Sunday, March 9, 2014

MH370 deepens mystery !

Four names on manifest considered suspect on plane disappearance

Video:

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) — Military radar indicates that the missing Boeing 777 jet turned back before vanishing, Malaysia's air force chief said Sunday as authorities were investigating up to four passengers with suspicious identifications who may have boarded the flight.

The revelations add to the uncertainties surrounding the final minutes of flight MH370, which was carrying 239 people when it lost contact with ground controllers somewhere between Malaysia and Vietnam after leaving Kuala Lumpur early Saturday morning bound for Beijing.

A massive international sea has so far turned up no trace of the plane, which lost contact with the ground when the weather was fine, the plane was already cruising and the pilots didn't send a distress signal — unusual circumstance for a modern jetliner operated by a professional airline to crash.

Air force chief Rodzali Daud didn't say which direction the plane might have taken or how long for when it apparently went off route.

"We are trying to make sense of this," he told a media conference. "The military radar indicated that the aircraft may have made a turn back and in some parts, this was corroborated by civilian radar."

Malaysia Airlines Chief Executive Ahmad Jauhari Yahya said pilots were supposed to inform the airline and traffic control authorities if the plane does a U-turn. "From what we have, there was no such distress signal or distress call per se, so we are equally puzzled," he said.

Authorities were checking on the suspect identities of at least two passengers who appear to have boarded with stolen passports. On Saturday, the foreign ministries in Italy and Austria said the names of two citizens listed on the flight's manifest matched the names on two passports reported stolen in Thailand.

Malaysian Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said that authorities were looking at two more possible cases of suspicious identities. He said Malaysian intelligence agencies were in contact with their international counterparts, including the FBI. He gave no more details.

"All the four names are with me and have been given to our intelligence agencies," he said. "We are looking at all possibilities."

A total of 22 aircraft and 40 ships have been deployed to the area by Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia, China and the United States, not counting Vietnam's fleet.

Two-thirds of the jet's passengers were Chinese. The rest were from elsewhere in Asia, North America and Europe.

After more than 30 hours without contact with the aircraft, Malaysia Airlines told family members they should "prepare themselves for the worst," Hugh Dunleavy, the commercial director for the airline told reporters.

Finding traces of an aircraft that disappears over sea can take days or longer, even with a sustained search effort. Depending on the circumstances of the crash, wreckage can be scattered over many square kilometers (miles). If the plane enters the water before breaking up, there can be relatively little debris.

A team of American experts was en route to Asia to be ready to assist in the investigation into the crash. The team includes accident investigators from National Transportation Safety Board, as well as technical experts from the Federal Aviation Administration and Boeing, the safety board said in a statement.

Malaysia Airlines has a good safety record, as does the 777, which had not had a fatal crash in its 19-year history until an Asiana Airlines plane crashed last July in San Francisco, killing three passengers, all Chinese teenagers.

Investigators will need access to the flight data recorders to determine what happened.

Aviation and terrorism experts said revelations about stolen passports would strengthen speculation of foul play. They also acknowledged other scenarios, including some catastrophic failure of the engines or structure of the plane, extreme turbulence or pilot error or even suicide, were also possible.

Jason Middleton, the head of the Sydney-based University of New South Wales' School of Aviation, said terrorism or some other form of foul play seemed a likely explanation.

"You're looking at some highly unexpected thing, and the only ones people can think of are basically foul play, being either a bomb or some immediate incapacitating of the pilots by someone doing the wrong thing and that might lead to an airplane going straight into the ocean," Middleton said. "With two stolen passports (on board), you'd have to suspect that that's one of the likely options."

Just 9 percent of fatal accidents happen when a plane is at cruising altitude, according to a statistical summary of commercial jet accidents done by Boeing. Malaysia Airlines CEO Ahmad Jauhari Yahya said Saturday there was no indication the pilots had sent a distress signal.

