Everyday meetings have become a little more Le Carr due to the pandemic.

Previously journalists like me would enjoy lunches, beers, coffees with contacts to catch up, share stories and gossip and generally have a good time and pretend it was work.

Now, with necessity for outdoor living and an obsession with ventilation, an appointment I had last week was typical. We met in a park, social distanced, sipped our coffees from either end of a bench. It felt a bit more Spy Who Came In From the Cold than State of Play.

But it also demonstrated a too oft overlooked element of the pandemic experience the politics of parks.

Although weve all be isolated and siloed this past year many, if not most, of the population have actually been sharing the same space: the local park. Green spaces previously taken for granted have suddenly become a lifeline a boon for mental and physical health.

And as we emerge from restrictions its important that we continue to value our public spaces that belong to everyone.

The changing attitudes towards our parks speaks to bigger alterations in public attitudes.

The Victorians got it. Waterlow Park in north London that I visited last week was gifted to Londoners by the then lord mayor. He dubbed it a garden for the gardenless. Lord Mayor Waterlow could not have foreseen just how vital his gift would prove 130 years later when a virus hit that toppled everything bar outdoor life.

Not all London mayors are so wise.

Boris Johnsons grandiose infrastructure is well known. His failure to bring most of it to fruition too often overlooked

Near my home in south London is another park that illustrates that Victorian can-do attitude and foresight.

When the judges gathered to choose a design for the pavilion that would house the 1851 Great Exhibition they decided they were all a bit rubbish.

During the deliberations one of the panel, garden design guru Joseph Paxton, was bored enough to sketch a massive glasshouse. Everyone decided this was a winner and so the Crystal Palace was born. Its a tale that begs the question how much better the Millennium Dome wouldve been if wed given Charlie Dimmock a shot at designing it.

Comparison with the doomed Dome is worth sticking with. The Dome was mocked, exhibited tat (to be fair, in part because nicking global treasures was out of favour by the 1990s not everything the Victorians did was entirely worthy) and now stands stuffed with capitalism.

The Crystal Palace, on the other hand, was lauded as a modern wonder of the world and after the Great Exhibition it was dismantled and moved from its Hyde Park home to a park in south London for the benefit of ordinary folk.

The park is still in use, and loved for its unique cement dinosaurs, but the Crystal Palace itself tragically burned down in the 1930s. Ever since then a variety of chancers, dreamers and do-gooders have hoped to rebuild it. The most recent episode involved a Chinese developer who promised the palace would rise again. But crucial to the plans was a conference centre and assorted money-making enterprises.

Opponents pointed out that to succeed the proposal relied on the Mayor of London giving away land that belongs to everyone so a Chinese enterprise can spin a profit.

The Mayor of London who expressed no qualms about such a scenario? Boris Johnson. Its a telling episode in the Prime Ministers backstory.

His love of grandiose infrastructure is well known. His failure to bring most of it to fruition too often overlooked.

As well as the the Crystal Palace plan, which collapsed when the local council refused to hand over the land, there was the London garden bridge which was canned only after upwards of 40 million had been spent on getting it off the ground, and the bizarre idea of a floating airport in the Thames.

History suggests that when Johnson talks of a bridge between Scotland and Northern Ireland or even just a decent train line across the north of England, he wont be able to make it happen.

Many of us took parks for granted before the pandemic. If we are to keep them, then its up to us to value them

And as we move forward looking to retain what gains there have been in the last year such as valuing our public spaces and more generally putting wellbeing, shared experience and public assets at the core of government philosophy its instructive that the man running the show did not quail at privatising public space for the sake of a half-cocked vanity project when given the chance.

Many of us took parks for granted before the pandemic. If we are to keep them, then its up to us to value them. Not, as government and developers might see them, as opportunities to generate cash, but for the vital good they provided during the pandemic and can continue to do into the future.

James Millar is a political commentator and author and a former Westminster correspondent for The Sunday Post

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James Millar: If we take our public spaces for granted again well live to regret it - Press and Journal

Jillian Lavender teaches celebrities, frazzled financiers and sleepless CEOs her stress-busting techniques, charging up to 2,000 for her time. She tells Bridget Harrison how to tackle anxiety

Jillian Lavender

CRAIG FORDHAM

Friday July 09 2021, 5.00pm, The Times

She wears tailored suits, speaks in no-nonsense Antipodean tones and was formerly an executive for a global publishing company. Meet Jillian Lavender, the go-to meditation teacher for hedge funders, top lawyers and chief executives, who sign up to her classes in London and New York, each paying up to 2,000 for her time.

These high-flyers turn to her to tackle stress, anxiety, insomnia and migraines. Brown rice and sandals this is not, Lavender says. A lot of people come to me because they want to stay at the top of their game but find coping with that pressure unsustainable eventually.

Among the thousands of pupils she has taught to meditate over the past decade are the actress Sienna Miller and the wellness expert Jasmine Hemsley.

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Jillian Lavender, the meditation guru who helps high-flyers stay calm - The Times

Water is the lifeblood of the planet but in its salty form, it can also be a threat. Even as drought cripples the U.S. West and other parts of the world, rising oceans are lapping at the shores of coastal communities and islands, increasingly exposing natural ecosystems and built-up environments to flooding, storm surges and erosion.

For over two years, the Northampton theatrical ensemble Serious Play has been developing a multi-dimensional production that grapples with the threats climate change poses to water on different levels, and with it life on the planet as well as what Director Sheryl Stoodley calls our own relationships with water.

Now, after the pandemic wiped out any chance for live performances last year, Moving Water is set for a live debut July 22-25 at the Northampton Arts Trust building at 33 Hawley St., and an online screening July 30-Aug. 1. Using sound and music, movement, drama, video, a rain shower tool and rolling scaffolding, its the most ambitious production Serious Play has ever mounted, Stoodley says.

The technical stuff can make me crazy, she said with a laugh during a recent phone interview. But given everything were seeing today with drought, melting glaciersand rising seas, [the production] certainly seems timely.

And though the pandemic has delayed the presentation of Moving Water, Stoodley noted, its also helped foster a collaborative effort with other arts organizations to get the show to the finish line. Moving Water is being co-produced by the Ko Festival, the long-running summer theater festival at Amherst College which this year is offering virtual workshops and performances.

In addition, Northampton Open Media will record the live performances of Moving Water, then edit and caption them for online viewing July 30 through Aug. 1. Those presentations will also include real-time, post-show discussions with the Serious Play ensemble and guest experts; audience members can ask questions via Vimeos chat function.

Im so grateful for the support the Ko Festival and Northampton Open Media have shown us, and for the way art organizations in general have kind of pooled their efforts during this really tough time, Stoodley said. She hopes the videotaped performance can also be used as calling card for finding other venues for Moving Water.

In addition, Ko Festival Artistic Director and Co-Founder Sabrina Hamilton is handling the lighting for Moving Water.

Aside from delaying the plays debut, COVID-19 also took a toll on the cast of Moving Water, which Serious Play members first began researching in 2018. The ensemble held a couple of live workshops in 2019 to showcase parts of the production, but a few initial members of the cast had to drop out during the pandemic for economic reasons,Stoodley said.

Now the story, by playwright Eric Henry Sanders, focuses on three characters, while the pandemic, or an unnamed one, forms a backdrop to the narrative.

In an aging apartment building in acoastal U.S. city, three residents are thrown together amid debate about climate change and a shortage of fresh water. Sergei (Kermit Dunkelberg), the buildings superintendentand a refugee from the Chernobyl nuclear plant meltdownin Ukraine, discovers another resident and friend, Pakistani immigrant Zara, is missing. Two other residents, Luna (Ximena Salmern) and Drew (Will Swyers), join the search for Zara.

But there are complications galore. Zara had been working with Sergei, an older man whos been creating da Vinci-like experiments, as Stoodley puts it, to try and save the building from impending flooding. Meantime, Drew, the building owners son, dismisses climate change and is determined to maintain the status quo. And Luna, an oceanographic student from Mexico, may have very different ideas altogether on how to address water problems.

