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    Shopping vouchers for lucky winners

    James Kon

    Local company Sphere Technologies and Solution Sdn Bhd won a BND8,888 shopping voucher as the first prize winner of the lucky draw for the Toyota Roar Into 2022 campaign held yesterday. The event was broadcast live on Toyota Brunei’s social media.

    Meanwhile, Muhammad Norhazmi Hazwan bin Samhan and Nur Aqilah binti Azhar also won a BND3,888 shopping voucher each.

    Other prizes included shopping vouchers worth BND2,888 (three), BND1,888 (three), BND888 (three), BND388 (six), BND288 (eight) and BND188 (12).

    NBT Senior General Sales Manager Leong Cheng Soon and Bunut Branch Sales Manager Arif bin Aliudin were on hand to carry out the lucky draw.

    The campaign aimed to continuously deliver a rewarding experience to customers with exciting and valuable prizes.

    To be eligible for the draw, customers had to purchase a new Toyota model between January 1 to February 28.

    Meanwhile, Toyota Brunei’s latest campaign, the ‘Gembira’ promotion, is offering its customers a chance to win exciting prizes by purchasing any new Toyota model between March 1 to April 15.

    ABOVE & BELOW: NBT Senior General Sales Manager Leong Cheng Soon and Bunut Branch Sales Manager Arif bin Aliudin draw the winners. PHOTOS: JAMES KON

    US extends mask rule for travel while weighing new approach

    WASHINGTON (AP) – Federal officials are extending the requirement for masks on planes and public transportation for one more month – through mid-April – while taking steps that could lead to lifting the rule.

    The mask mandate was scheduled to expire March 18, but the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) said on Thursday that it will extend the requirement through April 18.

    TSA said the extra month will give the United States (US) Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and Prevention time to develop new, more targetted policies that will consider the number of cases of COVID-19 nationally and in local communities, and the risk of new variants.

    The TSA enforces the rule, which extends to planes, buses, trains and transit hubs.

    A decision to eventually scrap the mask requirement – one of the last vestiges of nationwide pandemic rules – has grown more likely in recent weeks as more states, even those led by Democratic governors, relaxed their own mandates for wearing masks indoors, and the CDC eased its recommendations.

    That led critics to question why the CDC would allow maskless people to gather in movie theatres and sports arenas but not on planes. White House press secretary Jen Psaki said on Thursday that deciding on the right policy for travel was more complicated than setting recommendations for local communities.

    Travellers at the Miami International Airport. PHOTO: AP

    “If you’re moving from one zone to another and picking people up… it’s a little bit different, and that requires some consultation, which is what (CDC officials) are going to endeavour to do between now and April 18,” Psaki said.

    CDC Director Dr Rochelle Walensky said last week that her agency must study the science around virus transmission “but also the epidemiology and the frequency that we may encounter a variant of concern or a variant of interest in our travel corridors”.

    Senator Roger Wicker of Mississippi, the top Republican on the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, said he was disappointed in the one-month extension.

    “The science does not support this decision,” he said. Earlier, Wicker and 30 other Republican senators asked Biden to end the mask rule and a requirement that travellers test free of COVID-19 within a day before flying to the US.

    Airlines for America, a trade group that represents the largest US airlines, said in a statement that it urged the administration to end both rules. The federal mask mandate was imposed in January 2021, days after President Joe Biden took office, and has been extended several times.

    Last September, the TSA doubled the fines for people who refused to wear a mask on public

    transportation to up to USD1,000 for first-time offenders and up to USD3,000 for repeat violations.

    The requirement became a lightning rod for confrontation between some passengers and airline crews. Since the start of 2021, airlines have reported more than 6,000 incidents of unruly passengers, most of them involving disputes over mask wearing. That history could make it unlikely for airlines to require masks once the federal rule lapses.

    Flight attendants were once mostly in favour of masks, which they viewed as protecting their health. They largely supported the federal rule, which carried more weight than an airline policy.

    Gloomy nights for the Dark Knight

    Jake Coyle

    AP – Batman, never a day person, is plunged into perpetual night in Matt Reeves’ nocturnal, nihilist, neo-noir take on the Caped Crusader.

    Reeves’ three-hour-long The Batman includes plenty of action, character introductions, gadgets and other various superhero accoutrement. But it is no extravaganza. This Batman is a morose mood piece, soaked in shadow and rage, that has stripped the comic’s archetypes down to abstracted silhouettes and grubbily human characters.

