Author: quannd

NBA Finals predictions before 2024 seasonAs we get closer to the 2024 NBA season, the squad makes their NBA Finals predictionsChecking in for an NBA preseason game for the first time in 2 1/2 years, Chicago Bulls point guard Lonzo Ball received a standing ovation from the United Center crowd Wednesday night as he completed his comeback from extensive knee problems.Ball began having issues with chronic soreness in his left knee during the 2021-22 season. Three surgeries and countless hours of rehab later, he took the court midway through the first quarter and hit his first shot − a 3-pointer…

Demetrius “Big Meech” Flenory, who co-founded the notorious drug trafficking organization Black Mafia Family, is serving out the remainder of his prison sentence in a residential reentry program in MiamiMIAMI — Demetrius “Big Meech” Flenory, who co-founded the notorious drug trafficking organization Black Mafia Family, will serve the remainder of his prison sentence in a residential reentry program in Miami, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons.Flenory, 56, was originally sentenced to 30 years in prison following his 2008 conviction for drug trafficking and money laundering. He was recently transferred to the residential program in Miami.Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson first…

Renee Montgomery discusses the excitement surrounding WNBA FinalsWNBA great Renee Montgomery chats with Mackenzie Salmon about all things WNBA Finals and the energy surrounding them.Sports SeriouslyMINNEAPOLIS — Could these WNBA Finals get any wilder? Each game so far has featured a team going down at least 15 points, then climbing all the way back to make it a game, if not eke out a victory. First Minnesota fell behind 18 points in Game 1 and came back to win in overtime. Then the Lynx fell behind 17 in Game 2 but somehow made it a game in the fourth quarter. Wednesday in…

In sports-car racing, we haven’t seen all-wheel drive in a long time. That changes with the Toyota GR Corolla TC, the newest race car from Toyota Gazoo Racing North America (TGRNA).  TGRNA made a “special agreement” with SRO Motorsports Group America, the organization that sanctions the TC America series, company representatives told Motor1. In TC America, SRO will combine the current TC and TCX classes in 2025, allowing for more flexibility in car design. The GR Corolla TC uses the road car’s stock 1.6-liter turbocharged three-cylinder engine and newly available eight-speed automatic transmission. Those pair with the GR Corolla road…

NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft is on its way to help solve a quarter-century-old mystery: Could anything live in the ocean that lurks beneath the icy shell of Jupiter’s moon Europa? “This is a mission we’ve been dreaming of for 25 years now, since I was in graduate school,” says planetary geologist Cynthia Phillips of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. “It’s a generational mission.” An October 10 launch from Kennedy Space Center in Florida had been scrubbed due to Hurricane Milton, but on October 14, the spacecraft lifted off just past noon Eastern time and started its five-and-a-half-year trek…

A pair of male lions that roamed Kenya more than a century ago gained notoriety as the “man-eaters of Tsavo.” To be sure, the big cats hunted and ate people building a local railway. But a novel DNA analysis of hairs stuck in the cats’ tooth cavities is revealing a diverse — and occasionally surprising — menu. The roughly 130-year-old dietary log consists of oryx, zebras and yes, humans, researchers report October 11 in Current Biology. Unexpectedly, traces of wildebeest also showed up: The herbivores weren’t known to roam the Tsavo region at that time, so the finding raises questions…

Horse-riding Scythian herders and warriors, who inhabited Central Asia and Eastern Europe around 2,500 years ago, may have had cultural roots several thousand kilometers to the east in Siberia, a new study suggests (SN: 7/27/23). Remains of at least one person and 18 horses found atop a roughly 2,800-year-old tomb in southern Siberia may come from a Scythian-style sacrificial ceremony for a king or other elite person interred there, archaeologist Gino Caspari and colleagues report October 7 in Antiquity. Artifacts recovered at the Tunnug 1 burial mound include two bronze belt fittings decorated with stylized animals like those in later…

The latest headlines from our reporters across the US sent straight to your inbox each weekdayYour briefing on the latest headlines from across the US Mountain West Conference Commissioner Gloria Nevarez said Thursday the forfeitures that volleyball teams are willing to take to avoid playing San Jose State is “not what we celebrate in college athletics” and that she is heartbroken over what has transpired this season surrounding the Spartans and their opponents.Four teams have canceled games against San Jose State: Boise State, Southern Utah, Utah State and Wyoming, with none of the schools explicitly saying why they were forfeiting.…

President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky has signed the draft bill ‘On Amendments to the Customs Code Regarding the Introduction of the Appraisal of Customs Officials’. The relevant statement was made by Member of Parliament Yaroslav Zhelezniak (from the parliamentary faction ‘Holos’) on Telegram, an Ukrinform correspondent reports. “Law No. 6499d on customs reform has been signed and is coming into effect from November 1, 2024,” Zhelezniak wrote. In particular, the above law provides for regulating the terms of service contracts in customs authorities, determining the requirements for the professional competence of customs officials, introducing procedures for the rotation of customs…

Emily Alpert Reyes | (TNS) Los Angeles TimesLOS ANGELES — People hospitalized for COVID-19 early in the pandemic suffered an increased risk of serious “cardiac events” such as heart attacks and strokes that was akin to people with a history of heart disease, a newly released study has found.Researchers from USC, UCLA and the Cleveland Clinic analyzed more than 10,000 COVID cases tracked by the UK Biobank to examine how COVID affected the risk of heart attacks and other cardiac threats.Their study, released Wednesday in the journal Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology, assessed outcomes for people sickened in the first year…