"Tsunami" of property cooling measures, say analysts

SINGAPORE: Property analysts have described the latest set of government measures as the "tsunami" of property cooling measures, as it affects public and private housing, executive condominiums, and industrial properties.

Some say, the additional stamp duty will hit investors wanting to own a second or subsequent property.

Mr Mohamed Ismail, CEO of PropNex, said: "Such a drastic move will have a downward spiral effect, loss of confidence in the market... will the current property prices go under such that people who bought in recent times... will their property be a negative asset moving forward?

"More pertinent, as far as public housing here, is the restrictions on PR (Permanent Resident). I think there has been a lot of concerns and people have raised about PR being able to benefit while holding on to public housing and investing. These measures will increase the supply of public housing, and overall, this will help the public housing to be further moderated."

Meanwhile, some analysts say the new measures on industrial properties did not come as a surprise.

Mr Donald Han, Managing Director of HSR Property Consultants, said: "The measures are quite timely and could have come earlier because if you notice, industrial prices have actually increased by about average 25 per cent per annum since 2010, and if you look at last year, the full year price estimate capital values have increased by more than 30 per cent.

"So all in, all the government could have actually reacted earlier on, perhaps 12 months early rather than now. But it's never too late. I think that will have a huge impact on the pace of price movement, moving forward. I expect industrial price movement this year to be a bit more moderated to a single-digit increase, if any."

- CNA/de

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Firefox 19 betas: built-in PDF viewing, broader Android reach

Adobe Systems' Flash Player plug-in has been under attack in Web development circles for years, but now Adobe's Reader software is becoming more of a target in the war against plug-ins.

Mozilla released the with its own built-in PDF reader, called PDF.js, which uses the browser's own JavaScript engine to decode the Adobe-created but industry-standard document format.

The Portable Document Format for years was an awkward part of the Web, often ambushing the unwary with long page-load times as the Adobe Reader plug-in loaded. But PDFs have become more common, exposed in Google search results and used for everything from bank statements to tax forms. In
Safari, Apple bypassed Adobe's software with its own PDF-reading plug-in, but Google went a step farther by building PDF rendering directly into Chrome.

Mozilla launched its PDF.js project in 2011, taking advantage of newer browser abilities such as Canvas to display more complicated documents.

Mozilla also released a new Firefox beta for Android that it says reaches about 15 million more phones. Previously, the browser required an 800MHz ARMv6 processor or faster, but Mozilla lowered the requirement to 600MHz, along with 512MB of memory, and HVGA (480x320 pixels) screen resolution.

"This includes popular phones like LG Optimus One, T-Mobile myTouch 3G slide, HTC Wildfire S, and ZTE R750," Mozilla said in a blog post.

The new
Android beta also adds themes so people can customize the browser's look, handles CSS' formatting set using viewport percentages, and can be localized into traditional Chinese and simplified Chinese languages.

The
Firefox beta for PCs gets the CSS feature, too, along with faster startup and a feature that offers to reset the search engine setting for the awesomebar (aka Web address or location bar) if third-party software changes it.

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Teen to Hero Teacher: 'I Don't Want to Shoot You'

A California teacher'sbrave conversation with a 16-year-old gunman who had opened fire on his classroom bullies allowed 28 other students to quickly escape what could have been a massacre.

Science teacher Ryan Heber calmly confronted the teenager after he shot and critically wounded a classmate, whom authorities say had bullied the boy for more than year at Taft Union High School.

"I don't want to shoot you," the teen gunman told Heber, who convinced the teen gunman to drop his weapon, a high power shotgun.

Responding to calls of shots fired, campus supervisor Kim Lee Fields arrived at the classroom and helped Heber talk the boy into giving up the weapon.

"This teacher and this counselor stood there face-to-face not knowing if he was going to shoot them," said Kern County Sheriff Donny Youngblood. "They probably expected the worst and hoped for the best, but they gave the students a chance to escape."

One student, who police say the shooter had targeted, was shot. He was airlifted to a hospital and remains in critical, but stable condition, Youngblood said. He is expected to undergo surgery today.

Two other students received minor injuries. One suffered hearing loss and another fell over a table while evacuating. Heber received a wound to his head from a stray pellet, police said.

Taft Midway Driller/Doug Keeler/AP Photo

Tennessee Teen Arrested Over School Shooting Threat Watch Video

Tragedy at Sandy Hook: The Search for Solutions Watch Video

Police said the teen, whose name has not been made public because he is a minor, began plotting on Wednesday night to kill two students he felt had bullied him.

