This video says about itself:
15 April 2017
The Hillsborough disaster happened 28 years ago, 96 people were killed in the man-made catasrophe.
It has taken 28 years for the first charges to be laid against any of those culpable in the killing of 96 Liverpool football fans. They were crushed to death on April 15, 1989 at Sheffield Wednesday’s Hillsborough stadium, South Yorkshire: here.
This video is about the Greek national football team unexpectedly winning the 2004 European championship by beating favourites Portugal in the final match.
A big factor in the Greek victory was their goalkeeper Antonis Nikopolidis. He stopped many dangerous shots by Cristiano Ronaldo and other Portuguese players.
As Dutch daily De Volkskrant reports today, Antonis Nikopolidis now is 46 years old, and still involved in football. He is a trainer for refugees from the wars in the Middle East and Afghanistan, stuck in Greece because of anti-refugee policies in European countries.
Football helps the refugees cope with their terrible memories of bloody wars, and with their uncertain present.
How a project to help refugee women is making American produce a lot more interesting: here.
This music video from Jamaica says about itself:
The Bobsled Song
13 February 2014
Song by Sidney Mills & Jon Notar, and Groove Guild.
Download the Bobsled Song … and press play the exact moment our Jamaican Bobsled Team begins their big race … . You’ll be amazed how the song syncs perfectly with the rhythms of the bobsled track itself.
After the Jamaican men’s bobsleigh team, this news from the BBC:
The Nigerian bobsleigh team racing towards history
29 March 2017 Last updated at 20:52 BST
Fighting freezing winds, bone-breaking speed and up to five g-force, the Nigerian women’s bobsleigh team are training hard in western Canada.
Driver Seun Adigun and brakewomen Ngozi Onwumere and Akuoma Omeoga are all former professional track and field athletes.
Their practice times on the ice run are fast – and they are aiming for a historic first. No bobsleigh team from Nigeria or any country in Africa has competed at the Olympics.
The team’s dream is on the verge of coming true. The Nigerian bobsleigh team only needs to complete three more competitions to qualify for the 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea.
This video says about itself:
9 December 2016
Nigerian track stars Seun Adigun, Akuoma Omeoga and Ngozi Onwumere are determined to make history by being the first bobsled team to represent the African continent at the Olympics.
This video says about itself:
Watch a bee score a goal | Science News
23 February 2017
In experiments, buff-tailed bumblebees learned how to roll a ball to a goal (first clip), a task more bees mastered after watching a trained bee do it (second clip). When successful, bees received a sip of sugar solution as a reward.
From Science News:
Score! Bumblebees see how to sink ball in goal, then do it better
Lesson in six-legged soccer tests power of insect learning
By Susan Milius
2:32pm, February 23, 2017
Even tiny brains can learn strange and tricky stuff, especially by watching tiny experts.
Buff-tailed bumblebees got several chances to watch a trained bee roll a ball to a goal. These observers then quickly mastered the unusual task themselves when given a chance, researchers report in the Feb. 24 Science. And most of the newcomers even improved on the goal-sinking by taking a shortcut demo-bees hadn’t used, says behavioral ecologist Olli Loukola at Queen Mary University of London.
Learning abilities of animals without big vertebrate brains often get severely underestimated, Loukola says. “The idea that small brains constrain insects is kind of wrong, or old-fashioned.”
He and colleagues had previously challenged bees to learn, in stages, the not very beelike skill of pulling a string to reveal a hidden flower. Bees eventually succeeded. So the researchers devised an even more fiendish protocol to see how far insect learning could go.
Loukola invented six-legged sort-of soccer (or football for bees in London) in which a Bombus terrestris rolls a yellow ball about the size of its own body down a trackway to a central goal, where researchers dispense sugary rewards. This time, there was no pampering, no working up in stages to full completion of the test. But bees could observe a trained ball roller, a ball moving on its own (thanks to a researcher sliding a magnet under the arena) or get no advance ball-movement hints at all.
