Sign up to our free sport newsletter for all the latest news on everything from cycling to boxing Sign up to our free sport email for all the latest news British table tennis player Ashley Facey believes his Paralympic dream is back on track after getting on – and off – his bike. The newly-crowned English national champion was a Team GB member at Rio 2016 and Tokyo 2020 before eyeing up a completely different challenge for a third shot at the Games. The Londoner discovered a passion and talent for cycling during lockdown and, after much consideration, decided to pursue it as an alternative career. He had high hopes of making the grade but, after finding differences between recreational and professional life in the saddle not to his liking, switched back to his first love after 18 months away. Results would suggest the 28-year-old has made a smart decision. He marked his return to competitive action by teaming up with Aaron McKibbin to win a … [Read more...] about Ashley Facey eyes Paralympic table tennis glory after ditching saddle for paddle
Boxing match tonight
Saracens ‘relatively optimistic’ Owen Farrell will be fit for Ospreys clash
Sign up to our free sport newsletter for all the latest news on everything from cycling to boxing Sign up to our free sport email for all the latest news Saracens are hopeful that Owen Farrell will be fit for Sunday’s Heineken Champions Cup round-of-16 clash with the Ospreys . Farrell limped off with an ankle injury in the 70th minute of Saturday’s victory over Harlequins, but the England captain has made a rapid recovery. “Owen took part in some of the training today (Wednesday), so we’re relatively optimistic that he’ll be available for this weekend,” director of rugby Mark McCall said. Farrell cried out in pain after rolling his left ankle while making a tackle close to Saracens’ tryline at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium and hobbled off. The 31-year-old fly-half had injured the same joint while on England duty in the final stage of the Six Nations, raising concerns that an aggravation might have caused more significant damage. Recommended … [Read more...] about Saracens ‘relatively optimistic’ Owen Farrell will be fit for Ospreys clash
Virtual Meets Reality: Inside NBA 2K and Pro Basketball
Sports Video games NBA Gamers The cramped room in Midtown Manhattan was packed wall-to-wall with YouTubers—a relentlessly cheery bunch—the lot of them excitedly live-streaming, likes and comments bobbing across their screens. It was August, and the crowd was previewing the latest product from the NBA 2K video game series—NBA 2K18, which was released Friday to those who pre-ordered—and the event was crowded with elite gamers, social media stars, 2K staffers and, pocked about the room, honest-to-God, in-the-flesh NBA players. Security stood at the front door. Booze flowed from a bar in the back. TVs pinstriped the length of the room, cutting it into even rows. That was the main attraction, with the gamers lining up, jostling through the morass of people to get their turn on the joysticks (all of this, of course, beamed over the internet to 2K devotees). In a room full of presumed NBA fans it was somewhat disorienting to see these NBA players—Brooklyn Nets guard … [Read more...] about Virtual Meets Reality: Inside NBA 2K and Pro Basketball
Who is Chelsy Davy—Prince Harry’s ex he feared would be “harassed to death”
Before he met and married Meghan Markle , Prince Harry embarked on a number of high-profile relationships with women within the orbit of the royal family and British high society. Of his relationships, the most prominent was with Zimbabwe-born Chelsy Davy, whose family ran a big game farm in South Africa. Within months of their relationship becoming public, Davy was a figure of intense public interest—something Harry has since spoken of his, and her, discomfort over. In court filings, made as part of his ongoing lawsuit against the publishers of the British tabloid Daily Mail over historic phone-hacking and privacy invasion allegations, the prince said that Davy was the victim of unlawful information-gathering techniques such as wiretapping and bugging. The media intrusion, the prince said, made Davy feel as if she was being "hunted." In the end, he said, she questioned whether she wanted a "lifetime of being stalked?" Here, Newsweek looks at who Chelsy Davy is and … [Read more...] about Who is Chelsy Davy—Prince Harry’s ex he feared would be “harassed to death”
F.D.A. Approves Narcan for Over-the-Counter Sales
Narcan, a prescription nasal spray that reverses opioid overdoses, can now be sold over the counter, the Food and Drug Administration said on Wednesday, authorizing a move long-sought by public health officials and treatment experts, who hope wider availability of the medicine will reduce the nation’s alarmingly high drug fatality rates. By late summer, over-the-counter Narcan, could be for sale in big-box chains, vending machines, supermarkets, convenience stores, gas stations and even online retailers. The commissioner of the F.D.A., Dr. Robert M. Califf, said in a statement that the over-the-counter authorization was meant to address a “dire public health need.” “Today’s approval of OTC naloxone nasal spray will help improve access to naloxone, increase the number of locations where it’s available and help reduce opioid overdose deaths throughout the country. We encourage the manufacturer to make accessibility to the product a priority by making it available as soon as … [Read more...] about F.D.A. Approves Narcan for Over-the-Counter Sales
