Tom Holland had the odds stacked up against him to land the coveted role of Spider-Man back in 2015.Marvel Studios conducted a worldwide search to find the actor who would portray its famous wall-crawling superhero. Holland reportedly beat out more than 1,500 competitors for the role, including current Hollywood superstar Timothée Chalamet.To get the part, Holland went above and beyond just learning a New York accent and memorizing his lines.With a background in dance and acrobatics, including a lead turn in a West End production of “Billy Elliot,” Holland leaned on his athleticism to help convince decision-makers that he was…
Author: usaeverydaylife
This is the final entry in a five-part series about the state of the New York Giants. Within “Giants 2025,” we will examine the talent on the roster, the team’s positions of need, their pathways to improvement, the players they could target in the offseason and finally, the people charged with restoring this franchise to its former glory. At some point over the next 72 hours, Giants co-owners John Mara and Steve Tisch will meet to determine the fates of coach Brian Daboll and general manager Joe Schoen. Mara has said the coach and GM who arrived together from Buffalo in…
The cardboard box was light, barely big enough to hold a baby, much less an athletic 26-year-old. Yet, it held Diego Fernando Aguirre Pantaleón, or at least his remains, excavated from a common grave in a desert in northern Mexico.His family does not know how he ended up in the grave in Coahuila state. The authorities said he was abducted in 2011 on graduation day with six other classmates, all promising recruits for a new specialized police force trained to combat organized crime in Coahuila. Armed men had broken into the bar where the young police officers were celebrating and…
Djelics | E+ | Getty ImagesRetirees can expect to see some big changes in 2025 when it comes to their Social Security and Medicare benefits.President Joe Biden is expected to sign a bill that will increase Social Security benefits for certain pensioners. Additionally, the annual Social Security cost-of-living adjustment goes into effect for all beneficiaries.And Medicare enrollees who are worried about health-care costs now have a $2,000 annual out-of-pocket Part D prescription drug cap aimed at helping to reduce those financial pressures.Here are some important changes to note for the coming year.Some pensioners could get benefit increaseThe Senate passed a…
The NHL season is nearing its midway point, with all 32 teams playing between 35 and 41 games. By now, we generally know what each team is and isn’t and whether the rest of the season should be focused on title contention, short-term progress or the long-term future.What better time to break out our red pens and hand out some grades? That’s exactly what The Athletic did this week when it asked its NHL staff to assign a grade to every team with expectations in mind. You’ll definitely want to show some of these to your parents (or general managers).…
Hamas’s military wing released a video on Saturday of Liri Albag, one of some 250 people taken hostage by the group in its attack on Israel, as Israeli and Hamas officials held further rounds of indirect cease-fire talks via mediators in Qatar.Roughly 100 hostages are still being held in Gaza nearly 15 months since the Hamas-led attacks on Oct. 7, 2023, prompted Israel’s war in Gaza. Talks to free them have sputtered since a weeklong truce in November 2023 that allowed for the release of 105 Israeli and foreign captives.Ms. Albag, 19, served in a unit of lookouts charged with…
This undated and unlocated handout image released by the FBI on January 1, 2025 shows a photo of deceased New Orleans attack suspect Shamsud-Din Jabbar. – | Afp | Getty ImagesThe driver who killed 14 people in an ISIS-inspired attack by plowing into a crowded New Orleans street on New Year’s Day had planned to use a transmitter to detonate two explosive devices he had placed nearby, authorities have said.The FBI and ATF said in a joint statement Friday that the explosives were placed on Bourbon Street, which Shamsud-Din Jabbar later turned into a scene of devastation.Neither of the explosive devices were detonated, and it remains unclear whether the…
It was a conversation with Ruben Amorim at the start of December that goes some way to explaining why Marcus Rashford has been absent from the Manchester United side for the past five matches.United had just beaten Everton 4-0, with Rashford scoring two of the goals in a vibrant display on Sunday, December 1. But after that game, Amorim heard the forward had been out in Manchester on the Friday night, November 29, less than 48 hours before Everton’s visit to Old Trafford.The United head coach does not want his players in bars so close to games and asked Rashford…
In the wide range of articles published by The New York Times this week after the death of former President Jimmy Carter, a fragment of largely forgotten Canadian history resurfaced.The Times’s visual story of his life, told through a variety of objects, reveals how Mr. Carter came to assist in the cleanup of a major nuclear accident near Ottawa in 1952.[Read: Jimmy Carter’s Life, in 17 Objects]Among the 17 objects, photographed by Tony Cenicola and described by Bill Marsh, is a yellowed certificate issued in 1953 by the Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory in New York State, proclaiming Mr. Carter an…
Another earning season is over. The winners? Most of our stocks. Twenty-three out of 33 portfolio names delivered third-quarter reports were deemed good or great by the Investing Club, thanks partly to a still-strong consumer and largely to the massive build out of all things AI. Case in point: In the S & P 500, 86% of technology companies beat sales estimates for the third quarter, according to FactSet data. That was followed by healthcare (79%) and real estate (74%). Communication services led all sectors for bottom-line beats, with 95%, followed by technology, at 86%. Two big moves to note.…