The 10 bees that saw an expert bee roll the ball and score three times before their own attempt succeeded in almost every trial at the task. Watching ghostly movement didn’t help as much, and only a few bees happened on the solution on their own. Social learning matters, but Loukola highlights the way bees changed the technique they watched. Most of the successful bees ignored the ball they had seen rolled and instead used one closer to the goal, doing less work for the same reward.
“Fascinating,” says Dave Goulson of the University of Sussex in England, who studies bumblebees. Ball rolling may not be part of routine foraging behavior, but he notes that bees do drag around nesting material, moving backward as they do when playing soccer in the test. And they occasionally remove fat almost ball-like grubs from the nest with a similar technique.
Exactly how the bees solved the problem remains a puzzle, says Bennett Galef of McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada, who has studied social learning. He would like to know more details, for instance, about how untrained bees react to a ball.
Loukola often gets a different question: Could he train bumblebees to play a soccer match? He says he could certainly train some to score on one side of an arena and some on the opposite side. Then he might be able to study whether bumblebees could share a ball.
This video from the USA says about itself:
Undocumented Mother in Sanctuary in Denver Church: I’ve Paid Taxes for 20 Years, Why Hasn’t Trump?
17 February 2017
We go inside the First Unitarian church in Denver to interview Jeanette Vizguerra, an immigrant mother of four children who has taken refuge there out of fear she would be arrested and deported to Mexico if she went to her scheduled check-in with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Vizguerra came to the U.S. from Mexico in 1997 and is one of the founders of the Metro Denver Sanctuary Coalition. She previously won five postponements of deportation, but said she doubts she could win a similar reprieve under the Trump administration.
From UltraViolet in the USA today:
Just a few weeks in office and big name companies are already running away from President Donald Trump for targeting Muslims, immigrants, women, and working people.
In fact, after tens of thousands of people spoke out against each company, executives at Uber, Disney, and Nordstrom moved to cut significant ties with Trump and his businesses.1
And there’s one more company that is facing outrage for not yet dumping Trump. The Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA) is holding its most prestigious tournament–the 2017 U.S. Women’s Open–at Donald Trump’s New Jersey golf resort.2
The LPGA leadership is under a lot of pressure for hosting the Women’s Open at a serial sexual abuser‘s golf course. In fact, hundreds of people have flooded them with calls, and even U.S. senators urged them to cut ties with Trump.3 If enough of us speak up and join the mounting pressure, the LPGA will also be forced to cut business ties with Trump–hitting him where it hurts. Can you sign the petition?
Tell the LPGA: “Dump Trump! A sexist, racist should not host the most prestigious women’s golf tournament in America.”
Golf has a damning history of racism, sexism, and discrimination against people with disabilities. The LPGA began in 1950, thirty years after women won the right to vote. Until 1961, men of color were banned from the men’s PGA.4 And it took a Supreme Court ruling to stop the PGA from mistreating disabled golfers.5
As a sport, golf has come a long way from that history. The LPGA associating itself with Trump isn’t only several steps backward, but an endorsement of Trump’s presidency in front of the entire country.
There is momentum behind companies cutting ties with Trump–and it’s clear nothing gets under his skin more. If we speak out together, we can get yet another company to dump Trump and send the message that millions of people reject his hateful and dangerous presidency.
Will you sign the petition to the LPGA now?
Thanks for taking action.
–Nita, Shaunna, Kat, Karin, Adam, Holly, Kathy, Onyi, Susan, Anathea, Audine, Shannon, Megan, Libby, Emma, PaKou, and Pilar, the UltraViolet team
Sources:
1. Uber CEO Drops Out of Trump’s Economic Panel, Disney’s Bob Iger to Miss Meeting, Variety, February 2, 2017
Trump Slams Nordstrom For Dropping Ivanka’s Clothing Line, NPR, February 8, 2017
2. USGA awards 2017 U.S. Women’s Open to Donald Trump’s N.J. course, Golf Magazine, accessed February 15, 2017
3. Senators call for the LPGA to move women’s major away from Trump course, ThinkProgress, October 26, 2016
4. PGA Group Abolishes ‘Caucasian’, Sarasota Herald-Tribune, November 10, 1961
5. This time around, few would deny Casey Martin a ride at the Open, Golf Magazine, June 12, 2012
From Representative Alan Grayson in the USA:
Hillary Clinton famously described “half” of Donald Trump’s supporters as a “basket of deplorables.” When you look at Trump’s Cabinet choices, the only thing that’s wrong with that statement is the math.
