Welterweight champion Kamaru ‘The Nigerian Nightmare’ Usman has today knocked out his challenger, the American mixed martial artist, Jorge ‘Gamebred’ Masvidal in their hugely anticipated sold-out 170-rematch face-off for the UFC 261 Welterweight championship title scheduled at the VyStar Veterans Memorial Arena in Jacksonville, Florida.
The UFC 261 title fight which sold out 15,000 tickets in fifteen minutes after the announcement was made, longtime contender, Masvidal was looking for vengeance after being defeated during their first bout in July 2020 and reigning champion Kamaru is simply looking for another solid clear-cut win.
But in a 1 minute 8 seconds of the second round. Kamaru Usman with a devasting right punch knocked out Masvidal to retain his welterweight champion undisputed title.
The contender, Jorge Masvidal acknowledged the power when he said, “He (Kamaru Usman) won fair and square, he didn’t show me his power in the first fight so I underestimated his striking power”.
Masvidal refused to give a hint if he would be asking for a third rematch after he was knocked out in round two of their rematch
Rafael Nadal won his 12th Barcelona Open title, saving a match point in a thrilling three-set victory over Greece’s Stefanos Tsitsipas.
Nadal trailed 4-2 in the opener but recovered, breaking twice to take it.
World number five Tsitsipas showed great grit in the second set, saving two match points in game 10 game before levelling the match on a tie-break.
In a tight third set, Nadal faced a match point before piling on the pressure to win 6-4 6-7 (6-8) 7-5.
The victory, which took three hours 38 minutes, gave the 34-year-old his 61st clay court title and came against an in-form opponent who had won his maiden Masters crown in Monte Carlo last week.
“Winning the trophy here means a lot,” said Nadal, who had only lost one set in 11 previous finals in the Spanish city.
“I have been increasing my level and this was an important victory for me.”
Tsitsipas, who recovered from two sets down to beat Nadal at February’s Australian Open, started this match strongly before the Spaniard turned the opening set around.
Nadal again came from a break down in the second set after Tsitsipas had regrouped well.
That took him to the brink of victory on the court named after him but Tsitsipas showed his own mettle to stay in the contest, recovering from 15-40 at 4-5 with two fine points, including a lovely touch volley winner on the second.
A topsy-turvy tie-break saw Nadal lead 4-2 then save two set points from 4-6 only to serve a double fault at 6-6 that helped Tsitsipas clinch it.
The third set was serve dominated until 4-5, when Nadal wobbled on his own delivery, but ultimately it was the Spaniard who proved just the tougher.
Meanwhile, in the Belgrade clay court final, Italy’s Matteo Berrettini won his fourth career title.
The world number 10 beat Russia’s Aslan Karatsev, who had stunned Novak Djokovic in the semi-finals 6-1 3-6 7-6 (7-0).
Award winning director Chloe Zhao made Oscar history as the first Asian woman and second woman ever to win the award for the best director at the Academy awards. Zhao won the award for her work in the film “Nomadland” a story that cast real life Nomads, to show the lives of older Americans who travel from job to job trying to scrape together a living.
The movie also won the Oscar for best actress for Frances McDormand, one of the few actresses to achieve the “triple crown” of acting. Zhao was also nominated for best film editing and best adapted screenplay but did not win.
Frances McDormand and Chloe Zhao
However in Shanghai, a live stream of the awards show hosted by Zhao’s Alma mater New York University ran into China’s Firewall, as the organizer’s access to his virtual private network (VPN) service was suddenly cut off and blocked for nearly two hours.
This, added to the fact that they were the only ones airing this years Oscars as Chinese media regulators, decided not to air it this year. Hong Kong TV audiences were also unable to watch it because free-to-air broadcaster television broadcast limited (TVB), declined to air the Academy Awards for the first time since 1969, siting commercial reasons.
This year, “Do Not Split,” a documentary about the 2019-2020 Hong Kong protests also known as the Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill Movement, was nominated for an Oscar.
Anders Hammer, director and co-producer of the documentary said his team expected the Chinese government to react to the documentary, but not in this way.”It’s basically a movie about a big group of mostly young people standing up against Beijing,” Hammer said.
Italy’s Matteo Berrettini won his fourth career title on Sunday defeating Aslan Karatsev, who had stunned Novak Djokovic in the semi-finals, in the Belgrade clay court final.
The 25-year-old Berrettini, the world number 10, triumphed 6-1, 3-6, 7-6 (7/0) over the Russian who was seeking his second title of 2021 after winning in Dubai.
Berrettini won previous titles at Gstaad in 2018 and Stuttgart and Budapest, both in 2019.
