CYBER bullying, a worldwide big problem

CYBER bullying has become more widespread among people today, especially with the emergence of social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter (“Vengeance via the Net” – The Star, March 21).

Social networking sites offer people the chance to jot down the happenings in their daily lives, express opinions and share ideas, besides venting their frustrations.



However, cyber bullies take it a step too far when posting nasty and derogatory comments about others. The reason for their action is that they are prejudiced towards others.

Their prejudice stems from the fact that they think that the other person is not sociable and less outspoken. Due to jealousy, cyber bullies also target those who are popular.

Their methods of bullying include stealing other’s pictures or writing unpleasant remarks in order to attract attention.

Some work in groups so that they seem powerful, and the victims have no chance to turn the tables on them.

Cyber bullies will even use electronic means to superimpose the targeted victim’s face on a nude photo to destroy that person’s reputation.

The main motive is to hurt the other party, and cyber bullies are aware of their actions.

Cyber bullies are actually craving for attention. They lack confidence and they boost their pride and ego by destroying other people’s image. They enjoy the thrill of publicly shaming others in the mistaken idea that it will make them look good.

In actual fact, they are cowards hiding behind technology and using it as a weapon to humiliate others. They do not realise that their actions can have serious consequences.

The person they hurt may be harmed emotionally and psychologically. The victims suffer in silence because they do not know where to turn to for help. It will affect their daily routine.

It is advisable that victims of cyber bullying do not retaliate but instead inform their parents or the authorities.

Cyber bullies may say they are doing it for fun, but their actions will backfire should they be caught.

They are actually the ones who are in need of help. They may even take their bullying ways to the extreme, such as physical violence, if they are not stopped.
Counselling is the proper way to handle cyber bullies. Social networking sites are good outlets to voice opinions but one should not abuse the privilege. Use it right and one can eventually lead a fulfilling life.

By YANG CHIEN FEI, -Use social media right
Ampang, Selangor.

Are antibiotics an end to modern medicine?

A warning by the head of WHO that antibiotic resistance is so serious that it may lead to an end to modern medicine should alert health authorities to contain this most serious health crisis.

A schematic representation of how antibiotic resistance is enhanced by natural selection (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

LAST week, the head of the World Health Organisation (WHO) sounded a large alarm bell on how antibiotics may in future not work anymore, due to resistance of bacteria to the medicines.

Antibiotic resistance has been a growing problem for some time now. From time to time, there will be news reports of the outbreak of diseases, old and new, that cannot be treated because the bacteria have grown more powerful than the antibiotics used against them.

And experts have been warning about how the wrong use of antibiotics has given the bacteria the opportunity to develop resistance, enabling them to become immune to the medicines.

What is needed, of course, is a multi-prong strategy to prevent the abuse and wrongful use of antibiotics. Drug companies should not over-market their products. Doctors should not over-prescribe. And antibiotics should not be used on animals that are not sick but to fatten them and thus enable higher profits.

Now, the Director-General of the WHO has given a big warning that the growing threat of resistance may mean an end to modern medicine, and the entry of the post-antibiotic era.

Speaking at a meeting of infectious disease experts in Copenhagen last week, Dr Margaret Chan said there was a global crisis in antibiotics caused by rapidly evolving resistance among microbes responsible for common infections that threaten to turn them into untreatable diseases.

Every antibiotic ever developed was at risk of becoming useless.

“A post-antibiotic era means, in effect, an end to modern medicine as we know it. Things as common as strep throat or a child’s scratched knee could once again kill. For patients infected with some drug resistant pathogens, mortality has increased by around 50%,” she said.

“Some sophisticated interventions, like hip replacement, organ transplants, cancer chemotherapy and care of pre-term infants, would become far more difficult or even too dangerous to undertake.”

Dr Chan called for action to restrict the use of antibiotics in food production. “Worldwide, the fact that greater quantities of antibiotics are used in healthy animals than in unhealthy humans, is a cause for great concern,” she said.

She called for measures — doctors prescribing antibiotics appropriately, patients following their treatments — and restrictions on the use of antibiotics in animals.

These actions have, in fact, been suggested for many years, including by the health group REACT, based in Sweden, by health networks such as Health Action International, and locally, by the Consumers’ Association of Penang.

