The Houston Rockets won their NBA Western Conference playoff series on Friday with a crushing 115-107 victory over the Golden State Warriors, setting up a game-seven showdown.
When they play Game Seven on Sunday, the Rockets will try to become the only team to come back from a 3-1 deficit to win an NBA playoff game.
The Rockets, who led the majority of the game and suffocated an 18, 000-strong crowd at the Warriors’ Chase Center arena with an explosive fourth quarter, put together a 12-0 scoring run in the final frame to increase their lead to as many as 17 points, added Alperen Sengun, who added 21 points and 14 rebounds.
Houston’s Amen Thompson added 14 points, and veteran New Zealand big man Steven Adams added 17 as a standout defensive presence by connecting on four of four from the floor.
[Cary Edmondson/Reuters] Golden State Warriors guard Stephen Curry, left, guard Brandin Podziemski, second left, and second-right guard Moses Moody hold onto the ball during the NBA game.
As the Rockets controlled the Warriors’ potent offence led by Stephen Curry, Adams had three of Houston’s five blocked shots.
Curry had a 29-point game, but he only had nine of his 23 field goals and five turnovers.
No other Warriors starter scored in double figures, despite Jimmy Butler, who added 27 points.
As the Rockets jumped out to a two-point lead in the fourth quarter, VanVleet remarked, “Just make everything tough.” We are aware of what they bring to the table, of course.
You want to make everything competitive and difficult, but I just believe our youth and athleticism can inflict some pressure on them over the course of the game, and we’ve had some success lately.
The Warriors started off a slightly better start in game five on Friday, but in a nip-and-tuck first quarter with 10 lead changes, Houston were up 25-21 at the end of the first period.
With 1:15 remaining in the first half, the Rockets fought back to take the lead to 53-48 after the Warriors forced 11 of their 17 turnovers. A Curry three-pointer tied the game at 46-46.
Our ball security is the key to the series, according to Warriors coach Steve Kerr.
In a sign of what was to come, VanVleet made the first three-pointer in the opening seconds, drawing a foul, and making the free throw. Houston led 86-84 going in.
“I thought the crucial play was a four-point play to begin the (fourth) quarter,” Kerr said. VanVleet knocks it down and receives the free throw, which we didn’t guard because it was thrown up the floor by someone else, which felt game-changing.
In a two-point game, Draymond Green continued, “We can’t give up a four-point play.”
Adams, 31, who had 31 minutes on the floor during Kerr’s tenure, was also praised.
“Kerr said, “Adams was fantastic tonight. While he was away, they kept the game under control.
Adams, a low-percentage free-throw shooter, was fouled by the Warriors, who managed to rebound from a few of his misses anyway.
Scottie Scheffler, the world’s number one, extended his lead to six shots in the storm-hitting CJ Cup Byron Nelson second round, which was on pace for his first win this year.
With 18 players still to play, the second round was delayed by more than six hours due to the delay in Friday’s play in Texas.
At TPC Craig Ranch, American Scheffler shot a 63 to move to 18 under and record his lowest 36-hole total of his PGA Tour career.
His 36-hole total, which came in at the 2017 Sony Open, is Justin Thomas’ lowest ever total of 123, which is second-lowest in Tour history.
Before play was suspended, Scheffler eagled the 18th after starting on the back nine. Six birdies were added to his front nine when he resumed.
The Texan remarked, “Feeling good.” I’ve had two pleasant days,” she said. Overall, I’m pleased with my performance overall.
We’re on a course with a lot of birdies, and the weather is definitely changing today.
Harar, Ethiopia – When Abdallah Ali Sherif was growing up in eastern Ethiopia, his parents never spoke about the history of his city.
“When I asked my parents about our history, they told me we didn’t have one,” the kind-faced 75-year-old recalls as he reclines on a thin mattress on the floor of his home in Harar’s old walled city. Shelves of dusty cassettes line the walls and old newspapers lie scattered about the floor.