Authorities believe the suspect found his older brother's gun and brought it into the just before 9 a.m. on Thursday and went to Heber's second-floor classroom where a first period science class with 20 students was taking place.

"He planned the event," Youngblood said. "Certainly he believed that the two people he targeted had bullied him, in his mind. Whether that occurred or not we don't know yet."

The gunman entered the classroom and shot one of his classmates. Heber immediately began trying to talk him into handing over the gun, and evacuating the other students through the classroom's backdoor.

"The heroics of these two people goes without saying. ... They could have just as easily ... tried to get out of the classroom and left students, and they didn't," the sheriff said. "They knew not to let him leave the classroom with that shotgun."

The gunman was found with several rounds of additional ammunition in his pockets.

Within one minute of the shooting, a 911 call was placed and police arrived on the scene. An announcement was made placing the school on lockdown and warning teachers and students that the precautions were "not a drill."

The school had recently announced new safety procedures following last month's deadly shooting at a Newtown, Conn., elementary school in which 20 young children were killed. Six school staffers, including the principal, were killed as they tried to protect the children from gunman Adam Lanza.

The school employs an armed security guard, but he was not on campus Thursday morning.

Youngblood said the student would be charged with attempted murder, but the district attorney would decide if he was to be tried as an adult.

Some 900 students attend Taft Union High School, located in Taft, Calif., a rural community in southern California.

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A climate of cautious prediction

ABOUT 12,000 years ago, as the world warmed after the last ice age, temperatures in the far north plummeted. This was probably caused by a huge injection of fresh water from melting ice sheets.

Could something similar happen over the next century? Most climate scientists would say no, because they expect it to take centuries for the great ice sheets to begin melting in earnest.

But renowned climate scientist James Hansen thinks that with the planet warming more rapidly than ever before, the ice sheets will melt faster, leading to rapid sea level rise. His work suggests that the average surface temperature of the entire planet will temporarily fall as a result, leading to even more climate chaos (see "Sea level rise could lead to cooler, stormier planet").

Is Hansen being alarmist about sea level rise? It will be decades before we know. But a recent study looking at how the climatic changes seen so far compare with predictions concluded that most scientists "err on the side of least drama" (Global Environmental Change, doi.org/jv9). So the next time you see a climate scientist being accused of alarmism, bear in mind that, so far, more extreme projections are tending to be more accurate.

If you would like to reuse any content from New Scientist, either in print or online, please contact the syndication department first for permission. New Scientist does not own rights to photos, but there are a variety of licensing options available for use of articles and graphics we own the copyright to.

All comments should respect the New Scientist House Rules. If you think a particular comment breaks these rules then please use the "Report" link in that comment to report it to us.

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"Lincoln", "Life of Pi" lead Oscar nominations

 

LOS ANGELES: Steven Spielberg's "Lincoln" earned the most Oscar nominations with 12, ahead of Lee Ang's "Life of Pi," with 11 nods, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced Thursday.

Both movies are nominated for the coveted best film prize, along with "Silver Linings Playbook" and "Les Miserables," which each earned eight nominations, and Ben Affleck's political thriller "Argo" with seven.

Beyond best film, "Lincoln" earned nods for best director for Spielberg, best actor for Daniel Day-Lewis for his portrayal of the American president and best supporting actor for Tommy Lee Jones as abolitionist Thaddeus Stevens.

The other movies nominated for best film are "Beasts of the Southern Wild," "Zero Dark Thirty," "Amour" and "Django Unchained."

Other nominees for best actor besides Day-Lewis are Hugh Jackman in "Les Miserables," Bradley Cooper in "Silver Linings Playbook," Joaquin Phoenix in "The Master" and Denzel Washington for "Flight."

Best actress nominees are Jessica Chastain in "Zero Dark Thirty," Jennifer Lawrence for "Silver Linings Playbook," 85-year-old French actress Emmanuelle Riva in "Amour," Naomi Watts in "The Impossible" and nine-year-old Quvenzhane Wallis for "Beasts of the Southern Wild."

Best picture:
"Amour," "Argo," "Beasts of the Southern Wild," "Django Unchained," "Les Miserables," "Life of Pi," "Lincoln," "Silver Linings Playbook," "Zero Dark Thirty."

Best director:
Michael Haneke for "Amour," Benh Zeitlin for "Beasts of the Southern Wild," Lee Ang for "Life of Pi," Steven Spielberg for "Lincoln," and David O. Russell for "Silver Linings Playbook."

