Tradisional Sabah Borneo

SUNGAI BESAR: The aircraft debris found in Kangaroo Island, southern Australia and Madagascar, Africa have not been confirmed belonging to a Boeing 777 or MH370.

Transport Minister Datuk Seri Liow Tiong Lai today said the government had, however, contacted the countries concerned to analyse three new parts found recently.

He said the government would only acquire the debris from the two countries if the analysis by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) proved they belonged to MH370.

“Several pieces of wreckage suspected to be from MH370 were earlier found in various countries but they have yet to be verified as belonging to the ill-fated aircraft.

“There is a big possibility the debris found in South Africa and Mozambique were from MH370 because so far only one Boeing 777 or MH370 was reported missing in the Indian Ocean,” he said when asked to comment on international news agency reports on the findings.

Meanwhile, Liow said the search and investigation into the cause of the Eurocopter AS350 helicopter crash in Batang Lupar, Sebuyau, Sarawak on May 5 were still in progress.

He said the wreckage of the helicopter was feared missing after being swept away by strong current during the search period until today.However, he said, the search efforts would be stepped up from time to time using the latest equipment including sonar detectors by the agencies involved.

“The strong current is hampering the search for the missing aircraft but I have ordered the DCA (Department of Civil Aviation) and other agencies to step up efforts to find the helicopter,” he told reporters, here.

Liow has also the department concerned to draw up a detailed plan on the search operation for the wreckage until it is found.

He said only after the wreckage was found, could the main cause of the helicopter crash which killed five people including Plantation Industries and Commodities Deputy Minister Tan Sri Noriah Kasnon, could be determined. --BERNAMA

The noon meeting at New York City's Four Seasons Hotel is taking place two years after such a gathering would normally occur in the traditional realm of U.S. politicking.

Presidential contenders typically organize their fundraising operations long before they declare their candidacies. Trump, a wealthy celebrity businessman, became the Republicans' presumptive nominee for the Nov. 8 presidential election last month after seeing off 16 rivals in a largely self-funded primary campaign.

His late start on fundraising is widely considered a steep structural handicap among top Republican donors, who question whether Trump can achieve his previously stated aim of raising $1 billion before November. On the Democratic side, presumptive nominee Hillary Clinton's well-oiled operation is well ahead of schedule.

Already, top donors are saying Trump is unlikely to hit $1 billion.Trump is also pulling back from his earlier statements on his fundraising goal. His campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, told Reuters on Wednesday he sees no reason why Trump would have to raise that sum and that Trump may very well be able to continue his low-cost style of campaigning.

That includes garnering free media - which is estimated to reach a value of $5 billion by November, according to media analytics firm mediaQuant. That is more than double the amount Clinton is likely to get, mediaQuant says.

    Thursday's meeting kicks off the Trump Victory Fund - his joint fundraising operation with the Republican National Committee that aims to raise money both for his candidacy and for candidates further down the ballot in the November election, whose efforts could be impaired by anemic fundraising by Trump. The meeting will include top Republican fundraisers such as Trump Victory Fund Vice Chair Ray Washburne, Republican National Committee Chair Reince Priebus and Texas fundraising co-chair Gaylord Hughey.

CONCERNS ABOUT TRUMP'S STYLE

While Trump shot to the top of the Republican primary with freewheeling rhetoric, sprays of insults to rivals and promises to get tough on issues such as illegal immigration, even his biggest mega donors say they are discouraged by the candidate's attacks in recent weeks on a Mexican-American judge.

In comments that have been widely condemened, Trump has suggested that U.S. Federal Judge Gonzalo Curiel, who is presiding over a case against Trump University, has an inherent bias because of his heritage.

    "He needs to stop the campaign infighting, shut up and stop calling an American who was born in Indiana a Mexican," said Texas billionaire Doug Deason, who was invited to Thursday's meeting but who is not attending because he will be at Trump fundraisers in Texas next week. "It's asinine."

    Added Minnesota media magnate Stanley Hubbard, "Sometimes people's egos are connected to their mouths and it bypasses their brains ... People say dumb things but I just can't believe he did."

    Four people who will be at Thursday's gathering said that in addition to Trump's comments about Curiel, they are also concerned about the fundraising effort's late start.

