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Winnipeg Free Press
14 hours ago
- Sport
- Winnipeg Free Press
Canada cricketers celebrate T20 World Cup qualification with win over Bermuda
KING CITY – Teenage batsman Yuvraj Samra scored 45 runs Sunday as Canada celebrated qualification for next year's ICC Men's T20 World Cup with a six-wicket win over Bermuda in the final game of the four-country Americas Qualifier. Canada's seven-wicket win over the Bahamas on Saturday, coupled with Bermuda's nine-wicket loss to the Cayman Islands, sealed the Canadian qualification on the penultimate day of the four-team qualifier. Sunday's win, which improved Canada's tournament record to 6-0-0, was the icing on the qualifying cake. Bermuda won the toss and elected to bat at the Maple Leaf Cricket Ground where it was 32 C feeling like a steamy 39 for the mid-afternoon start. After a storming inning of 70 runs by No. 3 batsman Delray Rawlins, Bermuda's batting order crumbled. Bermuda finished at 131 all out midway through the 19th over. That set Canada a victory target of 132 from its 20 overs. Canada put up its half-century in the fifth over with Samra accounting for 40 of the runs. But the 18-year-old was bowled by Dominic Sabir in the sixth over with Canada at 63 for one. Samra finished with three sixes and five fours in his 23-ball knock. Fellow opener Dilpreet Bajwa was caught two balls later on 12 runs off 10 deliveries. And Pargat Singh was run out the next over with Canada at 65 for three. The Canadians were 85 for three after 10 overs. Harsh Thaker (33 runs) and captain Nicholas Kirton (17 runs) steered Canada over the victory line at 132 for four wickets in the 16th over. Canada is the 13th country to qualify for the 20-team T20 World Cup in February-March 2026. The other qualified sides are. Afghanistan, Australia, Bangladesh, England, South Africa, the U.S., West Indies, Ireland, New Zealand and Pakistan plus co-hosts India and Sri Lanka. Seven more teams — two from the Europe Qualifier (to be played July 5-11), two from Africa Qualifier (Sept. 19 to Oct. 4) and three from the Asia-Pacific Qualifier (Oct. 1-17) — will book their ticket through regional qualifiers. Canada made its T20 World Cup debut last year, failing to advance out of the group stage after beating No. 11 Ireland and losing to No. 8 Pakistan and co-host United States, ranked 17th. A match against No. 1 India was abandoned due to inclement weather. Canada defeated Bermuda by 110 runs in its June 15 opening match at the Americas Qualifier. Bermuda was 100 for two after 10 overs Sunday, before losing the next eight wickets for just 31 runs. Rawlins' fine innings ended when he was caught at the boundary by Shivam Sharma off Saad Bin Zafar's last delivery of the 11th over with Bermuda at 102 for three. Kaleem Sana and Zafar each took three wickets. Sana removed Bermuda opener Tre Manders with Canada's first ball. But Rawlins, the No. 3 batsman, came out swinging, scoring 14 balls off Dilon Heyliger's first three deliveries of a third over that produced 16 runs for Bermuda. Rawlins punished Jaskaran Buttar in the fourth over, with 10 runs of his first two deliveries of a 14-run over. And Rawlins attacked the spin of Thaker the next over, reaching his half-century with a four-six-four off the first three balls. Canada had a slight chance to remove Rawlins on 64 in the eighth over but a diving Singh was unable to get to a moonshot when it came down. Rawlins and Alex Dore put on an 83-run partnership before Dore, on six, was caught by Zafar off Buttar's last delivery of the eighth over. The 27-year-old Rawlins, who made his debut for Bermuda at 15 and went on to make 138 appearances for Sussex in England, slammed six sixes and four fours in his 42-ball knock. Onias Bascome added 20 runs. Canada, the Bahamas, Bermuda and Cayman Islands were competing in an eight-day double round-robin format that sent the tournament winner advance to the T20 World Cup. Canada is ranked 19th in T20 play by the International Cricket Council, compared to No. 27 for Bermuda, No. 41 for the Cayman Islands and No. 56 for the Bahamas. The Cayman Islands and Bahamas were recently promoted from the Subregional Qualifier. — This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 22, 2025.
