Latest news with #Sheff
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
CT riverfront university's $90 million engineering and manufacturing school under way
At a time when Connecticut school DEI policies and other Democratic initiatives are under fire, creation of a magnet high school for industry and technology students is a sign of progress, according to the woman behind the Sheff v. O'Neill civil rights case. 'This is an occasion that runs deep through my soul — another Sheff magnet school,' Elizabeth Horton Sheff told a crowd gathered this week for the groundbreaking for RiverTech at Goodwin University, billed as Connecticut's first technology magnet school. 'Despite what's going on at the national level, the commitment to public education in Connecticut continues,' she said. Since Sheff won her civil rights lawsuit alleging racial discrimination in Connecticut's public education system, the state has been building a School Choice program that includes a network of specialized magnet schools in Greater Hartford. Goodwin is adding to it this year with a four-year program in techology and industry; it will begin serving freshmen in the fall, and plans to complete an ultra-modern, 90,000-square-foot, four-story building next year that will serve all four grades. 'There's no other building like it in the United States. On the fourth floor is our international space station. It will be a replica of the surface of Mars that our students will walk as astronauts while their classmates will be 'mission control,' helping them navigate the surface and making sure they're doing their science experiments,' Superintendent Salvatore Menzo said at the ceremony. RiverTech will teach elements of business, entrepreneurship and technology, with an emphasis on new technology, according to Goodwin. Artificial intelligence, machine learning, cybersecurity, computer science and advanced manufacturing are among the areas of concentration, and the school is building partnerships with major Connecticut manufacturers so it can offer internships and pre-apprenticeships. 'I finally found something that truly excites me: engineering. I'm ready to get hands-on experience and certifications to set myself up for a stable career in a field that's only going to keep growing,' Zaidyn Williams of East Hartford told the audience. He'll be among the freshmen beginning classes after summer vacation. Williams said afterward he's most interested in aerospace engineering. Mayor Connor Martin, a Goodwin graduate, said he's looking to RiverTech to give students the preparation they'll need to provide the workforce at Pratt & Whitney and other large manufacturers in the region. 'As someone who has grown up in this neighborhood and as a Goodwin alumni, to see the continued expansion of this campus is just incredible,' said Martin, a Goodwin graduate. 'Before this campus was what it is today, this was an industrial wasteland.' As well as providing a vibrant campus, Goodwin's expansion has given East Hartford access again to what Martin called one of its most crucial natural amenities: the Connecticut River. 'Some years ago we started our magnet school system. We started with one … we are now a magnet school school system,' Mark Scheinberg, university president, said. 'We are to my knowledge the only university in the country that owns and manages its own public school system,' he said.
Daily Mirror
23-05-2025
- Business
- Daily Mirror
Sky Sports confirms Premier League changes ahead of final games
Sky Sports has made some big changes to its broadcast schedule for the 2025/26 Premier League season The 2024/25 Premier League season is almost at its end, but Sky Sports is already looking ahead to next season. Ahead of the final day on Sunday (May 25), the broadcaster has announced some major changes to its coverage of the 2025/26 campaign. Sky has confirmed it will broadcast a 'record minimum' of 215 Premier League matches every season from 2025/26. This will see Sky's coverage increase from 128 Premier League matches to at least 215, which it says is more than any other broadcaster. Ahead of the new season kicking off on August 16, Sky is offering a discounted sports package that includes more than 1,400 live games across the Premier League and EFL. The Essential TV and Sky Sports bundle now costs £35 per month, saving £192 from the standard £43 rate. This provides access to all of Sky Sports' 215 matches, including more than 140 at weekends, evening matches on Fridays and Mondays and three midweek rounds. Sky has also confirmed it will broadcast all 10 Premier League matches on the final day of each season for the first time. Fans will also be able to choose from multiple live matches on a number of weekends in the Sunday 2pm kick-off slot, as well as 'most of' the festive season fixtures. Boxing Day Premier League football will return to Sky Sports this year after Amazon's Prime Video ended its six-year run of coverage last Christmas. It comes after Sky signed a new four-year deal for the league's TV rights in 2023. Dana Strong, Group CEO, Sky said: 'This is a fantastic result for Sky customers, who will see a significant increase in the number of matches from the most iconic league in the world. Sky is the undisputed home for sport fans in the UK.' Virgin Media customers will also have access to Sky's Premier League coverage with select packages. Virgin provides eight Sky Sports channels with its Bigger Combo bundle + Sports, which is more expensive than Sky at £65.99 per month but also includes 362Mbps broadband and more than 200 TV channels. Sky announced it had agreed a new rights deal in December 2023, with fans flocking to social media to congratulate the broadcaster. Writing on X, one said: 'Really looking forward to this. Congratulations to Sky Sports on this massive deal.' Another said: 'Here's to 215 epic games.' Not everyone is happy about the changes though, as this fan said: 'And yet that's still about 55% of all Premier League games. People in the UK pay fortunes to watch half of a product produced in the UK, yet people abroad can watch 100% for a fraction of the price.' But this fan disagreed, saying: 'Next season's MVPs might just be the broadcasters.' The Premier League fixtures for the 2025/26 season are due to be released at 9am on June 18. Liverpool will be defending their title after securing the top spot for the 20th time, with Leeds United and Burnley joining the fray having been promoted from the Championship. Sheffield United and Sunderland will meet on May 24 in the Championship play-off final, with the winner booking their place in the Premier League.
