Free Republic

The staff and their families of the North Korean embassy have been told to leave after the country severed ties with Malaysia, apparently after Mun Chol-myong was ordered to be extradited to the US. (Bernama pic) PETALING JAYA: After North Korea’s move to sever ties with Malaysia, Wisma Putra has ordered all diplomatic staff and their dependents at the Embassy of North Korea in Kuala Lumpur to leave the country within 48 hours. Wisma Putra said Malaysia was now compelled to close its embassy in Pyongyang, where operations have been suspended since 2017. In a statement, Wisma Putra expressed regret...

Johor ruler Sultan Ibrahim Sultan Iskandar today called for the government to proceed with the appeal against the High Court ruling that allows non-Muslims to use the word “Allah” for religious and educational purposes. “As the head of Islam in Johor, I urge the federal government to appeal the ruling,” he said in a statement today. Sultan Ibrahim added that he would order the Johor Islamic Council to take any necessary steps to support the appeal. Citing a Johor fatwa that prohibits non-Muslims from using the word “Allah”, he said the fatwa states that the use of the word “Allah”...

March 8 marks seven years since Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 vanished into the southern Indian Ocean. Despite an international search effort that spanned about four years and cost $200 million, the plane's wreckage has never been found. Jim Hall, former chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, discusses where the investigation stands.

For Syahiirah Junaidi, a Kuala Lumpur resident, the recent halal meat scandal in Malaysia is beyond her control. The country was in December rocked by reports that a cartel had for decades been allegedly bribing officials to import and sell Muslims non-certified meat, including horse and kangaroo — when the meat was neither ritually slaughtered according to Islamic custom nor derived from approved sources. More from AsiaOne Read the condensed version of this story, and other top stories with NewsLite. While Syahiirah says she cannot do much but continue to take the word of supermarkets that pledge their meat is...

A SEVEN-year investigation into the mystery of flight MH370 has found the doomed Malaysian plane may have been shot from the sky. In an exclusive interview to mark her explosive new book, investigative journalist Florence de Changy today reveals her shock findings about the flight on March 8, 2014, that disappeared with 239 people on board. Official accounts concluded the Boeing-777 executed a dramatic U-turn less than an hour into its planned flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, before plummeting into the Indian Ocean. Yet Florence claims it stayed on course for a further 80 MINUTES before plunging into the...

A man who has been separated from his three children in Malaysia for the past 20 years was found in a home here after they made an appeal on Facebook. Mr Ali Jais, 84, was admitted to Bukit Batok Home for the Aged in 2018. He lost contact with his family prior to admission and was unable to share information about them, so the home was unable to assist him in contacting his family members. But earlier this month, his youngest daughter, Ms Khazimah Ali, 37, made an appeal on Facebook for information on him. The post included the only...

Malaysia's former prime minister today said that Muslims have the right 'to kill millions of French people', shortly after a knife-wielding Islamist killed three people in a deadly terror attack in Nice. Mahathir Mohamad, who lost power in February this year, said freedom of expression does not include 'insulting other people' as fury over satirical cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed sweeps the Islamic world. The 95-year-old politician said he did not approve of the beheading of a French school teacher for sharing caricatures of the Prophet, but said: 'Irrespective of the religion professed, angry people kill'. 'The French in the...

Malaysia's former prime minister Mahathir Mohamad said Thursday that Muslims had a right "to kill millions of French people", shortly after a knife-wielding man launched a deadly attack in Nice. Three people were killed at a church in the southern French city, with the attacker slitting the throat of at least one of them, in what authorities were treating as the latest jihadist attack to rock the country. Shortly afterwards, Mahathir -- who was prime minister of Muslim-majority Malaysia until his government collapsed in February -- launched an extraordinary outburst on Twitter. Referring to the beheading of a French teacher...

The Prime Minister of Malaysia said Muslims have “a right to be angry and kill millions of French people” just hours after an attacker yelling “Allahu akbar!” beheaded one woman and killed two others in a church in France. The incendiary comments were part of a tweetstorm from Dr. Mahathir Mohamad, who railed against Western culture and French President Emmanuel Macron for refusing to denounce the caricatures of Prophet Mohammad that have sparked three attacks in two months in France. Macron has also vowed to fight “Islamist separatism” in wake of the beheading of school teacher Samuel Paty in a...

A new investigation by aviation experts claims to have located where MH370 is Despite a four year, $200 million search the plan vanished and was never found On board the disappeared flight from Malaysia to Beijing were 239 people

A Malaysian student who had lost his phone found it again only a day later - with some unexpected new additions to his camera roll. Zackrydz Rodzi thought someone must have stolen his phone while he was asleep, but he couldn’t know for sure because there were no obvious signs of robbery. Speaking to the BBC, Rodzi said he woke up mid-morning on Saturday and realised his phone was gone. Pictures timecoded to 2pm on the same day show a monkey peering down the lens with bright green foliage and birds in the background. The monkey appeared to be trying...

