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FILE PHOTO: Oprah Winfrey talks on stage during a taping of her TV show in the Manhattan borough of New York City, New York, U.S., February 5, 2019. REUTERS/Carlo Allegri
April 8, 2019
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Oprah Winfrey is donating $2 million to help rebuild Puerto Rico and support arts and cultural programs after the devastating 2017 hurricane.
The Hispanic Federation and the Flamboyan Arts Fund said in a statement on Monday that $1 million would go to support long-term needs after Hurricane Maria, and a further $1 million would be devoted to arts and culture programs on the island.
Winfrey, one of the most influential media moguls in the United States, said she was inspired by the efforts of musical theater creator Lin-Manuel Miranda, who took his hit stage show “Hamilton” to the island for a limited run in January.
“I was so moved by Lin-Manuel Miranda’s commitment to bring ‘Hamilton’ to Puerto Rico and support the community that served him growing up that I wanted to join in the revitalization efforts of an island so rich in culture, beauty and heritage,” Winfrey said in a statement.
Hurricane Maria, which struck Puerto Rico in September 2017, killed an estimated 3,000 people in the U.S. territory, destroyed homes and infrastructure, and left much of the island without drinking water or electricity for months.
(Reporting by Jill Serjeant; Editing by Bill Berkrot)
Source: OANN
A couple of days ago I stumbled upon a radio interview where the topic was safety and government oversight. I had tuned in at the exact moment when the interviewee said the following:
Well, my experience of 30 years in Washington, D.C. is the same Ronald Reagan had – you know, trust but verify. And when bad things happen, you need to verify if what he is saying is correct. I certainly question that there’s not a cozy relationship. All anyone has to do is look at the revolving door in Washington, D.C., and this agency and the industry to realize that there is a cozy relationship. Now the question is, is that cozy relationship having an adverse impact on the safety decisions being made?
Before I could ascertain what they were discussing in the interview, my mind began to race. Could it be clean water, Round Up pesticide lawsuits, climate change, vaccine safety, the opioid crisis? My question was quickly answered. The forum was an interview on National Public Radio(NPR) with former National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) chairman, James Hall, on the investigation into the recent tragedy of two Boeing 737 MAX airline crashes. Upon a rewind of the interview, I kept hearing references to “revolving doors” and “cozy relationships.”
David Greene, host of the show, asked,
“But are you saying there are documents that Boeing has showing that they’re – that the company and, potentially the FAA, knew that there were some problems, some of the very problems that may have caused these accidents, and that they certified the aircraft anyway?”
Mr. Hall responded,
“…the process that we presently have is a self-certification process by the manufacturer of the safety of the aircraft… what has happened is that these decisions have been made in commissions and rulemakings dominated by the industry in Washington, D.C.”
As reported by NPR, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) left the safety testing of the plane to the manufacturing company (Boeing) and that this practice could be found “a lot” in the federal government. James Goodwin of the Center for Progressive Reform stated, “The American public would be surprised, and maybe even concerned, if they knew how widespread the practice of self-regulation was.” I wondered what implications this example might carry for aviation safety, agriculture, vaccine safety, and generally for the future of government oversight and scientific inquiry.
Toward the end of the interview, Mr. Greene from NPR stated that recently he had asked FAA head, Dan Elwell, some of the same questions. In one answer, Mr. Elwell responded, “the FAA is an agency that is based on data, and they very much make their decisions, including keeping those planes in the air, based on data.” Dan Elwell, is a former Vice President of the Aerospace Industries Association, representing the most powerful aerospace industry companies. There remain some very tough questions to be answered by the manufacturers of the airline industry, like Boeing, and the “cozy relationship” it and other industry members enjoy with the government agencies responsible for regulating its operations and overseeing its compliance with public safety. But, let’s move on from that thread of public air safety and pause for an overview of the opioid crisis facing the United States.
Alex exposes the globalist agenda that uses government agencies to cover up their crimes against the population.
Public Air Safety to the Opioid Crisis
Earlier in March, the 13th to be precise, I saved a copy of the transcript from an interview between David Greene and Brian Mann, an NPR associate, who has been following developments in some of the lawsuits around the nation’s opioid crisis. In its introduction to the interview NPR reported,
“The opioid epidemic claimed 70,000 lives in 2017. To put that in perspective, that is more than the number of people who died annually at the height of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. And the pharmaceutical industry is going to spend much of this year answering some hard questions. Many blame pharma for our country’s opioid crisis. And this year, big drug makers, as well as pharmacy chains, are facing more than 1,500 lawsuits filed by state and local governments. Billions of dollars are at stake, and so are reputations. Johnson & Johnson, Purdue Pharma, CVS – those are just some of the companies targeted in these lawsuits.”
The following are excerpts from the interview:
Greene: I mean that there are internal company documents that are being made public, and some of them have been controversial, you’ve been finding.
