MEXICO CITY (AFP) – After scrapping to a hard-fought podium ahead of title rival Lando Norris last Sunday, Max Verstappen will seek to end a nine-race winless run on a favourite circuit at this weekend’s Mexico Grand Prix.
Red Bull’s series leader beat McLaren’s Norris into third for the first time in five outings, albeit with the aid of some controversial stewards’ decisions in Texas, to enlarge his lead to 57 points with five rounds of the 24-race Formula One championship remaining.
If that was not sufficient encouragement for him and Red Bull, who enjoyed an upswing in form as Ferrari dominated with a commanding one-two at the United States Grand Prix in Austin, Verstappen’s impressive and breathless Mexican record should be.
The Dutchman has reeled off five wins from his last six visits to the high-altitude (2,250-metres above sea level) Autodromo Hermano Rodriguez and is the only current driver, apart from seven-time champion Lewis Hamilton of Mercedes, twice, to have won in the capital city.
“We made good steps in Austin and I saw some promising improvement with the car,” said Verstappen who won last Saturday’s sprint race. “Historically, we have always gone well here too and I always enjoy driving this track.
“So now it is about keeping the momentum going forwards and for us to continue picking up points.”
For Norris, it represents another critical opportunity to dent the champion’s progress – reversing the outcome of last Sunday’s tussle in which, he admitted, he “drove like a muppet” and suffered a “momentum killer”.
A wider view, among many paddock observers, suggests that not only do McLaren lack the experience, sangfroid and killer instincts of Red Bull, but that they lack a cool head for decisions in the heat of a contentious incident.
Team boss Andrea Stella criticised the Austin stewards, but missed a chance to tell Norris to give his place back, after running off circuit, and to attack again.
“The next circuit should be a bit more suitable to our car,” he said, adding that McLaren will have more upgrades this weekend as the focus on protecting their 40-point lead ahead of Red Bull in the constructors’ championship.
In that context, this weekend will be important for both teams’ second drivers Oscar Piastri and home hero Sergio Perez whose future has been a subject of speculation since he was awarded a contract extension in May.
“I just have to shut out the noise and concentrate on my job and try to take a podium finish for myself, the team and the fans,” said Perez.
Ferrari will also fancy their chances again this weekend on a track where last year they locked out the front row of the grid, with last Sunday’s victor Charles Leclerc, on pole. Another successful race could see them overhaul Red Bull.
After a rare debacle in Texas, Hamilton will want to bounce back from his early exit with Mercedes’ team boss Toto Wolff hoping to see their capricious car challenging again.
Hamilton’s successor next season, Italian teenager Kimi Antonelli, is set to take his car on Friday morning with the team crossing their fingers that it will be returned undamaged while, by contrast, Fernando Alonso, aged 43, reaches another career landmark with his record 400th Grand Prix entry. Of his previous 399, he has started 396.
LONDON (AP) — The imagination of Tim Burton has produced ghosts and ghouls, Martians, monsters and misfits – all on display at an exhibition that is opening in London just in time for Halloween.
But you know what really scares him? Artificial intelligence.
Burton said Wednesday that seeing a website that had used AI to blend his drawings with Disney characters “really disturbed me.”
“It wasn’t an intellectual thought — it was just an internal, visceral feeling,” Burton told reporters during a preview of “The World of Tim Burton” exhibition at London’s Design Museum.
“I looked at those things and I thought, ‘Some of these are pretty good.’ … (But) it gave me a weird sort of scary feeling inside.”
Burton said he thinks AI is unstoppable, because “once you can do it, people will do it.” But he scoffed when asked if he’d use the technology in this work.
“To take over the world?” he laughed.
The exhibition reveals Burton to be an analogue artist, who started off as a child in the 1960s experimenting with paints and coloured pencils in his suburban Californian home.
“I wasn’t, early on, a very verbal person,” Burton said. “Drawing was a way of expressing myself.”
Decades later, after films including “Edward Scissorhands,” “Batman,” “The Nightmare Before Christmas” and “Beetlejuice,” his ideas still begin with drawing.
The exhibition includes 600 items from movie studio collections and Burton’s personal archive, and traces those ideas as they advance from sketches through collaboration with set, production and costume designers on the way to the big screen.