On Saturday, the 28th-ranked Karatsev had knocked out world number one Djokovic in the semi-final, saving 23 of 28 break points.
NASA’s mini helicopter Ingenuity on Sunday successfully completed its third flight on Mars, moving farther and faster than ever before, with a peak speed of 6.6 feet per second.
After two initial flights during which the craft hovered above the Red Planet’s surface, the helicopter on this third flight covered 64 feet (50 meters) of distance, reaching the speed of 6.6 feet per second (two meters per second), or four miles per hour in this latest flight.
“Today’s flight was what we planned for, and yet it was nothing short of amazing,” said Dave Lavery, the Ingenuity project’s program executive.
The Perseverance rover, which carried the four-pound (1.8 kilograms) rotorcraft to Mars, filmed the 80-second third flight. NASA said Sunday that video clips would be sent to Earth in the coming days.
The lateral flight was a test for the helicopter’s autonomous navigation system, which completes the route according to information received beforehand.
“If Ingenuity flies too fast, the flight algorithm can’t track surface features,” NASA explained in a statement about the flight.
Ingenuity’s flights are challenging because of conditions vastly different from Earth’s — foremost among them a rarefied atmosphere that has less than one percent the density of our own.
This means that Ingenuity’s rotors, which span four feet, have to spin at 2,400 revolutions per minute to achieve lift — about five times more than a helicopter on Earth.
NASA announced it is now preparing for a fourth flight. Each flight is planned to be of increasing difficulty in order to push Ingenuity to its limits.
The Ingenuity experiment will end in one month in order to let Perseverance return to its main task: searching for signs of past microbial life on Mars.
As part of the activities leading to the annual Best of Nollywood (BON) Awards, the First Lady of Kogi State, Rashida Yahaya Bello will join past winners to read to children on May 27.
The board and organisers of BON awards announced during the week in Lokoja, Kogi state after a visit to the first lady. The organisers also noted that the book reading will be hosted at the State House in Lokoja.
The children would listen to the Kogi First Lady of the state, read to them in the company of Nollywood actors that include Aishat Lawal, Ali Nuhu, Lateef Adedimeji, and Yomi Fash-Lanso. Others include Gbenga Adeyinka, Fathia Williams, Adebimpe Oyebade, Biola Adebayo, and Efe Irele.
The BON book reading is an event held for children in the year’s host state for the awards.
Asides from the fact that it is the first time after the pandemic that BON Awards would be hosting a reading, the event, as usual, is scheduled to coincide with the 2021 Children’s Day celebration.
For this year, the organisers of the leading pan-Nigerian film industry awards have revealed that the official book of the year is Chinua Achebe’s ‘The Trouble with Nigeria,’ and over 1000 children from all over Kogi State are expected at the event.
The organisers of the BON awards also hinted that the event will be held on December 11 in Kogi state following Governor Yahaya Bello’s decision to accept the hosting rights on Tuesday, March 2.
Speaking on the reading, BON Awards founder Seun Oloketuyi revealed that “this is an important part of the series of events that make up BON because it is for the children, and we are glad that the First Lady graciously accepted to host the reading.”
Tade Ogidan has been saddled with the task of filming the life and times of elder statesman and revered politician, late Lateef Kayode Jakande.
The biopic, ‘Baba Kekere,’ has gotten the nod of the Jakande family after co-producers, Dele Momodu, Peace Anyiam-Osigwe, and Seun Oloketuyi paid a visit to the late Jakande’s widow and children.
While a release date and timeline are yet to be announced by the producers, it has been revealed that ‘Baba Kekere’ the biopic will have Bimbo Manuel working with Ogidan ahead of pre-production scheduled for May 2021.
The movie, which according to the producers is a one-of-a-kind biopic, will dramatise the life of Jakande drawing on both public and private facts.
Dele Momodu, speaking on the reason why a biopic on Jakande was necessary said, “One of the things we want to achieve with Baba Kekere the movie is that these days, many youths believe that going into politics is merely a means to an end. They believe it is all for money and not service. The life of Jakande is a perfect example that shows that many times, politics is not about money, it is about service.”
For Peace Anyiam-Osigwe, she explained that biopics are an important kind of film to make because they remind people of historical lessons. A movie about the life and times of a phenomenal man like Jakande would be a thorough lesson for those coming after who did not get the privilege of experiencing him.”
On the choice of the title, Oloketuyi shared that Baba Kekere was a fond moniker for Jakande. “Many people referred to him fondly as Baba Kekere. He was an honest, humble politician, and till his death, he was dedicated to the service of humanity and remained a friend to the people, hence the nickname.”
Oloketuyi further revealed that his dedication to the people is one of the reasons the producers came to do a movie to honour him. “The process started about two weeks after his death, and the family has given us approval for the movie to be done,” he shared.
