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In reporting on measles outbreaks, the mainstream corporate media routinely claim that for every 1,000 children infected, one will die from the virus. Their source for this claim is U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The trouble is, though, that it’s a lie.
Take the New York Times. On February 22, America’s newspaper of record reported that measles “kills one or two children out of every 1,000 who get it, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.” On April 3, the Times again claimed that in the US, “measles kills about one in every 1,000 victims.”
Those are just two examples I happen to have noticed, but they’re representative. It’s an oft-repeated claim. And, indeed, the CDC does state on its website that “For every 1,000 children who get measles, one or two will die from it.”
That’s the message that the CDC wants put out there, to be broadcast for public consumption by the lazily and dutifully compliant corporate media. But the CDC knows perfectly well that it’s false.
Alex Jones breaks down how vaccines are used to trigger deadly amounts of fluoride and glyphosate already present inside your body, from tap water and agricultural produce, and weaken the blood brain barrier’s blockade of these killer chemicals.
In fact, illustrating just how lazily complicit in propagating this lie the New York Times is, we can actually see that it’s false by turning to the Times’ own reporting and doing something that journalists and editors there evidently refuse to do and expect us not to do: independently thinking.
Here’s what I mean: On March 11, the Times reported with respect to measles that “Before 1963, it infected some four million people every year in the United States alone. Nearly 50,000 of them would land in the hospital with complications like severe diarrhea, pneumonia and brain inflammation that sometimes resulted in lifelong disability. Of the 500 or so patients who died from these complications each year, most were children younger than 5.”
The first point to make here is that, at an average of 500 deaths per year, the odds of dying from measles were less than the odds of dying from drowning in a bathtub; drowning in a swimming pool; slipping, tripping, or stumbling; or accidental suffocation in bed. While the incidence of measles had remained fairly steady over time, the mortality rate had already plummeted well prior to the introduction of the vaccine in 1962. Here’s what that looked like:
This reduction in the mortality rate obviously had nothing to do with the vaccine. It was rather the result of an increasing standard of living, including better nutritional status among the population. Vitamin A deficiency, for example, is a known risk factor for complications from measles, and the World Health Organization (WHO) actually uses high dose vitamin A supplementation as a treatment for measles infection. (Rampant malnutrition is one of the major reasons measles mortality remains so high in developing countries.)
And this dramatic decline in mortality in the US wasn’t true just for measles. As a paper published in 2000 in the journal Pediatrics noted, “nearly 90% of the decline in infectious disease mortality among US children occurred before 1940, when few antibiotics or vaccines were available.” Hence “vaccination does not account for the impressive declines in mortality seen in the first half of the century.” (Emphasis added.)
The second point to make is that the numbers presented to us in this instance by the Times give us a very different measles death rate. Let’s do the math. There were about 500 deaths per four million cases of measles infection. That’s not 1 death, but about 0.1 deaths per 1,000 cases. It’s one death per 10,000 cases.
(While there may also have been unreported measles deaths, they were likely few, especially in relation to unreported cases, since deadly complications would obviously be noticeable to surveillance systems, while benign infections wouldn’t; and for something like encephalitis, measles would be an obvious culprit to consider as cause of death. So let’s just assume that the official number for deaths is roughly accurate. Also, to be precise, given four million cases per year, the number is 1.25 deaths per 10,000 cases, but I’ve rounded for simplicity.)
In other words, when the Times and other news media claim that one out of every 1,000 infected children dies from measles, they are misreporting the death rate too high by an order of magnitude.
What can explain this? Well, the most obvious explanation is that saying one in 1,000 children die from measles is a lot more frightening than saying that one in 10,000 die from it, and when it comes to the topic of vaccinations, the New York Times and rest of the mainstream media, in dutiful service to the state, demonstrably engage in public policy advocacy rather than doing journalism. The evident intent is to scare parents into vaccinating their children, and providing the actual death rate of 0.1 per 1,000 just wouldn’t have the same motivational impact.
Maybe there are other explanations, but I can’t think of any. Perhaps I’m being unimaginative in coming up with another, but whatever the reason for it, the claim that it’s one death for every thousand measles-infected children is a blatant lie—and while we may give full benefit of the doubt to unthinking journalists and newspaper editors, for the CDC’s part, it is also a very deliberate lie.
If you’re thinking that the explanation must be that the Times got mixed up somehow by providing numbers showing a death rate closer to one in 10,000, you’re wrong. The Times is getting those numbers directly from the CDC, too.
As indicated, the rate of one per 1,000 refers to reported cases, which is misleadingly known as the “case fatality rate”, even though, as the CDC knows perfectly well, the vast majority of cases were not reported.
As the CDC’s “Pink Book” notes, “Before 1963, approximately 500,000 cases and 500 deaths were reported annually, with epidemic cycles every 2–3 years. However, the actual number of cases was estimated at 3–4 million annually. More than 50% of persons had measles by age 6, and more than 90% had measles by age 15. The highest incidence was among 5–9-year-olds, who generally accounted for more than 50% of reported cases.”
So between 83 percent and 88 percent of cases were unreported, according to the CDC. Again, that’s approximately one to two deaths for every 10,000 cases. And, again, when CDC officials claim that “For every 1,000 children who get measles, one or two will die from it”, they know perfectly well that they are lying to us.
Vaccine Failure and the Shifting Risk Burden
The CDC’s Pink Book also states that “Death from measles was reported in approximately 0.2% of the cases in the United States from 1985 through 1992.”