The father of five and grandfather of 17 pauses to pluck some khat leaves to chew as he explains: “Our parents were afraid to teach us about our culture or our history.”
A woman walks through one of the narrow streets of Harar’s old walled city [Jaclynn Ashly/Al Jazeera]
‘Peeking through a window’
For centuries, Harar, with its colourful clay houses and narrow cobblestone streets, was a centre of Islamic scholarship and home to a thriving manuscript culture producing Qurans, legal texts and prayer books in Arabic and Ajami, a modified Arabic script used to write Indigenous African languages.
Nestled atop a plateau that overlooks deserts and savannas linking the coastal lowlands and central highlands of Ethiopia and Somalia, in the 16th century, Harar became the capital of the Adal Sultanate, which at its height controlled large parts of modern-day Somalia, Ethiopia, Djibouti, and Eritrea.
Governed by powerful Muslim rulers, it was situated along trade routes that traversed the Red Sea to connect the Horn of Africa to the Arabian Peninsula and beyond.
Then, in 1887, Harar’s military was defeated by the forces of Menelik II, and the city was forcefully absorbed into a Christian empire.
The following decades were shaped by state repression, social discrimination and the erosion of the city’s Islamic culture and institutions.
Arabic street signs were replaced with Amharic ones, Harar’s largest mosque was turned into an Ethiopian Orthodox Church and numerous Islamic educational centres were demolished. Severe restrictions were placed on religious practices and education – once a central part of Harar’s identity.
It was against this backdrop that Sherif grew up.
“We learned from a young age that if we expressed our culture or talked openly about our history, then we could end up in the prisons,” he explains, smacking his wrists together to mimic handcuffs.
When Sherif was growing up in Harar, he knew that expressing his culture could get him sent to prison [Jaclynn Ashly/Al Jazeera]
Then, in 1991, ethnic federalism, which organised and defined federated regional states by ethnicity, was implemented throughout the country, allowing newfound religious and cultural freedom. The Harari people now belonged to the Harari region, with Harar as its capital.
Ever since, Sherif has been on a mission: To explore his city’s cultural identity by collecting artefacts, from old music cassettes to minted coins and, most importantly, manuscripts.
After years of painstaking searches going from household to household, he collected enough items to open Ethiopia’s first private museum, Abdallah Sherif Museum, 14 years ago in the hope of reconnecting Harar’s people with their history. The collection of hundreds of old manuscripts has become a particular passion.
“Each book I find, it feels like I am peeking through a window into a beautiful and rich culture that was almost forgotten,” he says.
To preserve these manuscripts, Sherif has also revitalised the ancient tradition of bookbinding. By tracing the last Hararis with knowledge of this art form, he has brought a once-extinct practice back to life.
The main gate into Harar Jugol, the old walled city, with a portrait of Abd Allah ash-Shakur, the last Emir of Harar who led the defence of the city against the forces of Menelik II [Jaclynn Ashly/Al Jazeera]
A city of manuscripts
The production of manuscripts – as a way of sharing and safeguarding religious knowledge – was an important aspect of Harar’s culture, says Nuraddin Aman, an assistant professor of philology at Addis Ababa University.
Manuscript making is believed to have emerged in the city in the 13th century, when an Islamic scholar, known colloquially as Sheikh Abadir, is said to have come from what is today Saudi Arabia and settled in the area with about 400 followers.
According to Sana Mirza, a researcher at the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University who specialises in Islamic art, Harari scripts were influenced by Indian Gujarati, Yemeni, and Egyptian Mamluki styles.
“The Indo-African relationship was very deep,” explains Ahmed Zekaria, an expert in Islamic and Harari history. “There was a strong linkage between India and Africa for centuries before the British arrived.”
Some Qurans found in Harar use a unique cursive calligraphic script said to have been developed in India’s northern Bihar region at about the 14th century and rarely seen outside India.
Manuscript makers developed their own style that merged local creativity and outside influences.
Within families, manuscripts were considered sacred heirlooms passed down through generations. Each Harari house had at least two or three manuscripts – often, the Quran, Hadiths, or other religious texts – Zekaria says.