The plane was last inspected 10 days ago and found to be "in proper condition," Ignatius Ong, CEO of Malaysia Airlines subsidiary Firefly airlines, said at a news conference.

By EILEEN NG and CHRIS BRUMMITT - Brummitt reported from Hanoi, Vietnam.

Missing MAS flight: Two passengers using passports stolen in Thailand

PETALING JAYA: The mystery of the missing MH370 deepened when it was reported that there were two impostors on board, both with passports that were stolen in Thailand.

Italian Luigi Maraldi, whose name is on the manifest, was not on the missing MH370 flight. Someone else had used his passport to board the plane.

According to news reports from Italy which quoted its Foreign Ministry, Luigi Maraldi’s passport was stolen last August while he was in Thailand.

Maraldi, 37, is now in Thailand.

According to Italian newspaper La Repubblica, Maraldi returned home after his passport was stolen and had a new one issued.

When officials heard of the missing plane, they went to his parents’ home but they said their son was alive and well in Thailand, and had called to say he was fine.

“I am fine, I was not on the flight,” he told his parents.

Meanwhile, London’s Daily Mirror reported that a second passenger was also using a stolen passport.

Austrian Christan Kozel has been confirmed as safe and well by authorities.

He told Austrian newspaper De Standard that his passport was stolen when he visited Thailand two years ago.

It is still unclear as to who had travelled on MH370 under the two names. - The Star/Asia News Network

Tracking firm: Plane missing about 50min after departure

PETALING JAYA: Sweden-based flight tracking service FlightRadar24 was the first to report that Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 had disappeared from radar about 50 minutes of departure, and not two hours as initially stated.

"Flight #MH370 took off from Kuala Lumpur at 1641 UTC time (12.41am local time) and disappeared from www.flightradar24.com at 1720 UTC time (about 1.21am local time) between Malaysia and Vietnam," said the company’s chief executive officer Fredrik Lindahl in an e-mail response to The Star.

Flight MH370, on a B777-200 aircraft, departed Kuala Lumpur at 12.41am on March 8. It was expected to land in Beijing at 6.30am the same day.

"Also, based on our data, there is no doubt that the last reported position of MH370 is about 150km northeast of Kuala Terengganu.

"We have good radar coverage in the area the flight went missing and the last signal was received from an altitude of 35,000 feet," said Lindahl.

MAS group chief executive officer Ahmad Jauhari Yahya had initially said at a press conference at 11am yesterday that the Subang Air Traffic Control had lost contact with the plane around 2.40am.

However, Department of Civil Aviation (DCA) director-general Datuk Azharuddin Abdul Rahman clarified later in the evening that contact was lost at 1.30am.

Meanwhile, aviation website The Aviation Herald stated that the plane was last regularly seen at 1.22am about halfway between Kuala Lumpur and Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh City.

"The aircraft was spotted over the Gulf of Thailand about 260 nautical miles north northeast of Kuala Lumpur and 120 nautical miles northeast of Kota Baru 50 minutes into the flight.

"This was followed by anomalies in the radar data of the aircraft over the next minute. Although these may be related to the aircraft, it could also be caused by the flight leaving the receiver range," it stated.

The website also reported aviation sources in China as saying that radar data suggested a steep and sudden descent of the flight, during which time the aircraft had changed track from 24 degrees to 333 degrees.

- The Star/Asia News Network

No sign of Malaysia Airline wreckage; questions over stolen passports

Traces of oil may be clue in plane search

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

NEW: "We have not been able to locate anything," an airline official says
U.S. law enforcement sources say both passports were stolen in Thailand
One of the two stolen passports is listed in Interpol's database, sources say
Vietnamese searchers spot oil slicks in the South China Sea

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (CNN) -- There were few answers Sunday about the fate of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, a day after contact was lost with the commercial jetliner en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

An aerial search resumed at first light, with aircraft searching an area of the South China Sea for any sign of where the flight may have gone down, Azharuddin Abdul Rahman, the director general of civil aviation in Malaysia, told reporters

"We have not been able to locate anything, see anything," Rahman said. "There's nothing new to report."

