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NoneMPT unveils groundbreaking Maryland Center for Media Literacy & EducationLONG BEACH — Coaches and players from the Newbury Park and Simi Valley football teams were seated at tables next to each other at the CIF Southern Section football championship luncheon on Monday afternoon. It’s the second straight year that the two programs are representing Ventura County and are the two schools from the Daily News coverage area to reach a CIF-SS championship game. “It’s a very competitive county,” Simi Valley coach Jim Benkert said. “We’ve got a lot of good teams out there, whether they’re public or private and in our specific (Marmonte League), there’s three publics and three privates in the league. “You’ve got to step up to be successful and that’s what we’ve had to do. We’ve had to elevate to get to where we are.” There are three Marmonte League teams competing for championships — Simi Valley, Pacifica and St. Bonaventure. Oaks Christian was almost the fourth team but lost to Murrieta Valley in overtime in the semifinals. Newbury Park was the undefeated Conejo Coast League champion. The Pioneers (21-1) will try for their second consecutive CIF-SS championship on Saturday against Edison at Huntington Beach High after winning in Division 6 last season. Newbury Park (13-0) fell to Orange Vista in the Division 5 title game last year and will play in the Division 2 finals against Murrieta Valley. “That’s what was in the back of my head when we were all lifting this offseason: Get back to the championship and win it all,” Newbury Park senior lineman Joel Gonzalez said. “It’s something that I’ve been thinking about since that loss to Orange Vista.” Head coach Joe Smigiel took over at Newbury Park in 2021 and Benkert took the helm at Simi Valley in 2018 and both coaches have turned their respective programs around while rallying the support of the community. Smigiel is an alumnus of Newbury Park and many players have had family members before them play a sport at the school. Senior defensive end Michael Guzman’s dad wrestled for the Panthers and his grandfather played sports in Ventura County. He also has a younger brother on the JV team, which has served as the scout team for varsity throughout the playoff run. It’s the first time the two brothers have been able to play against each other. “In Ventura County, we got a lot of skill out here,” Newbury Park senior corner Drew Cofield said. “We have a lot of talent and a lot of players that go unnoticed and are under-recruited.” Gonzalez gets recognized as a Newbury Park football player even when he’s working part-time at an ice cream shop. Simi Valley senior Seth Knight is recognized in public, too. “We’re not just playing for ourselves,” Knight said. “We’re playing for our community and it brings us all together. I have people come up to me and talk to me about the game, just congratulations on winning. It brings our community together and strengthens us.” There’s some crossover between the two football programs, even though they haven’t played each other since 2015. Related Articles Some players have been in the same youth football programs as each other and Benkert coached against Newbury Park when he was a coach at Westlake and Smigiel was playing for the Panthers. Ventura County football continues to build and thrive on the connections formed by teams like Newbury Park and Simi Valley. “It’s the dog in the players,” Guzman said. “There’s a lot of connection and roots and love for the game here. That’s what drives us.”
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The TOI Entertainment Desk is a dynamic and dedicated team of journalists, working tirelessly to bring the pulse of the entertainment world straight to the readers of The Times of India. No red carpet goes unrolled, no stage goes dark - our team spans the globe, bringing you the latest scoops and insider insights from Bollywood to Hollywood, and every entertainment hotspot in between. We don't just report; we tell tales of stardom and stories untold. Whether it's the rise of a new sensation or the seasoned journey of an industry veteran, the TOI Entertainment Desk is your front-row seat to the fascinating narratives that shape the entertainment landscape. Beyond the breaking news, we present a celebration of culture. We explore the intersections of entertainment with society, politics, and everyday life. Read More Mrunal Thakur’s style journey is where fashion meets acting excellence 8 love quotes by Rabindranath Tagore that will touch your heart Top 10 countries with the highest lactose intolerance 10 high-protein foods to include in soups When Kriti Sanon steps out in a saree, it's a sight to behold Ananya Panday's mom Bhavana Pandey's quirky earrings collection Baby girl names inspired by the Indian months How to make spicy one-pot Chicken meal 10 best books to magically fuel your child’s love for reading