According to Aman, the structured production of manuscripts made the city unique. Artisans were required to get permission from a local Islamic scholar – someone descended from Sheikh Abadir or one of his followers – to produce each religious manuscript. Then, before circulation, they needed approval from the incumbent emir. Still, full-time scribes were rare. “Most of them were farmers and produced manuscripts in their free time,” says Zekaria.
Harar also grew into a centre for bookbinding with artisans making leather covers to protect manuscripts, and people travelling to the city to learn the craft.
The Medhane Alem church in the central Faras Magala market was once Harar’s largest mosque, but was turned into an Ethiopian Orthodox Church after Menelik II conquered the city [Jaclynn Ashly/Al Jazeera]
When Harar was absorbed into the Ethiopian empire, education centres, once responsible for manuscript production, were shut down or destroyed. Without new manuscripts, bookbinding disappeared. Meanwhile, madrasas (religious schools) were shuttered, and children were forced to attend government schools teaching only Amharic.
Sherif was born into a middle-class Muslim family in 1950. He grew up during the reign of Emperor Haile Selassie, who ruled Ethiopia from 1930 to 1974 and under whom repression of Muslims escalated.
In the 1940s, Harari elites united with their Somali neighbours inside Ethiopia to organise a rebellion, advocating for Harar to join Somalia. When Selassie caught wind of this, he deployed thousands of soldiers into Harar. Mass arrests followed, leading to dozens of Hararis being imprisoned for years without charge or trial. Selassie’s forces confiscated the properties and belongings – including cherished manuscripts – of residents believed to be rebellion supporters. An estimated 10,000 Hararis fled to other Ethiopian cities or Somalia and Middle Eastern countries.
While Sherif says he grew up knowing he was Harari, he did not know what that meant outside of being Muslim and speaking the Harari language. Fearing state repression, Harari families were forced to hide their histories from their children. But as a teenager, Sherif could no longer suppress his curiosity about his identity.
In high school, he remembers asking his teacher if the city ever had Muslim leaders.
“The teacher responded that we had no leaders outside the Ethiopian Christian ones. After this, the other [Christian] students began teasing me about not having a history,” he recounts.
“I was taught that Haile Selassie was our king, and there was one country, one history, one language, and one culture,” he continues.
“Our community was too afraid of the state to challenge this or to teach us about our real history. They feared we would become angry over it and fight against the state.”
In 1974, when Sherif was in his 20s, the Derg, a Marxist-Leninist military group, overthrew Selassie.
The group brutally suppressed any opposition. Half a million Ethiopians were killed and thousands were crippled as a result of torture.
When the 1977-1978 Ogaden War broke out, with Somalia attempting to annex Ethiopia’s Ogaden region that is inhabited by ethnic Somalis, the Derg accused Hararis of collaborating and carried out massacres of civilians in Harari neighbourhoods of Addis Ababa.
In their region, Hararis were still the land-owning class, and many were completely dispossessed of their livelihoods as the Derg sought to eradicate private land ownership. Harari youth – like young men from all communities – were forcibly conscripted into the army. When an anti-Derg resistance movement emerged in Harar, the repression increased, while more Hararis moved abroad to escape it.
Today, Hararis are a minority in their region, with more living abroad than in Harari.
An old manuscript that Sherif and his employee Elias Bule are restoring [Jaclynn Ashly/Al Jazeera]
‘Missing pieces of myself’
Like many Harari families, when Sherif graduated from high school, his parents began educating him on who he really was.
He was bewildered to discover that what he’d been taught in school was a lie. “My whole life, I have suffered from a severe identity crisis,” says Sherif, sighing loudly and tossing a leafless khat stalk to the side. “I have always felt like there were pieces of myself that were missing – and I couldn’t feel peace until I found them.”
