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Day, Zalatoris share Torrey Pines PGA Tour lead

LOS ANGELES (AFP) – Two-time winner Jason Day birdied the last three holes in a five-under par 67 yesterday for a share of the third-round lead alongside Will Zalatoris in the US PGA Tour Farmers Insurance Open.

Former world number one Day, the 2015 PGA Champion who won at Torrey Pines in 2015 and 2018, will be chasing his first tour title since a victory at Quail Hollow in May of 2018 when he tees it up in the final group today.

Zalatoris, who is seeking his first tour victory, fired an eagle and five birdies in an impressive seven-under par 65 to join Day on 14-under 202.

World number one Jon Rahm of Spain, who started the day in a three-way tie for the lead, was a stroke back after an even-par 72, tied on 203 with England’s Aaron Rai, who shot a 68.

Justin Thomas, who shared the overnight lead, carded a 73 and headed a group on 204 that also included Cameron Tringale (72) and South Korean Im Sung-jae (68).

Jason Day hits his tee shot during the third round of the Farmers Insurance Open golf tournament. PHOTO: AP

Australia’s Day, who has dropped to 129th in the world after a tough 2021 season marred by continuing back trouble, said he believes he’s headed in the right direction.

“It’s been a long two-and-a-bit years not really being in contention or having a good shot at winning a tournament, but I think overall I’m pretty pleased with how things are progressing swing-wise, body-wise,” Day said.

Day was two-under on the front nine with birdies at the fourth and ninth. He bounced back from his lone bogey of the day at the 12th with a birdie at 13 then stormed home with birdies at 16, 17 and 18.

He launched that run with a 28-foot birdie putt at the 16th, then stuck his approach at 17 within three feet of the pin.

At the par-five 18th he blasted out of the back greenside bunker to 11 feet and made the putt.

“Actually, to be honest, that back pot is a pretty difficult bunker shot, but it was nice to be able to get that up and down,” he said.

Zalatoris, who finished runner-up to Hideki Matsuyama at last year’s Masters, kickstarted his round with a “pretty awesome” chip in for eagle at the second hole.

He rolled in a nine-foot birdie at the fourth and a 14-footer at the eighth to launch a run of three straight birdies.

An outstanding chip at 11 left him a tap-in to save par, and at the 13th he missed a three-foot birdie putt, but he got to 14-under with a nine-foot birdie at the 14th.

“Out here you can get a little wobble here or there,” he said, adding that his birdie at 14 “kind of righted the ship a little bit because I was pretty frustrated hitting two perfect shots into 13 and walking off with par”.

Rahm got off to a promising start with a birdie at the second hole, and after seeing a string of birdie chances go begging he rolled in a 38-footer at the ninth.

He stumbled with a double-bogey at the 10th and a bogey at 12 before clawing back a shot with his last birdie of the day at 15.

“I played great,” said Rahm, who won the US Open on the same Torrey Pines course last June. “I feel like I played a lot better than the score shows.”

Amazon accused of anti-union tactics in New York

SAN FRANCISCO (AFP) – United States (US) labour authorities have filed a complaint accusing e-commerce giant Amazon of using threats and surveillance against its workers trying to organise a union at a New York City warehouse.

Amazon allegedly grilled workers about union activities at the Staten Island site, promising to address grievances in exchange for voting against representation, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) argued in its complaint filed on Thursday.

At stake is whether the workers might be the first to unionise an Amazon warehouse in the US.

NLRB’s complaint alleges the company “repeatedly broke the law by threatening, surveilling, and interrogating their Staten Island warehouse workers who are engaged in a union organising campaign”.

The board asked a judge, with a hearing set for April 5, to order Amazon to educate workers as well as managers about employee rights when it comes to unionising.

People march during a protest in support of Amazon workers in New York City. PHOTO: AFP

Antetokounmpo’s big game helps Bucks beat Knicks

MILWAUKEE (AP) – Giannis Antetokounmpo had 38 points and 13 rebounds and made numerous big plays in the fourth quarter to help the Milwaukee Bucks beat the New York Knicks 123-108 yesterday.

“The ball was coming off his hands really good tonight from a lot of different places,” Bucks coach Mike Budenholzer said.

Antetokounmpo also had five assists a night after getting named an All-Star starter for a sixth consecutive season, tying the franchise record for selections. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar earned six of his 19 All-Star Game selections with the Bucks.

The Bucks never trailed as they won for the fourth time in five games and bounced back from a 115-99 loss at Cleveland. The Knicks have lost six of seven. Jrue Holiday scored 24 points, Khris Middleton had 20 and Grayson Allen added 15 for the Bucks. Allen returned after serving a one-game suspension as punishment for a flagrant 2 foul that broke Alex Caruso’s right wrist, knocking out the Chicago guard for at least six to eight weeks.