"We are sort of going from zero to 60 in two seconds," said Hughey, one of the Republican Party's most prolific fundraisers.

"Normally, we would have been together for 24 months by now, putting our networks in place, organizing all our contacts. Now, we are starting from a standstill."    Also causing worrying donors is the threadbare nature of Trump’s campaign, which has been struggling lately to carry out even the most basic of campaign functions. There are virtually no pollsters, no data team, no policy-writing shop and no communications team. Strategists are also scarce. Trump has largely funded the $50-million affair himself.

By contrast, the Clinton campaign operation, which has already spent more than $200 million, has had a large, robust staff filled with seasoned operatives for the past year.

But Lewandowski calls Trump’s lean operation a virtue, not a handicap.

"The Hillary Clinton campaign has 732 paid staffers. Donald Trump has 70 and he won against a 17-person field. This is the mindset the American people need for someone as chief executive."

REUTERS

Alejandro Costa, team leader for emergency vaccination and stockpiles, said an expert meeting would consider the plan next week, paving the way for the WHO to advise countries to shift to the lower dose on a emergency basis if necessary.

Fears of a wider outbreak of the mosquito-borne disease were fuelled this week by the confirmation of locally transmitted yellow fever in Kinshasa, capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

A major outbreak in the city would leave healthcare authorities with little choice but to cut the dose per patient.

"If we have to vaccinate Kinshasa, that would be a trigger," Costa said in a telephone interview on Thursday. "We don't have enough vaccine. Kinshasa has a population of 12 million to 14 million people and we only have today around six million doses."

Concerns about limited vaccine supplies have been building for some time, with independent medics calling for low-dose use in an article The Lancet journal in April.Limited scientific research suggests a one-fifth dose works as well as the full dose, although it is not clear if it lasts as long. Studies to date have also only involved adults, so it is uncertain how well children would be protected.

The current outbreak of yellow fever was first detected in Angola in late December 2015 and has since spread into DRC, Congo-Brazzaville, Kenya and Sao Tome, as well as to China, which has close commercial ties with oil-rich Angola.

DEPLETED STOCKPILE

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies called on Wednesday for an immediate scale-up in response, warning that limited vaccine supplies and other problems could turn Angola's epidemic into a larger crisis.

While the population in the Angolan capital of Luanda is now almost completely vaccinated, this has depleted the world's emergency stockpile of vaccines, and a slow vaccination campaign has allowed the virus to spread elsewhere.

Yellow fever is transmitted by the same mosquitoes that spread the Zika and dengue viruses, although it is a much more serious disease. The "yellow" in the name refers to the jaundice that affects some patients.Although approximately six million vaccine doses are kept in reserve for emergencies, there is no quick way to boost production when there is a spike in demand, as at present.

Manufacturers, including the Institut Pasteur, government factories in Brazil and Russia, and French drugmaker Sanofi, use a time-consuming method involving sterile chicken eggs.REUTERS

WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House on Thursday strongly endorsed a bipartisan bill to help ease Puerto Rico's financial crisis, urging the Republican-led House to pass it as the U.S. territory faces a $2 billion debt payment in just over three weeks.

The House was scheduled to begin debate on the bill that would create a financial control board and restructure some of Puerto Rico's $70 billion debt. Republican and Democratic leaders support it, as does the Obama administration. But the measure faces opposition from members of both parties, as some bondholders, unions and island officials have lobbied against it.

The White House said failing to act could result in an "economic and humanitarian crisis" in the U.S. territory beyond what the island is already facing. A lengthy recession has forced businesses to close, driven up the employment rate and sparked an exodus of hundreds of thousands of people to the U.S. mainland.

"This compromise legislation is far superior to the status quo and is necessary to protect the well-being of 3.5 million Americans and create a path to recovery," the White House statement said.

House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., will need significant support from his own caucus as well as most Democrats to get the bill passed. He has argued the legislation is the only way to avoid an eventual taxpayer bailout for the island and was closely involved in negotiations with the administration and House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of California.

In a push to get the bill passed, President Barack Obama summoned House Democrats with ties to Puerto Rico to a meeting in the Oval Office on Wednesday, including supporters and opponents of the measure.

Puerto Rico's representative in Congress, Pedro Pierluisi, attended the meeting and said he is supporting the bill despite opposition from other lawmakers on the island.