A report published recently by the U.S. Army describes North Korea’s cyber warfare capabilities and provides information on various units and their missions. The 332-page report, titled “North Korean Tactics,” details North Korean forces and their actions, and one chapter focuses on electronic intelligence warfare, which Pyongyang allegedly uses to collect information on its enemies, deceive its enemies, and launch disruptive and destructive attacks, particularly ones aimed at communication and information systems and infrastructure. North Korea’s electronic warfare includes both lethal and non-lethal methods. Non-lethal methods include electronic jamming and signals reconnaissance, while lethal methods can include physical destruction of...

In the wake of the normalization of relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, there are rumors that several other states could be next to sign an agreement with Israel. While there are hurdles to normalizing relations with some states in the Middle East, there are others who view the UAE decision as a trial balloon and will react positively based on how the next weeks and months play out between Jerusalem and Abu Dhabi. What follows is a list of some countries that reports suggest may be in line to normalize relations. Bahrain Bahrain was long thought to...

Under its vocally anti-American President Rodrigo Duterte, the Philippines has emerged as a focal point between China and the US in their continuing contest for dominance in the region. After years of cosier ties between Manila and Beijing, at the expense of the Philippines' traditional alliance with the US, Duterte last month appeared to signal a retreat from his anti-Washington stance by reversing an earlier decision to scrap a key military agreement with the US in June. While analysts say Duterte is unlikely to change his policy on China any time soon, the shift to reinstate the Visiting Forces Agreement...

The only evidence of collusion found in General Flynn’s phone calls was between the Obama administration and anti-Israel forces at the United Nations. BY BRENT NAGTEGAAL • JULY 2 One month before President Barack Obama left the White House, the United States infamously broke with its historic precedent of supporting Israel at the United Nations, an institution with systemic bias against the Jewish state. Collective applause erupted in the UN hall when U.S. Ambassador Samantha Powers raised her hand to allow passage of Resolution 2334, which called any Israeli settlement in the land occupied by Jordan before 1967 as illegal....

A "shameful" abstention by the U.S. in a United Nations Security Council vote Friday allowed passage of a resolution condemning Israeli settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank. The resolution was put forward by New Zealand, Malaysia, Venezuela and Senegal after Egypt withdrew it Thursday under pressure from Israel and U.S. President-elect Donald Trump. It was adopted with 14 votes in favor, to a round of applause, after U.S. Ambassador Samantha Power abstained. It is the first resolution the Security Council has adopted on Israel and the Palestinians in nearly eight years. Reaction from U.S. Republicans and Jewish leaders around...

An American Navy combat ship this week conducted “routine operations” near a Chinese geological survey ship in the South China Sea. The maneuvers in waters around the Spratly Islands echoed events off the north coast of Malaysian Borneo in April, when a Chinese survey vessel and a fleet of China Coast Guard (CCG) ships shadowed Malaysian oil exploration efforts, in an apparent bid to deter the smaller nation from exploiting resources in the disputed waters. “The Chinese Communist Party must end its pattern of bullying Southeast Asians out of offshore oil, gas, and fisheries. Millions of people in the region...

Egypt has announced an anti-Turkey alliance that includes Greece, Cyprus, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and France to confront Turkish moves in Libya and the Mediterranean. The announcement was made during a virtual meeting with the foreign ministers of these countries on May 11. In a joint statement issued shortly after the meeting, the five-party alliance said it will focus on confronting the Turkish moves in the territorial waters in Cyprus, where Turkey has been carrying out “illegal” excavations in the Mediterranean under Cyprus sovereignty. The alliance also condemned Turkey’s escalated violations of Greek airspace.  The European Union condemned May 16...

American authorities have arrested a former US Marine who is allegedly part of a group that raided North Korea's embassy in Madrid, reports say. Christopher Ahn will reportedly appear in a Los Angeles court. It would be the first arrest over the incident, which happened in February days before US President Donald Trump met North Korea's Kim Jong Un in Vietnam. Free Joseon, a self-styled human rights group, says it was involved. US federal agents have also raided the apartment of Adrian Hong, one of the group's leaders, says the Washington Post. ... On 22 February, a group of at...

Hackers are trying to infect organizations throughout the world with a popular strain of malware by sending emails that appear to be from an Egyptian oil company. In research published Tuesday, Romanian antivirus company BitDefender noted a surge in attempted phishing attacks that try to trick users into downloading malware by masquerading as Enppi, an oil company owned by the Egyptian government. The malware, known as Agent Tesla, is a spyware tool which enables hackers to monitor keystrokes, steal data about file downloads and collect username and password credentials from internet browsers, among other capabilities. The number of attacks spiked...