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By John Kass March 27, 2024 Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker-the perpetually frightened rich kid born on third base thinking he hit a triple-has a big fat political problem. He’s hosting the Democratic National Convention, his big fat coming out party in Chicago, in August. His fantasy? Becoming president of the United States of America. As he’s planning his party, America … Read More
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Lando Norris believes Oscar Piastri is making him a better Formula 1 driver after McLaren scored their first podium of the 2024 season in Melbourne.
Norris took his 14th podium in F1 last time out at the Australian Grand Prix to hold the unwanted record of most podiums without a win.
He was let through by Piastri in the middle of the race, though this likely wouldn’t have changed the result, and both drivers have enjoyed good starts to the season in terms of performance, continuing their impressive second half of 2023.
The McLaren drivers are contracted to stay with the team until at least the end of 2026, with Norris signing a new long-term deal in January.
Piastri is one point ahead of Norris in the standings going into the Japanese GP and was widely touted as one of the best rookies F1 has seen in recent years.
On the Sky Sports F1 Podcast, former F1 strategist Bernie Collins explores whether McLaren’s pitstop strategy prevented Lando Norris from improving on finishing third at the Australian GP
“Last year was already a very tough competition. He (Piastri) has obviously improved, because it’s second year he’s a bit more comfortable,” said Norris on his McLaren team-mate.
“He looked comfortable last year but now he’s probably even more comfortable. He’s doing a strong job and he did since day one last year already, so I don’t expect anything different. He’s going to push me, I’m going to push him and I look forward to our battles together.”
Norris largely had the upper hand on Piastri last year with an impressive run of four consecutive podiums near the end of the season, but it was the Australian who won a race, albeit a Sprint, at the Qatar GP.
McLaren team principal Andrea Stella has been impressed by Piastri’s tyre management, an area which new F1 drivers generally need time to learn.
Catch McLaren driver Oscar Piastri taking on the lie detector test
“Very, very good because in this delicate situation, with graining front and graining rear, he did very well. And the apparent pace difference in the second stint is just because he pitted so early,” said Stella after the Australian GP.
“Actually if you take the final stint, where they pit closer together, then Lando and Oscar go pretty much at the same pace.
“So compared to last year here in Australia and other places at the start of the season, we have gone a long way forward. And it’s extremely encouraging to think that this is only coming at the start of the second season. If you think how much he has to cash in more in terms of improvement, I think it looks very strong for the future from Oscar’s point of view.”
Relive how McLaren went from the back of the pack towards the front of the grid during the 2023 Formula One season
Norris and Piastri are seen as one of the best driver pairings on the grid even with highly-rated drivers at Red Bull, Ferrari and Mercedes.
Driving styles are key to performance in F1 and Norris has previously openly discussed how he likes to “U” the corner, meaning he wants to brake earlier but carry a high minimum speed through the turn.
However, last year’s McLaren was more suited to a “V” corner style, where you brake later but have less minimum speed.
This year’s car is an improvement but McLaren are still weak in the slow-speed corners, where Norris and Piastri both want more mechanical grip.
Asked if Piastri was making him a better driver, Norris added: “He has. I said since the first test we did last year pre-season that he’s been on the pace, and as much as our comments and everything always align and are 99 per cent of the time the same, he still drives in a slightly different way.
“You always want a team-mate where they can push you, and some corners they’ll be doing a different style and it works, so then you can learn about that and use that. And sometimes my style or someone else’s style might work somewhere else. So if your team-mate is good, you’re always going to learn things from them.”
McLaren’s biggest strength is the high-speed corners, with Lewis Hamilton astounded on the radio by Norris’ performance in the fast turns during their battle at the Saudi Arabian GP.
That aspect of McLaren’s car has continued from last year, where McLaren were Red Bull’s closest challengers on high-speed circuits such as Qatar and Suzuka.
Norris and Piastri finished on the podium together at both events but the British driver thinks it will be difficult to repeat their result at the Japanese GP, which will take place next weekend live on Sky Sports F1, after it moved from its usual autumn date to April 5-7.
