Latest news with #Hakeem
Yahoo
10-06-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Chattanooga Eastdale site removed as future hospital site as Rep. Hakeem pushes back
Rep. Yusuf Hakeem said he felt like a site for a new state hospital for mental health was being "pushed on" him. (Photo: John Partipilo/Tennessee Lookout) Tennessee officials are resuming the search for a mental health facility site to replace Moccasin Bend after dropping consideration of an Eastdale site in Chattanooga. The state Department of General Services removed the site from contention last week shortly before Democratic state Rep. Yusuf Hakeem was to hold a town hall to hear concerns about putting the mental health institute in an area of his House District 28. Hakeem opposed the site for a combination of reasons, including the impact of a mental health facility on people's properties, poor communication from the state and access by a two-lane road with no sidewalks. The 150-acre tract is bordered by a train track and quarry too. 'It's like they want to push it in my district,' Hakeem said, adding he and the community were 'ready to fight.' Hakeem said several other locations such as one near Erlanger Hospital and one on Amnicola Highway should be considered. The state might still be looking at two other pieces of property near Eastdale, but Hakeem does not oppose those. Tennessee Building Commission approves new Moccasin Bend Mental Health facility minus the site Department of General Services spokesperson Michelle Parks confirmed Monday the state is evaluating multiple sites in Hamilton County. She added that state law prevents the department from discussing sites under consideration. State Sen. Bo Watson, a Hixson Republican, said the state has looked at about 50 sites in Southeast Tennessee and will continue the search. At least 15 acres are needed for the hospital. Watson said the state 'never really evaluated' the Eastdale site because it was tied up with a development request through the local planning commission, then changed hands. 'Given the pushback and the concerns that the neighbors had, we never really got a chance to discuss it to any degree,' Watson said. No public hearings were held on the property, he added. The state built the mental health institute at Moccasin Bend along the Tennessee River in 1961 and planned to expand it there until advocates called for the area to be preserved as much as possible because of its Native American history. The area is the site of a national archeological district and part of Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park. The state had approved a Moccasin Bend expansion in 2023, but Gov. Bill Lee called for another location for the mental health facility because of the archeological review. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
Yahoo
04-06-2025
- General
- Yahoo
"He went to the mosque" - Hakeem Olajuwon didn't celebrate with the Rockets after their first NBA championship
Hakeem Olajuwon reached the pinnacle of success in his illustrious NBA career when he led the Houston Rockets to their first NBA championship in 1994. This landmark victory marked a significant milestone in the franchise's history, and "Dream" was rightfully named the Finals MVP for his outstanding performance throughout the series. While the Rockets had every reason to revel in their momentous achievement, Olajuwon made a surprising choice. Rather than joining his teammates in celebration, the legendary center chose to visit a mosque. There, Hakeem took the time to pray and express his heartfelt gratitude for the extraordinary accomplishment. Advertisement "One of the most moving stories was that after he won that first championship," Mirin Fader, author of 'Dream: The Life and Legacy of Hakeem Olajuwon,' told Awful Announcing last year. "Instead of going out and celebrating with the rest of his teammates and drinking champagne, he cannot do that because it's against (his religion). He's prohibited to have alcohol. He went to the mosque." "I spoke with a person who was there that night who saw him after winning the championship, and he just could not believe that Hakeem was there," she continued. "I thought that was so beautiful that your celebration is going back and praying and giving gratitude." Hakeem has his own mosque Olajuwon is not only celebrated as one of the greatest players in NBA history, but he is also widely recognized for his deep commitment to his faith as a devoted Muslim. By diligently following the teachings of Islam, "Dream" learned invaluable lessons about humility and the significance of living a life grounded in religious principles. Advertisement One of the most remarkable demonstrations of Hakeem's uncompromising faith is the mosque he built, which stands as a testament to his devotion to Islam. It