The Rev. Billy Graham has been taken to a hospital in Asheville, N.C., with respiratory problems, a family spokesman said Wednesday.
"Mr. Graham is in the hospital with a respiratory congestion issue, similar to what he had a few weeks ago," Mark DeMoss said. "As was the case then, we expect he will be able to return home in a day or two."
Graham, who celebrated his 95th birthday earlier this month with a party in Asheville, was taken to Mission Hospital.
Graham's birthday celebration featured hundreds of well-wishers and what is being characterized as his final sermon.
In a video that was recorded over the past year, Graham delivered his familiar message about the saving power of Jesus Christ and expressed concern about the nation's direction. "Our country's in great need of a spiritual awakening," he declared. "There have been times that I've wept as I've gone from city to city and I've seen how far people have wandered from God."
His son, Franklin Graham, who now runs the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, said before his father's birthday that the elder Graham has the typical maladies of old age but "has not had any major illnesses in several years."
"The (stay) at Mission was kind of routine," Franklin Graham said of the first stay in late October. "An older person will have trouble with their lungs, sometimes ingesting water in their lungs, and it gives them an infection. He had a little bit of that, and they could put him on antibiotics and that seemed to clear it up, so we're thankful for that."
Franklin Graham said his father has poor eyesight and hearing, and he uses hearing aids, but he remains alert and engaged, keeping up with the news and his work.
Graham has preached to almost 215 million people in more than 185 countries and territories through various meetings, including Mission World and Global Mission, according to his Billy Graham Evangelistic Association website. Hundreds of millions more have been reached through television, video, film, and webcasts. Graham began building an international following in 1949, when his three-week Los Angeles Crusade drew overflow crowds.
Anthony-Claret is a software Engineer, entrepreneur and the founder of Codewit INC. Mr. Claret publishes and manages the content on Codewit Word News website and associated websites. He's a writer, IT Expert, great administrator, technology enthusiast, social media lover and all around digital guy.
Coffee may do more than wake you up. It may help your small blood vessels work better, a new study suggests.
But that doesn't mean you should guzzle gallons of java.
Previous research has shown that moderate coffee consumption may have some beneficial effects on cardiovascular health. However, the precise mechanism for this benefit is unknown, says Masato Tsutsui, one of the authors of the new research and a cardiologist and professor in the pharmacology department at the University of the Ryukyus in Okinawa, Japan.
Tsutsui and colleagues in Japan worked with 27 healthy adults, ages 22 to 30, who did not regularly drink coffee. On one day, each participant drank one 5-ounce cup of either regular caffeinated or decaffeinated coffee. Then researchers measured reactive hyperemia in the participants' left index fingers. This is a measure of vascular function that takes into consideration how well small blood vessels function. Two days later, the researchers repeated the procedure with the other type of coffee.
• Those who drank a cup of caffeinated coffee had a 30% increase in vascular function in the index finger over a 75-minute period, compared with those who drank decaffeinated coffee.
• Caffeinated coffee slightly raised participants' blood pressure and decreased finger blood flow, compared with decaf.
• Heart rate levels were the same when participants drank decaf or regular coffee.
Tsutsui says that caffeine may improve blood vessels' function. "Our findings give us a clue about how coffee may improve cardiovascular health." The new study was funded in part by the All Japan Coffee Association.
However, cardiologist Vincent Bufalino, a spokesman for the heart association and senior vice president for the Advocate Cardiovascular Institute in Chicago, says "it's hard to come to broad-based scientific conclusions based on this one small study. The research is limited to one cup of coffee."
This subject needs further investigation, including looking at what happens when people drink more caffeine, he says.
"Small amounts of coffee may have a benefit, but a higher consumption of coffee definitely raises blood pressure. It definitely raises heart rate, and it makes you more prone to heart palpitations," Bufalino says. "We see that every day in terms of the use of caffeine in patients. A lot of people sense that a cup of coffee gives them a lift but too much can have negative effects."
A study released last year showed that regular, moderate coffee consumption may significantly reduce a person's risk of heart failure. It found that drinking the equivalent of two cups of coffee a day appears to have the most significant benefit on heart health, when compared with no coffee consumption, but that drinking excessive amounts of coffee — five to six commercial coffee house cups a day — may increase the chance of serious heart problems.
