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Fall is the best time to think about cooking soup. Here’s 5 recipes you’ll want to tryLimited again, 49ers QB Brock Purdy still fighting sore shoulder
From a plush armchair in his well-appointed study, Pat Carty chooses the tomes that caressed his cerebrum over the last year. ‘Comic books, the Bible, road maps, pornography, anything you wanna read, go out and sit in a field sometime,’ the great Paul Westerberg once sagely advised. With that in mind, here’s some of 2024’s best reading material, presented in no particular order but all worthy of your time and attention. (Canongate) It’s a bold claim because he’s so bloody good, but this old-school western and a poetic, lovers-on-the-run yarn may be Barry’s greatest achievement. Inspired by Cork miners moving to Butte, Montana in the late 1800s and a childhood love of cowboys, and influenced by Terence Malick and Cormac McCarthy, although the equal of both, every line here would be the pinnacle of a thousand lesser writers’ careers. The love story is touching and tragic and gets a suitable ending, the supporting cast are all mad as the wind, and the writer’s alter-ego is a hopeless rake. Brilliant. (New Island) Pirates are cool and O’Connor’s fictionalised retelling of the life of Anne Bonny reminds us of that certainty by having Bonny stand as a symbol for individuality, gender fluidity, and sexual liberation, a hero as relevant to our times as her own. There’s also the requisite amount of rogering, of both the Jolly and venereal kind, cads like Calico Jack, and general lawlessness to keep you going. It’s really a book about freedom. The fact that one of the pirates, a doubtless charming and handsome rogue, is called Patrick Carty did not in any way influence this book’s inclusion. (Jonathan Cape) Delivering on the promise his short stories showed, especially culchie/cop caper A Shooting In Rathreedane, Barrett stays in Mayo for this Booker Prize longlisted drug hawking drama. The Ferdia brothers kidnap Doll because his brother Cillian owes their boss Mulrooney for a cocaine consignment gone arseways. Hardly the most original plot under the sun but it’s the way, to paraphrase Frank Carson, Barrett tells it. The uniformity of small town living is perfectly captured and the cast, from Vinnie who sleeps under cars to the goat man to Sergeant Martin who one kidnapped a teacher to take her looking for UFOs, are as odd as two left feet. (Penguin) Banishing forever the awful memory of Colin Farrell in Alexander, Lennon shows that ancient Greeks with Dublin accents can actually be a good idea. Athenian prisoners are rotting in the stone quarries near the Sicilian city of Syracuse after they took a hammering during the Peloponnesian war. A couple of potters who sound like they’re from Crumlin, Lampo and Gelon, decide to stage Euripides plays using the prisoners as cast. Both funny and sad, Lennon’s accomplished and original debut is also a celebration of the transformative power of art, right up to the moving epilogue. (Doubleday) Carson is an author with more strings to her bow than three fiddlers. As great as her novels are, she’s equally adept at shorter fiction and each example collected here deserves some class of award. Whether it’s the dead smoker in the back of Grandma’s Sierra, Catholics speaking a slippery tingly, second language, a farmer praying for his cow, Malcolm trying to empty the sea of jellyfish, or the red hand of ulster in the fridge that won’t go away, the extraordinary crashes into the ordinary in extraordinary ways throughout. Magic realism? Magic writing. Hide Away – Dermot Bolger, Girl In The Making – Anna Fitzgerald, Hagstone – Sinéad Gleeson, Long Island – Colm Tóibín, Intermezzo – Sally Rooney, Heart, Be At Peace – Donal Ryan, Mouthing – Orla Mackey, The Women Behind The Door – Roddy Doyle, The Instruments Of Darkness – John Connolly, The Drowned – John Banville, The Coast Road – Alan Murrin, Witness 8 – Steve Cavanagh, The Hunter – Tana French (Hot Press Books) A Hot Press columnist from 1983 to 1993 when he became Ireland’s first Minister for the Arts, Culture and the Gaeltacht, Michael D. this year reviewed the hundreds of pieces he wrote and selected the ones that he feels still strongly resonate today. From parish pump politics and the rantings of Bishop Jeremiah Newman to strange Dáil machinations and his travels to El Salvador, Somalia and Chile, it’s a captivating read with the future President’s finely calibrated bullshit detector helping him get to the truth of the matter. With Hot Press editor, Niall Stokes, supplying contemporaneous introductions to these classic columns, you