Jakande, who passed on in February 2021 at the age of 91, was a man of many parts in his lifetime – he was a Nigerian journalist who became governor of Lagos State, and later Minister of Works.
Christa Ludwig, widely regarded as one of the greatest opera singers of the 20th century, has died at age 93, the Vienna State Opera said on Sunday.
The mezzo-soprano, whose repertoire ranged from Beethoven, Mozart and Mahler to Strauss, Verdi and Wagner in a career spanning nearly 50 years, died on Saturday at her home in Klosterneuburg, just outside Vienna.
Born in Berlin on March 16, 1928, Ludwig grew up in Aachen, west Germany, where her father, a tenor, also conducted at the local opera house. Her mother, too, was a mezzo-soprano.
“Singing for me was as natural as learning to walk,” she said once.
Ludwig made her operatic debut as Prince Orlofsky in Johann Strauss’s “Die Fledermaus” in Frankfurt in 1946.
Equally acclaimed as a concert performer and recitalist, Ludwig made her debt in Vienna as Cherubino in Mozart’s “Marriage of Figaro” on April 14, 1955.
And while she performed at all of the world’s leading opera houses such as La Scala in Milan, Covent Garden in London and the New York Met, and was awarded France’s Legion d’Honneur in 2010, it was the Vienna State Opera with which she became most closely associated, giving 769 performances there in 42 different roles.
Among her most memorable roles were Leonora in Beethoven’s “Fidelio”, both Octavian and Marschallin in Richard Strauss’s “Der Rosenkavalier”, Kundry in Wagner’s “Parsifal” and Dorabella in Mozart’s “Cosi fan tutte”.
She also worked with all of the world’s greatest conductors, including Otto Klemperer, Herbert von Karajan, Karl Boehm and Leonard Bernstein.
During her half-century on stage, she practised a self-discipline that she described as being similar to that of an astronaut, “thinking about her vocal cords day and night”, and avoiding tobacco and alcohol to preserve her unforgettable timbre.
Married to the Austrian bass-baritone Walter Berry for 13 years, she divorced him in 1970, and remarried French actor and director Paul-Emile Deiber in 1972.
She made her debut at the Paris Opera in November 1971 in a song recital, where she gave 10 curtain calls.
Ludwig, who worked with other legendary singers such as Maria Callas and Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, said she suffered stage nerves “before and during performances, and the pleasure afterwards is quickly spoiled by thoughts about the next performance”.
“It was the very special combination of a unique voice and intelligence of interpretation that made her so special,” said the Vienna State Opera.
Milan’s La Scala opera house said: “With the death of Christa Ludwig, the music world has a lost a luminous and inimitable personality.”
She retired from the stage with a performance of the role of Clytemnestra in Strauss’s “Elektra” in December 1994 in Vienna.
Beijing city has fined four online education agencies 500,000 yuan ($76,988) each for misleading customers with false advertising, the local market regulator said on Sunday.
GSX Techedu Inc (GSX.N), TAL Education Group (TAL.N), Koolearn Technology Holding Ltd (1797.HK) and Gaosi were given the maximum fine for falsely claiming that the price for its online courses before discount was much higher than it actually was, the regulator said.
Earlier this month, the education ministry forbade online education firms from offering minors live-streamed courses and games at night, to ensure children get enough sleep.
Huda al-Matroushi is one of few Emirati women to venture into the car repair business, an industry that has long been dominated by men in the Arab world.
“I enjoy it a lot,” says Matroushi, holding up her oil-stained work glove. “Because I’m on top of my job, and it’s my business, I belong to it: I feel proud of myself.”
Cars have been a hobby for Matroushi, 36, since childhood.
“I like cars and their models and their details. I like sports cars, I like luxurious cars, even normal non-luxurious cars, I love them all.”
She turned that passion into a profession and now owns and manages a car repair shop in Sharjah, one of the seven emirates that make up the United Arab Emirates.
Matroushi’s family had doubts about her pursuing a job in car mechanics, but she asked her father to take a leap of faith with her.
“I said: ‘Dad, please trust me and you will see what I will do.’ He said: ‘OK, OK!’. Most of my family are surprised … because this project, this business, it’s not easy for ladies,” she said.
Matroushi’s male employee, Mohammed Halawani, said it was initially strange to see a woman in charge of the garage.
“But after I joined and we started working and she’d tell me: disassemble this, assemble that, [it was clear] that she has experience.”
Matroushi hopes she can transform her single garage into a big repair centre, or open more garages across the UAE.
The UAE stipulates under new legislation that came into effect last month that UAE-based companies must have at least one woman on their board of directors.
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