Anthony-Claret is a software Engineer, entrepreneur and the founder of Codewit INC. Mr. Claret publishes and manages the content on Codewit Word News website and associated websites. He's a writer, IT Expert, great administrator, technology enthusiast, social media lover and all around digital guy.
Correction: An earlier version had an incorrect height for the tallest water slide in Brazil.
A photo of an under-construction water slide in Kansas City, Kan., with what looks to be a right-angle drop has social media users gawking and expressing fear.
The Verruckt Meg-A-Blaster is being called the world's tallest and fastest water slide and the park where it is being built says it will shatter records set by another slide in Brazil. According to Guinness World Records, the world's tallest water slide is the Kilimanjaro in Barra do Piraí, which is 164 feet high. The slide at Kansas City's Schlitterbahn park will debut May 23, when the park opens for the season, according to the Kansas City Star.
Verruckt is the German word for "insane."
The park will not reveal the details on speed and height until the slide opens, but a photo being distributed on social media appears to show a slide that falls at nearly a right angle with the ground.
"This new Meg-A-Blaster speed slide … is going to be a game changer for our industry," Schlitterbahn co-owner Jeff Henry said in a news release. "Our greatest challenge will be to find thrill seekers brave enough to ride."
Social media users reading posts or stories about the slide said they would be too frightened to try the slide.
One reader at the gawker.com site said, "I just feel like you'd fall off the side at some point and that would not be fun."
"My fear of heights/falling dreams look cuddly and fun compared to this," wrote another reader.
"Who's writing their liability policy?" wrote yet another.
Anthony-Claret is a software Engineer, entrepreneur and the founder of Codewit INC. Mr. Claret publishes and manages the content on Codewit Word News website and associated websites. He's a writer, IT Expert, great administrator, technology enthusiast, social media lover and all around digital guy.
PARACHINAR, Pakistan (AP) — A suspected U.S. drone carried out a rare missile strike in northwest Pakistan outside the country's remote tribal region on Thursday, killing six people, including at least two Afghan militants, Pakistani police and security officials said.
The missiles hit an Islamic seminary in Hangu district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province that was known to be visited by senior members of the Afghan Haqqani network, an ally of the Taliban and one of the most feared militant groups battling U.S troops in neighboring Afghanistan, the officials said. The two Afghan militants killed in the strike were from the Haqqani network.
It was only the second drone attack to occur outside Pakistan's semiautonomous tribal region along the Afghan border since the strikes began in the country in 2004 and could increase tension between Islamabad and Washington. There was a strike in Khyber Pakhtunkwa's Bannu district in 2008. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province is considered a "settled area" of Pakistan, meaning it is generally more populated and developed than the tribal region.
"Now no place is safe. The drones are now firing missiles outside the tribal areas," said Shaukat Yousufzai, health minister for the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provincial government, which has spoken out strongly against drone attacks.
"It is Hangu today. Tomorrow it can be Karachi, Lahore or any other place," Yousufzai told Pakistan's Dunya TV.
Thursday's strike was also the first drone attack since the U.S. killed former Pakistani Taliban chief Hakimullah Mehsud on Nov. 1 in a strike in the North Waziristan tribal area. Pakistani officials were outraged by the attack because they said it came a day before they planned to invite Mehsud to hold peace talks.
Police have arrived at the scene of the seminary, which was struck by three missiles in the Tall area of Hangu, said local police officer Fareedullah, who goes by only one name. The six killed were badly burned, he said.
Another police officer, Zia Khan, said five Afghans were killed in the attack, including three students and two teachers.
Hangu police chief Iftikhar Ahmad said two of the dead, Mufti Hameedullah and Mufti Ahmad Jan, were members of the Haqqani network. An Afghan intelligence official also confirmed Jan was killed in the attack. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to journalists.
The covert CIA drone program in Pakistan has been a constant source of tension between Islamabad and Washington. Pakistani officials regularly denounce the strikes in public as a violation of the country's sovereignty. But the government is known to have supported at least some of the attacks in the past. It is generally understood that Pakistan's secret agreement with the U.S. on drone strikes in the past was confined to the tribal region and did not include the country's so-called "settled areas."
The Pakistani government has stepped up its vocal opposition to drone attacks since Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif took office in June. Sharif met with President Barack Obama in Washington in October and pressed him to end the strikes. But the U.S. has shown no sign that it intends to stop using what it considers a vital tool to fight al-Qaida and the Taliban.