    Robert Pattinson’s is a young Batman, relatively new to the gig and suffering mightily from the nightly battles with Gotham’s most depraved. A feeling of helplessness consumes him, and a sense that he can never stem the tide.

    Reeves, the Planet of the Apes filmmaker, starts The Batman with numerous such gravely voiced intonations – “They think I’m hiding in the shadows, but I AM the shadows” – in a stunning, operatic montage set to Nirvana’s Something in the Way. It’s an electric fusion of imagery and sound, and the movie’s most fully realised section. This Batman is a dirge.

    The issue, though, is that The Batman, having found its tone and immersive atmosphere, wallows in it. There is surprisingly little suspense because the film struggles to find more than one note (powerful though it is) to strike. Even Pattinson’s Bruce Wayne is just as downbeat and grave as his Batman. Like a Paul Schrader character, he has abandoned nearly all social engagement, instead tortuously writing a diary to document the horrors he witnesses nightly. Pretty much since Adam West put on the cape and cowl, Batman has steadily grown darker. But Pattinson’s despondent Dark Knight takes the cake.

    Robert Pattinson and Zoe Kravitz in a scene from ‘The Batman’. PHOTO: AP

    The comic blueprint is Batman: Year One, Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli’s 1987 four-issue series in which Wayne turns vigilante. That step – a citizen taking up violence in the name of justice – is much the subject of The Batman.

    The Batman is structured as a detective story. There’s a delightful scene where he, in costume, stalks a crime scene he’s been sneaked into by detective Gordon (a fabulous, melancholy Jeffrey Wright). It’s a framework – a Batman of questionable vision and even more dubious self-awareness hunting clues – that makes The Batman a distinctive work separate from previous movie iterations of the character.

    But as Reeves and co-writer Peter Craig weave in the antagonists of this Gotham underworld – a serial killer named Edward Nashton aka the Riddler (Paul Dano, leaning into serial-killer tropes), the crime lord Carmine Falcone (a suavely villainous John Turturro) and a mid-level mobster Penguin (Colin Farrell, unrecognisable) – The Batman wears other influences, like David Fincher’s Seven, more obviously.

    As firmly gripped as The Batman is early on, you can feel its hold slipping as it extends into its lengthy running time, and I think that’s partly because Pattinson’s performance is largely limited to either sudden eruptions of fury or timid skulking in the shadows. For an actor who has long stayed clear of the mainstream, it’s thrilling to see him take on something this ambitious. But Pattinson’s talent lies in his cryptic charisma and that’s not always a compelling fit for a three-hour psychological portrait. He’s no chatterbox, this Batman.

    Zoë Kravitz, however, has a more instant and intimate bond with the camera. As Selina Kyle/Catwoman, she gives The Batman a major lift even while leading it down some of its darkest alleyways. After Selina joins with Batman as they investigate the corruption surrounding Falcone and others, he outfits her with video-recording contact lenses. In one of the film’s most arresting sequences, we see from her perspective as she infiltrates the bad guys’ nightclub and, in night vision, we feel the leers of the men that crowd her.

    The Batman is darkly dour stuff – potent but erratic. It’s as though the filmmakers, working in the very long shadow of The Dark Knight, have opted not to rival the moody majesty of Christopher Nolan’s genre-redefining 2008 film but instead to simply go “harder” – blacker, more cynical, a total eclipse. That may make The Batman properly suited to its times but it also makes it, ultimately, feel like a somewhat hollow if often grippingly pitch-black exercise in an imagined arms race of severity. The Dark Knight had a visceral splash in Heath Ledger’s Joker that The Batman sorely misses. Someone, somewhere here should be asking why so serious.

    Business as usual on the field for Chelsea with Norwich win

    LONDON (AP) – It was a tumultuous day off the field but business as usual on it for the club that is swiftly becoming one of the most talked about teams in the soccer world – for all the wrong reasons.

    Early goals from Trevor Chalobah and Mason Mount set Chelsea on its way to a 3-1 victory at bottom club Norwich in the Premier League early yesterday, just hours after unprecedented British government sanctions against Russian owner Roman Abramovich.
    Those included restrictions that prohibits the team from selling new tickets or merchandise, or signing new players.

    It meant Chelsea required a special licence to even be allowed to play, but the tough sanctions – which also halted Abramovich’s planned sale of the club – didn’t prevent the away fans from chanting the oligarch’s name from the first whistle.