Yahoo
23-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
ACLU New Mexico condemns military's role at southern border
NEW MEXICO (KRQE) – The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of New Mexico released a statement condemning the military's role at the international border in southern New Mexico. Military authorized to detain undocumented immigrants in New Mexico U.S. Northern Command (Northcom) announced Monday that troops can now temporarily detain and search trespassers, provide medical assistance and implement crowd control on the military-controlled land until appropriate law enforcement can take custody of an individual, according to a report by The Hill. Rebecca Sheff, senior staff attorney at the ACLU of New Mexico, said the military's expanded role at the southern border is concerning. 'The expansion of military detention powers in the 'New Mexico National Defense Area'—also known as the 'border buffer zone'—represents a dangerous erosion of the constitutional principle that the military should not be policing civilians,' a statement by Sheff read in part. This announcement comes days after Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum announced that the 109,651 acres of federal land in New Mexico along the Mexico border will be transferred to the Department of the Army to support U.S. Border Patrol operations. The U.S. Department of the Interior said troops would assist by constructing and maintaining border security infrastructure, increasing regular patrols by federal personnel, disrupting foreign terrorist threats to the country, and curbing illegal cross-border activities. Sheff's full statement can be read below: 'As New Mexicans, we have deep concerns about the enhanced militarization of our borderlands communities. The expansion of military detention powers in the 'New Mexico National Defense Area'—also known as the 'border buffer zone'—represents a dangerous erosion of the constitutional principle that the military should not be policing civilians. This approach seems to be akin to Texas's Operation Lone Star on steroids, threatening the longstanding relationships we've built with our neighboring communities in Mexico. By authorizing service members to detain, search, and conduct 'crowd control,' these new authorities undermine our state's values of dignity, respect, and community. We don't want militarized zones where border residents—including U.S. citizens—face potential prosecution simply for being in the wrong place. This isn't how we want to be in relation with our neighbors. This dangerous expansion of military authorities threatens both our civil liberties and the cultural fabric that makes our borderlands unique.' Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
02-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Rethinking Yoko: David Sheff's biography challenges decades of misinformation
In 1980, at the relatively tender age of 24, David Sheff landed a journalistic coup in the form of a multipart interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono. The famous couple had just ended a period of self-imposed retirement and were releasing their first new album of original material in five years. Sheff's interview proved to be a masterstroke. In one of its most significant aspects, the interview involved a lengthy analysis of Lennon's recorded output. Within a matter of weeks, Lennon would be murdered. Quite suddenly, Sheff's interview with the Lennons became the lasting word on the musician's illustrious career. In the process—particularly in the weeks after her husband's harrowing death—Ono and Sheff became friends. When it came to telling Ono's story, Sheff found himself at loggerheads over the ethics of authoring her biography. 'Just as my friendship with Yoko allowed invaluable access and insights,' he wrote, 'it forced me to face a difficult and critical question: Can a journalist tell the truth about a friend? I wasn't interested in presenting a whitewashed version of Yoko's story—a friend's filtered idealization.' With "Yoko," Sheff eschews 'filtered idealization' in favor of crafting Ono's biography with all of the artist's foibles and failures in candid relief. 'I did my best to strip the varnish away,' Sheff writes. 'I did my best to accurately reconstruct events and dialogue and report what actually happened.' In this unfiltered, unvarnished portrait of the artist, Sheff succeeds magnificently in bringing one of popular music's most divisive and misunderstood personae to life. 'I expose Yoko's missteps and failures,' Sheff writes. 'I reveal the depth and sources of her pain and fear. I also show her profound wisdom, wit, humor, inspiration, talent and joy; her resilience, compassion, her triumphs and genius.' Along the way, we learn about Ono's crucial life in pre-war Japan, a privileged upbringing that led to her early forays in artistry and philosophy. In some of the book's finest moments, Sheff explores her creative emergence, particularly her brash efforts to enmesh herself with Fluxus, the international art movement that celebrated the act of performance for performance's Sheff examines the evolution of Ono's association with Lennon in welcome, forensic detail. And what happened next, as the couple fell in love and paraded their relationship on the world stage, would involve elements of misogyny and racism that persist into the present day. 'The racism and misogyny behind Yoko's denigration over the years can't be overstated,' Sheff writes. 'When the two went out, fans yelled for Yoko to go back to her own country. John received racist letters, including ones warning him Yoko would slit his throat as he slept. They called her a 'Jap,' 'Dragon Lady' and other slurs.' And in one of the cruelest turns, fans would forever blame Ono—would scapegoat her—for breaking up The Beatles. In this aspect, Sheff makes a convincing case that not only did Ono not cause the Fabs' disbandment, she in fact prolonged their working relationship over their last few albums. 'There's a version of The Beatles story in which there'd be no 'Let It Be' or 'Abbey Road' without Yoko,' Sheff argues. 'During the writing and recording of those albums, John had a foot out the door. If he hadn't had Yoko, the other foot might have followed sooner than it did. Instead of being blamed and pilloried for breaking up the group, maybe Yoko should be thanked for keeping the band together during that fertile period.' "Yoko" is required reading for die-hard Beatles fans and music lovers, to be sure, but it's also a master class about assembling the evidence and rethinking the manner in which we think about our culture's most iconic figures. We might very well be surprised about what we find when the dust settles.
