Europe's Industry Set To Suffer As Natural Gas Prices SurgeNASSAU, Bahamas (AP) — Justin Thomas was long off the tee and made a few long putts on the back nine to overtake Scottie Scheffler with a 6-under 66 and build a one-shot lead Saturday over golf’s best player going into the final round of the Hero World Challenge. Thomas is trying out a 46-inch driver — a little more than an inch longer than normal — that he previously used for practice at home to gain speed and length. He blasted a 361-yard drive to 8 feet on the par-4 seventh hole and led the field in driving distance. But it was a few long putts that put him ahead of Scheffler, who had a 69. Thomas was on the verge of falling two shots behind when he made an 18-foot par putt on the par-3 12th hole. On the reachable par-4 14th, he was in a nasty spot in a sandy area and could only splash it out to nearly 50 feet. He made that one for a most unlikely birdie, while behind him Scheffler muffed a chip on the 13th hole and made his lone bogey of a windy day. Scheffler never caught up to him, missing birdie chances on the reachable 14th and the par-5 15th. Thomas hit his approach to 3 feet for birdie on the 16th after a 343-yard drive. Scheffler made an 18-foot birdie putt on the 16th to close within one. RELATED COVERAGE Scottie Scheffler goes on a run of birdies in the Bahamas and leads by 2 Scottie Scheffler has new putting grip and trails Cameron Young by 3 in Bahamas Kevin Kisner will be the lead analyst for NBC’s golf coverage Scheffler missed birdie chances on the last two holes from the 10-foot and 15-foot range, while Thomas missed an 8-foot birdie attempt at the last. “I had a stretch at 13, 14, 15 where I felt like I lost a shot or two there, but outside of that I did a lot of really good things today,” Scheffler said. Thomas hasn’t won since the 2022 PGA Championship at Southern Hills, and a victory at Albany Golf Club wouldn’t count as an official win. But the two-time major champion has made steady progress toward getting his game back in order. “I’m driving it great. I’ve had a lot of confidence with it,” Thomas said of his longer driver. “I feel like I’ve been able to put myself in some pretty good spots going into the green. I’m still not taking advantage of some of them as much as I would like, but that’s golf and we’re always going to say that.” Thomas was at 17-under 199 and will be in the final group Sunday with Scheffler, who is trying to end his spectacular season with a ninth title. Tom Kim put himself in the mix, which he might not have imagined Thursday when he was 3 over through six holes of the holiday tournament. Kim got back in the game with a 65 on Friday, and then followed with 12 birdies for a 62. He had a shot at the course record — Rickie Fowler shot 61 in the final round when he won at Albany in 2017 — until Kim found a bunker and took two shots to reach the green in making a double bogey on the par-3 17th. Even so, he was only two shots behind. Ryder Cup captain Keegan Bradley (68) was four back. “Feel like I’ve been seeing signs of improvement, which is what you want and that’s all I can do,” Thomas said. “I can’t control everybody else or what’s going on, I’ve just got to keep playing as good as I possibly can and hope that it’s enough come Sunday.” ___ AP golf: https://apnews.com/hub/golf

It's time to get tested for syphilis

NASSAU, Bahamas (AP) — Justin Thomas was long off the tee and made a few long putts on the back nine to overtake Scottie Scheffler with a 6-under 66 and build a one-shot lead Saturday over golf's best player going into the final round of the Hero World Challenge. Thomas is trying out a 46-inch driver — a little more than an inch longer than normal — that he previously used for practice at home to gain speed and length. He blasted a 361-yard drive to 8 feet on the par-4 seventh hole and led the field in driving distance. But it was a few long putts that put him ahead of Scheffler, who had a 69. Thomas was on the verge of falling two shots behind when he made an 18-foot par putt on the par-3 12th hole. On the reachable par-4 14th, he was in a nasty spot in a sandy area and could only splash it out to nearly 50 feet. He made that one for a most unlikely birdie, while behind him Scheffler muffed a chip on the 13th hole and made his lone bogey of a windy day. Scheffler never caught up to him, missing birdie chances on the reachable 14th and the par-5 15th. Thomas hit his approach to 3 feet for birdie on the 16th after a 343-yard drive. Scheffler made an 18-foot birdie putt on the 16th to close within one. Scheffler missed birdie chances on the last two holes from the 10-foot and 15-foot range, while Thomas missed an 8-foot birdie attempt at the last. “I had a stretch at 13, 14, 15 where I felt like I lost a shot or two there, but outside of that I did a lot of really good things today,” Scheffler said. Thomas hasn't won since the 2022 PGA Championship at Southern Hills, and a victory at Albany Golf Club wouldn't count as an official win. But the two-time major champion has made steady progress toward getting his game back in order. “I'm driving it great. I've had a lot of confidence with it,” Thomas said of his longer driver. “I feel like I've been able to put myself in some pretty good spots going into the green. I’m still not taking advantage of some of them as much as I would like, but that’s golf and we're always going to say that.” Thomas was at 17-under 199 and will be in the final group Sunday with Scheffler, who is trying to end his spectacular season with a ninth title. Tom Kim put himself in the mix, which he might not have imagined Thursday when he was 3 over through six holes of the holiday tournament. Kim got back in the game with a 65 on Friday, and then followed with 12 birdies for a 62. He had a shot at the course record — Rickie Fowler shot 61 in the final round when he won at Albany in 2017 — until Kim found a bunker and took two shots to reach the green in making a double bogey on the par-3 17th. Even so, he was only two shots behind. Ryder Cup captain Keegan Bradley (68) was four back. “Feel like I’ve been seeing signs of improvement, which is what you want and that’s all I can do,” Thomas said. “I can’t control everybody else or what’s going on, I’ve just got to keep playing as good as I possibly can and hope that it’s enough come Sunday.” AP golf: https://apnews.com/hub/golf