London is the exhibition’s final stop on a decade-long tour of 14 cities in 11 countries. It has been reconfigured and expanded with 90 new objects for its run in the British capital, where Burton has lived for a quarter century.
The show includes early drawings and oddities, including a competition-winning “crush litter” sign of a teenage Burton designed for Burbank garbage trucks. There’s also a recreation of Burton’s studio, down to the trays of paints and “Curse of Frankenstein” mug full of pencils.
Alongside hundreds of drawings, there are props, puppets, set designs and iconic costumes, including Johnny Depp’s “Edward Scissorhands” talons and the black latex Catwoman costume worn by Michelle Pfeiffer in “Batman.”
“We had very generous access to Tim’s archive in London, stuffed full of thousands of drawings, storyboards from stop-motion films, sketches, character notes, poems,” said exhibition curator Maria McLintock. “And how to synthesise such a wide ranging and meandering career within one exhibition was a fun challenge — but definitely a challenge.”
Seeing it has not been a wholly fun experience for Burton, who said he’s unable to look too closely at the items on display.
“It’s like seeing your dirty laundry put on the walls,” he said. “It’s quite amazing. It’s a bit overwhelming.”
Burton, whose long-awaited horror-comedy sequel “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” opened at the Venice Film Festival in August, is currently filming the second series of Netflix’ Addams Family-themed series “Wednesday.”
These days he is a major Hollywood director whose American gothic style has spawned an adjective – “Burtoneqsue.” But he still feels like an outsider.
“Once you feel that way, it never leaves you,” he said.
“Each film I did was a struggle,” he added, noting that early films like “Pee-wee’s Big Adventure” from 1985 and “Beetlejuice” in 1988 received some negative reviews. “It seems like it was a pleasant, fine, easy journey, but each one leaves its emotional scars.”
McLintock said Burton “is a deeply emotional filmmaker.”
“I think that’s what drew me to his films as a child,” she said. “He really celebrates the misunderstood outcast, the benevolent monster. So it’s been quite a weird but fun experience spending so much time in his brain and his creative process.
“His films are often called dark,” she added. “I don’t agree with that. And if they are dark, there’s a very much a kind of hope in the darkness. You always want to hang out in the darkness in his films.”
NEW YORK (AP) — Cardi B says she has been hospitalised with a medical emergency and will have to miss a Saturday night headlining performance at an Atlanta music festival.
“I am so sad to share this news, but I’ve been in the hospital recovering from a medical emergency the last couple of days and I won’t be able to perform at ONE MusicFest,” the Grammy-winning rapper wrote on Instagram. “It breaks my heart that I won’t get to see my fans this weekend.”
She added, “I’ll be back better and stronger soon. Don’t Worry.”
The 32-year-old New York native gave no details on her condition.
Cardi gave birth to her third child with rapper Offset less than two months ago. The two are going through a divorce.
She was to have performed along with Earth, Wind & Fire, Nelly, Gunna and GloRilla at the two-day ONE Music Fest.
Residents in Belait District are facing water supply disruptions due to power supply issues affecting key water facilities.
According to a statement released by the Public Works Department on Thursday, the interruption stems from a power outage reported by the Department of Electrical Services. The affected areas include the Sungai Bera Industrial Area and the Badas Pump Station, which has significantly impacted operations at the Seria and Agis-Agis Water Treatment Plants.
Efforts to restore the electric supply are currently underway, with emergency recovery work in progress. In the meantime, residents experiencing water shortages are urged to contact the Darussalam Line 123 for assistance.
Authorities have assured the public that they are working diligently to resolve the situation as swiftly as possible.
DETROIT (AP) — Tesla’s third-quarter net income rose 17.3 per cent compared with a year ago on stronger electric vehicle sales, and an optimistic CEO Elon Musk predicted 20 per cent to 30 per cent sales growth next year.
The strong performance changed the trajectory of the year for the Austin, Texas-based company, which had seen sales and profits decline in the first two quarters.
In its letter to investors, Tesla predicted slight growth in vehicle deliveries this year, better than the 1.8 million delivered worldwide in 2023.
Tesla said Wednesday that it made USD2.17 billion from July through September, more than the USD1.85 billion profit it posted in the same period of 2023.
