Latest news with #Charlotte
National Post
4 hours ago
- Sport
- National Post
Abbotsford Canucks Recap: One win away from Calder Cup glory after 3-2 Game 4 victory
Yet another ensemble effort has the Abbotsford Canucks one win away from capturing the Calder Cup. Article content The Vancouver Canucks farmhands beat the Charlotte Checkers 3-2 on Thursday before an announced crowd of 7,161 at the Abbotsford Centre to go up 3-1 in the best-of-seven AHL championship series. Article content The first of three possible cracks to bring home the trophy for the first time in franchise history comes with Game 5 on Saturday (6 p.m.) at the Abbotsford Centre. Article content Game 6, if necessary, would be Monday (4 p.m.) in Charlotte, N.C., and a Game 7, if required, would go next Wednesday (4 p.m.) there. Article content Abbotsford has been buoyed throughout these playoffs by the goaltending of Artūrs Šilovs. He was strong once again Tuesday, making 32 saves. Article content More than anything, though, this playoff run for Abbotsford has been characterized by team effort. Coach Manny Malhotra rolls four lines and three pairs of defence regularly. Abbotsford comes at you in waves, and, when they're right like they were on Thursday, they're heavy and physical. Article content Jett Woo, Sammy Blais and Tristen Nielsen led the way Thursday with momentum-swaying body checks. Article content Tristen Nielsen smashes a Checker into the boards! What a hit! 🎥: FloHockey — CanucksArmy (@CanucksArmy) June 20, 2025 Article content Article content Various players have led the offence through these playoffs and on Thursday it was Jonathan Lekkerimäki taking his turn, potting a pair of goals. The 2022 Vancouver first-round draft choice had been a healthy scratch for five games prior to getting back into action for Game 3 on Tuesday. Article content
The Guardian
5 hours ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
And Just Like That ... The Sex and the City spin-off's surprising take on race
Are any of the writers on And Just Like That (AJLT) reading this? Because I have several helpful suggestions to bring the current series of your Sex and the City reboot into 2025: Charlotte's husband, the hitherto harmless Harry, could start pressuring her into an open marriage, involving whatever passes for wild sex parties on the Upper East Side. Miranda could soon enter her Chappell-Roan-power-ballad era by hooking up with a sexually captivating, but emotionally unavailable, decades-younger woman. And what about a big reveal involving Aidan, who has been draining Carrie's bank accounts all along (because he's secretly a Reddit-radicalised, misogynist crypto bro now). I'd also suggest we see and hear a lot less from the children. The existence of Brady, Brock, Tilly and Twerp should only ever be referenced occasionally and obliquely, for form's sake. Y'know, like how people of colour were treated all the way through the original Sex and the City series? Ironically, racial politics is the one area in which AJLT is doing just fine, even without my help. This is not the consensus view, I'm aware. Many fans entered a state of full-body cringe during the first season, when Miranda wondered aloud if she was having 'a white saviour moment' when fighting off a mugger attacking her Black friend, and are yet to regain full use of their sphincter muscles. But the fact is, AJLT understands the specific whiteness of wealthy white women, in a way that not only vastly improves on the original show's run, but which could also teach other contemporary TV shows a thing or two about 'diversity' and 'representation'. Principally, this show gets things right by allowing its characters to get things wrong. The Mirandas of this world – and I can say this, because I am such a Miranda – often get to ride the righteous train all the way to Smug Town without so much as a ticket inspection. But the truth is, even the well-intentioned – especially the well-intentioned – have blind spots, and most of us could do with some practice at keeping our cool when those are brought to the fore. AJLT leans into the cringe and, as such, acts as a kind of anti-racist exposure therapy for its middle-aged, white, liberal core audience. The secondhand embarrassment it generates is healthy, productive and funny. Because imagine the alternative: this show could have remade its central trio as ever-elegant, socially confident 'sheroes'. Girl bosses who get it. Women who never miss a beat and are always at one with the sensibilities of the age. It could have shielded them from ever looking uncool or out-of-touch, or jaw-droppingly oblivious, in the way that Carrie does in the episode where her new Indian-American friend, Seema (Sarita Choudhury), takes her sari shopping in preparation for the Patel family's Diwali party. Upon entering the shop, Carrie's eyes widen in wonderment. 