Netflix will have one of its biggest days Wednesday since the site launched in 1998 when it airs two NFL games for the first time. “NFL Christmas Gameday on Netflix” begins with a two-hour pregame show at 11 a.m., before Pittsburgh hosts Kansas City. Baltimore faces Houston in the second game. The streaming giant agreed to a three-year contract in May to carry Christmas Day games. Netflix’s 282.3 million subscribers in over 190 countries will be able to stream the games, marking the first time one outlet has distributed an NFL game globally. Netflix will have the games available in five languages — English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and German. The games will also air on CBS affiliates in Kansas City, Pittsburgh, Baltimore and Houston. NFL policy dictates that games on cable or being exclusively streamed must also be on an over-the-air station in the competing teams’ markets. It will also be available on mobile devices in the U.S. for those who have NFL+. The biggest reason is money. The league is getting $150 million from Netflix for the two games this season. It also continues the NFL’s moves into streaming — Thursday night games are in their third season on Amazon Prime Video and the “Sunday Ticket” package moved to YouTube TV last year. That’s true, but the league wasn’t about to give up Christmas after seeing the ratings. Last year’s three games averaged 28.68 million viewers. The early afternoon contest between the Las Vegas Raiders and Chiefs led the way, averaging 29.48 million. The Chiefs, Steelers, Ravens and Texans played on Saturday, giving them the same turnaround they would have if they played on Sunday and then Thursday. All four have clinched playoff spots in the AFC, but seeding remains up for grabs. Kansas City (14-1) can clinch the top seed — which would mean a first-round bye and home field throughout the playoffs — with a win over the Steelers. Pittsburgh and Baltimore are tied atop the AFC North at 10-5, with the Steelers holding the tiebreaker due to a better conference record. Houston (9-6) has wrapped up the AFC South and holds the fourth seed. Netflix hopes so. Brandon Riegg, Netflix’s vice president of nonfiction series and sports, said the system was stress tested, and then some, during the Nov. 14 bout, along with internet service providers reporting they were also overwhelmed by the surge that occurred before and during the fight. The bout peaked at 65 million concurrent streams, including 38 million concurrent streams in the United States. According to the website Down Detector, nearly 85,000 viewers logged problems with outages or streaming leading up to and during the fight. Possible? Yes. Likely? No. The largest audience for a streamed-exclusive NFL game was 23 million on Peacock for last season’s AFC wild-card game between the Miami Dolphins and Chiefs. Nielsen will measure the ratings for the Christmas Day games, with early numbers expected late afternoon on Thursday. It will probably beat kickoff for both games, but especially around 5:45 p.m. EST. That would be near halftime of the Ravens-Texans game, and when Beyoncé will be performing. Mariah Carey will kick off the day with a taped performance of “All I Want for Christmas is You.” There is no word if Taylor Swift will make the trip to Pittsburgh to watch her boyfriend, Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce. Swift has been spending time in Kansas City since she wrapped up her Eras Tour two weeks ago. The NFL will have at least two games on Dec. 25 in 2025 and ’26, with Netflix slated to have at least one each year. Amazon Prime Video will have a night game with Christmas on a Thursday next year. Netflix’s worldwide partnership with World Wrestling Entertainment will begin on Jan. 6 when “Monday Night Raw” moves to the streaming service. On Friday, Netflix secured the U.S. rights for the 2027 and 2031 FIFA Women’s World Cup. AP NFL: https://apnews.com/hub/nflSpero Clinic's Groundbreaking Approach to Holistic Care Transforms Lives 12-09-2024 11:58 PM CET | Health & Medicine Press release from: Getnews / PR Agency: NewswireJet The Spero Clinic is revolutionizing the treatment of chronic pain through a holistic, patient-centered approach. Specializing in conditions like Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (EDS), Long COVID, Fibromyalgia, and Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS), the clinic offers innovative, non-invasive treatments that address the root causes of pain, combining neurology, nutrition, physical therapy, and cutting-edge rehabilitation techniques. Image: https://www.getnews.info/uploads/3465313aea4cfa9a562fe1175674537d.jpg Chronic pain affects millions of individuals worldwide, often leaving them feeling hopeless and isolated. The Spero Clinic [ https://youtu.be/XdlRmRn5Z4w?feature=shared ], a leader in holistic care, is transforming lives by addressing these complex conditions with a revolutionary approach to healing that prioritizes long-term results and patient empowerment. With innovative treatments for conditions like Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome [ https://www.thesperoclinic.com/conditions/ehlers-danlos-syndrome/ ] (EDS), Long COVID [ https://www.thesperoclinic.com/conditions/long-covid/ ], Fibromyalgia [ https://www.thesperoclinic.com/conditions/fibromyalgia/ ], Complex Regional Pain Syndrome [ https://www.thesperoclinic.com/conditions/complex-regional-pain-syndrome/ ] (CRPS), and more, the Spero Clinic has become a beacon of hope for those who have exhausted traditional medical options. A Holistic Approach to Complex Pain Unlike conventional pain management which often relies on medication or invasive procedures, the Spero Clinic offers a natural, comprehensive approach tailored to the unique needs of each patient. The clinic combines neurology, nutrition, and physical therapy with cutting-edge rehabilitation techniques to address the root causes of chronic pain. "Chronic pain doesn't have to be a life sentence," said Dr. Katinka van der Merwe, Founder and CEO of the Spero Clinic. "Our mission is to provide patients with the tools and treatments they need to regain their quality of life, using non-invasive and empowering methods." Stories of Transformation One of the most remarkable aspects of the Spero Clinic is the stories of transformation shared by its patients. Many arrive with little hope after years of ineffective treatments, yet they leave with renewed strength, reduced pain, and restored independence. "I felt like I'd tried everything before coming to Spero," shared a recent patient. "But the clinic's personalized care gave me not only relief but also the confidence to reclaim my life." The clinic's innovative approach has attracted patients from across the globe, building a community of individuals who have experienced firsthand the life-changing impact of its care. Raising Awareness for Chronic Pain Conditions The Spero Clinic is committed to raising awareness about the silent epidemic of chronic pain and the importance of holistic care. Conditions like EDS and POTS are often misunderstood or misdiagnosed, leaving patients without the support they need. The clinic's outreach efforts, including webinars, social media campaigns, and educational materials, aim to change that narrative. "Education is key," explained Dr. van der Merwe. "We want to shine a light on these conditions and give people the information they need to make informed decisions about their health." Image: https://www.getnews.info/uploads/5fc3af366fab8cb45401d1de1bbc92c1.jpg A Vision for the Future The Spero Clinic's dedication to innovation doesn't stop at its current offerings. The team continues to explore advancements in non-invasive treatments and collaborates with leading researchers to stay at the forefront of holistic pain care. As part of its mission, the clinic also emphasizes the importance of patient-centered care, offering individualized treatment plans that reflect each person's unique journey and goals. Learn More About The Spero Clinic The Spero Clinicinvites anyone struggling with chronic pain to explore its transformative approach. Whether you're battling CRPS, EDS, POTS, Fibromyalgia, Long Covid, or another debilitating condition, the clinic's compassionate team is here to help you move from pain to possibility. For more information, visit The Spero Clinic's website, call 479-304-8202, or email info@thesperoclinic.com Video: https://www.youtube.com/embed/XdlRmRn5Z4w?feature=shared Media Contact Company Name: The Spero Clinic Contact Person: Kaylie Crane Email: Send Email [ http://www.universalpressrelease.com/?pr=spero-clinics-groundbreaking-approach-to-holistic-care-transforms-lives ] Address:22 Colt Square Dr. City: Fayetteville State: Arkansas 72703 Country: United States Website: https://www.thesperoclinic.com/ This release was published on openPR.‘Weak, frail, an absolute disaster’: Alan Shearer leads stunned reactions to Man City collapse