    Chelsea’s players showed no sign of being affected by the turmoil as Chalobah headed in Mount’s corner in the third minute and Mount then then got on the scoresheet himself 11 minutes later as he curled in a pass from Kai Havertz.

    Chelsea appeared to be cruising to a comfortable victory but Norwich managed to reduce the deficit with 21 minutes left as Pierre Lees-Melou’s cross hit the arm of Chalobah and, after reviewing the incident on the pitchside monitor, referee Martin Atkinson pointed to the spot.

    Chelsea’s Kai Havertz (R) celebrates scoring during the English Premier League football match between Norwich City and Chelsea at Carrow Road, Norwich, England. PHOTO: AP

    Teemu P stepped up and sent Edouard Mendy the wrong way to set up a nervy finale for Chelsea in Norfolk. But Chelsea wrapped up the points in injury time when substitute N’Golo Kante dribbled into the area and squared it for Havertz to sidefoot home.

    “Of course, there was a lot of distraction, another level of distraction with the sanctions and we could feel it,” Tuchel said. “The players talked about it, they are aware of it and we accepted it, but the rhythm, excitement and love for the game helped us. Full credit, I think the team shows very good character and we can be proud that they produce performances like this under the circumstances.

    It tells us we are right to trust them, that the attitude is right, the culture at the club is right and we keep on going.” Chelsea remained third, 13 points behind Premier League leader Manchester City, but increased its advantage over fifth-place Manchester United to nine points. Wolverhampton kept up its bid for a European spot with a comfortable 4-0 victory over relegation-threatened Watford.

    Wolves jumped into a 3-0 lead after just 21 minutes thanks to an early strike from Raul Jimenez, an own goal by Cucho Hernandez and a Daniel Podence effort.

    Ruben Neves chipped in the fourth in the 85th to round off a commanding display.

    Wolves remained eight, two points behind Tottenham and West Ham. Aston Villa is seven points behind after routing Leeds 3-0 with goals from Philippe Coutinho, Matty Cash and Calum Chambers.

    It was Leeds’ seventh defeat in its last eight matches and left it two points above the relegation zone.

    Newcastle boosted its bid to escape relegation by winning 2-1 at Southampton. Eddie Howe’s side has now won six in seven games to move 10 points clear of the relegation zone in the first season under Saudi ownership.

    Sri Lanka hit by fuel price hikes

    COLOMBO (AFP) – Sri Lanka’s largest private fuel retailer hiked diesel prices more than 40 per cent yesterday, compounding the hardship for ordinary people in the country’s worst economic crisis since independence.

    The island nation’s 22 million people have already been reeling from weeks of shortages that have crippled public transport and caused long queues for petrol, food and medicine.

    The cause has been a wide-ranging import ban as the government tries to stop the outflow of dollars in order to pay off debt after the pandemic torpedoed the vital tourism sector.

    In its third hike in two months, Lanka IOC raised diesel to LKR252 (USD1.00) a litre from LKR177 while high octane gasoline was up LKR50 to LKR283 (USD1.08).

    Official figures show that diesel prices have risen 78.2 per cent while gasoline is up 43.5 per cent since February 6. Most of Ceylon Petroleum Corporation (CPC) pumps have been out of fuel. The few that were open saw long queues yesterday.

    The central bank on Monday announced “greater flexibility” in the exchange rate after depreciating the currency by 15 per cent. Since Monday, the rupee has lost about a quarter of its value against the dollar.

    Official sources said yesterday’s fuel price increase reflected the weaker rupee.

    A Sri Lankan bus worker carries empty containers searching for fuel as people gather at a fuel pump in Colombo, Sri Lanka. PHOTO: AP

    N Korea plans ‘monster’ missile launch by April

    SEOUL (AFP) – North Korea has been using satellite subterfuge to test parts of a so-called “monster” missile, analysts say, as it gears up for a sanctions-shattering launch ahead of a key domestic anniversary.

    Pyongyang has conducted a record nine weapons tests so far this year, in what experts see as an effort to work through a laundry list of strategic weapons set out by leader Kim Jong-un.

    One top priority is an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) that can carry multiple warheads – the Hwasong-17, dubbed a “monster missile” and first unveiled at a parade in October 2020.

    It has never been test-fired – but Washington said on Thursday Pyongyang had recently tested parts of it disguised as a satellite.