That’s two per 1,000 reported cases, an increase in the death rate during the vaccine era compared to the pre-vaccine era.
Curiously, the CDC’s Pink Book does not provide a case-fatality rate for more recent years. But we can learn from a paper by Gregory A. Poland and Robert M. Jacobson published in 1994 in Archives of Internal Medicine (now JAMA Internal Medicine) that, by 1990, the death rate had risen “dramatically” to 3.2 per 1,000 reported cases.
While it may seem counterintuitive that mass vaccination would result in an increased death rate, it actually makes perfect logical sense, if you understand a phenomenon that neither the CDC nor the media ever mention: vaccine failure.
As explained by Poland and Robertson (two experts who certainly do understand this phenomenon), this outcome reflected “the increased incidence of measles infection in infants and adults relative to children older than 1 year of age.” (Emphasis added.)
In other words, mass vaccination had shifted the risk burden away from those in whom it is generally a benign illness and onto those in whom it poses a significantly greater risk of potentially deadly complications: infants and adults.
Unable to locate any references to the measles death rate in more recent years, I searched a public database on the CDC’s website and found that from 1999 through 2017, there were twelve deaths in the US for which the underlying cause was determined to be measles. Two cases were in infants under one year old, two others were children aged one to four, and the remaining two-thirds were in adults aged twenty-five or older.
This is again reflective of the shifting risk burden. Today, because of mass vaccination, adults are at higher risk than they were in the pre-vaccine era in the event of exposure to the measles virus.
During the same period of time, there were 2,393 reported cases of measles in the US, or about 126 cases per year on average (with great variation from year to year and a peak of 667 cases in 2014).
That works out to five deaths per 1,000 reported cases, an 80 percent increase in the death rate from the pre-vaccine era.
But, remember, back then, measles was virtually a childhood rite of passage. Nearly everyone was infected at one time or another, and the vast majority of cases were benign and went unreported, whereas today there are likely relatively few cases that escape attention, so 5-per-1,000 is a conservative estimate of the increased risk in the event of infection. (For illustrative purposes, let’s just assume that there are twice as many measles cases as the number reported, and so we arrive at the lower figure of 2.5 deaths per 1,000 actual cases. Compared to the pre-vaccine rate of 0.1 per 1,000, that’s still a 96 percent increase in the risk of death in the event of infection.)
This outcome isn’t because measles has become more virulent than it was in the 1950s. Again, it rather reflects the shift in the risk burden away from children and onto infants and adults.
So why the increased incidence among adults relative to children over age one? The simple and obvious answer is that, while natural infection conferred a robust lifelong immunity, the immunity conferred by the vaccine wanes over time so that vaccinated individuals may lose their immunity later in adulthood. This is known in the medical literature as “secondary vaccine failure”.
The phenomenon of “primary vaccine failure” refers to the failure of the vaccine to stimulate a protective level of antibodies in a certain percentage of children. It’s estimated that this occurs in anywhere from 2 percent to 10 percent of vaccinated children.
In other words, the oft-repeated theory that “herd immunity” can prevent outbreaks of measles as long as a vaccination rate of at least 95 percent is maintained is known to be false.
As Poland and Robertson explicitly stated, “outbreaks can continue to occur unless the vaccine is virtually 100% effective and virtually 100% of the population is immunized.” They reiterated that vaccine-conferred “herd immunity does not appear to operate as a protective mechanism until nearly 100% of the population undergoes seroconversion.”(Emphasis added.)
And since infants are too young to be vaccinated, 2 percent to 10 percent of children do not seroconvert, and the vaccine-conferred immunity wanes over time to leave people vulnerable in adulthood, achieving that public health goal is a logical impossibility.
We’ve already seen the explanation for the increased incidence among adults. But infants are too young to get vaccinated, so neither type of vaccine failure directly explains why they’re at higher risk now during the vaccine era in the event of infection. So what does explain it? This one isn’t quite so obvious, but there is a simple answer, and it likewise has to do with vaccine failure and the opportunity costs of vaccination.
It’s because, during the pre-vaccine era, infants were better protected through maternal passive immunity. Mothers had been infected during childhood and so had gained a robust immunity, plus, since the virus was still widely circulating, they experienced natural boosting of antibodies through reexposures. Hence, they were able to pass on a high level of protective antibodies to their infants prenatally through the placenta, as well as postnatally through their breastmilk.
Today, however, mothers, having been vaccinated during their childhood and thus having lost the opportunity to gain the more robust immunity conferred by natural infection, and having also lost opportunities for exogenous boosting of antibodies due to interruption of transmission by mass vaccination, aren’t as well able to confer maternal immunity to their infants.
In short, it is in part because the vaccine has worked so well to reduce incidence of measles that mass vaccination has actually resulted in an increased risk to infants in the event of infection. This phenomenon is well recognized in the scientific literature. (See here, here, and here for examples.)
To put it another way, what mass vaccination has done is to destroy the natural herd immunity that the US population was already well into developing before the introduction of the vaccine, which conferred protection to those most at risk of serious complications: infants and adults.
So how come the CDC doesn’t want to talk about this? How come you never hear the term “vaccine failure” discussed in mainstream media reporting on measles outbreaks? How come the public is not informed that the dramatic reduction in measles mortality seen during the twentieth century was due to an increasing standard of living, not vaccination? How come there is not a peep in the mainstream discourse about the shifting risk burden and the loss of maternal passive immunity? And how come the public is routinely told that measles kills one child for every thousand infected when public health officials know perfectly well that the actual figure is something closer to one per ten thousand?
