MOIRE PICS & Video – Mat Rempits Weekend Arrest – Saturday at Taman Wahyu/Sentul; Sunday - Bandar Tasik Permasuri; Illegal Racing – 5 yrs Jail

The weekend fun enjoyed by the Mat Rempits after dark in KL was cut short when the Police Squad 42 heard about their activities. They swung into action. One team went to the Federal highway near Taman Wahyu and the Sentul New highways and nabbed those racing illegally in cars and motorbikes from 1am to 4am. Another team went at 1am to Bandar Tasik Permasuri and managed to take in a couple of riders - one in form 1 and another girl in form 3. They literally rule the streets after midnight as the City centre and its surrounding suburbs are laid with kilometers of excellent highways where they can practise their skills in competitions.

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The current top weekend topics covered are New system to tackle financial abuses and MP to query on waste ‘mismanagement’ services. Malaysiakini has no time for the Mat Rempits and seldom have we found a report on them.

= == == = == == = at Taman Wahyu/Sentul New Highways

ABOVE & BELOW: The crackdown starts at Federal Highway near Taman Wahyu which is linked to the new highways in Sentul and further up connects to MMR2
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ABOVE & BELOW: One of the driver taken in for questioning with his car impounded
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ABOVE: One of the vehicle being towed away and BELOW: another one (a Putra) awaits its turn

Squad 42 Kuala Lumpur Traffic went into action on Saturday, 15^th Sep 2007. In the early hours from 1 – 4am, a 4-wheeled imported vehicle & 4 others including 4 Motorcycles were detained for being involved in illegal racing around the Sentul New highway and on the highway near Taman Wahyu.

ABOVE: This is a special imported model that seemed to outrace the others and BELOW: Another white superbike being looked into by Squad 42 officer
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Investigations show that some of the vehicles have false registration and some ecstasy pills were found in one of the car. ABOVE: : a gold plated number plate with accompanying gold insigna. BELOW: The Federal highway returns to normal after the arrests

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ABOVE & BELOW: One of the unfortunate being taken away hand-cuffed and liable to RM5000 fine and 5 years jail under Road Transport Act fro testing their machines at high speed thereby endangering other road users

= = =Watch the Video Clip for a more detailed report (in Bahasa Malaysia)- Arrests at Taman Wahyu - Sentul Highways; unfortunately missed the Satellite transmission for the Tasik Permaisuri raid.

= = = == = == over at Bandar Tasik Permasuri

ABOVE & BELOW: The fun started well before midnight before the Police Squad 42 from KL Traffic moved in
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ABOVE: One of the skillful one was seen doing the "wheelie" with the aid of his pillion rider and BELOW & BELOW: they zoomed by at high speed in the race

= = == == = == = == = == = =and one caught is a Form I students and the Girl student is in Form 3

ABOVE: The innocent ones caught in the fun of illegal racing pleading ignorance and BELOW: The officers at Police HQ recording their particulars for future reference
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ABOVE: Police investigator questioning this Form 3 student (who wanted to have some weekend thrill and fun) and BELOW: The shy ones caught
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ABOVE & BELOW: More taken in for questioning and waiting for their turns

= = == = == = =and the BLAME goes on.. Crazy 70 kmh SPEED Limit at Putra Jaya (a TOWN!) They might as well ask Proton & Perouda to make only 600cc cars. They should amend the RT Act. The cars are better built and so are the roads and they still maintain that archaic 70 kmh limit. Transport Minister Chan K C, this is not 1957, we have just had our 50th Anniversary bash. 1st class infrstructure but still that 3rd class mentality - to get more fines for the depleting treasury coffers?

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Thursday September 13, 2007

Cops to come down hard on speedsters

PUTRAJAYA: Fed up with hell-riders who treat roads at the administrative capital like racetracks, the police will set up speed traps next week to nab and summon errant motorists on the spot. Putrajaya OCPD Supt Abdul Razak Abdul Majid said most motorists did not adhere to the 70km speed limit because the roads here were like highways. “But Putrajaya is a town just like other towns where the speed limit is 70km, so all have to abide by this or be served a RM300 summons,” he said. He added that the operation would start next week and first target public transportation.

Speaking to reporters here yesterday, Supt Abdul Razak said 90% of accidents here occurred due to human error and that the roads could not be blamed as they were maintained well. “There were cases of motorists involved in accidents as they were speeding and had lost control of their vehicles,” he said. Police statistics recorded 523 road accident cases here between January and September last year while there were 663 cases for the same duration this year. “Of the 663 cases, three were fatal, 15 involved serious injuries while 21 recorded minor injuries,” he said, adding that the number of vehicles involved in accidents last year was 616 against this year’s 835. Supt Abdul Razak also said police patrolling had been intensified with seven cars, four motorcycles and two beat patrols.

