Foreign envoys keen on strengthening bilateral ties with Malaysia in 2013 - Nation | The Star Online

Malaysian artistes break into international scene

The Internet age is fast connecting musicians with their listening audience, and Malaysia has ridden that crest pretty well in recent years, too.

MALAYSIAN artistes fared very well in the international scene, too. At the top of the list are Yuna Zarai and Zee Avi, two singer-songwriters who more or less got discovered via their YouTube video uploads. In 2012, Yuna played at about 50 venues in the United States, performing alongside singers like David Gray, Allen Stone and Graffiti 6. She also appeared in several music festivals, the biggest one being Lollapalooza 2012 in August, where she shared the bill with big names like Red Hot Chili Peppers, Florence And The Machine, Franz Ferdinand and The Black Keys. In April, Yuna got a slot on Conan O’Brien’s talk show, Conan, where she performed her track, Live Your Life. In November, she held two shows in Penang and Kuching, Sarawak as part of her Yuna Homecoming Concert. She also performed in Urbanscapes 2012 in Petaling Jaya, Selangor.

Touring the United States has paid off well for Yuna, as vocally, the indie singer is sounding more powerful than ever.

Malaysia among world’s top 10 tourist destinations - Nation | The Star Online

MALAYSIA was one of the world's top 10 tourist destinations last year, making it the only South-East Asian country to make the list in the United Nations World Trade Organisation (UNWTO) Tourism Highlights 2012.

In 2009, the country recorded 23.6 million tourists arrival and in 2010, the number increased to 24.6 million.

Topping the list was France with 79 million tourist arrivals, followed by United States (62 million), China (58 million), Spain (57 million), Italy (46 million), Turkey (29.3 million), United Kingdom (29.2 million) and Germany (28.4 million).

Rounding up the top 10 was Mexico with 23.4 million tourists. The report also ranked Malaysia 14th in terms of international tourism receipts with US$18.3bil (RM56.3bil) last year, ahead of countries such as Singapore, Japan, the Netherlands, Korea and Canada. In 2009 and 2010, Malaysia recorded US$15.8bil (RM48.6bil) and US$18.2bil (RM55.9bil) respectively in tourism receipts.

Pot luck: Singapore's Peranakan cuisine - Lifestyle - DNA

What do you get when you take people of Chinese origin, plant them in British/Dutch colonies in South Asia and stir in local, i.e. Indonesian and Malay, as well as Japanese and Indian influences? You get Peranakans (that literally translates to ‘descendants’), and a cuisine that has soaked up the best of the many worlds it has been exposed to.

Originally Chinese migrants, Peranakans moved to the colonies of Malaya and Indonesia in the 15th and 16th centuries and married locally while imbibing local cultures and influences. With such varied influences, it is no wonder that Peranakan cuisine is as unique as it is familiar, and Singapore, one of the world’s smallest nations, is where you can find the best of it.

Pics: Miss Universe 2012 — US wins for the 8th time - DNA

A 20-year-old beauty queen who plays the cello and is a breast cancer advocate was crowned Miss Universe on Wednesday, the eighth time an American has won the pageant where the world's most beautiful women parade in bikinis and ball gowns.

Olivia Culpo, 20, a brunette from Rhode Island, was chosen by a 10-judge panel from 89 contestants representing countries ranging from India to Kosovo and Britain.

In the pic: Miss USA Olivia Culpo waves after being crowned

Good Malaysian restaurant downtown on Ossington - Ontario (inc. Toronto) - Chowhound
The Hawker Bar on Ossington is a small place, 40 seats, that offers pretty good Malaysian fare at reasonable prices. Satay (chicken and pork) was good, chili sambal sting ray (skate) excellent (a favorite every time I am in a NY Malay restaurant), laksa noodle soup pretty good although it could be lighter. Did not try the rendang, a famous Malay beef curry. After the loss of quality of Matahari on Baldwin you have to go to Markham or Scarborough to find decent Malasian food - this is a welcome addition while we await the arrival of (over-hyped) Nick Lui. Chef at Hawker Bar trained in a top Thai restaurant in Melbourne, apparently.

Following The Food trail | Bangkok Post: food

The young and talented Malaysian chef Muhammad Nazri bin Redzuawan, aka Chef Riz.

Wilbur Ross Sees Recession, Warns of 'Greek' Situation
The U.S. economy faces a recession if the nation goes off the fiscal cliff and key tax cuts fully expire at the end of this year, said Wilbur Ross, chairman and CEO of WL Ross and Co.

And, in the wake of news the U.S. will hit its debt limit earlier than expected, the billionaire financier warned that the United States could soon face its own “Greek” style debt situation.

Failure to stop automatic tax increases set for Jan. 1 “would obviously have a big negative effect on disposable income and consequently, I believe would put us back into the recession when coupled with the spending cuts that are also part of it," Ross told Newsmax TV in an exclusive interview Thursday.

Read Latest Breaking News from Newsmax.com http://www.moneynews.com/Headline/Wilbur-Ross-Economy-fiscal-cliff/2012/12/27/id/469223?s=al&promo_code=114EB-1#ixzz2GNN66Txo
Urgent: Should Obamacare Be Repealed? Vote Here Now!

British mission to find signs of life beneath Antarctic lake called off - Telegraph

The British Antarctic survey team had hoped to bore through 1.8 miles of ice using near-boiling water to pierce Lake Ellsworth, untouched for around half a million years.

In one of the most ambitious British scientific projects in recent times, the hope had been to investigate early life forms in extreme conditions of pressure and temperature. The findings could have contributed to life theories on distant planets and moons, such as Jupiter's natural satellite Europa. The team had also intended to chart the continent's past climates via the lake's sediments.

The British camp at the Lake Ellsworth drilling site

Genesis II: Extraterrestrial Oceans Could Host Life : Discovery News

NASA's battle cry behind the small armada of orbiters, landers and rovers dispatched to Mars is "follow the water!" Where there's water, there could be life, which needs a solvent like water to assemble the complex macromolecules needed for living systems.

Mars is covered with geological evidence that it was once a soggy planet. But no longer. One of the most exciting findings to date from the roving field geologist, the Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity, was the detection of a dried up ancient stream where water once flowed billions of years ago.

The irony is that if you travel a couple hundred million miles beyond Mars' orbit you cross the solar system's frost line, the boundary beyond which there is plenty of water preserved from the planets' birth.

At least six outer moons have subsurface oceans that could potentially be cozy places for life: Europa, Ganymede, Callisto, Titan, Enceladus and Triton. Each of them could have as much if not more water than found in all of Earth’s oceans. In fact Earth is a comparatively dry world.

Massive Education Complex Takes Shape in Malaysia - NYTimes.com

Massive Education Complex Takes Shape in Malaysia

By KRISTIANO ANG

Published: December 23, 2012

FACEBOOK
TWITTER
GOOGLE+
SAVE
E-MAIL
SHARE
PRINT
REPRINTS

NUSAJAYA, MALAYSIA — The Malaysian state of Johor has long been viewed as an inexpensive shopping area across the border from Singapore, or a stop en route to the brighter lights of Kuala Lumpur.

Raffles University Iskandar

An artist’s rendition of plans for Raffles University Iskandar’s campus, which is expected to open at the end of 2014 in Educity, an education complex under construction in Malaysia.

Now Malaysia is trying to upgrade a hodgepodge of gritty industrial towns and rural villages with Iskandar Malaysia, a planned eco-city and trading zone with districts for tourism, health care and education.