reflects his belief that spirituality and faith will always be on top of everything else in his life. "He is extremely private," Fader further said of the Nigerian big man. "There's a reason why nothing has been done on him. He is dedicated to his religion, and because of those things, he has purposefully not wanted to do anything in the spotlight. I met him in the home of one of his friends. Essentially, Hakeem ended up not wanting to speak for himself but helped me get to people close to him. I got to go to Hakeem's mosque. He has a mosque downtown in Houston." The game never got in the way of Dream's faith Unlike other NBA superstars, Olajuwon never succumbed to temptations and other bad vices. He proved that no amount of personal success could ever affect his religious beliefs, not even NBA titles and MVP awards. Advertisement Today, the two-time champion is revered for his remarkable skills as a player, as a beacon of true humility and a man of faith. His legacy serves as a reminder that greatness is measured not only by accolades but also by the strength of one's character and beliefs. Through his actions and values, Olajuwon exemplifies how one can integrate one's faith into one's everyday life, serving as an inspiring role model for many. Related: "I never saw one free agent come to the Bulls and say that they wanna play with Michael" - Scottie Pippen reinforces the notion that no other big-name players had interest in playing with MJ
Yahoo
27-05-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
How did this shark swim a record-breaking 4,000 miles—a journey once thought impossible
When Turawa Hakeem caught a bull shark near Lagos, Nigeria last summer, the Ghanaian captain had no idea his crew was reeling a record winner onto his wooden fishing boat. The eight-foot-long female had made an epic journey of at least 4,500 miles, the longest known movement of its species and the first time a bull shark was documented swimming through two oceans. The shark traveled from the Mozambique Channel in the Indian Ocean, swam around the southern tip of Africa, and then voyaged north through the Atlantic to Nigeria, according to research published this month in Ecology. 'Wow, I was surprised,' says Hakeem. 'I didn't know they could travel that far.' When his crew began butchering the shark to sell its meat at a local market, Hakeem found a black finger-length cylinder inside its body that read: 'Research: Reward if returned.' Curious, Hakeem emailed the address. He reached Ryan Daly, the paper's lead author and a shark ecologist at the Oceanographic Research Institute, a marine science and service facility that leads research projects in the western Indian Ocean. He implanted the acoustic transmitter in the bull shark in South Africa in 2021. Daly was equally shocked—and very skeptical at first. 'I thought it might be a scam,' Daly admits. 'The chances of this happening are like one in a million.' This lucky catch is providing new insights into how bull sharks move and shows how climate change may break down the environmental barriers that historically limited the migration of certain ocean animals. Another study author and marine biologist at the Nigerian Institute for Oceanography and Marine Research, Dunsin Abimbola Bolaji, confirmed Hakeem's story. In the year after she was tagged, the female bull shark was detected 567 times along the east coasts of South Africa and Mozambique by an array of 43 different underwater receivers. Then she disappeared on March 25, 2022 and wasn't seen again until Hakeem's crew caught the shark on July 11 last year. As part of their shark migration research, Daly and his colleagues also tagged and tracked 102 bull, blacktip, tiger and reef sharks in southern Africa. The longest recorded migration among these sharks was 1,400 miles, just one-third the distance traveled by the female bull shark that ended up near Lagos. Bull sharks are coastal species, not known for long-distance travel in the open ocean. They prefer shallow waters where freshwater meets the sea and need water temperature warmer than 65°F. During her voyage north, the female bull shark had to navigate the Benguela upwelling, one of the world's largest cold-water currents that extends along the west coasts of South Africa and Namibia. This upwelling has formed a cold barrier separating Africa's bull shark populations for at least the past 55,000 years. Scientists think this bull shark bypassed the cold water by swimming out around the upwelling, which can extend up to 90 miles offshore. It's also possible she rode pockets of warmer water around South Africa into the Atlantic Ocean during a Benguela Niño event. This climate pattern is similar to the El Niño events that influence sea temperatures off the west coast of the Americas. Certain cold-water fish, like mackerel and sardines, have also been pushed north during Benguela Niño events. As waters warm and upwellings shift due to climate change, Daly says the Benguela's cold water barrier may break down more often, allowing ocean animals to move to different latitudes. These Niño-related water temperature changes can change the entire species makeup of certain marine areas, impacting everything in the food web from algae to plankton to sharks. For bull sharks, however, more movement is likely a positive sign. 