Topic Review
Family Tree of the Malaysian Monarchs
The following is a family tree of the monarchs of Malaysia.   - - - -   The dashed line denotes a marriage     ♀   - denotes a female.
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  • 11 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Public Sector Downsizing and Public Sector Performance
Performance measurement as a social structure considers that institutional rules arise from the interaction of individual reactions. The capability of a country’s public sector to provide high-quality goods and services cost-effectively is crucial to foster long-term growth. Governments attempt to identify the most effective production processes to increase efficiency, effectiveness, and performance. On the other hand, performance can be considered a combination of effectiveness and efficiency in the public and private sectors. Public sector performance is considered through its indicators at the international level across countries. A public sector’s goods and services can be efficient in volume and quality, with good corporate performance.
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  • 24 Mar 2022
Topic Review
Fat Leonard Scandal
The Fat Leonard scandal is a corruption scandal and ongoing investigation within the United States Navy involving ship support contractor Glenn Defense Marine Asia (GDMA), a subsidiary of the Glenn Marine Group. The Washington Post called the scandal "perhaps the worst national-security breach of its kind to hit the Navy since the end of the Cold War." At the heart of the scandal was Glenn Defense Marine Asia, a firm run by Leonard Glenn Francis, a Malaysian national known as "Fat Leonard" for his then over 350 pound weight. Francis provided at least a half million dollars in cash, plus travel expenses, luxury items, and prostitutes to a large number of U.S. uniformed officers of the United States Seventh Fleet, who in turn gave him classified material about the movements of U.S. ships and submarines, confidential contracting information, and information about active law enforcement investigations into Glenn Defense Marine Asia. Francis then "exploited the intelligence for illicit profit, brazenly ordering his moles to redirect aircraft carriers to ports he controlled in Southeast Asia so he could more easily bilk the Navy for fuel, tugboats, barges, food, water and sewage removal." The Navy, through GDMA, even employed divers to search harbors for explosives. He also directed them to author "Bravo Zulu" memos, which is an informal term for a letter of commendation from the Navy given to civilians who have performed outstanding services for the Navy, in order to bolster GDMA's credibility for jobs "well done". The first activities of the conspiracy were confirmed to have existed in 2006 when Francis recruited numerous Navy personnel to engage in corruption, including directing contracts toward his firm, disfavoring competitors, and inhibiting legitimate fiscal and operational oversight. The initial co-conspirators labelled themselves "the cool kids" and "the wolf pack." U.S. federal prosecutors filed criminal charges against 33 people in connection with the Fat Leonard scandal. Of those, 22 pleaded guilty: Francis himself, four of his top aides, and 17 Navy officials (specifically, at least ten commissioned officers, two petty officers, one former NCIS special agent, and two civilian Navy contracting officials). Nine others are awaiting trial in U.S. district court in San Diego. Separately, five Navy officers were charged with crimes under the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) and have been subject to court-martial proceedings. An additional civilian pleaded guilty to a scandal-related crime in Singapore court. Suffering health problems, Francis was hospitalized and released in March 2018. Rather than returning to the custody of the U.S. Marshals Service, he was granted a medical furlough and allowed to stay in San Diego at a private residence owned by one of his physicians, under 24-hour surveillance for which his family paid. At a deposition taken in 2018 in the David A. Morales case, Francis said he is being treated for kidney cancer. In 1989, when he was 21, Francis had been sentenced to three years in jail in Malaysia for firearms possession.
