World
The NBA's East play-in field is set: Miami goes to Philadelphia while Atlanta goes to Chicago
Orlando blew out Milwaukee, Indiana blew out Atlanta, Philadelphia blew out Brooklyn and Miami blew out Toronto.
And all that meant this: Nothing on the bottom half of the Eastern Conference’s playoff chase changed on the final day of the regular season.
It will be eighth-seeded Miami visiting seventh-seeded Philadelphia in an East play-in game on Wednesday, followed by 10th-seeded Atlanta visiting ninth-seeded Chicago in an elimination game later that night. The Heat-76ers winner will face the No. 2 seed — either New York or Milwaukee — in Round 1 of the playoffs, and the Heat-76ers loser will play host to the Hawks-Bulls winner on Friday night.
The winner of that game will play No. 1 seed Boston in Round 1, starting April 21 at TD Garden.
“Look, this is the best time of year,” said Heat coach Erik Spoelstra, whose team started in the play-in last season and wound up in the NBA Finals. “These kind of environments, the games, the context … you can’t expect to be easy.”
The East result set the game schedule for the Western Conference as well, with both of those play-in games set for Tuesday. Those matchups — Sacramento, the Los Angeles Lakers and Golden State will be joined by either Phoenix or New Orleans — will be set later Sunday afternoon.
Cleveland is the No. 4 seed in the East for the second consecutive year. The Cavaliers had a chance to move to No. 2 or No. 3 in the East with a win on Sunday and led lottery-bound Charlotte by 13 with 10 minutes remaining.
And they didn’t seem to want to move up much, getting outscored 30-7 the rest of the way. Charlotte won 120-110.
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AP NBA: https://apnews.com/hub/NBA
World
US military constructs hulking metal pier amid Biden's $320 million gamble to get aid into Gaza
The U.S. military has completed the construction of a hulking metal pier that is expected to be jabbed into a beach in northern Gaza in the coming days, officials said.
Completing the massive makeshift structure — approximately 1,500-ft long or the length of five U.S. football fields — is the first step in the Biden administration’s two-month-long, $320 million gamble to open a sea route to get humanitarian aid through the eastern Mediterranean and into Gaza, where Israel continues to wage war with the Hamas terror group.
The construction of the new floating pier and causeway is risky for President Biden and the Pentagon as aid delivery teams face unknown dangers and uncertainties as they attempt to work around the challenges of getting aid into Gaza through the Rafah border.
“In the coming days, you can expect to see this effort underway. And we are confident that we will be able to, working with our NGO partners, ensure that aid can be delivered,” Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder, the Pentagon press secretary, said Tuesday, noting humanitarian groups were ready for the first shipments through the new U.S. maritime route.
REPUBLICAN SAYS BIDEN HAS ‘STRENGTHENED’ HAMAS BY WITHHOLDING AID FROM ISRAEL: ‘COMPLETELY INCOMPETENT’
The administration’s effort to open the additional sea route comes as the intensifying war between Israel and Hamas has neared the land crossings in Rafah.
Scott Paul, an associate director of the Oxfam humanitarian organization, described the sea route as “a solution for a problem that doesn’t exist” because land crossings could bring in all the needed aid, he said.
Paul suggested the amount of aid that is allowed to be delivered into Gaza is dependent on Israeli officials allowing it. Some officials have expressed concerns the aid could fall into the hands of Hamas, the very terrorists that Israel is seeking to eliminate from the Palestinian territory.
UN REVISES GAZA DEATH TOLL, ALMOST 50% LESS WOMEN AND CHILDREN KILLED THAN PREVIOUSLY REPORTED
“Like all of the land crossings, it comes down to the consent of the government of Israel,” Paul said. “If Israel is comfortable with allowing the maritime corridor to function … then it will work in a limited way. And if they don’t, it won’t. Which is why it’s a very, very expensive alternative.”
Ophir Falk, foreign policy adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said Tuesday that the country had enabled the entrance of thousands of aid trucks into Gaza and would continue to do so.
Falk accused Hamas of disrupting aid distribution by hijacking and attacking convoys.
The Israeli military said in a statement Tuesday that it will keep acting in line with international law to distribute aid to Gaza. It also has previously said there are no limits on aid.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledged to Biden to allow in more aid and safeguard those workers.
Anastasia Moran, an associate director for the International Rescue Committee, a global humanitarian group, said truckloads of aid entering Gaza increased by 13% last month.
The Israel-Hamas war has been particularly lethal to Palestinian civilians residing in Gaza with Palestinian health officials estimating more than 35,000 have been killed. Israeli officials estimate the number of deceased civilians is approximately 16,000 civilians. A U.N report from May 8 found the number of women and children killed so far in the war to be just under 13,000.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
World
Canadian Nobel-winning author Alice Munro dies aged 92
Munro was renowned for her short stories, which focussed on the frailties of the human condition.
Alice Munro, the Nobel Prize-winning Canadian author known for her mastery of the short story, has died at the age of 92.
Munro died at her home in Port Hope, Ontario, publisher Kristin Cochrane, chief executive officer of McClelland & Stewart, said in a statement on Tuesday.
“Alice’s writing inspired countless writers … and her work leaves an indelible mark on our literary landscape,” Cochrane said.
Munro published more than a dozen collections of short stories, which she focused on the frailties of the human condition and set in the rural Ontario countryside where she grew up.
Awarded the International Booker Prize for her body of work in 2009, and the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2013, Munro was diagnosed with dementia about a decade ago and was living in a care home.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said the world had “lost one of its greatest storytellers”.
“A true literary genius … her short stories about life, friendship, and human connection left an indelible mark on readers,” he said.
Munro was born on July 10, 1931, in Wingham, Ontario. Her father raised foxes and poultry, while her mother was a smalltown teacher.
Munro decided she wanted to be a writer when she was 11, and never wavered in her career choice.
“I think, maybe I was successful in doing this because I didn’t have any other talents,” she once explained in an interview.
“I’m not really an intellectual,” Munro said. “There was never anything else that I was really drawn to doing, so nothing interfered in the way life interferes for so many people.”
“It always does seem like magic to me.”
Munro’s first story, The Dimensions of a Shadow, was published in 1950, while she was studying at the University of Western Ontario.
Munro was three times awarded the Governor General’s Award for fiction, the first for Dance of the Happy Shades, a collection of stories published in 1968. Who Do You Think You Are (1978) and The Progress of Love (1986) also won Canada’s highest literary honour.
Her short stories were often published in the pages of prestigious magazines, such as The New Yorker and The Atlantic. Her last collection of work, Dear Life, appeared in 2012.
The characters in Munro’s stories were often girls and women who led seemingly unexceptional lives but struggled with issues ranging from sexual abuse and stifling marriages to repressed love and the ravages of age.
She was often likened to Anton Chekhov, the 19th-century Russian known for his brilliant short stories – a comparison made by the Swedish Academy when it awarded her the Nobel Prize.
Calling Munro a “master of the contemporary short story”, the Academy also said: “Her texts often feature depictions of everyday but decisive events, epiphanies of a kind, that illuminate the surrounding story and let existential questions appear in a flash of lightning.”
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