Luna represents the next generation and how they might approach these issues, Stoodleysaid. Im not sure our generation has the answers. Thats one of the questions [the production] asks: Are there other things we should be considering besides science and technology?

To tell this story on multiple levels, the stage will be backed by a screen on which Robin Doty, Stoodleys husband, will project a number of videos he has designed (including an image of Dunkelberg, wearing a snorkel and mask, walking down a street in a coastal New Jersey town that was underwater during Hurricane Sandy in 2012).

Jonny Rodgers, a composer and multi-instrumentalist from Oregon, has created the soundtrack for the production, a combination of electronic music and sounds from tuned wine glasses, also known as the glass harp. Rodgers will play the latter live at the show, Stoodley says, after working with Serious Play both live and virtually over the last few years.

The production also includes a water tank, and characters will get rained on during the performance. Rolling scaffolding represents the structure of the apartment building. The ensemble will also make use of Playtronica, a new electronic sound sensor technology that can make sound emanate from human skin or inanimate objects.

There are a lot of moving parts to this production, Stoodley noted with a laugh.

Moving Water will be staged in the Arts Trusts large, unfinished space (about 3,400 square feet), which provides lots of roomfor maneuvering but also poses additional challenges, such as rigging special lights for the play, as regular lighting is not yet part of the space.

Stoodley says the play is designed to be a really immersive experience, as its based on company members research and their own personal histories and memories of being in contact with water. That research, she notes, involved talking to and reading accounts of people who grew up in areas of chronic water scarcity.

Its really about the beauty and terror of water, she said. Water is a gathering point for the story but we didnt want to do make this just a story of disaster. We wanted it to be about empathy and about finding ways of coming together to try and deal with a crisis.

Tickets for the live performances of Moving Water, which take place July 22-24 at 8 p.m. and July 25 at 4 p.m., must be purchased in advance no walk-in sales will be available at kofest.com. Seating will be limited to 50 people per show.

Tickets for the online version of the play, at 8 p.m. on July 30-31 and 4 p.m. on Aug. 1, can also be purchased at kofest.com. Tickets for both versions of the production range from $32 (patron price), $22 (discounted price), and $10 for those with SNAP/EBT cards, on unemployment or with income affected by COVID-19.

More information is available at seriousplay.org.

Steve Pfarrer can be reached at spfarrer@gazettenet.com.

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Lifeblood out of balance: Serious Play returns to the stage with a meditation on climate change and water - GazetteNET

Today well talk about how to write the classic New York Times column, using Thomas Edsalls recent Trumpism Without Borders as our example. It must have taken him about 40 minutes to write it.

Edsall blames the populist movements sweeping the globe on the same ills that led to a right-wing takeover of the federal government by Donald Trump. To wit: anti-immigrant fervor, political tribalism, racism, ethnic tension, authoritarianism and inequality. Fascism awaits us unless we keep importing low-skilled immigrants and shipping jobs abroad!

For someone worried about the erosion of democratic norms, maybe Edsall shouldnt be referring to the outcome of a free and fair U.S. presidential election as a right-wing takeover of the federal government. We had an election, pal.

But ever since the 2016 election, theres been a frisson of viciousness to the elites usual contempt for ordinary Americans. Never mind that Trump ended up betraying his voters. The establishment is appalled that the issues he ran on were popular. Five years later, they still sputter in rage, unable to comprehend why Jeb or Hillary didnt end up in the White House.

To explain this calamity, Edsall rolls out all the Timesian cliches about losers being upset about losing. He calls this the ubiquity of loss, as if were talking about a natural phenomenon, like beach erosion.

Trump voters, he says, are people who are angry about:

their inability to achieve a standard of living as high as that of their parents,

the decline of the gender pay gap ... and other types of loss relative to women, and

losing employment and earnings to China and other countries.

Edsall acts as if these things are immutable laws of physics. Actually, they result from the deliberate policy choices of our ruling class to benefit some Americans to the detriment of others.

Specific policy decisions were made to import an endless stream of low-skilled workers. Employers got boatloads of cheap labor, while ordinary Americans saw their wages plummet.

Oh, and if were pretending to care about democratic norms, Americans have voted for less immigration over and over and over again. If anyone in the establishment gives a crap about democratic norms, then why do they keep foisting more immigration on us?

Specific policy decisions were made to explicitly discriminate against white men in order to give jobs to women, simply because they were women.

I give you Kamala Harris (Bidens one job requirement for his VP: must be a woman of color); every police chief in the nation (save a couple of black men); and Kara Hultgreen (who died when she crashed a $38 million F-14 after being continuously promoted despite repeated training failures, because the Navy wanted a female fighter pilot).

What crybabies! These guys resent losing jobs because of abject discrimination against them. Koo-koo! Koo-koo!

Specific policy decisions were made to gut our countrys manufacturing base. Globalist bankers got rich, and the working class got the shaft.

The destruction of American manufacturing wasnt, as Edsall claims, a consequence of trade. (Whos buying our stuff?) International agreements forcing Americans to compete with dollar-an-hour third worlders were a gift to Big Business and Wall Street. They get a larger share of a much smaller pie. Sure, our country overall will make $30, instead of $100. But the 1 percent will get $29 instead of $20!

We dont need Thomas Edsall to psychoanalyze Trump voters in order to understand what happened in 2016. We were at DEFCON 1 as a nation. (And thanks to Trumps betrayal, we still are.)

After 20 years, people began to notice: The elites really do hate us. They really are going to ship our jobs abroad. They really are going to replace us with cheap foreign labor. They really are going to let in hordes of illegals. They really are going to bail out Wall Street and preserve their sleazy tax loopholes.

Faced with a choice between the toxic left and country club Republicans, when a complete psychotic came down the escalator, people thought, He might just mean it! (That was a miscalculation.)

The elites screw over ordinary Americans, then to salve their consciences, they call the poor saps racists. They get to maintain a system that benefits only them and at the same time feel morally superior to the people whose lives theyve ruined. Its win-win all around!

Americans dont care about the gender pay gap, climate change or international institutions. They deserve whats coming to them!

Ann Coulter is a syndicated columnist.

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Ann Coulter: Why are they so angry? | Opinion | marshallnewsmessenger.com - Marshall News Messenger

Every revolutionary movement needs a martyr and it appears that the MAGA revolution has finally found one for itself.

Ashli Babbit, the Jan. 6th insurrectionist who was shot by a security guard as she climbed through a broken window just a few feet away from members of Congress,is Donald Trump's Horst Wessel, the German brownshirt who was murdered in 1930 and turned into a martyr by the Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels. Trump himself is making the case for Babbit, having mentioned her in every appearance he's made in the last week.

At his recent Florida rally, Trump wondered:"Who shot Ashli Babbit? We all saw the hand... Now they don't want to give the name." At hispress conferenceon Wednesday in which he announced his laughable "class action" lawsuit against the Big Tech companies, he went a little bit farther saying, "there were no guns in the Capitol except for the gun that shot Ashli Babbitt. And nobody knows who that man were...the person that shot Ashli Babbitt right through the head, just boom. There was no reason for that." Then this past weekend he went all the way, describing the insurrection as a love fest and Babbit as an innocent victim in an interview with Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo:

Bartiromo took the ball and ran with it, saying that Babbitt climbedoutof a broken window (as if she was trying to escape the vicious gunman) after which both she and Trump speculated that the officer who shot Babbitt was part of a Democratic official's security detail, casually mentioning Chuck Schumer in the process. The implication was obvious: the Democrats shot Ashli Babbitt for no good reason. The fact that we have all seen the footage of the shooting is irrelevant: We can believe them or we can believe our lying eyes.