Best leading actor:
Bradley Cooper for "Silver Linings Playbook," Daniel Day-Lewis for "Lincoln," Hugh Jackman for "Les Miserables," Joaquin Phoenix for "The Master," and Denzel Washington for "Flight."

Best leading actress:
Jessica Chastain for "Zero Dark Thirty," Jennifer Lawrence for "Silver Linings Playbook," Emmanuelle Riva for "Amour," Quvenzhane Wallis for "Beasts of the Southern Wild," and Naomi Watts for "The Impossible."

Best supporting actor:
Alan Arkin for "Argo," Robert De Niro for "Silver Linings Playbook," Philip Seymour Hoffman for "The Master," Tommy Lee Jones for "Lincoln," and Christoph Waltz for "Django Unchained."

Best supporting actress:
Amy Adams for "The Master," Sally Field for "Lincoln," Anne Hathaway for "Les Miserables," Helen Hunt for "The Sessions," and Jacki Weaver for "Silver Linings Playbook."

Best foreign language film:
"Amour" (Austria), "Kon-Tiki" (Norway), "No" (Chile), "A Royal Affair" (Denmark) and "War Witch" (Canada).

Best animated feature:
"Brave," "Frankenweenie," "ParaNorman," "The Pirates! Band of Misfits" and "Wreck-It Ralph."

- AFP/fa

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Nexus 7 dock to go on sale this month for $39.99

Nexus 7 owners will finally be able to pick up a dock for their tablet made by Asus.

Citing a "reliable source," The Verge says that Asus will offer the dock in the U.S. within the next two weeks at a price tag of $39.99.

Backing up on that claim is a product page for the dock from Manhattan retailer B&H. The page shows the price of the dock and gives an expected delivery date of January 16. Fellow retailer Adorama also lists the dock and its price but says the product is currently backordered.

The dock comes with a mini-Google
Nexus 7 (32GB, Wi-Fi only)USB port for charging the Nexus 7 and a 3.5mm audio jack for playing music through external speakers. Other Nexus 7 docks have been released by third-party vendors and at cheaper prices, but this is the first one made directly by Asus.

Though the Nexus 7 is branded and sold under Google's name, Asus is the actual manufacturer. Asus has been busy demoing the new dock at
CES this week.

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Embryonic Sharks Freeze to Avoid Detection

Jane J. Lee

Although shark pups are born with all the equipment they'll ever need to defend themselves and hunt down food, developing embryos still stuck in their egg cases are vulnerable to predators. But a new study finds that even these baby sharks can detect a potential predator, and play possum to avoid being eaten.

Every living thing gives off a weak electrical field. Sharks can sense this with a series of pores—called the ampullae of Lorenzini—on their heads and around their eyes, and some species rely on this electrosensory ability to find food buried in the seafloor. (See pictures of electroreceptive fish.)

Two previous studies on the spotted catshark (Scyliorhinus canicula) and the clearnose skate (Raja eglanteria)—a relative of sharks—found similar freezing behavior in their young. But new research by shark biologist and doctoral student Ryan Kempster at the University of Western Australia has given scientists a more thorough understanding of this behavior.

It all started because Kempster wanted to build a better shark repellent. Since he needed to know how sharks respond to electrical fields, Kempster decided to use embryos. "It's very hard to test this in the field because you need to get repeated responses," he said. And you can't always get the same shark to cooperate multiple times. "But we could use embryos because they're contained within an egg case."

Cloaking Themselves

So Kempster got his hands on 11 brownbanded bamboo shark (Chiloscyllium punctatum) embryos and tested their reactions to the simulated weak electrical field of a predator. (Popular pictures: Bamboo shark swallowed whole—by another shark.)

In a study published today in the journal PLoS One, Kempster and his colleagues report that all of the embryonic bamboo sharks, once they reached later stages of development, reacted to the electrical field by ceasing gill movements (essentially, holding their breath), curling their tails around their bodies, and freezing.

A bamboo shark embryo normally beats its tail to move fresh seawater in and out of its egg case. But that generates odor cues and small water currents that can give away its position. The beating of its gills as it breathes also generates an electrical field that predators can use to find it.

"So it cloaks itself," said neuroecologist Joseph Sisneros, at the University of Washington in Seattle, who was not involved in the study. "[The embryo] shuts down any odor cues, water movement, and its own electrical signal."