    North Korea has been observing a self-imposed moratorium on testing long range and nuclear weapons, but with talks stalled and sanctions still in place, it seems close to tearing it up.

    “I think the moratorium is as good as over. We should expect to see a return to ICBM testing,” said security analyst Ankit Panda.

    The tests of purported “reconnaissance satellite” components on February 27 and March 5 were likely the Hwasong-17, possibly the technology to “carry and deliver multiple warheads”, he said.

    “North Korea hasn’t demonstrated the latter capability before, even if it has tested ICBMs capable of ranging the United States three times,” he said.

    North Korea’s renewed determination to test an ICBM comes at a delicate time in the region, with a new president, Yoon Suk-yeol, set to take control in South Korea.

    ‘Mad Max: Fury Road’ had an exceptionally strange journey to cinematic glory

    Chris Klimek

    THE WASHINGTON POST – The latter three films in the loosely connected Mad Max saga are set in a bleak future when the oral tradition is dominant and more advanced forms of record-keeping have, like every other comfort of civilisation, been blasted into dust.

    So it’s fitting that the most comprehensive look yet into the franchise’s crowning achievement – 2015’s Mad Max: Fury Road – takes the form of an oral history. Juiced up from reporter Kyle Buchanan’s 4,600-word 2020 New York Times feature, Blood, Sweat & Chrome offers a candid, sometimes contradictory, always compelling examination of the most unlikely big-budget cinematic triumph since Titanic.

    Assembled from more than 130 interviews with Fury Road’s makers and notable admirers, Buchanan’s book is a chronicle of near-miraculous creative, diplomatic and financial perseverance on the part of co-writer/producer/director George Miller, whom Buchanan dubs ‘The Visionary’ in his dramatis personae.

    The story begins long before and continues long after the movie’s grueling 2012 location shoot in the southwest African nation of Namibia. The Thunderdome that Fury Road navigated on its way to the Academy Awards and cinephile Valhalla was not made up merely of such familiar blockbuster stumbling blocks as swollen budgets and tender egos, but by actual wars, natural disasters and palace intrigue at the studio covering its payroll.

    Miller was an emergency physician before he pivoted into filmmaking with the three initial Mad Max entries circa 1979-1985, making an international star of young Mel Gibson in the process. From there, his eclectic filmography swerved from the frantic adaptation of John Updike’s The Witches of Eastwick to the somber medical drama Lorenzo’s Oil to the children’s film franchises Babe and Happy Feet.

    By the mid-1990s, Miller was mulling a proposal to turn Mad Max into a syndicated TV series.

    But a 1995 brainstorm set him to dreaming instead about the most frenetic and formally daring Max feature yet: a feature-length chase wherein the objects of pursuit would be five young women who had escaped enslavement. (As in the equally grim dystopia of The Handmaid’s Tale – a novel published the year Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome hit theatres – their fertility would doom them to servitude.) Exposition? Banned. Miller asked himself: “Can you tell an entire story on the run, and how much of the backstory can you pick up on the way?”

    Miller recruited co-writer Eric Blakeney, comic book artist Brendan McCarthy and illustrator Peter Pound as collaborators, and the brain trust got to work immediately, creating a 3,500-panel storyboard in place of a traditional screenplay. (The film’s designers, several of whom would win Oscars for Fury Road, loved this approach; the actors, not so much.) Ideas flowed freely. And yet it would take two decades for Fury Road to reach cinemas.

    Buchanan’s vivid account of the project reads like an auteur filmmaker’s version of the Book of Job. The USD104 million Fury Road 20th Century Fox had agreed to bankroll with a peak-stardom Gibson returning as Max was set to begin shooting in 2003, but the American-led invasion of Iraq that spring depressed the value of the US dollar against the Australian dollar, creating a budget gap that made Fox pull the plug.

    Gibson’s advancing age and public self-immolation led Miller to replace him with a not-yet-famous Tom Hardy before preproduction ramped up again in 2010 in Broken Hill, Australia, where the filmmaker had shot The Road Warrior 30 years earlier. Then a freak superstorm turned the barren location Miller had chosen to reprise its role as The Wasteland into a veritable Eden, bursting with flowers and greenery not seen in decades. Hardy went off to play the heavy in The Dark Knight Rises while Miller and Warner Bros (which had picked up the project from Fox) waited for Broken Hill to turn barren again. It didn’t.