Draw your own conclusions.
The viewpoints expressed here do not necessarily represent those of Infowars.
Alex Jones breaks down the true origins of ‘Earth Day’ and lays out how the Globalists are planning on fueling phony outrage about environmental conservation to usher in their technocratic control system over every nation of the world.
Source: InfoWars
The logo of Exxon Mobil Corporation is shown on a monitor above the floor of the New York Stock Exchange in New York, December 30, 2015. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson
April 23, 2019
SINGAPORE (Reuters) – Exxon Mobil Corp said it has signed a 20-year agreement to supply liquefied natural gas (LNG) to China’s Zhejiang Energy, as the U.S. oil and gas giant steps up marketing of the fuel in China, the world’s second-largest buyer.
Under the sales and purchase agreement, Exxon Mobil will supply 1 million tonnes a year of the super-chilled fuel to the provincial government-backed Zhejiang Energy, Exxon said in a statement late on Monday.
The agreement, which follows a framework deal announced last October, did not give details on price or timing, or say where the supplies will be sourced.
Exxon Mobil said last year it would deliver the LNG starting in the early 2020s, while LNG supplies to China would come from its global portfolio.
The U.S. firm has been expanding its portfolio of LNG, including from upcoming projects in Mozambique, Papua New Guinea, Qatar and Golden Pass in the United States.
Zhejiang Energy is building a 9 billion yuan ($1.34 billion) receiving terminal for the fuel in Wenzhou, in the eastern province of Zhejiang, with annual handling capacity of 3 million tonnes.
Chinese state oil and gas major Sinopec will be a partner in the terminal.
Chen Zhu, managing director at Beijing-based consultancy SIA Energy, said the Exxon-Zhejiang deal was separate from U.S.- China trade negotiations under which Chinese firms are expected to eventually boost purchases of U.S. gas.
“The gas supplies to the Zhejiang firm will come from Exxon’s portfolio production outside the U.S.,” Chen said, adding that the Wenzhou terminal is likely to be operational in 2022 or 2023.
Exxon already has two long-term LNG supply agreements in China, one each with Sinopec and CNPC, China’s largest state oil group, she said.
(Reporting by Chen Aizhu and Jessica Jaganathan; editing by Richard Pullin)
Source: OANN
A rescuer assists a search dog as they try to reach survivors at a collapsed four-storey building following an earthquake in Porac town,, Pampanga province, Philippines, April 23, 2019. REUTERS/Eloisa Lopez
April 23, 2019
PORAC, Philippines (Reuters) – Rescue teams in the Philippines searched for signs of life beneath the rubble of a collapsed four-storey commercial building on Tuesday after a strong earthquake shook the country’s biggest island, killing at least 11 people.
Heavy lifting equipment and search dogs were used as dozens of firefighters, military and civilian rescue teams raced to shift piles of concrete in the town of Porac, about 108 km (67.1 miles) northeast of Manila, where a 6.1 magnitude earthquake destroyed several buildings on Monday.
During the night, seven people were rescued and four dead bodies were pulled out of the rubble of the commercial building, which had caved in on a ground floor supermarket, officials said.
“The rescue is ongoing, they are still hearing a sound, no one can say how many were still trapped,” Pampanga provincial governor Lilia Pineda said in a radio interview.
The quake, which struck at 5 p.m. local time on Monday, was initially reported as being of 6.3 magnitude and later revised down to 6.1 magnitude, the U.S. Geological Survey and Philippines seismology authorities said.
The Philippines is prone to natural disasters, located on the seismically active Pacific “Ring of Fire”, a horse-shoe shaped band of volcanoes and fault lines that arcs round the edge of the Pacific Ocean.
The earthquake was felt strongly in key business areas of Manila, with residential and office buildings evacuated after being shaken for several minutes. Train services were halted and roads and sidewalks were clogged by the sudden exodus of workers.
The government declared Tuesday a holiday for civil servants in Metro Manila to allow for safety inspections of buildings.
The international airport in Clark, a former U.S. military base in Pampanga, remained closed for repairs, while parts of a one corner of a historic church in the province collapsed.
(Reporting by Eloisa Lopez and Peter Blaza; Additional reporting by Neil Jerome Morales and Karen Lema in MANILA; Writing by Martin Petty; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore)
Source: OANN
Former President Barack Obama marked Earth Day on Monday with praise for young activists “stepping up to save the one planet we’ve got.”
Obama tweeted:
“Young people all over the world are leading the way in the fight to protect our planet because they know their future depends on it. This Earth Day, I want to celebrate the courageous, committed young leaders who are stepping up to save the one planet we’ve got.”
In particular, Obama lauded Greta Thunberg, a Swedish teen who helped fuel an interest in young people to fight climate change.
“They’re people like 16-year-old @GretaThunberg, whose protests at Swedish parliament sparked a movement,” Obama wrote in a separate tweet.
“Inspired by Greta’s action, Fridays for Future brought together more than a million strikers on every continent last month to demand action on climate.”
The former commander-in-chief’s message was in contrast with that of President Donald Trump, whose Earth Day tweet stressed “historic economic and job growth,” but made no mention of climate change.