Over the weekend, Trump appeared at his second CPAC conference in five months this time in Texas. (Salon's Zachary Petrizzo deliveredthesedispatchesfrom the event.) Trump gave his usual speech, to a notably more excited crowd than the last one in February in Florida. He's barely able to keep from announcing to his adoring fans that he's running again and they are all clamoring for him to do it. And it's clear that he will be running to avenge his bogus claims that he actually won the election. The Big Lie will never die.

It all sounds bizarre but when you talk about this stuff in the context of CPAC, it is really not all that crazy. Sure the violent insurrection gives their standard reckless rhetoric a feeling of urgency that wasn't there before, but if you look back you can see that's been there for decades.

Back in 1973 when the American Conservative Union (founded in 1964) first started holding these get-togethers, the GOP was in terrible disarray in the wake of Watergate and far-right organizers saw an opportunity to reshape the party in their conservative image. They invited Ronald Reagan to give the first keynote and the "New Right" never looked back.

CPAC has always been used as a way to take the temperature of the party activists and in that way, it's very instructive. The straw poll that's taken every year (or now, every few months, apparently) has not always been predictive of the party's nominee, but it shows what ideas and issues most excite the base. It's almost certain that the feedback loop between this group and the right-wing media guides the party as much as party officials and pollsters do. For the first quarter-century, the conference was an ideological gathering designed to promote the conservative movement agenda of anti-communism, small government, strong military, Christian Right values, low taxes, etc. But with the rise of the right-wing media first talk radio, then Fox News by the turn of the century, it became much more of a right-wing celebrity spectacle that sought to shock the political media, which loved to cover it since it was always held in DC. (This is the first year they've ever held the event outside of DC.) In fact, for the past 20 years, CPAC was basically the same circus that Trump took on the road for his beloved rallies. During the Bush years, politicians showed up and there were panel discussions of issues but the stars of the show were people like Ann Coulter, who pretty much made her name at these events. And they said things which, looking back, make January 6th seem inevitable.

At the 2002 meeting, Coulter said, "we need to execute people like John Walker in order to physically intimidate liberals, by making them realize that they can be killed, too, otherwise, they will turn out to be outright traitors." A few years latershe made news againwith another notorious speech:

On Democrats: "Someday they will find a way to abort all future Boy Scouts."

College professors: "sissified, pussified." Harvard: "the Soviet Union." John Kerry: the other "dominant woman in Democratic politics."

Her post-9/11 motto: "Rag head talks tough, rag head faces consequences." For good measure, she threw in a joke about having Muslims burn down the Supreme Court with the liberal justices inside.

Then came questions. A young woman asked Coulter to describe the most difficult ethical decision she ever made. "There was one time I had a shot at Bill Clinton," Coulter said.

She meant that literally. Meanwhile, down in the bowels of the hotel hosting CPAC, they sold merchandise with adorable sayings such as "Happiness is Hillary Clinton's face on a milk carton" and "Rope. Tree. Journalist. Some Assembly Required." At the next year's event, Coulter said, "I was going to have a few comments on the other Democratic presidential candidate, John Edwards, but it turns out you have to go into rehab if you use the word 'fa**ot,'" and when she was rebuked for saying it, she called it "speech totalitarianism."

There is nothing new under the right-wing sun.

In recent years, some of the acts were scrapped. Coulter was not invited in 2015, and in 2017 the right-wing provocateur Milo Yianopoulos wascanceledwhen it was revealed that he had made positive statements about pedophilia. They were no longer needed anyway. The show was by then dominated byDonald Trump who had made his first big political splash there in 2013spreading the "birther" lie, which the attendees ate up with a spoon. And while Coulter climbed her way back to CPAC this weekend, participating on an obscure panel going onabout immigrationand making grotesque racist statements, as usual,her act doesn't shock anymore and nobody cares. Who needs Coulter anyway when you have Trump?

Heather Digby Parton, also known as "Digby," is a contributing writer to Salon. She was the winner of the 2014 Hillman Prize for Opinion and Analysis Journalism.

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Trump cranks it up at CPAC: Why raising the spectacle of right-wing madness right now is so scary - Salon

The chief priest of an Ashram in Sayala of Surendranagar was allegedly murdered by his sewak (helper) after a dispute between the duo, with police forming multiple teams to arrest the accused.

According to police, the incident took place in Nageshwar Ashram at Vanki village of Sayla taluka in Surendranagar on July 4 night, when head priest Bhavani Shankargiri Bapu, said to be above 60 years old, was allegedly assaulted by his helper Sitaram (Ramji), 30. Bapu died during treatment in a Rajkot hospital on July 6 night, after which police lodged a case of murder against Sitaram who is absconding.

I arrived at Nageshwar Ashram with my guru Dharmendragiri Bapu for a satsang On July 4 night, Dharmendragiri Bapu, Bhavani Shankargiri Bap, Sitaram and I were sitting in the ashram. Bhavani asked Sitaram to get him dinner and water The latter got infuriated and started abusing him. Sitaram picked up a wooden stick and assaulted Bhavani Shankargiri multiple times on his head due to which he fell unconscious. He then assaulted Dharmendragiri and myself with the stick and demanded keys of my motorcycle. He then locked us inside the ashram and left on the motorcycle, said Ashish Shekhalia, helper of Dharmendragiri Bapu, in his police complaint.

We called on 108 helpline and Bhavani Shankar Giri was taken to a hospital in Surendranagar. He was later shifted to Rajkot based hospital where he died on July 6 night during treatment, the complaint added.

Speaking to The Indian Express, Surendranagar Superintendent of Police Mahendra Bagadia said, The accused assaulted Bapu over demanding dinner and water. He is absconding as of now and teams have been formed to arrest him.

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Police look for helper who murdered head priest in Surendranagar ashram - The Indian Express

With a pared-down audience and a lengthy list of safety protocols, the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games are set to begin later this month, more than a year after they were postponed due to what was then called a developing global situation. The COVID-19 pandemic has meant a difficult time for athletes across the world. For many, it involved isolating with family and loved ones, reduced training opportunities, and lots of unknowns.

But now one of the biggest summer sporting events is on track and will run from July 23 to August 8. And the excitement is palpable.

Israel plans to send 89 athletes in 15 sports to compete in the games this month, including 54 men and 35 women. This is the countrys largest delegation to date and almost double the number of athletes it sent to the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro in 2016.

Israel is probably now in the top 30 this time of biggest teams. Sending a team of almost 100? Thats actually really big, especially for a small country, says David Wiseman, co-founder of Follow Team Israel, the only organization devoted entirely to providing information on Israeli athletes in English.

Due to qualifying standards, athletes from small countries generally receive invitations to qualify in certain events. In Israel, 24 out of the 89 athletes will compete as a baseball team. That leaves 65. It shows you that were really improving. That weve got athletes that are even able to qualify, which is just amazing. And that means all the athletes are improving to get there, Wiseman tells NoCamels.

Israels biggest delegation also includes some of the top judo athletes in the world and at least 10 gymnasts: Alex Shatilov, the male artistic gymnast competing in his third Olympic Games, Linoy Ashram, the rhythmic gymnast that may very well be Israels best chance for a medal in Tokyo, and a womens rhythmic gymnastics group, which took the gold medal at the European Championships in November 2020.

While Israel has won a total of nine Olympic medalssince its debut in 1952 as a country officially recognized by the International Olympic Committee, this year is its best chance to grab first, second, and third-place finishes.

As the Olympics approach, were featuring some of the top Israeli athletes competing in Tokyo in just a few weeks.

The Olympics will see Israels first-ever equestrian team, made up of four show jumpers, the first Israeli archer, and the first Israeli surfer to compete in the games.

There are also Olympic events in which Israeli athletes have never competed or medaled.

Twenty-two-year-old Linoy Ashram first made history in September 2017 by becoming the first Israeli rhythmic gymnast to get a medal in the all-around competition at a World Championships. She won the bronze medal in the competition. Previously, Neta Rivkin was the only Israeli to win a medal, but it was in an apparatus final.