The earnings came despite price cuts and low-interest financing that helped boost sales of the company’s ageing vehicle lineup during the quarter. It was Tesla’s first year-over-year quarterly profit increase of 2024, a year plagued by falling sales and prices.
Revenue in the quarter rose 7.8 per cent to USD25.18 billion, falling short of Wall Street analysts who estimated it at USD25.47 billion, according to FactSet. Tesla made an adjusted 72 cents per share, soundly beating analyst expectations of 59 cents.
Shares in Tesla Inc. soared nearly 12 per cent in trading after Wednesday’s closing bell.
On a conference call with analysts, Musk said the profit increase came despite a challenging environment for auto sales with still-high loan interest rates. “I think if you look at EV companies worldwide, to the best of my knowledge, no EV company is even profitable,” he said.
Musk qualified his prediction that Tesla would post 2025 vehicle sales growth of 20 per cent to 30 per cent by saying it could be changed by “negative external events.”
Earlier this month Tesla said it sold 462,890 vehicles from July through September, up 6.4 per cent from a year ago. The sales numbers were better than analysts had expected.
The letter said that Tesla is on track to start production of new vehicles, including more affordable models, in the first half of next year, something investors had been looking for. The new vehicles will use parts from its current models and will be made on the same assembly lines as Tesla’s current model lineup, the letter said.
The new vehicles were not identified and the price was nebulous. Musk has said in the past the company is working on a car that will cost about USD25,000, but said Wednesday that a new affordable vehicle would cost under USD30,000 including government tax incentives.
Earlier this month, the company showed off a purpose-built two-seat robotaxi called “Cybercab” at a glitzy event at a Hollywood movie studio. Musk said it would be in production before 2027 and cost around USD25,000.
By using parts from existing models and the current manufacturing system, Tesla won’t reach cost reductions that it previously expected using a new manufacturing setup.
Tesla said it reduced the cost of goods per vehicle to its lowest level yet, about USD35,100.
The company’s widely watched gross profit margin, the percentage of revenue it gets to keep after expenses, rose to 19.8 per cent, the highest in a year, but still smaller than the peak of 29.1 per cent in the first quarter of 2022.
During the quarter, Tesla’s revenue from regulatory credits purchased by other automakers who can’t meet government emissions targets hit USD739 million, the second highest quarter in company history.
Musk said Tesla’s “Full Self-Driving” system is improving and would drive more safely than humans in the second quarter of next year. Despite the name, Teslas using “Full Self-Driving” cannot drive themselves, and human drivers must be ready to intervene at all times.
The company, he said, is offering an autonomous ride-hailing service to employees in the San Francisco Bay Area, but it currently has human safety drivers. It expects to start a robotaxi service for the public in California and Texas next year, he said.
Musk also conceded that it may not be possible to reach autonomous driving safety levels with older editions of “Full Self-Driving” hardware. If it can’t do that, Tesla will upgrade computers in the older cars for free, he said.
The self-driving claims come just five days after U.S. safety regulators opened an investigation into the system’s cameras to see in low-visibility conditions such as sun glare, fog and airborne dust. The probe raised doubts about whether the system will be ready to drive on its own next year.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said in documents posted Friday that it opened the probe of 2.4 million Teslas after the company reported four crashes in low visibility conditions. In one, a woman who stopped to help after a crash on an Arizona freeway was struck and killed by a Tesla.
Investigators will look into the ability of “Full Self-Driving” to “detect and respond appropriately to reduced roadway visibility conditions.”
Edward Jones analyst Jeff Windau said the earnings report and conference call showed that Tesla is making money on software, a business with high profit margins.
Still, he has a “hold” rating on the stock as the company moves toward robotics and autonomous vehicles. “They’ve got a lot of challenging goals out there,” he said.
MANILA (AFP) – Philippine rescuers waded through chest-deep floodwaters yesterday to reach residents trapped by Tropical Storm Trami, which has killed seven people and forced thousands to evacuate as it barrels toward the east coast.
Torrential rain driven by the storm has turned streets into rivers, submerged entire villages and buried some vehicles in volcanic sediment set loose by the downpour.
At least 32,000 people have fled their homes in the northern Philippines, police said, as the storm edges closer to the Southeast Asian country’s main island of Luzon.
