Ahad, 13 Oktober 2013

The Malaysian Insider :: Sports

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Djokovic beats Del Potro in Shanghai thriller

Posted: 13 Oct 2013 07:40 AM PDT

October 13, 2013

Strike the pose... Djokovic wins the Shanghai Masters in style as he demonstrates another prancing move to return a shot to Spaniard Del Potro in today's final. - Reuters pic, October 13, 2013.Novak Djokovic overcame a fierce challenge from Juan Martin del Potro today to defend his Shanghai Masters title with a 6-1, 3-6, 7-6 (7/3) victory, improving his phenomenal winning streak in China to 20 matches.

The Serbian top seed looked set to wrap up the final in double-quick time after a one-sided first set - but the Argentine, who conquered Rafael Nadal in the semi-finals, hit back hard to take the match into a third set tie-break.

Djokovic held his nerve in the shoot-out to win a gripping contest lasting more than two-and-a-half hours for his fifth title of the season.

The victory keeps alive his slim chances of overtaking Nadal in the battle for the year-end number one ranking.

"It was a great experience again in Shanghai with a thrilling performance from both my opponent tonight and myself," said Djokovic, who struck 47 winners in total and was particularly impressive at the net, winning 18 of 19 points.

"I think the tournament had a fantastic final. I'm just very glad to go out as a winner from the court tonight from such a close match."

"I think either one of us could really take the title. I just managed to hold my emotions and I managed to believe in the victory enough in the end to play the right shots at the right time," added the Serb, who also won last week's China Open in Beijing.

Del Potro came into the final against the top seed brimming with confidence after his semi-final demolition of Nadal, but was immediately on the back foot in breezy conditions at the Qizhong Tennis Center.

The 26-year-old Serb established an iron grip on the first set with a double break, dictating the play and not allowing the sixth seed to produce the thundering groundstrokes that dispatched Nadal.

The giant Del Potro avoided an embarrassing "bagel" to loud cheers, but could not prevent Djokovic, playing with controlled aggression, from sealing the set.

But in the second set the Argentine, the winner of last week's Japan Open, rediscovered the kind of form that he found to see off Nadal, breaking at his first opportunity in a bizarre game in which his Serbian opponent appeared to have trouble keeping his balance.

Djokovic engineered a golden opportunity to hit back, earning three break points in the seventh game, but former US Open champion Del Potro upped his game to hold, going on to level the match.

Both players had chances to break in the third set, but as the match edged towards its climax it was Del Potro who was facing more pressure on his serve. He was forced to dig deep to save two match points in the 10th game.

The Serb opened a 4-2 lead in the tie-break, going on to seal victory with a backhand winner down the line.

"The match was really close and I think Nole played unbelievable points in the tie-break," said Del Potro, who added that poor serving was partly to blame for his slow start.

"I was lucky in the second (set) because I broke very early," he added. "The crowd helped me because they want to watch a longer match, for sure... I think I played another really good match. But today I lost."

Djokovic, displaced this week by Nadal as world number one, now has 15 Masters titles.

Del Potro, 25, has qualified for the elite season-ending World Tour Finals in London, featuring the season's top eight players.

Other confirmed qualifiers are Nadal, Djokovic and Spain's David Ferrer. - AFP, October 13, 2013.

Spain’s Pedrosa wins Malaysian MotoGP

Posted: 13 Oct 2013 04:13 AM PDT

October 13, 2013

And there he comes... Dani Pedrosa is first to cross the finishing line at the Sepang circuit in the Malaysian MotoGP today. - Reuters pic, October 13, 2013.Spain's Dani Pedrosa won a hard-fought Malaysian Grand Prix today, followed by MotoGP championship leader Marc Marquez for a Honda one-two.

The Spanish teammates came in ahead of defending champion and compatriot Jorge Lorenzo on the Yamaha.

The win marks Pedrosa's third victory of the season. He also triumphed in Malaysia last year.

