The first shipment of live cattle for the year, imported by PDS Abattoir Sdn Bhd (PDS) to meet the livestock demand during Ramadhan and the Hari Raya festivities, arrived in at the Muara Port on Saturday.
The cattle shipped from Australia aboard the Nine Eagle were directly transported to PDS’ abattoir in Kampong Batang Mitus the same day.
It marked the first shipment of the year since challenges arose to meet demand over the past few months due to the shortage of cattle supply from Australia as well as increased cost of importation, said PDS.
While alternative solutions were in place, such as the importation of live cattle from Sabah, challenges in terms of logistics and limited availability of resources made it difficult to obtain the required number of cattle within the specified period, said the company.
PDS said it has imported and received sufficient livestock for the peak periods of Ramadhan and Hari Raya festivities and is also making arrangements to cover the additional public demand for Korban.
Cattle being loaded for transportation to PDS’s abattoir. PHOTO: LYNA MOHAMAD
MEMPHIS, TENNESSEE (AP) – De’Anthony Melton had 24 points, Desmond Bane added 20 and the Memphis Grizzlies continued to win in the absence of scoring leader Ja Morant, beating the Milwaukee Bucks 127-102 yesterday.
Dillon Brooks scored 19 points and Jaren Jackson Jr had 16 and two blocks to help Memphis win its fourth straight and eighth in the last nine games. Melton was eight of 11 from the field, going six of nine from three-point range.
“I’m just trying to go out there and hoop,” Melton said. “Have fun with it. Play with confidence and do what the team needs me to do.”
Giannis Antetokounmpo led the Bucks with 30 points, 11 rebounds and four blocks, scoring 18 points in the third quarter when Milwaukee tried to make a run. Khris Middleton added 16 points. The defending champion Bucks lost for only the third time in the last 13 games.
Milwaukee dropped into a tie for third with Boston in the Eastern Conference, a half-game behind Philadelphia and Miami.
Memphis Grizzlies guard Tyus Jones reacts after fellow guard De’Anthony Melton scored a three-point basket against the Milwaukee Bucks. PHOTO: AP
Antetokounmpo was listed as questionable before the game with a sore right knee, but after going through pregame warmups was deemed ready to play. Meanwhile, the Grizzlies continued to play without Morant who is nursing a sore right knee and is not expected to return until near the end of the regular season.
“They just do a lot of things that are about winning basketball,” Bucks coach Mike Budenholzer said, adding: “Credit to their players, to (Memphis coach Taylor Jenkins), the coaching staff. They just keep playing no matter who’s in.”
The Bucks had trouble connecting on their first-half shots and were under 30 per cent overall near the midway point of the second quarter. Antetokounmpo was three of 11 in the first half, part of Milwaukee’s 32 per cent shooting.
Bane and Melton had 12 apiece as Memphis led 59-46 at the break.
Antetokounmpo came out with much more aggression in the second half making his way to the basket and helping Milwaukee chip into the Memphis lead. But near the three-minute mark, Melton connected on a trio of three-pointers to take the Grizzlies lead to 22.
Memphis led 98-79 entering the fourth.
“It felt like (Antetokounmpo) tried to will us back into the game,” Budenholzer said. “It felt like we had some momentum for some small stretches there in the third quarter, where I felt like we might get back in it.
“But we weren’t able to sustain it.”
For the Grizzlies, they continue to win with Morant on the shelf. They are now 17-2 with their leading scorer not playing. Jenkins credits the success to a balanced team.
“We’re just sticking with our identity,” Jenkins said. “It doesn’t matter if you’re a starter, bench, mixed lineups. Whatever we do, we do to the best of our abilities.”
BOULDER, COLORADO (AP) – Authorities issued an evacuation order for 19,400 people on Saturday near a fast-moving Colorado wildfire in rolling hills south of the college town of Boulder, not far from the site of a destructive 2021 blaze that levelled more than 1,000 homes.