The closest things to clues in the search for the missing jetliner are oil slicks in the Gulf of Thailand, about 90 miles south of Vietnam's Tho Chu Island -- the same area where the flight disappeared from radar early Saturday morning. A Vietnamese reconnaissance plane, part of a massive, multinational search effort, spotted the oil slicks that stretch between six and nine miles, the Vietnam government's official news agency reported.

Malaysian authorities have not yet confirmed the Vietnamese report, Rahman said.

The reported oil discovery has only added to a growing list of questions about the fate of the plane carrying 227 passengers and 12 crew members: What happened to the plane, why was no distress signal issued, and who exactly was aboard?

Passenger manifest questioned

Bits and pieces of information have begun to form, but it remains unclear how they fit into the bigger picture, if at all.

Photos: Malaysia airliner loses contact

Map: Malaysia airliner lost contact

Traces of oil may be clue in search

Quest: I flew with missing first officer

Quest: Odd to lose contact while cruising

For instance, after the airline released a manifest, Austria denied that one of its citizens was aboard the flight. The Austrian citizen was safe and sound, and his passport had been stolen two years ago, Austrian Foreign Ministry spokesman Martin Weiss said.

Similarly, Italy's foreign ministry confirmed none of its citizens were on Flight 370, even though an Italian was listed on the manifest.

On Saturday, Italian police visited the home of the parents of Luigi Maraldi, the man whose name appeared on the manifest, to inform them about the missing flight, said a police official in Cesena, in northern Italy.

Maraldi's father, Walter, told police he had just spoken to his son, who was fine and not on the missing flight, said the official, who is not authorized to speak to the media. Maraldi was vacationing in Thailand, his father said.

The police official said Maraldi had reported his passport stolen in Malaysia last August and had obtained a new one. But U.S. law enforcement sources told CNN that both the Austrian and Italian passports were stolen in Thailand.

"No nexus to terrorism yet," a U.S. intelligence official said, "although that's by no means definitive. We're still tracking."

Rahman, Malaysia's top civil aviation official, declined to answer questions Sunday about the stolen passports, and how people using them managed to get past security and on to the plane.

"This is part of the investigation," Rahman said at a news conference.

The U.S. government has been briefed on the stolen passports and reviewed the names of the passengers in question but found nothing at this point to indicate foul play, said a U.S. law enforcement official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Of the two passports in question, the Italian one had been reported stolen and was in Interpol's database, CNN Law Enforcement Analyst Tom Fuentes said, citing sources at Interpol.

Additionally, no inquiry was made by Malaysia Airlines to determine if any passengers on the flight were traveling on stolen passports, he said. Many airlines do not check the database, he said.

During the news conference in Kuala Lumpur, Rahman declined to say whether the airline or Malaysian authorities had checked the database.

Not ruling anything out

Malaysian authorities reiterated during a news conference that they are not ruling anything out regarding the missing aircraft.

The Boeing 777-200ER departed Kuala Lumpur International Airport at 12:41 a.m. Saturday in good weather, and it was expected to land in Beijing at 6:30 a.m., a 2,300-mile (3,700-kilometer) trip.

Air traffic controllers in Subang, outside Kuala Lumpur, lost contact with the plane about 1:30 a.m., Rahman said. Earlier, the airline said the jetliner lost contact at 2:40 a.m.

The pilots did not indicate to the tower there may be a problem, and no distress signal was issued, the airline said.

It may be days, possibly weeks or months, before authorities can offer any firm answers.

It took five days for authorities to locate the wreckage of Air France Flight 447 when it crashed June 1, 2009, in the Atlantic Ocean, killing all 228 on board.

It took four searches over the course of nearly two years to locate the bulk of Flight 447's wreckage and the majority of the bodies in a mountain range deep under the ocean.

If Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 went down in the Gulf of Thailand, the recovery may be a bit easier because it is a relatively shallow area of the South China Sea, according to marine officials.

China, Vietnam, Singapore and Malaysia were conducting search and rescue operations south of Tho Chu island in the South China Sea, according to the airline and reports from Xinhua, China's official news agency. Ships, helicopters and airplanes are being utilized.

The USS Pinckney, a destroyer conducting training in the South China Sea, is being routed to the southern Vietnamese coast to aid in the search, the U.S. Navy said. The United States is also sending a P-3C Orion surveillance plane from Japan to provide long-range search, radar and communications capabilities, the Navy said.

Meanwhile, the Chinese Coast Guard has ordered on-duty vessels to aid in the search, Xinhua reported, citing government officials. China also sent a diving and salvage team to the area where the airplane is suspected to have gone down, the news agency reported.

Because of the Americans aboard the flight, the FBI has offered to send a team of agents to Malaysia to support the investigation into the disappearance if asked, a U.S. official familiar with the issue told CNN on condition of anonymity. Earlier, an official had said FBI agents were heading to the area.

The FBI is not ruling out terrorism or any other issue as a possible cause in the jetliner's disappearance, the official said.

Officials appeared resigned to accepting the worst outcome.

"I'd just like to say our thoughts and prayers are with the bereaved families," Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak said during a news conference.

Grief, especially in China

The plane carried 227 passengers, including five children under 5 years old, and 12 crew members, the airline said. At the time of its disappearance, the Malaysia Airlines plane was carrying about 7.5 hours of fuel, an airline official said.

Among the passengers there were 154 people from China or Taiwan; 38 Malaysians, and three U.S. citizens.

Relatives of the Chinese citizens on board gathered Saturday at a hotel complex in the Lido district of Beijing as a large crowd of reporters gathered outside.

"My son was only 40 years old," one woman wailed as she was led inside. "My son, my son. What am I going to do?"

Family members were kept in a hotel conference room, where media outlets had no access. Most of the family members have so far refused to talk to reporters. The airline said the public can call 603 7884 1234 for further information.

In Malaysia, the families and loved ones of those aboard the flight were gathered at the Everly Hotel in Putrajaya, south of Kuala Lumpur, according to Bernama, the Malaysian national news agency.

Twenty of the passengers aboard the flight work with Freescale Semiconductor, a company based in Austin, Texas. The company said that 12 of the employees are from Malaysia and eight are from China.

The airline's website said the flight was piloted by a veteran.

Capt. Zaharie Ahmad Shah, a 53-year-old Malaysian, has 18,365 total flying hours and joined Malaysia Airlines in 1981, the website said. The first officer is Fariq Ab Hamid, 27, a Malaysian with a total of 2,763 flying hours. He joined Malaysia Airlines in 2007.

Still an 'urgent need' to find plane

"The lack of communications suggests to me that something most unfortunate has happened," said Mary Schiavo, former inspector general of the U.S. Department of Transportation, in an interview with CNN International.

"But that, of course, does not mean that there are not many persons that need to be rescued and secured. There's still a very urgent need to find that plane and to render aid," she said.

Malaysia Airlines operates in Southeast Asia, East Asia, South Asia, the Middle East and on the route between Europe and Australasia.

It has 15 Boeing 777-200ER planes in its fleet, CNN's Richard Quest reported. The missing airplane was delivered to Malaysia Airlines in 2002.

Part of the company is in the private sector, but the government owns most of it.

Malayan Airways Limited began flying in 1937 as an air service between Penang and Singapore. A decade later, it began flying commercially as the national airline.

In 1963, when Malaysia was formed, the airline was renamed Malaysian Airlines Limited.

Within 20 years, it had grown from a single aircraft operator into a company with 2,400 employees and a fleet operator.

If this aircraft has crashed with a total loss, it would the deadliest aviation incident since November 2001, when an American Airlines Airbus A300 crashed in Belle Harbor, Queens, shortly after takeoff from JFK Airport. Killed were 265 people, including five people on the ground.

