Author: tourist_yp6g7u

The Los Angeles Lakers defeated the Denver Nuggets 126-108 on December 16, 2022. Since then, LeBron James, Anthony Davis, and the Lakers have lost 10 games in a row to Denver, including a 4-0 sweep in last year’s Western Conference Finals and two defeats in the opening round of this year’s playoffs.

The Lakers came close to ending the losing streak on Monday in Game 2 of their best-of-seven series, as they led by 20 points in the third quarter. But Nuggets point guard Jamal Murray nailed a fadeaway jumper over Davis as time expired, with the Lakers big man falling in front of the Nuggets bench as teammates mobbed Murray in celebration. The 101-99 win added to the unsolved puzzle the Lakers have in front of them that is the Nuggets.

It starts with the Nuggets’ two-time league MVP and last season’s Finals MVP Nikola Jokic, who punished the Lakers with 27 points, 20 rebounds and 10 assists in Game 2.

“Obviously, the only game that matters now is Game 3 and how we can get better,” said James after Game 2. “How we can figure this team out. So Game 3 is where my mindset is.”
James was also highly critical of the officiating, arguing questionable calls that went in favor of the Nuggets as well as non-calls impacted the outcome.  

“I don’t understand what’s going on in the replay center, to be honest,” a frustrated James said. ”(D’Angelo Russell) clearly gets hit in the face on a drive. What the f–k do we have a replay center for… [?] Makes no sense to me. It bothers me.”

James was referencing a call in the third quarter when Nuggets forward Michael Porter Jr. was called for a foul on Russell, which was then overturned on a challenge by Nuggets head coach Michael Malone.

“We’ve shown that we’re more than capable,” Anthony Davis said, after scoring 32 points and grabbing 11 rebounds. “We have stretches where we just don’t know what we’re doing on both ends of the floor. And those are the ones that cost us.”

“Remember this feeling as we take it back home to L.A.,” Lakers coach Darvin Ham said as a way of motivating the team before game three tonight. “We got to give them that same feeling in Game 3. That needs to be the sole focus. The recovery process has to start now, us filling our cups back up. But Game 3, it’s all about Game 3 right now.”

The recent history between the two teams indicates the Lakers won’t defeat the Nuggets in four of the next five games to win the series. But that’s why the games are played. Game 3 is tonight (10:00 p.m. EST) in Los Angeles and Game 4 is Saturday night in L.A. (8:30 p.m. EST) 

The post LeBron and the Lakers strain to solve the Nuggets’ dominance appeared first on New York Amsterdam News.

* This article was originally published here

When the Yankees hosted the Oakland A’s in the Bronx last night in the third game of a four-game series, 2022 American League MVP Aaron Judge, one of the best baseball players in the world, carried atypical numbers to the plate that were more in line with those of a deer in the headlights rookie.

Before the evening’s first pitch, the Yankees center fielder was batting a disquieting .180 in 89 at-bats in 24 games with three home runs, 11 RBI, and a team-high 31 strikeouts. Somewhat surprisingly, he was booed by the fans at Yankee Stadium last Saturday while going 0-4 with four strikeouts, including making the game’s next-to-last out, in his team’s 2-0, 10-inning loss to the Tampa Bay Rays. 

Judge empathized with the fans’ reaction. “I’ve heard worse and I’d probably be doing the same thing in their situation,” he acknowledged. 

The five-time All-Star expressed a broader view of the season and his current batting troubles. “I’ve had seasons where I’ve started off worse than this through my career,” he said.  “I’ve had seasons where you start off hot and you always hit a rough patch where you hit about .150 in the whole month but it kind of gets mixed in there with the other 500 at-bats. It’s just you got to keep working, keep improving and you’ll get out of it.”

The Yankees were 16-8 after starter Marcus Stroman picked up his second win of the season on Tuesday, logging 5.1 innings, giving up seven hits, three runs, and striking out nine in a 4-3 win over the A’s. They were in first place in the American League East, a half game ahead of the 

15-8 Baltimore Orioles when yesterday’s MLB schedule began. 

In the midst of Judge fighting through an early season funk, right fielder Juan Soto, designated hitter Giancarlo Stanton, first baseman Anthony Rizzo, and shortstop Anthony Volpe have mitigated his low production. When the Yankees took the field last night, Soto led them with 20 RBI and 29 hits. Stanton topped the team with 5 home runs and was third with 12 RBI. Rizzo had 21 hits and 10 RBI, and Volpe was second on the Yankees with 25 hits and his six stolen bases were the most on the club. Additionally, third baseman Oswaldo Cabrera was having a solid campaign with 20 hits and 14 RBI.

The Yankees begin a seven-game road trip tomorrow. They are scheduled for three against the Milwaukee Brewers and four versus the Baltimore Orioles. 

The post Aaron Judge shrugs off the boos and eyes the bigger picture appeared first on New York Amsterdam News.