Telegraph
27-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Did Yoko Ono save the Beatles?
Did Yoko Ono hold the Beatles together in their final, fertile years? The award-winning American journalist David Sheff floats this notion in Yoko, his warm and absorbing biography of the woman who for so long bore most of the blame for the breakup of the world's favourite band. Pointing out John Lennon's depression and lack of purpose before his all-consuming affair with Ono, Sheff posits that by accompanying him to studio sessions – 'literally holding his hand sometimes' – she helped to maintain his engagement with the Beatles when he already 'had a foot out the door'. 'There's a version of the Beatles story,' Sheff suggests, 'in which there would be no Let It Be or Abbey Road without Yoko.' Now there's a thought. Like many Beatles fans, I've often wondered what this mysterious figure in black was actually doing, sitting next to Lennon for weeks on end, staring blankly as the Beatles composed some of the greatest music any of us have ever heard. A lot of resentment, misogyny and racism has been thrown at her inscrutable presence, as captured in Michael Lindsay Hogg's 1970 documentary Let It Be, and Peter Jackson's more recent six-hour reconstruction Get Back. Yet Ono's explanation, given to Paul Zollo in 1992, was disarming: 'I was just living my own world inside. Dream world. I was sitting there just thinking about all the stuff I'm doing in my head. So I was there and in a way I wasn't there.' As Sheff's sympathetic biography illustrates, Ono had been sitting and dreaming her whole life, then turning those dreams into audacious conceptual art. As a 12-year-old in Japan in the wake of the Second World War, impoverished and starving, she developed mental tricks to survive. One was to create imaginary feasts for her younger brother, Kei, when he was weeping with hunger, saying: 'Eat this imaginary apple. It will fill you up.' 'It did fill her up,' Kei told Sheff. 'She was good at imagining. But those words didn't fill me up!' The exhortation to 'imagine' became a central theme of Ono's art, running through Grapefruit, her 1964 book of 'instruction works', full of pieces such as 'Imagine the clouds dripping, dig a hole in the garden to put them in.' She gave Lennon a copy after their first brief encounter in 1966, at her debut London exhibition. He kept it by his bedside for two years before they became romantically involved (and married in 1969). 'I used to read it, and sometimes I'd get very annoyed by it,' he told Rolling Stone in 1971. 'Then sometimes I'd be very enlightened by it. I went through all the changes that people go through with her work.' In many ways, Sheff's book serves as a guide to those very changes of perception. In 1971, Ono sat next to Lennon, by now her third husband, at a piano in their mansion in Tittenhurst Park in Berkshire, contributing lyrical ideas while he composed a ballad based around her work. 'I wasn't man enough to let her have credit for it,' Lennon remorsefully admitted to Sheff in a 1980 interview, shortly before his death. At a ceremony in 2017, as Lennon had in his final months urged, the American National Music Publishers Association recognised Ono as co-writer of that ballad: Imagine. Although this biography is unauthorised, Sheff admits to a little bias. As a 24-year-old journalist, he spent weeks interviewing Lennon and Ono for Playboy magazine around the recording of Double Fantasy (1980), and established a lifetime friendship with Ono and son Sean Lennon in the aftermath of John's murder. In 2008, Sheff published a memoir, Beautiful Boy, about his own son's struggles with drug addiction and the friends who helped save his life. 'Those friends,' he reveals, 'were Yoko and Sean.' Don't open these pages expecting a hatchet job. Nor is Yoko a hagiography, though. Ono is too complex a person for that. Sheff doesn't shy away from her capacity for protective selfishness, incredible self-indulgence, mind-boggling superstitiousness – consulting tarot readers, numerologists and psychics – and the seemingly magical thinking with which she ran a business empire that nonetheless became wildly successful. (Ono's net worth was valued at $500 million [£390 million] in 2024.) 