Mann: Purdue executives, for example, can be seen secretly acknowledging that their prescription opioids were far more addictive and dangerous than they were telling doctors. At the same time, company directives kept pushing sales, pushing the salespeople incredibly hard to get more opioids into the hands of vulnerable people, including seniors and military veterans….We’ve also learned that Purdue Pharma executives developed a secret plan they called Project Tango, which they allegedly hoped might help them profit again from the growing wave of opioid addiction. The idea here was to sell addiction treatment services to some of the same people addicted to products like their own OxyContin… Which means for more than a decade, no one in the wider public knew how serious the allegations against Purdue and these other drug companies were. But this time, states and cities suing these companies seem eager to sort of pull back the curtain… the drug industry has fought these disclosures at every turn. They describe the information in these documents as proprietary, basically arguing its corporate property. But as more and more information comes out, it’s making people angry.
On a related topic, Mr. Mann expressed:
But according to the drug company’s own documents, firms including Johnson & Johnson pushed unscientific theories about drug addiction. They did so allegedly to convince doctors to prescribe even more opioids after patients showed signs of dependency. David Armstrong, the reporter with ProPublica, says this kind of disclosure is making it harder for the industry to protect its image.
Government Agency Collusion
Government agency collusion with different industries, to me, represented nothing short of corruption. I was reminded of the tobacco industry and how the Phillip Morris tobacco company organized its Boca Raton Action Plan in 1988, in an effort to “diffuse and re-orient” the voices and initiatives of those fighting tobacco in favor of public health. Also, how the World Health Organization (WHO) itself colluded with legal experts and doctors in the United States in favor of the tobacco industry and against public health. From this fiasco was coined the expression “tobacco science;” i.e. “Science” done on behalf of an interest defending its profits, like the science conducted by a cigarette company showing that cigarettes are safe.
And speaking of the WHO, I was also reminded of the 2009 H1N1 (swine flu) “pandemic.” In the spring of 2010, the Council of Europe was investigating the role of the WHO in declaring the H1N1 pandemic. Dr. Wolfgang Wodarg, an epidemiologist who at one time was head of the Health Committee of the Council of Europe, expressed concerns that the contracts for the vaccine were mostly confidential arrangements between the WHO, individual member states and the companies producing the vaccine. In fact, numerous countries, including Germany, France, Italy and Great Britain, entered into contracts with the vaccine manufacturing companies prior to the WHO’s declaration of an H1N1 pandemic. The contracts obligated these countries to purchase swine flu vaccinations under one condition: that the WHO issue a pandemic flu alert.
Transformed Relationships
In his farewell speech to the citizenry, U. S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower poignantly expressed his concern regarding the future of science and its partnership with government, and government with industry, when he said:
…the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research…The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded. Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.
I kept wondering about the revolving doors, the collusion, industrial interests, and the science that was supposed to provide a foundation upon which to rest our confidence, our trust. How did we get here? The short answer, and quite possibly the simplest, might be the privatization of knowledge, or as some have called it, the “selling of science.” Or, maybe it’s the troubled matrimony of science and technology, where an applied and economic gain becomes the foundational rationale for present and future scientific endeavor. Such an environment raises serious questions as to the future of knowledge, the advancement of the sciences, and potential impacts on our economic, social, and public health.
Aristotle reminded us that “knowledge is virtue.” It has a value unto itself; a purpose that serves no particular master other than the rational development of inquiry and respective methods for the development of that knowledge. Here resided the principles of the classic universities, places where questions were explored, answered, and questioned again. This was the meaning of science – never settled – but forever moving toward a better, safer, healthier, and more advanced state of human affairs. But what happens to science when the scientist is tied to private industry, where the principle objective of private industry is defined by its stockholders interests, investments, and profits, where the same industry that manufactures the product for profit is also the industry responsible for generating the science determining the efficacy, effectiveness, and safety of its product?
In his book, Science in the Private Interest, Dr. Sheldon Krimsky writes,
“The responsibility of the scientist begins with discovery and ends with commercial applications. Universities exist mainly to provide labor for industry and to help industry turn knowledge into technology; technology into productivity; and productivity into profits.”
What Dr. Krimsky refers to as “public interest science as a model of knowledge for human welfare,” has been redefined, or more crudely speaking, undermined by the transformation of the relationship between scientists at universities, private industries with their scientists, and the “cozy relationships” that exist between the two. In the book To Profit or Not To Profit, authors Walter Powell and Jason Owens-Smith state,
“The changes underway at universities are the result of multiple forces: a transformation in of the nature policymakers and key constituents. These trends are so potent that there is little chance for reversing them-nor necessarily a rationale for doing so.”
These changes have been referred to as characteristic of the scientist as entrepreneur, or parts of what Sheila Slaughter and Larry Leslie explore in their book Academic Capitalism. In it, they write:
“We would expect that faculty as professionals participating in academic capitalism would begin to move away from values such as altruism and public service, toward market values.”
The Transformation of Science and Scientists
The transformation of science and scientists that are lured into and seek financial support from private industry for any number of research-to-market projects has become an all too familiar scenario with potentially devastating consequences.
