Sunday, May 14, 2017
South Korea’s Si Woo Kim wins Players Championship
Facing calamity at the scary 18th hole after shanking his mid-iron second shot into a palmetto bush, Poulter dropped out under penalty. Hundreds of thousands of dollars and scores of precious world ranking points were disappearing before his eyes.
From trying to chase down the nerveless 21 year old Korean Si Woo Kim, Poulter was now in danger of undoing so much of his earlier good work.
It was at this point Poulter summoned up the Ryder Cup warrior within. He played the 90 yard shot so well it carried over the trees in front of him and finished inches from the hole for as good a bogey five as you’ll ever see.
It gave him a share of second place with South African Louis Oosthuizen and emphatically takes care of business in terms of keeping his PGA Tour card for next year. On Monday morning, he can look forward to a leap of more than 100 places in the world rankings from his present placing of 197th.
‘It feels great to be back, and particularly following one of the worst shots you’ll ever see with a pretty good one,’ said Poulter, referring to his miraculous escape at the last.
As for the victor, Kim became the youngest winner of this flagship PGA Tour event in terrific fashion, shooting a last round 69 to win by three. Everyone else in the field had at least two bogeys while he had none.
FINAL LEADERBOARD
Source: South Korea’s Si Woo Kim wins Players Championship | Daily Mail Online
Paris shooting: several injured, gunman fired into crowd sparks new terror fears
AT least three people have been shot during an incident on the outskirts of Paris, with unconfirmed reports of one fatality.
Details are still emerging but French news outlets say shots rang out in a crowd in Dammarie-les-Lys, in the Plaine du Lys neighbourhood, late on Sunday afternoon local time.
Some 40 “young people” had gathered in a town square in the city’s southeast but it’s not clear why, French website La République 77 reported.
Dammarie-les-Lys is said to have a recent history of civil unrest and clashes between locals and authorities. Police are at the scene, according to the Daily Star.
The quiet enclave was only recently given a dedicated police presence, the outlet reports.
It comes on the day that France’s new president Emmanuel Macron was inaugurated.
The country remains in a declared state of emergency, following a series of terrorist attacks in the past few years.
It’s not believed the shooting is related to terrorism.
More to come
Source: Paris shooting: several injured, gunman fired into crowd | Perth Now
Spanish Grand Prix: Ricciardo gets first podium as Hamilton edges Vettel in thriller
Daniel Ricciardo has landed his first podium finish of 2017, finishing third in the Spanish Grand Prix.
Ricciardo finished behind victor Lewis Hamilton, who edged Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel in a Barcelona thriller to cut the German’s Formula One championship lead to six points with a quarter of the season completed.
The Australian was the only driver not lapped by the top two in a race after inheriting third from Valtteri Bottas after the Finn’s engine expired.
Hamilton’s 55th career win was hard-fought and tense, with Ferrari’s Vettel seizing the lead from the Mercedes number one at the start and in the hunt all the way as the tyre strategies played out.
Hamilton took the chequered flag 3.4 seconds clear of the German, who did all he could to beat him with a thrilling move to pass the Briton’s team-mate Valtteri Bottas that will be replayed for some time to come.
“That’s how racing should be and I loved it,” said a happy Hamilton, who raced side by side with Vettel at turn one after the German’s final pitstop.
“This is what the sport needs to be every single race … to have that close battle with him, a four-times champion, is awesome.”
Vettel now has 104 points to Hamilton’s 98.
The Briton, who made the move stick seven laps later and then made his tyres last to the finish, had sounded strangely breathless during the race when fretting about a strategy that turned out to be spot on.
“Lewis saved the race with an incredible drive. The strategy was great, but it was the driver who won it,” said Mercedes F1’s non-executive chairman Niki Lauda.
Hamilton endures poor start
The win was Hamilton’s second in Barcelona and ended a run of 10 different winners in 10 years.
“I was eight seconds ahead and then … I don’t know how we managed to lose that,” said Vettel, who made the most of Hamilton’s poor start.
Bottas, who celebrated his first career victory in Russia two weeks ago, made glancing contact with his compatriot and the impact pitched Raikkonen into Verstappen on the other side, smashing the suspension on both cars.
The 19-year-old Dutch driver, with a legion of fans around the Circuit de Catalunya, shook his fist as the field disappeared in front of him and Raikkonen stopped.
Stewards investigated the incident and decided to take no further action.
Bottas retired 38 laps later, having started with an engine that had already done four races and was hurriedly shoe-horned into the car overnight on Friday after a water leak was discovered.
Spain’s double world champion Fernando Alonso, starting seventh for McLaren after a troubled practice, was forced into the gravel in a tussle with Williams’ Felipe Massa and dropped to 13th. He finished 12th.
