Mubeen Blogs

Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/baoiNPw

Moldova blocks access to major Russian news media sites; US-made F-16 jets donated to Ukraine from Netherlands to arrive at training centres in weeks See all our Ukraine war coverage Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/TmvKP8M

Installations across US include friendship bracelets and a ‘boyfriend graveyard’ , with fans spending hundreds on their masterpieces Last week, Taylor Swift became a billionaire . She also became a 399lb pumpkin. For 35 years, Jeanette Paras has “pumpkinized” celebrities, turning giant gourds into their likenesses in an effort to drum up breast cancer awareness for charities. This year, her muse was a no-brainer: Swift’s record-breaking Eras tour and concert documentary were cultural events, and her romance with the NFL star Travis Kelce dominates tabloid headlines. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/r3wv5M8

Vacationers are increasingly looking for short-term rentals that may be haunted on online platforms like Airbnb and VRBO Adrienne Parks and her husband, Bill Bowman, moved into their New Orleans Queen Anne-style Victorian house on Halloween in 2005. But it had a long history before them. Built as a single-family home in 1884, the 5,500-sq-ft structure became a boarding house in the 20th century before falling into disrepair. In the 1980s, a couple purchased it and decided to restore the building to its original glory, ripping out sheet rock and tearing out the drop ceilings. Years later, the property found its way to Parks and Bowman. Not long after moving in, Parks took a walking tour of her neighborhood, which happened to be led by one of the home’s previous owners. They made a stop at the house. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/Tmn3oRM

The 90s were a decade of carefree optimism and comically low stakes. Matthew Perry’s death brings us crashing back into the now In 2004, the author Damian Barr published Get It Together: Surviving Your Quartlerlife Crisis. Barr would go on to write poignant and beautiful books (including the memoir Maggie and Me) but this wasn’t either of those things. It was more of a fun, generational howl: how’s this stuff supposed to work? How are you supposed to become an adult in these conditions? The dream of life in your 20s – flailing around not sure what to do, mooching from one dead-end job to another but still managing to afford a gigantic, lovely flat in the centre of everything, failing romantically, hilariously, while it all turns out for the best, never feeling anxious for no reason or as if you’re slipping through the sieve of polite society, too small and weightless to remain in the in-crowd – well, that dream was cracking a little. As Barr put it in a radio interview, the question, ...

Fiji and Portugal should be proud while Ireland and France will have regrets but there has to be incentive for teams to vary tactics It was Andy Farrell who best summed up the 2023 Rugby World Cup. “Sport can be cruel sometimes – I guess that’s why we love it,” Ireland’s head coach said after his team’s heartbreaking defeat by New Zealand in the quarter-finals. Which is precisely how every All Black squad member felt on Saturday evening as dazzling laser beams, coloured lights and fireworks turned the Stade de France into the planet’s dampest nightclub and South Africa’s ecstatic players danced their way into Springbok folklore. The extraordinary Siya Kolisi was still singing out loud to himself when he entered the post-game press conference clutching the Webb Ellis Cup, in sharp contrast to his downcast All Black counterpart Sam Cane who had just left. Few Test captains have ever looked as pained as Cane after his team’s record 35-7 defeat by the Boks at Twickenham in August. Here...

As 36-hour blackout imposed by Israel ended, phones were flooded with news of people killed in intensified bombardment Israel and Hamas at war – live updates On Sunday morning, phones belonging to the 2.3 million people trapped in the besieged Gaza Strip slowly came to life again, inundated with updates, messages and missed calls after the lifting of a 36-hour near-total communications blackout imposed by Israel. Nights in Gaza now are completely dark. At the same time as communications were lost on Friday evening, Israel intensified its aerial bombardment and launched its initial ground operation into the strip. Ambulance drivers described how they decided to just drive towards the sound of explosions as there were no accurate coordinates to follow. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/851YaHc