“Environmental protection and economic prosperity go hand in hand,” Trump said in a statement issued Monday. “A strong market economy is essential to protecting our critical natural resources and fostering a legacy of conservation.”
Source: NewsMax America
FILE PHOTO: Mar 13, 2019; Norman, OK, USA; Oklahoma quarterback Kyler Murray participates in positional workouts during pro day at the Everest Indoor Training Center at the University of Oklahoma. Mandatory Credit: Jerome Miron-USA TODAY Sports
April 22, 2019
The 2019 quarterback class has a consensus top four, but all four bring wildly different styles, skill sets, strengths, weaknesses — and opinions from evaluators.
Let’s dig into the “wows” and the “red flags” for each, starting with the likely first overall pick.
Kyler Murray, Oklahoma
Wow: Twitchiness as a thrower
His explosiveness as a runner is obvious, but Murray’s athleticism also translates seamlessly to his throwing ability. That sounds natural but is far from a given — just ask Blake Bortles or Paxton Lynch.
His sharp, active feet stay under him for balance but are always ready to move and reset for a new platform. Likewise, his arm is a whip that lashes out from any angle with a snappy release. Together, these tools help him throw extremely quickly from myriad positions with precision.
On the 10-yard touchdown against UCLA, Murray threw with just enough touch to get over the defensive line and the linebacker but also with enough zip to beat the cornerback. The ball placement was perfect. His tape is littered with throws like this.
Murray’s twitchiness also helps him stay on schedule even when forced to move early. On long touchdowns against Iowa State and Alabama, he had to move immediately after his play-fake but quickly reset from an unnatural platform to flick a flawless deep ball. In both cases, he kept the play on time despite immediate pressure — had he taken any longer, like most QBs would, his receiver would be too far downfield to hit in stride.
More than ever before, NFL schemers excel at creating simple reads and open targets for their quarterbacks. In turn, getting the ball from Point A to Point B with zippy precision — even amid adverse conditions — is a tremendously valuable skill.
Red flag: Inconsistent field vision and pocket movement
Murray’s hair trigger is important, because he is often a beat late to identify open receivers (and sometimes overlooks them entirely). His eyes aren’t as quick as predecessor Baker Mayfield’s, and they pinball at times instead of reading smoothly through a progression. Whether because of his short stature, Murray fails to see open receivers now and then.
Linked to inconsistent vision is a lack of polished pocket movement. Leaning on his athleticism, Murray often defaults to juke-and-escape mode — dropping his eyes at times — upon seeing/feeling pressure, rather than stepping up or sliding. That instinct can pay off with big plays, but it cuts both ways.
Murray will overreact to perceived pressure at times and rush unnecessarily, as seen on a third-and-8 against Baylor and his lost fumble against Texas. On the former, he scanned right past his running back — wide open up the seam against an overmatched linebacker — and an open receiver near the sideline. He scrambled and took a hit short of the sticks.
Against Texas, Murray juked himself into pressure while holding the ball loosely with one hand (a consistent tendency), creating his own fumble despite no rusher threatening until after he moved.
On third-and-11 against Alabama, Murray did a better job stepping up calmly, but his head bounced from left to right to left and back right again. He failed to spot a coverage bust to his left or anticipate a crossing route opening from left to right before he was sacked.
These aren’t all easy plays to make, but they highlight issues that will be exposed more often in the NFL. Murray had mostly terrific protection at Oklahoma, and the offense featured several half-roll concepts that moved the pocket slightly, slowing down opposing rushers.
If placed behind a porous offensive line early in the NFL, Murray will avoid some sacks and create big plays. But it also could exacerbate these issues, encouraging him to abandon reads and escape rather than refining his pocket movement and vision.
–Dwayne Haskins, Ohio State
Wow: Mental processing and field vision
A redshirt sophomore and one-year starter, Haskins’ lack of experience belies his advanced mental grasp of the game. Ohio State coordinator (now head coach) Ryan Day put a heavy burden on Haskins, shifting to more of a pro-style scheme with full-field progressions and asking him to set protections and change plays at the line of scrimmage.
Haskins rewarded him handsomely, showing quick eyes and processing, and finding targets late in the progression at a rate rarely seen from college quarterbacks.
These are high-level plays on obvious passing downs that many current NFL quarterbacks don’t make with regularity, but Haskins did so throughout 2018 and even more frequently late in the year.
The throw against Michigan State went to his fourth read, a backside dig, with perfect ball placement despite late pressure on second-and-14.
On third-and-7 against Northwestern, he stepped up smoothly from edge pressure — with both hands on the ball — before hitting his third read, throwing over a dropping D-lineman but with zip to beat the closing linebacker.
His touchdown against Washington was another fourth read. Haskins quickly eliminated covered routes to his right, scanned left — moving his feet with his eyes by sliding and stepping up — and layered a throw to the backside post on third-and-8. (Also notice, he signaled pre-snap to his slot receiver to run a hot route if the Huskies blitzed.)
Haskins also regularly uses subtle pump fakes and shoulder rolls to manipulate coverage, another high-level ability that some QBs never learn.
Recent history tells us the very best quarterbacks — Brady, Manning, Brees — win primarily with their minds. In just 14 career starts, Haskins has clearly shown the ability to do that.
Red flag: Response to pressure and inconsistent accuracy
Let your 16-year-old drive a Lamborghini long enough and he’s eventually going to crash it.