won’t find a better Christmas stocking-filler – even if we do say so ourselves! (The Bodley Head) Okay, Philipps isn’t actually Irish, but his book about a great and slightly unsung hero who, according to President Higgins, contributed ‘not only to Irish freedom but to the universal struggle for justice and human dignity’ more than warrants its place on this list. Philipps details Casement’s ‘three destinies’ – almost single-handedly, as Foreign Office consul in The Congo, taking down King Leopold II for human rights violations, uncovering more abuse in the South American rubber industry, and his part in the fight for Irish freedom which lead to his death sentence – in this gripping biography. Likeable smart arse, and as an economist the right man for the job, takes on the mammoth (and mammon) task of presenting a history of cash that stretches from 18,000 BC – where money was, perhaps unsurprisingly, “the first thing we wrote about” – to the current era. If it sounds like a dry subject for a book then fear not for McWilliams, a born talker, peppers his treatise with anecdotes like the influence of economic theory on Darwin and Hitler’s plans to derail the Brits through counterfeiting. I lasted half an hour in undergraduate economics, I might have hung on if I’d had this in my satchel. (Allen Lane) Irish history has its share of dark corners but there is no blacker spot on our collective past than the mother and baby homes. Hearing about hundreds of bodies in a septic tank in Tuam is one, horrific, thing but reading a book which makes it feel very personal is another matter entirely. Wills’ uncle gets a local girl pregnant in 1950s rural Cork and her cousin Mary is born in the Bessborogh Sacred Heart Home. Mary goes on to also become pregnant out of wedlock and ends her own life. Wills documents a ‘culture of silence’ that stained everyone it touched. (Gill Books) Rooney has been contributing his unique scraperboard (pencil drawings completed by scalpel) artwork to Hot Press since I was a very small boy. This book stemmed from work commissioned for The Story Of Ireland BBC documentary series, where he felt a particular and personal affinity for our ancestors who lived and died during the famine. His pieces are intensely moving, especially those depicting starving villagers, the workhouse, famine ships, and a striking work called ‘Death Stalks The Land’ in particular. (Head Of Zeus) I reckon Jordan is a better writer than a filmmaker, but he’s pretty hand at both disciplines and this poetic memoir handily combines them. Covering the background he came from to get where he is, his start in the movie industry assisting John Boorman with the Excalibur script in 1981 which helped him break into directing when Film On 4 took interest in Angel, and then onto success with The Crying Game, Interview With The Vampire, and Michael Collins, the star names like Liam Neeson, Julia Roberts, Tom Cruise, Cillian Murphy, and even Sinéad O’Connor come thick and fast. Who Killed Una Lynskey? – Mick Clifford, Murder At Lordship: Inside The Hunt For A Detective’s Killer – Pat Marry & Robin Schiller, Atlas of the Irish Civil War: New Perspectives – edited by Héléne O’Keeffe et al, A Season of Sundays – Sportsfile (Viking) A beautiful, sweeping epic that sways and flows like the mighty rivers within it, Shafak’s masterful novel has one drop of water at its centre which falls on to the head of King Ashurbanipal in the ancient city of Nineveh, then as snow on to the tongue of a baby born by the Thames in 1840 who grows up to uncover part of The Epic Of Gilgamesh, and then on to the present day. A brief overview can’t do justice to a novel that addresses global and sexual inequality and who holds dominion over history and how we are all joined to it. (Hutchinson Heinemann) Having already covered trees in his Pulitzer Prize-winning 2018 novel The Overstory, Powers turns his attention to the oceans, specifically the Pacific, which covers around 32 percent of the planet’s surface, more than all its landmass combined. The work of oceanographer Evie Beaulieu inspires Todd Keane who gets caught up in the ‘third industrial revolution’ of computing and creates an artificial intelligence. His school friend Rafi Young, a literature devotee, marries Ina Aroita, moving back to her island home of Makatea where all the strands of this ecological call to arms/plea for a less human-centric approach to tomorrow come together. (Viking) Boyd, an exceptional writer who gave us 2022’s fabulous The Romantic, maintains that writing 2014 James Bond caper Solo was ‘tremendous fun’ so why wouldn’t he want to create a secret agent of his own? Rather