"It's a great feeling to be back... I came back strong," said Pedrosa, who crashed out in the last race in Spain after rookie Marquez made contact with him.

"Obviously for the championship with Marc finishing always on the podium, it's hard to take back any points," Pedrosa, who still trails Marquez and Lorenzo in the standings, added.

It was a hard-fought race for all three.

Marquez was on pole, but Lorenzo took the lead after starting from fourth place. He in turn was overtaken by Pedrosa, who started from fifth, in lap 5.

This sparked a thrilling battle between Lorenzo and Marquez for second place. The 20-year-old, who Lorenzo knocked once, eventually gained the upper hand with 11 laps in the 20-lap race to go.

Lorenzo's teammate, seven-time world champion Valentino Rossi of Italy, finished fourth after starting from second place.

He was followed by Spanish Honda rider Alvaro Bautista, while British Yamaha rider Cal Crutchlow, who started third, fell back to sixth.

"It was a nice battle with Jorge. I enjoyed it a lot," Marquez said.

"I tried to reduce that gap (to race leader Pedrosa) but I saw that it was too much risk, and the target of this weekend was to finish in front of Jorge," he said, adding that extending his championship lead was "most important".

"I prefer to take that 20 points (for a second place finish). I think about the world championship too."

With three races remaining, Marquez tops the standings with 298 points, followed by Lorenzo at 255 points and Pedrosa at 244 points.

Lorenzo conceded he would aim to retain the season's second place with the Hondas outperforming the Yamahas, especially in warm weather.

"It was a great battle (with Marquez)... He was strong. He didn't lose the concentration. He deserved the second place," the title defender said.

"We hope in Phillip Island (in Australia) with colder temperatures and a more flowing track without so much braking, we can fight for the win and also to keep the second place in the championship because the first one seems more difficult now," he said.

Though rain clouds hung overhead and a strong wind blew, today's race remained dry with temperatures around 30°C.

The 5.5-kilometre Sepang circuit in the tropical humid Southeast Asian country is one of the season's longest and most demanding.

Italian MotoGP rider Marco Simoncelli was killed in a crash during the race two years ago. A Malaysian racer and marshal died in an accident last month.

Race officials say the track is safe, describing the accidents as "tragic" one-offs.

Last year, a torrential downpour caused the race to be cut short.

Malaysia is the 15th race of the season. The riders will now proceed to Australia, followed by Japan and the final race in Valencia. - AFP, October 13, 2013.

Kredit: http://www.themalaysianinsider.com

The Malaysian Insider :: Features

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Nigeria’s Adichie says bestseller helped recall painful past

Posted: 13 Oct 2013 12:44 AM PDT

October 13, 2013

Nigeria's Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (pic), author of the bestseller "Half of a Yellow Sun", said writing a novel about the civil war which devastated her home region helped people connect with a past that most no longer discussed.

A month after the film based on "Half of a Yellow Sun" premiered, Adichie, 36, reflected on the impact of the book about Nigeria's 1967-1970 Biafra War, which left more than one million people dead after the writer's home southeastern region tried to secede.

"I have heard from many people who have read 'Half of a Yellow Sun' and said that the novel for them was an entry point into their history," Adichie told AFP at the Lagos office of her Nigerian publisher.

She said her generation of Igbos, the majority ethnic group in the southeast, "grew up knowing that this terrible thing had happened and deeply affected our families," but those who lived through the war did not talk about it.

"My mother would say 'I used to have this before the war' or my father talked a lot about his father, my grandfather, whom I never met because he died in 1969 in a refugee camp."

"The war was always there. I knew agha. Agha is war (in Igbo). There was always 'agha.' But I didn't know the details," she said.

"I think this is what happens for a generation that experiences trauma, that usually, it's the next generation who can start to talk about it," she continued.

"I don't think I could have written this book if I had lived in Biafra."

The novel has sold 800,000 copies in English and has been translated into 35 other languages.