The wildfire was fuelled by wind earlier in the day and had grown to 122 acres with no containment, Boulder Fire-Rescue spokesperson Marya Washburn said.
The Boulder Office of Emergency Management said an overnight shelter was opened after evacuation orders covered 8,000 homes and 7,000 structures.
Winds and temperatures have died down, Washburn said. Officials expect to be dealing with the fire for several days due to heavy fuels, said Boulder Fire-Rescue Wildland Division Chief Brian Oliver.
The fire is in an area where a blaze destroyed 1,000 homes last year in unincorporated Boulder County and suburban Superior and Louisville. Superior town officials told residents in an email that there were no immediate concerns for the community.
The 2021 blaze burned Alicia Miller’s home, where she could see smoke from Saturday’s fire rising in the background. She posted a photo on Twitter and referenced climate change, which has made the United States (US) West warmer and drier in the past 30 years and will continue to make weather more extreme and wildfires more destructive, according to scientists.
Miller said her neighbours helped her escape along with her husband, Craig, their three adult sons and two dogs, Ginger and Chloe. She said the hardest losses from the blaze were things they didn’t look at much, like baby shoes, family pictures and letters from her grandmother.
“I feel exhausted by all of this, and I just feel like enough as far as these fires and disasters,” she said.
A helicopter flies above the smoke from the NCAR fire burns. PHOTO: AP
DETROIT (AP) – A former official at a suburban Detroit branch of the United Auto Workers (UAW) has pleaded guilty to charges that he embezzled over USD2 million in union money.
Timothy Edmunds, 54, pleaded guilty last Friday to one count each of embezzling union funds and money laundering during a hearing in the United States (US) District Court in Detroit, federal prosecutors said. He is the 17th defendant convicted in an ongoing criminal investigation into corruption within the UAW, prosecutors said.
From 2011 to 2021, Edmunds was secretary-treasurer of UAW Local 412, which represents about 2,600 people who work for Stellantis, formerly known as Fiat Chrysler, at factories in the Detroit area.
Edmunds “systematically drained” the local’s bank accounts of about USD2.2 million by using the labour group’s credit cards for personal purchases, cashing local checks and transferring money into his accounts, according to the criminal case, the US attorney’s office said.
Prosecutors said he spent more on guns, cars and child-support payments.
After Edmunds was charged in a November indictment, the UAW said in a statement that its auditors discovered his improper expenditures and turned their findings over to federal authorities.
STOKE-ON-TRENT, United Kingdom (AFP) – In his ceramics workshop, Simon Willis proudly displays the crockery set he has created for Queen Elizabeth II’s Platinum Jubilee, dreaming it will end up in the monarch’s personal collection.
“It’s an event which won’t ever happen again, we won’t have the chance of seeing another queen or king on the throne for 70 years. So it’s a big deal,” he told AFP.
Willis is the owner of Goviers in Stoke-on-Trent, central England, which has specialised in making commemorative ceramics for over 30 years.
Elizabeth became queen on February 6, 1952, and June will be the focal point of public celebrations to mark her unprecedented 70-year reign.
To celebrate the occasion, Goviers has been selling a ‘Platinum Jubilee’ range of cups and plates with traditionally English floral designs since last July.
The work is meticulous, with each coloured pattern in the motif individually printed onto a transfer and applied by hand on the fine porcelain cups and plates.
A ceramist brushes the final golden touches to the piece, which is then fired to make it ready for sale.
From the rough cup to the final dabs of paint, everything is made in Stoke-on-Trent, which is also known as The Potteries.
The city has been renowned for its pottery for centuries, taking advantage of local clay for making the ceramics and coal deposits for firing them.
It became the world’s centre of pottery production in around 1800, prospering for decades before going into sharp decline, with factories closing and relocating to Asia.