Yahoo
11-06-2025
- Yahoo
‘Made for sex': the hedonistic party palaces of New York's Fire Island – and the blond bombshell who made them
Posters advertising a 'bear weekend' cling to the utility poles on Fire Island, punctuating the wooden boardwalks that meander through a lush dune landscape of beach grass and pitch pine. It's not a celebration of grizzlies, by the looks of the flyers, but of large bearded men in small swimming trunks, bobbing in the pools and sprawled on the sundecks of mid-century modernist homes. You might also find them frolicking in the bushes of this idyllic car-free island, a nature reserve of an unusual kind that stretches in a 30-mile sliver of sand off the coast of Long Island in New York. Over the last century, Fire Island Pines, as the central square-mile section of this sandy spit is known, has evolved into something of a queer Xanadu. Now counting about 600 homes, it is a place of mythic weekend-long parties and carnal pleasure, a byword for bacchanalia and fleshy hedonism – but also simply a secluded haven where people can be themselves. He stole his first commission from another architect by seducing the clients – with whom he briefly formed a throuple 'My most vivid memory of my first visit here in the late 90s is being able to hold my boyfriend's hand in public without fear,' says Christopher Rawlins, architect and co-founder of Pines Modern, a non-profit dedicated to celebrating the modern architecture of the island. The palpable sense of community and liberation here is, he says, 'what happens when people who are accustomed to a certain degree of fear no longer feel it.' That was even more the case for Horace Gifford, an architect who arrived here in 1960, aged 28 and bored with working in a dull office in Manhattan and determined to make his mark in the sand. Over the next two decades, the young Floridian would build 63 holiday homes here, channelling his native beach culture into a seductive vision of breezy, timber-framed modernism that would define the look of the Pines – and beach homes – for the rest of the century. Long before the term sustainability was invented, Gifford's houses were models of compact, light-touch living with the land. While others were building sprawling mansions in the Hamptons, Gifford encouraged his clients to reduce their footprints, strip away extraneous details, and submit to what Rawlins describes as 'an artful form of camping'. Clad with planks of raw cedar inside and out, interspersing solid volumes with walls of glass, and crowned with angled roofs to 'reach out and grab for light', his homes felt at one with the island – and celebrated its sexually liberated way of life with voyeuristic relish. Few had heard of Gifford until Rawlins began digging in the archives for his seminal book, Fire Island Modernist, first published in 2013 and long out of print, but now expanded and updated with new photography and additional homes. Gifford had been criminally overlooked, in part thanks to his own criminal record, which had put him off ever applying for his architect's licence, in a state where licensed professionals had to be 'of good moral character'. Like many others of the period, Gifford was arrested during a police raid on Fire Island in 1965, in a dune cruising zone known as the Meat Rack. Such raids happened throughout the 60s, with police threatening felony sodomy charges for anyone who challenged their misdemeanour arrests. Names were published in newspapers and careers ground to a halt. 'They would entrap and beat the crap out of the guys,' recalls one of Gifford's clients in the book, 'then drag them down the boardwalks and corral them at the harbour-front like dead fish!' Gifford's arrest might have put paid to his professional licensure, but that didn't hinder his success on Fire Island. He was a statuesque, charismatic blond, who had been voted 'best looking boy' at school, and few could resist his charms. He turned heads as he strode down the beach from meeting to meeting, 'wearing a Speedo and carrying an attache case', as one amused client recalls. He once hosted an elegant black-tie party – where that was the only item of dress people wore. 'He understood his power over people,' says Rawlins. And he started how he meant to go on. He stole his first Fire Island commission from another architect by seducing the clients, with whom he briefly formed a throuple. 'He affected a quiet vulnerability,' recalls one college friend, who majored in psychology, and found Gifford a fascinating study. 'But he was anything but. He was ferociously narcissistic.' It worked a charm with the press. A 1964 issue of The American Home magazine declared Gifford to be 'undoubtedly the top beach-house designer in the country'. Another newspaper headline in 1968 cooed 'He Sends Cutting Edges into the Sky', while the New York Times singled out his work in a travelling exhibition of beach house architecture the same year. They highlighted his treehouse-like design for textile designer Murray Fishman, raised on a series of chunky wooden columns, which doubled up as hidden cupboards. As Gifford joked to Fishman: 'You will now have 20 closets to come out of.' Sometimes the references were more risque. In a chapter titled Form Follows Foreplay, Rawlins describes how Gifford designed a fur-lined 'make-out loft' for Stuart Roeder, a Warner Brothers' PR man known