.com that they do not believe another suspect is at large.

The crime scene was described as a single-story apartment. The relationship between the suspect and the alleged victims was not immediately clear.

Mayor Ronald Drake said he got the call around 4:45 a.m., indicating that there had been a shooting with multiple fatalities, Fox2Now.com reports.

Drake did not say who the victims were or given any details about the suspect. He told The St. Louis Post-Dispatch that the victims "lived in federal housing and it's hard to keep up" with their identities because there is so much turnover of residents there.

Illinois State Police spokeswoman Monique Bond says the victims were found early Wednesday morning in the southwestern Illinois community, 50 miles west of Springfield. She didn't have any details on the deaths or the circumstances surrounding the capture of the suspect.

A school superintendent in the area says he was informed by sheriffs early Wednesday morning that the victims had been shot to death. Les Stevens of the North Greene School District says he canceled classes because authorities warned him at the time that the suspect was at large. The district has since been informed that the man was captured.

Classes were canceled in three area school districts: Northgreene, Winchester and Jacksonville.  Approximately 950 students are affected.

Click for more from Fox2Now.com

Click for more from WLDS

The Associated Press contributed to this report

Muslims have a problem. Uncle Ruslan may have the answer. - Washington Post

Posted: 23 Apr 2013 05:18 AM PDT

In Reef flip flops, blue jeans and a Calvin Klein polo shirt, Ruslan Tsarni, an uncle of the alleged Boston Marathon bombers, strode down the driveway of his Federalist-style home last week in Montgomery Village, Md., an upper middle-class Washington, D.C. suburb, past a ground cover of purple wisteria blooming in his front yard and pink tulips across the street.

In the next few minutes, the uncle to Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, the alleged Boston Marathon bombers, accomplished something that 11 years of post-9/11 press releases, news conferences and soundbites by too many American Muslim leaders has failed to do on the issue of radicalization and terrorism: with raw, unfettered emotion, he owned up to the problem within.

Instead of being silenced by what they did, he openly said that his nephews had brought "shame" on the family with their actions. This is the same kind of "shame off," as one admirer later called it, that protesters to the gang rape in India have to win: Are we shamed into silence? Or do we confront the serious issues that shame us?

Hands clasped tightly in front of him, Uncle Ruslan faced off against a pack of about 30 journalists, cameras pointing at him, microphones stuck in front of him, questions about his nephews thrown at him:

"When was the last time you saw them?" He answered: December 2005. Another journalist asked: "What do you think provoked this?" "Umm, being losers! Hatred to those who were able to settle themselves!" he shouted. "These are the only reasons I can imagine. Anything else to do with religion, to do with Islam, is a fraud, is a fake."

As an American Muslim who has watched the radicalization of Muslims from Louisville, Ky., to Chatanooga, Tenn., to Chechnya, the ancestral ethnicity of the alleged bombers, over the last three decades, I had one question on my mind.

I asked softly: "Is your family Muslim?"

The uncle didn't hear me well: "Huh?"

I repeated my question: "Is your family Muslim?"

The question was one other journalists later admitted to me that they wondered but didn't dare ask, the proverbial elephant in the room, only at that moment, on a cul-de-sac with manicured lawns, playground sets and helicopters and Canadian geese overhead. In Washington, D.C., leaders of national American Muslim organizations filled a room at the National Press Club and issued their flat, blanket rebuttals: Islam doesn't sanction violence, and it doesn't allow terrorism. When the New York Post made the mistake of writing that a Saudi witness was actually a suspect, bloggers and others took advantage of the opportunity to chortle over the mistake as just one more horrible example of stereotyping.

While it is critical that we don't jump to conclusions by associating religious affiliation with militancy, there is no doubt that embracing an ideology of Islam that promotes extremism and violence has been a motivator for terrorism, from assassinated al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden to Army Major Nidal Hasan.

Did such an ideology influence the Tsarnaev brothers? Who or what compelled them to violence? What role does Muslim culture play in this type of radicalization?
Kredit: www.nst.com.my

Selasa, 23 April 2013

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Asean leaders to talk China, trade

Posted: 23 Apr 2013 06:49 PM PDT

BANDAR SERI BEGAWAN: Southeast Asian leaders will meet in Brunei today hoping to heal wounds from damaging infighting over China, while seeking to build momentum towards a giant free trade pact.