As for the film, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 8, Adichie said she needed to stay away from the production "to preserve (her) sanity."

"It's a book I am very proud of but it's also a book that has a lot of emotional meaning for me... Every page of that book matters to me," she said.

"The thought that I would have to somehow oversee the chopping up and taking out large chunks of something that I had spent six years of my life slaving on, I thought it would be very difficult."

'Different ways of being black in the US'

Adichie's latest novel, "Americanah," published in May, partly explores the nuances of African American culture from the perspective of an African woman who is new to America.

It focuses on the character Ifemelu, a Nigerian university student in the US.

The title is a word Nigerians use to chide people who go "to the US and come back Americanised," Adichie said.

"They affect an American accent or they affect American manners... So it's a very playful way of saying "oh look how you've changed just because you went to America".

Her hair covered in an embroidered gold ankara and wearing a sleeveless blue suit, Adichie, who studied in the US and still lives there part-time, said the novel explores the dynamic of a black person in America who does not "have the history of black Americans".

"The expectation on you (is) that you are supposed to get it... And you don't, you really don't!" she said.

"I was expected to understand that a joke about watermelon was racist, and a joke about fried chicken was racist," she said, referring to stereotypes about African American cuisine which have been used in US popular culture to denigrate black people.

"And I was just confused, I thought: 'I don't see what's wrong with watermelon and chicken!'"

"When I started to read and ask questions, I started to understand these things intellectually, but there's still things that you can't reach emotionally because it's not your history," she said.

This, she added, is her "way to say that there are different ways of being black in the US".

'This is mine! I am home!'

Her parents were lecturers at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka in the southeast, the country's first indigenous university founded shortly after independence from Britain in 1960.

Adichie went to the US for university and described her first visit home after four years abroad, surveying the "jumble" of rusty roofs visible from the window as the plane descended, a jarring contrast from the orderly planning of many American cities.

"There was just an unplannedness about it all that made me so happy," she said. "I just thought: this is mine! I am home!"

Soon the romance of arriving in Lagos, sub-Saharan Africa's largest city, started to fade and the young post-graduate grew increasingly irritated by the city's less appealing traits, including terrible sanitation and far, far too many cars on the road.

"The traffic was crazy. I was so scared... And then I had my family members laughing at me." – AFP, October 13, 2013.

Kashmir rappers battle to be heard

Posted: 13 Oct 2013 12:24 AM PDT

October 13, 2013

Shayan Nabi wax lyrical about the highs and lows of life in Kashmir. - AFP pic, October 13, 2013.Being a hip hop artist in one of the most militarised and sensitive places on the planet is not easy, but MC Kash is determined to be heard from his home in the Himalayas.

The 23-year-old lives in Srinagar, the main city of Indian-administered Kashmir which has suffered 20 years of separatist insurgency and decades as a focus of fighting between India and Pakistan.

Like many local Muslims, he chafes under restrictions imposed by an estimated 700,000 Indian security forces, with heavy-handed policing, human rights abuses and disappearances feeding his resentment.

After his first song I Protest" went viral in 2010, a year of huge and deadly demonstrations against Indian rule that saw 120 people shot dead, MC Kash saw the studio where he recorded it raided by police.

He says he learned the lesson.

"I have been shifting from this underground studio to that underground studio... After we finish recording we delete everything from the studio owner's computer. The studio owners know that if you record this guy the state's wrath will be upon you," he told AFP.

Performing isn't easy either.

There are no public venues where performances can be independently staged and the ones owned by the government are tightly regulated by the authorities.

"No matter what, they could raid my studio, they could raid my house, as long as I'm doing right to my people and my country, as long as my conscience is satisfied, I'm glad and I'll keep doing it," Kash, whose real name is Roushan Illahi, told AFP.

His popularity has inspired others to join in, like Shayan Nabi, a 23-year-old student whose gentle and calm personality gives way to anger when he gets in front of a mic.