Stephen Colbert Calls Nashville Shooting ‘Horrible and Familiar’
Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous night’s highlights that lets you sleep — and lets us get paid to watch comedy. Here are the 50 best movies on Netflix right now . ‘Horrible and Familiar’ An armed assailant shot and killed six people at a Nashville elementary school on Monday. Stephen Colbert called the situation “horrible and familiar, and horrible because it is so familiar,” noting that the tragedy was “the 130th mass shooting of 2023, and 2023 is only 87 days old.” “Not doing anything about this is an insane dereliction of our collective humanity. And the obvious solution here is one President Biden has proposed: an assault weapons ban. We’ve had one before, from 1994 to 2004 — and it worked. During that ban, the risk of dying in a mass shooting was 70 percent lower than it is today. That just makes sense. Fewer guns equals fewer shootings.” — STEPHEN COLBERT “It’s not complicated. It might be hard, but it’s not complicated. That’s … [Read more...] about Stephen Colbert Calls Nashville Shooting ‘Horrible and Familiar’
How the Right Turned Radical and the Left Became Depressed
One of the notable dynamics of American life today is that conservatives report being personally happier than liberals but also seem more politically discontented. The political left has become more institutionalist, more invested in experts and establishments, even as progressive culture seems more shadowed by unhappiness and even mental illness. Meanwhile conservatives claim greater contentment in their private lives — and then go out and vote for paranoid outsiders and burn-it-down populists. These dynamics aren’t entirely new: As Musa al-Gharbi writes in an essay for American Affairs, the happiness gap between liberals and conservatives is a persistent social-science finding, visible across several eras and many countries. Meanwhile, the view that “my life is pretty good, but the country is going to hell,” which seems to motivate a certain kind of middle-class Donald Trump supporter, would have been unsurprising to hear in a bar or at a barbecue in 1975 or 1990, no less than … [Read more...] about How the Right Turned Radical and the Left Became Depressed
Why Do Health Costs Keep Rising? These People Know
DANVILLE, Pa. — The Geisinger Health Plan, run by one of the nation’s top-rated health care organizations, foresees medical costs increasing next year by 7.5 percent for people buying insurance under the Affordable Care Act. So when Geisinger requested a rate increase of 40 percent for 2017, consumer advocates were amazed. And Kurt J. Wrobel, Geisinger’s chief actuary, found himself, along with other members of his profession, in the middle of the health care wars still raging in this political year. Actuaries normally toil far from the limelight, anonymous technicians stereotyped as dull and boring. But as they crunch the numbers for their Affordable Care Act business, their calculations are feeding a roaring national debate over insurance premiums, widely used to gauge the success of President Obama’s health care law. Health plans around the country have just filed proposed rates for 2017. State insurance commissioners are still reviewing them. But questions about the proposed … [Read more...] about Why Do Health Costs Keep Rising? These People Know
Third Rail
“Social security — they used to call it the third rail of American politics,” President Bush told a news conference last year, “because when you talked about it, you got singed, at the minimum.” But “singed” was putting it mildly; on another occasion, he concluded the metaphor with all the force inherent in it: “You grab ahold of it, and you get electrified.” Last month, Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, agreed about the reason so many politicians dreaded dealing with the dangerous subject of Social Security: “This is, kind of, the third rail . No one wants to touch it.” We have here one of the most vivid political metaphors coined in the U.S. in the past generation. As every subway straphanger knows, the word picture is rooted in the system invented in the 1880s providing electric current to a railroad train and running parallel to its two rails; passengers are wise to give it a wide berth. How and when did the fear of this technological conveyor of power … [Read more...] about Third Rail
Betting on the Planet
In 1980 an ecologist and an economist chose a refreshingly unacademic way to resolve their differences. They bet $1,000. Specifically, the bet was over the future price of five metals, but at stake was much more -- a view of the planet's ultimate limits, a vision of humanity's destiny. It was a bet between the Cassandra and the Dr. Pangloss of our era. They lead two intellectual schools -- sometimes called the Malthusians and the Cornucopians, sometimes simply the doomsters and the boomsters -- that use the latest in computer-generated graphs and foundation-generated funds to debate whether the world is getting better or going to the dogs. The argument has generally been as fruitless as it is old, since the two sides never seem to be looking at the same part of the world at the same time. Dr. Pangloss sees farm silos brimming with record harvests; Cassandra sees topsoil eroding and pesticide seeping into ground water. Dr. Pangloss sees people living longer; Cassandra sees rain … [Read more...] about Betting on the Planet