"He made absolutely clear that there is no 'Plan B' here," Pierluisi said of Obama.

Puerto Rico has missed several payments to creditors and faces the $2 billion installment on July 1. Some schools on the island lack proper electricity and some hospitals have said they can't provide adequate drugs or care. The island's only active air ambulance company announced Tuesday that it has suspended its services.

Ahead of the vote, Republicans said they had enough support from both parties for passage. But some bondholder groups continued to try and pick off conservatives with the argument that the bill is unfair to creditors and tantamount to a bailout for the territory.

The control board would "cast aside bondholder contracts and retroactively subvert them to Puerto Rico's government pension system at its sole discretion," a group called Main Street Bondholders said in a release this week.

Some conservatives said they would vote against the bill.

"People in my district are very unhappy with it," said Rep. John Fleming, R-La. "They see it as just another bailout of a government that was run in a liberal progressive way."

Others are supporting it, however. Idaho Rep. Raul Labrador, a Republican born in Puerto Rico who is a member of the House Freedom Caucus, helped negotiate the legislation and has worked to sell it to colleagues.

Unions have also lobbied against the legislation because of a provision that would allow the Puerto Rican government to temporarily lower the minimum wage for some younger workers. Democrats are offering an amendment to delete that provision from the bill.

The Senate has not yet acted, but senators said this week that they are watching the House vote. Texas Sen. John Cornyn, the No. 2 Senate Republican, said Tuesday that it's likely that the Senate will take up the House version of the bill if it passes the House this week.

The legislation would allow the control board to oversee negotiations with creditors and the courts over reducing some debt. It does not provide any taxpayer funds to reduce that debt.

It would also require the territory to create a fiscal plan. Among other requirements, the plan would have to provide "adequate" funds for public pensions, which the government has underfunded by more than $40 billion.  AP

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Gena O'Brien was catching up on headlines this week when she stumbled across a young woman's account of her life since she was sexually assaulted at Stanford University — a statement to the former student-athlete who attacked her as she lay unconscious behind a dumpster 16 months ago.

O'Brien has two sons, ages 10 and 14. The older boy is a competitive swimmer, like 20-year-old Brock Turner was before his arrest. In the raw words of an assault survivor, O'Brien recognized a teachable moment.

She read portions of the woman's statement out loud to her ninth-grader while he was getting ready for school and made him promise to read all 12 pages when he was done studying for finals.

"There are so many golden truths in there, stark truths," said O'Brien, a hairdresser who lives with her family in Berkeley. "It's about victimizing somebody, and somebody's feelings of being a victim of something. And I want my boys to have empathy."

With the six-month jail sentence Turner received last week generating widespread publicity, some parents are using the case to talk with their children about sexual misconduct, binge drinking, personal responsibility and boundaries. It's an opportunity that even comes with primary sources — the victim's statement, a plea for leniency that Turner's father wrote to the sentencing judge — that are helping fuel discussions about rape with young people.

"Let's not kid ourselves about this. One of the reasons we are resonating with this so much is two people caught the person — it's not a 'she said, he said.' Two white men caught him," said Rosalind Wiseman, author of a book about modern boy culture called "Masterminds & Wingmen." ''The other reason is (the victim) did an amazing job of articulating her experience."

Wiseman, a parent educator and bullying expert with two sons ages 13 and 15, said she wants her children to read the assault survivor's statement. But she also plans to discuss how social privilege played out in the case, how women who report rapes are often discounted, how boys and men also experience sexual violence and how difficult it can be to do the right thing, like the two graduate students who stopped Turner and held him until police arrived.

"It does them no good to talk in sound bites to our children about these kinds of issues," she said. "We have to be able to tell them they will be in situations that are really uncomfortable or messy, and it's possible people we love might do things we are not proud of. And we have to use the opportunity to ask, 'What do you think is the most important take-away from this for how you conduct yourself?'"Jeffrey Shinbrot, an attorney in Los Angeles who has three sons ages 9 to 13, found in the harrowing details of Turner's behavior a way of illustrating a point he had been trying to hammer home for a while. Namely, that some of the hip-hop lyrics his boys mindlessly sang normalized misogynistic behavior he considered neither normal nor cool.