Most recently, the parents of one of the victims of the Egyptian Boeing airline, filed suit against Boeing and the Rosemont airline parts manufacturing industry. Reuters report states that:
Thursday’s complaint accuses Boeing of putting “profits over safety” and said the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration must also be held accountable for certifying the 737 MAX.
However, reports Reuters: “Legal experts say these cases face high hurdles since government officials and agencies are generally immune from civil lawsuits.”
Under the current science-to-market model, government oversight of any number of products, from airplanes, to drugs, to tobacco, and more, continues to demonstrate a complacency that favors market-driven profits over public safety. This reality should alarm anyone and all. What if, as some of the legal experts above claim, a U.S. citizen has no right to hold industry responsible for assurances of safety because those industries are tied to government agencies, or because those agencies derive profits or “benefits” from the “cozy relationships?” If you believe that the FAA and the FDA need to come clean regarding the “revolving door” and “cozy relationships” that experts have indicated exist between both agencies and private industry, why would we not consider the same for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)?
Arguably, a profoundly vivid parallel is seen in the policies and practices of mandatory vaccination and informed consent. Over the many years studying vaccination theory and practice, I discovered a disturbing similar pattern – the “revolving door” between the CDC and private pharmaceutical manufacturing companies, the conflicts of interest where different committees and their members are given waivers protecting conflicts of interest, payoffs to doctors for administering vaccines, fast-tracking of vaccines and safety studies with no use of double-blind placebo studies, and the very “cozy relationship” between members of Congress, “big pharma,” the CDC and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
In 1986, Congress passed the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act (NCVIA). For years families had been suing vaccine manufacturers for injuries their children suffered at the hands of vaccines. Threatening to discontinue vaccine production, the vaccine manufacturers asked for government assurances that their products would go forward unhindered. The 1986 law took all liability away from the manufacturers of vaccines, making it impossible to sue the industry. The same law stipulated that every two years the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) would submit a report to Congress on the state of vaccine safety. It was during this time that the numbers and doses of vaccines began a dramatic increase.
In 2017 Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Del Bigtree of the Informed Consent Action Network (ICAN) filed a suit before the U.S. Federal Court for the Southern District of New York. On July 27, 2018, HHS admitted the following before the court:
The [Department]’s searches for records did not locate any records responsive to your request. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Immediate Office of the Secretary (IOS) conducted a thorough search of its document tracking systems. The department also conducted a comprehensive review of all relevant indexes of HHS secretarial correspondence records maintained at Federal record centers that remain in the custody of HHS. These searches did not locate records responsive to your request, or indications that records responsive to your request and in the custody of HHS are located at Federal record centers.
Today in the United States, political, medical, and mass media leadership, infused by the interests of vaccine manufacturers, are currently engaged in a massive campaign to silence dialogue, ban books and websites, avoid debates, and impose that vaccines become mandatory for all with no respect to informed consent, religious beliefs, medical conditions, or personal conscience. Writing on a recent measles outbreak in Rockland County, New York, Celeste McGovern remarks,
“People, like those in Rockland County, don’t avoid vaccines because they are misled by “fake” news and Facebook – but because of the real stories of corporate greed and political cover-up and vaccine-injured children that are shared on those platforms. The data bears them out. There are millions of them.”
The very thought that censorship would become an instrument of intimidation, humiliation, a threat, and a practice violating human rights, should make anyone shiver. But maybe more importantly, the unbridled and crass censorship we are witnessing today on the topic of mandatory vaccination, its effectiveness and safety, should leave us asking: How is it possible that censorship becomes a principal upon which public policy and social interaction are defined in a democracy? Will the violation of the right to informed consent become the new paradigm applied to air travel, medications, vaccination, food, and more?
Personally, and professionally, I see nothing edifying and positive coming from the censorship of those that question. Boeing has explaining to do, as does the FAA. Furthermore, Johnson & Johnson, Purdue, CVS and the FDA, owe the people an explanation. Likewise, the HHS, CDC, and pharma owe the people many explanations about the safety of vaccines.
This is no time for silence.
The viewpoints expressed here do not necessarily represent those of Infowars.
Brian Stelter is famous for complaining too much.
Source: InfoWars
Anti-government demonstrators rally outside the defence ministry in Khartoum, Sudan, in this still image taken from a video obtained by Reuters, April 8, 2019. REUTERS TV/via REUTERS
April 8, 2019
By Khalid Abdelaziz
KHARTOUM (Reuters) – Sudanese soldiers intervened to protect demonstrators on Monday after security forces tried to break up a protest by thousands of anti-government demonstrators camping outside the Defence Ministry in central Khartoum, witnesses and activists said.
They said that riot police and secret service personnel charged the demonstrators with pickup trucks while firing tear gas, trying to disperse a crowd estimated at around 3,000 men and women.
But witnesses and activists said that soldiers guarding the compound had come out to protect the demonstrators, firing warning shots in the air.
The security forces retreated without firing back and soldiers deployed around the area, while demonstrators chanted “The army is protecting us” and “One people, one army”, witnesses said. There were no immediate reports of casualties.