The WHO itself has the scope to do much more in alerting health authorities and in building the capacity, especially of developing countries, to act.

There are forms of TB that have become untreatable because of multi-drug resistance. The TB pathogen has become immune to many antibiotics. This has resulted in a resurgence of the deadly disease. The story is the same for many other pathogens causing other diseases.

As Global Trends reported in June 2011, a worrying development is the discovery of a gene, known as NDM-1, that has the ability to alter bacteria and make them highly resistant to all known drugs, including the most potent antibiotics.

In 2010, there were reports of many such cases in India and Pakistan and in European countries. At the time, only two types of bacteria were found to be hosting the NDM-1 gene – E coli and Klebsiella pneumonia.

But it was then feared that the gene would transfer to other bacteria as well, since it was found to easily jump from one type of bacteria to another. If this happened, antibiotic resistance would spread rapidly, making it difficult to treat many diseases.

These concerns have been proven to be justified. In May 2011, the Times of India published an article based on interviews with British scientists from Cardiff University who had first reported on NDM-1’s existence.

The scientists found that the NDM-1 gene has been jumping among various species of bacteria at “superfast speed” and that it “has a special quality to jump between species without much of a problem”.

While the gene was found only in E coli when it was initially detected in 2006, now the scientists have found NDM-1 in more than 20 different species of bacteria. NDM-1 can move at an unprecedented speed, making more and more species of bacteria drug-resistant.

Since there are very few new antibiotics in the pipeline, when the resistance grows among the whole range of bacteria to the existing drugs, human beings will be more and more at the mercy of the increasingly deadly bacteria.

In May 2011, there was an outbreak of a deadly disease caused by a new strain of the E coli bacteria that killed more than 20 people and affected another 2,000 in Germany.

They were affected by a new strain of the already rare 0104 type of E coli. There are other common types of E coli which normally cause only a mild ailment. The WHO said the variant had “never been seen in an outbreak situation before”.

Although the “normal” E coli usually produces mild sickness in the stomach, the new strain of E coli 0104 causes bloody diarrhoea and severe stomach cramps, while in some of the more serious cases so far, it also causes haemolytic-uraemic syndrome (HUS), which damages blood cells and the kidneys.

A major problem is that the bacterium is resistant to antibiotics. Eradication of these kinds of bacteria is impractical partly because they are able to evolve so rapidly, according to medical experts.

Now that the WHO chief has sounded the alarm bell, health authorities should redouble their efforts to contain the crisis. An “end to modern medicine” and a “post-antibiotic era” are predictions too horrible to imagine.

By  GLOBAL TRENDS By MARTIN KHOR

Related articles

• Antibiotic resistance is a fight we will never win (bio230fall2010.wordpress.com)
• New Delhi NDM-1 superbug: Indian scientists nail British hoax (quicktake.wordpress.com)
• Compound May Help In Fight Against Antibiotic-Resistant Superbugs (medicalnewstoday.com)
• Team discovers how bacteria resist a 'Trojan horse' antibiotic (eurekalert.org)
• Antibiotic Resistance (and other falling skies) Part One (huntgathermedicine.com)

Cyber-attacks on China

  By Phil Muncaster

China is claiming attacks on public and private organisations from outside of its borders have rocketed in the past year - from five million computers affected in 2010 to 8.9m in 2011.

Attacks on Chinese websites are on the rise, according to a government report >>

State-run newspaper China Daily reported the figures from (deep breath) the government’s National Computer Network Emergency Response Technical Team and Coordination Center.

They revealed that machines behind 11,851 IP addresses from overseas took control of 10,593 Chinese websites during 2011. Other attacks involved the destruction of servers and stealing of personal data from web users in the People’s Republic.

Some 1,116 sites were defaced by overseas attackers, and just under half of those government sites, Wang Minghua, deputy director at the centre, told a news conference on Monday.

“This shows that Chinese websites still face a serious problem from being maliciously attacked by foreign hackers or IP addresses," he is quoted as saying.

Surprisingly, Japan is alleged to be the source of most attacks on China, supposedly landing 22.8 per cent, followed by the US with 20.4 per cent and then the Republic of Korea with 7.1 per cent.

The attacks were both financially motivated and targeted at stealing sensitive information from government departments, according to the report, although tellingly there is no breakdown for each.