* This article was originally published here

It was another animated and emotional event for Figure Skating in Harlem (FSH), which held its Reaching for the Stars Gala on April 17. Hosted by Vladimir Duthiers of CBS News, the honorees, guests and alumni were joined by U.S. Olympic skaters, including four from the 2022 team event, who earlier this year were officially recognized as gold medalists after a two-year delay.

The evening’s honorees were Tina Davis, Daria Forde, Alicia Hall Moran, and Cynthia Romano. Davis is the head of enterprise marketing and brand engagement at Citi and a member of FSH’s board. Romano, a former figure skater, is the senior managing director at FTI Consulting.

An accomplished singer and actress, Hall Moran is a long-time skater and FSH supporter. This year she was a twice-weekly volunteer skating instructor. “The ability to pop onto the ice as a Black woman fully engaged in her Blackness and stand in her Harlem neighborhood on ice with girls of color studying a sport and an artform feels very natural to me,” she said.

Forde, a 2020 computer science graduate from Barnard College, said FSH instilled confidence in her. “It means so much to me to be honored by a program that was pivotal with my trajectory and allowed me to see what it looked like to be a part of a true community,” said Forde. “Being in that environment at such a young age allowed me to know that I can enter whatever environment I want to and succeed.”

It’s been an eventful year for FSH. The performance team skated in the exhibition at the 2024 U.S. Figure Skating Championships in Columbus, Ohio. During career week, a group of students went to Estee Lauder headquarters where they learned how to make and market products. The most remarkable experience was a trip last summer to South Africa for 11 girls, which FSH founder/CEO Sharon Cohen said was “magical.”

High school junior Zayda Rojas, a member of FSH for 10 years, described the trip as life changing and an opportunity to travel to the place of their ancestors.  

“I could see different cultures, how they interacted, the foods that they ate,” she said. “I felt loved and I felt nourished by the people. They were very welcoming and inclusive. I learned a lot about them and a lot about myself.”

The post Figure Skating in Harlem continues to reach for the stars appeared first on New York Amsterdam News.

* This article was originally published here

NEW YORK (AP) — Facing widespread unhappiness over its response to the Israel-Hamas war, the writers’ group PEN America has called off its annual awards ceremony. Dozens of nominees had dropped out of the event, which was to have taken place next week.

PEN, a literary and free expression organization, hands out hundreds of thousands of dollars in prizes each year, including $75,000 for the PEN/Jean Stein Award for best book. But with nine of the 10 Jean Stein finalists withdrawing, along with nominees in categories ranging from translation to poetry, continuing with the ceremony at The Town Hall in Manhattan proved unworkable.

Among those dropping out was debut novel finalist Rachel Eliza Griffiths, wife of former PEN president Salman Rushdie.

“This is a beloved event and an enormous amount of work goes into it, so we all regret this outcome but ultimately concluded it was not possible to carry out a celebration in the way we had hoped and planned,” PEN America CEO Suzanne Nossel said in a statement Monday.

The cancellation comes as tensions over the war have spread throughout the country, from college campuses to political events to roadways, which at times have been blocked by protesters everywhere from Illinois to California.

Since the war began last October, authors affiliated with PEN have repeatedly denounced the organization for allegedly favoring Israel and downplaying atrocities against Palestinian writers and journalists. In an open letter published last month, and endorsed by Naomi Klein and Lorrie Moore among others, the signers criticized PEN for not mobilizing “any substantial coordinated support” for Palestinians and for not upholding its mission to “dispel all hatreds and to champion the ideal of one humanity living in peace and equality in one world.”

PEN has responded by citing that it has condemned the loss of life in Gaza, called for a ceasefire and helped set up a $100,000 emergency fund for Palestinian writers. Last week, PEN America President Jennifer Finney Boylan announced that a committee was being formed to review the organization’s work, “not just over the last six months, but indeed, going back a decade, to ensure we are aligned with our mission and make recommendations about how we respond to future conflicts.”

Critics have said that the relief fund is too small and noted that PEN waited until March to endorse a ceasefire, five months after the war began.

Stein finalists had included Justin Torres’ “Blackouts,” winner last fall of the National Book Award for fiction, and Catherine Lacey’s “Biography of X.” At the request of the estate for Jean Stein, an author and oral historian who died in 2017, the prize money will be donated to the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund.

“Jean Stein was a passionate advocate for Palestinian rights who published, supported, and celebrated Palestinian writers and visual artists,” reads a statement from Katrina Vanden Heuvel, Wendy Vanden Heuvel and Bill Clegg, on behalf of the Stein estate. “While she established the PEN America award in her name to bring attention to and provide meaningful support to writers of the highest literary achievement, we know she would have respected the stance and sacrifice of the writers who have withdrawn from contention this year.”

Camille T. Dungy’s “Soil” had been the only remaining Stein award contender.