- Contributed by Chelsea J. Carter and Jim Clancy, CNN

Related post:

Malaysia plane carrying 239 people missing, crashed off Vietnam? Malaysian minister denies crash report!

Saturday, March 8, 2014

Malaysia plane carrying 239 people missing, crashed off Vietnam? Malaysian minister denies crash report!

State media: Malaysian plane crashed off Vietnam

Malaysia minister denies crash report

Video: Wang Yi: China has initiated emergency response

Chinese Foreign Miniser Wang Yi said in today´s press conference that he is very worried about...

Reports from China's Xinhua news agency say the plane was lost in airspace controlled by Vietnam.

The aircraft did not enter airspace controlled by China and did not make contact with Chinese controllers, Xinhua said.

A report on a Chinese TV network, citing the microblogging website Weibo, said 160 Chinese nationals were on board the flight.

A woman cries as she talks on her mobile phone at Beijing Capital International Airport

Photo: Relatives of passengers wait for news at Beijing airport. (Reuters: Kim Kyung-Hoon)

Distressed family members of those on board the flight have also been gathering at Beijing airport.

Chang Ken Fei, a Malaysian waiting at the airport for friends to arrive, said: "I got here at 7:00am. At first I thought the plane was just delayed as normal, so I came a bit later, I've just been waiting and waiting."

"I asked them what was going on but they just tell us, 'we don't know'."

If the plane is found to have crashed, the loss would mark the second fatal accident involving a Boeing 777 in less than a year, after an unblemished safety record since the jet entered service in 1995.

Last year, an Asiana Airlines Boeing 777 crash landed in San Francisco, killing three passengers.

Boeing said it was aware of reports that the Malaysia Airlines plane was missing and was monitoring the situation but had no further comment.

Among previous accidents involving Malaysia Airlines planes, one of the smaller Twin Otter aircraft crashed upon landing in Malaysia's Sabah state on Borneo island last October, killing a co-pilot and a passenger.

And a jet crashed in 1977 in southern Malaysia, killing all 93 passengers and seven crew.

Graphic: Malaysia Airlines plane missing

Photo: The plane, a Boeing 777-200, left Kuala Lumpur at 12:41am on Saturday, and had been due to arrive in Beijing at 6:30am local time. (ABC News)

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Malaysia Airlines has still not been able to confirm what happened to the flight. The airline has confirmed that there were 4 Americans — 3 adults and one infant — aboard the flight, which also carried Canadians and Australians, and a majority of Chinese and Malay passengers.

Malaysia Airlines lost contact with a commercial aircraft bound from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, China, the airline reported Saturday morning.

Flight MH370, a Boeing 777-200ER that was carrying 227 passengers and 12 crew members, was scheduled to land at 6:30 a.m., but lost contact with air traffic control at 2:40 a.m. on March 8. Its whereabouts are unknown.

At 7:24 a.m. local time, the airline posted a message to its Facebook page stating it was working with local search and rescue authorities to find the aircraft, and that it would continue to provide updates. It encouraged the public to contact a number provided for information.

A search for the flight on FlightAware.com showed its status as "result unknown" and included a map that depicted its partially completed route.

Malaysia Airlines VP of operations Fuad Sharuji told CNN's Anderson Cooper that it had tried but "failed to establish any contact" with the plane before he detailed concerns about how much fuel it was carrying.

There were "about seven hours of fuel on board this aircraft and we suspect that by 8:30 this aircraft would have run out of fuel," Faruji said. He added, "At the moment we have no idea where this aircraft is right now."

Kuala Lumpur is the hub for Malaysia Airlines, which services over 60 destinations globally with a heavy presence in Asia, according to its website. The airline told the BBC that it would hold a press conference on the situation later in the day.

According to Reuters, Boeing's 777 had a solid safety record after its 1995 introduction up until last summer's Asiana Airlines crash in San Francisco, Calif.