= == = ==and the Mat Rempits attack again, road rage continues, the anger caused by a "accidents"

Thursday September 13, 2007

Student attacked by Mat Rempit after crash

By NUR AKMAL; STAR

KUALA LUMPUR: A group of Mat Rempit threatened a college student and damaged his car with helmets and other objects in Subang Jaya. Chin Yaw Fung, 20, was driving along Federal Highway at 3.30am on Sept 2 when his car knocked into a Proton Iswara car. “I alighted from my car and apologised and was even willing to pay for the damage but the car driver refused to settle the matter. “Suddenly, about 20 Mat Rempit rode by and started shouting and threatening me. “I got into my car and drove off,” he said at a press conference held by MCA public complaints and services department chairman Datuk Michael Chong yesterday. Bad wreck: Chin and Chong showing pictures of Chin's smashed up car in Kuala Lumpur on Wednesday.But Chin's car had a puncture at Subang Jaya and he pulled over to stop and found that the Mat Rempit had followed him. “Then some of them jumped on top of my car and started swinging their helmets, sticks and steering locks at my car,” he said, adding that he sounded his car horn but no one went over to help him.

ABOVE: This guy might be showing off at 3.30am along the highway and he still complain

Several minutes later, a tow-truck driver pulled over. Only then did the gang members stop their attack. Before fleeing, they took his cellphone, a jacket and an expensive pen. Chin later lodged a report at the Petaling Jaya police headquarters. In another case, painter Yap Khong Tjun was assaulted by a motorcyclist after an accident in Bandar Tasik Permaisuri about 8pm on Monday. “It was a minor accident but he refused to settle the matter and we decided to walk to the police station, which was nearby. “As we were walking, the man swung his helmet at my head several times,” he said, adding that he lodged a report at the Petaling Jaya police headquarters.

= == = = Go H E RE on the last ARREST in Bandar Tasik Permaisuri in Oct 8 2006 ON

MORE PICS-250 MAT REMPITS & SPECTATORS Detained -Illegal Racing-BANDAR TASIK PERMAISURI - EARLY SATURDAY; TRIO Killed in Kedah; 1 Murder in Damansara

= = == == = Latest from Bangkok Ind Paper - NATION

Published on September 17, 2007

ABOVE: Thai firefighters trying to put out the fire and help passengers out of a plane that crashed in Phuket, southern Thailand on Sunday

Forty-three people survived in the first local disaster for lowcost airline industry since its introduction a few years ago.

One Two Go Flight OG 269 lost balance while touching down and skidded off the runway. The MD82 plane slammed into trees and an earth embankment, exploding and breaking in two, witnesses and officials said. Health Minister Mongkol Na Songkhla said 87 people died and 43 people survived. There were a total of 130 passenger and crew on the plane. Of the 43 survivors, 15 are Thais and 28 foreigners. The verification of identities of both the dead and injured were far from complete at press time. Deputy Transport Minister Sansern Wongchaum earlier said that there were 78 foreigners on board. Tourists from Australia, Austria, Britain, Iran, Ireland, Italy, Sweden and the Netherlands were being treated at main provincial hospitals.

A surviving Thai passenger said the plane "landed hard" and "bounced" and then skidded off the runway. Air Transport Department chief Chiasak Angkauwan said, "the airplane requested to land but due to the weather in Phuket strong wind and heavy rain maybe the pilot did not see the runway clearly." One survivor told of a fast drop in altitude by the airplane and sudden brief jerk upward. He said they plane then crash landed and exploded. He saw several fellow passengers on fire. It was not immediately clear if the pilot, who was reportedly killed, was attempting to pull the aircraft up in the last minute when it crashlanded.

He had reportedly been allowed to circle the airport to wait for improvement in weather conditions. An official at the Phuket Airport control tower, who asked not to be named, said the pilot had been told of bad weather conditions, especially very strong winds. Shortly before the ill fated flight crash landed, another low cost airliner originating from Hong Kong had successfully touched down, he said. Officials said victims could have died on impact, or from suffocation or fire resulting from explosions. According to an initial account, the plane's fuselage was torn open in the accident, some of the survivors were those thrown out through the opening. Flight OG 269, approached the Phuket airport at about 3.40pm from Bangkok. Phuket had earlier been hit by heavy rains. Eyewitnesses said the impact of the crash caused the plane to break in two and they heard loud explosions.

