Latest news with #Dutch
Express Tribune
an hour ago
- Sport
- Express Tribune
Pep Guardiola hails new City signings
Manchester City coach Pep Guardiola hailed the impact of the new signings who came straight into the team for the 2-0 win over Wydad Casablanca in their opening match at the Club World Cup on Wednesday. Dutch midfielder Tijjani Reijnders and France attacking midfielder Rayan Cherki both started the game on a hot afternoon at Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia after joining in the run-up to the tournament from AC Milan and Lyon respectively. "He is a really, really good player. You feel it, you smell it. The pace, in the final third, with the ball, when he will get a little bit more rhythm, he will be top," Guardiola said of Reijnders, 26, who played the whole game in sapping conditions. Brought in to help fill the huge void left by Kevin De Bruyne's departure, the 21-year-old Cherki lasted an hour before being substituted as City eased to victory in the Group G contest thanks to first-half goals by Phil Foden and Jeremy Doku. "Of course Kevin is difficult to replace, we know that, for the quality that he has," Guardiola said. "There is no doubt about that but at the same time the club decided on Rayan because he has incredible skills close to the box, incredible vision, many things. "This was just the first game, in really tough conditions, and I am really pleased he is here."There was an experimental look to the City line-up against the Moroccan side, with young Brazilian defender Vitor Reis starting for just the third time since signing in January while Nathan Ake made a first appearance for his club since late February. The five most-used outfield players for City over the course of the last campaign — Josko Gvardiol, Bernardo Silva, Erling Haaland, Ruben Dias and Ilkay Gundogan — were all on the bench at kick-off. New signing Rayan Ait-Nouri was an unused substitute, but Guardiola suggested that he will change almost his entire team for the next game, against Al Ain in Atlanta on Sunday. "We had new players, players playing in different positions. Vitor Reis played a really good game, Nathan Ake was three, four or five months without playing, so many players we needed to give them minutes," Guardiola said. "The next game 10 new players (are) going to be there and we will try to win the next one." City will be without Rico Lewis due to suspension for the clash with Al Ain after he was sent off late on against Wydad. If that was a source of frustration for the coach, Foden's performance was encouraging as the England star scored the first goal and made the second. "Obviously last season wasn't the best for me so I put it in my head to start the season strong and I am happy today that I managed to score and get an assist and help the team win," said Foden. "Last season was a bit rough for all of us but it is about trying to go again this season, with the new signings to help us, and trying to win trophies again."
CairoScene
an hour ago
- General
- CairoScene
To the Ancestors, Human & Non-Human: Ayman Zedani on Holistic Kinship
"To the ancestors, human and non-human." That's the line Ayman Zedani signs off with in his emails. It's less poetic flourish than a philosophical stance. Something you may find inscribed in a manifesto. And in many ways, it frames everything that followed. Ayman Zedani is a Saudi artist whose work explores what he calls the "holistic kinship" between all forms of life on the Arabian Peninsula. The email signature is a statement of intent that becomes clearer as we settle into conversation. Zedani grew up near the Sarawat Mountains of Saudi Arabia's Aseer region, a long range of peaks that fundamentally shaped his vision. "I saw a lot of species there, and that was just the norm then," he explains, his voice carrying the measured cadence of someone who has spent considerable time thinking about our place in the natural world. "The importance of growing in these areas shaped my vision. It wasn't that I was surrounded by nature, it's that I was of it.' He moved to Riyadh when he was 15, a shift that proved revelatory. "It was a very different territory from what I was used to. There's something so mystical about the desert; it created a necessity, the importance of visiting these places again." And he did, conceptually. This move became the foundation for what he describes as "a personal project to establish my relationship with the Arabian Peninsula." But for Zedani, the personal and the ecological are inseparable. "Human and non-human, I don't really separate these things. Through time, this has become the basis of us as a species: we