The summit of the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) comes after the bloc suffered deep splits last year linked to territorial disputes with China over the resource-rich South China Sea.

Asean members Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam, as well as China and Taiwan, claim parts of the sea, which is also home to some of the world's most important shipping lanes as well as rich fishing grounds.

But a push by the Philippines and Vietnam for Asean to send a united message to an increasingly aggressive China crumbled amid resistance from Cambodia, a close Chinese ally that held the rotating chair of the bloc in 2012.

Senior Asean figures emphasised ahead of the two-day summit in Brunei's capital that the group, which for more than four decades has operated by consensus, must work hard to find common ground on the South China Sea issue.

And Asean leaders will make a united call in an end-of-summit statement for talks with China on the issue, but they will avoid any strong language, according to a draft of the document obtained by AFP.

"We reaffirmed our commitment to ensuring the peaceful resolution of disputes without resorting to the threat or use of force, through friendly consultations in accordance with universally recognised principles of international law," the draft statement said.

The draft called for an "early conclusion" on a legally binding code of conduct for the sea between Asean and China, but did not give a timeframe.

Brunei had said one of its priorities as this year's Asean chair was to see the code of conduct, initially proposed in 2002, agreed by the end of the year.

However China, which prefers to negotiate directly with individual countries rather than a united Asean bloc, has refused to begin meaningful talks on the code, and has given no indication it is willing to start negotiations soon.

Feuds over how to deal with China overshadowed most senior-level Asean meetings last year.

The highest tensions came at a foreign ministers' meeting in Phnom Penh in July, which ended for the first time in the bloc's 45-year history without a joint communique.

The Philippines and Vietnam are the most vocal critics of China, while Laos and Cambodia are regarded as Beijing's staunchest allies in Asean.

Asean leaders have said that one of the other key issues on the agenda during the Brunei summit is pressing ahead with deeper economic integration within the bloc, and also with other countries in the region.

The leaders will announce on Thursday that Asean will begin negotiations next month with China, Japan, South Korea, India, Australia and New Zealand for a giant free trade pact, according to the draft end-of-summit statement.

The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) aims to tie together Asean's bilateral free trade agreements with each trading partner, and is being strongly backed by China.

It excludes the US, which is leading talks for a rival trade pact called the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).-- AFP

Ringgit marginally higher against US dollar

Posted: 23 Apr 2013 06:33 PM PDT

The ringgit opened slightly better against the US dollar, in earlier session, this morning on mild buying interest for the local note, dealers said.

At 9am, the ringgit was quoted at 3.0540/0570 versus the greenback against Tuesday's close of 3.0560/0580.

"There are some bargain hunting activities in the market to shore up the ringgit, which suffered losses recently," a dealer said.

Regionally, the ringgit was traded mixed against other major
currencies.


It rose against the yen to 3.0663/0705 from 3.0969/0005 on Tuesday but depreciated marginally against the British pound to 4.6519/6570 from 4.6503/0540 yesterday.

The ringgit was slightly lower against the euro at 3.9696/9744 from 3.9670/9702 yesterday but was higher against the Singapore dollar at 2.4599/4633 from 2.4621/4651 on Tuesday.-- Bernama

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Boston bombing suspect cites US wars as motivation, officials say - Washington Post

Posted: 23 Apr 2013 08:54 AM PDT

The 19-year-old suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings has told interrogators that the American wars in Iraq and Afghanistan motivated him and his brother to carry out the attack, according to U.S. officials familiar with the interviews.

From his hospital bed, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has acknowledged his role in planting the explosives near the marathon finish line on April 15, the officials said. The first successful large-scale bombing in the post-Sept. 11, 2001, era, the Boston attack killed three people and wounded more than 250 others.

The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe an ongoing investigation, said Dzhokhar and his older brother, Tamerlan, who was killed by police as the two attempted to avoid capture, do not appear to have been directed by a foreign terrorist organization.