Goviers proprietor Simon Willis inspects a Platinum Jubilee HM Queen Elizabeth II Character Jug, as part of their Royal Commemoratives collection, in Stoke-on-Trent. PHOTOS: AFPA worker applies gold paint by handABOVE & BELOW: Transfers are stored before being applied to pottery to create Platinum Jubilee Commemorative pieces; and a worker inspects the templates used to produce silk screen printed transfers to be applied to Goviers’ Platinum Jubilee Commemorative pottery
‘VERY ENGLISH TRADITION’
“A lot of the manufacturing has gone abroad,” due to cost of production, said the 58-year-old owner.
But those factories don’t produce jubilee pieces because “they see the market is not big enough for them”, he added.
Willis stumbled into the ceramics industry after studying economics, specialising in the auto industry.
Given most of his customers are collectors from Britain, he had no hesitation in creating a new jubilee line.
“They’ve probably got plates to celebrate the queen’s marriage, or the coronation, all these other events,” he said of his clientele.
“They are just a tradition, I suppose, that is very English.”
Selling for between GBP45 for a small cup and GBP175 for a large plate, Goviers crockery is not intended to be used as a mere kitchen utensil.
Instead it is meant to be displayed alongside other commemorative ceramics.
“The British ceramics industry has always been good at marking those occasions, big or small,” said Willis.
“The great thing about ceramics is that… whatever is produced today, if it’s looked after will still be around when my son is probably gone.
“We’re producing something that is intrinsically there forever,” he added.
ECONOMIC BENEFITS
Souvenirs dedicated to the popular queen, who turns 96 next month, and the wider royal family are typically rolled out to mark every birth, wedding and celebration.
Such souvenirs generated almost GBP200 million in revenue during the Diamond Jubilee in 2012, with five million commemorative cups and ceramics sold, according to the United Kingdom’s (UK) Centre for Retail Trade.
Four days of public festivities are planned for early June, including a military parade, a large concert and thousands of street parties around the country.
Despite Brexit and the pandemic, tourists are expected in their droves.
Goviers expects to sell only a few hundred cups and plates, but its boss hopes his tableware will be remembered.
“It is a little bit special doing something that is associated with a royal event, a big event… for an occasion which has been celebrated all over the world,” said Willis.
He is particularly keen to impress one potential customer.
“We do know that the queen obviously has a massive collection of ceramics. But a couple of things that we’ve done, they may well get into the hands of Her Majesty,” he added.
BANGKOK (AP) – Myanmar’s leader vowed yesterday to intensify action against homegrown militia groups fighting the military-run government, saying the armed forces would “annihilate” them.
Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, speaking at a military parade marking Armed Forces Day, also urged ethnic minorities not to support groups opposed to army rule and ruled out negotiations with them.
The military seized power last year from the democratically elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi. Security forces used lethal force to suppress mass nationwide protests, resulting in the deaths of more than 1,700 civilians, according to a detailed tally compiled by the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners. Forced to turn away from peaceful protests, many of those opposed to military rule took up arms, forming hundreds of militia groups called People’s Defense Forces – better known as PDFs. In some parts of the country, they’ve joined forces with well-organised, battle-hardened ethnic armed groups, which have been fighting for greater autonomy for decades.
Min Aung Hlaing, speaking to thousands of military personnel at the annual Armed Forces Day parade in the capital Naypyitaw, said he would not negotiate with “terrorist groups and their supporters for killing innocent people” and threatening peace and security.
He said the military – known as the Tatmadaw – “will annihilate them to (the) end”, according to an official translation of his speech.
Head of the military council Senior General Min Aung Hlaing inspects officers during a parade in Naypyitaw, Myanmar. PHOTO: AP
His government has declared major resistance organisations – regardless of whether they are directly engaged in armed struggle – as terrorist groups. Membership or even contact with them carries harsh punishment under law.
“I would like to highlight that there are no governments or armies worldwide that negotiate with any terrorist groups,” he said.
Despite a huge advantage in equipment and numbers, Myanmar’s military has struggled to crush the new militia units. Outgunned and outmanned, the PDFs have relied on support from local communities and knowledge of the terrain to carry out often surprisingly effective attacks on convoys, patrols, guard posts, police stations and isolated bases in remote areas.