Evan Fournier had 25 points, and RJ Barrett 23 for the Knicks, though Barrett shot six of 20. Quentin Grimes had 11, and Alec Burks 10.

Milwaukee Bucks’ Giannis Antetokounmpo shoots against the New York Knicks. PHOTO: AP

Burks opened the fourth-quarter scoring with a three-pointer that cut Milwaukee’s lead to 93-91, but the Bucks responded with a 9-2 spurt. Antetokounmpo scored the last seven points in that run.

“At the beginning of the fourth, Giannis kind of took over a little bit,” Barrett said.

“They just had a different intensity in the fourth that we weren’t able to match. But it’s good for a team like us, watching the defending champs to see how they raise their level, especially in that fourth quarter. We know what we’ve got to do to eventually get to that level.”

Antetokounmpo capped the 9-2 run with a three-pointer that put the Bucks ahead 102-93 with 9:29 left. Just over a minute later, Antetokounmpo got an offensive rebound and threw an off-balance, overhead, no-look pass to a wide-open Grayson Allen behind the three-point arc. Allen calmly sank a three-pointer that gave the Bucks an 11-point edge.

“He threw a pass you would see someone throw messing around in pregame or something like that, and it was right on the money,” Allen said. “He does ridiculous stuff like that all the time. I guess I learn to expect it.”

After trailing by 16 midway through the fourth quarter, the Knicks had cut the margin to 113-105 when Mitchell Robinson went to the foul line with 3:58 left. Robinson missed both free throws, and the Bucks eventually regained their double-digit advantage.

This game ended the regular-season series. The Bucks went 3-1 and won the last three meetings.

Syrian fighters set deadline for IS gunmen to surrender

BEIRUT (AP) – United States (US)-backed Kurdish-led fighters searched on Friday near a Syrian prison for Islamic State (IS) group militants and gave an ultimatum to dozens of armed extremists holed up in a small part of the jail to surrender or face an all-out attack, a Kurdish official said.

About a half-dozen IS fighters surrendered on Friday morning, among scores of militants hiding in a basement in the northern section of the prison, according to a spokesman for the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) Siamand Ali.

He would not confirm or deny a report by the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition war monitor, that SDF fighters discovered the bodies of 18 of their comrades inside Gweiran prison, also known as al-Sinaa prison, in northeast Syria on Friday.

The IS group’s January 20 attack on the prison was the biggest military operation by the extremist group since the fall of their self-declared caliphate in 2019. It came as the militants staged deadly attacks in both Syria and Iraq that stoked fears that IS may be staging a comeback.

The weeklong assault on one of the largest detention facilities in Syria has turned the city of Hassakeh into a conflict zone. The Kurdish-led administration declared a curfew and sealed off the city, barring movement in and out.

Thousands of people in Hassakeh were displaced in recent days because of the fighting. The SDF claimed on Wednesday it had regained full control of the prison – a week after scores of militants overran the facility. The attackers allowed some to escape but also took hostages, including child detainees, and clashed with SDF fighters in violence that killed dozens.

The SDF had said that between 60 and 90 militants were hiding out in the northern section of the prison.

Ali said the militants are in the basement of a two-storey building and that those who remain inside are refusing to surrender.

“Our units are surrounding the building and are trying to convince them to surrender,” he said.

“We gave them a deadline and we are besieging them,” Ali said by telephone from Hassakeh. He refused to say when the ultimatum ends and the attack begins, for security reasons.

A Syrian Democratic Forces soldier talks on a radio in Hassakeh, northeast Syria. PHOTO: AP

UN urges world to turn the screw on Myanmar junta

AFP – The United Nations (UN) urged the world on Friday to ramp up the pressure on Myanmar’s junta to cease violence against the country’s own people and quickly restore civilian rule.

One year on since the military seized power, UN human rights Chief Michelle Bachelet said the country’s people had paid a high price in terms of lives and freedoms lost.

Bachelet said that while there had been near-universal condemnation of the coup and the ensuing violence, she branded the international response as “ineffectual”, saying it “lacks a sense of urgency commensurate to the magnitude of the crisis”.

“It is time for an urgent, renewed effort to restore human rights and democracy in Myanmar and ensure that perpetrators of systemic human rights violations and abuses are held to account,” she said.

The former Chilean president said the UN Security Council and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) had not done enough to convince the junta to facilitate humanitarian access.

Anti-coup protesters displaying signs against the military coup in Mandalay, Myanmar. PHOTO: AP

Bachelet said she had spoken with civil liberties defenders in Myanmar who were pleading with the international community not to abandon them.

