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Retired Chinese tennis star Li Na is up against Serena Williams in a six-woman field for sportswoman of the year in the Laureus World Sports Awards. The other nominees are Valerie Adams, Marit Bjorgen, Genzebe Dibaba, and Tina Maze . In the men’s field, Real Madrid star Cristiano Ronaldo will compete against number one golfer Rory McIlroy and Formula One motor racing champion Lewis Hamilton. Also in the race are tennis world number one Novak Djokovic and World MotoGP title-holder Marc Marquez, as well as France’s Renaud Lavillenie, who broke a 21-year-old world record for the pole vault last year....

Boyd’s latest novel–his seventh–purports to be the journal, complete with footnotes, editor’s notes and an index, of one Logan Mountstuart, a log of his life from prep school in the ’20s to his death in 1991. But Boyd systematically destabilizes the closed world in which his hero moves. Mountstuart floats through the 20th century, bumping into greatness (Hemingway, Jackson Pollock, Virginia Woolf) without ever rising to greatness himself. Instead, his journal bears gentle and often eloquent witness to a world that seems a little more foreign with every entry, as when he writes in 1936, “The King died last night and Kipling died last week… You grow accustomed to these old men being around, always aware of their presence in the background of your life....

But as they get ready to return from the All-Star break as the NHL’s top team, the Lightning knows there is little they can do before April to make this a successful campaign. Tampa Bay leads the league with 76 points so far this season, opening up a 13-point edge over the next best team in the Eastern Conference. But after losing in the Stanley Cup Final in 2015 and then in Game 7 of the conference finals in 2016 and ‘18, nothing short of winning it all will be enough for the Lightning....

That’s not strictly true, however. Besides Xiaomi, another brand that’s been quietly plugging away at the classier end of the Android tablet market is Lenovo. In addition to the quirky Lenovo Yoga Tab 13, the Chinese brand currently provides the Lenovo Tab P12 Pro – an even pricier but decidedly more orthodox high-end tablet. With an RRP of £749 in the UK and US$699 across the pond, this full-sized tablet is competing directly with the iPad Pro and the Samsung Galaxy Tab S8....

It has built in stand that gives it a lop-sided look when portrait but provides a spine to hold onto one handed. Turned landscaped it becomes symmetrical and the pop-out stand solves an issue many with regular shaped tablets have to buy cases for. You can even hang it on a hook to watch it in landscape, if you want. With a decent screen and above-average speakers, the Lenovo Yoga Tab 3 Plus is a nothing if not versatile....

For Grammy winning R&B singer-songwriter Leon Bridges, Gold-Diggers became a second home where he lived as well as wrote and recorded his latest music. “A friend of mine and I threw a Grammy pre-party there,” Bridges, who discovered the place in 2018, recalls. “I was totally unaware of the studio-in-hotel aspect. Gold-Diggers had a history of being used as a soundstage in the ’40s for some films, and a strip club—a lot of crazy history about it....

That said, Miles admitted the stress the past two weeks has been difficult, as rumors swirled about his future at LSU. MORE: Most disappointing Power 5 teams in 2015 | LSU AD: Les Miles is our football coach “There’s probably a guy or two I’d like to meet in an alley and have a little straight-talk with,” Miles said after the LSU’s 19-7 win over Texas A&M. “But I’m not built that way....

A World Cup winner with France in 1998 and a three-time FIFA World Player of the Year, Zinedine Zidane is a footballing legend. But, he is now also an impressive manager. After the sacking of Rafa Benitez in early 2016, Zidane was appointed as Real Madrid’s manager. He inherited a team which were thrashed 4-0 by Barcelona and looked rather subdued. His appointment drew criticism due to his inexperience in management....

Since the ‘71 Sylmar quake, rescue workers have invested in high-pressure air bags capable of propping up 72 tons, fiber-optics search cameras and dogs to aid in scouting for victims. Despite the new equipment, officials fear they lack the trained personnel to cope with massive casualties. Caltrans, the state transportation department. began retrofitting bridges and overpasses shortly after the ‘71 quake. After the ‘89 temblor it instituted a second round of construction to shore up highway pillars with steel, shock-absorbing buffers and restraining hinges....