'OK …' she says, 'These clothes … This holiday … I need to know everything about it!' Thus revealing that she is a fiftysomething woman, who has spent her entire adult life living in one of the most diverse cities in the world and yet – somehow – has never heard of Diwali, a festival celebrated annually by around a billion Indian and South Asian-descended people, worldwide. Get a clue, Carrie. When that episode aired, some commentators (mostly white women) bristled at the depiction of their carefree, curly queen. They said it wasn't plausible. It was doing Carrie dirty. But some of us (women of colour and the other white women) recognised the truth in that characterisation. It's Lana Turner in the classic 1959 film Imitation of Life, expressing surprise when Annie (Juanita Moore), her Black maid of several decades – and, essentially, her closest confidante – refers to a rich social life outside work. Annie's response? 'Miss Lora, you never asked.' Seema takes this in her stride. I suspect she too has met plenty of Carries in her time. The scene only begins to strain credulity when, moments later, Carrie follows up by asking her if she's ever considered an arranged marriage – What? Because she's Indian? – and Seema still betrays no hint of irritation. It wasn't the writing of Carrie's character that was flawed in that moment, but the writing of Seema's. It's because of moments like these that I'm glad the characters of Professor Nya Wallace (Karen Pittman) and Che Diaz (Sara Ramirez) have been phased out for season three. Or, as I prefer to understand it, set free to share a chilled bottle of chablis and/or weed vape with other friends who actually get it. I'm glad for their own sakes, because no human being wants to feel like a walking BLM reading list for someone on their solipsistic journey toward belated political consciousness. It was always clear why Miranda would want to be friends with Nya, the stylish, self-assured professor on her policies and principles of humanitarian law course – if only to improve her grades. But what is Nya getting out of the arrangement? After a long day of battling the ingrained racism of Ivy League academia, tending to her needy Gen Z grad students and her own underwritten IVF storyline, why would she want to spend her evenings further exerting herself by explaining micro-aggressions to Miranda 'give me a gold star' Hobbs? How is that relaxing? Nya and Che's departures also leave more room for AJLT's other two characters-of-colour to be fully realised. Lisa Todd Wexley, played by Nicole Ari Parker, is an upper-middle-class Black woman (she would probably prefer 'African American') with a busy career in documentary film-making and her scenes in the edit offer a way for AJLT to make meta-commentary on media depictions of Blackness – worshipful references to Michelle Obama are a leitmotif, for instance. Something similar was previously attempted in season two, when Che decamped to Los Angeles to get their semi-autobiographical sitcom off the ground and the Italian-American actor Tony Danza was cast as their Mexican father. Sadly, by that point, nobody watching cared about Che's tedious travails, so nobody cared about the politics of colour-blind casting either. Lisa isn't just a working mother with an impressive collection of oversized jewellery. She is also a classic example of the bad'n'bougie princess, a trope which allows TV to explore the intersections of race, gender and class, and has a noble lineage stretching back to Lisa Turtle on Saved by the Bell, through Hilary Banks on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and Dionne Davenport in Clueless, all the way to reality star Gizelle Bryant on Real Housewives of Potomac. Here, I detect the hand of Susan Fales-Hill, proud descendent of US 'afrostocracy', creator of original bougie princess Whitley Gilbert from A Different World, and a writer on AJLT since season two. Seema's type is more obvious. She is a new Samantha, brought in to replace our dearly beloved Kim Cattrall from the original SATC, a woman with so much charisma she could almost – but not quite – get away with wearing an afro wig to a post-chemo social gathering. Seema has Samantha's confidence and fondness for animal prints, but to that she adds her own top-note of vulnerability. Being a professionally high-flying, never-married, child-free woman in your 50s is fabulous. But, in a world that likes to constantly remind women of how they've failed to please the patriarchy, an occasional wobble of self-doubt is to be expected. It's in this wider context of the third season, with more screen time and better storylines, that Seema's ethnicity can be just one aspect of her character; neither defining, nor denied. Now, when Seema's cultural heritage is referenced, it's usually on her own terms, and in her own words. As she cautions bossy date-finder Sydney Cherkov (Saturday Night Live's Cheri Oteri): 'I'm Indian, we invented matchmaking'. And just like that, through an ever-enjoyable, show-your-workings process of trial-and-error, this show has landed on what it can most usefully add to the pop culture discourse about race. And that isn't shoe-horning in badly written POC characters to offer a hastily bodged version of racial diversity and representation. Rather it's exploring the whiteness of Miranda/Charlotte/Carrie as they move through this changed and changing world, but – crucially – always with a tad more self-awareness than the characters themselves possess. Now, back to more pressing matters: Should Charlotte order specially monogrammed stationery from Tiffany's for those sex party invites? And who's telling Anthony he's been cut from the guest list?