'If it means more gene flow, then typically that's a good thing,' Daly points out. 'We need to adapt to survive in a changing world.' Daly thinks that perhaps she was an immature shark who was 'just exploring'. Females don't reach sexual maturity until they are around 20 years old. Then they repeatedly return to the same estuary to reproduce. Until then, however, they may head out to 'find their groove and the pattern that works for them,' Daly says. It's possible that this female's extraordinary journey 'might not be unusual at all', says Rachel Graham, a shark biologist who was not involved in this study and executive director of MarAlliance, a conservation nonprofit based off the west coast of Africa. Bull sharks may have always traveled farther than scientists realized, or perhaps this female was the 'the black sheep in the family, the one who does something completely and utterly different to keep our gene pool robust,' Graham suggests. Despite her long journey, this female won't pass on her genetics after befalling a common shark fate. Globally, sharks' numbers have been halved since 1970. Overfishing drives 90 percent of the decline in sharks—but three-quarters of the estimated 100 million sharks that are caught each year are killed accidentally. As stocks of other fish plummet globally, more people are turning to shark meat for protein—especially in countries in sub-Saharan Africa like Nigeria where people depend on fishing for their livelihoods. 'It had a one-way ticket there because fishery pressure is so extreme,' Daly says. 'Sharks are running the gauntlet. In every country, they're facing different types of threats on top of climate change.' Hakeem says his crew didn't hook the tagged female bull shark on purpose. She took the bait meant for more lucrative grouper and snapper. To ensure sharks—including future record breakers—survive, Graham says that scientists need to rely more on fishers like Hakeem to track sharks and to learn whether other marine species are making transoceanic journeys. 'Small-scale fishers are our allies in science,' Graham says. 'They have PhDs of the sea.' These sorts of novel partnerships may help scientists better understand how and where marine species are moving into new habitats. Warming water may allow tropical species to expand their range polewards, which can relieve fishing pressure or allow them to spread to new homes. But simultaneously, climate change is also creating more intense cold events in their historic ranges, such as an extreme upwelling along the southeast coast of South Africa that killed individuals from 81 species in 2021, including sharks. 'It's kind of like this bait and switch,' Daly says. 'It gets warmer but then these intense upwelling events increase, so they might get trapped down there, at the end of their range for a tropical species and then die off.'
Yahoo
23-05-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
"That would be the team" - Hakeem Olajuwon on the Boston Celtics being the "ideal team"
During the 1985-86 season, Hakeem Olajuwon had the opportunity to win his first ring at 23 years old. Leading the Houston Rockets to the Finals, he encountered one of the toughest competitions he had ever faced in the championship bout with the Boston Celtics. The Eastern Conference powerhouse took the trophy, winning the series in six games. After that battle, Olajuwon appears to have realized that the Celtics squad he faced may have been the perfectly put-together team. Advertisement "I have great respect for that team," the Rockets legend said of the 1985-86 Celtics. "If you want to put an ideal basketball team together, that would be the team. A basketball team is supposed to be big. They had a big front line. And they're very smart. They don't waste opportunities. If you take a bad shot, they're going to capitalize." A nightmare for "The Dream" The 1986 playoffs were supposed to be a dream ride for Hakeem. After dispatching the Sacramento Kings and Denver Nuggets in the first two rounds, he and his Houston crew easily defeated the Los Angeles Lakers in the Western Conference Finals. What made it more impressive for Olajuwon was that he had to face Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who was already 39 by then but still averaged over 20 points per