Author: Nasrat Nejat

Cape Town, South Africa – One morning in December 1967, prison warders strode into Robben Island’s Cell Block 4 with a football and randomly chose two teams of 11. While walking to the grassless pitch they had cleared themselves, the prisoners hastily discussed tactics and came up with names for their teams: Bucks would play Rangers in the maximum-security prison’s first-ever organised football match. The players were rusty, malnourished and exhausted from their backbreaking work in the island’s slate quarry. Barefoot, and wearing their khaki prison uniforms, they also had to contend with a vicious summer southeaster that whipped across Cape…

The visit comes less than a month after a UK court ruling declared a deportation scheme to Rwanda illegal. British Home Secretary James Cleverly has signed a new treaty to send asylum seekers to Rwanda after the United Kingdom’s top court declared the deportation scheme unlawful. The agreement was signed by Cleverly, who travelled to Rwanda’s capital Kigali on Tuesday, and Rwandan Foreign Minister Vincent Biruta. The details of the new agreement were not immediately available but British media reports said it would include commitments by Rwanda regarding the treatment of asylum-seekers and other migrants sent there. Cleverly said he expected…

Israel has ordered Palestinians to evacuate several more areas as it widens its bombardment of the Gaza Strip, killing hundreds. The Israeli military declared on Monday via the social media site X that it was defining “safe areas” for Gaza civilians to minimise harm to them. However, hundreds more Palestinians have been killed since the onslaught resumed on Friday, and it is unclear where civilians might seek safety. Al Jazeera journalists on the ground say it is difficult to heed the orders in real time, with nowhere safe remaining in the enclave. Israel published a map on Friday, dividing Gaza…

Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige revealed in an interview with Vanity Fair that despite reports otherwise, there are no plans to resurrect the character after Downey Jr.’s last appearance in 2019’s “Avengers: Endgame.” “We are going to keep that moment and not touch that moment again,” Feige said. “We all worked very hard for many years to get to that, and we would never want to magically undo it in any way.” Downey Jr. was hesitant to even do reshoots for “Endgame,” according to the film’s co-director Joe Russo. “We’d already said tearful goodbyes on the last day of shooting. Everybody had moved on…

A luxury cruise ship that was stuck in a remote part of Greenland for three days after running aground with 206 people on board has been pulled free by a fishing trawler. The Ocean Explorer cruise vessel was refloated on Thursday, the Danish navy and ship owner said, after having been stuck since Monday in mud and silt in the Alpefjord national park, some 1,400km (870 miles) northeast of Greenland’s capital Nuuk. The Ocean Explorer was pulled free,” the Royal Danish Navy’s Joint Arctic Command in Greenland said. The Joint Arctic Command confirmed that the ship had been pulled free…

In 2012, a small cottage in the Hamptons owned by the Lauder family—descendants of the pioneering cosmetics entrepreneur Estée—was tragically destroyed by Hurricane Sandy. It left a void, to be sure, but also presented an opportunity to build something entirely new. Now they’ve constructed an unassuming aerie along an enchanting stretch of beach nestled between the ocean and a saltwater pond. “It’s really this magical indoor-outdoor beach pavilion,” says Aerin Lauder, style and creative director of Estée Lauder and founder of the luxury lifestyle brand Aerin, speaking on behalf of the family. “It’s a jewel box,” she adds, a touch dreamily.…

She’s a shoe-in. When When Mary Lynch, 25, runs her third New York City Marathon on Sunday, she’s hoping her $250 Hoka Rocket X2 super shoes will help propel to her first sub-3-hour finish. “I have never run a marathon in them,” Lynch, who works in finance and lives in Manhattan, told The Post. “You see the pros wearing them. It’s a very seductive [promise].” Super shoes were first introduced by Nike in 2016 as an unnamed prototype for elite runners and later christened the Vaporfly 4%. Now, the high tech sneakers — which have a carbon fiber plate embedded in a…

Spotify shares rose Monday after the music streaming service said it is laying off 17% of its workforce, in a dramatic move aimed at reducing its costs and adjusting for a slowdown in growth. In an email sent to staff, Spotify CEO Daniel Ek said that Spotify was taking “substantial action to rightsize our costs,” adding that the company took on too many employees over the years 2020 and 2021, when capital was cheap and tech companies could invest significant sums into team expansion. The latest round of cuts equates to roughly 1,500 jobs, according to a CNBC source familiar with…

For people with traumatic brain injuries, cognitive functions like memory, attention and mood regulation can become exceedingly difficult. But “there is no therapy for this kind of problem, even though it’s so prevalent,” says Nicholas Schiff, a neurologist at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City. Now, in a small study of individuals who have suffered moderate to severe brain injury, five patients scored better on a test of attention and information processing after having electrodes surgically implanted into the thalamus, an early stop for information coming in through the senses, Schiff and colleagues report December 4 in Nature Medicine. The study participants…

Work to be carried out on Garisenda tower in new year after area around it was cordoned off due to collapse fears Officials have announced plans to repair one of two 12th-century towers in the Italian city of Bologna after the area around it had to secured last month over fears its leaning could lead to collapse. The city said the €4.3m (£3.7m) project to shore up the Garisenda tower – one of the Two Towers that look out over central Bologna, providing inspiration over the centuries to painters and poets and a lookout spot during conflicts – would proceed…