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  • 14 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Homelessness
Homelessness is the circumstance when people are without a permanent dwelling, such as a house or apartment. People who are homeless are most often unable to acquire and maintain regular, safe, secure and adequate housing. The legal definition of homeless varies from country to country, or among different jurisdictions in the same country or region. The term homeless may also include people whose primary night-time residence is in a homeless shelter, a domestic violence shelter, long-term residence in a motel, a vehicle, squatting, cardboard boxes, a tent city, tarpaulins, shanty town structures made of discarded building materials or other ad hoc housing situations. According to the UK homelessness charity Crisis, a home is not just a physical space: it also provides roots, identity, security, a sense of belonging and a place of emotional wellbeing. United States government homeless enumeration studies also include people who sleep in a public or private place not designed for use as a regular sleeping accommodation for human beings. There are a number of organizations who provide help for the homeless. In 2005, an estimated 100 million (1 in 65 at the time) people worldwide were homeless and as many as 1 billion people live as squatters, refugees or in temporary shelter, all lacking adequate housing. In Western countries, the majority of homeless are men (50–80%), with single males particularly overrepresented. However, current data suggests similar rates of homeless males and females. Most countries provide a variety of services to assist homeless people. These services often provide food, shelter (beds) and clothing and may be organized and run by community organizations (often with the help of volunteers) or by government departments or agencies. These programs may be supported by the government, charities, churches and individual donors. Many cities also have street newspapers, which are publications designed to provide employment opportunity to homeless people. While some homeless have jobs, some must seek other methods to make a living. Begging or panhandling is one option, but is becoming increasingly illegal in many cities. People who are homeless may have additional conditions, such as physical or mental health issues or substance addiction; these issues make resolving homelessness a challenging policy issue. Homeless people, and homeless organizations, are sometimes accused or convicted of fraudulent behaviour. Criminals are also known to exploit homeless people, ranging from identity theft to tax and welfare scams. These incidents often lead to negative connotations on the homeless as a group.
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  • 30 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Post-Truth
Post-truth is a philosophical and political concept for "the disappearance of shared objective standards for truth" and the "circuitous slippage between facts or alt-facts, knowledge, opinion, belief, and truth". Post-truth discourse is often contrasted with the forms taken by scientific methods and inquiry. The term garnered widespread popularity, in the form of "post-truth politics", in the period around the 2016 United States presidential election and the Brexit referendum. It was named Word of the Year in 2016 by the Oxford Dictionary where it is defined as "Relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief". While the term post-truth is relatively recent, the concept can be traced back to earlier moral, epistemic, and political debates about relativism, postmodernity, and mendacity in politics, including nontruthfulness, lies, deception, and deliberate falsehood.
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  • 19 Oct 2022
Topic Review
GSIS-Meralco Bribery Case
The GSIS-Meralco case is a political controversy and pending legal case being heard by the Supreme Court of the Philippines. This complex case began with a complaint filed by the Philippines' Government Service Insurance System (GSIS) with the Securities and Exchange Commission of the Philippines (SEC) questioning the unvalidated proxy votes used by the Lopez family in a board election of the Manila Electric Company (Meralco). The SEC issued a cease and desist order (CDO) against Meralco, which was ignored by the latter. A show cause order (SCO) was then issued by the SEC, whereupon Meralco petitioned the Court of Appeals, questioning the jurisdiction of the SEC. The Court of Appeals issued a temporary restraining order (TRO) to the SEC while the Special 9th Division composed of Associate Justices Vicente Q. Roxas, Jose L. Sabio Jr. and Myrna Dimaranan Vidal heard the case. Roxas was assigned as the ponente while Sabio was the acting chairman. Later, Sabio called a press conference and alleged that an emissary of Meralco tried to bribe him with ₱10 million to have a case transferred to another appeals court justice. The criminal charges are obstruction of justice and malfeasance in office. Sabio did not mention any names, but businessman Francis de Borja stepped forward and claimed that he was the alleged emissary, accusing Sabio of asking for a ₱50 million bribe to side with Meralco, in response to De Borja's question “What will it take for you to resist the government’s offer?” The alleged government offer was a Supreme Court position. In the latter course of the investigation, Sabio let slip that his brother, Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG) Chairman Camilo Sabio, called him up twice to urge him to side favorably with the government. The late admission of the allegedly unethical and criminal action called into doubt the innocence of Sabio in coming forward with his expose and the veracity of his entire story. These acts are alleged to be punishable under Article 208 and 243 of the Revised Penal Code respectively. It also came out during the course of the Supreme Court investigation that Court of Appeals Justice Vicente Roxas, the ponente of the controversial Meralco decision, had himself committed improprieties. One such impropriety was that Roxas preempted the legal opinion of Presiding Justice Conrado Vasquez that the Special 9th Division should have ruled on the case as per the Internal Rules of the Court of Appeals (IRCA), and not the 8th Division to which Roxas was transferred, and which eventually promulgated a ruling in favor of Meralco, with Justices Reyes and Apolinario Bruselas hastily signing the ponencia without going over or reading the memoranda submitted by concerned parties. The Supreme Court, voting 12–1, ordered the dismissal of Roxas after he was found guilty of multiple violations of the canons of the Code of Judicial Conduct, grave misconduct, dishonesty, undue interest and conduct prejudicial to the best interest of service. Sabio was suspended for two months after he was found guilty of simple misconduct and conduct unbecoming of a justice of the CA. Vasquez was severely reprimanded “for his failure to act promptly and decisively in order to avert the incidence that damaged the image of the Court of Appeals,” Reyes was found guilty of simple misconduct with mitigating circumstance, and Vidal was found guilty of conduct unbecoming of a justice of the appellate court for being “too compliant" when she allowed herself to sign the decision without reading the parties’ memorandum.