than ape Ian Fleming’s man, he goes in another direction. Gabriel Dax is a mediocre travel writer, who gets dumped by women, can’t hold his booze, isn’t much cop with firearms, and – Bond would balk – uses a second hand bicycle at one point. He is, despite all that, extremely likable and rumour has it Boyd plans to bring him back again in the future. Good. (Michael Joseph) The sickeningly handsome Pierce Brosnan, the most un-Navan Navan man of all time, came to fame through Remington Steel, a TV detective show where an eminently qualified woman hired a chancer to take her place in order to be taken seriously in a man’s world. That was in the 1980s but imagine how much worse it was in the 1580s where Picoult imagines Emilia Bassano, possibly the Dark Lady of the sonnets, as the actual author of the bard’s plays, who procures a hack actor by the name of Will Shakespeare as her Remington. Clever and pointed storytelling. (Hamish Hamilton) The third in her Trojan War series, The Voyage continues Barker’s remarkable retelling of ancient history/myth from the point of view of the women caught up in it. This entry covers the return to Mycenae by the victorious Agamemnon after the fall of Troy, haunted by the sacrifice of his daughter Iphigenia who he dispatched ten years before to please the gods. Naturally, Queen Clytemnestra is equally unhappy and out for revenge. She represents the past coming to claim its due from cruel, insecure, and superstitious men in the same way the priestess Cassandra stands in for all the unheard women of the ancient world. Odyssey – Stephen Fry, Table For Two – Amor Towles, You Like It Darker – Stephen King, The Ministry Of Time – Kaliane Bradley, James – Percival Everett, Godwin – Joseph O’Neill, Precipice– Robert Harris, Blood Ties – Jo Nesbo, Proof Of Innocence – Jonathan Coe, Karla’s Choice – Nick Harkaway (William Collins) Nobody does war like Hastings and Operation Biting is the book equivalent of a bank holiday movie. A brilliant chap in the air ministry notices mentions of the ancient goddess Freya, who could see for miles thanks to a stolen necklace, in German signals intercepted by the boffins at Bletchley Park. A raid is proposed to the Combined Operations HQ led by the vainglorious Lord Mountbatten. There’s also a “fantastically indiscrete” French spy, a horny novelist, and all manner of stiff upper lip types in a caper that should have gone sideways but managed to pull off a badly needed propaganda coup. (Torva) Terrifying step-by-step examination of the nightmare scenario where North Korea launch a nuclear attack on the United States. Thousands of years of groping towards civilisation are reversed in a mere seventy-two minutes. Rule 42 of the Geneva Convention is violated as the Koreans target a nuclear power plant, prompting the US to respond by levelling Pyongyang. However, the missiles have to overfly Russia, which drags them into the conflict along with the Chinese, who border Korea, and it’s game over for everyone. The matter-of-factness of Jacobsen’s account is chilling. (Viking) For those of a certain age, the Challenger Space Shuttle disaster is as ingrained in the memory as the JFK shooting or 9/11 is for others because we watched it happen on television. Higginbotham puts the work in, interviewing all involved and leaves you aghast at the risks NASA took throughout its history to maintain the forward motion needed to guarantee continued funding. Their Space Flight Participation Programme added teacher Christa McAuliffe to the crew, the reason why so many school children were watching when it all went wrong in January, 1986. The subsequent investigative hearings, starring Richard Feynman, are equally fascinating. (Allen Lane) ‘Why would anyone of sound mind send troops into a nuclear disaster zone?’ This question is at the heart of this scarcely believable account of the 35-day occupation of the infamous Chernobyl plant that followed Putin ordering the troops in after claiming Ukrainians were planning to produce WMDs. US intelligence had presumed that Russian forces would bypass the exclusion zone on their way towards Kyiv because what sane person wouldn’t? Heroes like foreman Valentyn Heiko emerge and a counteroffensive takes Chernobyl back, although Russia still controls Europe’s largest nuclear plant at Zaporizhzhia which is good news for nobody. (Profile Books) Let’s be honest, the art world, and the vast sums of money thrown about within it, is patently ridiculous. Don’t get me wrong, I can be as moved as the next fella by a well-placed daub but a book like this – Whitfield meets Inigo Philbrick as a student, they go into the art business, Philbrick thrives