There's a sugar cane farm in far north Queensland. It feels isolated, private. About five minutes' drive from the farmhouse is a lagoon. These days bullrushes just cling to the edge of the murky brown water. But 60 years ago it was thick with them. Something happened in those bullrushes that is still unanswered today. In fact, the questions it raised ended up becoming so much bigger than the mystery itself. At first light, a boy and his father sling rifles over their shoulders and trudge barefoot through squelching grass. They're hunting — for proof of UFO landings on their sugar cane farm. A young Shane Pennisi trails in lockstep behind his dad, Albert, eyes fixed on the swarm of mosquitoes surrounding him as they approach the lagoon. "The whole of his back would be just black and they're all full of red blood," Shane says. They survey the scene for any disturbance to the bullrush reed bristling from the murky water and triple-check that no crocodile has spilt into residency during the recent floods. Best stay armed, just in case. With last night's sleep still clinging to the corners of their eyes, they hoist the rifles above their heads and slide into the warm marsh. Paternal bonding comes in all shapes and sizes. Wading through stagnant, larval-rearing water in search of "saucer nests" is just part of the daily routine for this father-son duo. Something happened here that knocked the family off its axis and tormented a mild-mannered man for the rest of his life. An impression left in this very lagoon would grow into a roaring wave of global crop circle fever. And there are still secrets to tell almost six decades on. An unlikely protagonist George Pedley was a wiry young banana farmer in Far North Queensland when he encountered what he later described as a flying saucer. The gentle bachelor in his 20s worked the plot of land beside the Pennisi cane farm at Euramo, just south of Tully, and built a rough but sturdy shack for his tractor and tools. It was the era of the space race. Aliens, UFOs and interplanetary exploration were part of the pop cultural furniture. Less so, perhaps, around Tully. The town then, as today, prided itself on being the wettest place in Australia — a simple agricultural and logging community carved into the skirt of a rainforest-blanketed mountain. It seemed an unlikely spot, with an unlikely protagonist, for a mystery that would foreshadow a rash of UFO and crop circle reports all over the world. Even so, in the grips of a sweltering wet season in January 1966, Tully went into a tailspin. The sighting Shane Pennisi was seven years old at the time and living on the same cane farm in the single-storey house he still calls home today. He remembers his whole family pulling into the driveway after a beach trip on the afternoon of January 19, 1966 to find their neighbour sitting on their front steps. George Pedley had an uncharacteristic look of agitation etched across his face. "He started stuttering a bit. Something had happened." Shane's dad Albert spoke with George for a few minutes before they all hopped in the ute — adults up front, kids clinging on in the tray — and drove to a horseshoe-shaped lagoon at the edge of a cane paddock. That's when they saw it. A perfect circle of flattened bullrush reeds in the middle of the water, about nine metres in diameter and floating like a pontoon. There were no markings around it — no trail from machinery that might have fabricated the unusual imprint. Back at the house, George opened up about his experience. He had been driving his tractor that morning when he heard a tremendous "hissing" noise and hopped out in search of a punctured tyre. "He heard the hissing getting louder and louder. Then he turned around and looked up," Shane says. "He saw a UFO. Just above the treetops — tilted like it hesitated, and then it was gone. "Then he looked back in the lagoon and saw the water swirling." Shane clearly recalls his neighbour picking up two teacup plates from the table, tipping one upside down and placing them lip to lip. This was what he had seen. A flying saucer, illuminated with bright lights and hissing away in a puff of blue vapour. The term "gone troppo" is Australian slang for being driven mad by excessive heat and possibly a few too many swigs of the flagon. George was not a drinker. Still, the banana farmer couldn't shake the suspicion he had contracted an acute case of the tropical malady. "George being George just thought, 'I'm just seeing things'," Shane says. George went back to the shade of his shed and boiled a billy to get his faculties in order. Questions were piling up. After a while he returned to the lagoon and discovered this floating mat of reeds, almost woven in a clockwise swirl into a perfect geometric circle of botanical fabric. Or so the story goes. The bush telegraph Police were eventually called and word of this weird encounter spread like a contagion as the small-town rumour mill went into overdrive. It was dubbed a "saucer nest" — a sort of prototype crop circle two decades before the latter term would become popular — and everyone wanted a look. Cars roared onto the farm in their hundreds, with yahoos knocking over cane, drinking beer and climbing the reedy pontoon which could hold a man's weight with no trouble at all. It was a lot for a seven-year-old boy to take in. Shane remembers the dust from the traffic being so thick that his mum couldn't hang the washing. "It was one car after the other," he says. "They parked anywhere they could, they walked over plant cane ... broke down trees ... they just walked through the lagoon." The