In the Bicol region, about 400 kilometres southeast of the capital Manila, “unexpectedly high” flooding was complicating rescue efforts, said police.
“We sent police rescue teams but they struggled to enter some areas because the flooding was high and the current was so strong,” regional police spokeswoman Luisa Calubaquib told AFP.
One person drowned inside a bus that was swept away by floodwaters in the Bicol city of Naga, where three others also drowned, police officer Bryan Ortinero told AFP.
An elderly woman drowned in Quezon province southeast of the capital, while a toddler was also killed after falling into a flooded canal, police said.
Manila’s civil defence office reported one person was killed by a falling tree branch.
As of 2pm (0600 GMT), Trami’s centre was 160 kilometres east of Luzon’s Aurora province with maximum sustained winds of 85 kilometres per hour, the national weather agency said.
Photos verified by AFP yesterday showed streets submerged by muddy floodwaters in Camarines Sur province’s Bato municipality, with only the roofs of houses and convenience stores visible.
“It’s getting dangerous. We’re waiting for rescuers,” resident Karen Tabagan told AFP.
GERMANY (AFP) – Three-year-old Laurent Schwarz may still be wearing nappies but his paintings have earned him social media fame and the nickname of Germany’s “mini-Picasso”.
In a studio his parents have set up at their home in the Bavarian town of Neubeuern, the toddler has been busy creating splashy artworks, often several times bigger than he is.
When he is not playing with his dinosaur toys, he likes to liberally apply acrylic paint to canvas with brushes, rollers or just his fingers to create riotously abstract pieces.
His parents said his works have attracted the eye of art lovers and galleries and fetched high prices. They insisted it was Laurent’s artistic passion that has fuelled the art world hype, media interest and his very early brush with fame.
His 33-year-old mother Lisa Schwarz told AFP that the family discovered Laurent’s love for painting on a family holiday last year, at a hotel which had a studio.
“When we got home, Laurent just wanted to paint – paint, paint, paint, the whole time,” she said.
She and her husband Philipp bought him some canvases, brushes and paint, and it was not long before family and friends were clamouring to see the prodigy’s work.
They set up an Instagram account to share images of his work more easily and said they were soon bowled over by the response.
“Within four weeks we had got 10,000 followers,” said Lisa, with enquiries from galleries following soon after, and interest from newspapers in Germany and abroad which quickly dubbed him the “mini-Picasso”.
The Instagram account now has 90,000 followers and at a sale of Laurent’s work in September buyers from around the world showed interest, according to his parents.
They said some works have sold for hundreds of thousands of euros, but declined to divulge details on sales and buyers.
Laurent is not the first child artist to capture the public’s imagination. In 2022 for example, 10-year-old American Andres Valencia sold his Picasso-influenced works for several hundred thousand dollars.
In the late 1990s, Romanian-American artist Alexandra Nechita also drew comparisons with the Spanish master at the tender age of 12. Laurent’s parents said they are still surprised at the reaction to their son’s work.
While at the moment “almost everything has been sold”, Laurent “is always painting new ones,” said Philipp, 43.
“There are pictures that we don’t sell, for example his first work or ones that he particularly likes,” he explained.
Laurent’s parents said they are keeping the money paid for his work in an account in his name which he will be able to access when he is an adult.
“He can study painting, buy a car, play an instrument, play football… It’s up to him to choose,” said Philipp, 43.
“The important thing for us is that he’s happy.”
AFP – After a year of relentless war, Gaza’s olive harvest is set to suffer, while in the occupied West Bank, Palestinian farmers fear to tend their groves due to settler attacks.
For generations, olive harvests have been central to Palestinian life and culture.
“We are happy that the olive season has started but we are afraid because we are in a state of war,” said Rami Abu Asad, who owns a farm in Deir el-Balah, central Gaza.
Workers picking the olives by hand stay alert, listening for drones or warplanes that could bomb without warning.
“But it is clearly evident (to Israeli forces) that we are workers and we do nothing else,” he said, noting a sweeping Israeli military operation in Jabalia, less than 20 kilometres to the north.
The ongoing war has reduced vast areas of Gaza to rubble, with about 68 per cent of the territory’s agricultural areas damaged by the conflict and farmers unable to fertilise or irrigate their land, the United Nation (UN) said.