only to be arrested later on for one of the biggest art frauds ever (in the neighbourhood of $86 million) – will leave you convinced it’s all a massive cod. The author’s recounting of his mate’s moral-free machinations is guaranteed to have you picking your jaw up off the floor. The Siege – Ben Macintyre, Knife – Salman Rushdie, Autocracy, Inc – Anne Applebaum, Nexus – Yuval Noah Harari, A Voyage Around The Queen – Craig Brown, Sonny Boy – Al Pacino, A History Of The World In 12 Shipwrecks – David Gibbins (Faber) Celebrated producer Boyd (Nick Drake, R.E.M.) wrote a fine memoir back in 2006 (White Bicycles) but this gargantuan exploration of where the music came from is on another level altogether. Bursting with anecdote and big names like Paul Simon in Africa, George Harrison going Indian and Ry Cooder heading to Cuba, each chapter is really a book on its own, especially his exploration of the Jamaican sound from its birth out of American R&B to its influence on hip-hop. His take on technology in modern recording will separate the (old) men from the boys but this is required reading. (PVA Books) While lists are all well and good, the best music writing is about feel and how, like an aural equivalent of Proust’s biscuit, it takes you back where you once were. These essays cover everyone from Shostakovich to Dylan because everything ever recorded can hit someone in the right way and provide ‘a personal soundtrack to particular experiences’. Like all such compendiums you’ll nod in agreement – Aingeala Flannery on The Smiths and dodgy hairdos, Brian Dillion on Iggy Pop – and howl in anger – Wendy Erskine’s heretical disparagement of Rod Stewart – but that’s half the sport. (Nine Eight Books) As evidenced by the announcement only last month of a forthcoming Apple access (and excess) all areas documentary about the band, interest has yet to flag for the Fleetwood Mac story, perhaps the greatest soap opera in rock history. Blake captures it all, from Peter Green’s (‘the greatest guitarist of his generation, and then he wasn’t’) blues boomers to the wild success of Rumours, which definitely did not result in cocaine being blown up someone’s jacksie, and beyond. Everyone from Status Quo to Harry Styles chips in to a tale that never tires. (Bantam) ‘Why don’t old rockers retire?’ cub reporters often ask me in the halls of HP HQ, although I fear their ire aims at superannuated codgers like Stuart Clark and myself rather than Jagger et al. Hepworth, a commentator always worthy of attention, answers such queries with a why the hell would they? Using Live Aid as his starting point, where the old guard were reborn, he shows why McCartney, Springsteen, and even the relatively sprightly Bono became rock’s aristocracy and are still packing them out at a stadium near you. Old is not as old as it used to be. (Harper Collins) A half-formed rumour about Mitchell scribbled on an alley wall would be worth reading, not to mind this extensive biography, although Powers argues she isn’t a biographer at all, which covers everything Mitchell related, from the polio partly responsible for her unique guitar playing, to her time in Laurel Canyon, where talented men around her were left in the ha-penny place by her otherworldly creativity. Powers doesn’t shy away from ‘missteps’ like Joni’s blackface on the cover of Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter and is also, admirably, unsure about her recent resurgence. The book a genius deserves. Kate Bush’s Hounds Of Love – Leah Kardos, The Blues Brothers – Daniel De Visé, Street-Level Superstar: A Year With Lawrence – Will Hodgkinson, The Secret Public – Jon Savage, Uncommon People – Miranda Sawyer, Pressure Drop: Reggae In The Seventies – John Masouria
Say you picked up a shiny new TV this holiday season. You unbox it like a kid at Christmas and prepare yourself to binge-watch Squid Game 2 . You think to yourself, "This is 2024. TV technology is sizzling, and it's going to look amazing no matter what." So you plug it in and don't take one look at the default settings. Big mistake. I've been guilty of it. And I'm okay with that because it's widely accepted that the majority of consumers neglect to alter the most basic settings when setting up their TVs. Even if your TV is a few years old, you may have never modified its defaults. Also: I tested Samsung's 98-inch 4K QLED TV, and here's why it might be worth the $13,000 For Samsung TVs , in particular, you can change a few settings to improve your viewing experience and make a dystopian survival thriller look that much more appealing. Following are six tips for doing just that. 1. Turn off Eco Mode Pretty much all TVs now