Rescue teams and navy personnel were involved in the rescue operation. Bodies were piled up in the smouldering wreckage. All flights in and out of the Phuket airport have been cancelled. An Irish tourist, identifying himself only as "John", said he was on board the flight. He and his friend survived with bruises all over their bodies. "We sat on the 18th row. The weather was real bad and there were lots of unusual noises during the landing. Something was obviously wrong [during the landing]," he said. He and his friend escaped through the emergency door. Meanwhile Transportation Minister Thira Haochareon said Phuket International Airport was temporary closed after the crash. He said the body of the aircraft hit the runway and was on fire. The air traffic control source said the aircraft's right wing made contact with the runway at the initial stage of the accident. MacDonnel Douglas MD82 has a passenger capacity of 175 seats, with flight ceiling of 37,000 feet and flight distance of 3,500 kilometres. AFP reported that the accident was witnessed from the sky. It said Marine Keisel, from Paris, was aboard a plane behind the one that crashed and saw the accident happen.

"When the plane landed it caught fire," she told AFP at Phuket airport. "We could see the fire coming out of it. It was chaos inside my plane." Authorities say they will not make any assumption regarding the cause of the tragedy until investigation is completed, although bad weather was obviously a problem at the airport over the weekend. An American pilot who landed just prior to the One Two Go plane reportedly told CNN that the landing was one of the toughest he had ever undertaken - indicating that the weather conditions were severe. Like several other airlines, One Two Go has reportedly undergone manpower changes. The boss of One Two Go and Orient Thai budget airlines, Udom Tantisprongchai, is said to have replaced several of his Western and Thai pilots - allegedly to cut costs and reduce the chance of work disputes _ with crews with Indonesian and Philippine pilots. However, authorities insisted it was too soon to presume anything, including whether human errors played a part in the tragedy. Certain reports said the pilot was given permission to abort the landing in the final minutes. Communications between the pilot and the air traffic controller and their judgements _ information contained in the black box _ could shed some light on the tragedy. Some aviation sources said an instruction or decision to land in Krabi could have been taken in extreme weather conditions. Last night a swarm of media had descended on the office of One Two Go, near the intersection of Asoke and Sukhumvit. With the high death toll and the fact that it took place in the heart of Thailand's tourism industry, the issue of whether or not there were human errors involved could become hot up very soon, the aviation sources said.
= == = and the Air Crash in Thailand, Update news from Bernama

September 16, 2007 21:49 PM; By D. Arul Rajoo

More Than 110 Believed Killed In Phuket Air Crash

BANGKOK, Sept 16 (Bernama) -- More than 110 people are believed to have been killed when a plane of a Thailand budget carrier with 128 people on board slid off the runway after landing and broke into two at the Phuket International Airport, about an hour's flight southwest of here. Initial reports indicate that Malaysians were not among the passengers on Flight OG269 of One-Two-Go Airlines that crash-landed at about 3.40pm after heavy rain. According to reports, rescue workers have found 66 bodies. The reports said at least 74 of the passengers were Thais and the rest foreigners. Among the injured were Britons, Australians, Iranians, Germans and Irish while the identities of the dead were not known yet.

ABOVE & BELOW: Rescue efforts were quick from the relevant department

The One-To-Go Airlines was carrying 123 passengers and five crew when it slid off the runway and broke into two before catching fire. The plane had flown from Don Muang International Airport here. One-Two-Go Airlines is a low-cost airline based in Bangkok and is the domestic subsidiary of Orient Thai Airlines. The airline started operations in December 2003 with a Bangkok-to-Chiang Mai service. It recently added an additional daily flight out of Don Muang to Phuket, giving it six flights a day. It has eight McDonnell Douglas MD-80 jets in its fleet. Meanwhile, Malaysia Airlines (MAS) cancelled its second daily flight from Kuala Lumpur to Phuket following the closure of the airport.

A MAS official said the MH790 Kuala Lumpur-Phuket flight was scheduled to have arrived in Phuket at 6.30pm (7.30pm Malaysian time) and returned to Kuala Lumpur at 7.35pm. He said the 67 passengers who were to have travelled from Phuket to Kuala Lumpur on Flight MH791 had been taken to a hotel and would fly tomorrow once the airport opened. The airline operates two flights on the route, with the first leaving Kuala Lumpur at 9.30am. MAS has four flights daily between Kuala Lumpur and Bangkok.