    Finally, in 2012, producer Doug Mitchell leased a container ship for USD2 million, loaded it with the 120 custom vehicles the production had built, and set sail for Namibia, a location he’d scouted a decade earlier. According to executive producer Chris DeFaria, Mitchell didn’t tell the studio – which had decreed that shooting in Africa would be too risky – until the boat had left port.

    On location in what may be the world’s oldest desert, top-billed actors Hardy and Charlize Theron struggled to give Miller what he wanted, in large part because of his habit of rolling film in bursts of a few seconds at a time. In Hardy’s summation, Miller “was trying to explain to us a colour we hadn’t seen yet”. (Margaret Sixel, Fury Road’s editor and Miller’s spouse, would win an Oscar for her work on the film.)

    In the years since he’d been cast as Max, Hardy’s star had risen, and his erratic, waiting-for-inspiration-to-come method did not endear him to the punctual and disciplined Theron. (She’s candid here about her admiration for Miller, her frustration at the shoot’s chaotic workflow, and her disgust at producer Mitchell’s indulgence of Hardy’s tardiness and fits of temper.) Still more conflict came from the movie’s off-screen nemesis, Warner Bros President Jeff Robinov. After months of delays and cost overruns, Robinov forced Miller to wrap without having shot the movie’s ending – or its beginning! These scenes would be captured on soundstages in Sydney a year later, by which time Robinov had been fired. Hollywood can be as unforgiving as The Wasteland.

    The forbidding environment, along with Miller’s insistence that Fury Road’s astonishing action beats be performed by non-digital, flesh-and-blood “stunties” atop real, full-size gas-guzzling vehicles, gave the picture a danger and verisimilitude that’s all but extinct from blockbusters in the Marvel era. Buchanan’s book will give even Fury Road’s most ardent admirers new reasons to celebrate Miller & Co’s singular achievement – and studio bean-counters new reasons to say no the next time a stubborn visionary asks them to cut a nine-figure check.

    Osaka survives Stephens to launch Indian Wells return

    INDIAN WELLS, UNITED STATES (AFP) – Four-time Grand Slam champion Naomi Osaka wouldn’t be blown off course in her return to Indian Wells, outlasting Sloane Stephens 3-6, 6-1, 6-2 in a blockbuster first-round clash.

    Japan’s Osaka, playing her first tournament since a third-round exit at the Australian Open saw her plummet out of the top 80 in the world rankings, was a break down at 0-2 in the third set but won the last six games to secure the victory over former US Open champion Stephens at the WTA and ATP Masters event.

    In gusting California desert winds, Osaka saved three break points in the third game of the third set to launch her final rally of a match that featured a string of momentum shifts.
    She polished it off by breaking Stephens at love in the final game.

    “I felt like I was fighting for my life,” Osaka said. “I was playing against her, I was playing against the wind. It was crazy.

    “I just kept thinking she was going through the same circumstances as me, so I just had to will my self to try as hard as I could.”

    The winds were picking up just as Osaka and Stephens took Stadium Court, with afternoon shadows making things even more difficult in the early going.

    Osaka seemed to settle in quicker, taking a 3-1 lead, but Stephens won five straight games to pocket the opening set before Osaka roared back in the second – winning four games before Stephens managed her lone service hold.

    Naomi Osaka of Japan shakes hands with Sloane Stevens of the United States after defeating her at the BNP Paribas Open at Indian Wells Tennis Garden in Indian Wells, California. PHOTO: AFP

    The marquee first-round match was an outlier at Indian Wells, where all 32 seeded players in both the men’s and women’s draws enjoy first-round byes.

    But Osaka and Stephens weren’t among them, Osaka starting the week ranked 78th in the world and Stephens 38th, although the American came in on the rise after claiming her first title since 2018 in Guadalajara last month. “She’s such a great champion,” Osaka said.

    “Hopefully next time we play it’ll be in more ideal conditions.”

    Osaka advanced to a second-round meeting with 21st seed Veronika Kudermetova. Osaka is back at the prestigious Indian Wells hardcourt tournament for the first time since 2019.

    She won the title in 2018, her first WTA trophy launching a breakout campaign that included the 2018 US Open crown.

    She added a second US Open title to her resume in 2020 and won the Australian Open in 2019 and 2021, but her second Melbourne triumph was followed by well-documented struggles that put a spotlight on the mental health of athletes in a wide range of sports.

    She arrived at Indian Wells saying she felt “at peace” with herself, and confident that she was on the right path despite her early Australian Open exit.