He belongs to the new breed of Indian footballers – players who love and dare to dream big. And they love challenges. For Pune FC midfielder Lester Fernandes, life is more than just about hoodwinking his rival and speeding down the flank and send perfect crosses. Life for him is more about “watching Roger Federer glide on the court or about Zinedine Zidane’s ball control.” “There’s nothing like watching Roger Federer; so sublime, so classy,” utters Lester....

However, calls for creating an off-ramp are harmful to Ukraine’s fight against its invaders and—importantly—completely unnecessary: The Russian propaganda machine responsible for propagating the invasion’s false justifications is fully capable of creating an off-ramp for itself whenever it deems it necessary. The issue policymakers must focus on instead is how to convince Russia to abandon its war aims, which still include seizing Kyiv and annexing large swaths of Ukraine....

Such was the scene at the first World Cyber Games, held at a convention center in Seoul this month. Beneath three overlapping Olympic-style rings, 400 competitors from 37 countries promised “fair play for friendship and harmony,” then grabbed their keyboards and mice and started (virtually) blowing one another away. Some call this sort of thing escapism, and see it as the domain of spotty adolescents with too much pent-up testosterone pouring through their Pentium chips....

Is Zlatan the greatest 30-something striker of all time? Though half of the back four that lined up against Everton are unlikely to start against Atletico in their Champions League quarter-final, there remains a genuine concern as to how they will deal with Diego Simeone’s side should the Liga giants find top gear against them. Everton possess their own attacking threats that would cause the majority of the Premier League if not Europe’s defences problems, but the ease in which they were able to put four goals past Kasper Schmeichel will have alarmed Shakespeare so close to the club’s biggest ever match....

A continent away last Friday, in an empty classroom inside the sprawling Electrical Training Institute of IBEW Local 11 in Commerce City, Calif., I read Bing’s words to Clinton, who, while she listened, took a sip of water and nodded knowingly, a look of recognition in her eyes. She had heard this before. “I understand that,” she said. “What a good problem to have. Two leading candidates for president, a woman and an African-American, who are being viewed, I hope, on our merits, our qualifications, our records, our plans, our vision....

With Lionel Messi dropped from the matchday squad altogether, manager Ernesto Valverde fielded a much-changed line-up and eventually paid for it. The visitors were dominant at the start, but the Granotas feasted on some poor man-marking and acres of space left by Barcelona’s defence. Levante lead 2-1 at the break and then increased the lead to 5-1 before the hour mark as Emmanuel Boateng scored hat-trick. Barcelona mounted a late comeback as Coutinho bagged a treble of his own and Suarez further reduced the deficit from the spot....

The Poland international suggested on Saturday he is struggling to cope with the demands of leading the line in three domestic competitions and for the national team. Bayern 15/2 to win CL The issue has come to the fore in the build-up to Tuesday’s Champions League clash with Celtic in Glasgow, with Lewandowski unable to travel with the team due to a muscle injury. Rummenigge insists Lewandowski will only miss the game out of precaution, though, and denied they need more options in the squad....

A report in Spain on Friday claimed the Poland star is “obsessed” with a move to the Santiago Bernabeu and has already informed his agent to try to negotiate a move in 2018. Schalke 15/2 to beat Bayern The rumours surfaced in the wake of an interview in which he criticised Bayern’s transfer policy, prompting chairman Karl-Heinz Rummenigge to issue a public warning against any further such comments. Lewandowski put talk of his future to one side with a clinical display in Bayern’s 4-0 win over Mainz, scoring twice to take his tally to 82 goals in 100 Bundesliga appearances for the champions....

Sky News has reported that seven-time Formula 1 world champion Sir Lewis Hamilton, as well as tennis icon Serena Williams, have pledged an estimated £10 million each into an offer for the club from a wealthy consortium group led by Sir Martin Broughton. Broughton is a former chairman of Liverpool and British Airways. Hamilton, who is competing in this weekend’s Melbourne Grand Prix, and 23-time major winner Williams have both become established investors in recent years....

LG has a habit of creating buzz by offering a sneak peek at some of its big projects a few days ahead of the Las Vegas tech summit and this year is no different. This year’s early preview is for LG’s new 21:9 display with AMD’s FreeSync tech, designed to keep picture clear and smooth throughout intense gaming sessions. We’ve seen curved screens in sci-fi movies for the last decade, and curved TVs are already in the market,, but this may be one of the first curved screens we start to see in our own gaming rooms....