The virtual safety car was deployed when Alonso’s team-mate Stoffel Vandoorne broke his car’s suspension in a collision with Massa on lap 34.
Mexican Sergio Perez finished fourth, his 15th successive points finish, for Force India with French rookie team-mate Esteban Ocon fifth.
Germany’s Nico Hulkenberg was sixth for Renault, with compatriot Pascal Wehrlein eighth for Sauber after a five-second time penalty was applied — the Swiss team’s first points of the season — and Carlos Sainz seventh for Toro Rosso.
Russian Daniil Kvyat was eighth for Toro Rosso and French driver Romain Grosjean took the final point for Haas.
Photos show bullets fired into Manus Island detention accommodation, not just air: Amnesty
Human rights group Amnesty International has found the Australian Government downplayed the danger asylum seekers on Manus Island faced when the detention centre was attacked by soldiers from the Papua New Guinea Defence Force.
Amnesty analysed photos and videos from the centre purportedly taken during the attack on Good Friday — April 14.
They showed bullets were fired into the accommodation area of the centre that night — directly contradicting the Government’s claims, in a statement from the Department of Immigration and Border Protection, that they were fired into the air, the report found.
“I think we can say with a degree of certainty now that multiple shots were fired into the centre and that put people at risk,” researcher Kate Schuetze said.
“What we’ve had here was a very serious incident of violence outside the centre.
“It’s not the first shooting which has occurred at the Manus Island centre and it’s of course the second time now that the centre has been under attack from the outside, which really proves that the Australian Government and the Papua New Guinean Government cannot protect the safety of refugees and asylum seekers there.”
The human rights group said it had analysed 21 photos and six videos purportedly taken from inside the centre the night of the attack.
“The digital experts used reverse image search tools and corroboration with known photos of the centre to geolocate the images,” the report said.
“A military expert also reviewed the images and video”
Ms Schuetze said it appeared the Government sought to minimise the perceived risk to asylum seekers.
“We’ve had a lot of information come out very quickly, trying to downplay not only the incident and the risk that refugees were put in, but also to try and deflect attention from the actual causes around what happened,” she said.
‘Ultimately a matter for PNG Government’, Immigration Department says
The Department of Immigration and Border Protection said Amnesty International did not consult it about the report or seek a response.
“Consistent with previous Amnesty International reports, the Department has not been consulted nor provided an advance copy of this report,” it said in a statement.
“While this is ultimately a matter for the PNG Government, we cannot comment on a report we have not seen.”
Australians warned not to be complacent on ransomware threat
More Australians could find they have become victims of a massive global cyber attack when they turn on their computers this morning, the Federal Government is warning.
Key points:
- At least one Australian company hit, possibility more, says Government
- Europol spokesman fears attack not over as “numbers are going up”
- Concerns victims could grow when people turn on their computers on Monday morning
The attack, which locks computers and holds users’ files for ransom, hit 200,000 victims in 150 countries over the weekend.
The European Union’s police agency has also warned the number of people affected by the cyberattack, may grow today as people return to work and switch on their computers.
One Australian company appears to have been targeted by the attacks, with the possibility of more, said Assistant Minister for cyber-security Dan Tehan.
“We are now getting reports that there might be two other incidents so that would bring the total number of incidents in Australia to three,” he told ABC News.
“What we are seeing is the exact same features that have occurred overseas: a freezing of their IT systems and a ransomware note.”
Mr Tehan said the attacks were on small- to medium-sized private sector businesses and that government departments had been told to ensure they were protected.
“This is absolutely a wake-up call,” he said.
“We have to understand that ransomware costs the Australian economy $1 billion a year conservatively.”
Britain’s healthcare system was thrown into chaos by the ransomware attack on the weekend.
On Sunday the UK Government announced 97 per cent of its hospital were back to normal after the attack locked , but Europol director Rob Wainwright said he feared the attack was not over and that the number of attacks would continue to grow.
“The global reach is unprecedented. The latest count is over 200,000 victims in at least 150 countries, and those victims, many of those will be businesses, including large corporations,” he said.
“At the moment, we are in the face of an escalating threat. The numbers are going up, I am worried about how the numbers will continue to grow when people go to work and turn [on] their machines on Monday morning.”
Attackers used encryption algorithms to lock files and demanded owners pay a ransom to access those files.
Mr Wainwright said what was unique about the attack was that the ransomware was used in combination with “a worm functionality” so the infection spread automatically.
New versions of the worm are expected, cyber security experts have warned, as the extent of the damage from Friday’s attack remains unclear.
Monday is expected to be a busy day, especially in Asia which may not have seen the worst of the impact yet, as companies and organisations turn on their computers.