Information Minister Hassan Ismail, who is also the government spokesman, contradicted the reports, saying:
“The crowd in front of the (military) general command has been cleared completely, in a way that resulted in no casualties among all parties …
“The security apparatus are coherent together and working with positive energy and in harmony,” he added.
Previous attempts by security forces have failed to disperse the protesters, who have vowed to stay until Bashir steps down.
Mostly small but sustained protests have been staged regularly since December, when the government tried to raise bread prices.
Sudan’s 40 million people are suffering from a severe economic crisis caused in part by years of U.S. sanctions and in part by the loss of oil revenues since South Sudan seceded in 2011.
The protests have since turned against Bashir, a former army general who came to power in a military coup in 1989.
Demonstrators accuse Bashir, who is wanted by international prosecutors for alleged war crimes in the westerly Darfur region, of presiding over years of repression and promoting policies that devastated the economy.
The government denies any atrocities in Darfur and blames U.S. sanctions for the economic hardships.
MEMORANDUM TO ARMY
Bashir has acknowledged that the protesters have legitimate demands but that they must be addressed peacefully, and through the ballot box.
On Saturday, activists, apparently energized by Algerian protesters’ success in forcing President Abdelaziz Bouteflika to step down, marched towards the Defence Ministry hoping to deliver a memorandum urging the army to side with them.
They chose the April 6 anniversary of a 1985 military coup that forced long-time autocrat Jaafar Nimeiri to step down after protests.
Thousands of demonstrators reached the ministry compound, which also houses Bashir’s residence and the secret service headquarters, despite attempts by police and secret service to stop them, and set up a camp there.
Witnesses said that the protests had swelled during the day but only a few thousand were camping overnight, fed water and sandwiches by fellow protesters.
(Reporting by Khalid Abdelaziz, writing by Sami Aboudi; Editing by Kevin Liffey)
Source: OANN
Apr 7, 2019; Minneapolis, MN, USA; Virginia Cavaliers guard Kyle Guy during a press conference for the 2019 men’s Final Four championship game at US Bank Stadium. Bob Donnan-USA TODAY Sports
April 7, 2019
MINNEAPOLIS – Lee Larkins first got his hands on Kyle Guy as an Indiana sixth-grader who might as well be shooting free throws with his eyes closed.
“I shot with two hands, kind of like (motions his hands over his forehead and pushes, palms high, in opposite directions),” Guy, now a junior at Virginia, said Sunday, about 16 hours removed from the heroic game-winning free throws that sent the Cavaliers to the national championship game and Auburn home from the NCAA Tournament.
A self-described slasher in middle school, Guy grew into a sharpshooter. There’s a Jimmy Chitwood — the sweet-shooting Hickory High School guard in the film “Hoosiers” for the uninitiated — on every block in Indiana, where hoops is a religion and virtually all other things take second billing. Not just on winter Fridays in high school gyms. Parents get the ball bouncing on the same day they toss the baby booties.
Guy credits, in part, his middle school guidance counselor, Larkins. Guy’s recollection was Larkins, who played football at Purdue and later coached there after playing middle school for Mike Fratello, forced him to work out with him.
“I have two daughters and they’re a little bit older than Kyle. He used to come into the gym, always had a basketball in his hand,” Larkins told Field Level Media on Sunday afternoon. “It started as — he went against all girls. All girls and him.”
Larkins is not the only basketball mentor in Guy’s life, although he remains a constant. So when Guy strolled to the line with the game hanging in the balance Saturday night with 0.6 seconds left, the Larkins family started celebrating. That included Larkins’ two older daughters who were part of the Kyle Guy Construction Project.
“He was built for this. This is what I texted him last night. Right away, my mindset is that he’s knocking these three down. This is what he trained his mind for,” Larkins said.
“At the end of every workout, we shot free throws with his eyes closed. He had to be at 80 percent. There was no doubt in my mind, this kid is going to make these shots. That same scenario, I guarantee you, he’s played it out in Lawrence Central’s gym. It’s a mindset we were trained on.”
Larkins only had to open the door once for Guy to keep showing up at practices. He begged to be coached hard, and picked up nuances of the game on the fly.
Before long, Larkins had no doubt about Guy’s destiny.
“We constantly worked on his shot, but he wanted to be coached and loved to be coached hard,” said Larkins, who now runs an AAU program and has coached women’s basketball at IUPUI.
“His grandmother was my boss. And then I told her and his dad, I said, ‘This kid can be Mr. Basketball.’ He picked up everything. Worked so hard. In my gym, I’m pretty fundamentally sound: Don’t fade away, straight up and straight down. He picked up from there. It shows now. Just a really good shooter.”
Not everyone peered through the same optimistic lens evaluating the spindly Guy, who floated under the radar of many major college programs. Larkins said his alma mater, Purdue, was not a fit because it already had slots filled — hello, Carsen Edwards — in which Guy would have fit.
“Virginia was a natural fit,” Larkins recalled.