McLaren driver Lando Norris has previously refused to accept that Max Verstappen is the dominant force in F1 because he’s simply a better driver. The Red Bull man eventually finished 63 points clear of Norris in the drivers’ standings, winning a fourth consecutive world title with two races to spare. That’s despite the British team appearing to be superior in pace in the latter half of the campaign, with Norris briefly threatening to haul down the Dutchman’s lead. That didn’t materialise, but McLaren did finish the season with a first constructors’ crown since 1998. Norris, who ended the 2023 season still without a Grand Prix win to his name, still enjoyed a breakthrough campaign as he notched his first four F1 victories. But in interview with the Athletic in October, he was defensive when asked why he was struggling to keep pace with Verstappen in the standings, also citing seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton in his answer. "They've experienced a lot more,” he said. “They've experienced a lot more in Formula 1. But it's more experiencing situations and dealing with situations that I haven't experienced yet. “It's not so much that because they've been driving a car longer, they're better drivers. It's more certain situations where you're racing against people or you have to make decisions." The last eight F1 titles have now been shared between Verstappen and Hamilton. The last season that an alternate name to those two was on the trophy was in 2016, when Nico Rosberg prevailed over his British team-mate before immediately retiring. Norris, 25, has been criticised this year for making errors as he pushed in races, and relations also got spiky between him and Verstappen after a number of racing incidents between the pair. But before the season ended, he also insisted he was working hard to make adjustments. "I'm probably working more than ever on every area to try to improve and eliminate as many weaknesses as possible,” he said. “Life hasn't changed per se, but I'm just trying to work in a different way and perform better. It's as simple as that." Verstappen and Norris had previously been considered close friends before their title battle. And this week, the Red Bull man insisted that notion had not been affected, and blamed “social media idiots” for exaggerating tensions. "Lando and I, we got on very well,” he told the Talking Bull podcast. “Of course, at times it got a bit tense on track but off the track, that shouldn't matter. We always try to do the best we can on track to get the best possible result.”Syrian Insurgents' Shocking Aleppo Takeover