separate ourselves from anything non-human. But I went back to revisit them. Humans are the expression of nature itself. We are like passengers in a spaceship that contains us and everything around us." Zedani's philosophy seems to echo the 17th-century Dutch philosopher Spinoza, who argued against the Cartesian separation of mind and matter, proposing instead that everything in the universe is part of a single substance. "There's a holistic kinship about everything," he continues, and you sense this isn't theoretical for him; it's the animating principle of his practice. Zedani tells me about the agricultural terraces of his childhood, structures that reveal the sophisticated ecological thinking of earlier generations. "Growing up in Aseer, they used to refer to these terraces as 'sudud', dams. They were actually thinking of these works in relation to water, not food, the way water was distributed to the land and to humans." The 2020 fires in Aseer, which destroyed large patches of forest, revealed the deeper wisdom of these ancient systems. "These terraces reflect the narrative of the region. The clay-like soil there doesn't absorb water fast, so it turns into flash floods. You hear about people being washed away by these floods, but these terraces were designed to give water enough time to be absorbed by the soil." In Aseer, where water is not scarce, but sudden and overwhelming. The terraces were designed less for storing crops than for managing the volatile behaviour of rain. They slowed the descent of water across clay-heavy slopes, giving it time to seep into the soil rather than tear through the landscape in flash floods. This interpretation of terracing as hydrological infrastructure, an elegant choreography between land and water, stands in striking contrast to how terraces function elsewhere. In the arid zones of the Mediterranean, for instance, terraces cling to rocky hillsides not to delay abundance but to trap what little rain arrives. In the monsoon-soaked highlands of the Philippines, they become rice basins, synchronising with cycles of excess. And in the Andes, they serve as vertical ecosystems, responding to gradients of altitude and temperature as much as water. Across the world, terraces reflect not just agricultural necessity but cultural perception, what each society believes about water, time, and the land's temperament based on what they experience. This kind of traditional knowledge, what he calls "water harvesting from different perspectives," forms the backbone of his artistic practice. "I love to work with people in botany, archaeology and more, identifying our surroundings," he explains. "There's always a protagonist for each project, weaving factual information with fiction to reimagined the future. The practice looks into creating new stories, something really curious with a lot of contributors, weaving them into the project." One of his most compelling investigations centres on the Arabian Sea Humpback whales of the Arabian Sea, a project that began with disturbing Soviet-era research and is called Between Desert Seas. "These whales are unique," Zedani explains, his tone shifting. "There was a research paper from the Soviet Union documenting a mission where they came to the sea and killed as many whales as possible, they killed 60% of the population. As they were opening them up, some had food, some were pregnant." The tragedy led to an extraordinary discovery. When scientists took DNA tests from beached whales, they realised they were looking at a unique subspecies isolated in the Arabian Sea for an estimated 70,000 years. "They are not responding to other whales in other oceans when exposed to open seas, thousands of years in solitude. These whales developed their own language, their own song, their own culture," Zedani notes. Through the Environment Society of Oman, he encountered people who had lived alongside these creatures for generations. "I met people who had encountered these whales and called them by specific names, champ, Luban, and others." This layering of scientific and traditional knowledge becomes central to his approach. His installation work around the whales incorporates the story of Prophet Yunus, creating what he calls "spiritual ecology." The installation draws from both scientific research and spiritual narrative. At its core, it explores the ecological discoveries of the Arabian Sea, including the identification of a genetically unique whale population, and weaves them together with the story of the Prophet Yunus, who was swallowed by a whale and cast into darkness. 