“I tried to get him to Purdue. His grandfather and great grandfather are all (Indiana University) people. Kyle wanted something different. He wanted to get away, and write his own story. I think that was so much different than anyone else.
“Virginia was a great fit. When coach (Tony Bennett) came here and watched him, they were playing Lawrence North at the time. You could just see the relationship he had with Coach. It was a perfect, perfect match.”
The trust evident between Bennett and Guy paid off in a big way again Saturday. But Guy wants his original support system to know he’s taking the court for them, too, on Monday.
“I’ve been thinking about that a lot the last three weeks,” Guy said. “Not just what it would mean to win a championship with these guys, but to bring it home and represent my hometown and Indiana.”
* * *
Measured and reflective, Guy comes across as vulnerable with overtones of on-court confidence. He models his openness after his coach, Bennett.
It might not have been evident to observers when Guy, who shoots 86 percent from the free throw line, sealed Virginia’s win Saturday, but he battles extreme anxiety. He looked calm. He told himself he was calm. In reality?
“I was terrified,” Guy said. “But it was a good terrified.”
Pressure typically feels like a privilege until it has buckled you.
“The best thing I could do for Kyle is I pray for him a lot,” said Bennett, who identified five biblical pillars of his program and uses faith-based teaching daily.
“I do, and I’m there for him. We have a saying: be kind because everyone you meet is facing a hard battle. Some things you have to work through with yourself and the right kind of help, and he’s very honest about it. I try to encourage him and challenge him in ways and be there for him, coach him hard.
“We always talk about encouragement and accountability — being that way with him. I constantly think about him. It’s an extended family, so you are a father figure, to an extent, to them. I think about that stuff, and I do that for me. That’s really important for him. That’s probably the best thing I could say I did.”
* * *
Historically improbable, Virginia lost to UMBC in the first round of the 2018 NCAA Tournament. The March 16 defeat wasn’t just an upset — it was the first time a No. 16 seed knocked off a No. 1 in tournament history — it also was an emotional landmark for Guy.
At the time, it felt like a landmine. The impact settled well below the surface when the team bus required a police escort back to Virginia’s hotel in response to death threats.
Guy didn’t know where to turn. He went into a shell and tried to close himself off from society. The 20-point loss felt to Guy like a nightmare from which he couldn’t, and seemingly wouldn’t, escape.
Fighting out of the pit wouldn’t be a point-to-point venture.
Anxiety medication. Sports psychology. Sessions with Bennett. All of it helped. Nothing cured Guy.
He wrote himself a series of letters and ultimate liberation came through a social media post. Guy poured out his heart and soul into the emotion-charged writing at the behest of fiancee Alexa Jenkins.
“When that final buzzer sounded, I cracked. I cracked and the pressure got to me,” Guy wrote in a Facebook post 39 days after the UMBC loss, unwinding and expelling almost 2,500 words of pulverized anguish.
“If you know me or read my last passage you know I do not believe pressure is real, unless you let it be real. Pressure comes from thinking too much about the future or past so there can be such thing as no pressure if you just be where your feet are. Well I was right where my feet were but my mind raced to the past, the future, and the present. It was too much. I was hit with an overwhelming feeling of sadness, anxiety, and failure. All the sensations of that exact moment consumed me and I was no longer in control of my emotions.”
* * *
Writing became a necessary form of therapy. He shared, he asked and listened. And most important to Guy, he refused to forget. It didn’t take away the shame and the sting is still there — but it is now suspended intentionally by the 21-year-old.
His cellphone wallpaper and Twitter avatar are still set to the March 16, 2018, loss to UMBC. Soon enough, Guy says he’ll let it go. And if you wonder how often a 21-year-old college athlete checks a cellphone — “a lot.”
“It still stings every time I look at it,” he said.
But Guy crept out of his shell. He firmly believes a hand guided him here, to Minneapolis, to Monday night, to the precipice of a story of overcoming failure by refusing to repeat history.
It helped that when he felt like he was drowning a year ago, his mom reminded him his lifeguard walked on water.
He felt an unspeakable presence on the Virginia team outing — white-water rafting, the high-class kind that might not be a wise choice for someone battling anxiety — and an unshakable calm that emerges in-game with a smile that stretches to his earlobes.
“In a way, it’s a painful gift,” Bennett said of how the UMBC loss propelled Virginia to this point.
“It did draw us nearer to each other as a team. I think it helped us as coaches. I think it helped the players on the court and helped us in the other areas that rely on things that were significant. I knew it was going to be a really important marked year for all of us in our lives, and it’s certainly playing out that way.”
* * *
That echo helped carry Guy in this very NCAA Tournament, when he endured a shooting slump from 3-point range — 3 of 29 — that put the Cavaliers in peril in two of their first three games. Then came the regional final. Guy collected 21 points after halftime, 25 in all, and Virginia bounced Purdue to reach the Final Four.
Six points in the final 10 seconds on Saturday is now the string of splash plays Guy can recall when he rewinds his journey on and off the court.