The twenty-two-year-old powerhouse has since become Israels most successful rhythmic gymnast to date and has repeatedly placed in the top three in rhythmic gymnastics competitions for a number of years. While Neta Rivkin earned a chance to head to the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, she was not able to move past the qualifying rounds in the individual all-around when her final score was not enough to earn her place in the top 10.

Everybody has expectations for Linoy, says Follow Team Israels other co-founder Shari Wright Pilo. Is Linoy going to get a medal? What happens if she doesnt? Is she a loser? No, shes a total winner. She got them. Shes in the top 20 of the world to be there.

But Ashram already has the world championship medals to back her up, so an Olympic medal is a very real possibility. She is the 2018 World All-Around silver medalist, two-time (2017, 2019) World All-around bronze medalist, and the 2019 European Games All-around silver medalist. In November 2020, she won a gold medal in the individual rhythmic category at the European Championships in 2020. She was the first athlete in decades to win the top spot, which has been dominated by athletes from a former Soviet Union country or Bulgaria.

I am very happy, Ashram told Israels Kan public broadcaster after her win, according to The Times of Israel, but The focus is on the Olympics, she said.

Over the past 15 years, she has won 47 medals, including 11 at the World Championships. She hopes to add at least one Olympic medal to the collection in just a few weeks.

Bullseye! Twenty-two-year-old Itay Shanny has made history by becoming the first-ever archer to compete in the Olympic Games for Israel.

With his outstanding performance in the final Olympic qualifying tournament in Paris, Shanny secured himself a spot for Tokyo 2020 by finishing 23rd out of 94 contenders.

Its surreal. Im going to be the first archer from Israel to be at the Olympics, he said at the tournament, according to World Archery, the official website of the international federation of the sport of archery.

I need to see on paper my name and Tokyo qualification, he added.

Shanny scored 656 points in the initial qualification round. He later beat 90th seed Oliver Ormar Ingvarsson (Iceland) Latvias 42nd seed Janis Brunis, and gained a victory over 10th seed Senna Roos of Belgium to reach the round of 16, meeting the Olympic quota.

Ive thought about that moment for a long time in my head, said Shanny. Im still in sort of shock. Im not celebrating as maybe I should. Its amazing, I feel great.

Anat Lelior is Israels first (and currently only) Olympic surfer among the 20 men and 20 women who will be competing this summer.

Lelior qualified for the 2020 Olympics in 2019 after finishing as the highest-ranked female surfer from Europe at the International Surfing Association (ISA) World Surfing Games in Miyazaki, Japan. That same year, she also had her best season on the World Surf League (WSL) World Qualifying series, culminating in a first-place finish at the Deeply Pro Anglet in France.

The 21-year-old Tel Aviv native started surfing at five with her sister Noa, and by 12 she had claimed the Israeli national championships.

Growing up surfing the Meditteranean waves in Tel Aviv has also given Lelior a unique mentality and approach, she tells Olympics.com

I live in a sea compared to an ocean, and a sea is almost like a puddle next to a pool, said Lelior. The waves are not really consistent and its really hard to be an excellent surfer next to all the world champions and all the other contestants. So, I just try to keep pushing harder and harder even though I dont have the conditions that they have.

Lelior sheltered in place with her family in Tel Aviv during the pandemic, and she looks back at the experience positively as it offered her an opportunity to focus and plan out her goals.

Im even grateful for the Olympics being postponed. I think it gave us all time to see whats the most important in our lives, she adds. I know what I want to do with my life now and Im ready to start it.

Israels equestrian team at the Olympics will certainly be a first. The team is made up of Alberto Michan, a Mexico-born horse rider in his third Olympics but representing Israel for the first time, Teddy Vlock, a 23-year old jumper juggling training with Yale University in the US, Danielle Goldstein Waldman, a 36-year-old, American-born rider known for her trademark hair styled with colorful feathers, and Ashlee Bond, the daughter of Israeli-American actor and model Steve Bond.

Bond began competing in equestrian competitions when she was six. After her first grand prix competition in 2001, when she was 16, she was named Grand Prix Rookie of the Year by the US Equestrian Federation and Pacific Coast Horse Shows Association.

Bonds passion for the sport wavered at times. At 19, she quit and explored other career possibilities. Soon after, when she was 21 traveling to New Zealand with her mom, Bond rediscovered her passion. Over the next 15 years, Bonds passion led to numerous victories and accolades, including Chronicle of the Horse Show Jumping Horseman of the Year for 2009.

She became a citizen of Israel in 2018 and qualified to participate in the Olympics in the summer of 2019. Bond will ride the horse Donatello 141 at the Games.

Its #TeamIsrael all the way! You cant pick just one member of this superstar team. Baseball in Israel does not enjoy the same popularity as in the US, Japan, or the Dominican Republic, but the country is still celebrating its first baseball team to ever qualify for the Olympic Games.

Made up of 12 pitchers, three catchers, six infielders, and three outfielders, the 24-person team is also the first Israeli sports team to have qualified for the Olympics since the national soccer team in 1976.

Much of the Israeli team is made up of Jewish Americans who became Israeli citizens as a requirement for the Olympics.

Everyone is a passport holder or citizen of Israel. Most of the players are from the minor leagues, but a few have played in the major leagues and a few are native Israelis, including the pitcher Shlomo Lipetz, who was born in Tel Aviv, Eric Holtz, a US-born baseball coach who had played for the Israel Baseball League in 2007, told NoCamels in 2019. Holtz was asked to head coach the Israel Senior National Team in 2017 and, in 2019, the team made history by defeating South Africa 11-1 during a six-team Europe/Africa Olympic qualifying tournament in Italy, and securing a spot in Tokyo

The teams first game at the Tokyo Olympics will be against the American team. They will also face teams from Japan, Mexico, South Korea, and the Dominican Republic.

Baseball can be sudden death, says Wiseman, But they have a good chance.

Some of these competitors are not household names just yet, but they are definitely ones to watch for their hard work, tenacity, and dedication.

Israeli runner Lonah Chemtai Salpeter will compete in the Womens 5,000 meter, Womens 10,000 meter, and the Womens marathon event at the Tokyo Olympics this month. She previously competed in the Womens marathon during the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro but left the event at the 33rd kilometer due to a shoulder problem, which she said had to do with continuing to breastfeed her 20-month old son.

Since then, the Kenya-born runner has won the 10,000m race at the 2018 European Athletics Championship. She also completed the Tokyo Marathon in 2020 with her personal best time of 2:17:45. It set a new Israeli national record, the second-fastest European of all time, and the 6th fastest woman in the marathon in history.

It made her the 6th-fastest woman in the marathon in history (now 7th), the second-fastest European of all time, and it gave her a new Israeli national record, Wiseman tells NoCamels.

Chemtai Salpeter first came to Israel in 2008 while working as a caretaker for the children of Kenyas ambassador to Israel. In 2011, she met Dan Salpeter, an Israeli running coach whom she later married.

Wright Pilo has interviewed Chemtai Salpeter for Follow Team Israel in the past. Shes got a great story, she tells NoCamels.

Chemtai Salpeter had been running shorter distances for much of her life, but she only started running marathons in 2014. By 2016, she came in first among women in the Tel Aviv marathon and qualified for the Olympics with a time of 2:40:16.

She received Israeli citizenship in March 2016, just in time to be able to participate in the Olympics.

Most people know Israeli judoka Ori Sasson for winning a bronze medal in the +100 kg category at the 2016 Summer Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, and Israeli judoka Sagi Muki for being the 2019 world judo champion and for his unlikely friendship with Saeid Mollaei, the Iranian judoka who left Iran after revealing that Iranian authorities allegedly told him to intentionally lose a match to avoid a potential face-off against Muki in the finals.

Then theres Peter Paltchik, the Israeli judoka who is making a name for himself as the current number one ranked judoka in the world in the under 100kg weight category.