“I urge governments – in the region and beyond – as well as businesses, to listen to this plea,” the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said.

Myanmar’s military seized power on February 1 last year, ousting the civilian government and arresting its de facto leader, Aung San Suu Kyi.

The junta has waged a bloody crackdown on dissent.

The UN Human Rights Office said that since the coup, at least 1,500 people had been killed by the military in a brutal effort to crush dissent, while thousands more would have been killed in the wider armed conflict and violence.

At least 11,787 people have been arbitrarily detained for voicing their opposition to the military, the office said, of whom 8,792 remain in custody.

At least 290 have died in detention, many likely due to the use of torture, it added.

Bachelet said the current crisis was built upon the impunity with which the military leadership waged a campaign of violence against the Rohingya minority four years ago.

“As long as impunity prevails, stability in Myanmar will be a fiction. Accountability of the military remains crucial to any solution going forward – the people overwhelmingly demand this,” she said.

Bachelet’s office is due to publish a report in March detailing the human rights situation in Myanmar since the coup.

BND21,000 fine for contraband possession

Fadley Faisal

The Magistrate’s Court yesterday ordered an Indonesian man to settle a BND21,000 fine for possessing smuggled cigarettes.

Ahmat Alifin, 32, would have to serve 13 months’ jail in default of payment.

Senior Magistrate Azrimah binti Abdul Rahman heard from the Customs prosecutor that the defendant was arrested by Customs enforcement officers during a raid on discovering that he kept 26 cartons and nine packets of smuggled cigarettes at his work quarters in Jalan Pasir Berakas.

The raid was conducted at 7.57pm on January 27 where officers also found and seized BND363 confirmed to be proceeds from selling the cigarettes.

The court ordered the cash forfeited to the state and the cigarettes destroyed.

Hewlett Packard wins massive fraud case in UK

LONDON (AFP) – United States (US) tech giant Hewlett Packard won its multibillion-dollar fraud case on Friday over its 2011 purchase of British software company Autonomy.

A year after the deal, HP accused Autonomy of fudging its accounts, claiming it had inflated its value and caused huge losses for the US company when the true situation emerged after the USD11.1-billion sale.

HP sued two executives, Mike Lynch, Autonomy’s British founder, and former chief financial officer Sushovan Hussain, for around USD5 billion.

In a summary of his decision in what is believed to be Britain’s biggest-ever civil fraud trial, judge Robert Hildyard said HP and the other claimants had “substantially won”.

Hildyard said the damages to be paid will be determined at a later date.

A sign at the entry way into Hewlett Packard Enterprise in Massachusetts. PHOTO: AP

HP claimed the two men had “artificially inflated Autonomy’s reported revenues, revenue growth and gross margins… over a sustained period of time”.

The company announced an USD8.8-billion write-down of the firm’s value just over a year after the sale.

Interior Minister Priti Patel on Friday signed an order for the extradition of Lynch to the US, where he faces separate criminal proceedings over the sale, the Home Office said in a statement.

Lynch has the right to apply to the High Court to appeal the extradition order, it added. Lynch has denied any wrongdoing.

A lawyer for the businessman, Kelwin Nicholls, said the court’s ruling was “disappointing”, and added that Lynch “intends to appeal”.

Another of Lynch’s lawyers, Chris Morvillo, said his client “firmly denies the charges brought against him in the US and will continue to fight to establish his innocence”.

Lynch was “a British citizen who ran a British company in Britain, subject to British laws and rules and that is where the matter should be resolved”, Morvillo said.

Lynch, from Suffolk in eastern England, claimed HP was making him “a scapegoat for their failures”.

HP’s lawyer Laurence Rabinowitz told the court that Autonomy used “a variety” of fraudulent devices to boost or invent revenue.

A US court in 2018 convicted Autonomy’s Finance Chief Hussain of fraud relating to the sale and jailed him for five years.

Time to bid goodbye to ‘Hotel Transylvania’

Lindsey Bahr

AP – Here are some good things about the fourth Hotel Transylvania movie: Kathryn Hahn, who is as evocative a voice actor as she is in live action; the monster sidekicks voiced by David Spade, Keegan-Michael Key, Steve Buscemi and Brad Abrell; a joke about a single marshmallow (really); the revelation that the invisible man has been naked this whole time; and the 94-minute runtime.

But perhaps the best thing about Hotel Transylvania: Transformania is that it’s the end. The well of ideas on this particular property has apparently run dry and they made the wise decision to show themselves the door. Though not wise enough to end on a particularly high note.