“I think all of my life has led to this. Everything that I’ve been through made it a lot easier to hone in and try to knock down the free throws,” Guy said Sunday. “I said that I was terrified. It was a good terrified, though, a good nervousness in my stomach like, ‘This is my chance.’”
The climactic final chapter comes Monday.
Pressure is a privilege Guy would never consider passing on this time around. Imagining scissors fitted around his fingers to trim the nets hanging at U.S. Bank Stadium won’t bring anxiety Sunday night or Monday. Even knowing Texas Tech could be the team climbing the ladders to celebrate becoming champions brings a peaceful smile to Guy’s face.
“Every player and coach on every team has envisioned it, I’m sure,” he said. “But I think it’s important to realize that you don’t get to skip the game and just go down and cut the nets. We’ve got to focus on what’s in front of us. We’ve got to practice (Sunday) … and just focus. We’re excited.”
–By Jeff Reynolds, Field Level Media
Source: OANN
Rowing – 2019 Oxford v Cambridge – University Boat Race – River Thames, London, Britain – April 7, 2019 Cambridge celebrate winning the men’s boat race on the podium with the trophy REUTERS/Peter Cziborra
April 7, 2019
(Reuters) – Cambridge beat Oxford by two seconds to win the 165th men’s Varsity boat race on the River Thames on Sunday with double Olympic champion James Cracknell rowing himself into the record books as part of the victorious crew.
At the age of 46, Cracknell became the oldest person to compete in the race as Cambridge held off a late Oxford surge on the home stretch to win in a time of 16 minutes 57 seconds.
Cambridge had pulled ahead at the start and had a half-length lead at the mile mark despite a clash of oars. They then quickly extended their advantage to four seconds when they passed under the Hammersmith Bridge.
“On the start I thought: ‘I’ve missed this’,” Cracknell told the BBC. “The first few minutes were great but they just didn’t drop.
“To be honest the endurance wasn’t a problem. If I had any doubt it would have been my sprinting. I just made sure I stuck it in and hopefully we had enough in the bank.”
It was a victorious return to the water for Cracknell, who had retired from competitive rowing in 2006 but qualified for the event because he is studying for a Master of Philosophy degree in human evolution at Cambridge.
Cambridge also comfortably won their third successive women’s race earlier in the day with a time of 18 minutes 47 seconds, 17 seconds ahead of Oxford.
Cambridge’s men extended their head-to-head record to 84-80 while the women lead 44-30.
(Reporting by Rohith Nair in Bengaluru; Editing by Toby Davis and Clare Fallon)
Source: OANN
A contingent of troops will be pulled out of Libya due to escalating conditions of violence, US Africa Command announced on Sunday.
“Due to increased unrest in Libya, a contingent of US forces supporting US Africa Command temporarily relocated in response to security conditions on the ground,” AFRICOM said in a statement.
CLARIFICATION: A contingent of U.S. forces supporting AFRICOM temporarily relocated from Libya in response to security conditions. We will continue to monitor conditions on the ground and assess the feasibility for renewed U.S. military presence, as appropriate.
— US AFRICOM (@USAfricaCommand) April 7, 2019
“We will continue to monitor conditions on the ground and assess the feasibility for renewed U.S. military presence, as appropriate,” said AFRICOM spokesman Nate Herring.
The evacuation is reportedly a result of Islamic terrorist forces making inroads within the country.
“AFRICOM’s concern over the “evolving security situation” comes amid an offensive by the renegade general, Khalifa Hifter, whose forces are making an attack on the Libya capital of Tripoli. Various media reports say Hifter’s troops have made inroads and seized control of Tripoli International Airport,” Stars and Stripes reported.
Libya’s late dictator Muammar Gaddafi kept maintained peace under an iron fist among the country’s various warring factions until former President Obama ordered military action against him in 2011, resulting in his overthrow and murder, descending Libya into chaos ever since.
“The late Gaddafi was far from being an example of a benevolent selfless leader, having a record of military adventurism, alleged human rights violations and reported personal corruption,” RT reported. “Nevertheless he ruled the country with a firm hand for decades, navigating the labyrinth of conflicting tribal loyalties and keeping radical Islamist groups in check.”
Alex Jones breaks down how the globalists are attempting to collapse civilization within the next six months by intensifying their migrant fueled destabilization of the west alongside the chemical castration of the population by targeting food, water, and air with toxic pollutants worldwide. Their goal is to cull the population down to an easily manipulated / controlled few under their technocracy.
Source: InfoWars
FILE PHOTO: Survivors of cyclone Idai arrive at Coppa business centre to receive aid in Chipinge, Zimbabwe, March 26, 2019. REUTERS/Philimon Bulawayo/File Photo
April 7, 2019
BEIRA, Mozambique (Reuters) – Hundreds of thousands of people are in need of food, water and shelter after Cyclone Idai battered Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Malawi.
As of Sunday, at least 847 people had been reported killed by the storm, the flooding it caused and heavy rains before it hit. Following is an outline of the disaster, according to government and United Nations officials.
