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No. 4776 PP 2644/12/2009 (023092)

Tuesday
June 9, 2009
TELLING IT AS IT IS www.sun2surf.com

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Sports

Billy Elliot
17 bodies found ...
Brazilian Navy personnel recovering
debris on Sunday from Air France
Flight 447, which crashed into the
Atlantic Ocean on June 1. The search
mission has recovered 17 bodies
and much debris in a remote stretch
of the Atlantic from the flight which
carried 228 passengers and crew
from Rio de Janeiro to Paris.
See page 10
Pass in English a must
EDUCATION MINISTRY WANTS TO MAKE IT COMPULSORY FOR SPM CANDIDATES
by Tim Leonard and Husna Yusop In Cyberjaya, former premier Tun Dr Ma-
newsdesk@thesundaily.com hathir Mohamad said making it compulsory for
students to pass English in order to get the SPM
UALA LUMPUR: The Education Ministry was a good move for their future.

K wants to make a pass in English compulsory

for students to obtain their Sijil Pelajaran
Malaysia.
Deputy Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin
Yassin, who is also education minister, said
the government wanted to ensure students
who complete Form 5 “are well-versed in
the English language”.
“The ministry is currently working on the
proposal and is in the midst of getting public
feedback. We want the public to give their
feedback on whether passing English in SPM
should be compulsory for students to receive
their certificate,” he said.
He said it was important for Malaysian
students to be conversant in English, especially
if they “are furthering their studies”.
He added that it was also in line with the
ministry’s objective to stop the declining stand-
ard of the English language among students.
“We are also mindful of the fact that many
school leavers with SPM have difficulty grasping
the English language, which is the dominant
language of commerce, science and information
technology,” he said yesterday after opening the
Alumni Maktab Kirkby Association Malaysia’s
AFPPIX
“It will prepare them for globalisation and
stand a better chance at securing jobs. (At the
end of the day,) it is up to parents to decide
because it concerns the future of their children,
not that of the government.
“Without a strong command of the language,
it will be difficult for them to study abroad or
secure good jobs as they would be required to
be able to converse well in the international
language,” he said after receiving an Honorary
Doctorate of Humanity from the Limkokwing
University of Creative Technology (page 5).
He said those who opposed the proposal
were interested in only political mileage and
not in education.
“They are not interested in (our children’s)
education or acquiring knowledge, all they want
to do is to see how much support they can get.
I am afraid if they do that (reject the stress on
English), the country will go to the dogs,” he
added.
On the government’s pending decision on
the teaching and learning of Science and Maths
in English, Mahathir said he would feel sorry
if the government decided to revert to Bahasa
Malaysia. “If that is the case, in future, all Malays

annual general meeting. and Malaysians will be bodoh,” he said.

12 years hard labour for two US journalists

SEOUL: North Korea, facing UN sanctions
for last month’s nuclear test, yesterday
raised the stakes in its growing confronta-
tion with Washington by jailing two US
journalists to 12 years hard labour for a
“grave crime”.
The sentence follows US Secretary
of State Hillary Clinton’s warning on
Sunday the United States was considering
putting the reclusive North back on its list
of states that sponsor terrorism, which
would further isolate the impoverished
country.
The journalists, Euna Lee and Laura
Ling, of US media outlet Current TV, were
arrested in March working on a story near
the border between North Korea and
China. The trial for the two, working for
the company co-founded by former vice-
president Al Gore, opened on Thursday.
“The trial confirmed the grave crime
they committed against the Korean
nation and their illegal border crossing
as they had already been indicted and
sentenced each of them to 12 years of
reform through labour,” the official KCNA
news agency said in a brief dispatch.
The sentence is certain to deepen the
chill in relations with the United States
which has been trying for years, with
scant success, to convince Stalinist North
Korea to give up its ambition of becoming
a nuclear weapons power.
“We are deeply concerned by the
reported sentencing of the two Ameri-
can citizen journalists by North Korean
authorities and we are engaged through
all possible channels to secure their
release,” State Department spokesman
Ian Kelly said in the statement.
“We once again urge North Korea to
grant the immediate release of the two
American citizen journalists on humani-
tarian grounds,” the statement said.
Clinton had also appealed for the
women’s release, saying the charges
against them were baseless.
“(North Korea) is using the sentence as
bait to squeeze concessions out of the US
amid heightened tension,” said Lee Dong-
bok, a senior associate with the CSIS think
tank in Seoul and an expert on the North’s
negotiating tactics.
US President Barack Obama at the
weekend called the North’s latest nuclear
test, which was followed by a series of
missile tests, “extraordinarily provocative”
and said that this time there would be no
appeasement by Washington.
North Korea kept up its rhetoric which
is increasingly unnerving the region. It
threatened to retaliate with “extreme”
measures if the United Nations punished
it for last month’s nuclear test. – Reuters