Paltchik is considered one of Israels top athletes and a potential Tokyo Olympic medalist. He previously took gold at the 2020 European Championships under-100kg category in Prague, and bronze at the International Judo Federations (IJF) 2021 World Judo Masters in Doha, Qatar in January.

Peter is such an awesome guy and his matches are always so exciting, says Wright Pilo, who tells NoCamels the judoka was one of several athletes who did a workout video for Follow Team Israel at the very beginning of lockdown last year. I asked him at the very first lockdown when nobody was doing workouts online. He was like, Sure, Shari, Im on it. Paltchik did an exercise that he said gets him moving during training called the lizard walk.

Hard work and dedication to the sport is what brought this judoka to the forefront of his sport. In 2016, he didnt even qualify for the 2016 Summer Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro.

Missing out on qualifying for the Rio Games was one of the lowest points in my life, he told Olympics.com in February.

Its the same hard work and dedication that has been part of his life since he was young and already facing tough challenges and severe obstacles. Paltchik was born with multiple fractures and health complications.

The doctor said to his grandfather, Take him to sports, that will help him, Wright Pilo says. He began judo at age four and has since indicated that it helped foster his resilience both physically and mentally to overcome challenges.

The Israeli judoka is ready to show what he can do in Tokyo and says Israels strong system for serious judo athletes, which has produced medal-winning competitors like Arik Zeevi, Ori Sassoon, and Yarden Gerbi, is whats going to help get him there.

We have a system that works very, very good. Everyone is very focused on what needs to be done. And its a big system that is motivating everyone, he told Olympics.com, As for Tokyo, I think in my case, its an advantage because Im coming very, very ready. My physical and my mental game is ready. Everything is on the right path.

At just 17 years old, Lihi Raz is the only female artistic gymnast that will represent Israel in the womens artistic gymnastics competition in Tokyo. Raz was the Israeli national champion for her age group in 2019. She qualified by winning the bronze medal in the European Championship in Womens Artistic Gymnastics this past December.

She was the first Israeli to win a medal in the competitions history, according to The Jerusalem Post.

But she almost didnt make it. Israel did not send a female artistic gymnast in 2016 and when it was time to decide if there would be one in 2020, the Israeli Olympic Committee had additional internal qualification rules for athletes. Raz, due to her age and lack of experience, was not designated as an Olympic hopeful. She had to fulfill additional criteria including placing no lower than 12th on bars, beam, or floor, or in the first two halves of competitors on vault at the European Championships In this case, the pandemic worked to her favor.

Raz not only placed in the to 8 on the floor exercise in the qualifying round, but she also ended up winning bronze in the final and is the first-ever senior World Artistic Gymnastics medal for Israel at the European Championships.

Of course it was the goal but it was a bit of a surprise because I didnt yet know that I was capable of it. It made me believe in myself more and see what Im capable of achieving, she later told Haaretz, according to gymnastics news website Gymnovosti.

Raz was born in the US and moved to Israel with her family when she was three months old. Her gymnastics career started when she was just six.

Avishag Semberg is the 19-year old Israeli taekwondo athlete that has qualified for the 2020 Olympics by winning first place in the 2021 European Taekwondo Olympic Qualification Tournament in Bulgaria in May. She will be one of just 16 competitors in her weight category.

Previously, Semberg won gold in the womens-49kg category in the 2020 European Taekwondo Championships in Sarajevo, as the only woman competing in the Israeli delegation.

competing for Israel, Semberg has said: When I enter the arena with the Israeli flag on hand and the ISR on the suit I feel it is my commitment to represent Israel with dignity and I am excited about this opportunity.

Semberg was born in 2001 and started practicing taekwondo in the first grade.

My expectations of myself ahead of the Olympics is to do my maximum during the preparation and especially in the competition. Resist the pressure and give everything I have until the last second! she has shared on the official Israel Olympics Committee website.

Brothers Ran and Shachar Sagiv will compete in the triathlon event at the Tokyo Olympics. The sons of Israeli Olympic marathon runner Shemi Sagiv, the brothers will look to advance the family legacy while competing together in Japan.

Based in Zichron Yaakov, a town just south of Haifa, the Sagiv brothers have trained since they were young, including during high school and military service.

Shachar is currently ranked 39 in the world, and Ran is ranked 52, according to World Triathlon, the international governing body for the Olympic and Paralympic sport of triathlon. Each brother has won Israeli triathlon national championships. In 2017, Shachar finished fourth in the U23 World Championship, and in 2019, Ran won the bronze medal in the same event.

This will be the second consecutive Olympics that includes Israeli triathletes. Ron Darmon finished in 26th place in 2016.

In 2004, Israels first and only Olympic gold medal so far went to Gal Fridman in mens windsurfing at the Games in Athens.

This year, Yoav Cohen is looking to repeat the win as a competitor in Mens RS:X windsurfing class. Or at least showcase his talents. The 21-year-old finished in fifth place at the 2021 RS:X World Championships in April and reached a tie with Shahar Tzuberi in the ranking of the countrys selection. Although Tzuberi competed in the 2008, 2012 and 2016 Olympics for Israel and was chosen to compete in the Games before the postponement last year, the teams coach, Gur Steinberg, decided to make Cohen the representative instead.

The world will see how Cohen fares in the mens RS:X windsurfing heats later this month.

Originally posted here:

Israel Is Sending 89 Athletes To The Tokyo Olympics. Here Are 11 To Watch - NoCamels - Israeli Innovation News

(JTA) The 2020 Tokyo Olympics are finally happening, a full year after they were planned. And yes, theyre still being called the 2020 Olympics, even though theyre happening in 2021.

The Jewish athletes competing this year and there are many are the products of inspiring journeys. Theres the fencer looking for redemption, Israels first Olympic surfer, one of the greatest canoe paddlers of all time, a teen track star para-athlete, and so many more.

The games run July 23 through Aug. 8; the Paralympics will be held Aug. 24 to Sept. 5.

Here are many of the inspiring Jewish athletes to root for.

Basketball, USA

Is Sue Bird one of the greatest Jewish athletes of all time? Perhaps.

The basketball legend has won gold medals with the U.S. womens basketball team in the last four yes, four Olympics. (The team has not lost at the games since 1992.) Bird, now 40, is back for her fifth, and likely last, Olympics.

The child of a Jewish father and non-Jewish mother, Bird was born and raised in Syosset, Long Island. Shes been a basketball star since her debut for the University of Connecticut in 1998 and selection as the WNBAs No. 1 overall draft pick in 2002 by the Seattle Storm. In her nearly 20 years as a pro, Bird has won four WNBA championships (including last year in the COVID-19 bubble) and is a 12-time All-Star.

Bird also gained Israeli citizenship in 2006 in a basketball-motivated decision, so she could play for European teams. Her citizenship also allowed her to connect to her Jewish identity.

It was cool because what I found was in this effort to create an opportunity in my basketball career, I was able to learn a lot about a culture that I probably wouldnt have tapped into otherwise, Bird told the Washington Jewish Museum.

Read more on Sue Bird here.

The womens basketball tournament begins on July 26; the U.S. plays its first game on July 27 against Nigeria. The gold medal game is Aug. 8.

Rhythmic Gymnastics, Israel

Israels best chance at winning a medal is 22-year-old Linoy Ashram. The Mizrahi and Sephardi gymnast (her father is Yemeni Jewish and her mother is Greek Jewish) is set to compete in her first Olympics after winning in the individual rhythmic category at the European Championships in 2020 the first athlete to take the gold medal in decades who was not from a former Soviet country or Bulgaria.

Ashram has many firsts for her country: Shes the first rhythmic gymnast from Israel to win an individual all-around medal at the World Championships, the first to win gold in the World Cup series and the first to win a European All-Around title. Can she be the first to win gold in gymnastics at the Olympics? Well find out early next month.

Read more on Linoy Ashram here.

The rhythmic gymnastics competition takes place Aug. 6-8.