After high school, Sherif began a science degree in Addis Ababa, but dropped out within a year when he found out the woman he loved, who was his then-girlfriend, was being forced by her family to marry another man in Harar. “There was nothing in my life more important to me than her,” he says, with a wide, bashful smile. He returned home to marry this woman, Saeda Towfiqe – today his most enthusiastic supporter – and began working in the family business.
It wasn’t until 1991, when the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), led by the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), overthrew the Derg and implemented a system of ethnic federalism designed to promote minority ethnic and religious rights, that Hararis, along with various other groups, suddenly found themselves with the freedom to develop and express their cultures and histories.
“I became mad to understand my history,” explains Sherif, the tone of his speech rising sharply as he smacks his head. “I really became mad.”
Taking advantage of this opening, Sherif began collecting hundreds of old cassettes of traditional Harari music. But he quickly realised that the history he sought existed in the old manuscripts still owned by many families in Harar. Through these religious and legal manuscripts, Sherif was able to glimpse the rich intellectual life of his ancestors.
“Each manuscript I found added a missing piece to a puzzle,” he explains.
A book cover being restored at Sherif’s museum workshop [Jaclynn Ashly/Al Jazeera]
Over centuries, families had developed a practice of conserving and transmitting manuscripts to the next generation, Aman explains.
Manuscripts were inherited or given at significant life events, such as weddings, the birth of a child, or during religious ceremonies. Scholars and religious leaders also gave them to students as a token of appreciation, “thereby fostering an environment of knowledge sharing and manuscript mobility”, says Aman.
People kept the manuscripts wrapped in cloth and would only uncover them on special occasions.
At first, Sherif, who was 40 when he began his project, purchased the manuscripts. “Eventually, when the community saw the importance of what I was doing for our heritage, they started donating manuscripts and other artefacts to me.”
But Sherif found that the covers and bindings of many manuscripts he acquired were in disarray.
The last bookbinder in Harar was Kabir Ali Sheikh, a local Quran teacher who learned the craft from elders and kept the tradition alive until his death in 1993. The ancient art of Harari bookbinding died with him. But Sherif was able to learn the traditional process from a few of Ali’s former students. He also went to train in Addis Ababa and Morocco.
“If you don’t bind the books, then you will lose them,” Sherif says. “Collecting manuscripts is useless if you do not also work on their restoration and preservation. If you lose just one page, you can lose the whole book. Beautiful things need to be protected and covered.”
It took Sherif two years of practice to perfect the art. He is now considered one of the best bookbinders in Africa, Zekaria says.
Sherif has strictly adhered to the traditional Harari way of bookbinding by using old ornamental stamps retrieved from around Harar – which are also displayed at his museum – to block-press motifs onto the front and back of covers, in the same way his ancestors did.
A view of Sherif’s museum, in the old residence of Haile Selassie’s father, once governor of Harar [Jaclynn Ashly/Al Jazeera]
Ensuring a history stays alive
In 1998, Sherif opened his private museum in his house. But, in 2007, a year after Harar’s old town with its unique architecture was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the regional government provided Sherif with the double-storey former residence of Ras Makonnen Wolde Mikael, the father of Selassie who served as governor of Harar under Menelik II, to use for his museum. The museum reopened to the public in 2011.
Sherif’s museum now houses the world’s largest collection of Islamic manuscripts from Harar, numbering about 1,400. Almost half are Qurans, one of which is more than 1,000 years old. There are also more than 600 old music recordings, tools, swords, coins, and items of jewellery, basketry, and weaponry.
Over time, Sherif’s museum has transformed from a space showcasing Harar’s cultural heritage to one actively revitalising it. In a side room of the museum is a manuscript conservation room with locally assembled tools and equipment for restoring manuscripts, with a particular focus on bookbinding.
Scholars are still tracking down various manuscripts from Harar that are scattered around the world, Zekaria says. Most of them left with European travellers, especially in the 19th century, when colonialists were expanding into the Horn of Africa. Many of these manuscripts are preserved in Italy, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom. In the US, the Catholic University of America in Washington, DC alone has 215 manuscripts from Harar.
In the meantime, Sherif continues to look after the manuscripts he acquires.