Team-mate Charles Leclerc and former team-mate Lando Norris share their thoughts on Carlos Sainz following his triumph in Melbourne
“I think if you look back to Australia last year, we were not terrible considering the car that we had. We’ve now come back with a good car and we’ve shown what we can do but I think Australia was always going to be a good weekend for us,” said Norris.
“Suzuka proved that last year. I think they’re kind of similar. You’ve got a lot of high-speed corners. The problem is Ferrari have improved their high speed a lot and that’s where they were struggling last year. So that’s why they’ve been able to take such a good step forward.
“I think we can still have a good weekend. We can still look forward to it. And I would love to say that if we can get two cars on a podium again, it would be a lovely weekend. But I think we have two more cars this year that we’re competing against on these types of circuits, not just Max.”
Look back at some of the most memorable moments to have taken place at the Japanese GP
Stella added: “The positive news is that the faster car was not faster by much at all. We were very close, which I think is encouraging for Japan, in which some of the characteristics that make Australia good for us, take another step further in having a higher ratio of medium and high-speed corners compared to low speed.”
Formula 1’s biggest-ever season continues with the Japanese Grand Prix, live on Sky Sports F1 from April 5-7. Stream every F1 race and more with a NOW Sports Month Membership – No contract, cancel anytime
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Some members of the royal family, particularly the princes and princesses of its younger generation, are easy to slot into that victim role. They are wealthy, famous and photogenic, and their roles in public life make them beloved to many.
Catherine, particularly, was a ready-made focus for a conspiracy narrative, not only because she is glamorous and widely liked in Britain (helped by favorable coverage in the tabloid press), but also because she has been more private about her life than many other royals. “Kate’s signature has been her composure, her discretion,” Arianne Chernock, a historian at Boston University who studies the British Monarchy, told me. “Kate has been a much more private person” than Princess Diana, she said.
The recent conspiracy theories came prepackaged with villains: In the speculative corners of the internet, William was slotted into the villain role that Charles once occupied in coverage of Diana, for instance.
And as an institution, the royal family is, by its nature, particularly vulnerable to faultfinding and even ridicule: it is after all a centuries-old constitutional relic, built on strange rituals and funded by British taxpayers, that many see as anachronistic in a modern parliamentary democracy. At its heart is a paradox: it is a family of human beings held together by relationships and love, but it is also “the firm,” as Prince Philip called it, an institution that ruthlessly pursues its own interests, even at the expense of the royals themselves.
Importantly, there was an existing online subculture devoted to speculating about the royal family’s perceived institutional corruption and mistreatment of its members: supporters of Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, often called the “Sussex squad,” had long combed royal coverage for evidence of wrongdoing. That community became a source of some of the conspiracy narratives that were amplified by social media algorithms and even a Russian-linked disinformation operation. And the scale of online speculation then became a subject of mainstream media coverage, which added further fuel to the fire, a feedback loop that Are said is common.
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For the moment, Maryland officials are focused on crisis management.
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Scottie Scheffler’s bid to become the first player to win three consecutive PGA Tour events for seven years started impressively with a bogey-free 65 during the opening round at the Texas Children’s Houston Open.
The in-form world No 1 has won on his last two appearances, at the Arnold Palmer Invitational and the Players Championship, and is aiming to become the first player since Dustin Johnson in 2017 to win three consecutive tournaments on the tour in his final outing before The Masters, live from April 11-14 on Sky Sports.
Scheffler, who had shaved off his beard since his Sawgrass triumph, started on the 10th and missed his first three greens, but picked up shots at the 13th and 17th to reach the turn at two under.
A birdie on the par-three second was followed by two more in the next three holes as Scheffler finished at five under, one shot behind joint leaders Wilson Furr and Taylor Moore.
“I had a solid round. Bogey-free is always nice, especially around a golf course like this,” Scheffler told reporters. “It is nice to be able to keep the card clean.”
It was the American’s 28th consecutive round under par to start the year, which the PGA Tour has confirmed is the most on record since 1983.
Scheffler had been struggling with a neck problem at Sawgrass, where a closing 64 saw him take the title by one stroke, but hopes he is now on the mend.
“(The) neck is feeling better, body feels good. The off week was good for me to get some rest, get some rehab,” he said.
“I took a couple more days off than I typically would last week, so it was some good recovery time.”