come with a form of "Eco Mode" turned on by default. Eco Mode is designed to limit power usage by attenuating the TV's brightness and reducing its contrast level. A recent study found that enabling Eco Mode saves as little as $7 a year on your electric bill. (That's literally less than two cents per day.) Whether "eco" is short for economy or ecology , that's not a significant saving, and there are myriad ways to more effectively reduce your carbon footprint. Also: I changed these 5 TV settings to lower my electric bill. Here's why they work To disable Eco Mode, click the gear button on your Samsung remote to access the settings. Then follow this path: All Settings > General and Privacy > Power and Energy Saving > Energy Saving Solution. Lastly, toggle Energy Saving Solution off. 2. Turn off Brightness Optimization While you've already navigated to Power and Energy Saving, go ahead and disable Brightness Optimization by toggling it off as well. Many TVs now come with optical sensors that can detect how bright your room is and how warm or cold that light may be. Then, the TV adjusts automatically, supposedly optimizing brightness and color temperature based on that data. This isn't always reliable, and the feature might end up giving you worse results, especially in a room where illumination may change, like on a sunny day with big clouds darkening the sky. 3. Choose a Picture Mode designed for film I find that Movie, Cinema, or Filmmaker modes are generally best because they aim to provide the most accurate and faithful representation of the content creator's vision. Also, by reducing unnecessary image processing, these modes minimize the risk of introducing artifacts and other image quality issues. Go to All Settings > Picture Mode. Then flip through these three options (Movie, Cinema, or Filmmaker) to find your favorite. Also: Samsung Frame TV 2024 vs. 2023: Comparing the key differences The default Standard mode tends to yield a cooler or bluer color temperature. TVs often come with a Vivid mode, which Samsung calls Dynamic mode. I'd advise staying away from that, as both Dynamic and Sports modes can make colors look too intense, with the whole picture having a harsh radiance. These modes are more commonly used by retailers when setting up display TVs, as the colors will pop more vibrantly in storefronts. 4. Adjust Brightness levels to suit your eyes Finding an ideal brightness level will depend on what kind of content you're watching. While HDR (high dynamic range) is steadily becoming more prevalent, decades of film are still limited to SDR (standard dynamic range). However, you can easily adjust your brightness levels for both scenarios. For SDR, open any app, such as Prime, and don't start playing a video yet. Now go to All Settings > Picture > Expert Settings > Brightness (Note that on certain Samsung models, this is found under Picture Setup.) Move the sliders to find the sweet spot (in your opinion) for SDR brightness. Also: The next big HDMI leap is coming next month - what the 2.2 standard means for you To adjust HDR brightness, you'll first need to find a video displayed in high dynamic range. Going to YouTube TV is a quick way to ensure you are watching HDR content because many of its videos are labeled with short descriptions indicating their type. Alternatively, you can simply search for "HDR video." The brightness level you choose is a matter of personal preference, but you will see a distinction when viewing both technologies (SDR/HDR). HDR looks best to me with the brightness maxed out. You might find that SDR looks ideal when set at a lower level. 5. Experiment with Local Dimming Another setting that impacts brightness levels is Local Dimming, which is available on Samsung TVs in three options. Go to All Settings > Picture > Expert Settings > Local Dimming. Experiment with this by sampling Low, Standard, and High to see which one suits you best. Set to Low, Local Dimming provides less halo and blooming around bright objects on dark backgrounds. On Samsung TVs, my preference is High because it keeps flashpoints bright without surrounding images with a halo. Now that you've modified Local Dimming, you might want to go back and check your brightness levels on both SDR and HDR content to see if they're satisfactory. 