for his wild parties. With its lusty loft suspended above a couch-rimmed conversation pit, the house provided a lurid backdrop for the 1970 pornographic film, The Fire Island Kids. A year later, the island provided the setting for Boys in the Sand, the first gay porn film to go mainstream, which cemented the Pines' reputation as a place of 'bronzed skin, stripped-bare facades of cedar and glass, flaxen hair, and shimmering pools,' as Rawlins writes. It was the perfect calling card for Gifford's more raunchy work, which included homes with multi-man outdoor showers, bathrooms with big picture windows facing the boardwalks and 'telescoping' interiors, choreographed like stage sets for the enjoyment (and enticement) of passersby. Gifford would even sometimes commission 'peephole' style photographs of the interiors, as if to hint at the imminent indiscretions. As Fire Island's reputation grew, so did the fame of its residents. In 1977, after divorcing his first wife, Calvin Klein bought one of Gifford's beachfront homes. He then hired the architect to convert it into a souped-up party pad, adding a black-lined pool, a 'pool boy's quarters', a gym and a garden. 'It was amazing,' Klein recalled in 2013, 'the ultimate hedonist house. I mean, it was made for sex.' Following a series of unsympathetic additions, Rawlins is now busy restoring the house to its original splendour, as he has for a number of other homes in the Pines. By the 1970s, Gifford's designs had evolved from their humble beach shack origins. As the island's foliage matured, the ground enriched by leaching septic tanks, he developed 'upside down' floor plans that raised sunny living areas above shaded bedrooms. Budgets also grew. The owners of Broadway Maintenance, a lighting company, commissioned Lipkins House, a home that pulsated along the beachfront with disco energy. Inside, a sunken living area led down to a windowless den lined with electric blue shag carpet and a mirrored ceiling, with lights that throbbed in time to the music. Its current owners are delighted with its ingenious details, like a hidden bar, cylindrical showers and clever sun-loungers that can be lifted out of the poolside wall, all still intact. 'We bought it just as Hurricane Sandy hit,' they tell me. 'Both our neighbours lost their pools and their decks, but miraculously we were OK.' They look out at the beach, across a freshly planted protective sand berm, studded with clumps of new grass like a hair transplant. It was recently rebuilt, at a cost of $52m, after the previous $207m beach fortification – completed in 2019 and designed to withstand a 44-year storm event – was washed away in just four years. 'We shouldn't even be allowed to have houses here,' the owner tells me, with a guilty look. 'It's a nature reserve. But the homes are 'grand fathered' in. When the hurricane hit, I thought, 'My God, what have we done?'' Fire Island Pines has already been decimated once. Just as it reached its free-spirited, out-of-the-closet peak of liberation, Gifford's generation was wiped out by Aids, the architect himself included, at the age of 59. The island became a ghostly place of mourning in the 1980s and 90s. But it is booming once again. House prices have rocketed, fuelled by the Covid pandemic and the arrival of high-speed internet, with the island's fame boosted by a 2022 romcom bearing its name. Sexual freedom has also been turbo-charged once again by the advent of PrEP, an HIV-preventive drug. Homes are getting bigger too, as new owners join lots together and bulldoze the quaint shacks of old, with an eye for lucrative short-term rentals. Watching the waves crash against the shore, as contractors drive piles for ever bigger, bloated beach houses, raised up on stilts against the floods, Gifford's light-touch legacy looks just as fragile as ever.
Daily Mail
08-05-2025
- General
- Daily Mail
Horror as swarm of feral beasts dig up loved ones' graves in local cemetery
Residents in Wyoming are in uproar as feral animals in the area are digging up the graves of their loved ones in the local cemetery. Rawlins Cemetery has been plagued by a group of prairie dogs who have been digging in and around graves as locals are furious over the disturbance of their loved ones graves. Janice Martinez and her husband, who visit the cemetery every day, shared their anger over the dog holes across the grounds, Cowboy State Daily reported. In a Rawlins based Facebook group, Martinez wrote: 'I cannot believe the damage "ground squirrels" are causing to our cemetery. Maybe whoever's in charge of this should take a drive through the cemetery and take a look at the daily destruction these animals are doing.' In response to the issue, the City of Rawlins Government wrote in a Facebook post that its Park Division would be 'increasing efforts to control the ground squirrels.' 'Our priority is to create an environment where our loved ones' resting place is treated with respect. These animals have caused major damage to our cemetery,' the post said. 'Their burrows and tunnels create unstable ground, which then damages gravestones and irrigation. They are also very destructive to turf.' Some of the combative efforts that the city has said they plan to implement include tripling the number of T-trap bait stations for their annual placement of Rozol, which can be used to combat prairie dogs, rats and gophers. 