MOZAMBIQUE
Cyclone Idai landed on the night of March 14 near the port city of Beira, bringing heavy winds and rains. Two major rivers, the Buzi and the Pungue, burst their banks, submerging entire villages and leaving bodies floating in the water.
People killed: 602
People injured: 1,641
Houses damaged or destroyed: 239,682
Crops damaged: 715,378 hectares
People affected: 1.85 million
Confirmed cholera cases: 2,424
Confirmed cholera deaths: 5
ZIMBABWE
On March 16 the storm hit eastern Zimbabwe, where it flattened homes and flooded communities in the Chimanimani and Chipinge districts.
People killed: 185, according to government. The U.N. migration agency puts the death toll at 259.
People injured: 200
People displaced: 16,000 households
People affected: 250,000
MALAWI
Before it arrived, the storm brought heavy rains and flooding to the lower Shire River districts of Chikwawa and Nsanje in Malawi’s south. The rains continued after the storm hit, compounding the misery of tens of thousands of people.
People killed: 60
People injured: 672
People displaced: 19,328 households
People affected: 868,895
(Reporting by Emma Rumney and Stephen Eisenhammer in Beira, Tom Miles in Geneva, MacDonald Dzirutwe in Harare and Frank Phiri in Blantyre; Writing by Alexandra Zavis, Alexander Winning and Joe Bavier; Editing by Angus MacSwan and David Goodman)
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FILE PHOTO: A labourer cleans an underground sewer at Noida in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh September 2, 2010. REUTERS/Parivartan Sharma/File Photo
April 7, 2019
By Sai Sachin Ravikumar
MUMBAI (Reuters) – Five sanitation workers, all from the lowest rung of India’s caste system, were chosen in late February to meet a very important guest: Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
As cameras flashed, Modi proceeded to wash the feet of the workers, one by one, using water and his hands, a gesture intended to honor staff who clean toilets at the Kumbh Mela, a massive religious gathering in north India.
But sanitation workers, scores of whom die each year from asphyxiation while removing waste from underground drains, have had enough, said Bezwada Wilson, the head of the Safai Karmachari Andolan (SKA), or Sanitation Workers’ Movement.
Ahead of general elections that begin on Thursday, the workers are reminding Modi of his promise to eradicate by this year the practice of manual scavenging — the cleaning, carrying or disposing of human excreta from dry latrines and sewers.
“(Modi) has done nothing for us in the past five years,” Wilson said.
India has laws banning the hiring of manual scavengers, but they have not been properly enforced, mostly due to difficulty collecting evidence and apathy by successive governments. Workers picking up human waste with bare hands is a common sight at railway stations.
While government estimates peg the number of manual scavengers at anywhere between 14,000 and 31,000, the SKA says the figure is closer to 770,000, with nearly 1,800 sewer cleaners asphyxiating to death in the last decade.
The community has little political power and Modi remains the front-runner to win the election, but critics point to their condition as another example of lofty promises undone and the empty symbolism of washing their feet.
Wilson has launched a hashtag #StopKillingUs on Twitter and demanded government help workers find jobs that give them dignity.
Most sanitation workers find it difficult to get other work because of caste-based barriers, while many operate without formal contracts and are unaware of the terms of their employment, a study by U.S.-based advisory firm Dalberg shows.
The workers whose feet Modi washed in February are not satisfied with their jobs and want an end to manual scavenging, they told the Indian Express newspaper last month.
One said he was grateful for the honor, calling Modi a great man. But, he added: “There is no difference in our lives. We were doing this cleaning work before too, we continue to do it.”
More than 90 percent of latrine cleaners are women, and all sanitation workers are Dalits, the social group at the bottom of India’s caste system.
(Reporting by Sai Sachin Ravikumar; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani and Jacqueline Wong)
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A bridge over the Moju River is seen after collapsing and potentially affecting shipments of grains, such as soybeans and corn through northern ports at Alca Viaria complex in the Highway PA-483 in Acara, Para state, Brazil April 6, 2019. Fernando Araujo/Agencia Brasil/Handout via REUTERS
April 6, 2019
SAO PAULO (Reuters) – Part of a bridge over the Moju River in Brazil’s Para state collapsed early on Saturday, potentially affecting shipment of grains such as soybeans and corn through northern ports, local authorities and an agribusiness consultant said.
The bridge fell after it was hit by a boat, Governor Helder Barbalho said on Twitter, where he also posted videos of a large section of the bridge in the water. He said this was not the first time such an accident had occurred.
According to the official Agência Brasil news agency, two vehicles were crossing the bridge at the time of the collision.
“At the moment, our priority is searching for victims and giving complete support to their families,” Barbalho was quoted as saying in a statement from Para’s state news agency.
According to rescue workers, no crew or documents from the boat that collided against the bridge were found on the scene. The number of casualties was unclear.
Kory Melby, an agribusiness consultant based in the city of Goiania, said the bridge was on the main route connecting Brazil’s farm country to its northern ports.
“It will probably take years for that bridge to be rebuilt,” he said by telephone.