We will continue to update this post with more information as it arises.

- mashable.com

Friday, March 7, 2014

Malaysia sacrifices talent to keep one race on top, said Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore

SINGAPORE - Straits Times Press, the book publishing unit of Singapore Press Holdings (SPH), announced in Jul 29, 2013 the launch of Mr Lee Kuan Yew's new book

Malaysia is prepared to lose its talent through its race-based policies in order to maintain the dominance of one race, said Lee Kuan Yew in his new book which was launched August 6, 2013 in Singapore.

And although Malaysia has acknowledged the fact that they are losing these talents and is making an attempt to lure Malaysians back from overseas, such efforts may be too little too late, he said.

"This is putting the country at a disadvantage. It is voluntarily shrinking the talent pool needed to build the kind of society that makes use of talent from all races.

"They are prepared to lose that talent in order to maintain the dominance of one race," he said in the 400-page book called "One Man's View of the World" (pic).

It features conversations between Lee and his long-time admirer, Helmut Schmidt, former leader of West Germany. They discussed world affairs when Schmidt visited Singapore last year.

In the book, Lee pointed out that Malaysia is losing ground and giving other countries a head start in the external competition.

About 400,000 of some one million Malaysians overseas are in Singapore, according to the World Bank.

When announcing the five-year plan for Malaysia, Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak said in Parliament in 2011, the government would set up a talent corporation to lure some 700,000 Malaysians working abroad back to the country.

But in his book, Lee said the demographic changes in Malaysia will lead to a further entrenchment of Malay privileges.

He noted that in the last 10 years, since the enactment of the New Economic Policy, the proportion of Malaysian Chinese and Indians of the total population has fallen dramatically.

"The Chinese made up 35.6 percent of the population in 1970. They were down to 24.6 percent at the last census in 2010. Over that same period, the Indian numbers fell from 10.8 percent to 7.3 percent," he said.

He added, "40 percent of our migrants are from Malaysia.

"Those with the means to do so leave for countries farther afield. In the early days, Taiwan was a popular destination among the Chinese-educated.

"In recent years, Malaysian Chinese and Indians have been settling in Europe, America and Australia. Some have done very well for themselves, such as Penny Wong, Australia’s current finance minister.

"Among those who have chosen to remain in Malaysia, some lack the means to leave and others are making a good living through business despite the discriminatory policies. Many in this latter class partner with Malays who have connections."

World Bank data for 2012 showed that the island republic has raced ahead of its neighbour, with gross domestic product per capita of US$51,709 compared with Malaysia’s US$10,381.

Najib had said Malaysia is set to become a high income developed nation as early as 2018, two years earlier than the targeted 2020.

Lee said in his book the separation of Singapore and Malaysia in 1965 marked "the end of a different vision in Malaysia on the race issue".

He added, "Much of what has been achieved in Singapore could have been replicated throughout Malaysia. Both countries would have been better off."

Sources: The Malaysian Insider

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Thursday, March 6, 2014

Singapore downplays its world's most expensive city

People stand along the Marina Bay promenade in Singapore on March 4, 2014. The soaring cost of cars and utilities as well as a strong currency have made Singapore the world's most expensive city, toppling Tokyo from the top spot, a survey showed March 4. AFP PHOTO / ROSLAN RAHMAN (Photo credit should read ROSLAN RAHMAN/AFP/Getty Images)

SINGAPORE - Singapore on Wednesday played down a global survey showing that it is now the world’s most expensive city, a finding which has triggered outrage among Singaporeans struggling with rising costs.

Finance Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam said reports like the 2014 Worldwide Cost of Living survey by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) are aimed at measuring expatriates’ expenses.

“It is not that these surveys are wrong, or that they are misguided. But they are measuring something quite different from the cost of living for an ordinary local in different cities around the world,” Tharman said in a parliamentary speech.

In the survey released Tuesday, Singapore toppled Tokyo as the world’s costliest city, a result the EIU attributed to the high cost of cars and utilities as well as a strong local currency. Paris was in second place.