Rather, the officials said, the evidence so far suggests they were "self-radicalized" through Internet sites and U.S. actions in the Muslim world. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has specifically cited the U.S. war in Iraq, which ended in December 2011 with the removal of the last American forces, and in Afghanistan, where President Obama has made plans to end combat operations by the end of 2014.

Obama has made repairing U.S. relations with the Islamic world a foreign policy priority, even as he has expanded drone operations in Pakistan and other countries that have inflamed Muslim public opinion.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has provided limited information to authorities that indicates he and his brother acted independently, without direction or significant influence from Islamist militants overseas. U.S. officials said they are still working to assemble a detailed timeline of a trip the older Tsarnaev took to Russia, but see no evidence that he received instructions there that led to the attack.

"These are persons operating inside the United States without a nexus" to an overseas group, a U.S. intelligence official said.

U.S. officials have said that the FBI questioned Tamerlan Tsarnaev at the behest of Russian authorities who had become concerned that he was becoming radicalized. The request was conveyed to officials at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow. U.S. officials said they sought follow-up information from Russia, but that Moscow failed to respond.

Officials also expressed skepticism that Russian authorities were concerned about the elder Tsarnaev's contacts during his trip to Russia. "The evidence points to the fact that they let him into the country and let him out of the country," the U.S. official said. "They didn't take any legal action, which they could have while he was there."

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was charged Monday with using a weapon of mass destruction and malicious destruction of property, counts that could carry the death penalty if convicted. He made his first court appearance in an unusual, non-public proceeding in which a federal judge and several lawyers went to his hospital bed in Boston.

The criminal complaint against Tsarnaev, filed in U.S. District Court in Boston, ended a debate over how the case should be handled. Some congressional Republicans had insisted that Tsarnaev be designated an "enemy combatant,'' which would enable the government to charge him under the laws of war in a military commission or to hold him indefinitely.

Israel Says Syria Has Used Chemical Weapons - New York Times

Posted: 23 Apr 2013 09:04 AM PDT

By and
Published: April 23, 2013

TEL AVIV – Israel's senior military intelligence analyst said Tuesday there was evidence the Syrian government had repeatedly used chemical weapons in the last month, and he criticized the international community for failing to respond, intensifying pressure on the Obama administration to intervene.

"The regime has increasingly used chemical weapons," said Brig. Gen. Itai Brun, research commander in the intelligence directorate of the Israeli Defense Forces, echoing assertions made by Britain and France. "The very fact that they have used chemical weapons without any appropriate reaction," he added, "is a very worrying development, because it might signal that this is legitimate."

General Brun's statements, made at a security conference here, are the most definitive by an Israeli official to date regarding evidence of possible chemical weapons attacks on March 19 near Aleppo and Damascus. Another military official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that the evidence had been presented to the Obama administration — which has declared the use of chemicals a "red line" that could prompt American action in Syria — but that Washington has not fully accepted the analysis.

None of the assertions — by Israel, Britain or France — have been made with physical proof of chemical weapons use. Experts say the most definitive way to prove the use of chemical weapons is to promptly gain access to the site to collect soil samples and examine suspected victims.

The Syrian government, which has accused insurgents of using chemical weapons and has requested that a United Nations forensics team investigate, has so far refused to allow that team to enter because of a dispute over the scope of its inquiry.

In Brussels, at a meeting of NATO foreign ministers, Secretary of State John Kerry urged that members of the alliance be ready to respond if it is determined that Syria had in fact used chemical weapons.

"We should also carefully and collectively consider how NATO is prepared to respond to protect its members from a Syrian threat, including any potential chemical weapons threat," Mr. Kerry said. He did not specify in his publicly released remarks what planning he wanted from members of the NATO alliance.

Mr. Kerry also said he had talked by telephone Tuesday morning with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, and that Mr. Netanyahu had told him that he could not confirm the assertions of chemical weapons use. "He was not in a position to confirm that in the conversation that I had," Mr. Kerry said.

"I don't know yet what the facts are," Mr. Kerry added. "I don't think anybody knows what they are."

.

In briefings earlier on Tuesday, the Israelis said they believed that the attacks March 19 involved the use of sarin gas, the same agent used in a 1995 attack in the Tokyo subway that killed 13.