China has swung from being a country frequently accused of launching cyber-attacks on Western nations to one finding itself on the business end of hackers' keyboards. Although it has been frustratingly difficult for investigators and politicians to prove, everyone from Hillary Clinton to William Hague and Google’s Eric Schmidt has pointed accusing fingers at the Asian nation as a source of malicious net traffic.

Most recently, a detailed report from US defence contractor Northrop Grumman revealed that the People’s Liberation Army is tooling up with advanced information warfare capabilities, and warned that academia and commercial technology firms are helping to provide it with significant R&D resources.

However, despite the threat that Western governments believe Chinese hackers pose, it’s also likely that as China increasingly becomes an affluent web-connected nation, international cyber-criminals will look to target its web users. There are after all more than 500m users online in the People’s Republic, and almost one billion mobile subscribers, while a growing middle class is spending increasing amounts of cash online - China’s internet GDP will grow at a CAGR of over 17 per cent through to 2016, according to new research.

It would be naïve to think that the US, UK and other nations are snoozing while China-sponsored attackers target their data. The UK’s Cyber Security Strategy announced in November explained that a Cyber Defence Operations Group will be installed at the Ministry of Defence next month, for example.

Overseen by Air Marshal Sir Stuart Peach, the group will have a mission to develop "new tactics, techniques and plans to develop military cyber capabilities”.

The latest stats from the Chinese government may be slightly exaggerated but shouldn’t be dismissed out of hand. ®

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Malaysia Websites hacked but not whacked after ...

India, Asia #1 world's top weapons importer!

 A study has found India to be the biggest weapons importer.

STOCKHOLM AFP— Asia leads the world when it comes to weapon imports, according to a study released Monday by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).

 World arms trade (AFP Graphic)

Globally the volume of international transfers of major conventional weapons was 24 percent higher in the period 2007-11 compared to the 2002-06 period, the report said.

Over the past five years, Asia and Oceania accounted for 44 percent in volume of conventional arms imports, the institute said.

That compared with 19 percent for Europe, 17 percent for the Middle East, 11 percent for North and South America, and 9 percent for Africa, said the report.

India was the biggest arms importer in the period covered, 2007-11, accounting for 10 percent in weapons volume.

 India is the world's largest arms importer (AFP/File, Raveendran)

File photo shows Indian soldiers firing a Bofors gun 

It was followed by South Korea (6 percent), China and Pakistan (both 5 percent), and Singapore (4 percent), according to the independent institute which specialises in arms control and disarmament matters.

These five countries accounted for almost a third, 30 percent, of the volume of international arms imports, said SIPRI.

"India's imports of major weapons increased by 38 percent between 2002-06 and 2007-11," SIPRI said.

"Notable deliveries of combat aircraft during 2007-11 included 120 Su-30MKs and 16 MiG-29Ks from Russia and 20 Jaguar Ss from the United Kingdom," it said.

While India was the world's largest importer, its neighbour and sometime foe Pakistan was the third largest.

Pakistan took delivery of "a significant quantity of combat aircraft during this period: 50 JF-17s from China and 30 F-16s," the report added.

Both countries "have taken and will continue to take delivery of large quantities of tanks," it also noted.

"Major Asian importing states are seeking to develop their own arms industries and decrease their reliance on external sources of supply," said Pieter Wezeman, senior researcher with the SIPRI Arms Transfers Programme.

China, which in 2006 and 2007 was the world's top arms importer, has now dropped to fourth place.

"The decline in the volume of Chinese imports coincides with the improvements in China's arms industry and rising arms exports," according to the report.

 File photo shows Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) …

But "while the volume of China's arms exports is increasing, this is largely a result of Pakistan importing more arms from China," it added.

"China has not yet achieved a major breakthrough in any other significant market."

China is however the sixth largest world exporter of weapons behind the United States, Russia, Germany, France and Britain.

In Europe, Greece was the largest importer between 2007 and 2011, the institute said.

Between 2002 and 2011, Syria increased its imports of weapons by 580 percent -- the bulk supplied by Russia -- while Venezuela boosted its imports over the same period by 555 percent, it reported.

Throughout the Middle East as a whole, weapons imports decreased by eight percent over the period of the survey.