Ganghwa, South Korea: For seven years, Kim Seongmin has been facing a cancer that has spread to his lungs, brain and liver. Doctors recently gave him only months to live. He can’t sleep at night without painkillers. Still, Kim broadcasts into North Korea twice a day, bringing its people news and information they are cut off from because of strict censorship laws. “North Korea is keeping its people like frogs trapped in a deep well,” ​said Kim​, 62, during an interview at his rural home on this island west of Seoul, where he records and edits shows for Free North Korea Radio. “We broadcast to help them realise that there is something wrong with their political system.” Kim Seongmin, president of Free North Korea Radio, edits content for the station at his home on Ganghwa Island, west of Seoul, South Korea. Credit: Chang W. Lee/The New York Times For two decades, North Korean defectors living in South Korea have been infiltrating the North with outside news and entertainment, through balloons floated across the border or broadcasts such as those from Kim’s radio station. But Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader, has grown increasingly sensitive to “anti-socialist and non-socialist” influences that could threaten his totalitarian grip on power, and he is cracking down on such efforts like never before. Authorities are searching homes and pedestrians, meting out harsh punishments, including public executions, to people who consume news and TV dramas ​from South Korea, or even if they sing, speak​, dress ​and text-message like South Koreans, according to North Korean documents and a South Korean government report. Bottles filled with rice and packages, each containing propaganda posters, a US dollar bill and a Bible, which Kim Seongmin’s group plans to send to North Korea. Credit: Chang W. Lee/The New York Times North Korea has been flexing its military muscle beyond the Korean Peninsula by sending troops and weapons to Russia to support its war against Ukraine. But at home, Kim Jong-un is reinforcing the country’s defences against foreign influences. He has built more walls along North Korea’s border with China, giving soldiers there a shoot-to-kill order to stop an outflow of refugees and an influx of people smuggling outside goods and information. He has destroyed ​his country’s few roads and railways linking to South Korea​, after declaring that the North was no longer interested in reunification with the South. And he has introduced a slate of draconian new censorship laws. “We sense the fears of the Kim Jong-un regime​,” Admiral Kim Myung-soo, the chair of South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, told parliament recently. This year, the North called foreign content being sent across from the South “filth” and retaliated by sending balloons filled with rubbish and broadcasting eerie noises across the border. Defectors prepare to release balloons carrying leaflets and a banner denouncing Kim Jong-un in 2016. Such continued campaigns have enraged the Kim regime. Credit: AP Kim, the founder of Free North Korea Radio, was a captain and propaganda writer at a North Korean artillery unit when he fled to China in 1995. He wanted to defect to South Korea but was arrested at a Chinese port. He said he was on his way to Pyongyang, North Korea’s capital, for certain execution when he jumped through the window of a train toilet booth while an armed guard waited outside. He fled back to China and arrived in Seoul in 1999. He launched Free North Korea Radio in 2004. “He was a pioneer, the first North Korean defector to start a radio broadcast into the North,” said Lee Min-bok, a fellow defector who began sending leaflet-filled balloons to the North around the time Kim started his radio broadcasts. “He spoke more closely to the North Korean heart, because he broadcast in North Korean dialects.” During recent broadcasts,​ Kim’s station reported international criticism of the North’s troop ​dispatch to Russia and invited North Korean female veterans to testify to any sexual violence they had endured in the North’s Korean People’s Army. It carried letters from Japanese people whose family members had been kidnapped to ​the North. North Korean defectors living in ​the South reported that there was hot water in every South Korean home while ordinary North Koreans had to take cold showers, even in the winter. Lee Si-young, director of Free North Korea Radio, at the recording studio where its content is recorded daily in Seoul, South Korea. Credit: Chang W. Lee/The New York Times Kim often gets information from informers inside the North who use mobile phones with prepaid Chinese SIM cards. With those phones, they can pick up Chinese signals from near the border and exchange calls, text messages and photos with Kim. With their help, he reported the execution of Jang Song-thaek, Kim Jong-un’s uncle, in 2013, days before the North’s state media announced it. Through his sources, Kim also monitored young North Koreans who grew up in the wake of a famine in the 1990s and have depended more on unofficial markets than on state rations to feed themselves. They trust their government less than the generations before them did and have an insatiable appetite for foreign entertainment and news, which they obtained through CDs, DVDs and computer memory sticks smuggled from China, as well as through balloons carrying USB drives and broadcasts such as Kim’s. Kim can’t tell how many North Koreans listen to his shortwave broadcasts, which are financed by US and South Korean human rights and religious groups. In the North, all radio and TV sets have their channels fixed to receive only government broadcasts, although defectors say people often manipulate their devices to receive South Korean broadcasts. Free North Korea Radio and other sources of outside news – such as Radio Free Asia, funded by the US Congress, and North Korea Reform Radio, which is run by another group of defectors – seek to chip away at the information blackout. The office of Free North Korea Radio in Seoul, South Korea. Credit: Chang W. Lee/The New York Times Efforts to exert influence from abroad have increasingly drawn Kim Jong-un’s ire as he seeks to control the country’s younger generations, according to internal North Korean government documents Kim received from his informers. “Anti-socialist and non-socialist practices” have become a malicious tumour that “penetrated deep into social life in general,” putting North Korea’s socialist system at a crossroads, said one of the ​North Korean documents that Kim shared with The New York Times . In an unnamed provincial city, 9000 high school students surrendered themselves for watching “impure” videos after authorities promised not to punish them. Under laws introduced recently by Kim Jong-un, those who watch, possess or distribute South Korean content face a punishment of five to 10 years in labour camps, according to the South’s National Intelligence Service. Even those who “speak, write or sing” in a South Korean style or publish texts using South Korean fonts face up to two years of hard labour. Loading Those who distribute them widely face the death penalty. A 22-year-old farmworker was killed by firing squad in 2022 for possess​ing 70 songs and three movies from South Korea​ and sharing them with seven other people, according to a human rights report from South Korea’s Unification Ministry. Last year, North Korea called for “random inspections” of electronic devices to ferret out those who consume South Korean videos and broadcasts. The crackdown has created a chilling effect, leading to an estimated 70 per cent drop in outside information reaching North Koreans, said Kang Shin-sam, head of the Seoul-based human rights group Unification Academy, during a recent forum. But some North Koreans find new ways to circumvent censorship, other analysts say. Kim Seongmin worked at a studio in Seoul with a staff of five other North Korean defectors until he moved months ago to his island house. Two police officers are assigned to guard him against possible terrorist attacks from North Korea. Loading Over the years, he has received numerous threats from South Koreans who accused him of raising tensions with the North, as well as anonymous packages that contained dead mice or dolls smeared with red paint, and with knives stuck in their chest. A North Korean secret police officer he had known in the North​ once called him from China, threatening to harm ​his sisters in the North, Kim said.​ But he persisted. In July, the South Korean government awarded him a citizen’s medal for his work. Lee Si-young, another defector who joined the station’s staff eight years ago, said she listened to Free North Korea Radio while in the North. “For North Koreans, our radio signals are like a lighthouse in the darkness, bringing hope that a better day will come,” she said. Kim said he would die knowing that the work he started would be continued by younger defectors he trained. “I will die a happy man,” he said. This article originally appeared in The New York Times . Save Log in , register or subscribe to save articles for later. Dictators North Korea South Korea Kim Jong-un For subscribers Most Viewed in World Loading

Kristaps Porzingis' confidence should have the rest of the NBA running scaredScanlan: Time for legislators to protect women