'It's a multilayered sonic installation that renegotiates our relationship with the seas surrounding the Arabian Peninsula,' Zedani explains. The piece gathers recordings made throughout the research process, whale songs, oceanic data, local oral histories, into an immersive sound environment. "The salt part references desalination and the hyper-salinity happening now with climate change, it took the place of fire. And there's darkness, like what Yunus experienced. "What you see in the artwork is just the tip of the iceberg," Zedani reflects. Hazek, a village in Oman situated just metres from where the whales come to feed. Until 2017, when a road finally connected it to the rest of the country, the village was completely isolated, accessible only by sea. "They developed their own cultures," he explains. "The women of the village are free divers, I found a woman in her 60s who could free dive for seven minutes." The villagers call the whales Sultan el Bahar – the King of the Sea. Language itself becomes a medium for exploration. His relationship with Arabic, "whether as a language, a script, or a sonic texture," influences his work in unexpected ways. "The works have both subtitles and titles, but the subtitles are not mirror translations," he explains. "I learned how to write Nabataean scripts, all mirrors of the Arabic language. The way Nabataeans used to speak was in Arabic, but they wrote in their own script. This linguistic archaeology connects to his current project in AlUla, where he's working to "recreate a certain narrative in relation to the burial tombs" using Nabataean script. He is crafting a new narrative about the tombs and burial sites that evoke the mythic and symbolic landscape of the Arabian past. The core sentence that Zedani wrote to anchor the project on reads: "إلى النسور مفاتيح الجسور لتسمح لنا العبور من خلال القبور إلى ما وراء النجوم" 'To the eagles, the keys of bridges, to grant us passage through the graves to what lies beyond the stars.' 'It seems like Saudi has opened a portal," Zedani says, reflecting on the cultural changes happening in the kingdom. "And it's important to tie it to our ancestral history." Zedani speaks of what he calls 'cultural pollination' taking place in AlUla, where craftspeople from regions with similar desert ecologies are invited to contribute their knowledge. One example is the team brought from Egypt's Siwa Oasis, renowned for its centuries-old mud-brick construction techniques, to help revive sustainable building practices in the area. 'AlUla brought people from Siwa to share their methods,' Zedani explains. 'It's a kind of cross-desert knowledge exchange—responding to similar climates with inherited techniques.' Zedani reflects positively on his experience with NEOM, the ambitious megacity project on Saudi Arabia's Red Sea coast. "They invited us to go there for three months, and we were fascinated that most of the work is ecological, discovery of new species, and the largest coral nursery in the region. All water is recycled." His perspective reflects a pragmatic approach to navigating Saudi Arabia's complex transformation. "The thing about artists is that we are border crossers," he says. "We dream about how these things connect. What really interests me is what allows me to look into ecology." This border-crossing extends to knowledge systems themselves. He references Indigenous Australian academic Tyson Yunkaporta's concept of 'TEK' – traditional ecological knowledge – as opposed to Western technology. "Indigenous TEK versus tech," he summarises, highlighting the difference between wisdom systems rooted in place and those that extract and commodify. Blue holes, earthquakes, coral nurseries, his practice encompasses the full spectrum of Arabian Peninsula ecology. "The mountains, the desert, and the sea," he says, as if describing the three acts of an epic story. Which, in a sense, he is. His work becomes a form of cultural archaeology, excavating ways of being that might offer alternatives to the extractive logic of contemporary development. So much of Zedani's work rests not in what it declares, but in what it chooses to attend to, a practice built on listening rather than speaking, observing rather than capturing. The desert, the mountains, the sea, in his cosmology, these are not symbolic backdrops but living archives, sites of memory and intelligence. To read them requires patience. To misread them risks erasure, not just of ecological history, but of ourselves. Ayman Zedani resists the usual binaries, insider or outsider, artist or activist. What matters more to him is presence. Not presence in the art world, but in the landscape itself, walking it, listening to it, allowing it to reframe what art can be.