Tennis, Argentina

Diego Schwartzman is the highest-ranked Jewish tennis player in the world. Last year he broke into the top 10 for the first time, becoming the shortest top 8 player since 5-foot-6 Harold Solomon, also Jewish, in 1981. The Argentines listed height of 5-7 is called one of the more generous measurements in professional sports he likely stands around 5-4 (the U.S. Open lists him at 5-5). Watching him go shot to shot with players that are over a foot taller is nothing short of remarkable.

Nicknamed El Peque, or Shorty, the 28-year-old is set to play in his first Olympics. (For tennis, qualifications are based on world rankings, with the top 56 players becoming eligible.)

Schwartzman is open about and proud of his Jewish identity. Last year he wrote movingly on his familys Holocaust history, and how his great-grandfather escaped a train car headed for a concentration camp and ended up in Argentina.

I am Jewish and in Argentina, we have many Jewish [people] there, and all the people there know me, he told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in 2017.

Read more on Diego Schwartzman here.

The mens tennis tournament begins on July 24.

Beach volleyball, USA

Alix Klineman had played indoor volleyball for Stanford in college and professionally following her graduation in 2011. But in 2016, she failed to make the U.S. Olympic Volleyball Team and vowed to find another way to compete at the games. So she switched to beach volleyball. Unlike indoor volleyball, which has teams with rosters selected by coaches, beach volleyball is a two-person sport dependent on your own results with a partner.

I looked at the beach as a new opportunity and a chance to chase my dreams without anybody having to give me approval or put me on a roster, she said in 2019. The biggest thing was pursuing the Olympics and getting a new shot at that.

Klineman teamed with two-time Olympian April Ross she had been partnered with three-time gold medalist Kerri Walsh Jennings and they quickly rose in the rankings. They are entering the Tokyo Games with a world ranking of No. 2, with a more than solid chance of winning gold.

Klineman, 31, was raised in Southern California in a Jewish family. In 2015, she was inducted into the SoCal Jewish Sports Hall of Fame.

Read more on Alix Klineman here.

The womens beach volleyball tournament begins on July 24.

Surfing, Israel

Anat Lelior is Israels first and only Olympic surfer. Surfing is new to the Olympics, and only 20 men and 20 women will be competing this summer. Lelior, 21, qualified as the highest-ranked female surfer from Europe (Israel competes in European leagues). Lelior, who hails from Tel Aviv and served in the Israeli military, started surfing at 5, and by 12 she had won the Israeli national championships.

I know people arent aware of surfing in Israel, and the fact that I get to be the one to show people that were capable of more than they think, thats just amazing, Lelior told Surfline. But more than that, I want to show kids, women, everyone from everywhere, that they can do anything they want. Theres no limits. I mean, look at me. I had no idea that this would happen, and now Im going to the freaking Olympics.

Read more on Anat Lelior here.

The surfing competition is subject to change depending on wave conditions at Tsurigasaki Surfing Beach. The womens competition is tentatively scheduled for July 25-28.

Baseball, Israel

The Cinderella story continues.

In 2017, Israels national baseball team which included several American Jewish players who became Israeli citizens to represent the country surprised observers by placing sixth at the World Baseball Classic, an international tournament of the worlds best teams, with wins over top squads from South Korea, Chinese Taipei, the Netherlands and Cuba. Israel was far from a top-10 powerhouse at the time, not even ranked in the top 10 teams in Europe. That made sense, as few Israelis play the sport.

Along the way, the team ginned up enthusiasm for baseball in Israel and gave some under-the-radar Jewish players, many who had spent several years in the minor leagues, new chances to shine. Oh, and there was that endearing mascot a life-sized Mensch on a Bench.

In 2019, Team Israel won the European Baseball Championship to qualify for the Olympics. The current roster is anchored by de facto captain Danny Valencia who has Cuban and Jewish heritage and hit 96 home runs over eight Major League Baseball seasons and Ian Kinsler, a former four-time MLB All-Star who made it to Israel on one of the last flights before COVID-19 shutdowns last year to earn his Israeli citizenship.

Only six teams are in play (the field also includes South Korea, Japan, Mexico, the Dominican Republic and the United States), so Team Israel has a chance of snagging a medal.

Read more on Ian Kinsler here, and keep an eye out for more JTA coverage of the team closer to the games.

The baseball tournament runs July 28-Aug. 7. Israels first game is against the United States.

Canoe slalom, Australia

Jessica Fox is known as the greatest paddler of all time: She has 10 World Championship medals, including seven gold medals, and seven overall World Cup titles. Her parents, Richard Fox and Myriam Jerusalmi, also were Olympic canoeists Myriam, a French-Jewish athlete, won bronze at the 1996 Atlanta Games. Mom is now coaching her daughter.

Born in Marseille, France, Fox moved to Australia at 4, so her dad could take up a coaching position with the Australian Olympic team.

Both my parents competing in the Olympic Games is something pretty special, she said. It definitely inspired me to get to this position. Winning a medal is something that you dream [of] and Im proud to follow in my mothers footsteps.

Fox, 27, won silver in the K-1 slalom competition at the 2012 London Olympics and bronze in the 2016 Rio Games. This year, for the first time, women will also be competing in C-1 slalom so Fox, ranked No. 1 in the world, is favored to win not just one but two gold medals.

In 2012, Fox became the the second Australian Jewish athlete to ever win an Olympic medal.

Read more on Jessica Fox here.

The womens K-1 slalom competition is July 25-27. C-1 slalom is July 28-29.

Fencing, USA

Eli Dershwitz is returning to the Olympics for redemption.

At the 2016 Rio Games, the Jewish saber fencer lost in the opening round. In 2021, hes ranked No. 2 in the world and hoping to medal.

Dershwitz, who started fencing at 9, would win back-to-back NCAA championships for Harvard in 2017 and 2018. In Tokyo, he will aim to become the fifth U.S. man to win a medal in saber fencing. No American man has ever won gold in the category.

Born and raised in Sherborn, Massachusetts, to a Jewish family, Dershwitzs maternal grandparents are Holocaust survivors. He has a twin sister, Sally, who worked on the frontlines caring for patients during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Dershwitz grew up attending a Conservative synagogue in Natick, Massachusetts, and told Hillel International before the Rio Games that he considers himself a proud member of the Jewish community.

The Jewish community has been very supportive throughout my journey to the Olympics, and I look forward to representing them on the world stage, he said in 2016.

Read more on Eli Dershwitz here.

The mens saber fencing individual competition takes place on July 24; the mens saber team competition is on July 28.

Racewalking, Australia

Jemima Montag was perhaps destined for Jewish athletic greatness. Her parents, Ray and Amanda, met at the 1989 Maccabiah Games the Olympics for Jewish athletes held in Israel where Amanda was competing in the heptathlon and Ray was a cricketer. They hit it off on the flight home to Australia.

Growing up, the Montags encouraged their daughters (Jemima is one of three) to try everything, from long jump to shot put to ballet. But for Montag, race walking just clicked.

I found that my combination of endurance, hypermobile joints and fiery competitiveness were a great trio for racewalking, she said.

Montag soon became one of the best racewalkers in Australia, but after the World Youth Championships in 2015, she decided to step away from the sport. A family ski trip to Japan in 2017 reignited her competitive spirit. Her sister joked shed love to return to the country for the Olympics, and her mom encouraged her to go for it. A year later, at the 2018 Commonwealth Games a tournament of the Commonwealth nations, or the former territories under British control Montag won gold in the 20km event.

Montag credits her Holocaust survivor grandparents for her work ethic and resilience. When a training session or race feels tough, she thinks about them and reminds herself that grit and perseverance are in my DNA.

Read more about Jemima Montag here.

The womens 20km race walk will take place on Aug. 6.

Judo, Israel

At the 2016 Rio Olympics, Or Ori Sasson won bronze in the mens heavyweight judo competition and became a national hero overnight not just for his skill but also his sportsmanship after one of his opponents, from Egypt, refused to shake his hand following a match.