Day’s pro-style offense gave Haskins tremendous freedom, but it also allowed opponents to get more creative with blitzes, knowing they had time to get home as the quarterback went through full-field reads. TCU was the first to really stress Haskins with pressure, but he mostly responded well.
Penn State employed a similar blueprint with greater effectiveness, and Purdue and Michigan State followed suit, making Haskins uncomfortable and forcing misses or rushed decisions.
Facing repeated pressure in those games, Haskins’ accuracy went missing for stretches, even amid a clean pocket at times. His feet got lazy — a tendency he often overcomes with his arm — and his delivery rushed, leading to ugly misses.
At times, Haskins broke down in the pocket before pressure arrived and dropped his eyes to scramble, like against Penn State.
These issues are common for quarterbacks when pressured repeatedly — and outside of those poor stretches, Haskins’ accuracy was mostly razor sharp — but he will have to adapt to minimize negative stretches.
Whoever drafts Haskins will hope he improves at setting protections and finding answers against blitzes, trusting his mental acuity to win out as he gains experience. He also must sharpen his footwork and maintain it when pressured.
If not, Haskins’ coaches will be forced to protect him more through scheme — in other words, keep the Lamborghini off the highway. Nobody wants that.
–Drew Lock, Missouri
Wow: Arm talent and release
You’ve heard about Lock’s cannon by now, but his flexibility and speedy release are as valuable — if not more so — than his pure arm strength.
He overuses the sidearm slot, but Lock can whip the ball from funky arm angles like few outside of Patrick Mahomes, Aaron Rodgers or Matthew Stafford. Combined with a lightning release, he can be deadly.
Most of those throws were on-schedule to the first or second read, but as he showed on third-and-12 against Oklahoma State, Lock can occasionally conjure brilliance from nothing late in the down.
His quick delivery is also a weapon against blitzing defenses. A four-year starter, Lock earned the authority to audible at the line and used quick flicks to beat the rush for third-down conversions or explosive gains.
Notice against Florida how Lock saw the nickel cornerback communicating with the safety, anticipated blitz and signaled for his slot wideout to run a quick hitch. (The wideout nearly ruined the play twice, by false starting — no call — and then bobbling the throw.)
Given Lock’s tools and level of experience, it’s no surprise NFL coaches want to work with him.
Red flag: Inconsistent field vision and skittish pocket movement
However, Lock doesn’t read the field as sharply as you’d expect from a four-year starter.
While he occasionally works deep into a progression, his offenses were built on either-or reads from 2015-17. Missouri’s attack expanded in 2018, but Lock produced shaky results, and he never fully mastered some simple designs.
Even when presented open receivers on basic reads, Lock failed to pull the trigger at times.
On third-and-6 against Arkansas (in 2017), Missouri’s post/wheel concept worked exactly as intended, springing the tight end — the primary read — wide open. Lock stared at it but didn’t throw, instead scrambling into pressure (and committing intentional grounding).
On third-and-4 against Alabama, Missouri ran a mesh concept with a wideout screening for the running back on intersecting crossers. The back came wide open, but Lock stared at the wideout (covered by three Tide defenders) and never saw the back.
Tied to Lock’s inconsistent vision — and perhaps more worrisome — is an extreme lack of pocket toughness.
That’s not to say Lock won’t take big hits; he makes some great throws on tape while getting clobbered. But he shows an extreme aversion to pressure, which short-circuits his reads and promotes dangerously undisciplined pocket movement.
Lock drifts and fades with alarming frequency, relying on back-foot throws, even when pressure is not close. He rarely showed the inclination to step up or slide within the pocket. That won’t fly in the NFL, where quarterbacks must step up to prevent easy angles for pass rushers.
By drifting deeper, Lock repeatedly gave edge rushers a shorter corner to turn, hanging his offensive line out to dry. Against Oklahoma State, he broke a free blitzer’s attempted sack, but he should have stepped into a clean pocket much earlier, giving that rusher a more difficult path.
Lock did make progress as a senior, his first year in a remotely pro-style offense, but he has a long way to go. Given how difficult it is to teach and improve field reading and pocket toughness, he carries major risk.
–Daniel Jones, Duke
Wow: Pocket movement and toughness
A complete 180 from Lock, Jones has pocket toughness in spades.
Yes, Jones has clearly learned from QB guru David Cutcliffe to navigate the pocket with proper mechanics (active feet, two hands on the ball, eyes downfield, etc.). At the same time, he also has something you can’t teach — a willingness to sacrifice his body to maximize every play.
With a weak supporting cast at Duke, Jones faced tons of pressure: unblocked, off the edge, through the middle, and sometimes all of the above. He was willing to not only take hits, but also to move into more exposed positions seeking the best throwing platform.
The deep throw against Virginia Tech came less than three minutes into his first game back from a broken collarbone. Jones shuffled slightly left from one rusher and stepped into another, getting slammed by both, but his receiver failed to secure a gorgeous deep ball.
On third-and-13 against Miami, Jones saw the slot blitzer come free but didn’t let it affect his mechanics. He stepped up quickly and fired a dart for a first down.
On third-and-8 against Temple, he again stepped into a hit to get enough juice on a sideline throw for a conversion.
Red flag: Decision making
The play against Temple, however, also hints at a concern about Jones: He writes too many checks his arm can’t cash.