    Should she go deep into the tournament, Osaka won’t have to worry about the current top-ranked players in the world. Number one Ashleigh Barty withdrew saying she hadn’t fully recovered after her Australian Open triumph, and world number two Barbora Krejcikova pulled out late with an elbow injury.

    Ukraine’s Marta Kostyuk saved two match points in an emotional 6-7 (5/7), 7-6 (8/6), 7-5 victory over Ukrainian-born Belgian Maryna Zanevska.

    Kostyuk said that she considered not taking the court as she wrestled with concern over the Russian invasion of her homeland.

    “When I woke up this morning I thought, ‘I’m not going to do it, I can’t win it,’” Kostyuk said.

    “I just tried to find a way. She was playing amazing, amazing tennis. My main goal was to fight and I fought. Everyone is fighting how they fight,” she added. “My job is playing tennis and this is the biggest way I can help in the current situation.”

    Men’s first-round action got underway, with Czech Tomas Machac booking a second-round meeting with newly minted world number one Daniil Medvedev with a 6-3, 7-5 victory over Australian Alexei Popyrin.

    New mobile app feature brings convenience to customers

    James Kon

    Takaful Brunei believes in bringing convenience to customers. When the product is made more approachable, the customers will find it easier to participate and purchase.

    This was said by Takaful Brunei Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer Haji Shahrildin bin Pehin Orang Kaya Lela Utama Dato Paduka Haji Jaya during an interview at the Takaful Brunei’s launch of its new mobile feature yesterday morning.

    He added that in addition to motor takaful, other products include travel takaful, life protection, savings and life savings.

    The mobile feature enables individuals to switch from the current car insurance/takaful provider to TBA’s Motor Takaful, with just a click away from enjoying comprehensive coverage with discounts. It aims to ease customers’ participation and assist in transitioning to a fully digital platform for all takaful needs.

    To register for Takaful Brunei Mobile, Haji Shahrildin said the individual must enter the identity card details to switch from the existing insurance provider to Takaful Brunei.

    Takaful Brunei Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer Haji Shahrildin bin Pehin Orang Kaya Lela Utama Dato Paduka Haji Jaya speaking. PHOTO: JAMES KON

    “We only need an upload of the existing insurance policy. The individual only needs to key in the details, and then we will provide the quotation. If the individual agrees to the quotation, he or she can participate in Takaful Brunei and receive the insurance immediately.”

    On the public response in using the Takaful Brunei Mobile app, he said, “We are happy to share that there are triple digits of customers registering daily. We have close to 40,000 registered users and we are confident that as more customers get used to the mobile application, we will see more registration.”

    On the Musafir (Travel) Takaful with COVID-19 Coverage, he said, “It is in accordance to the latest guidelines to include COVID-19 protection with additional coverage for travel protection such as cancellations or delay due to COVID-19 related causes, personal accidents coverage and medical expenses for COVID-19 and other medical coverage. Individuals can see the details and purchase the takaful in the app for per trip or annual basis.”

    In the future, Haji Shahrildin said, more features and products will be introduced.

    IS confirms its leader was killed in Syria, names new chief

    BEIRUT (AP) – The Islamic State (IS) group confirmed for the first time on Thursday that its leader was killed in a United States (US) strike in northwestern Syria last month and named his successor.

    It was the first official comment from the militant group about its leader Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi since US officials said he blew himself up along with members of his family as American forces raided his hideout in the northwestern Syrian town of Atmeh, near the border with Turkey, on February 3.

    In an audio message released on Thursday, IS spokesman Abu Omar al-Muhajer confirmed the death of the leader, as well as that of the group’s former spokesman, Abu Hamza al-Qurayshi, in the raid.

    Al-Muhajer also said that IS has named a successor to the former leader, identifying him as Abu al-Hassan al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi and saying the late IS chief has chosen him as the next leader.

    There was no immediate information about the new leader and it wasn’t known whether he is Iraqi like his two predecessors, both killed in rebel-held parts of Syria. Last month’s US strike was the second time in three years that the US took out the top IS leader.

    In the US raid, about 50 US special operations forces landed in helicopters and attacked a house in a rebel-held corner of Syria, clashing for two hours with gunmen. In all, 13 people were killed, including six children and four women. Residents described continuous gunfire and explosions that jolted Atmeh near the Turkish border, an area dotted with camps for internally displaced from Syria’s civil war.

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