Malay Mail
7 hours ago
- Sport
- Malay Mail
Real Madrid confirm Mbappe's release from US hospital after stomach bug scare
MIAMI, June 20 — Real Madrid superstar Kylian Mbappe has been released from hospital in the United States after suffering a stomach bug, the Spanish giants said yesterday. Mbappe, who is in the USA at the Club World Cup, had what the club called 'an acute case of gastroenteritis' and was taken in for tests and treatment. 'Our player Kylian Mbappe was discharged from hospital this afternoon and has returned to the Real Madrid training camp,' Los Blancos said in a statement. 'Mbappe will continue with specific medical treatment and will gradually return to the team's activities,' they added. French striker Mbappe missed his team's Club World Cup opener against Al-Hilal on Wednesday, a 1-1 draw in Xabi Alonso's first game at the helm. Alonso said on Tuesday the 26-year-old forward had been 'feeling a little better' after illness in the run up to the match in Miami. Madrid B-team player Gonzalo Garcia, 21, started in Mbappe's stead and opened the scoring for Real Madrid against their Saudi Arabian opponents. Madrid's second match in Group H is on Sunday June 22 against Mexican side Pachuca in Charlotte. Mbappe finished as the European Golden Shoe winner in his first season at Real Madrid with 31 goals in La Liga, but Los Blancos finished the season without a major trophy. — AFP
Yahoo
10 hours ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
Thousands of NC voters to see a change in their party affiliation
CHARLOTTE (QUEEN CITY NEWS) — Some North Carolina voters might notice a surprise next time they check their voter registration: their party affiliation may have changed. On Tuesday, June 24, roughly 34,000 voters previously affiliated with the Constitution, Justice for All, No Labels, or We the People parties will be shifted to 'unaffiliated' status in the state's official voter database, according to the NC State Board of Elections. This change follows a decision by the State Board of Elections after these parties lost their official recognition under state law. To stay recognized, political parties in North Carolina must meet certain performance benchmarks, like securing at least 2% of the vote in a statewide race for president or governor. YOUR LOCAL ELECTION HQ: Controversial bills await action from Governor Stein In the 2024 general election, candidates from these four parties reportedly didn't meet that mark. The Green Party is the only exception. Despite falling short of the vote requirement, the party was reinstated after proving its presidential candidate appeared on the general election ballot in at least 70% of states, a separate qualification under state law, officials said. As of now, only four political parties are officially recognized in North Carolina: Democratic, Republican, Libertarian, and Green. All other voters are considered unaffiliated. For those unsure of their status, the State Board recommends checking online using the Voter Search Tool. Registration updates can also be made through the North Carolina DMV. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Vancouver Sun
11 hours ago
- Sport
- Vancouver Sun
Canucks: Big AHL performances from Bains and Karlsson may carry into NHL success
There is little doubt that this spring's epic run by the Abbotsford Canucks to the Calder Cup Final bodes well for the future of the entire Vancouver Canucks organization. Winning, after all, brings good vibes, and good vibes bring you goodwill. And winning at the AHL level usually means some good things for your NHL team a couple seasons down the line. The Vancouver Canucks are hopeful that this spring's solid run will yield positive things for the NHL club as soon as next season. Yes, we're talking about you, Arshdeep Bains and Linus Karlsson. Start your day with a roundup of B.C.-focused news and opinion. By signing up you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc. A welcome email is on its way. If you don't see it, please check your junk folder. The next issue of Sunrise will soon be in your inbox. Please try again Interested in more newsletters? Browse here. The two wingers were massive performers Tuesday, helping the Canucks take a 2-1 series lead over the Charlotte Checkers. Bains' all-around good game sense has been on display ever since he made the jump to pro hockey in 2022. But his emergence as a big-game player is notable. He was one of Abbotsford's best performers all season long. In the playoffs, it took him a while to score an actual goal — he only has five — but those five have all come in crunch time. The first three were in the final two games of the Western Conference final against Texas, and the latest two came on Tuesday, along with two assists, leading the way in a 6-1 romp over Charlotte. Karlsson, meanwhile, has 11 goals and 11 assists in this playoff run, including goals in both games two and three of this series against Charlotte. He hs been a player on a mission all season. After a rather underwhelming NHL callup last fall, he clearly put the bit between his teeth, and doubled down on what he needs to be, because when he came back to the NHL later in the season, he was a solid, hard-working presence. He is not the fleetest of foot, but he's strong and has hockey smarts that have carried him this far. Both players aren't going to be stars in the NHL, but they have guts and brains and dedication to the craft, exactly what you want in homegrown depth wingers. And both would help the NHL team if they can turn themselves into such players. pjohnston@