The Syrian attacks killed "a couple of dozens," the military official said, in what Israel judged as "a test" by President Bashar al-Assad of the international community's response. He said the government had deployed chemicals a handful of times since, but that details of those attacks were sketchier.

"Their fear of using it is much lower than before using it," the official said. "If somebody would take any reaction, maybe it would deter them from using it again." Regarding possible further attacks, he added, "Now I'm more worried than I was before."

Israel, which is in a technical state of war with Syria, has been deeply reluctant to act on its own in Syria, for fear that it could bolster President Assad by uniting anti-Israel sentiment. But the public statements regarding the attacks, days after the British and French governments wrote to the United Nations Secretary General saying they, too, had evidence of chemical use, complicates the situation for Washington.

Reporting was contributed by Thom Shanker from Amman, Jordan, Hwaida Saad from Beirut, Lebanon, and Michael R. Gordon from Brussels.
Kredit: www.nst.com.my

Isnin, 22 April 2013

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Guoco Group shares suspended

Posted: 22 Apr 2013 06:47 PM PDT

HONG KONG: Trading in shares of Guoco Group Ltd, a Hong Kong investment company controlled by Malaysian tycoon Quek Leng Chan, was suspended on Tuesday morning, according to a filing on the Hong Kong exchange.

Guoco said the suspension was pending the release of a statement on information in relation to an offer to be made by GuoLine Overseas Ltd, a unit of Hong Leong Co (Malaysia), to acquire all the issued shares of Guoco.

No further details were immediately available.-- Reuters

Ringgit opens weaker against US dollar

Posted: 22 Apr 2013 06:40 PM PDT

The ringgit opened lower against the US dollar in, earlier session today, on lack of buying support, dealers said.

At 9am, the ringgit was quoted at 3.0515/0535 to the greenback against Monday's close of 3.0480/0500.

A dealer said there was mild trading for the local note in the absence of internal and external cues to influence movements.

Investors also reduced their hold in riskier assets especially in the foreign exchange market ahead of the May 5 polls, he added.

Regionally, the ringgit was traded lower against other major currencies.

It fell against the yen to 3.0731/0764 from 3.0541/0567 on Monday and depreciated against the British pound to 4.6650/6690 from 4.6458/6491, previously.

The ringgit eased against the euro to 3.9825/9860 from 3.9761/9796 yesterday and was slightly lower against the Singapore dollar at 2.4589/4611 from 2.4565/4601 on Monday.-- Bernama

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Hospitalized suspect in Boston bombings awaits charges - Chicago Tribune

Posted: 22 Apr 2013 09:37 AM PDT

Information about the backgrounds of the two suspects in the Boston bombing attack emerge as their uncle, Ruslan Tsarni, says he became concerned about Tamerlan when he began to talk about jihad.

BOSTON (Reuters) - The badly wounded Boston Marathon bombing suspect faced federal charges as early as Monday and the city of Boston planned tributes to the dead after a week of blasts, shootouts, lockdowns and one of the largest manhunts in U.S. history.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, an ethnic Chechen college student suspected of carrying out the attacks with his older brother, lay in a Boston hospital under armed guard. He was unable to speak after he was captured with throat injuries sustained during shoot-outs with police.

Police declined to comment on media reports he was communicating with authorities in writing.

"There have been widely published reports that he is (communicating silently). I wouldn't dispute that, but I don't have any specific information on that myself," Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis told CNN. "We're very anxious to talk to him and the investigators will be doing that as soon as possible."

The FBI said on Monday morning that Tsarnaev remained in serious condition at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.

Tsarnaev's capture on Friday night ended a manhunt that virtually shut down greater Boston for some 20 hours. His older brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, died after a gunfight with police early Friday morning.

The city of Boston crawled back to normal on Monday, a week after twin bombs exploded at the crowded finish line of the city's famous marathon road race, killing three people and wounding 176. Ten of the injured lost limbs.

The crime scene around the blasts was still closed but was expected to reopen within a day or two. Signs declaring "Boston Strong" hung about the city.

Memorial services were set on Monday for two of those killed in the bombings: Krystle Campbell, a 29-year-old restaurant manager, and Chinese graduate student Lingzi Lu.

An 8-year-old boy, Martin Richard, was also killed.