Padraig Harrington hit an incredible shot while on his knees when his ball found a tree on the par-5 16th hole at the Texas Children’s Houston Open.
Moore had started his round with a bogey, but soon built some momentum following an eagle on the par-five third to turn in 31. A couple more birdies saw him home at six under and into the early clubhouse lead.
“After the first hole, just tried to see how many greens I could hit,” Moore said. “Got off to a little bit of a jump start there on 3, chipped in for eagle and birdied 4. Just got into the round.”
Starting his round later on Thursday, Furr punctuated a strong finish with a nearly 20-foot birdie putt to join Moore with a six-under 64.
Furr, a PGA Tour rookie ranked No 278 in the world entering this week, started his round on the back nine before making his move on the front. After a birdie at the third, he holed out from the fifth fairway for an eagle and finished his round birdie-birdie, including his long putt at the par-three ninth.
Davis Riley and Joe Highsmith sat alongside Scheffler in a tie for third, while England’s Aaron Rai was among a group of players from the early starters at four under.
Watch the Texas Children’s Houston Open all live on Sky Sports. Early coverage of the second round begins on Friday from 12.30pm on Sky Sports Golf, ahead of full coverage from 8pm. The Masters is then exclusively live from April 11-14 exclusively on Sky Sports. Stream the PGA Tour, DP World Tour, majors and more with NOW.
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An 8-year-old girl was the sole survivor after a bus carrying 46 people on their way to an Easter weekend pilgrimage in South Africa on Thursday plunged 165 feet from a bridge into a ravine and burst into flames, according to a local department of transportation.
The bus was traveling from Botswana to Moria, a religious pilgrimage site in South Africa’s northeast, when it careered off a bridge winding through the Mmamatlakala mountain pass after the driver “lost control,” the department said in a statement.
Forty-five people, including the driver, were killed.
The girl was receiving medical attention at a nearby hospital, the Limpopo Province department of transportation in South Africa said in a statement. The child was in serious condition, according to another government statement.
“Rescue operations continued until the late hours of Thursday evening, as some bodies were burned beyond recognition, others trapped inside the debris and others scattered on the scene,” the transportation department said.
President Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa called his counterpart in Botswana, President Mokgweetsi Masisi, to extend his condolences, the president’s office said in a statement released late Thursday.
The crash occurred in a scenic, mountainous area of winding roads and sweeping vistas about three and a half hours north of Johannesburg. The road on a high overpass bent sharply over a ravine flanked on both sides by rocky, tree-covered slopes.
The area attracts a lot of traffic on Easter weekend for a pilgrimage to Moria, the headquarters of the Zion Christian Church, one of the largest in the country. Mr. Ramaphosa visited last year’s pilgrimage, the first one since the Covid-19 pandemic. South African border officials had said they were bracing for an influx of visitors for this year’s pilgrimage.
The nationalities of the victims have not yet been determined.
The tragedy struck as South Africans prepared for a four-day weekend, with public holidays on Friday and Monday.
Around major holidays, the South African authorities often take extra measures like police roadblocks and publicity campaigns to help prevent traffic accidents. On Wednesday, South Africa’s minister of transport, Sindisiwe Chikunga, started an Easter road-safety campaign, noting that traffic accidents often spiked during the holiday.
“Easter is a time for celebration, but it is also a time when roads can be more dangerous due to increased traffic and holiday festivities,” the ministry warned.
Africa has historically had among the highest road-fatality rates in the world, according to data from the World Bank and the World Health Organization.
South Africa had more than 12,400 road fatalities in 2022, the most recent year for which statistics are available. The Automobile Association of South Africa called the traffic deaths a “national crisis” in a statement released last year. The association argued that the government needed to invest more in road safety and to enforce traffic laws better.
“Unless these two issues are dealt with, our country’s abysmal road safety situation will never improve,” it said.
Russell Goldman contributed reporting from New York.
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Governments at every level ought to cap public-sector wages and benefits at private-sector comparables.
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Padraig Harrington hit an incredible shot while on his knees when his ball found a tree on the par-5 16th hole at the Texas Children’s Houston Open.
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Gang violence has killed more than 1,500 people in Haiti so far this year, the United Nations human rights office reported on Thursday, the result of what it described as a “cataclysmic situation” in the country.