6. Turn off Motion Smoothing for cinematic viewing Most movies are (and always have been) filmed at 24 frames per second. The purpose of Motion Smoothing is to interpolate images in footage shot at 24 FPS in order to reduce blur and juddering. This can be beneficial when watching sports because live television is shot at 30 FPS. Another common default feature, however, is Motion Smoothing, which has earned the reputation of giving TVs a "soap opera effect." By that description alone, you probably get the idea. I think of it as glossy vs. matte in photographic prints, with glossy describing the soap opera effect, which resembles a live broadcast. While I'm always aiming for an immersive viewing experience, I don't need to feel like I'm on the set with the actors and crew shooting the scene. Also: The best Samsung TVs of 2024: Expert tested Go to All Settings > Picture > Expert Settings > Picture Clarity Settings (Note that on Samsung TVs, Motion Smoothing is called Picture Clarity or Auto Motion Plus.) From here, you can entirely turn Picture Clarity (Motion Smoothing) off or choose Custom Settings. There, you can adjust the sliders for Blur Reduction and Judder Reduction, which you might opt to increase if watching a soccer match or playing a video game. For conventional (filmic) aesthetics, though, turning off Motion Smoothing is the way to go. If you get a new Samsung TV this Christmas, congratulations! Now, take a few minutes to maximize its potential. If you have an older model, you can still treat yourself to a better-looking picture with a few clicks of the remote. ZDNET's product of the year: Why Oura Ring 4 bested Samsung, Apple, and others in 2024 I tested Samsung's 98-inch 4K QLED TV, and watching Hollywood movies on it left me in awe I let my 8-year-old test this Android phone for kids. Here's what you should know before buying This ThinkPad checks all my boxes for a solid work laptop. Here's why it stands out
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If you’re gym mad, then the festive period is no reason to slack off (and it might even provide a good excuse to escape the family). The good news is that most London gyms are open over the Christmas holidays – some even on Christmas Day. For those who can’t get to class, several studios also have online classes to tide you over. Iuliana Capilnar, personal trainer at the east London The Gym Factory, believes that keeping up your schedule is a good thing. “staying active during the holidays can be challenging, but it’s important to remember that fitness isn’t seasonal. Even if you can just manage a small bit of movement, go for it, because every little step takes you closer to your goals, meaning you don’t have to “start again” in January. So, here’s where you can get your fitness fix over the festive break. If you want to work out on Christmas Day, head down to the large, well-stocked gym in east London, which has two floors with extensive selection of cardio and weights machines along with a huge range of free weights. Open 7am-10pm weekdays; Saturday 9am-9pm; Sunday 10am-6pm. gym-factory.co.uk Want climb on Christmas Day? London has several climbing walls open, including EustonWall, VauxWest, RavensWall, and BethWall, which will be open from 9am-5pm. Mile End climbing wall is open daily from Boxing Day onwards, including NYE and New Year’s Day. londonclimbingcentres.co.uk FRAME, across London FRAME’s five London clubs are open every day except 25th and 26th December and the 1st January. Angel and Victoria are also closed on the 24th December. “We’re open every other day for strong moves and good moods,” co-founder Pip Black says. There’s also FRAME online, where they have hundreds of classes filmed. moveyourframe.com While all the Fitness First London clubs are closed on Christmas Day and Boxing Day, many of the clubs are open up until Christmas Eve and from the 27th, except a few including the Oxford circus, Fenchurch Street and Berkeley Square branches. fitnessfirst.co.uk Those looking for their Barry’s hit, there are classes right up until lunchtime on Christmas Eve across all seven London studios. All studios are closed for Christmas Day and Boxing Day, with a slightly reduced schedule operating from 27th – 31st December (classes available from 7.30am - 5.30pm and from 8.45am - 5.30pm on January 1st). Normal service resumes from January 2nd. Classes at the south London yoga studio are closed on Christmas Eve and re-open from the 27th. For those looking for their yoga fix on Christmas Day, the studio has online classes available. basicspacelondo.com GYMBOX’s five London clubs are open until Christmas eve and reopen on the 27th from 6am; Ealing and Elephant and Castle are also open on New Year’s Day. gymbox.com East of Eden is open for spinning, strength, reformer, calisthenics, reformer Pilates, yoga and Pilates classes every morning except Christmas day, Boxing Day and New Year’s Day. eastofeden.uk Reformer Pilates and Functional Fitness classes (and sessions in the infrared sauna) are running until