PAUSE AT TIME OF BOMBINGS

The city also planned to pause at 2:50 p.m. EDT to mark the moment a week ago when the two bombs made of pressure cookers and packed with nails and ball bearings tore through the crowd watching runners complete the Boston Marathon.

In the days that followed, investigators examining thousands of images from surveillance video, media coverage and spectators taking pictures were able to pick out two men as suspects, later identified as the Tsarnaev brothers.

On Tuesday, the day after the attack, the younger Tsarnaev was working out in the gym at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth, listening to music on his iPod, when he struck up a conversation with fellow sophomore Zach Bettencourt.

Bettencourt said he and Tsarnaev chatted about the bombings.

"It's crazy this is happening now," Bettencourt recalled Tsarnaev telling him. "This (these bombings) is so easy to do. These tragedies happen all the time in Afghanistan and Iraq."

Police said the Tsarnaev brothers made enough additional bombs for them to believe that more attacks were planned. They were also armed with handguns. A shootout with police in the Boston suburb of Watertown early Friday morning left more than 200 spent shell casings in the street.

Neither Tsarnaev brother was licensed to own guns in the towns where they lived, Cambridge, Massachusetts, authorities said on Sunday.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev could be charged with several crimes including use of weapons of mass destruction, terrorism and bombing of places of public use in addition to homicide, said former federal prosecutor and University of Notre Dame law professor Jimmy Gurulé.

Because death resulted, each statute authorizes the death penalty, he said.

Though the case is likely to involve officials at the highest levels including Attorney General Eric Holder, the prosecutor in charge will be Carmen Ortiz, the U.S. attorney for the district of Massachusetts.

Ortiz has faced criticism for coming down too hard on some defendants, but that approach may become a legal asset for the biggest case of her career, said attorneys who have faced off against her.

The Tsarnaev brothers emigrated to the United States a decade ago from Dagestan, a predominantly Muslim region in Russia's Caucasus. The men's parents, who moved back to southern Russia some time ago, have said their sons were framed.

Much of investigators' attention has focused on a trip to Russia last year by Tamerlan Tsarnaev, and whether he became involved with or was influenced by Chechen separatists or Islamist extremists there.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev traveled to Moscow in January 2012 and spent six months in Dagestan, a law enforcement source said. Neighbors in Makhachkala, the region's capital city, said he kept a low profile while visiting there last summer, helping his father renovate an apartment unit.

That trip, combined with Russian interest in Tamerlan communicated to U.S. authorities and an FBI interview of him in 2011, have raised questions whether danger signals were missed.

(Additional reporting by Jonathan Allen, Mary Ellen Clark, Ross Kerber and Hillary Russ; Writing by Daniel Trotta; Editing by Phil Barbara and Frances Kerry)

Taliban kidnap 11 from helicopter in Afghanistan - Hindustan Times

Posted: 22 Apr 2013 07:25 AM PDT

civilian aircraft landed in strong winds and heavy rain on Sunday in the village of Dahra Mangal in the Azra district of Logar province, southeast of Kabul, District Governor Hamidullah Hamid told The Associated Press.

He said the helicopter came down in a gorge in the densely forested region, known for narrow gorges and rugged mountains, about 20 kilometers (12 miles) from the Pakistani border.

The Taliban fighters then captured everyone aboard the helicopter and took them away, Hamid said.

In a telephone interview, Arsala Jamal, the Logar provincial governor, identified the prisoners as eight Turks, one Afghan translator and two foreign pilots of unknown nationality.

In Ankara, a spokesman at Turkey's Foreign Ministry confirmed that eight Turks were aboard the helicopter but had no information on their condition or what had happened to them after the emergency landing. The official spoke on condition of anonymity in keeping with ministry regulations.

Stepan Anikeyev, the Russian Embassy's press attache in Kabul, said in a phone interview that a Russian man was being held prisoner. He said the Russians know he was one of the two pilots, but they don't have details about his identity yet, and they are in "constant touch" with local officials in Afghanistan.

There was no information about the other pilot.

