News stories by Anil Netto

PENANG, Malaysia, Sep 27 (IPS) - A unique electoral exercise in Penang state, promoting  participatory and gender-responsive decision-making at the grassroots level, may serve as a cue for the revival of local elections in Malaysia.  

PENANG, Malaysia, Jul 21 (IPS) - Three years ago, Sherly Hue lived the life of a typical career woman in Kuala Lumpur, working as a marketing executive promoting building materials. But one day, she received a phone call from her worried parents that would forever change her life.

It is a paradox, all right.

The government’s proposal to remove and rationalise subsidies on essential goods and services continues to provoke a storm of criticism from ordinary Malaysians.

A increasing number of natives in Sarawak state in north Borneo are alarmed at encroaching forest and oil palm plantations, which are taking over their native customary land and destroying their traditional lifestyles and biodiversity.

Even if Prime Minister Najib Razak is in Copenhagen for the high-level segment of the U.N. conference on climate change, there has been precious little meaningful debate on the subject here in Malaysia.

For a long time, activists had believed that rainforests in the vast northwest Borneo state of Sarawak were being logged unsustainably, rapidly making way for tree (acacia) plantations, oil palm plantations, dams and secondary growth. But few listened.

An official guideline for employers to retrench their foreign workers ahead of local employees has alarmed civil society society groups who fear that indebted migrant workers could be sent home with inadequate compensation.

It has already been dubbed 'Pokok Demokrasi' or Democracy Tree and is set to enter the annals of folklore in Ipoh, capital city of Perak state.

During a tense press conference, in the midst of the current constitutional crisis in this state, peninsualar Malaysia's second largest, a reporter's MP3 recorder/handphone began ringing.