contest nonetheless, Magic Johnson, and the Lakers' vaunted fast-paced offense. It also didn't matter for the Rockets that the Purple and Gold had won the NBA title the previous year. Advertisement Houston prevailed over the Showtime Lakers in five games to set up a meeting with Boston. Olajuwon probably thought that his team had enough to beat the Celtics, even offering a dismissive response before the start of the series when asked about the storied franchise. In response, Larry Bird said he would give the then-youngster a "two-week history lesson." That's exactly what happened as Boston and its terrifying frontcourt rotation of Bird, Kevin McHale, Robert Parish, and Bill Walton made life difficult for Hakeem and his twin-tower duo, Ralph Sampson. The Celts registered resounding wins in the first two meetings, finishing both games with double-digit margins. Houston nearly fell into a 3-0 hole, but a fourth-quarter meltdown from Boston allowed the home team to escape with a 106-104 victory. The foes then traded wins in the following two contests before Bird and company took care of business in Game 6. Advertisement Olajuwon tried his best to steer the Rockets to the championship, averaging 24.7 points and 11.8 rebounds per contest. However, he shot just 47.9 percent from the field, which was still efficient enough but below his standards. He was also a beast on defense, logging 3.2 blocks and 2.3 steals per game, but the "ideal" Celtics' offense was just too overwhelming for the up-and-coming squad. Related: "I watched Shawn go to Cleveland and he got big, and I felt that was my fault" - Gary Payton says he feels responsible for the sad end to Kemp's career Becoming a part of a title-winning team The 1994 NBA MVP may have learned his lesson during that fateful bout with Boston, but it took him a long while before he finally reached the Finals again. Advertisement The years after the Rockets' 1986 Finals appearance saw the organization stumble big time. They had first-round exits from 1988 to 1991 and couldn't even make the playoffs in 1992. At some point, Olajuwon nearly left, as he felt his contract was not in keeping with his valuable contributions to the franchise. Everything came to a head when the front office accused him of faking a hamstring injury to avoid playing. Fortunately for Rockets fans, the 12-time All-Star and the management were able to put their differences aside because, in 1994, the team finally landed its first title in history. It even successfully defended the trophy in the following campaign to avoid becoming the first squad to fail to win back-to-back championships since, coincidentally, 1986. Related: "There were days where, oh man, he had some flashbacks" - When aging Hakeem Olajuwon made Rockets teammates look clownish in practice
Economic Times
21-05-2025
- Climate
- Economic Times
IndiGo flight with 227 on board hits turbulence, pilot declares emergency; plane's nose severely damaged
Live Events IndiGo issues statement: (You can now subscribe to our (You can now subscribe to our Economic Times WhatsApp channel A Srinagar-bound IndiGo flight from Delhi with more than 220 people on board hit turbulence midair on Wednesday due to inclement weather, prompting the pilot to report the "emergency" to air traffic control at Srinagar. The flight later landed safely, officials said. "Indigo flight 6E2142 enroute Delhi to Srinagar experienced bad weather (hail storm), emergency reported by Pilot to ATC SXR (Srinagar)," an official of the Airport Authority of India said the flight landed safely at Srinagar at 6.30 pm."All Aircrew and 227 passengers are safe and flight is declared AOG by airline," he added.'Aircraft on ground' (AOG) refers to a plane that is grounded and unable to fly due to technical of the moments of turbulence have emerged on social media with one passenger claiming that the nose of the plane was damaged. However, there was no official word on it."I was in the plane and heading back home from was a near-death experience... the nose of the plane is damaged," Owais Maqbool Hakeem (@owaismaqbool) posted on the videos, the passengers could be heard making religious supplications as the plane swayed in the turbulent weather."The Nose and Right side of the plane was damaged ... And we were not allowed to see much as airforce police was there," Hakeem claimed in another after the incident, IndiGo issued a statement saying, "Flight 6E 2142 operating from Delhi to Srinagar encountered sudden hailstorm en route. The flight and cabin crew followed established protocol and the aircraft landed safely in Srinagar.""The airport team attended to the customers after the arrival of the aircraft, prioritising their wellbeing and comfort. The aircraft will be released post-necessary inspection and maintenance.'(With PTI inputs)