"A helicopter that belongs to no military organization made emergency landing in an area of Logar province," Interior Ministry spokesman Sediq Sediqi said. "We have sent our police forces to the area to investigate the situation, to find out the reason of the landing and to know who was in the helicopter, how many of them were there and their whereabouts at the moment."

Security forces were dispatched to the area where the helicopter landed and engaged in firefights with the Taliban but quickly retreated because they had no support, said Logar Deputy Police Chief Rais Khan Abdul Rahimzai.

"We brought the police back because there was no help from the (NATO) coalition or the Afghan army. The police were unable to secure the area, which is very rural, and we were worried," Rahimzai said.

He said that information they had from the region was that the prisoners were taken by the Taliban to Hisarak district of neighboring Nangarhar province.

Hamid said that repeated calls for the Afghan army or NATO help went unanswered, and police were unable to secure the area, 15 kilometers (nine miles) from the district police compound in the town of Azra.

NATO confirmed that the Turkish helicopter went down on Sunday, but the International Security Assistance Force did not have any other details. It did say there were "no ISAF" or "U.S. personnel onboard the Turkish helicopter," denying an earlier Taliban claim that they had detained Americans on the aircraft.

ISAF spokeswoman Erin Stattel said the coalition was assisting in the recovery of the aircraft, but would not say how. She could not say whether the helicopter made a precautionary landing or the Taliban had forced it down.

Turkey's state-run Anadolu Agency, quoting an unidentified official from the Khorasan Logistics company in Kabul, said an MI-8 type helicopter belonging to the company made an emergency landing near the town of Azra due to bad weather conditions. There were 11 people on board, including eight Turks, one Afghan and one Russian, Anadolu quoted the official as saying.

The helicopter reportedly belonged to a company called Khorasan Cargo Airlines. No one was answering telephones at Khorasan's offices in Kabul or in Dubai.

Rahimzai said he didn't know what kind of cargo the helicopter was carrying, where it was headed, or whether it was working for NATO.

Although the capture or kidnapping of foreigners is not uncommon in Afghanistan, large scale captures of foreigners are rare.

The last such instance occurred in July 2007 when the Taliban abducted 23 South Korean church volunteers as they traveled by bus along a dangerous road in southern Afghanistan. The militants killed two men soon after taking them and later gradually released all the remaining captives over a month.

Last month, the Taliban released a Turkish engineer that they kidnapped two years ago. Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said at the time that the engineer was released as a goodwill gesture.
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Ahad, 21 April 2013

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MISC plunges after buyout offer fails

Posted: 21 Apr 2013 06:58 PM PDT

Shares in shipping firm MISC Bhd fell nearly 10 per cent on Monday after a revised US$3 billion privatization bid by state oil and gas company Petroliam Nasional Bhd (Petronas) fell through.

By the deadline on April 19, Petronas had only managed to lift its stake in MISC to 86.07 per cent, short of the required 90 per cent acceptance by shareholders the national oil firm needed to take MISC private, according to a stock exchange filing late Friday.

The shipping group earlier this month said Petronas' revised US$3 billion offer to buy out all remaining stock was not fair because it was lower than the combined valuation of its different divisions.

By 9.49am, MISC shares had slipped 9.6 per cent. The benchmark Kuala Lumpur stock index rose 0.1 per cent.-- Reuters

Ringgit opens mostly unchanged

Posted: 21 Apr 2013 06:48 PM PDT

The ringgit traded mostly unchanged against the US dollar in the earlier session today due to weaker support for the local note, dealers said.

At 9am, the ringgit was quoted at 3.0345/0365 to the greenback against Friday' s close of 3.0340/0370.

A dealer said amid quiet trading, investors remained on the sidelines ahead of the 13th General Election on May 5.

"In tandem with the weaker cash market, investors are also reducing their major positions in other riskier assets, including emerging currencies due to lack of internal and external catalysts," he added.

Regionally, the ringgit was traded higher against other major currencies.

It rose against the yen to 3.0391/0426 from 3.0591/0624 on Friday and surged against the British pound to 4.6161/6206 from 4.6602/6657 previously.

The ringgit appreciated against the euro to 3.9637/9669 from 3.9715/9763 previously, and was slightly better against the Singapore dollar at 2.4515/4545 from 2.4559/4597.-- Bernama

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