"I said, 'Look you guys, this is how serious the things you are repeating in music are.' I really wanted them to understand the seriousness of those types of acts and the seriousness of the acts the lyrics are describing," Shinbrot said. "Did it sink in? Who knows."

Margaret Silverman of Orinda has an 18-year-old son heading off to college in the fall. She remembers speaking with him when he was a high school freshman about communicating well with his future sexual partners, about respecting that both he and the girls he was interested in had the right to say no.

While touring the university her son will attend in September, they heard about a campus fraternity that had been suspended after police broke up a party and found a woman passed out on a couch. Silverman told him she hoped he would be the one to notice, to pay attention rather than ignore, if he found himself in a situation like that — a message she plans to deliver again."I'll be reminding him, 'If you see a buddy of yours acting out, I would hope you would have the sensibility to say, 'Hey dude, leave her alone, let's get out of here.  AP

WASHINGTON (AP) — The latest developments in the 2016 campaign for the presidency. All times EDT:

10:12 a.m.

Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders has landed outside Washington for meetings with President Barack Obama at the White House and with Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid on Capitol Hill.

Sanders faces questions about whether he will back Clinton and when he may end his bid. He lost four of six contests in Tuesday's primaries and Hillary Clinton is now the Democrats' presumptive nominee.

But Sanders has vowed to campaign through Tuesday's final primary in the District of Columbia and pursue a contested Democratic convention in Philadelphia.

Sanders was headlining a D.C. rally and then returning home to Vermont on Thursday night.3:13 a.m.

On the verge of endorsing Hillary Clinton, President Barack Obama will pay tribute to Bernie Sanders' historic candidacy for presidency with an Oval Office meeting. The session is aimed at unifying the Democratic Party for a general election brawl with Donald Trump.

Sanders heads to the White House under intense pressure to drop out and clear the way for Clinton. Though he showed signs he understood the end was near, he's vowed to keep fighting for his movement.

Obama has sought to give the Vermont senator the courtesy of exiting the race on his own terms, but is expected to formally endorse Clinton after the meeting. The White House says he plans to use the meeting to discuss how to build on the enthusiasm Sanders brought to the primary.  AP

A fetus, a two-year-old boy and a seven-year-old girl were among 117 human remains recovered from a mass grave made by Mexican authorities in 2014, officials said.

It took 12 days for forensic experts to dig the pit in the central state of Morelos, and there was one more body than they previously believed were buried in a cemetery in Tetelcingo.

Morelos attorney general Javier Perez said authorities are investigating why they had a registry of 116 bodies instead of 117. Authorities will continue digging to make sure there are no other unknown bodies.

The case has caused outrage in Mexico, where more than 28,000 people have disappeared in a decade of drug violence.

Families of missing people came from other states to observe as authorities began to dig the grave on May 23.

Perez said the fetus, a 36-week-old female -- nearly full term -- was found dead on a street in 2012 in the city of Cuernavaca.The seven-year-old girl was found on December 26, 2012, between Cuernavaca and Jiutepec, and an autopsy concluded that she had died of a contusion in the chest.

The two-year-old boy was discovered in a river in April 2013, with his death caused by head trauma.

The bodies of the children were never claimed, Perez said.

The law allows authorities to bury bodies that are not identified and that nobody claims, but irregularities were found in the Tetelcingo case.

Some bodies were buried without a document with a case number, or the number was ineligible. Perez said 28 remains did not have a genetic registry.

Authorities have not said how many crime victims were among the bodies.

- A mother's despair -

The scandal erupted after a mother launched a legal battle to recover the body of her son, Oliver Wenceslao Navarrete Hernandez.

Navarrete was found dead after he was kidnapped in 2013. His family was unable to bury him because prosecutors insisted on keeping the body for forensic tests.But the body vanished from official records until an official revealed that Navarrete was buried in the mass grave with apparently falsified documents.

His family was present when officials opened the grave for the first time in December 2014, and they made a video of the grim dig.

But it was not until November 2015 that the discovery became public. Under pressure, authorities agreed to exhume all the bodies and open an investigation.

One former official from the state prosecutor's office is facing charges and another is investigation.

"We will continue (to look into the actions of) other public servants and former officials," Perez said.

Perez said DNA samples were taken from each body in a bid to identify all of them.

The 117 remains were taken to another cemetery, "The Garden of Memories," where they will be placed in wall crypts. AFP