Corruption, impunity and poor governance, together with increasing levels of gang violence, have brought the Caribbean nation’s state institutions “close to collapse,” the agency said.
The U.N. human rights office reported that gang violence had left 1,554 people dead and 826 injured this year, as of March 22, A new report released by the agency described a surge in sexual violence by gang members, including rapes of women, often after having witnessed the killing of their husbands.
There is also widespread, deadly vigilantism, with community groups — some calling themselves “self-defense brigades” — attacking people suspected of petty crime or gang affiliation. Last year, 528 people were reported killed in that way, and 59 more so far this year, the U.N. said.
Armed gangs have taken control of most of the capital, Port-au-Prince, destroying police stations and government offices, as well as looting banks and hospitals, and killing and kidnapping dozens of people. The violence spurred the resignation of Prime Minister Ariel Henry, who became stranded outside the country in early March.
William O’Neill, a U.N. human rights expert who has worked extensively in Haiti, told a news conference in New York on Thursday that the current situation was the worst violence he had seen in Haiti since the early 1990s military dictatorship, when rapes and execution were commonly used against opponents of the government.
“The numbers are all going very much in the wrong direction, very quickly,” he said.
Haitians are trapped in “an open prison,” cut off from the world by air, land and sea, Mr. O’Neill said. Leaving their homes to go to the market “is a life-threatening venture for them,” he said.
U.N. officials are warning that the Haitian police may not be able to resist the onslaught of the gangs much longer. “I don’t know how much longer Haitians can wait,” said Mr. O’Neill.
The State Department announced this week it was sending $10 million in equipment, including weapons and ammunition, to Haitian security forces “as they fight to protect people and critical infrastructure against organized and targeted gang attacks.”
The head of the U.N. human rights office in Haiti, Arnaud Royer, said in an interview that only 600 to 700 Haitian police officers were currently working in Port-au-Prince, with only 9,000 police active across the whole country, less than half the U.N.’s recommended policing level. Against the gangs, the police are outnumbered and outgunned.
“It’s nearly over for the police. They are on the edge,” said Mr. Royer. “Morale is extremely low, and they cannot keep up with all alerts they have been receiving. There is nobody who is safe now in this city,” he added.
The police were up against gangs “who have demonstrated extensive sophisticated weapons capabilities,” Lewis Galvin, a senior Americas analyst at Janes, the defense intelligence firm, said in an email, including various makes of assault rifles as well as sniper rifles equipped with hollow-point ammunition.
An international arms embargo has failed to block the supply of illegal weapons and ammunition getting into Haiti, the U.N. report said. “It is shocking that despite the horrific situation on the ground, arms keep still pouring in,” Volker Turk, the U.N. human rights chief, said in a statement on Thursday. “I appeal for a more effective implementation of the arms embargo,” he added.
In a rare public appearance via a video statement on Thursday, Frantz Elbe, the head of the Haitian National Police force, tried to reassure the population, standing before fellow officers and wearing a protective vest.
“Our society is going through a political crisis linked to a security crisis that the country has never experienced before,” he said, vowing that the police would “continue the fight so that you return to your neighborhoods and to your family.”
Amid the ongoing violence, the creation of a presidential transitional council has been delayed after more than two weeks of negotiations. The council will be tasked with appointing an acting prime minister to head a new government and hold new elections, while also paving the way for the deployment of a U.N.-backed international police mission. But the makeup of the body has been delayed after several names were withdrawn because of personal security fears and ethical issues.
While the violence in Port-au-Prince had subsided somewhat in recent days, local humanitarian agencies have reported a shortage of food and fuel after the capital’s main port was shut down. Several countries, including the United States, Canada and France, have evacuated hundreds of stranded citizens on emergency flights.
The World Food Program said this week that Haiti was now suffering its worst levels of food insecurity on record after the gangs took over farmland and blocked the roads in and out of the capital, extorting people on buses and trucks delivering goods.
Andre Paultre contributed reporting.
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In October, when Robert F. Kennedy Jr. abandoned his primary challenge to Joe Biden and instead launched an independent candidacy, the initial conventional wisdom was that he might hurt Donald Trump more than Biden.
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