family was eventually forced to retreat to their nearby beach shack until things died down. It would take a while. News reports all over the country featured photos of the splayed, flattened reeds, and reporters spent the night getting mauled by mosquitoes in hope of experiencing a visitation. They never got one, but they did get plenty of fodder for a readership desperate for anything to do with aliens, flying saucers and cosmic expeditions. How do you explain the unexplainable? Wild theories started popping up about what could have caused the strange phenomenon. Obviously it wasn't aliens ... was it? Everything from helicopters and reed-eating grubs to whirlwinds and waterspouts were proposed as logical culprits. There was even a theory that the purported saucer nest had been created by ducks swimming in a circle. George's honesty and mental stability were questioned in news articles and cartoons, and to his dying day he felt slighted about being publicly ridiculed. Locals who knew him and the landscape were more inclined to believe his story. Valerie Keenan was a child when saucer nest mania swept through Tully. Her dad, a cattle station owner from one of the area's original pioneering families, was already something of a UFO enthusiast. "He would sit out on the lawn in this chair and observe the night sky and talk about what he would do if someone, a UFO landed," she remembers. He was one of a few locals to receive an invitation from George to visit the saucer nest shortly after its discovery — and he brought Valerie in tow. For all the interest in George and his encounter, there remained a secret to which only a handful of people were privy. It went almost entirely unnoticed by all those hundreds of trespassing sightseers and headline-chasing journalists. Given the media circus was in full swing, Albert and George weren't keen on bringing too many others into the fold. But Valerie knew. There were more so-called saucer nests in horseshoe lagoon. Even stranger, these shapes would keep appearing on the farm for decades to come. Other farms, other farmers The crop circle is now such a pervasive cultural touchstone that it's easy to forget the term wasn't coined until the 1980s. Sporadic mentions of comparable formations pop up as far back as 1678, when a woodcut pamphlet published in England told of a "mowing devil" at work in Hertfordshire. The story went that a farmer had refused to pay a labourer's exorbitant price to harvest three acres of oats and swore "that the Devil should mow it, rather than he". That night he saw the field go up in flames, but by morning any sign of fire was gone and the crop was cut to perfection in a manner "no mortal man was able to do the like". Crop-lopping Lucifers aside, it wasn't until the Tully saucer nest sensation that these stories really found their stride. Keith Basterfield is a UFO researcher who in 1973 investigated an eerily similar case in an oat field at Bordertown in South Australia. Keith says seven of these shapes were scattered across the farm — and he would investigate similar reports over the years. For some, saucer nests had become the subject of genuine scientific inquiry. Unfortunately for believers, their credibility was dealt a catastrophic blow in 1991 when British artists Doug Bower and Dave Chorley admitted they had faked hundreds of the celestial glyphs across the UK since the 1970s. In a bizarre turn of events, those British artists pointed to what happened at Horseshoe Lagoon in Tully as their inspiration. But authorities were not simply dismissing reports outright. Brett Biddington is a former Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) intelligence officer who spent about a decade investigating UFO reports for the military. He was once tasked with driving to Bendigo after local media went into a frenzy over strange lights appearing in the sky in the 1980s. He got a first-hand glimpse of how the hunt for a headline can whip up hysteria and misinformation. "It tends to be both sensationalised and somewhat trivialised in the general media," he says. Brett says military interest in UFOs was very real, but not because of any perceived threat from little green men. "There was intense interest by both sides in the Cold War — the United States on the one hand, the Soviets on the other, to try to understand what the level of their technologies were with regard to space," he says. RAAF investigations into UFOs wrapped up in the 1990s and never really kicked off again Down Under. A small percentage of cases remain unexplained, like what happened in Tully. Some measure of vindication George Pedley's memorial plaque at the Tully cemetery features a small embossed figure of a horse cocking its front leg and the epitaph: "Husband, father, grandfather and brother." A man's life summed up in five words. He was a quiet farmer who, according to those