Buzz Feed
an hour ago
- Entertainment
- Buzz Feed
12 Must-Have EOFY Home Upgrades Worth Buying
We're coming up to EOFY, and your feeds, inboxes and entire brain is probably filled with sales. And, when we say goodies, we mean goodies. Take a look below. This enamelled cast iron Dutch oven that's a kitchen workhorse and can handle everything from braising hearty stews to baking mouthwatering desserts. Promising review: 'Fantastic quality. The colour is beautiful and it's a good size for first-time Dutch oven users. It's heavy so bear that in mind but I would absolutely recommend it!' —MaddisonBuy it from Amazon Australia for $74.90. This vertical foot warmer that's just what we all need moving into colder days — especially when you were raised to never switch on the heater. This heating pad won't add any excess noise pollution to your space but it will make it warm and cosy. It used infrared to heat up the area much like those saunas you see with different LED lights. And it has a low power consumption, to get through a cozzie livs winter. Buy it from AliExpress for $89.99. This LG Soundbar SG10TY that'll make your lounge room feel like an actual cinema, and you can save $1000 (!!!) when you bundle it with with an LG OLED G5 TV. Plug it in, pair it up and let the sound wrap around you. The LG G Series Sound Bar SG10TY brings 420W of Dolby Atmos® power in a sleek, wall-hugging profile that's designed to match your LG OLED G series TV. Whether you're syncing it with your compatible LG TV via WOW Orchestra or streaming playlists through Chromecast or AirPlay 2, it's all about big sound, made seamless. And, if you get this soundbar right now alongside any LG OLED evo G5 TV as a bundle, you can get $1000 off. Yes, you read that right — $1000 OFF. Gimme gimme it from LG for $1,499. This fancy gadget that removes way more plaque than flossing ever could, leaving your mouth feeling squeaky clean and dentist-approved. Promising review: "I love the larger water tank, the easy-to-use pik, and the extendable hose. Not filling the tank is worth the dollars. I highly recommend this."— Hector EliasBuy it from Amazon Australia for $177.95. This desktop water dispenser that uses reverse osmosis to draw out impurities without installing a filter and you can adjust its temperature in a matter of seconds. Using the app, you can easily pre-measure capacities so the dispenser can fill up your bottle, cup or vessel with just one tap. The machine also tells you when the water level's low and can easily be taken from home to getaway accomodations to a function. Buy it from AliExpress for $435.99. This smart blender that can do it all without too much noise. From food processing to making smoothies, the built-in noise reduction ensures it won't make a racket. The blender's encased in a cast aluminium spray ceramic — ideal for breaking down roasted veggies for soups and savoury dishes too. Buy it from AliExpress $117.39. This baseboard heater that has immediate heating for the whole house — despite its slimline build! Colder days are coming and this graphene heater will create a warming environment without drying up the air. And, it'll do it quietly!Buy it from AliExpress for $289.99. This handheld vacuum cleaner which uses triple filtration with a super strong suction that'll pick up a whole lot of hair and dust off your house floor. Weighing in a only 1.5kg, this vacuum might be lightweight but don't let that fool you into thinking it means less power. The smooth air duct ensures that dust is picked up and trapped quickly — plus, it's easy to clean. Buy it from AliExpress for $122.69. This heated back massager that'll knead and work at your muscles, so that they can carry on living their best life without neck and back pain. This massager features four deep-kneading massage nodes and a heating function to provide them with optimum comfort and relief from the tension you've been carrying around. The velcro strap also makes it easy to secure it to any chair, so they can enjoy their massage while you're working, watching a movie or just hanging out. Buy it from Amazon Australia for $80.53. This white noise machine that encourages your best sleep, which will probably have you waking up in a much better mood. This sound machine has 20 unique sounds that don't loop. There's also a sleep timer, so you don't have to worry about it running all review: "Light sleeper, apartment dweller: This sound machine literally changed my life. I moved into an apartment for the first time in my life one year ago and hearing my neighbours move around at night used to make me so anxious. This little machine blurs it all out! I CANNOT sleep without it now, it's the best purchase I have ever made and I would seriously recommend any light sleepers purchase it. My partner now loves it too." —Julia WillingBuy it from Amazon Australia for $99.99. This flat-weight bench that's built to last and easy to assemble, perfect for strength training, weightlifting, or just doing some good old-fashioned push-ups. Promising review: "I used the four nyloc nuts on the base of the vertical tubes and tightened the bolts with "extraordinary strength" as instructed by the spanner… The package included spare bolts and nuts too. No, seriously, no trips to the hardware store for missing nuts/washers/bolts! The bench is well padded and I'm very happy with the purchase." —Darren RBuy it from Amazon Australia for $109.98. And finally, this weight bench that's a total gym rat's dream come true, easily folding away when not in use but offering all the adjustments they need to get a full-body workout at home. Promising review: 'I have to say I am very impressed with the quality of this bench. For the price… I am very pleasantly surprised for once. I'm 6'2" and 110kg and the bench is long enough whether upright or flat. The padding is firm, but not like sitting on a board, and is fine for me. The build is solid and does not flex or creak under my weight at all. The seat and back support both slide up and down very easily and the pins are very quick to release and tighten. The setup was extremely easy and took less than 10 minutes. You don't need a Swedish degree in flatpack. 😄' —RWBuy it from Amazon Australia for $189.99.
