Author: Overcoming Adversity | Buteau’s Odyssey

Assata Shakur, a Black liberation activist who was given political asylum in Cuba after her 1979 escape from a U.S. prison where she had been serving a life sentence for killing a police officer, has died, her daughter and the Cuban government said. Shakur, who was born Joanne Deborah Chesimard, died Thursday in the capital city of Havana due to “health conditions and advanced age,” Cuba’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement. Shakur’s daughter, Kakuya Shakur, also confirmed her mother’s death in a Facebook post. Shakur’s case had long been a thorny issue in the fraught relations between the…

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — For two weeks, Memphis has been bracing for an influx of National Guard troops after President Donald Trump announced his intention to deploy them to the city. On Friday, residents finally learned more about that plan, and it looks to be very different from the deployments in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee said Friday that the troops will be part of a surge of resources to fight crime in the city that includes 13 federal agencies and state troopers. The National Guard troops will be from Tennessee, and they will be deputized by the U.S. Marshals Service…

Everyone knows Guillermo del Toro. He is the mastermind behind some of modern horror’s greatest works. From The Devil’s Backbone to Pan’s Labyrinth, he has shown a style and range that few other directors can compete with. However, del Toro may be finished with this unique style of film in a recent interview with Empire. Del Toro has been in the spotlight more than usual as fans anxiously await his new Frankenstein film. Netflix’s Frankenstein is set to release for a limited theatrical run on October 17th before its official release on Netflix on November 7th. However, Del Toro tells…

Democratic New Jersey gubernatorial hopeful Mikie Sherrill’s husband was also caught up in the Naval Academy cheating scandal that has rocked her campaign, court documents exclusively obtained by The Post show. Jason Hedberg was one of about four dozen midshipmen who sued top officials at the Naval Academy, Navy and Pentagon in 1994 in a desperate bid to block the Honor Board at Annapolis from deciding whether they should be dismissed from the school. “In compliance with the orders of their superior military officers, each named plaintiff was compelled to make inculpatory statements to Navy Inspector General investigators,” read the…

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky asked Trump in a closed-door meeting this week to sell Kyiv Tomahawk missiles to heighten the pressure on Russia to end its bloody war, according to reports and The Post’s sources. The missiles have far more range than any other missiles sent so far by Western allies — and could be key in strongarming President Putin at the negotiating table. “Sending even a single Tomahawk to Ukraine would scare the s–t out of the Russians more than almost anything else we could do,” a senior congressional aide told The Post. Zelensky meets with Trump on the…

Musician Doe Paoro is approaching music as a healer. With her new album Living Through Collapse, she aims to create a healing experience—both personal and collective. Lyrically, the album explores big questions about ancestry and revolution as well as intimate ones about Paoro’s personal experience. Sonically, it is by turns soothing and energizing. In this interview, Paoro reflects on the ways she brings her experience designing sound baths and guided meditations to the recording and performance of music. The idea that music has the capacity to heal seems intuitive, but few contemporary musicians make music explicitly as a healing art.…

Joel Sherman discusses the Mets, Yankees and Giants entering the final weekend of the MLB regular season.

A British explorer has made history by becoming the first person to reach seven of the planet’s most inaccessible places. Chris Brown, 63, is on a mission to visit all eight Poles of Inaccessibility (PIAs) – the exact spot on a continental land mass or ocean that is furthest from the sea or coast in any direction. He has already ticked off six of them in North America, South America, Africa, Australia, the Antarctic, and the oceanic pole at Point Nemo in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Chris Brown in a fur-hooded parka and life vest at the Northern…

The final stretch of Julius Randle’s Knicks tenure, which ended last Oct. 2 with a stunning blockbuster trade to the Timberwolves, found the star forward in a vulnerable situation. “At the end of that time, I was kind of at my darkest moment,” Randle told The Athletic. “Just miserable, like in a way where I just was not having fun going to work every single day.” Randle revealed that his five-season stint with the Knicks took a turn for the worse when he suffered a season-ending dislocated right shoulder against the Heat in January 2024. He had seen the Knicks…

Egyptian archaeologists recently uncovered a hidden harbor at an ancient temple connected to Cleopatra VII – an unexpected find for historians.  The Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities announced the discovery of the harbor on Sept. 18. It was found at the Temple of Taposiris Magna, about 30 miles west of Alexandria. The temple, built in the Ptolemaic era, was dedicated to Osiris, the Egyptian god of the afterlife. Though the temple from the 3rd century B.C. was constructed two centuries before Cleopatra ruled, it was still in use by the time she took power.  Cleopatra, who was respected in Egypt but vilified in…