Every boy and girl saw not only a great athlete but a man with values, then-Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Sasson in a phone call that was broadcast live on Israeli TV. You showed the true face of Israel, its beautiful face.

Sasson spent the pandemic year delay competing on Israels version of The Masked Singer his costume was a falafel sandwich and finished third. Watch one of his performances here.

This year, the Kurdish Jewish Sasson now 30 and likely in his last Olympics is set to compete in the heavyweight competition and in the team competition, an addition to the Olympics judo lineup. Judo has been the pride of Israels Olympic fortunes, winning five of the nations nine overall medals. (See more on one of Sassons teammates below.)

Read more about Ori Sasson here.

The mens 100+ kg competition is on July 30. The team competition is on July 31.

Judo, Israel

Sagi Muki made headlines when he befriended an Iranian judoka, Saeid Mollaei, who was forced to throw a match to avoid competing against an Israeli athlete. Mollaei fled Iran as a dissident and received refugee status in Germany. The story of their friendship is now being made into a TV show.

But Muki,29, is an Olympic medal contender in his own right. The half-middleweight judoka is a two-time Israeli national champion,a2019 world champion, and the 2017 and 2018 European champion. He was expected to medal at the 2016 Rio Games but was hampered by an injury.

Born and raised in Netanya, Israel, to a Yemeni Jewish family, he started focusing on judo when he was 8 years old.

The mens under-81 kg competition is on July 27.

Marathon, Israel

Maru Teferi, who was born in northwestern Ethiopia and immigrated to Israel with his Jewish family when he was 14, is the Israeli record holder in six distances, including the half marathon and the marathon. His fastest marathon time of 2:07:20, run right before the pandemic in February 2020 is just 6 minutes off the world record.

Now hes set to compete in his second Olympics. This time hell be joined by his wife, Selamawit Selam Dagnachew Teferi. Theyll be the first married couple to represent Israel at the Olympics.

Teferi, 28, met now-wife Selam while training in Ethiopia in 2012. Selam, 27, is not Jewish, but she moved to Israel in 2017 after the couple married and became an Israeli citizen. That made her eligible to represent Israel at the Olympics.

Even in our wildest dreams, we didnt think this would be possible, Selam said.

Read more about Maru Teferi here.

The mens marathon will take place on the last day of the Olympics, Aug. 8. To watch Selam, the womens 5,000m competition begins July 30; the finals are Aug. 2. The womens 10,000m is on Aug. 7.

Basketball, Japan

Avi Koki Schafer is sometimes listed at 6-foot-10. With that height, you would think he has played basketball his entire life. But the Japanese Jewish athlete didnt get into the sport until he was 16. Just seven years later, the 23-year-old will be playing for Japan in the countrys home Olympics.

Schafer, whose mom is Japanese and dad is Jewish American, grew up in Japan but spent his senior year of high school playing for Brewster Academy in New Hampshire before going on to play Division I basketball at Georgia Tech for two years.

He left his sophomore year to go pro in Japan and since 2019 has played professionally in his native country.

When I came back to Japan from the United States and decided to become a professional in Japan, I made the decision with an eye on the Olympics, he said shortly after being selected to the team. It is held in my home country and I want to show Japanese people what I can do.

Read more about Avi Schafer here.

The mens basketball tournament begins July 25. Japans first match is against Spain on July 26.

Paralympics track and field, USA

Ezra Frech is only 16 years old, but hes already made a name for himself as a para-athlete. The Los Angeles native competes in the high jump, long jump and the 100m race.

Due to a congenital abnormality, Frech was born with only one finger on his left hand, and he was missing his left knee and shinbone.At 2 he had surgery to remove the curved part of his leg, and had a toe attached to his left hand. By 9 he was on Ellen talking about his athletics and advocating for adaptive sports, and at the 2019 World Para Athletics Championships, he was the youngest athlete in the world to compete at 14.

Everywhere you go, people dont think youre capable of what an able-bodied person can do, Frech said. Ill go to my high school track meet and they dont expect the one-legged kid to go out and win the competition. When I was younger it got to me, but now its a motivation and excites me that I have a chance to prove people wrong, to shock them and turn some heads.

His mom, Bahar Soomekh, is a Persian Jewish actress. She fled Iran with her family in 1979. His dad, Clayton Frech, left his job in 2013 to found Angel City Sports to bring adaptive sports opportunities to Los Angeles.

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Tokyo Olympics: All the Jewish Athletes to Watch Detroit Jewish News - The Jewish News

Rating system: (4=Don't miss, 3=Good, 2=Worth a look, 1=Forget it)

For more reviews, click here.

Eat Pray Love (PG-13) (3) [Appeal for brief strong language, some sexual references, and male rear nudity.] [DVD and VOD only] After divorcing her husband (Billy Crudup) and breaking up with her actor boyfriend (James Franco) to the concern of her agent (Viola Davis) and best friend in this engaging, factually inspired, romantic chick flick, which is based on Liz Gilberts bestselling memoir and filled with gorgeous scenery, a discontented and unhappy New York City travel writer (Julia Roberts) seeks balance and a new zest for life by indulging in fabulous food and making new friends (Welker White, Silvano Rossi, Giuseppe Gandini, et al.) in Italy, by seeking spiritual enlightenment and inner peace at an ashram in India with the help of a guilt-ridden divorced man (Richard Jenkins), and by opening herself up to love in Bali when she meets a sensitive, caring Brazilian import/export businessman (Javier Bardem).

The Expendables (R) (2.5) [Strong action and bloody violence throughout, and some language.] [DVD and VOD only] Nonstop action and explosions dominate this fast-paced, bullet-riddled, violent, star-dotted (Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis, Mickey Rourke, and Dolph Lundgren) film in which a motley group of hired mercenaries (Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Jet Li, Randy Couture, and Terry Crews) head to a South American island to assassinate a greedy rogue CIA agent (Eric Roberts), his right-hand man (Steve Austin), and a puppet leader (David Zayas) whose artistic daughter (Giselle Iti) has risked her life to help the Americans and her country.

The Girl in the Caf (NR) (3.5) [DVD and VOD only] A delightful charming, captivating, and touching 2005 film in which a reserved, regimented, lonely, workaholic British civil servant (Bill Nighy) finds his personal and professional life turned upside down when he meets a mysterious, shy woman (Kelly Macdonald) at a caf and then invites her to join him in Reykjavik, Iceland, where he is attending the annual G8 summit with his boss (Ken Stott) and coworkers.

Grinder (NR) (1.5) [Available on various VOD platforms.] While a gay, nave, 16-year-old model (Tyler Austin) escapes his abusive, drunk, unemployed father after he smears lipstick all over his face and ends up in the apartment of an abusive, manipulative, pedophile modeling agency owner (Jon Fleming) who also produces a porn magazine in New York City in Brandon Ruckdashels dark, gritty, clich, poorly-acted, predictable, 82-minute, 2016 film, a jogging-loving photographer (Brandon Rucksdashel) living on the down low neglects his unsuspecting fiance (Sarah Lazar) and hooks with random men (Joshua Dye, et al) even as he tries to convince himself that he is straight.

The Ice Road (PG-13) (2) [Strong language and sequences of action and violence.] [Netflix Only] After 26 Canadian miners (Holt McCallany, Martin Sensmeier, Ray McKinnon, et al.) become trapped in a diamond mine in northern Manitoba due to a methane explosion and their available air supply is rapidly depleting in Jonathan Hensleighs disappointing, lackluster, violent, predictable, star-studded (Matt Salinger, Matt McCoy, and Benjamin Walker), 108-minute thriller loosely inspired by the long-running, factually based television series Ice Road Truckers, four brave truckers (Liam Neeson, Laurence Fishburne, Marcus Thomas, and Amber Midthunder) encounter unscrupulous, money-hungry people when they take on an extremely dangerous, time-sensitive rescue mission by driving over melting ice roads in an attempt to deliver life-saving, 25-ton wellshead equipment to the mine.