= = == More from IHT
One-Two-GO passenger jet crashes upon landing at Phuket

By Thomas Fuller; IHT; Published: September 16, 2007

BANGKOK: A budget airline carrying foreign tourists crashed in heavy rain and broke into several pieces on the resort island of Phuket on Sunday, killing at least 56 of the 130 passengers and crew on board. More bodies would probably be retrieved from the smoldering wreckage of Flight OG 269, an MD-82 operated by One-Two-GO, a Bangkok-based airline, officials said. There were 43 confirmed survivors of the crash, Woratot Rattasima, the deputy governor of Phuket, said on Thai television. The flight, which left the Don Muang airport at Bangkok at 2:30 p.m. Sunday, carried 123 passengers, two pilots and five crew, television reports said. Kongkiat Katepetch, a doctor at Krung Thep Hospital in Phuket, said he had admitted 29 injured passengers, including 5 in serious condition.

Eleven of the injured were Thai, 8 British, two Austrians, two Iranian and two Irish. There was also one Italian, one German and one Dutch passenger injured. Another remained unidentified. The exact cause of the crash remained unclear Sunday evening but witnesses said that amid heavy wind and rain the plane had slid off the runway soon after touching down.

Chaowalert Jitjumnong, a survivor of the crash who was seated in row 22 said he heard no explosion. "The plane slid and then crashed," Chaowalert said on the Thai television channel TITV. "It was dark and there was a lot of smoke." Chaowalert said he crawled toward the light. "I slid out onto the wing," he said. "After I got out of the plane I saw fire."
The crash was the latest in a series of accidents involving low-cost airlines in Southeast Asia. Orient Thai airlines, an affiliate of One-Two-GO, has been warned about its safety procedures. The crash was the latest in a series of accidents involving low-cost airlines in Southeast Asia. Orient Thai airlines, an affiliate of One-Two-GO, has been warned about its safety procedures. In March 2006, the South Korean Ministry of Construction and Transportation issued a warning to Orient Thai airlines and two other budget carriers for "frequent delays and substandard safety measures," according to the Korea Times newspaper.

The ministry said that Orient Thai, which operated flights from Inchon, South Korea, to Bangkok, had not updated its safety and operational manuals as required and that fire extinguishers and oxygen tanks were not in working condition. "We ordered the carriers to improve the detected items," the Korea Times quoted an official saying.

The official also was quoted saying that the Korean government would urge the Thai government "to strengthen aviation safety." In October 2004, a Boeing 747-200 operated by Orient Thai came within 200 meters, or 660 feet, of the Tokyo Tower while making its final approach to the city's Haneda Airport, the Mainichi Shimbun reported. Mainichi quoted Orient Thai as saying the plane's captain had failed to give proper instructions to his crew on landing procedures at Haneda.

In Phuket on Sunday, officials praised emergency workers for responding quickly to the crash. Rescue teams had carried out a drill Sept. 6 involving a burning aircraft. Pornnapa Wongakanit contributed reporting from Bangkok.

= == = =the STAR report is OUTdated; Sunday STAR; September 16, 2007

Dozens feared dead in Phuket plane crash

PHUKET: An airliner exploded and broke in two after it slid off the runway and crashed into nearby walls at Phuket airport on Sunday afternoon. Some reports put the death toll at about 60, but this has yet to be confirmed. The nationalities of those onboard is also unknown, but Phuket is a highly popular destination for overseas tourists.

Civil aviation official Chiasak Angkauwan said, "the airplane asked to land but due to the weather in Phuket -- strong wind and heavy rain -- maybe the pilot did not see the runway clearly." "The plane then fell onto the runway and broke into two. It is expected that there will be deaths." "We are rescuing people from the aircraft ... we know now there were 123 passengers and five crew," he told the news channel. "We won't know what really happened until we hear the black box." The airliner services Bangkok-Phuket flights six times a week. The ill-fated airline left Don Muang airport at about 2.30pm.

Information now coming in said the plane, which was being used by local budget travel company, One-to-Go Airline, had 123 passengers and five crew. The aircraft, flight number OG 269, landed at Phuket airport at about 3.40pm from Bangkok and was taxiing along the runway when it went into a slide. Phuket had earlier been hit by heavy rains.

It crashed into trees and walls surrounding the airport. Eye-witnesses said the impact of the crash caused the plane to break in two and they heard a series of explosions. Rescue teams and navy personnel rushed to the scene.- The Nation/ANN

= = = Go H E R E to continue, more info on

MORE PICS - Thai Budget One-Two Go Plane Crashed; Sun 16 Sep 07; Flight OG269; 130 Paxs; 88 Died 42 Survived; KL-Phuket flights OFF