'I saw her at her worst,' writes Sheff, 'at her most paranoid, scared and despondent, but also at her best, when she was elated, creative and inspired, exhibiting the kind of otherworldly wisdom John described.' Born in 1933, Ono was raised in one of the richest banking families in Japan. She was a privileged misfit, growing up in a near-total absence of parental love or support for her independence as a woman. She experienced the horrors of war firsthand, watching Tokyo burn on March 9 1945, when the Americans dropped 1,665 tons of incendiary bombs on the capital. In the aftermath, she rebelled against parental pressure to make a socially acceptable marriage, and fled to New York to study art. Her first husband was the experimental piano player Toshi Ichiyanagi, who would go on to become a leading Japanese composer. Ono's parents cut off all financial support; she worked as a secretary and translator to sustain her artistic career. Ono's first public performance was over 60 years ago, but she has only in the last couple of decades been acknowledged as a pioneering feminist artist; large retrospectives have recently been staged at London's Tate Modern and New York's Museum of Modern Art. But Sheff's concise account, barely 300 pages long, shows that her accomplishments were rarely doubted by her peers. She was a vital mover and shaker in a small but influential 1950s New York performance art scene that included the likes of composer John Cage and choreographer Merce Cunningham. Classically trained as both a pianist and vocalist, Ono's work included avant-garde musical pieces, one of which she performed with the great jazz virtuoso Ornette Coleman at the Royal Albert Hall in London in 1968. The 'ballad of John and Yoko', as Sheff calls it, has been covered in thousands of books, articles and documentaries, but it's enlightening to rewatch familiar stories from Ono's perspective. We learn what she was up to, for instance, during the famous 'lost weekend', when the couple split for 18 months while Lennon caroused in Los Angeles with May Pang, the girlfriend Ono chose for him. Ono, Sheff explains, had kicked him out on account of his cheating, heavy drinking and lack of productivity; she hoped to preserve her own sense of self. During the separation, she socialised, read voraciously, made art and recorded an album; Lennon phoned on a near-daily basis, begging her to take him back. Friends from Elton John to Paul McCartney lobbied her on Lennon's behalf. Eventually she capitulated, but only if he made changes to his alcohol consumption. Lennon called Pang, told her 'Yoko's allowed me to come home', and dropped her on the spot. What followed genuinely seems to have been the happiest five years of Lennon and Ono's lives. Lennon's murder on December 8 1980 rocks this book like a bomb. If it remains a huge event in most music-lovers' lives, its impact on Ono was all-consuming. The grief and horror of those chapters is shattering to read: the rest of Sheff's book is a kind of journey through a very public post-traumatic stress disorder. He gives a first-hand insight into the gentle relationship she had with interior designer Sam Havadtoy from 1981 to around 2000, and the intense bond she has formed with her son, Sean; but it all feels like aftermath and reverberation – a life lived in dust that refuses to settle. The public perception of Ono's character and career, at least, experienced an almost complete reversal in that period. Today, her status as a significant artist isn't in doubt. Even the wildest music she made, the stuff that was once deemed unlistenable, has gained 'cult classic' status: it and she have been acknowledged as inspirations by everyone from Patti Smith and Siouxsie Sioux to Sonic Youth and Lady Gaga. No one can call themselves a Beatles completist if they aren't proud owners of the 1970 album Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band – a companion piece to Lennon's album of the same name – on which John and Ringo rock their punky socks off and Ono ululates with terrifying, joyous majesty. Dance remixes of her work have given her 13 number one hits on the Billboard dance charts in America. Ono is 92 now. She lives in seclusion on a farm in upstate New York, set in 600 acres of fields and forests; she's regularly visited by her children, Sean and Kyoko (the latter from her second marriage, to Tony Cox, in the 1960s), and her several grandchildren. I met her in 1988, and I was utterly charmed. She had a beautiful laugh, which tinkled with lightness and amusement throughout our conversation, and it was suddenly so easy to perceive the vividly intelligent, arty woman with whom Lennon had fallen in love. She didn't wear her usual dark sunglasses, and tears glistened in her eyes when she spoke about John. But even in the long grief of her widowhood, she exuded an open-hearted love for the world. I asked this remarkable woman – who has appeared naked on album covers, howled from inside black bags on stage and released recordings of her own miscarriage – whether there was anything she looked back on with embarrassment. 'I'm too emotional to think of it objectively,' she replied. 'But there are periods when we [were] not exactly slim!' She laughed. 'You know, some things like that, now I go, 'I don't wanna see that!' A series of embarrassments. But that's just me.'