The survey examines prices of 160 products and services including food, toiletries, clothes and domestic help in 140 cities, and is aimed at helping companies calculate allowances for executives overseas.

Tharman noted that the basket of goods and services evaluated by the EIU included imported cheese, filet mignon, “Burberry-type raincoats,” the four best seats in a theater and three-course dinners for four in high-end restaurants.

“The EIU tries to put together a basket of what they think are expatriate costs, perhaps more on the higher end of expatriates,” Tharman said. ”

It is quite different from the goods and services consumed by ordinary Singaporeans.”

He also reiterated a point noted by the EIU — that Singapore’s rising living costs for expatriates are driven by the strengthening of its currency.

“What is important for us is that Singaporeans, and particularly low- and middle-income Singaporeans, have incomes that grow faster than the cost of living,” Tharman said.

Jon Copestake, editor of the EIU report, acknowledged the points raised by Tharman but told AFP the basket of goods includes many everyday items as well.

“The survey basket ranges from a loaf of bread to a luxury car. In fact, the highest-weighted category in our survey is that of groceries and everyday staples which include goods like fresh fruits and vegetables, meat, fish, rice, etc.,” Copestake said.

“Expatriates make up a very significant proportion of Singapore’s population, and this means that the results of our survey will be more keenly felt by a higher proportion of the people who live and work there.”

The survey’s release provoked strong online reactions from Singaporeans, who saw it as confirmation of their complaints about soaring living costs.

Others however saw it as a sign that Singapore has attained high living standards.

Singapore’s per capita income of more than $51,000 in 2012 masks a widening income gap between the richest and poorest citizens.

By Bhavan Jaipragas, AFP

S’pore ranked world’s most expensive city by EIU .

The high cost of cars and utilities as well as a strong currency have made Singapore the world's most expensive city. (AFP/Roslan Rahman)

SINGAPORE: Singapore has jumped to the top of the Economist Intelligence Unit's (EIU) ranking of the world's most expensive cities, overtaking the likes of Tokyo and Osaka as the Singapore dollar appreciated against the yen.

Singapore was ranked sixth in the EIU's survey last year, behind the two Japanese cities, Sydney, Oslo and Melbourne.

According to the EIU, Osaka and Tokyo fell off the top of its cost of living ranking because of the weaker yen.

Tokyo, the most expensive city to live in for 2013, fell to joint sixth place alongside Caracas, Geneva and Melbourne, while Paris is second, ahead of Oslo, Zurich and Sydney.

Ten years ago, Singapore was number 18 on the list.

The EIU report compares the price of products and services such as food, clothing, transport and domestic help among 140 cities with New York city as a base.

According to the survey, Singapore's curbs on car ownership, which include a quota system and high taxes, make it the most expensive city to run a car.

A new Toyota Corolla Altis, for example, could cost as much as US$110,000 in Singapore but only US$35,000 in Malaysia.

And overall transport costs in Singapore are almost three times higher than those in New York.

But the survey does not include public transport, which is most commonly used by Singaporeans.

In addition, the lack of natural resources and energy supplies means Singapore is the third most expensive city for utility costs.

The survey also shows that Singapore is the priciest place in the world to buy clothes, as shopping malls along the prime Orchard Road shopping belt import luxury European brands.

As for housing, Singapore, being smaller in size than New York City, has seen home prices jump to record highs in recent years amid rising wealth and an influx of foreigners.

But the survey does not include public housing.

And it must be noted that the EIU survey is aimed at helping companies and HR managers calculate allowances for executives or expatriates being sent overseas.

This means that their spending patterns may differ from locals. Hence, while cars and utilities are expensive, public transport and hawker food in Singapore are cheaper than in most developed cities.

And latest data also show that in January, consumer prices in Singapore rose at their slowest pace in four years, rising by 1.4 per cent from a year ago.

- CNA/nd/ir

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