Singapore and Malaysia said on Monday they have resolved long-standing disputes over land and water that have plagued ties between the two neighbours for the past 20 years.

Malaysia will relocate its railway station near Singapore's central business district to an area close to one of the two bridges linking the two countries, freeing up land in the city-state for redevelopment.

Malaysia has sovereignty over the site on which the Tanjong Pagar station is located, as well as land on both sides of the railway tracks that run through Singapore, under agreements dating back to British colonial rule.

Singapore said in turn it would not seek to extend a water agreement dating back to 1961, which allowed the city-state to buy water from the southern Malaysian state of Johor at below-market rates. Singapore will also hand  over the waterworks it operates in Johor to the Malaysian state government when the current agreement lapses.

The agreement between the two countries emerged after a meeting between Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak and Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong.

"The points of agreement would facilitate resolution of the issue which has been outstanding for more than 19 years," the two countries said in a joint statement.

The railway station in Tanjong Pagar, owned by Malaysia's Keretapi Tanah Melayu (KTM), will move to the Woodlands Train Checkpoint by July 1 next year. This might be moved to Johor when the proposed rapid transit system is up.

Malaysia will co-locate its railway Customs, Immigration and Quarantine facilities at the checkpoint.

The Tanjong Pagar site and five other parcels of land in Singapore owned by Malaysia - in Bukit Timah, Kranji and Woodlands - will be managed by a new company jointly owned by Malaysia and Singapore.

They may be swopped for pieces of land of equivalent value in Marina South and/or the Ophir and Rochor area.

Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong will visit Kuala Lumpur within a month with a proposal for the swop, after both countries conduct their own valuations of the land.

The railway buildings at Tanjong Pagar and Bukit Timah will be conserved.

The issue of Malaysian railway land here has dogged bilateral relations for decades, and stalled after both countries signed the Points of Agreement (POA) on its status and development in 1990.

Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak said that the deal was "historic because we see now the light at the end of the tunnel with respect to an outstanding issue that has been lingering almost 20 years".

PM Lee said: "It enables us to move forward on so many other areas, to cooperate and work together for mutual benefits without having this outstanding issue always there."

Asked why the deal worked now, he said: "There's a willingness on both sides to look forward and to resolve this matter.

"There is urgency. This matter really cannot wait indefinitely because it's already been 20 years and there are many development projects in Singapore which have been held up because the POA has not been implemented as it should have been many years ago."

He added that both sides recognised the need to work together and develop a win-win relationship to stay ahead of the competition from other countries in Asia.

The company, called M-S Pte Ltd, will be set up before the end of this year, with Malaysia's Khazanah Nasional holding 60 per cent of the shares, and Singapore's Temasek Holdings taking the remaining 40 per cent.

The ownership of the six parcels of land will be transferred to it when KTM vacates Tanjong Pagar Railway Station.

BY 2018, commuters will be able to travel between Singapore and Malaysia's Johor Baru and Tanjung Puteri using a rapid-transit system, to be jointly developed by Singapore and Malaysia, the prime ministers of both countries said yesterday.

The toll charges for the Second Link will be cut on both sides; the number of cross-border bus services will be doubled with eight new bus services; and cross-border taxi services will be liberalised, among other measures to improve connectivity between both countries.

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On our return journey, I received sms from my brother, knowing that his father-in-law had passed away. (Let us offer a prayer to his father-in-law.)

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A stunning new residential development is planned for the Putrajaya waterfront known as Precinct 4, just 30km south of Kuala Lumpur. The design, however, is a refreshing and original with unique, marine-inspired structures - which also draw from traditional Islamic designs - arranged in a permeable, radiating block of bioclimatic architecture.

The winner of a recent contest, the design for Precinct 4 comes from Studio Nicoletti Associati and Malaysian architects Hijjas Kasturi Associates, who provided the masterplan of Putrajaya. The goal of the designers was to provide a model for sustainable residential design that was inspired by the city’s unique landscape which includes an expansive artificial lake. The biggest inspiration came from the sea and the entire development resembles a fleet of ships.

The architect’s goal was to design buildings that tell “of its place of origin which is culturally modern, Islamic and tropical in nature.”

A Sumatran rhinoceros has been photographed in peninsular Malaysia in the first sighting for more than a decade, raising hopes the animal can avoid extinction, a report said Sunday.

The report did not reveal where the rhino was snapped, but said the photo was taken in a wildlife corridor targeted by the Wildlife and National Parks Department which also spotted elephants, sun bears and the bison-like gaur.

"We're going back to areas where the rhinos were once recorded, looking for more signs and taking samples," said Siti Hawa Yatim, head of the department's biodiversity conservation division.

World Wildlife Fund Malaysia announced earlier this year that it had captured video footage of the extremely rare Borneo sub-species of the critically-endangered Sumatran rhino. The footage, taken in a forest in Malaysia's Sabah state on Borneo island, showed a rhino eating, peering through jungle foliage and sniffing the automatic video camera equipment used to shoot it.

The Bornean sub-species is the rarest of all rhinos, distinguished from other Sumatran rhinos by its relatively small size, small teeth and distinctive shaped head.

WWF says scientists estimate there are only between 25 and 50 of the Bornean sub-species left.

SOS Rhino.

Related:

Palm oil puts squeeze on Asia’s endangered orangutan.

Amur Leopard Near Extinction.

Modern pirates have long plagued Southeast Asia’s Strait of Malacca, robbing sailors, kidnapping crews, and stealing entire ships.

European colonizers and their navies brought the sultanates under control in the late 1800s, but the lanun were never eradicated. The 21st-century inheritors of their tradition continue to hunt these waters, mainly in three incarnations: gangs that board vessels to rob the crews; multinational syndicates that steal entire ships; and guerrilla groups that kidnap seamen for ransom.

Modern lanun have no shortage of targets. Each year, according to Lloyd’s of London, some 70,000 merchant vessels carrying a fifth of all seaborne trade and a third of the world’s crude oil shipments transit this critical choke point in the global economy. The strait’s geography makes it nearly unsecurable. It passes between Malaysia and Indonesia, known for thorny relations, further complicating the security picture. Some 250 miles (400 kilometers) wide at its northern mouth, the strait funnels down to about ten miles (16 kilometers) across near its southern end and is dotted with hundreds of uninhabited mangrove islands, offering endless hideouts to all manner of criminals.

“In some cases the ship’s owners dissuade the captain from reporting an attack,” he says. “They don’t want bad publicity or the ship to be delayed by an investigation.” As a result, no one knows for sure how many pirates remain active in the Malacca Strait.

I have traveled from the other side of the world to hear Johan Ariffin's story; to ask him why he became a lanun; to hear how it is possible for a handful of men to hijack a ship as large as the Nepline Delima.

The plot was hatched in a Batam coffee shop, Ariffin says, when a Malaysian shipping executive approached an Indonesian sailor named Lukman and inquired whether he could organize a crew to hijack the tanker. Ariffin, who went to sea in his teens and rose through the maritime ranks to become a mechanic, had served with Lukman on a few crews.

..

No pirate attacks had been reported in the Malacca Strait since I left. Indonesia and Malaysia had called on foreign governments to help fund their patrols. Without more resources, it is unclear how long the cash-strapped Indonesian navy will maintain its current level of vigilance.

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