Summer is still four months away in the Southern Hemisphere but Brazil is contending with a balmy winter, with record high temperatures and dry weather across much of the country

Rescuers in India have found more bodies as they dug through slushy debris and ice-cold water in a hunt for survivors after a glacial lake burst through a dam

The number of people sickened by salmonella from cut and whole cantaloupes has more than doubled in a week

Turkey's central bank hiked its main interest rate for the second month in a row on Thursday but analysts said the unwinding of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's unconventional policy...

Japan moves to reform its sex assault laws, finally recognising consent.

A suspect is in custody for the Gilgo Beach murders, an unsolved case tied to at least 10 sets of human remains discovered in suburban Long Island, New York, since 2010, according to two law enforcement sources.

With the release of the first College Football Playoff rankings, let's take a look at the New Year's Six bowl projections.

The road race incident involving Roberto Navarro took place at the intersection of Palm Coast Parkway and Old Kings Road in Palm Coast

President Joe Biden and actor-director Eva Longoria have welcomed hundreds to the White House lawn to watch “Flamin' Hot,” a feel-good movie about the origin of the spicy Cheetos snack

Virtual reality could help footballers improve their heading without the repetitive head impacts from a ball, a new study indicates. Players involved in a study at Manchester Metropolitan University’s Institute of Sport and its Department of Sport and Exercise Sciences demonstrated greater performance in ‘real world’ heading after training with a VR headset compared to a control group who did no training. The VR group also reported greater self-confidence and efficacy in their heading compared to the control group, the study found. Our findings show that virtual reality (VR) based training can be used to improve real-world heading performance. Dr Ben Marshall, Manchester Metropolitan University Institute of Sport The study, titled: ‘A preliminary investigation into the efficacy of training soccer heading in immersive virtual reality’, has been published in the journal Virtual Reality on Tuesday. It provides some insights into how players may be able to improve heading technique amid restrictions on training. Football Association guidelines advise against any heading training in under-12s, while a trial is ongoing in the current season and next season to eliminate deliberate heading completely from matches up to and including that age group. At ages 12 and 13, heading should be limited to a single session of no more than five headers, and no more than 10 headers per session for children aged 14 to 17, according to FA guidance. Even in adult football at all levels, players are advised to perform only 10 ‘higher force headers’ per training week, such as headers from crosses, corners, free-kicks and returning of goal kicks. The exposure to heading has been limited because of concerns over the sub-concussive impact of repetitive heading on a player’s longer-term wellbeing. The 2019 FIELD Study found professional footballers were three and a half times more likely to die of neurodegenerative disease than age-matched members of the general population. “With increasing restrictions of heading exposure to professional and youth soccer, it is evident that alternative methods for training heading confidence and technique will be required while it remains an integral part of the game,” the VR paper concluded. “The work presented here provides some initial evidence suggesting that immersive VR may have a place in any new approach to training this important skill.” A group of 36 adult recreational-level players, made up of 30 men and six women, participated in the study in total. The 36 were split into two groups of 18, with 16 men and two women in the control group who did not use the VR headsets between ‘real world’ heading sessions, and 14 men and four women in the VR group. The VR group used the Oculus Quest 2 head-mounted display, with the Rezzil Player 22 application used to provide the VR football heading training. Dr Ben Marshall, Lecturer in Sport and Exercise Psychology at the Manchester Metropolitan University Institute of Sport, said: “Our findings show that virtual reality (VR) based training can be used to improve real-world heading performance and that this method is more effective than not training the skill at all. “This is important as current training guidelines recommend limiting the number of physical headers performed in training for all age groups due to the associated long-term risks to player health. “Our findings suggest the inclusion of VR-based training could play an important role in developing football heading skills whilst reducing the number of real-world headers and sub-concussive head impacts that players need to be exposed to – which is really positive.”

Brie Larson thinks there is "so much more" to come from her Marvel Cinematic Universe character Captain Marvel.

Maximizing player rest and limiting travel demands were again part of the NBA’s formula for the coming regular season