Sisneros, who conducted the previous clearnose skate work, is delighted to see that this shark species also reacts to external electrical fields and said it would be great to see whether this is something all shark, skate, and ray embryos do.

Marine biologist Stephen Kajiura, at Florida Atlantic University, is curious to know how well the simulated electrical fields compare to the bamboo shark's natural predators—the experimental field was on the higher end of the range normally given off.

"[But] they did a good job with [the study]," Kajiura said. "They certainly did a more thorough study than anyone else has done."

Electrifying Protection?

In addition to the freezing behavior he recorded in the bamboo shark embryos, Kempster found that the shark pups remembered the electrical field signal when it was presented again within 40 minutes and that they wouldn't respond as strongly to subsequent exposures as they did initially.

This is important for developing shark repellents, he said, since some of them use electrical fields to ward off the animals. "So if you were using a shark repellent, you would need to change the current over a 20- to 30-minute period so the shark doesn't get used to that field."

Kempster envisions using electrical fields to not only keep humans safe but to protect sharks as well. Shark populations have been on the decline for decades, due partly to ending up as bycatch, or accidental catches, in the nets and on the longlines of fishers targeting other animals.

A 2006 study estimated that as much as 70 percent of landings, by weight, in the Spanish surface longline fleet were sharks, while a 2007 report found that eight million sharks are hooked each year off the coast of southern Africa. (Read about the global fisheries crisis in National Geographic magazine.)

"If we can produce something effective, it could be used in the fishing industry to reduce shark bycatch," Kempster said. "In [America] at the moment, they're doing quite a lot of work trying to produce electromagnetic fish hooks." The eventual hope is that if these hooks repel the sharks, they won't accidentally end up on longlines.

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Oscar Nominations 2013: Full List

"Lincoln" is leading the way to the 2013 Oscars. This morning, the bio pic about the 16th president picked up 12 Academy Award nominations, including best director for Steven Spielberg and best actor for Daniel Day-Lewis.

Ang Lee's "Life of Pi" followed close behind with 11 nominations. "Les Miserables" and "Silver Linings Playbook" tied for third place, with eight nominations each.

The Academy also named its eldest and youngest best actress nominees ever. "Beasts of the Southern Wild" star Quvenzhané Wallis, 9, is up for best actress along with "Amour" lead Emmanuelle Riva, 85.

See who made the cut below, and weigh in on who you want to win with Oscar.com's My Picks, an interactive and social Oscar ballot that allows you to pick who you think will win in each category. You can compete with your Facebook friends when the Academy Awards air on Feb. 24.

FULL COVERAGE: The 85th Annual Academy Awards

Best Picture:

"Beasts of the Southern Wild"

"Silver Linings Playbook"

"Zero Dark Thirty"

"Lincoln"

"Les Miserables"

"Life of Pi"

"Amour"

"Django Unchained"

"Argo"

My Picks: Create an Oscar Ballot and Play With Friends

Best Supporting Actor:

Christoph Waltz, "Django Unchained"

Philip Seymour Hoffman, "The Master"

Robert De Niro, "Silver Linings Playbook"

Alan Arkin, "Argo"

Tommy Lee Jones, "Lincoln"

Best Supporting Actress:

Sally Field, "Lincoln"

Anne Hathaway, "Les Miserables"

Jacki Weaver, "Silver Linings Playbook"

David James/Dreamworks/AP

Helen Hunt, "The Sessions"

Amy Adams, "The Master"

Best Director:

David O. Russell, "Silver Linings Playbook"

Ang Lee, "Life of Pi"

Steven Spielberg, "Lincoln"

Michael Haneke, "Amour"

Benh Zeitlin, "Beasts of the Southern Wild"

Best Actor:

Daniel Day Lewis, "Lincoln"

Denzel Washington, "Flight"

Hugh Jackman, "Les Miserables"

Bradley Cooper, "Silver Linings Playbook"

Joaquin Phoenix, "The Master"

Best Actress:

Naomi Watts, "The Impossible"

Jessica Chastain, "Zero Dark Thirty"

Jennifer Lawrence, "Silver Linings Playbook"

Emmanuelle Riva, "Amour"

Quvenzhané Wallis, "Beasts of the Southern Wild"

Best Original Screenplay:

"Zero Dark Thirty"

"Django Unchained"

"Moonrise Kingdom"

"Amour"

"Flight"

Best Adapted Screenplay:

"Lincoln"

"Silver Linings Playbook"

"Argo"

"Life of Pi"

"Beasts of the Southern Wild"

Best Animated Feature:

"Frankenweenie"

"The Pirates! Band of Misfits"

"Wreck-It Ralph"

"Paranorman"

"Brave"

Best Foreign Feature:

"Amour"

"A Royal Affair"

"Kon-Tiki"

"No"

"War Witch"

Best Visual Effects:

"Life of Pi"

"The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey"

"The Avengers"

"Prometheus"

"Snow White and the Huntsman"

Best Cinematography:

"Skyfall"

"Anna Karenina"

"Django Unchained"

"Life of Pi"

"Lincoln"

Best Costume Design:

"Anna Karenina"

"Les Miserables"

"Lincoln"

"Mirror Mirror"

"Snow White and the Huntsman"

Best Documentary Feature:

"Searching for Sugar Man"

"How to Survive a Plague"

"The Gatekeepers"

"5 Broken Cameras"

"The Invisible War"

Best Documentary Short:

"Open Heart"

"Inocente"

"Redemption"

"Kings Point"

"Mondays at Racine"

"Snow White and the Huntsman"

Best Film Editing:

"Lincoln"

"Silver Linings Playbook"

"Life of Pi"

"Argo"

"Zero Dark Thirty"

Best Makeup and Hairstyling:

"Hitchcock"

"The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey"

"Les Miserables"

Best Music (Original Score):

"Anna Karenina"

"Argo"

"Life of Pi"

"Lincoln"

"Skyfall"

Best Music (Original Song):

"Before My Time" from "Chasing Ice"

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The science of Sherlock Holmes

Jonathon Keats, contributor

(Image: Everett Collection/Rex)

The ace detective continues to enthrall us, as two new books, The Scientific Sherlock Holmes by James O'Brien and Mastermind by Maria Konnikova, show

THE death of Sherlock Holmes, as related in the December 1893 issue of The Strand Magazine, was met with sadness and fury. Fans wore black armbands to mourn their favourite detective, thrown from a cliff in mortal combat. They also sent scathing letters to Arthur Conan Doyle, who had written off Holmes to concentrate on more "serious" fiction.

A decade of literary failure persuaded the author to admit his error, averring that Holmes had actually survived. He would appear in 33 more stories by the time Conan Doyle died in 1930, but even that misfortune didn't mean the end for Holmes. Most recently he has been the subject of two TV series set in the present day: Sherlock, from the BBC, and Elementary, produced by CBS.

Two new books also capitalise on his undying fame, and suggest reasons for his appeal across genres and generations. In The Scientific Sherlock Holmes, chemist James O'Brien presents him as a pioneering forensic scientist. In Mastermind, psychologist Maria Konnikova poses him as a master of mindfulness. While each book has serious flaws, together they offer some valuable insights into the Sherlock Holmes phenomenon, and how it relates to the rise of popular science.

In Conan Doyle's opinion, science was what set Holmes apart from other fictional detectives, who typically solved crimes by chance. The author, who had trained as a physician, boasted of giving Holmes "an immense fund of exact knowledge". The majority of O'Brien's book is an assessment of whether this knowledge really was immense and exact, and how much of it is still accurate.

Holmes fares better here than in past appraisals, notably Isaac Asimov's 1980 claim that he was a "blundering chemist". O'Brien shows that he had a surprisingly advanced understanding of certain chemicals, such as barium bisulphate, which many turn-of-the-century chemists didn't believe existed, and that his famous test for blood, by detecting haemoglobin, was perfectly viable.

He also shows that Holmes was on the cutting edge of forensic techniques, from fingerprinting to tracking criminals with dogs. The first Holmes story involving fingerprints dates to 1903, two years before they were first successfully used by the police. His first story to employ a tracking dog dates to 1890, 13 years before they became popular with real-life investigators.

All of this would be little more than literary trivia were it not for another observation made by O'Brien. Conan Doyle's interest in science waned with age, as he embraced spiritualism. While he never imposed these beliefs on Holmes, the later stories contain far less science than the earlier ones. O'Brien finds that 60 per cent of the forensic science takes place in the first half of the Holmes canon, and that every story in which he performs chemical experiments predates 1904. He overlays this with reader polls that have overwhelmingly favoured the earlier stories, and concludes that the correlation between scientific content and reader interest is "surely no coincidence".

Though his certainty seems overstated, O'Brien is persuasive when he says that science gives the stories a sense of plausibility and an authenticity that prior detective fiction lacked. Conan Doyle's fiction appropriates the authority of Victorian science; Holmes's forensic investigations allow readers to vicariously experience his scientific achievements in a setting more thrilling than a university laboratory. He is the Ernest Rutherford of crime, pursuing murderers instead of protons.