who knew him, never sought nor enjoyed the limelight that was thrust upon him. To this day, his widow Helen chooses not to speak publicly about the saucer nest incident out of respect for her late husband and the derision he experienced. However, she has meticulously collected snippets from decades of newspaper and magazine articles that mention the encounter and neatly compiled them in a manilla folder at the local library. George died aged 85 in 2022, around the time a fundamental shift was happening in the public perception of UFOs — or UAPs (unidentified anomalous phenomena), as they're often now called. Three years ago, the United States government published a report into 144 UAP sightings between 2004 and 2021. It was inconclusive in terms of identifying the nature of these phenomena — but it did not rule out the possibility of advanced tech from foreign nations or extraterrestrial sources. In 2022, the US Congress held its first hearing on UFOs in more than 50 years. A new government branch called the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) was also created to investigate UAPs across, as the name suggests, all domains — air, sea, land and space. Suddenly there is an acknowledgement that not all encounters can be written off as hoaxes or the creations of overactive imaginations. If this shift does provide some measure of vindication to witnesses, it has arrived too late for old George. Dozens more nests over decades If there was one person who never doubted George's reliability as a witness, it was his neighbour Albert Pennisi. He would visit the lagoon every day for decades, jotting down notes of any disturbances and sending them back to UFO researchers in Brisbane. Shane remembers his dad on the phone, speaking in code to those researchers to avoid government infiltration — and even connecting a camera to electromagnetic equipment so it would automatically shutter if a disturbance was detected in the lagoon. To this day, he believes there was government surveillance of the activities at the farm. There was a reason for all this cloak-and-dagger stuff. The Pennisis had a secret. Valerie Keenan and her dad were among a select few locals who were shown the other saucer nests that had also appeared that fateful January in 1966. "There was another lagoon on the other side, and we saw another three pads, different sizes, different shapes," she remembers. "It was just sort of like something had come down from above — and where we saw the other three, there was no way in the world you would have got a vehicle of any kind in there." And it didn't stop there. Those early mornings spent waist-deep in the lagoon with parasites lapping at their veins and rifles held above their heads were not the most comfortable father-son expeditions. In 1966 a banana farmer in Queensland saw something he couldn't explain. That moment became the inspiration for an international alien hoax and exposed him to the chaotic debate about UFOs. But for Shane, they were beautiful moments spent with the man he idolised. And they didn't always come back empty-handed. The pair never saw a spacecraft themselves, but Shane swears saucer nests kept appearing until about a decade ago. "I couldn't tell you the number ... 25, 30, more," he says. "Towards the end, I didn't even keep marking it down. "You know, it's very scary for your kids. I saw but I didn't mark it down." The last saucer nest Shane says the last "marking" appeared about 10 years ago. He says over the past 20 years the frequency of appearances has decreased, which the family attribute to the changing landscape of more scrub being cleared for cane. It seems odd to come out almost 60 years on with these sensational new claims, but Shane has his reasons. The recent shift in public perception towards UFOs is one factor, but there's something much more existential than that. That seven-year-old boy is now an old man himself, and this lagoon is where he feels closest with his dad. But it's time to sell the farm. Shane recently survived serious heart surgery and his kids won't be taking over the reins. He's terrified that whoever buys the farm will bring in the dozers and fill the lagoon to fit in a few more rows of cane. "What's the biggest thing that's going to hurt me? It's this. Walking away from it," Shane says. "I've got to walk away from it all. "It's my life. I've got to leave and forget and don't look back." Shane's voice trembles as he sits in the same dining room where Albert and George drank tea after that very first sighting in 1966. He feels like a weight has been lifted. "I'm the last that's going to be involved in it, so now's the time for the public to know." Credits Related topics Euramo History Human Interest Tully Weird and WonderfulAP News Summary at 3:42 p.m. ESTPro Picks: Chiefs will beat the Steelers and Ravens will edge the Texans on Christmas Day