He grew up during the darkest days of the armed rebellion against Indian rule that began in 1989 but has petered out in recent years, with violence now at a two-decade low.

He says he was a bystander until 2010 when he witnessed hundreds of thousands of Kashmiris take to the streets in the anti-India protests of that summer, which saw security forces firing live ammunition at crowds.

"As news of youth dying came in everyday I started reading history and writing songs to protest against what had been happening to my people," Shayan said.

"If two people outside Kashmir get to know about my music, what's happening here, they can connect to this place, they can at least raise their voices like I do," says Shayan.

Many Kashmiri rappers revealed to AFP that plain-clothes police officers visited their homes on several occasions making "intimidating" enquiries about them and asking them to report to police stations.

Though modern-day rap has its roots in the United States, Kashmir has a long tradition of protest through poetry and music.

Before 1947 when the former princely state was divided between India and Pakistan as the two countries won freedom from Britain, Kashmiri Muslim artists used rhyming spoken word called Laddi Shah to ridicule their Hindu rulers.

Inspector general of police, Abdul Gani Mir, denies that his officers are trying to muzzle dissent by keeping tabs on local rappers.

"A lot of things do happen in the society and it is our mandate to verify things. If policemen visited their homes and tried to verify, there's no harm in that and it doesn't amount to harassment," Mir told AFP.

Khurram Pervez, a prominent human rights defender, says young Kashmiris are trying to fill a "resistance space" after Indian forces succeeded in largely crushing the armed rebellion in recent years.

That young people are channelling their frustration into music instead of violence is a positive development, but Pervez is critical of "repressive tactics" being used to silence artistic dissent.

"The government is afraid of any such thing that brings people together here. Anything that binds people, whether it is music, art or writing," says Pervez. "The government is scared that they will get the international community to attend to the violations here."

Last month in Srinagar, music was back in the headlines for the wrong reasons after the German embassy in New Delhi organised a performance by the 70-member Bavarian Orchestra conducted by Indian-born maestro Zubin Mehta.

The "peace concert," intended to showcase the picturesque Kashmir's tourism potential, was attended by about 2,000 invitees but became embroiled in controversy after local separatists accused Germany of endorsing Indian sovereignty in Kashmir.

It gave MC Kash a new subject and inspired his angry protest number Orchestra of War (Beethoven Remix).

"you selling peace? you stupid? in a land that's still disputed

your vision's all polluted if you can't see the persecuted....

you selling peace we ain't buying it

this is Orchestra of War." - AFP, October 20, 2013.

Kredit: http://www.themalaysianinsider.com

The Malaysian Insider :: Showbiz

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Earth couldn’t handle my serial killer film, says award-winning Tarantino

Posted: 12 Oct 2013 06:20 PM PDT

October 13, 2013

Two-time Oscar winner and Hollywood director Quentin Tarantino (R) gestures to fans while South Korean director Bong Joon-Ho (L) at the 18th Busan International Film Festival (BIFF) in Busan on October 11, 2013. - AFP Relaxnews pic, October 13, 2013.Two-time Oscar winner Quentin Tarantino today revealed he was afraid to make any film about a serial killer, because such a production would "reveal my sickness far too much".

"The planet Earth couldn't handle my serial killer movie," claimed the American director, who has a long history of ultra-violence in his films, from breakthrough box office smash Pulp Fiction (1995) through to last year's Django Unchained.

Both those films which won the 50-year-old Academy Awards for best original screenplay.

Tarantino also penned the Oliver Stone-directed Natural Born Killers (1994), but disowned that film.

"I hate that f****** movie," he said. "If you like my stuff, don't watch that movie."

Tarantino was making a surprise visit to the 18th Busan International Film Festival (BIFF) in South Korea, the first time he has attended the region's largest cinematic gathering.

He took to the stage alongside Korean director Bong Joon-ho for an Open Talk lasting just over an hour in front of around 1,500 fans.