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  • 04 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Handfasting
Handfasting is a traditional practice that, depending on the term's usage, may correspond to an unofficiated wedding (in which a couple marries without an officiant, usually with the intent of later undergoing a second wedding with an officiant), a betrothal (an engagement in which a couple has formally promised to wed, and which can be broken only through divorce), or a temporary wedding (in which a couple makes an intentionally temporary marriage commitment). The phrase refers to the making fast of a pledge by the shaking or joining of hands. The terminology and practice is especially associated with Germanic peoples, including the English and Norse, as well as the Gaelic Scots. As a form of betrothal or unofficiated wedding, it was common up through Tudor England; as a form of temporary marriage, it was practiced in 17th-century Scotland and has been revived in Neopaganism. Sometimes the term is also used synonymously with "wedding" or "marriage" among Neopagans to avoid perceived non-Pagan religious connotations associated with those terms. It is also used, apparently ahistorically, to refer to an alleged pre-Christian practice of symbolically fastening or wrapping the hands of a couple together during the wedding ceremony.
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  • 17 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Digital-Free Tourism
Digital-free tourism (DFT) has recently attracted tourism service providers’ attention for its benefits in terms of enhancing tourists’ experiences and well-being at destinations. DFT refers to tourists who are likely to voluntarily avoid digital devices and the Internet on holiday, or travel to destinations without network signals. DFT has advantages for tourists in increasing well-being, mental health, and social networking during their journeys. DFT also has a benefit for tourism marketers in that they can consider it as a new tourism approach.
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  • 01 Jun 2022
Topic Review
LinkedIn
LinkedIn (/lɪŋktˈɪn/) is a business and employment-oriented service that operates via websites and mobile apps. Founded on December 28, 2002, and launched on May 5, 2003, it is mainly used for professional networking, including employers posting jobs and job seekers posting their CVs. As of 2015, most of the company's revenue came from selling access to information about its members to recruiters and sales professionals. As of April 2017, LinkedIn had 500 million members in 200 countries, out of which more than 106 million members are active. LinkedIn allows members (both workers and employers) to create profiles and "connections" to each other in an online social network which may represent real-world professional relationships. Members can invite anyone (whether an existing member or not) to become a connection. The "gated-access approach" (where contact with any professional requires either an existing relationship or an introduction through a contact of theirs) is intended to build trust among the service's members. LinkedIn participated in the EU's International Safe Harbor Privacy Principles. The site has an Alexa Internet ranking as the 34th most popular website ((As of June 2018)). According to the New York Times, US high school students are now creating LinkedIn profiles to include with their college applications. Based in the United States, the site is, as of 2013, available in 24 languages, including Arabic, Chinese, English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, Swedish, Danish, Romanian, Russian, Turkish, Japanese, Czech, Polish, Korean, Indonesian, Malay, and Tagalog. LinkedIn filed for an initial public offering in January 2011 and traded its first shares on May 19, 2011, under the NYSE symbol "LNKD". On June 13, 2016, Microsoft announced plans to acquire LinkedIn for $26.2 billion. The acquisition was completed on December 8, 2016. According to the SEC filing, "The transaction resulted in the payment of approximately $26.4 billion in cash merger consideration."
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  • 04 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Kinesthetic Learning
Kinesthetic learning (American English), kinaesthetic learning (British English), or tactile learning is a learning style in which learning takes place by the students carrying out physical activities, rather than listening to a lecture or watching demonstrations. As cited by Favre (2009), Dunn and Dunn define kinesthetic learners as students who require whole-body movement to process new and difficult information.
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  • 11 Oct 2022
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