PEN announced Monday that judges had selected a handful of winners, among them Javier Fuentes’ “Countries of Origin” for debut novel, the PEN/Hemingway award. Playwright/screenwriter Tony Kushner will still receive the PEN/Mike Nichols Writing for Performance Award. Other honorary awards include the PEN/Nabokov Award for Achievement in International Literature, given to the late Maryse Condé.

Some authors have called for the resignation of Nossel and other top officials. Lacey, in an Instagram post last week, wrote that PEN needed to “make big changes in the leadership and move into a new era.” More than a dozen awards finalists endorsed a recent letter that demanded Nossel, Boylan and others step down and alleged that PEN had “shown blatant disregard of our collective values.”

A PEN spokesperson said it had no plans to respond to calls for Nossel and others to resign.

PEN’s other high-profile spring events — the “World Voices” festivals in New York and Los Angeles, and the gala at the American Museum of Natural History — will go ahead as scheduled. Klein and Moore are among the writers who have said they will not attend the World Voices festival, which Rushdie helped establish 20 years ago. Rushdie and other former PEN presidents, including Jennifer Egan and Andrew Solomon, had recently published a letter urging the literary community to participate in the festival.

“The festival was conceived amid conflict to draw together diverse authors and thinkers at a time of deepening and deadly geopolitical tension after 9/11,” the letter reads in part.

“We believe in PEN America and the festival and urge that, even at a time of discord, readers and writers will once again find a way to come together to jointly quest for insight and inspiration.”

The post PEN America calls off awards ceremony amid criticism over its response to Israel-Hamas war appeared first on New York Amsterdam News.

* This article was originally published here

Global leaders and progressive officials observed Earth Day at Prince William Forest Park in Triangle, Va., on historic grounds that hold the stories of the many populations that inhabited them. 

Indigenous Americans and freed slaves once cultivated the land there, known as “Batestown,” before federal development under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration Program. This year, in honor of the April 22 holiday, President Joe Biden announced pioneering efforts to help solve the climate crisis. 

“On this day 54 years ago, with literally toxic rivers burning, air filled with pollution, millions of Americans from every age and background rallied together to stand for our environment and for future generations,” Biden said in his opening remarks. 

“The United States can and must lead the world in transforming our energy systems away from fossil fuels,” said Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) at the event. “The Solar for All program—that I successfully championed—will not only combat the existential threat of climate change by making solar energy available to working class families, it will also substantially lower the electric bills of Americans and create thousands of good-paying jobs. This is a win for the environment, a win for consumers, and a win for the economy.”

Just last week, Biden initiated efforts to preserve 13 million acres of Western Arctic land. On Monday, he declared $7 billion in awards through the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Solar for All Program. According to the White House, funds will be dispersed to 900,000 households for rooftop solar paneling, decreasing homeowners’ utility bills by $400 a year. 

Biden said the investment would “cut more than 5 million metric tons of carbon pollution annually.” He’s inviting other citizens to join his cause through the newly launched ClimateCorps program. Enrollment is open to all but geared toward training the younger generation in clean energy jobs. 

The EPA investments add to Biden’s ongoing support for sustainable energy initiatives. During his speech, Biden shared sentimental connections to Earth Day when he introduced the first climate bill in the Senate and served alongside Gaylord Nelson (D-WI), the official credited for creating Earth Day. 

“All these years later, as president, I was able to sign into law the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), the most significant [climate] investment ever anywhere in the history of the world, and we’re just getting started,” Biden said proudly. 

Through federal programs, the IRA makes billions available in loan distributions to encourage business owners and families to use clean energy sources. The legislation is projected to cut 40 percent of greenhouse gas emissions for the country by 2030 and save up to $1,000 in energy costs for the average American. 

“Last year was the Earth’s hottest year on record, and over the last two years, natural disasters and extreme weather in America have caused $270 billion in damages,” Biden said. “The impacts we’re seeing, due to decades in the making because of inaction, are only going to get worse, more frequent, ferocious, and costly.”

His fears resonate with Democratic progressive Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY-14) and Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA), who introduced the Green New Deal in Congress several years ago. The policy, which passed in the House of Representatives but failed in the Senate, urges government agencies to stimulate economic recovery, eradicate poverty, and reduce carbon emissions and ecosystem degradation through affordable housing projects. 

Although legislators did not move forward with the bill, Ocasio-Cortez and Markey have been passionately pursuing viable alternatives to solve the growing issue at hand.

“Over just the past few months, President Biden has paused new natural gas exports, vastly expanded the conservation of our public lands in Alaska, and has overseen tens of billions of dollars in climate investments across the United States,” Ocasio-Cortez said at the event.These efforts, propelled by the administration, signal larger investments to come as Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris welcome environmental activists to the White House this week for a water summit. The two have indicated a national goal to protect, restore, and reconnect 8 million acres of wetlands and 100,000 miles of the nation’s rivers and streams.

The post Earth Day sparks increased access to clean energy, Biden allocates $7 billion to “Solar for All” appeared first on New York Amsterdam News.

* This article was originally published here