The military is currently conducting operations in Sagaing, in upper central Myanmar, and in Kayah State, in the country’s east, using airstrikes, artillery barrages and the burning of villages. The army recently seems to have expanded its offensive into Chin State in the west and Kayin State in the southeast as well.
Nine startups under the DARe (Darussalam Enterprise) entrepreneurship bootcamp had the opportunity to pitch their ideas before a panel of seven leading venture capitalists in Singapore recently.
The startups under DARe’s Accelerate programme – Xpress Enterprise, Ameenfarm Agrotech and Trading, Bruhaha Comedy, Rumine Corporation, Fatih Aquaculture, Thryffy, Alora Collection, Yuwal Technologies, and Al-Huffaz Management – took part in a ‘Demo Day’ in Singapore and engaged in the regional entrepreneurship ecosystem.
Singapore’s Golden Equator (GE) – DARe’s appointed facilitator for prior cycles of Accelerate – organised the Demo Day programme from March 13 to 17, which culminated in the nine startups pitching before a panel of seven leading venture capitalists and consultants at GE’s tech and innovation workspace SPECTRUM.
The Demo Day is a staple of entrepreneurship programmes; gathering startups together to present their ideas and network with an audience of potential business partners.
DARe Executive Officer Mohd Saiful Azzam bin Haji Sarpudin said a key feature of the 100-day Accelerate bootcamp, which targets startups looking to scale locally and abroad, is to provide international exposure and connections.
“The majority of the Accelerate programme is focussed on helping startups build up their capabilities: improving their business models, developing their products, learning how to leverage technology, while also creating their pitches,” said Mohd Saiful Azzam.
“Towards the end of the programme is the opportune time for the participants to be exposed to networking and market access opportunities to help them validate and find partners that can allow them to grow further.”
In addition to the pitching event on Demo Day, GE also curated a list of tours and workshops for the nine participants.
This included a session focussing on how to enter the Singapore market; a fireside chat on how to be investible with founder of Sugar Venture Capital Dr Mark Hon, one of Singapore’s pioneering venture builders; and a visit to award-winning social enterprise and agritech startup Edible Garden City.
ABOVE & BELOW: DARe’s Accelerate programme participants taking part at the Demo Day in Singapore. PHOTOS: DARE
MOSTYSKA, UKRAINE (AP) – Russia’s invasion has displaced half of Ukraine’s children. On a hospital bed in a town close to the border with Poland, a little girl with a long blonde braid and dressed in pink is one of them.
To get there, Zlata Moiseinko survived a chronic heart condition, daily bombings, days of sheltering in a damp and chilly basement and nights of sleeping in a freezing car. The fragile 10-year-old became so unsettled that her father risked his life to return to their ninth-floor apartment 90 kilometres south of the capital, Kyiv, to rescue her pet hamster, Lola, to comfort her.
The animal now rests in a small cage beside Zlata’s bed in a schoolhouse that has been converted into a field hospital operated by Israeli medical workers. The girl and her family hope to join friends in Germany if they can arrange the paperwork that allows her father to cross the border with them.
“I want peace for all Ukraine,” the little girl said, shyly.
The United Nations children’s agency said half of the country’s children, or 4.3 million of an estimated 7.5 million, have now fled their homes, including about 1.8 million refugees who have left the country.
The children are everywhere, curled up amid suitcases in train stations, humanitarian aid tents, evacuation convoys. It is one of the largest such displacements since World War II.
Zlata’s mother, Natalia, folded her hands in prayer and was close to tears.
A Ukrainian flag hangs at a schoolhouse that has been converted into a field hospital in Ukraine. PHOTOS: APNatalia Moiseinko holds her 10-year-old daughter Zlata Moiseinko
“I ask for help for our children and the elderly,” the mother said. She recalled the escape from their community of Bila Tserkva that put her daughter’s life in peril beyond the ever-present threat of airstrikes.