In a rambling, expansive and entertaining exchange, the filmmaker explained why it was that he had jumped from genre to genre throughout his career, touching on everything from westerns to war.

"When I make a film I am hoping to reinvent the genre a little bit," said Tarantino. "I just do it my way. I make my own little Quentin versions of them.

"I consider myself a student of cinema. It's almost like I am going for my professorship in cinema and the day I die is the day I graduate. It is a lifelong study."

Tarantino was full of praise for Bong, whose apocalyptic English-language thriller Snowpiercer has been a $60 million (RM190 million) box office smash in South Korea and is being lined up for a global release.

"Bong has that thing that the 1970s's [Steven] Spielberg had in that he can do many different types of stories but there is always this level of comedy and entertainment that is there," he said, adding that even Bong's The Host (2006), about a toxic monster, had "wonderful human moments".

BIFF comes to a close Saturday.- AFP Relaxnews, October 13, 2013.

Captain Phillips aims to hijack awards season

Posted: 12 Oct 2013 04:23 PM PDT

October 13, 2013

Tom Hanks (centre) and Barkhad Abdi (right) in a scene from Captain Phillips. - October 12, 2013.Forrest Gump and Castaway star Tom Hanks again plays an everyday guy thrust into exceptional circumstances in Captain Phillips, a true story of a cargo ship hijacked by Somali pirates.

Directed in hyper-realistic style by British director Paul Greengrass - whose United 93 reconstructed a 9/11 hijacking drama - the movie looks like a contender possibly for multiple Oscar nominations.

The film, based on A Captain's Duty, the autobiography by the real Captain Richard Phillips, tells the story of the US-flagged Maersk Alabama, attacked off the coast of Somalia by pirates in 2009, the first American ship to be hijacked in 200 years.

After their bid to to take the entire crew hostage fails, the pirates instead kidnap only the captain, taking him off into a sealed lifeboat.

The story, which played out in real time in April 2009, ends with the heroic captain being saved by US Navy SEALS, and three of the four pirates killed. The other was arrested and brought to justice in the United States.

Greengrass, using his trademark documentary style, treats the story as a thriller, focusing on the tension between Captain Phillips and the pirate leader Muse (played by Barkhad Abdi).

"What moments of crisis do is create a ballet of tension building up. You have to capture that ratcheting up, as accurately as you can," the Briton said ahead of the film's US release this Friday.

"If you can do it, you can get something that's underneath that, which is common humanity and compassion," he added.

The director, who also made two of the blockbuster Bourne movies, prevented the actors playing the four pirates from meeting those playing the crew before the assault scenes were filmed, to increase tension.

Some of the Somali actors, unknowns who had turned up for an open casting for the film, only met Hanks for the first time when playing those scenes.

"It gave an edge to the actors and gave an edge to the crew," said Greengrass.

"It helped Tom too, because he didn't know them and they didn't know him, so there's no sort of intimacy. They were antagonists at that moment. And that you could really tell on screen," he added.

Hanks, recalling the scene, said: "Inhabiting a character and staying on story, and on point, while maintaining that character, is something that not everybody can do.

"And these guys, and particularly Barkhad, were evident from the get-go ...there was true terror in the eyes of all the white guys that are on board the ship when they came on to the bridge that time," added the actor, who won back-to-back Oscars in 1994 and 1995 for Philadelphia and Forrest Gump.

Abdi, who was seven when his family emigrated to the United States, one year after civil war erupted in Somalia, said: "It was really scary.

"I hadn't seen Tom until that first scene. The fear was all natural. That night I was nervous, because we wanted to meet Tom but we were told that we weren't allowed to see Tom until that scene," he added.

The actor, a former limousine driver, improvised a key line used in the trailer for the movie, when the pirate chief tells Captain Phillips to look him in the eyes.

"I used a lot of imagination. I was improvising. That line came up 'I'm the captain now'. That wasn't in the script," he said.