'Rozol will be placed in the stations this spring and again in late summer,' the post added. The city furthered that risk toward 'non-target' species is being monitored. But the issue has stirred the local community and is a struggle known to many cemeteries. Darin Edmonds, superintendent of the Campbell County cemetery district, told the Cowboy State Daily: 'People get squirrely about anything digging underground where their loved ones are. 'Prairie dogs are a nuisance and their holes are unsightly, but it's one of those things that can happen in rural Wyoming.' Edmonds said that cemeteries in 'the middle of nowhere' often run into problems with persistent prairie dog digging. 'Prairie dogs probably do the most damage, visibly and physically, of any critter I've encountered,' he added. 'But in Wyoming, you're subject to the natural tendencies of wildlife.' After trials and failures to flood the dogs out, Edmonds said the most effective way to rid cemeteries of the issue is poison. 'Poisoning is probably the best remedy, fortunately or unfortunately,' he said. 'We went out to the extent of that environment, applied poison, and it seemed to work.' 'Prairie dogs are a nuisance and their holes are unsightly, but it's one of those things that can happen in rural Wyoming,' said Darin Edmonds 'You could try live trapping them, but the quickest, shortest and most effective remedy is to poison them.' The damage, however, remains a sore point for those with loved ones buried at Rawlins. Martinez told the outlet: 'I read the post about the new poisoning system. It breaks my heart to see graves being dug up, stones covered in dirt and new holes dug on a daily basis.'
Yahoo
06-05-2025
- Climate
- Yahoo
Spring storm causes power outages, tree damage over weekend
CHICOPEE, Mass. (WWLP) – This past weekend's storm left hundreds in the Pioneer Valley without power. Strong winds also brought down trees and power lines in the eastern part of the Pioneer Valley. As rain continues to fall, which could lead to some flooding, cleanup efforts continue. It's not uncommon during stronger storms to see wind gusts reach 30 miles per hour. The danger comes when microbursts and straight-line winds enter heavily wooded areas. The first big spring thunderstorm brought heavy rain and strong winds to most of southern New England. This is the same storm system that wreaked havoc in the Midwest with tornadoes and massive floods. While we were saved from tornadoes, Michael Rawlins with the Climate System Research Center told 22News that more intense rain could become more common, 'There have been some indicators that suggest that maybe weather is becoming more variable, more volatile if you will more rapid swings between wet and dry, hot and cold.' Straight line winds, or any strong winds not associated with tornadoic rotation, are a product of this more volatile weather. The town of Ware experienced one form of straight-line winds, known as microbursts. Reports of a microburst this weekend happened right around this area, and the short but strong winds easily have enough power to take down trees and power lines. Microbursts generally last between five to ten minutes, but the strong sustained winds can feel like a weak hurricane. Researchers point to the climate rebounding from recent dry spells as the reason for these stronger events. 'As it gets wetter overall, in general throughout the year, that shift in the climate is bringing more of those extreme events more in the tails of the distribution if you think about a bell curve,' Rawlins adds. In the south, two people died last week during major floods from this same storm deaths have been reported in western Massachusetts. WWLP-22News, an NBC affiliate, began broadcasting in March 1953 to provide local news, network, syndicated, and local programming to western Massachusetts. Watch the 22News Digital Edition weekdays at 4 p.m. on Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
23-02-2025
- General
- Yahoo
More than 40,000 items knitted for Ukraine appeal
A Guernsey charity which sends knitted baby items to Ukraine has surpassed 40,000 donations. The new born baby hats appeal first sent items for families or pregnant woman fleeing the country, shortly after the Russian invasion on 24 February 2022. Items including baby hats, blankets, vests and comforters have been been donated from knitters in the island and as far away as Scotland. Kay Rawlins, who is leading the appeal for the group Stand with Ukraine, said she was "very proud" of the work of members and donators. Items are sent to Guernsey before being packed by the charity and sent to Ukraine by a postal company free of charge. "I think we are all terribly proud of what we are doing," said Mrs Rawlins. "We don't go out and ask for contributions they just appear constantly. Mrs Rawlins said the charity has been so well supported due to the strong feelings people have for the war. "The fact that it's babies, they have nothing to do with this war, I think that is why people are so generous in helping us," she said. "We just get tremendous satisfaction from knowing that we are helping the needy, the ones that really have no involvement with the war." Follow BBC Guernsey on X and Facebook. Send your story ideas to Nearly 30,000 baby items gifted to Ukraine Guernsey sends 25,000 knitted items to Ukraine Nearly 8,000 knitted items sent to Ukraine