“The number of remaining olive trees is very small and the costs are very high,” Asad added.
Agricultural engineer Jamal Abou Shaouish expected this year’s harvest in Gaza to net just 15,000 tonnes, sharply down from around 40,000 tonnes in the years before the war.
Supply shortages and destruction caused by the war will also impact the quality of olives, while pressing prices have soared due to the lack of fuel needed to run the machinery required for sorting and pressing the oil.
In the West Bank, the harvest has been marred by perennial fears of attacks by Israeli settlers, who regularly prevent Palestinians from accessing their olive groves or outright destroy their orchards.
For Khaled Abdallah, he has made the tough decision not to harvest the olives this season on his land near the Beit El settlement.
“I didn’t even consider going to these lands close to the colony, because the situation is very dangerous,” he told AFP, saying he will instead focus on harvesting olives from a separate property in the village of Jifna, north of Ramallah.
Like other Palestinians who own olive groves near the settlements, Abdallah coordinated with Israeli advocacy organisations to obtain special permits for the crops.
“But there are no longer any rights organisations capable of protecting us from settler attacks, and there is no longer any coordination,” he added. Olive groves have long been essential to the economy and culture of the West Bank, but have also been the site of bloody clashes between farmers and encroaching Israeli settlers for decades, with the disputes hinging on access to land.
In the past, settlers have assaulted Palestinians, set fire to or damaged their crops, stolen sheep and blocked them from getting to their land, water and grazing areas, according to the UN.
And since October 7, the violence has only intensified.
Attacks by settlers have increased “significantly” this year, said the Israeli human rights group Yesh Din.
According to the group’s spokesperson Fadia Qawasmi, farmers from the village of Madama, south of Nablus, were prevented from accessing their plots for three years. Settlers also damaged their vehicles.
“The owners were expelled from their land by settlers from Itamar,” said head of the Madama village council Abdallah Ziada. “Every day there are clashes.”
“We cannot distinguish those who arrests us – if they are settlers or soldiers, because they are sometimes in civilian clothes and armed, and other times in military uniform,” Ziada added.
Earlier this week, the Palestinian Health Ministry in Ramallah said Israeli forces shot dead a woman in Faqoua village near Jenin while she harvested olives.
The Israeli military said it had prepared for the harvest season even during the time of war.
“This is done out of a commitment to maintaining the security of the area and its residents, while at the same time allowing the local residents to harvest their crops,” the military said in a statement to AFP.
“Israeli military forces are securing the harvest in the coordinated areas.”
For many poor Palestinian families, the olive season provides a vital source of income.
Earlier this week, UN experts said Palestinian farmers in the occupied West Bank are facing “the most dangerous olive season ever”.
SINGAPORE (AFP) – The youngest son of Singapore’s founding leader Lee Kuan Yew said he was granted asylum in Britain due to persecution at home, where a bitter family feud rages over a property dispute.
Lee Hsien Yang said in a Facebook post on Tuesday that he sought asylum in 2022 “as a last resort” from government attacks against him.
“I am a political refugee from Singapore under the 1951 UN Refugee Convention,” Lee, 67, wrote.
“I face a well-founded risk of persecution and cannot safely return to Singapore.”
The Lees are the closest thing Singapore has to royalty, and their battle over whether to demolish or preserve the single-storey house has generated headlines and gossip.
Lee Hsien Yang and his sister wanted to demolish the bungalow that hosted the formation of the People’s Action Party (PAP), which has governed Singapore since 1959.
Their older brother, former premier Lee Hsien Loong, wanted to preserve the property, which prompted his siblings to accuse him of trying to exploit their father’s legacy for political gain.
After Lee Wei Ling, who was living at the disputed property, died of an illness on October 9, Lee Hsien Yang had said he felt unsafe to return to Singapore for her funeral.
He said there was a “risk” that his brother would wield “the organs of the Singapore state” against him.
“The Singapore government’s attacks against me are in the public record. They prosecuted my son, brought disciplinary proceedings against my wife, and launched a bogus police investigation that has dragged on for years,” he wrote in his latest Facebook post.
“I remain a Singapore citizen and hope that someday it will become safe to return home,” he added.
The Singapore government has said that the younger Lee’s allegations of persecution are without basis and that he and his wife are free to return to Singapore at any time.