As Russian planes pounded overhead, aiming for the local military base, the family decided to run. They found shelter for a week in a cold, damp basement in a village. The girl’s family struggled to keep her calm and attended, since her heart condition requires constant care.
“We gave her medication to calm her down,” her mother said. But it was not enough. Every loud sound was jarring. The family had few options, without friends and family to call on for help along the road west towards Poland and safety. Eventually they tried to shelter with an acquaintance of the girl’s grandmother, Nadia, but the sounds of airplanes and air raid sirens followed them.
On the final drive to the border, Zlata and her family slept in their car in freezing weather. At the border, amid confusion over documents and the girl’s father, they were turned back. Ukraine is not allowing men between 18 and 60 to leave the country in case they’re called to fight, with few exceptions.
It was by chance that the family heard about the Israeli field hospital in the Ukrainian border town of Mostyska. Now they are regrouping in relative comfort, without the scream of sirens.
At times, to fill the silence, Zlata plays the piano at the school. She missed playing while the family was on the run, her mother said. She proudly showed off her daughter’s YouTube channel of performances. The most recent video, however, showed their basement hideout instead. As the shaking camera panned to show a bare light bulb and concrete walls, the mother narrated in a whisper.
“All we have is potatoes and a few blankets,” she said in the recording. “I hope we won’t stay here long.”
For now, until the family moves again, there is some peace. A drawing by Zlata has been tacked up in the hallway. On a nearby bed, a stuffed panda and a doll have been placed in a toy embrace.
The girl has been transformed. She arrived at the field hospital severely dehydrated, said one of the Israeli physicians Dr Michael Segal.
CNA – Amusical about Diana, the late Princess of Wales, and a remake of the semi-animated Space Jam starring LeBron James took home the most Razzies, the awards that skewer the year’s lamest films on the eve of the big Oscar ceremony.
The Razzies announced the winners ahead of yesterday’s Academy Awards, handing out five prizes to Diana: The Musical, the film version of a Broadway production that closed in December after just 33 regular performances.
After its ignominious demise on stage, the film version snagged Razzies for worst picture, worst actress for Jeanna deWaal in the title role, worst supporting actress for Judy Kaye, and worst director for Christopher Ashley.
The Diana duo of Joe DiPietro and David Bryan claimed worst screenplay for what the Razzies called “some of the year’s most ridiculed dialogue and lyrics, including rhyming Camilla with both Manilla and Godzilla”, the Razzies said in a statement announcing the winners.
Space Jam: A New Legacy won three Razzies: worst actor for LeBron James, worst rip-off or sequel, and worst screen couple for James combined with any of the cartoon characters.
The movie put the NBA star, shot in live action, in a cosmic basketball game with Looney Tunes characters, remaking the 1996 original with Michael Jordan.
‘Space Jam: A New Legacy’ put NBA star LeBron James shot in live action, in a cosmic basketball game with Looney Tunes characters, remaking the 1996 original with Michael Jordan. PHOTO: THE WASHINGTON POST
As usual, the Razzies ridiculed a former Oscar winner, naming Jared Leto worst supporting actor for his over-the-top performance as Paolo in House of Gucci.
The Razzies gave Bruce Willis his own special category, nominating him eight times for “Worst Performance by Bruce Willis in a 2021 Movie”, in eight forgettable films. The one called Cosmic Sin took the prize.
Four-time Razzie winner Will Smith received the only true honour, the redeemer award, for his role in King Richard, for which Smith is also nominated for a best actor Oscar.
The Razzies, the self-described “ugly cousin to the Oscars”, started in 1980 as the Golden Raspberry Awards, created by UCLA film school graduates and film industry veterans John JB Wilson and Mo Murphy.
More than 1,100 Razzie members from across the United States and about two dozen other countries vote on the awards, according to the Razzie website.
LVIV, UKRAINE (AFP) – A rapt and raucous audience, a group of chess fanatics watch a cut-throat game play out on a park bench.