the 24th (albeit with a reduced timetable), back open from the 28th December, and closed on the 1st and 2nd. studioanatomy.co.uk The luxury gym Third Space’s 13 London locations are all open up until 4pm on Christmas Eve, and back open on the 27th; they close again at 4pm on New Year’s Even until the 2nd . thirdspace.london The ten Hotpod Yoga studios are open throughout the festive period, excluding Christmas Day and Boxing Day (Putney, Tottenham Hale and South Wimbledon all offering a limited number of Boxing Day classes). All studios, excluding Putney, also open on New Year’s Day. The chain is offering a special ‘Festive Pass’ with unlimited yoga for 14 days from 18-31 December for prices ranging from £20-30, dependent on studio. hotpodyoga.com PURE GYM has 80 clubs across London, all of which will close at 4pm on 24th December and will remain closed on Christmas Day. Most of the 24/7 gyms will reopen at 8am on 26th December, (except Aldgate, Moorgate, Tower Hill, Farringdon, Marylebone, Bayswater, Fulham which will remain closed on Boxing Day too) and selected other sites, including Acton and Kentish Town, Edgware, Borehamwood, Holloway Road, and Ealing Broadway will also re-open on the 26th December.NAPLES, Fla. -- Narin An handled the windy conditions with a hot putter on Thursday, making four straight birdies around the turn and finishing with an 8-under 64 for a one-shot lead in the CME Group Tour Championship. At stake for the 60-player field is a $4 million prize to the winner, the largest single-day payoff in women's golf. Nelly Korda already has won more than that during her sterling season of seven wins. Now she faces an eight-shot deficit over the next three days at Tiburon Golf Club if she wants to end her year in fitting fashion. Korda, coming off a victory last week, couldn't make amends for her three bogeys and had to settle for an even-par 72. She has come from behind in four of her victories, and still has 54 holes ahead of her. But it has made the task that much tougher. Everything felt easy for An, a 28-year-old from South Korea who has never won on the LPGA and has never cracked the top 10 in any of the 16 majors she has played. “Today my putt really good,” An said. “The speed was good and the shape was good. I just try to focus a little bit more.” She had a one-shot lead over Angel Yin, who shot 30 on the back nine, including an eagle on the par-5 17th hole that most players can easily reach in two. Former U.S. Women's Open champion Allisen Corpuz and Marina Alex were at 66, with Lydia Ko leading the group at 67. Despite the wind so typical along the Gulf Coast of Florida, 27 players — nearly half the field — shot in the 60s. “It's a good head start for the big ol' prize we get at the end of the week,” Yin said. Whoever wins this week is assured of breaking the 17-year-old LPGA record for most money earned in season. The record was set by Lorena Ochoa in 2007 at $4,364,994, back when the total prize money was about half of what it is now. Ochoa earned $1 million for winning the Tour Championship in 2007. The opening round followed a big night of awards for the LPGA Tour, where Korda officially picked up her first award as player of the year, which she clinched earlier this month . Ko was recognized for her big year, highlighted by an Olympic gold medal that put her into the LPGA Hall of Fame. She regained plenty of focus for the opening round on a course where she won just two years ago. “The course isn't easy,” Ko said. “I set a goal of shooting 3 under today, and somebody shot 8 under. I was like, ‘OK, maybe I need to make a few more birdies.’ It's a course that can get away from you as much as you can shoot some low scores, so I’m just trying to stick to my game plan and go from there.” Also in the group at 67 was Albane Valenzuela of Switzerland, already celebrating a big year with her debut in the Solheim Cup and her first appearance in the Tour Championship. She made a late run at her first LPGA title last week at Pelican Golf Club, and kept up her form. And she can see the finish line, which is appealing. “I everyone is looking at that $4 million price tag,” Valenzuela said. “I try not to look too much at the result. I feel like in the past I’ve always been stuck on results, and ultimately all I can do is control my own round, my own energy, my own commitment. “It's the last week of the year. It’s kind of the bonus week. No matter what, everyone is having a paycheck.” ___ AP golf: https://apnews.com/hub/golf
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Trump's 25% tariff would be devastating for Canada — but it would be devastating for the U.S. too, economists say