What started as a clever enough riff on a father-daughter relationship, monsters and the hospitality industry has been on cruise control from its early days and has been running out of fuel since. It’s hard to shake the feeling that everyone was just phoning it in for this final go. Actually, it’s not even “everyone” since Adam Sandler, who was the marquee sell for the previous three as Count ‘Drac’ Dracula, managed to bow out early. Kevin James did, too.

This time, under the direction of Derek Drymon and Jennifer Kluska, Drac is voiced by Brian Hull, who does a fine job approximating Sandler’s vampire shtick. And though the character has had three movies to get used to the idea of his daughter’s relationship, he hasn’t evolved much from the first movie, when he sits back in horror as Mavis (Selena Gomez) meets and falls in love with a human man, Johnny (Andy Samberg).

In the world of Hotel Transylvania, they’ve since married AND had a child, but Johnny still feels like an outsider, and Drac is still loathe to accept him as part of the family. So, in this installment, which was executive produced and co-written by franchise creator Genndy Tartakovsky, Drac decides in a backstage panic to not make a big, public announcement about giving the hotel to Mavis and Johnny.

Johnny, thinking it’s his fault because he’s not a monster, asks Van Helsing (Jim Gaffigan) to help him change. It works. He becomes a toothy, goofy, scaly abomination and everything goes haywire. Drac becomes human, which for him means out of shape and kind of pathetic, like a stereotype of an American on vacation, raising uncomfortable questions as to whether or not the transformations are a commentary on the subject’s essential selves or humans in general.

It’s even further compounded by the human forms Frank, Murray, Wayne and Griffin take – one is handsome, another ancient. Regardless, no one cares to stay altered, and they all have to travel around the globe to find a crystal to change them back so it doesn’t become permanent.

It’s hard to overstate just how garish and frenetic this whole endeavour is.

Even with the explosion of colours it still strains to hold interest. The manic Hotel Transylvania: Transformania does not seem to be for parents or for very young kids. Perhaps there’s a sweet spot for eight- to 12-year-olds who may love these characters and be on board for whatever adventure they find themselves in, but even this might test their patience.

A scene from Hotel Transylvania: Transformania. PHOTO: SONY PICTURES ANIMATION

Brunei records 47 local, five imported cases

James Kon

Brunei Darussalam recorded 52 new COVID-19 cases yesterday, where 47 were local and five were imported.

With the latest figures, the total number of confirmed cases now stand at 16,345.

This was said by Minister of Health Dato Seri Setia Dr Haji Mohd Isham bin Haji Jaafar during a press conference yesterday.

The new cases were the result of 1,629 laboratory tests conducted in the past 24 hours, showing the rate of testing positive of 3.2 per cent.

Some 35 cases recovered yesterday, bringing the number of recoveries to 15,877. There are currently 366 active cases.

The bed occupancy rate in isolation centres nationwide is 8.7 per cent.

Among the cases being treated at the National Isolation Centre, one is in Category 4 requiring oxygen assistance and is under close monitoring. There are no cases in Category 5.

As of January 28, 94.8 per cent of the Brunei population had received one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine while 93.9 per cent had been administered two shots and 39.3 per cent had received three jabs.

Vietnam to increase frequency of commercial international flights

HANOI (BERNAMA) – Vietnam’s Deputy Prime Minister Pham Binh Minh has agreed to increase the frequency of commercial international flights, as well as removing the need for passengers to take rapid COVID-19 tests before and after their flight, as per new government regulations.

Following this latest dispatch by the government office on Friday, passengers will not have to undergo rapid tests for COVID-19 before and after boarding the plane, reported Vietnam News Agency (VNA).

The destinations under consideration for more flights include Japan and South Korea. More locations in Europe and Oceania are expected to be added to the pilot flight resumption programme starting this year after nearly two years of border closures.

Diplomatic missions will work with the local authorities to resume regular international flights, aiming to remove quarantine requirements for Vietnamese people upon arrival to Singapore, Japan, and South Korea.

They are also required to issue guidelines for Vietnamese nationals who denied entry to their destinations.

Vietnam’s Ministry of Health will review and issue detailed instructions on preventive and control measures against the Omicron variant for arrivals to Vietnam.

Meanwhile, the National Immigration Department will proactively provide guidance on entry customs and health declaration for people entering the country.

People boarding an Airbus A350-900 at Hanoi’s Noi Bai international airport. PHOTO: AFP
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Borneo Bulletin is the leading English daily in the country. It was first published by Brunei Press. Today, Borneo Bulletin has become the foremost source of information on local and foreign affairs, and the region’s business news.

© 2013 Borneo Bulletin Online - The Independent Newspaper in Brunei Darussalam, Sabah and Sarawak

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