Day: March 12, 2023

By Matt Hardy Ireland kept their Six Nations Grand Slam and Triple Crown hopes alive in a 7-22 victory over Scotland yesterday in Edinburgh. Scotland centre Huw Jones and Ireland winger Mack Hansen traded tries in a tight opening 40 which saw the hosts return to the dressing room with a one-point deficit at 7-8. But it was all Ireland in the second 40 with tries from James Lowe and Jack Conan. Ireland on the cuspJohnny Sexton’s seven points drew him level with Ronan O’Gara as Ireland’s joint-top point scorer in the competition with 557. Crucially, however, Ireland were denied a try bonus point… Read More “Six Nations: Ireland set up Grand Slam decider against England with Scotland win”

By Kevin McGuire It’s safe to say that if something could have gone wrong for Texas A&M last season, it did. The Aggies started the season with high expectations of competing for an SEC title and making an appearance in the College Football Playoff. Despite starting the season with a top-10 ranking, Texas A&M was tossed out of the Top 25 after the first weekend of October and never recovered. But the 2023 season is a clean slate for the program, and the expectations are once again rising as Jimbo Fisher heads into his sixth season at the helm. Related: SEC Football Spring 2023 Power Rankings H… Read More “Texas A&M Football: 3 Reasons for Optimism About the Aggies in 2023”

By Michael Graham ‘Relegation.’ To chairmen and fans at Premier League clubs, there is probably no more frightening word. It doesn’t just mean you drop down a division, but you lose players, riches, visibility and status as you step out of the Premier League spotlight. More often than not, the sheer financial implications force root and branch change at the club that can take years to bear fruit again. There is no doubt it is a terrifying prospect. The 2022/23 Premier League season is shaping up to be a cracker if relegation six-pointers and drama is your thing. There are nine teams involved i… Read More “How many points are needed to avoid relegation from the Premier League”

There is a great deal of financial turmoil at this time, a possible reason for much of the investor selling we’ve seen in the commodity complex since late February.This has put a number of markets in Rubber Band Dispositions, meaning a snap back to real fundamentals could occur at any time.Since my first rule is to not get crossways with the trend, given it is set my noncommercial activity, when we see these types of market situations a possible strategy is to look at options (both puts and calls).When it comes to the Silicon Valley Bank fiasco all I hear is the line from John Lennon’s Nobody … Read More “Commodities: Running the Option Play”

Shahidul Alam at the PopTech 2011 conference (PopTech.jpg) / CC BY-SA 2.0) Noted Bangladeshi photojournalist, activist and writer Shahidul Alam started documenting the post-liberation political landscape of Bangladesh in the 1980s, only to find himself as an activist in a social justice movement that would eventually end the nine-year dictatorship of General Hussain Muhammad Ershad. Even without actively joining the political scene, he has built a media ecosystem that continually holds the polity accountable. Alam was arrested in August 2018 on charges of instigating “students to continue a mo… Read More “‘Third ’ and ‘Developing ’ not our chosen identity: Interview with photojournalist Shahidul Alam”

The European project was meant to unite countries with diverse cultures around a common set of values that uphold human rights, freedom and democracy. But how similar are cultural values in different European countries? According to recent data from the World Values Survey (WVS), a global study that explores people’s values and beliefs, Europe as a whole is becoming more socially-liberal, but there are huge geographic discrepancies. “The level of economic development is a major indicator,” said Dr Christian Welzel, the Vice President of the WVS. “But it correlates with a lot of other things, l… Read More “Europeans are becoming more socially liberal, according to a new study”