Excerpts from two articles from the 8 March 2011 edition of the Star, Malaysia's leading English-language newspaper. It's a thick tabloid format, all the articles are short, with substantial coverage of domestic news (mostly crimes and politicians accusing each other, if you care to make the distinction), pages and pages every day on food, and some brief articles from international news agencies. Note the relative prominence given to these two articles.

Page 1 (banner headline): "Driven by habit"

"Habitual traffic offenders are the main cause of accidents in the country. The majority of drivers involved in major road accidents in the country were found to have been issued with multiple summonses and they are deemed to be part of about 1.44 million habitual traffic offenders.

"Speeding tops the list of offences by habitual offenders. Other offences are queue jumping, overtaking on the double line, beating traffic lights, speaking on mobile phones and the illegal use of emergency lanes."

Page 40: "Of Human rights and detention"

"Malaysia will have two years to implement recommendations made by the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention after its final report is accepted by the Human Rights Council (HRC). ... When they released the initial findings last June, Home Minister Datuk Seri Hishamuddin Tun Hussein had taken umbrage at certain groups for ignoring the positive findings and instead latching onto the revelation that almost all detainees under preventive laws interviewed had said they were tortured by police to gain confessions or evidence.

"While they were pleased to find a decrease in Internal Security Act (ISA) detainees, [the Working Group] said 1535 had died in prisons and detention centres between 2003 and 2007. Eighty-five others died in police custody.

"They recommended that the ISA (Internal Security Act) [and three other acts] be repealed or amended to conform with the UN Declaration of Human Rights.

"Detainees under the preventive laws were not told of their right to contact relatives or consult a lawyer but if they knew, some police officers would say [i.e. inform them] that the latter would 'make their situation more complicated.' "