Jones’ arm strength isn’t poor, but it’s closer to average than good, and his delivery can border on being too methodical. He flashes a slight windup and rarely makes the quick-flick, multi-platform deliveries these other three quarterbacks do regularly.
That’s OK — some NFL starters have merely decent arm talent — but Jones too often plays with the recklessness of a stronger-armed passer. The throw against Temple wasn’t far from being intercepted, and his tape shows too many ghastly gambles.
As a Duke product working under Cutcliffe with connections to the Manning brothers, Jones often gets labeled as a cerebral signal-caller who dices defenses up mentally. But decisions like these show he has a long way to go.
While he works deep into progressions and makes sound pre-snap decisions at times, it’s difficult to excuse late-down-the-middle throws like the one against Virginia Tech (which three different defenders could have intercepted).
The dropped pick near the sideline vs. the Hokies is even more concerning. On a very simple two-man route concept, the out route opened immediately, but Jones stared and waited. His receiver reached the numbers before he began his throwing motion, late enough for the cornerback to close 5-plus yards of separation. (The throw was also too far inside).
Unless he strengthens his arm or quickens his release, Jones must play more conservatively to survive in the NFL. Compensating for less-than-ideal tools requires maximizing mental precision and minimizing poor decisions.
–David DeChant, Field Level Media
Source: OANN
Pedestrians walk in front of a banner of the Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi before the upcoming referendum on constitutional amendments in Cairo, Egypt April 16, 2019. REUTERS/Mohamed Abd El Ghany
April 22, 2019
CAIRO (Reuters) – Opponents of constitutional amendments that could see Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi stay in power until 2030 urged people to vote “no” on Monday, the third and final day of a referendum on the proposal.
The amendments would also bolster the role of the military and expand the president’s power over judicial appointments. The constitutional changes were approved by parliament last week.
While the amendments are expected to be passed in the referendum, observers say the turnout will be a test of Sisi’s popularity, which has been dented by austerity measures since 2016. He was re-elected last year with 97 percent of votes cast.
Sisi’s supporters say he has stabilized Egypt and needs more time to reform and develop the economy. Critics fear changing the constitution will shrink any remaining space for political competition and debate, paving the way for a long period of one-man rule.
Ahmed al-Tantawi, one of a small number of opposition members of parliament, said the referendum was being held against a backdrop of intimidation and “vote buying”.
The electoral commission said on Monday afternoon it had not received any formal complaints so far about any irregularities.
“We can say that the first two days of voting were held under the slogan, the ‘ticket and the cardboard box’,” Tantawi said, referring to reports that grocery boxes were being handed out to people in exchange for casting a vote.
“But there is a chance on the third day of voting for Egyptians, particularly the youth, to return things to their natural course,” he said.
Activists have posted photos on social media that appeared to show white cardboard boxes packed with groceries being handed out to people after they voted.
A Reuters reporter saw some voters receiving vouchers for groceries after leaving a central Cairo polling station, which they then exchanged for packages of cooking oil, pasta, sugar and tea at a nearby charity.
It was not immediately possible to verify who was distributing the food.
When asked about the boxes, Mahmoud el-Sherif, spokesman for Egypt’s election commission, said it was monitoring for any violations. But he added: “The commission has received no notifications or complaints of this kind so far.”
The commission says it has strict measures to ensure a fair and free vote, posting judges at each polling station and using special ink to prevent multiple voting.
If approved, the amendments would extend Sisi’s current term to six years from four and allow him to run again for a third six-year term in 2024.
They would also grant the president control over appointing head judges and the public prosecutor from a pool of candidates, and give Egypt’s powerful military the role of protecting “the constitution and democracy”.
Cairo’s streets have been adorned with banners encouraging people to vote, some of them backing a “yes” vote.
Ahmed Maher, a founder of the April 6 Movement, one of the youth groups behind the 2011 uprising that toppled President Hosni Mubarak, said Egyptians still had a chance to make their voice heard.
“Try to change the result, even by a small ratio,” he wrote in a message posted on social media. “Tell your relatives, friends and acquaintance to go down and say ‘No’.”
Some 61 million of Egypt’s nearly 100 million population are eligible to vote. The result is expected within five days.
(Reporting by Cairo bureau; Writing by Sami Aboudi; Editing by Aidan Lewis and Edmund Blair)
Source: OANN
FILE PHOTO: Demonstrators hold flags and banners as they return to the streets to press demands for wholesale democratic change well beyond former president Abdelaziz Bouteflika’s resignation in Algiers, Algeria April 19, 2019. REUTERS/Ramzi Boudina should/File Photo
April 22, 2019
By Lamine Chikhi and Hamid Ould Ahmed
ALGIERS (Reuters) – Five Algerian billionaires, some of them close to former president Abdelaziz Bouteflika who quit over mass protests, have been arrested as part of an anti-graft investigation, state TV said on Monday.
The five are Issad Rebrab, considered the richest businessman in the energy-rich north African nation who is especially active in the food and sugar refining business, and four brothers from the Kouninef family, it said.
Rebrab is chairman of the family-owned Cevital company, which imports raw sugar from Brazil and exports white sugar to Tunisia, Libya and elsewhere in the Middle East.
The Kouninef family is close to Bouteflika, who ruled Algeria for 20 years. Bouteflika stepped down three weeks ago, bowing to pressure from the army and weeks of demonstrations by mainly younger Algerians seeking change.
There was no immediate statement from those arrested.