Osso Bucco (NR) (2) [DVD only] A wacky, silly 2008 comedy about two feuding Chicago detectives (Aaron Roman Weiner and Antoine McKay) who are trapped in an Italian restaurant during a blinding snow storm with two Mafia gangsters (Mike Starr and Christian Stolte), a fesity waitress (Illeana Douglas), a passionate Italian chef (Perry Anzilotti), a Mexican waiter (Eddie Martinez), and a cheating host (Michael Gilio).

Racially Charged: Americas Misdemeanor Problem (NR) (4) [Available on Vimeo and YouTube.] Mahershala Ali narrates Robert Greenwalds powerful, educational, eye-opening, poignant, ire-inducing, 35-minute, 2020 documentary, which was inspired by Harvard law professor Alexandra Natapoffs Punishment without Crime: How Our Massive Misdemeanor System Traps the Innocent and Makes America More Unequal book, that examines the unfair, disturbing, racist judicial system in which more than 13 million Blacks and Hispanics are charged annually with misdemeanors such as jaywalking, broken car taillight, and driving with a suspended license that negatively impact many areas, including employment and housing, and consists of archival photographs, historical film clips, and insightful commentary by people (such as Michael Brown, Eddie Gray, Faylita Hicks, Chris Lollie, Fernando Martinez, Demario Davis, Michael Robinson, and Bradley Haggard) who were unjustly arrested for a misdemeanor and professors Alexandra Natapoff, Paul Delano Butler, Irene Oritseweyinmi Joe, Douglas A. Blackmon, Gaye Theresa Johnson, andKhalil Gibran Muhammad.

Silat Warriors: Deed of Death (NR) (2.5) [Subtitled] [Available July 6 on Blu-ray and DVD and June 4 on Hi-YAH! on http://www.hiyatv.com.] After an immature, thoughtless, and reckless gambling addict (Fad Anuar) loses the deed to his familys home during illegal fights and drag racing in Areel Abu Bakars award-winning, action-packed, violent, well-choreographed, evenly-paced, low-budget,102-minute, 2019 film, his martial-arts teacher father (Namron), sister (Feiyna Tajudin), and brother (Khoharullah Majid) join forces as a spiritual, close-knit, silat-skilled family to fight to save their Malaysian property when a ruthless loan shark (Faizal Hussein) and his gang members give them one week to pay off the debt.

The Tomorrow War (PG-13) (3) [Intense sequences of sci-fi violence and action, language, and some suggestive references.] [Available July 2 on Amazon Prime Video.] When time travelers (Jasmine Mathews, et al.) from 2051 show up in 2022 to get help to defeat menacing, hungry aliens that threaten mankind in Chris McKays convoluted, action-packed, fast-paced, bullet-riddled, violent, star-dotted (J. K. Simmons, Gary Weeks, Felisha Terrell, Seychelle Gabriel, and Kiley Casciano), 140-minute sci-fi thriller, a Florida science high school teacher (Chris Pratt), who has a wife (Betty Gilpin) and young daughter (Ryan Kiera Armstrong), along with other civilians (Sam Richardson, Edwin Hodge, Keith Powers, Theo Von, Mike Mitchell, Mary Lynn Rajskub, Chibuikem Uche, et al.) are drafted and transported into the future in a last-ditch effort to defeat the aliens while a dedicated, tenacious scientist (Yvonne Strahovski) desperately tries to determine a way to kill the aliens through a biological serum.

Wendy Schadewald is a Burnsville resident.

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Short Redhead Reel Reviews for the week of July 9 - ECM Publishers

As India fights the COVID-19 pandemic, NGOs across the country have been working relentlessly to help those affected. With limited resources, these organisations have helped the underprivileged sections of the society by providing relief materials.

Despite the challenges, NGOs and volunteers came forward risking their lives to keep the spirit of humanity alive.

Humanity United Together (HUT), a volunteer-driven NGO from Bengaluru, is also helping a number of families affected by the pandemic.

The organisation was started in 2016 by a group of seven engineering students from Bengaluru Adil Hamza Khan L, Rishabh Jain, Haneefa Nida, Priyanka C, Roushan Meraj, Aaron Geoffrey, and Prerana Reddy P.

HUT Paatashaala's event at Gauribidnooru Government School, Karnataka

Initially, they pooled in whatever they could to visit charitable organisations like Anand Ashram, Kidwai Cancer Memorial Hospital, and Holy Faith Orphanage in the city. They also made necessary donations based on the requirements like food packets, essentials, etc.

HUT was officially registered as an NGO in 2021 to provide relief to different communities.

During the pandemic-induced lockdown in 2021, around 60 student volunteers from nearly 12 universities across Karnataka came together as part of HUTs relief work and distributed ration kits and fed the stray dogs who had no access to food.

The ration kits were sufficient to provide for a family of three to four for about a month. The team distributed these kits to about 150 families across the city during the pandemic, and has been doing that since May.

Lubna shares that abandoned dogs, cats, and the strays had a difficult time as the restaurants, which usually feed the leftovers to these animals, were closed during the lockdown.

We provided food to stray animals on a regular basis locality-wise. We also provided food and rations to pet shelters overburdened by abandoned pets, she says.

In addition, the team also collected blankets for stray animals to protect them during the monsoon and the subsequent cold weather in the city.

A volunteer from the NGO feeding the stray dogs

During the peak of the second wave, the team arranged hospital beds, oxygen cylinders and refills, and medication, among others, for the families impacted by COVID-19. We are also providing counselling to COVID patients and their families, says Lubna.

Apart from COVID relief work, HUT is also spreading awareness about afforestation, deforestation, and the importance of growing trees for the future. It organised a seed ball dispersion event, which were thrown around in certain sparse areas of Lalbagh in April 2021.

Seed balls, also known as earth balls or Nendo Dango, consist of a variety of different seeds rolled within a ball of compost.

If at least 10 percent of them grow, then that is a huge achievement, says Lubna.

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The HUT team is divided into four factions Paatshaala, Saathi, Anveshna, and Prachaar. The NGOs work is executed under each of these verticals by the volunteers.

Paatashala aims to provide knowledge and awareness to underprivileged children.

On the other hand, the volunteers at Saathi are spreading awareness on mental health and wellness for timely diagnosis of mental illnesses. Psychology students are the main volunteers of this faction, where they conduct sessions and help people understand their mental health condition.

The Saathi volunteers also reached out to the families who lost their loved ones and helped them through difficult times, says Lubna.

HUT's seed ball dispersion event

Anveshana, HUTs fact-checking authority, does a complete background check of the event location, needs, requirements, etc. The volunteers also provide verified information about available beds, oxygen cylinders, and others with the help of some of the volunteers who were UPSC aspirants.

Lastly, Prachaar is the social media team of HUT, which is in charge of keeping its followers up-to-date on events and activities. In fact, Lubna is one of the core members of this team.

Madeeha Chowdhary, another volunteer, says, Though I have been associated with other NGOs, I really liked HUTs approach. The team is friendly and enthusiastic to serve the society.

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The HUT team has so far reached out to over 150 families by providing monthly rations. The volunteers also provide food for about 40-60 dogs about two to three times a week.

In order to meet these requirements, the team pooled in their own money and also received some donations from well-wishers. The team also organised a charity bake sale through which they were able to raise funds for ration kits for about 20 families.

However, the biggest challenge for the team was the movement, because while it may be a good cause, they might be putting people at risk.

HUT is now preparing for the third wave of the pandemic in the coming months. The team is looking to conduct more awareness campaigns with video conferences and other engaging activities to protect people from the third wave.

Now, with most of us having been vaccinated, we want to visit Kidwai Cancer Memorial again because the joy that we experience with them is unmatchable, says Lubna.

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How this NGO helped people and animals in distress during the pandemic - YourStory