Imran Khan, the former cricket star who now leads the party that runs the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government, has called for Pakistan to block trucks carrying supplies to NATO troops in Afghanistan in response to continued drone strikes. The federal government has shown little interest in doing so, but Khan plans to hold a strike on Nov. 23 and block the road through the province that some of the trucks take.
Obama ramped up the use of drone strikes after he took office in 2009, and they reached a peak in 2010, when there were more than 100 attacks. The number has dropped off since then, and there have only been a little more than two dozen so far this year.
Most of the drone strikes have occurred in North Waziristan, the headquarters of the Haqqani network in Pakistan. The U.S. has repeatedly urged Pakistan to conduct an operation in North Waziristan, but the government has refused, saying its troops are stretched too thin battling domestic militants. Many analysts believe, however, that Pakistan doesn't want to cross the Haqqani network, a group with which it has historical ties and could be an ally in Afghanistan after foreign forces withdraw.
Also Thursday, a bomb rigged to a bicycle exploded near a group of soldiers and police patrolling in a vehicle in Quetta, the capital of southwest Baluchistan province, killing two policemen and a civilian, said Quetta police chief Abdur Rauf.
No one has claimed responsibility for the attack. Baluchistan is home to both Islamic militants and separatists who have been waging a low-level insurgency against the government for decades.
Later Thursday, a suicide bomber detonated his explosives at a customs office at the Torkham border crossing with Afghanistan in the Khyber tribal area, wounding 26 people, many of them critically, said local government administrator Daftar Khan. No one has claimed responsibility for the attack.
Anthony-Claret is a software Engineer, entrepreneur and the founder of Codewit INC. Mr. Claret publishes and manages the content on Codewit Word News website and associated websites. He's a writer, IT Expert, great administrator, technology enthusiast, social media lover and all around digital guy.
WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. — A New York man charged with crashing a boat into a construction barge on the Hudson River, killing two friends, told emergency workers he had been drinking, prosecutors said Wednesday.
"My fault," Jojo John said to first responders on the night of July 26, according to Rockland County executive assistant district attorney Steve Moore. "I was drinking all day."
During John's arraignment on a multifelony indictment Wednesday, Moore said that John's blood-alcohol level was nearly twice the legal limit, that there were traces of cocaine in his system and that he was speeding and driving recklessly when he crashed the 19-foot-speed boat into a barge being used in construction just south of the Tappan Zee Bridge.
The crash killed bride-to-be Lindsey Stewart, 30, of Piermont and her fiance's best man, Mark Lennon, 30, of Pearl River. Stewart and Brian Bond, who was injured, were set to marry in mid-August.
Also Wednesday, the families of both victims filed separate civil lawsuits seeking damages from John, the barge owners, and Tappan Zee Constructors, the consortium designing and building the new $3.9 billion bridge. The court papers cite a lack of sufficient lighting as a cause of the crash after the barge owners were informed of the problem by boaters.
John, 35, of Nyack, had no comment as he entered the Rockland County Courthouse Wednesday morning. Appearing before state Supreme Court Justice William Kelly, he pleaded not guilty to an 18-count indictment that includes charges of first- and second-degree vehicular manslaughter, negligent homicide and operating a vessel under the influence of alcohol or drugs.
Kelly said that John's blood-alcohol level "doesn't prove causation. That's a fact for the jury."
The judge set bail at $25,000, citing the deaths and the seriousness of the felony charges. John, who had been free, was taken into custody, but was expected to make bail. He is due back in court Jan. 3.
His lawyer, David Narain, said during court that a lack of sufficient lighting, and not John's drinking, caused the accident.
He said an independent investigation unearthed witnesses and evidence that he said will prove the lighting was the cause.
Afterward, Narain told reporters that he wasn't aware of his client's statement about drinking to the first responders. He declined further comment on the prosecutor's claim.
The families of Stewart and Lennon, as well as those injured, say John must take responsibility for the accident but have also blamed the barge lighting.
The U.S. Coast Guard says the barge lighting met federal standards, although the owners increased the lighting after the crash.
Frank Floriani, the Manhattan lawyer representing the Stewart and Lennon families in their civil lawsuits, said the barge owners had been told that the lighting was bad.
"Our information is whatever light was there could not be seen," Floriani told The Journal News. "It may have been blocked by construction equipment or it may not have been working… In effect, this was an accident waiting to happen."