The move came after Algeria’s army chief, Lieutenant General Gaid Salah, said last week he expected members of the ruling elite in the major oil and natural gas-producing country to be prosecuted for corruption.
An Algerian court has already summoned former prime minister Ahmed Ouyahia and current Finance Minister Mohamed Loukal, two close associates of Bouteflika, in an investigation into suspected misuse of public money, state TV said on Saturday.
Mass protests, which began on Feb. 22 and have been largely peaceful, have continued after Bouteflika’s resignation as many want the removal of an entire elite that has governed Algeria since independence from France in 1962. They also want the prosecution of people they see as corrupt.
Bouteflika has been replaced by Abdelkader Bensalah, head of the upper house of parliament, as interim president for 90 days until a presidential election is held on July 4.
Hundreds of thousands protested on Friday to demand the resignation of Bensalah and other top officials.
Bensalah has invited civil society and political parties on Monday to discuss the transition to elections but several parties and activists said they would not participate.
The army has so far patiently monitored the mostly peaceful protests that at times have swelled to hundreds of thousands of people. It remains the most powerful institution in Algeria, having swayed politics from the shadows for decades.
Salah said on April 16 that the military was considering all options to resolve the political crisis and warned that “time is running out”.
It was a hint that the military was losing patience with the popular upheaval shaking Algeria, a major oil and natural-gas exporter and an important security partner for the West against Islamist militants in north and west Africa.
(Reporting Lamine Chikhi and Hamid Ould Ahmed; writing by Maher Chmaytelli and Ulf Laessing; Editing by Gareth Jones)
Source: OANN
FILE PHOTO: Demonstrators hold flags and banners as they return to the streets to press demands for wholesale democratic change well beyond former president Abdelaziz Bouteflika’s resignation in Algiers, Algeria April 19, 2019. REUTERS/Ramzi Boudina should/File Photo
April 22, 2019
ALGIERS (Reuters) – Five Algerian billionaires, some of them close to former president Abdelaziz Bouteflika who quit over mass protests, have been arrested as part of an anti-graft investigation, Algerian state TV said on Monday.
The five are Issad Rebrab, considered the richest businessman in the energy-rich north African nation, and four brothers from the Kouninef family, it said.
The move came after Algeria’s army chief, Lieutenant General Gaid Salah, said last week he expected members of the ruling elite in the major oil and natural gas-producing country to be prosecuted for corruption.
An Algerian court has already summoned former prime minister Ahmed Ouyahia and current Finance Minister Mohamed Loukal, two close associates of Bouteflika, in a investigation into suspected misuse of public money, state TV said on Saturday.
Bouteflika stepped down two weeks ago after 20 years in power, bowing to pressure from the army and weeks of demonstrations by mainly younger Algerians seeking change.
But the protests, which began on Feb. 22 and have been largely peaceful, have continued as many want the removal of an entire elite that has governed Algeria since independence from France in 1962. They also want the prosecution of people they see as corrupt.
Bouteflika has been replaced by Abdelkader Bensalah, head of the upper house of parliament, as interim president for 90 days until a presidential election is held on July 4.
Hundreds of thousands protested on Friday to demand the resignation of Bensalah and other top officials.
(Reporting Lamine Chikhli and Hamid Ould Ahmed, writing by Maher Chmaytelli and Ulf Laessing; Editing by Gareth Jones)
Source: OANN
FILE PHOTO – Members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards march during a military parade to commemorate the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war in Tehran September 22, 2007. REUTERS/Morteza Nikoubazl/File Photo
April 21, 2019
By Lesley Wroughton, Arshad Mohammed, Jonathan Landay and Phil Stewart
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States has largely carved out exceptions so that foreign governments, firms and NGOs do not automatically face U.S. sanctions for dealing with Iran’s Revolutionary Guards after the group’s designation by Washington as a foreign terrorist group, according to three current and three former U.S. officials.
The exemptions, granted by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and described by a State Department spokesman in response to questions from Reuters, mean officials from countries such as Iraq who may have dealings with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, or IRGC, would not necessarily be denied U.S. visas. The IRGC is a powerful faction in Iran that controls a business empire as well as elite armed and intelligence forces.
The exceptions to U.S. sanctions would also permit foreign executives who do business in Iran, where the IRGC is a major economic force, as well as humanitarian groups working in regions such as northern Syria, Iraq and Yemen, to do so without fear they will automatically trigger U.S. laws on dealing with a foreign terrorist group.
However, the U.S. government also created an exception to the carve-out, retaining the right to sanction any individual in a foreign government, company or NGO who themselves provides “material support” to a U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organization (FTO).
The move is the latest in which the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump has staked out a hardline position on Iran, insisting for example that Iran’s oil customers cut their imports of Iranian petroleum to zero, only to grant waivers allowing them keep buying it.
‘WHY BE SO OPAQUE?’
Pompeo designated the IRGC as an FTO on April 15, creating a problem for foreigners who deal with it and its companies, and for U.S. diplomats and military officers in Iraq and Syria, whose interlocutors may work with the IRGC.
The move – the first time the United States had formally labeled part of another sovereign government as a terrorist group – created confusion among U.S. officials who initially had no guidance on how to proceed and on whether they were still allowed to deal with such interlocutors, three U.S. officials said.
American officials have long said they fear the designation could endanger U.S. forces in places such as Syria or Iraq, where they may operate in close proximity to IRGC-allied groups.