The consultant noted the bridge was located some 50 kilometers (31 miles) from Belém, capital of Pará state, where three major grain loaders operate, including Archer Daniels Midland Co, Bunge Ltd and Hidrovias do Brasil SA.
The companies did not immediately reply to requests for comment.
Melby said barge traffic would not be affected on the Tocantins and Amazon rivers, which use river ports including Vila do Conde and Barcarena. Some 10 to 20 percent of the soy grown in Brazil’s center west is delivered by road at those ports, he said.
Willians Ribeiro, a supervisor at Vila do Conde, told Reuters road traffic to that port would be affected but there were alternative routes.
Shipping statistics show some 5.7 million tonnes of soybeans and 3 million tonnes of corn were unloaded in 2018 in the region, a volume likely to increase due to port expansions, according to the consultant.
(Reporting by Alberto Alerigi; Additional reporting and writing by Ana Mano; Editing by Daniel Wallis and Rosalba O’Brien)
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Supporters of Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido, who many nations have recognized as the country’s rightful interim ruler, take part in a rally against Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s government in Caracas, Venezuela, April 6, 2019. REUTERS/Carlos Garcia Rawlins
April 6, 2019
By Vivian Sequera and Mariela Nava
CARACAS/MARACAIBO, Venezuela (Reuters) – After weeks of power cuts and limited access to water, tens of thousands of Venezuelans took to the streets on Saturday to back opposition leader Juan Guaido and protest against President Nicolas Maduro, who they accuse of wrecking the economy.
Venezuelans, already suffering from hyperinflation and widespread shortages of food and medicine, say the crisis in the chaotic country has worsened over the past month. That is when crippling nationwide power outages began to leave vast swaths of territory in the dark for days at a time, cutting off water supplies and cell phone service.
Guaido, head of the opposition-controlled National Assembly and recognized as Venezuela’s legitimate head of state by most Western nations, called for Saturday’s marches to mark the start of what he has billed as a new wave of “definitive” protests to oust Maduro.
Guaido invoked the constitution to assume an interim presidency in January, denouncing Maduro as a “usurper” after he began a second term following a 2018 national election widely considered fraudulent.
Maduro, who retains the support of the military and allies including Russia and China, has derided Guaido as a U.S. puppet and said he will face justice.
In Caracas, thousands of opposition supporters assembled at a main rally point in the eastern El Marques district. Protesters there said their homes had been without water for days and many had taken to drawing it from unsanitary pipes or streams running off the Avila mountain overlooking Caracas.
“We have to get rid of this usurper, and we can’t think about anything else,” said Claudia Rueda, a 53-year-old homemaker at the Caracas protest.
At one point, the crowd chanted, “The water has gone, power has gone, and now Maduro what’s missing is that you go too.”
Two massive power outages since February have led Maduro’s government to cancel school classes and work and left many businesses shuttered. The resumption of services has been uneven, with cities such as San Cristobal, Valencia and Maracay still reporting intermittent blackouts.
“We haven’t just come to demand water and power. We’ve come to demand freedom and democracy,” Guaido said at the Caracas rally, surrounded by a cheering crowd. “We can’t let ourselves become used to this, we can’t put up with it, we aren’t going to let these crooks keep hold of our country.”
While no immediate protest-related violence was reported in Caracas, witnesses reported clashes between protesters and police in the steamy oil hub of Maracaibo.
Protesters in the city, in the western state of Zulia, told Reuters police had fired rubber bullet rounds and tear gas to disperse them.
“I’m fed up. They hurt me, and though I was frightened, what it makes me most is angry,” said Denis Fernandez, a 25-year-old who said he had been injured by a rubber bullet.
Fernandez said his daughter had almost died from hepatitis a month ago, as hospitals had no supplies to treat her. When there is no electricity for air conditioning, he said he and his wife had taken to fanning their children at night to keep them cool.
The National Assembly, on its Twitter account, said two of its lawmakers had been arrested by authorities at the Maracaibo protest and demanded their immediate release. Venezuela’s Information Ministry did not respond to a request to comment.
The ruling Socialist Party staged a rival march in Caracas on Saturday but turnout was sparse, with just a few hundred people clad in red shirts and red baseball caps banging drums and dancing salsa.
Venezuela’s Constituent Assembly, an all-powerful legislature controlled by the Socialist Party, on Tuesday approved a measure allowing for the possible prosecution of Guaido by stripping him of his parliamentary immunity.
The chief prosecutor’s office has opened an investigation of Guaido and his alleged links to “incidents of violence” in January, but it has not yet ordered his arrest or officially charged him with any crime.
The U.S. government on Friday took another step in its efforts to force Maduro out, by imposing new sanctions on Venezuelan oil shipments, and promising “stronger action” against key ally Cuba for helping to keep his government afloat.
(Additional reporting by Mayela Armas and Shay Valderrama in Caracas, Anggy Polanco in San Cristobal, and Mircely Guanipa in Punto Fijo; Writing by Angus Berwick; Editing by Tom Brown)
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