Rook takes knight, a flurry of moves, then the game is over in an instant. The loser surrenders a note of Ukrainian currency and the pieces are reset for another game on the battered board.
In the western city of Lviv, Ukraine’s capital of chess, local players make a point of keeping up the local tradition of street games, despite the March chill and the war raging to the east.
“Chess is a very difficult game,” reigning champion of Ukraine Andrei Volokitin sighed.
“It needs memory, calculation, strategy, positional thinking,” said the 35-year-old grandmaster.
But he is smart enough to know that his foresight on the board does not extend to international affairs. He offers no predictions concerning the Russian invasion wreaking havoc in the east of his country.
“I’m afraid this can continue a few months, maybe more, I don’t know,” he said. “This is the new reality for all people in Ukraine.”
Lviv – just 70 kilometres from the Polish border – has so far been largely spared since Russia launched its invasion on February 24.
The city considers itself the cultural epicentre of Ukraine.
ABOVE & BELOW: Photos show men playing chess at a bench on the central promenade in Lviv. PHOTOS: AFP
Its cobbled streets are lined with coffee shops, boutiques and neon-lit restaurants, even if its nightlife is curbed by the curfews imposed under martial law.
But Lviv is also known as the chess capital of Ukraine. The old Soviet Union to which Ukraine belonged until 1991 invested heavily in developing chess talent, cherishing the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics’ (USSR) longstanding dominance in the game. The city’s continuing obsession with chess is a legacy of those times.
All along the central promenade, droves of mostly men gather to watch amateur players play out their games in the chilly March weather.
Volokitin reckons there are between 20 and 30 active grandmasters among Lviv’s 700,000 residents. “It’s a traditional chess city,” he said.
But the chess world has been divided by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s order to invade Ukraine.
FIDE – the International Chess Federation – has already cancelled tournaments in Russia, where the game is also wildly popular, and banned its flag from flying at events.
But the Ukrainian Chess Federation wants more.
It is pushing for a total ban on Russian players “under any flag or without it”. Volokitin himself has signed an open letter pledging not to play Russians.
“During the killing of our civilians, our women and children, and destroying our cities I think it’s logical,” he said.
Last week, FIDE banned the Russia and Belarus teams from its tournaments.
Last Monday, it banned top Russian grandmaster Sergey Karjakin from its tournaments for six months over his outspoken support for the invasion.
But for the moment, other Russian players can still play.
So next week, Volokitin travels to the European Individual Chess Championship in Slovenia next week to put Ukraine’s case for extending the ban.
He has received a special dispensation on the government’s order forbidding men aged between 18 and 60 from leaving the country, he said.
His wife and daughter are already sheltering in Poland, and Volokitin spent two weeks sheltering “chess friends” as they made fled the conflict zone.
“We should do all we can,” he said.
Military analysts suggested Putin’s “special military operation” is stalling after heavy losses and unexpected resistance from outmanned but highly motivated Ukrainian forces. However last Friday, a Russian air strike hit a plane repair plant next to Lviv’s airport.
Although no one was killed, it was a clear sign that the war was drawing closer to the city, after three weeks of having escaped relatively unscathed.
Nevertheless, the city’s chess fans still gather along the promenade for their games, some offering their prognosis on the conflict as the one-month marker approaches.
Oleh Chernobayev, 52, only lasted 10 minutes in his game with Volokitin – but he was more optimistic about Ukraine’s chances in the war.
“We will definitely win,” he said.“We have good people, people without weapons are stopping tanks. They can’t take Kyiv. Our guys are very brave.”
Nearby, self-declared stalwart of the city’s chess benches Oleksander holds court as he plays.
“This is a difficult game, a game of the mind,” he declared.
A young challenger in a baseball cap has him locked him in a gruelling match. But the pauses between his moves get longer and longer, until eventually the young pretender resigns the game.
“We need to compete for Ukraine the same way we compete in chess,” he remarked sardonically.
