Rants

Parking along Bendahara road is being removed to make way for road widening. If you're turning into town from Melayu Road / Kingsway Road along China Street, there will be absolutely no parking for you, until you turn left along Cassia Road, turn into Anatto Street, make a turn into Raja Road adjacent to China Street, to find a parking space. Normally you'd find a spot along Bendahara, but this isn't possible now.

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Or you could park in the new parking area along the riverside just off Bendahara Road (as designated in these signs), which is quite a distance away.


As can also be seen in the pictures, the removal of the parking lines will only make people park in their own invisible parking spots. This road will be packed, parking or not. Is this a good idea?

A 22-year-old Penan woman has lodged a police report claiming that she was tricked into going to Kuala Lumpur and telling the police that she had been raped by a logger.

The woman, from Long Item, said two men approached her at home last October and offered to bring her to Kuala Lumpur to seek treatment for her daughter, who was ill at the time.

...

Sahabat Alam Malaysia (SAM) said there was a strong possibility that some Penan women from Ulu Baram who were said to have been raped by loggers were living under tremendous pressure.

SAM field officer for Sarawak said the women might have been pressured to make public statements that they have not been raped or victimised.

More at Source

My take:
So which is it?? There's always things happening like this when the cases are huge - claims of one thing and suddenly another claim that it wasn't true, it was all a conspiracy.

This is a follow up to the previous news.

Rape of Penan women did occur

It has been confirmed that Penan girls and women were raped and molested by timber company workers in Sarawak’s Ulu Baram district.

A special committee, set up by the Women, Family and Community Development Ministry, revealed that sexual abuses against Penan women and girls by timber workers as reported by The Star last year did take place in the Baram district.

More at Source

Air Quality In Miri At Unhealthy Level, Other Areas Good Or Moderate

KUALA LUMPUR, Aug 13 (Bernama) -- Only Miri is recording unhealthy air quality with an Air Pollution Index (API) reading at 101, while most areas in the country have good or moderate air quality.

The API classification is as follows: 0-50 (good), 51-100 (moderate), 101-200 (unhealthy), 201-300 (very unhealthy) and 300 and above (hazardous).

Source

As a side note, considering that I was in Kuching in 1997 when the API reading went up to 890+ and visibility 20m, this is probably not going to shorten my lifespan any more than it already is.

Pictures don't really do it justice. Visibility was less than 200 meters in some areas.
It's that hazy!

However, a few drops of rain *just now*, but it stopped as soon as it started. Is that the cloud seeding we've been hearing about?