In real life, Captain Phillips' story is not quite as simple a hero's tale as in the movie; a number of crew have sued him for allegedly ignoring warnings to stay further away from the Somali coast, thereby negligently endangering their lives. - AFP/Relaxnews, October 13, 2013.

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Khalid bidas Anwar, bukan senang kumpul lebihan dana kerajaan negeri

Posted: 13 Oct 2013 02:16 AM PDT

October 13, 2013

Menteri Besar Selangor, Tan Sri Abdul Khalid Ibrahim (gambar) berkata pihaknya mempunyai alasan tersendiri dalam cara membelanjakan lebihan dana kerajaan negeri.

Beliau berkata ia perlu dilakukan dengan tertib agar rakyat tahu tujuan dana itu digunakan.

Proses mengumpulkan lebihan dana kerajaan negeri adalah sesuatu yang sukar dilakukan dan ia memerlukan strategi lebih teliti dalam membelanjakannya, katanya kepada pemberita selepas penyerahan lembu untuk korban sempena Aidiladha di Masjid Kampung Pendamar di sini hari ini.

Beliau berkata kritikan yang diterima daripada Ketua Pembangkang Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim pada forum di Petaling Jaya malam tadi yang melabelnya sebagai gagal membelanjakan perolehan negeri dengan baik sebaliknya hanya berbangga dengan lebihan dana itu, dianggap kritikan biasa.

"Pada saya, ia (kritikan) hanya perkara biasa dan saya anggap Anwar ibarat memberi galakan untuk melakukan lebih banyak perbincangan sesama pemimpin agar dapat menjana strategi terbaik menguruskan dana kerajaan negeri," katanya. – Bernama, 13 Oktober, 2013.

Lebih 50% ketua sayap bahagian Umno Perak muka baharu

Posted: 13 Oct 2013 02:07 AM PDT

October 13, 2013
Latest Update: October 13, 2013 05:16 pm

Lebih 50% daripada pemimpin sayap Umno di Perak yang menang pada pemilihan Wanita, Pemuda dan Puteri semalam terdiri daripada muka baharu.

Setiausaha Perhubungan Umno negeri Datuk Mohd Khusairi Abdul Talib berkata sebanyak 17 ketua Pemuda adalah muka baharu, 13 ketua Wanita dan 16 ketua Puteri.

Mohd Khusairi berkata tujuh ketua Pemuda iaitu di Ipoh Barat, Parit, Lenggong, Bagan Serai, Ipoh Timur, Lumut dan Tanjung Malim mempertahankan jawatan masing-masing.

Bagi Wanita pula, 11 ketua mengekalkan jawatan masing-masing dalam pemilihan kali ini iaitu di Gerik, Padang Rengas, Tambun, Ipoh Timur, Beruas, Tapah, Lumut, Tanjung Malim, Taiping, Parit dan Sungai Siput, katanya.

Beliau berkata pergerakan Puteri menyaksikan lapan ketua Puteri bahagian iaitu Gerik, Ipoh Barat, Batu Gajah, Tapah, Teluk Intan, Bukit Gantang, Sungai Siput dan Kuala Kangsar dipilih semula.

"Dalam pemilihan Umno, keputusan yang dibuat oleh perwakilan kadang-kadang tidak dijangka ia bergantung kepada prestasi calon dan hubungan dengan kepimpinan bahagian," kata Mohd Khusairi kepada pemberita di sini hari ini.

Beliau berkata keputusan perwakilan itu turut mencerminkan hasrat mereka untuk melihat transformasi dalam Umno yang selari dengan kehendak pucuk pimpinan parti.

Proses pemilihan dan pengiraan undi di semua bahagian di negeri ini berjalan lancar dan keputusan pemilihan diterima baik oleh perwakilan, katanya. – Bernama, 13 Oktober, 2013.

Kredit: http://www.themalaysianinsider.com

Ahad, 13 Oktober 2013