Of course forensic techniques are only part of the equation. Holmes applies the scientific method to everything he encounters, surmising where people have been and what they have done by logical deduction. His astonishing insights, and how he achieves them, are the subject of Mastermind.

"I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty attic," Holmes tells Watson in the very first story, "and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose." This quaint analogy "may not be far from the truth", Konnikova says. By her 21st-century interpretation, the hippocampus is the entryway, where information is initially placed, and long-term storage is achieved by the process of consolidation. Part of what makes Holmes so good at what he does is that he is scrupulous about what he lets into his attic and how he organises it. His talent for deduction derives from keen observation combined with a memory primed to associate fresh input with prior knowledge.

Half of Konnikova's task is to describe his thought processes in terms of present-day psychology. The other half is a primer on how to employ Holmes's techniques yourself. To attain his power of observation, for instance, requires the sort of focus you can practise through meditation. To reason as effectively as he does requires that you be aware of your biases.

If all of this sounds vague, it's because Konnikova is seldom specific. Whereas O'Brien tends to get lost in details and to run off on tangents, Konnikova offers only the quickest gloss on complex issues in neuroscience, and dishes out advice that hardly depends on psychology or Holmes. She does make an interesting point when she claims that Holmes is perennially popular because "he makes the most rigorous approach to scientific thinking seem attainable". The very existence of her book shows his appeal as a self-help guru. But surely he also engages us as a man in need of help himself.

That's the line taken in both recent TV programmes. CBS presents Holmes as a recovering drug addict; the BBC as an autistic savant. While each show departs significantly from Conan Doyle's Victorian milieu, they are true to Holmes's "dual nature" (as Watson dubs it): the hyperintelligence and morphine dependence that together make for such a vivid character.

Sherlock Holmes is a work in progress. We may be fascinated by the forensics and impressed with his deductive reasoning, but it's the detective's vulnerability that moves each generation to cast him in their own image.

Jonathon Keats's new book Forged: Why fakes are the great art of our age will be released this month

Book information:
The Scientific Sherlock Holmes: Cracking the case with science and forensics by James O'Brien
Oxford University Press
£18.99/$29.95

Book information:
Mastermind: How to think like Sherlock Holmes by Maria Konnikova
Canongate/Viking
£16.99/$26.95

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Malaysian opposition to rally for poll reforms

KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia's opposition on Wednesday received rare permission to hold a weekend political rally in a historic stadium, ahead of hotly anticipated elections due within months.

Opposition organisers say the gathering on Saturday at the 30,000-seater Stadium Merdeka (Independence Stadium), in the capital Kuala Lumpur, will focus on continued widespread criticism of a voting system seen as skewed in favour of the ruling Barisan Nasional coalition.

Senior opposition politician, Hatta Ramli, from the Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party said: "Not giving access to the stadium would have looked very bad for the government... They are doing the right thing and now we have a proper venue for the gathering. We want to make people aware of our demands for free and fair elections."

A rally for clean elections in April drew tens of thousands to the streets but degenerated into clashes between demonstrators and police, who were criticised for a response widely seen as heavy-handed.

The ruling coalition has controlled Malaysia since independence in 1957 but political observers say it faces its stiffest test yet in the coming polls against a formidable opposition and amid rising voter impatience with its rule.

Prime Minister Najib Razak must face elections no later than late June, but speculation of early polls is rife.

Najib's ethnic Malay-dominated ruling bloc faces an alliance comprising opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim's multi-ethnic party, the Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party and a third party dominated by ethnic Chinese.

Malays make up more than 60 per cent of Malaysia's 28 million people.

The trust that owns the stadium, where independence was declared 56 years ago, said in a statement it would allow Saturday's rally but that crowds must not exceed the venue's capacity.

The opposition often complains of hurdles in gaining permission for rallies, blaming ruling-party meddling, and had said in recent days that the stadium trust appeared to be snubbing its request, before approval came through.

Activists and the opposition say Malaysia's electoral roll is marred with irregularities, and complain that election officials and mainstream media are biased in favour of the ruling coalition.

The government set up a parliamentary panel to examine the complaints but critics said not enough concrete action has been taken.

The last elections in 2008 saw Barisan Nasional's worst showing ever, losing its traditional two-thirds parliamentary majority to the opposition.

- AFP/xq

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