“When I first get a manuscript, I carefully clean it,” he explains. He removes dust and dirt, adds new pages to damaged manuscripts, and fills in the missing text. He covers the paper in transparent paper and has bound and digitised almost all the books.
“Each new piece of information I get about my history, it opens up a new world for me and I realise how far we still have to go to preserve our culture,” Sherif says.
Bule sits at the museum workshop where he restores and binds manuscripts [Jaclynn Ashly/Al Jazeera]
About a decade ago, Sherif began training dozens of youths around Harar in bookbinding and has also led training in neighbouring Somaliland.
One of his students was Elias Bule, a soft-spoken 31-year-old, who was first hired as a security guard at Sherif’s museum. After a few months, “Sherif asked me if I wanted to learn the Indigenous way of bookbinding,” explains Bule, as he sorts through scattered pages of an old manuscript in the museum’s conservation workshop. “Of course, I accepted immediately.”
Bule is now employed full-time at the museum, supporting Sherif’s various endeavours and giving tours to visitors.
At least six people have been killed and about 80 others were injured in a crowd crush at a temple in the western Indian state of Goa where tens of thousands of Hindu worshippers had assembled, officials said.
The incident happened on Friday night as thousands of devotees thronged narrow lanes leading to the Hindu temple in Goa’s Shirgao village, some 40km (24 miles) from the state capital of Panaji.
People had gathered during the annual Shri Lairai Zatra festival at the Sree Lairai Devi temple, which is popular for events including firewalking rituals, during which devotees walk barefoot over a bed of burning coals to seek blessings.
According to a report by the Press Trust of India news agency, people standing on a slope near the temple fell over, pushing more people to fall onto each other, Director General of Police Alok Kumar said.
Goa Chief Minister Pramod Sawant said in a statement that he was “deeply saddened by the tragic stampede”. He visited the hospital and said that “all possible support” would be given to the families of those killed or injured.
Vishwajit Rane, Goa state’s health minister, said “approximately 80” people were injured. “Five are critical and on ventilator support, while the remaining are being treated in the specially created emergency ward,” he said.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s office expressed “condolences to those who lost their loved ones”. “The local administration is assisting those affected,” Modi said on social media.
Deadly crushes occur regularly at religious festivals across India, where large crowds often gather in small areas.
In January, at least 30 people were killed and many more were injured as tens of thousands of Hindus rushed to bathe in a sacred river at India’s massive Maha Kumbh festival, the world’s largest religious gathering, in the northern Uttar Pradesh state.
In July last year, at least 116 people died, most of them women and children, when a crowd of thousands at a religious gathering in northern India surged at a tent camp in Hathras town in the same state.
As the second meeting of the inaugural Grand Slam Track season rolled into full swing in Miami, Britiah Josh Kerr claimed victory in the men’s 1500m.
For his first series victory, the world champion sprinted home straight and won.
Before Olympic bronze medalist Yared Nuguse and Olympic champion Cole Hocker, Kerr, who won silver at the Paris 2024 Olympics, ran a three-minute, 34.51 second time.
On Saturday, the men’s short distance competitors will also compete over 800 meters to determine the overall slam winner and the winner of $100, 000 (£79, 500).
A $ 12.66 million (£ 10 million) prize pot is offered in its inaugural season of Grand Slam Track, a concept created by four-time Olympic champion Michael Johnson.
Despite the three-day event’s length, there were sizable swathes of empty seats at the National Stadium throughout the three-day event, despite the fact that the inaugural event took place in Kingston, Jamaica, last month.
Olympic champion Masai Russell set the second-fastest time in history in the women’s 100m hurdles in a time of 12.17 seconds, which was the second-fastest in history on the opening day of action in Miami.
Melissa Jefferson-Wooden, a compatriot, won the 100-meter race, but an illegal tailwind prevented her fast time of 10.75. In 11.16, British star Daryll Neita placed eighth.
One of the 48 “challenges” at the Miami event, Briton George Mills, third, in 8:17.77, gave himself a chance to win the men’s 3, 000m on Sunday.