Hamilton Spectator
5 hours ago
- General
- Hamilton Spectator
Netherlands returns 119 looted artifacts known as Benin Bronzes to Nigeria
ABUJA, Nigeria (AP) — The Netherlands on Thursday returned 119 artifacts looted from Nigeria, including human and animal figures, plaques, royal regalia and a bell. The artifacts, known as the Benin Bronzes and mostly housed in a museum in the city of Leiden, were looted in the late 19th century by British soldiers. In recent years, museums across Europe and North America have moved to address ownership disputes over artifacts looted during the colonial era. They were returned at the request of Nigeria's National Commission for Museums and Monuments. During the handover ceremony in Edo State, Oba Ewuare II, the monarch and custodian of Benin culture, described the return of the artifacts as a 'divine intervention.' The Benin Bronzes were returned at the request of Nigeria's National Commission for Museums and Monuments. The restitution is a testament to the power of prayer and determination, the monarch said. The Dutch government is committed to returning artifacts that do not belong to the country, said Marieke Van Bommel, director of the Wereld Museum. Olugbile Holloway, the commission's director, said the return of 119 artifacts marks the largest single repatriation to date and that his organization is working hard to recover more items looted during colonial times. Nigeria formally requested the return of hundreds of objects from museums around the world in 2022. Some 72 objects were returned from a London museum that year while 31 were returned from a museum in Rhode Island . The Benin Bronzes were stolen in 1897 when British forces under the command of Sir Henry Rawson sacked the Benin kingdom and forced Ovonramwen Nogbaisi, the monarch at the time, into a six-month exile. Benin is located in modern-day southern Nigeria. Error! Sorry, there was an error processing your request. There was a problem with the recaptcha. Please try again. You may unsubscribe at any time. By signing up, you agree to our terms of use and privacy policy . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google privacy policy and terms of service apply. Want more of the latest from us? Sign up for more at our newsletter page .
Winnipeg Free Press
5 hours ago
- General
- Winnipeg Free Press
Netherlands returns 119 looted artifacts known as Benin Bronzes to Nigeria
ABUJA, Nigeria (AP) — The Netherlands on Thursday returned 119 artifacts looted from Nigeria, including human and animal figures, plaques, royal regalia and a bell. The artifacts, known as the Benin Bronzes and mostly housed in a museum in the city of Leiden, were looted in the late 19th century by British soldiers. In recent years, museums across Europe and North America have moved to address ownership disputes over artifacts looted during the colonial era. They were returned at the request of Nigeria's National Commission for Museums and Monuments. During the handover ceremony in Edo State, Oba Ewuare II, the monarch and custodian of Benin culture, described the return of the artifacts as a 'divine intervention.' The Benin Bronzes were returned at the request of Nigeria's National Commission for Museums and Monuments. The restitution is a testament to the power of prayer and determination, the monarch said. The Dutch government is committed to returning artifacts that do not belong to the country, said Marieke Van Bommel, director of the Wereld Museum. Olugbile Holloway, the commission's director, said the return of 119 artifacts marks the largest single repatriation to date and that his organization is working hard to recover more items looted during colonial times. Nigeria formally requested the return of hundreds of objects from museums around the world in 2022. Some 72 objects were returned from a London museum that year while 31 were returned from a museum in Rhode Island. The Benin Bronzes were stolen in 1897 when British forces under the command of Sir Henry Rawson sacked the Benin kingdom and forced Ovonramwen Nogbaisi, the monarch at the time, into a six-month exile. Benin is located in modern-day southern Nigeria.