Jeff Sessions for Attorney General? Jeff “Klansman without a Hood” Sessions will be in charge of enforcing our civil rights laws? Why didn’t Trump appoint Tony Soprano for Attorney General? Was Soprano simply not available?
Maybe Trump thought that Tony Soprano would be better suited as Treasury Secretary — under the Willie Sutton theory of kleptocracy – “that’s where all the money is.” Which makes you wonder why Trump chose Steven “I’d like to buy a vowel, Vanna” Mnuchin. Because you want the guy who raised the most money for your campaign to be in charge of ALL the money, right?
Questions, questions. Why didn’t Trump select Michael Corleone for FBI Director?
Darth Vader for Secretary of Defense?
Nurse Ratched for Secretary of Health and Human Services?
Freddy Krueger for Surgeon General? (Or Jason Voorhees.)
Norman Bates for Secretary of Homeland Security?
Daddy Warbucks for Secretary of Commerce?
Hannibal Lecter for Secretary of Agriculture?
Megatron for Secretary of Transportation?
Hans Landa (of “Inglorious Basterds”) for NATO Ambassador?
The Wicked Witch of the West for UN Ambassador?
Agent Smith for OMB Director?
Jaws for NOAA Administrator?
OK, that last one would be difficult, because Jaws would demand to be paid in fish. But as for all the rest, when I look at Trump’s actual picks, the ONLY reason I can think of why he didn’t choose the ones on my list is that . . . they’re fictional characters, silly. They’re not real. They don’t exist.
So Trump had to find some real-life villains instead.
An EPA Administrator who wants to pave paradise and put up a parking lot.
A Secretary of Labor who would love to see the day when workers would have to pay their bosses to work, instead of vice versa – “call them interns!”
A Secretary of State who would not only sell out his country, but probably his grandmother as well, for the sake of a lucrative drilling contract.
Why? Why put people in charge of agencies that they want to destroy? Because, as they used to say in the Reagan Administration, “personnel is policy.” Wedge enough right-wing grifters into high office, and right-wing policies will flow thick and fast.
Or maybe Donald Trump just has a really wicked sense of humor. Which makes me wonder: Is Donald Trump really . . . The Joker?
Riddle me that.
Courage,
Alan Grayson
And this graph shows how much that Kellyanne Conway callout has boosted Ivanka Trump’s sales. [HuffPost]
This video, from the Olympics in Brazil last year, is called J’den Cox (USA) wins the bronze medal in men’s freestyle wrestling at 86 kg.
In about ten days time, there will be World Cup wrestling in Iran. Then came United States President Donald Trump’s decree banning people from seven countries, including Iran.
As a retaliation, the Foreign Affairs Department of Iran banned the United States wrestling team from coming to the World Cup tournament.
However, then a federal judge (by the way, a Republican, a George W Bush nominee) decided that Trump’s travel ban was illegal. A federal appeals court confirmed that decision.
As a reaction, the Iranian Foreign Affairs Department has reversed its earlier decision. The United States wrestlers are welcome to participate after all.
This picture shows the logo of Dutch football club Valken ’68.
It shows two peregrine falcons, sitting on top of two footballs.
The number 68 refers to the founding of the club in 1968.
‘Valken’ means falcons in Dutch.
Valken ’68 is an amateur club from Valkenburg village in South Holland province; not to be confused with the other Valkenburg in Limburg province.