Before taking on his preferred full-lap event on Saturday, Olympic 400m silver medalist Matthew Hudson-Smith placed seventh in the men’s 200m in 20.64.
The 1% Club, one of ITV’s toughest games, has been revealed by Lee Mack and he acknowledges that while contestants are frequently perplexed, the questions also irritate him.
Lee Mack, who hosts The 1% Club, admits to being frequently perplexed by the inquiries.
Lee Mack has revealed his three children often beat him at The 1% Club questions – despite him hearing the questions dozens of times. The actor and comedian fronts the ITV show which sees contestants grilled on questions based off of common knowledge and logic, rather than general knowledge.
Fans of the program, which has averaged over 4 million viewers per series, are perplexed by the questions, which even the contestants find difficult. Host Lee, 56, acknowledges that despite seeing the questions before the contestants, he struggles to remember them and is confused now that it is fourth in the series.
“All the time,” he said when asked if he ever finds himself thinking “what the hell?” when he sees them. Speaking exclusively to the Mirror, Lee added: “I have to be prepared, so it’s not the first time I’ve read them. But in the rehearsals in the afternoon, the producers come and see me and we play the game – just the three of us to see if I can answer them as well.
Lee Mack practises The 1% Club with the show producers but is still as confused as viewers(Image: ITV)
“But no, I’m just as perplexed as everyone else.” Lee and his family gather at home to play the game when the show airs on television, frequently months after the filming is finished. And despite having seen the questions numerous times, he still struggles to get them right.
My kids play it very seriously with a pen, paper, and scorecard because my memory is so poor, she said. Because they are aware that I won’t recall the response from the moment I film it, I am allowed to play. And I still fail to win! Lee, who was born in Southport, said, “Maybe it’s only five months into the year.
Continue reading the article.
He revealed that there will be a “More 1% Club” this year. Would I lie to you more? then more Not Going Out, “Lee laughed before mentioning that there is more Soccer Aid that I add to my list of things to do annually, so it’s the same as it has been for the past 17 years. I just need to stay on the treadmill right away because Soccer Aid is what I need to do right away.
The presenter is often beaten at the game by his own children(Image: ITV)
Without this, I wouldn’t exercise every year. I say to myself, “Right, I have to get in shape,” so a treadmill I bought a few years ago is now, and it always comes back and forth. I believe I went on it the night before last year. Lee will be working for UNICEF for the eighth time this year.
Lee mentioned being called up for the World XI squad once more, saying, “I assume they’re going to ask me back every year, so it’s very exciting when I get the call. I’m in the point where I should stop thinking after each one because it takes months and months before I feel better.
“But when the call comes, and says, “Do you want to do it?” I always say, “Yes, definitely. ” However, he made fun of the fact that he is the “oldest outfield player” every year, which means he must deal with physical ailments every year. Lee joked that his position essentially serves as a “goal hanger.” But when he first began using Soccer Aid, he quickly realized that being on the pitch in one spot is “exhausting,” he joked.
He continued, “You’ve got to get a little fit; the training lasts three days and consists of a few hours of play; at my age, you don’t play football three days on the run, then you play the match,” adding, “You’ve got to get a little fit.” I’ve always enjoyed playing with local dads once per week.
Over £106 million has been raised for UNCIEF since Soccer Aid’s launch 20 years ago, with records being broken year after year. Lee continued, “It doesn’t seem to slow down in any way,” adding that despite being held once every two years, he anticipated it would be more difficult to draw in crowds and money each year.
The stadium always sells out, he said, adding that “the money raised is incredible and seems to keep rising.” He continues, “As an abstract concept,” the money raised is difficult to imagine how much money would cost.
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When they show it in action or when you learn what £100 or £20 can buy, it’s fantastic.
The match takes place on Sunday 15th of June at Old Trafford, Manchester, with adult tickets priced at £20 and juniors from £10. Tickets are available now on theSoccer Aid for UNICEF website.