However SIPRI warned "this trend will soon be reversed."

Tunisia, where mass protests ousted strongman Zine El Abidine Ben Ali early last year, launched the so-called Arab Spring and inspired similar movements in Egypt, Libya and elsewhere.

"During 2011, the governments of Bahrain, Egypt, Libya, Tunisia and Syria used imported weapons in the suppression of peaceful demonstrations among other alleged violations of human rights and international humanitarian law.

"The transfer of arms to states affected by the Arab Spring has provoked public and parliamentary debate in a number of supplier states," the report said.

The volume of deliveries of "major conventional weapons" to African nations increased by a massive 110 percent in 2007-2011 over the previous five-year period, with deliveries to North Africa up by 273 percent.

Morocco saw its own imports increase by 443 percent, the report added.

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Malaysia's household debt rise a concern

PETALING JAYA: While not an imminent danger, the level of household debt is of concern and warrants close monitoring, RAM Ratings head of financial institution ratings Wong Yin Ching said,

The nation’s household debt as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP) had risen to 77% as at end-2011 compared with 69% at end-2006, and its household debt-to-GDP ratio was considered high when compared with other countries in the region, especially in relation to GDP per capita.

Wong was speaking to StarBiz after the release of the rating agency’s Banking Bulletin 2012. Home loans remained the largest component, contributing about 45% of the total household debt, she added.

However, unsecured financing in the form of personal loans and credit-cards had been growing rapidly, accounting for about 15% and 5% of total household debt, respectively.

Development financial institutions, cooperatives and building societies that offer personal financing facilities to civil servants under salary-deduction schemes contributed to the bulk of the growth, she noted.

“We view positively Bank Negara’s various pre-emptive measures implemented since late 2010 to rein in growth in household debt and safeguard the soundness of the financial system.

“On top of the tighter measures on residential property financing, stricter guidelines have also been implemented on credit cards, such as increasing the income eligibility criteria.

“We do not discount additional prudential regulations to be imposed in future,” Wong said.

Effective Jan 1, banks are required to use net income calculation method instead of gross income when computing debt-service ratio.

Wong added that unemployment rate was still relatively low at 3% and the credit quality of household sector was also healthy, with a low gross impaired-loan ratio of 1.8% as at end-January 2012 (end-2010:2.3%).

Nevertheless, she said the debt-servicing ability of households in the lower-income segment might be more vulnerable to economic down-cycles, greater variability in income and inflationary pressures.

On loan growth, RAM Ratings expects the overall banking system’s loan growth to taper to about 8% to 9% this year, after clocking in a strong 14% expansion in 2011. This is supported by a projected 4.6% real GDP growth this year, which is slightly lower than the 5% in 2011.

Private investments, she said were expected to remain strong, although a weakening in global demand would have some bearing on export performance.

Wong anticipates the central bank to remain accommodative in its monetary policy by maintaining the overnight policy rate at 3% with a downside bias in 2012, as preserving growth momentum would take precedence over curbing inflationary pressures.

While a more moderate household loan growth was anticipated due to the prudential regulations introduced, she added this would be balanced by stronger financing demand from the commercial and corporate sector from the rollout of projects under the Economic Transformation Programme and 10th Malaysia Plan.

For non-performing loans this year, she said the industry’s gross impaired-loan ratio was expected to be kept healthy this year, with a slight uptick to about 3% from the current all time low level of 2.7%.

“In terms of capitalisation, all the domestic, all the domestic banks were well poised to meet the new capital requirements under Basel III, of which the implementation would be phased in from 2013,” she added.

Although these new capital measures would elevate banks’ funding costs, which may in turn be passed on to consumers, it would ensure the banking sector was safeguarded against unexpected shocks, Wong said.

As at end-January, the banking system’s capitalisation was strong with a tier-1 risk-weighted capital adequacy ratio of 12.9%.

Banks’ profitability, she said had been on a steady rise over the last couple of years on the back of strong loan growth, benign loan impairment charges and growing fee income. However, net interest margins (NIMs) had been under pressure due to stiff price competition, particularly in certain loan segments such as residential mortgages.

NIM is a measure of the difference between interest income generated by banks and interest paid out to depositors.

Source: By DALJIT DHESI  daljit@thestar.com.my

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