“Expect to hear a lot more about this tomorrow morning when users are back in their offices and might fall for phishing emails [or other as yet unconfirmed ways the worm may propagate],” Singapore-based security researcher Christian Karam said.
Europol spokesman Jan Op Gen Oorth said it was too early to say who was behind the onslaught and what their motivation was.
Mr Oorth said the main challenge was the fast-spreading capabilities of the malware, but added that, so far, not many people had paid the ransoms the virus demanded.
Cyber security research experts warned against giving in to criminal syndicates in order to have data unlocked.
Director for Centre for Cyber Security Research at Deakin University, Professor Yang Xiang, said it was not ethical to pay ransom for data.
“If you keep paying ransom it’s actually helping attackers to grow the industry,” he told the ABC.
‘You’re only safe if you patch ASAP’
The attack is believed to be the biggest online extortion attack ever recorded, with victims including Britain’s hospital network and Germany’s national railway.
How did the attack occur?
- Attack appeared to be caused by a self-replicating piece of software that takes advantage of vulnerabilities in older versions of Microsoft Windows, security experts say
- It spreads from computer to computer as it finds exposed targets.
- Ransom demands start at $US300 and increase after two hours, a security researcher at Kaspersky Lab says
- Security holes were disclosed several weeks ago by TheShadowBrokers, a mysterious group that has repeatedly published what it says are hacking tools used by the NSA
- Shortly after that disclosure, Microsoft announced it had already issued software “patches” for those holes
- But many companies and individuals have not installed the fixes yet or are using older versions of Windows that the company no longer supports and for which no patch was available
As terrifying as the unprecedented global “ransomware” attack was, cybersecurity experts said it was nothing compared to what might be coming — especially if companies and governments do not make major fixes.
Had it not been for a young cybersecurity researcher’s accidental discovery of a so-called “kill switch”, the malicious software likely would have spread much farther and faster that it did on Friday.
The 22-year-old — identified online only as MalwareTech — partnered with 28-year-old research engineer Darien Huss to register a domain name and redirect the attacks to Malware Tech’s server to activate the “kill switch”.
That halted the ransomware’s infections by creating what is called a “sinkhole”, which prevents botnets from communicating with their command-and-control servers.
But MalwareTech said sinkholing would only stop the spread until hackers removed the domain check and tried again. He said it was “incredibly important that any unpatched systems are patched as quickly as possible”.
“You’re only safe if you patch ASAP,” he warned.
This is already believed to be the biggest online extortion attack ever recorded, disrupting computers that run factories, banks, government agencies and transport systems in nations as diverse as Russia, Ukraine, Brazil, Spain, India and the US.
Security experts tempered the alarm bells by saying that widespread attacks are tough to pull off.
This one worked because of a “perfect storm” of conditions, including a known and highly dangerous security hole in Microsoft Windows, tardy users who did not apply Microsoft’s March software fix, and malware designed to spread quickly once inside university, business or government networks.
NSW RSL to undergo largest-ever probe into fraud allegations
The NSW RSL will be the subject of a royal commission-style inquiry with powers to compel witnesses to appear and seize evidence, with state Charities Minister Matt Kean today announcing the Government will create the most wide-ranging probe ever to hit the venerable institution.
Key points:
- Probe will run as NSW Police fraud investigators and Australia’s charity watchdog continue their inquiries
- Whistleblower welcomes probe, says culture of entitlement out of control
- Scandals anger veterans, young veteran involvement aims to make way for new era
The inquiry, to be headed by former NSW Supreme Court justice Patricia Bergin SC, follows allegations of rorting and embezzlement at the RSL’s NSW branch.
Those allegations have already sparked a NSW police fraud investigation and an inquiry by Australia’s charities watchdog.
“We will get to the bottom of these allegations once and for all,” Mr Kean said.
“These are serious complaints and the fact that they’ve allegedly been committed in the name of one of our oldest and most respected institutions is totally unacceptable
“We want to clean up the mess and make sure it never happens again.”
The announcement also comes a fortnight after RSL NSW’s governing body, the state council, sacked chief executive Glenn Kolomeitz, who blew the whistle on the alleged frauds.
The RSL maintains he was terminated due to a breach of contract, a claim Mr Kolomeitz denies.
Speaking for the first time since he was removed from his job, Mr Kolomeitz, a former army lawyer and barrister, told 7.30 he welcomed the inquiry.
“This will set the RSL up for a clearing of the decks and brighter, more transparent future for the organisation to be able to service the escalating needs of generations of veterans,” he said yesterday.
Tonight 7.30 will speak exclusively to Mr Kolomeitz about his 18 months as chief executive at RSL NSW.