The State Department’s Near Eastern and South and Central Asian bureaus, wrote a rare joint memo to Pompeo before the designation expressing concerns about its potential impact, but were overruled, two U.S. officials said on condition of anonymity.
The action was also taken over the objections of the Defense and Homeland Security Departments, a congressional aide said.
“Simply engaging in conversations with IRGC officials generally does not constitute terrorist activity,” the State Department spokesman said when asked what repercussions U.S.-allied countries could face if they had contact with the IRGC.
“Our ultimate goal is to get other states and non-state entities to stop doing business the IRGC,” the State Department spokesman, who declined to be identified by name, added without specifying the countries or entities targeted.
Separately, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has replaced the head of the IRGC, Iranian state TV reported on Sunday, appointing Brigadier General Hossein Salami to replace Mohammad Ali Jafari.
Pompeo’s carve-outs appear designed to limit the potential liability for foreign governments, companies and NGOs, while leaving open the possibility that individuals within those groups could be punished for helping the IRGC.
“Under the first group exemption, the secretary determined that, generally – but with one important exception – a ministry, department, agency, division, or other group or sub-group of any foreign government will not be treated as a Tier III terrorist organization,” the State Department spokesman said.
A Tier III terrorist group is one that has not formally been designated as an FTO or a terrorist group under other laws, but that the U.S. government deems to have engaged in “terrorist activity,” and hence, its members may not enter the United States.
This exemption, a congressional aide and two former U.S. State Department lawyers said, appeared designed to ensure that the rest of the Iranian government, as well as officials from partner governments such as Iraq and Oman who may deal with the IRGC, would not automatically be tainted by its FTO designation.
Under U.S. law, someone who provides “material support” to terrorist groups is subject to extensive penalties. Material support is defined widely and can cover anything from providing funds, transportation or counterfeit documents to giving food, helping to set up tents or distributing literature, the Department of Homeland Security’s website shows.
A former State Department lawyer said the guidance quoted above seemed to signal visa officers should not reflexively deny applications from officials of foreign governments or businesses that might deal with the IRGC, but called the language unclear.
“Frankly, a lot of people are going to have questions about the impact of these exemptions. Why be so opaque about it?” asked the lawyer, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The State Department declined requests to explain the guidance language.
A SPLASH, BUT NOT A POLICY CHANGE?
“Under the second group exemption, the secretary determined that, generally, a non-governmental business, organization, or group that provided material support to any sub-entity of a foreign government that has been designated as a foreign terrorist organization … will not be treated as a Tier III terrorist organization,” the State Department spokesman said.
A congressional aide suggested the Trump administration wanted to signal it was ratcheting up pressure on Iran by targeting the IRGC, but not to disrupt diplomacy of U.S. allies.
“I got the sense that the administration was looking for a splash, but not a policy change,” said the congressional aide, speaking on condition of anonymity. “They are not necessarily looking to punish anyone. They are looking to scare people.”
However, the State Department also made clear it could go after individuals in exempted groups if they wished.
“The exemptions do not benefit members of an exempted group who themselves provided material support … or had other relevant ties to a non-exempt terrorist organization,” the agency spokesman said.
“This FTO designation, like other sanctions actions, has a number of unintended consequences that if left to play out in their natural way, would harm U.S. interests,” said former State Department lawyer Peter Harrell, alluding to the potential denial of U.S. visas to officials from partner countries.
“The State Department is trying to in a reasonable way limit those consequences,” he said.
(Reporting by Lesley Wroughton, Arshad Mohammed, Phil Stewart and Jonathan Landayj; writing by Arshad Mohammed; editing by Mary Milliken and G Crosse)
Source: OANN
FILE PHOTO – A man runs across a hill in front of the Sydney city skyline under a smoke tinted sky at daybreak September 5, 2012. REUTERS/Tim Wimborne
April 21, 2019
MELBOURNE (Reuters) – The environment has emerged as a major issue for Australian voters, a poll showed on Sunday, but healthcare and the cost of living are the top concerns ahead of next month’s elections.
For 32 percent of Australians, access to affordable health services is the biggest worry, followed by the cost of living at 31 percent and crime at 25 percent, according to the Ipsos Issues Monitor, cited by the Sydney Morning Herald.
But the monitor, Australia’s longest running survey of community concerns, found that 23 percent of respondents cited the environment as one of their biggest concerns, making it the fourth top issue.
At the last federal election in 2016, the environment ranked ninth at 14 percent.
“Now there is a real momentum around it,” the newspaper cited Ipsos social researcher Daniel Evans as saying.
According to government agencies and environmental organizations, Australians are paying increasingly more attention to climate change, renewable energy, drought, environmental regulation and protection of natural habitats, such as the Great Barrier Reef, under threat from global warming.
Two-thirds of Australians believe their country is already being affected by climate change and 46 percent agree that the change is “entirely or mainly” caused by human action, an annual climate survey issued by Ipsos this month suggested.
Australia’s A$1.87 trillion ($1.3 trillion) economy is slowing, but the number of voters for whom it is a major worry has fallen since the last election to 23 percent from 30 percent. It ranked as the fifth major concern in this month’s poll.
Australians vote on May 18, with opinion polls showing Bill Shorten’s center-left opposition Labor party well ahead and the coalition of Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s Liberals and the rural-focused Nationals heading for a resounding defeat.
(Reporting by Lidia Kelly; Editing by Nick Macfie)
Source: OANN
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