A statement from Tappan Zee Constructors said project officials had not yet reviewed the lawsuits but asserted that the barges were properly moored and lighted.
Anthony-Claret is a software Engineer, entrepreneur and the founder of Codewit INC. Mr. Claret publishes and manages the content on Codewit Word News website and associated websites. He's a writer, IT Expert, great administrator, technology enthusiast, social media lover and all around digital guy.
This is a very nice photo, a beautiful mother and her cute child, Andre, Paul Okoye's son is quite big now, his 7 months old, Mother Anita says this was the only time she had to sit for 5 minutes during her brother in-law's wedding last Saturday.
in other news Lola Omotayo-Okoye took to twitter to thank everyone for the well wishes also changed her Twitter name to reflect that.
Anthony-Claret is a software Engineer, entrepreneur and the founder of Codewit INC. Mr. Claret publishes and manages the content on Codewit Word News website and associated websites. He's a writer, IT Expert, great administrator, technology enthusiast, social media lover and all around digital guy.
We were told that anyone individual willing to go Awka to protest will receive N5,000 cash and APC party uniform, but they paid us only N2,000.
Mrs Njideka Nwaigwe was the spokeswoman for the women who protested last Sunday in Awka, Anambra state capital, about the conduct of the election and Ngige's dismal performance in the election.
Mrs Nwaigwe narrated her story at Aroma junction late Sunday evening after they finished the Protest rally assignment Awka.
She recounted how she was getting ready to go to church when her neighbour called her that the bus has come to take them to Awka for protest rally.
She was told that each individual willing to go will receive N5,000 cash and APC party uniform. She hurriedly took off her church clothes and rushed to the venue and they were taken to Awka. Inside the bus, they were educated on what to do by one man who kept on talking all through the drive from Ezinifite to Aroma.
He kept on telling them to roll on the floor and shout and cry, to rain abuses on Jega and INEC and Peter Obi. He said that they will be watching for who performed the best as the person will get extra N2,000. "This was what brought us to Awka", she added.
"Now, we were paid N2,000 on reaching Awka instead of N5,000 and most of us did not have the vehicle to go back to our various towns."
Anthony-Claret is a software Engineer, entrepreneur and the founder of Codewit INC. Mr. Claret publishes and manages the content on Codewit Word News website and associated websites. He's a writer, IT Expert, great administrator, technology enthusiast, social media lover and all around digital guy.
The 183 persons suspected to be thugs imported from Osun state to disrupt the inconclusive Anambra state guber election held last week were again arraigned, yesterday, before an Owerri Magistrate’s Court. It will be recalled that Imo state police command arrested last Thursday 183 Osun indigenes for alleged unlawful assembly and other electoral offences.
The first drama that unfolded, was the appearance of two lawyers – one each from the office of the State Director of Public Prosecution, DPP, Mr. Nnamdi Akobundu and the Deputy Director, Legal Services, Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, Mr. Emmanuel Ogbodu.
Opposing the appearance of the State DPP in the matter, Ogbodu hinged his stand on Section 211 (3) of the Constitution and Section 150 of the Electoral Act.
“Section 150 of the Electoral Act specifically empowered INEC to prosecute all electoral offences. The offences contained in the charge are federal offences. The State DPP does not therefore, have any business to prosecute the matter for INEC,” Ogbodu said.
Continuing, the INEC lawyer told the court: “In view of the enormity of the offences, we would not like the DPP to be part of the prosecution.” However, the accused were granted bail in the sum of N50,000 each and two sureties in like sum
Anthony-Claret is a software Engineer, entrepreneur and the founder of Codewit INC. Mr. Claret publishes and manages the content on Codewit Word News website and associated websites. He's a writer, IT Expert, great administrator, technology enthusiast, social media lover and all around digital guy.
A man, who apparently has no job to enable him feed himself, has been sentenced to spend one year in prison after he was found guilty of stealing from the Mountain of Fire and Miracles church.
Police prosecutor, Sergeant Simon Ibrahim told the court that the convict was a habitual offender and had stolen from the same church in 2012. Sergeant Ibrahim said:
“He stole from the same church last year. He was charged before a different court and was sentenced to one year imprisonment. In fact, he was just released from prison just last week. I don’t think he is ready to change.”
36yrs old Ademola Ayeni was sentenced on Monday after he was convicted on charges of theft for making away with the offerings of the church members. He had been previously convicted of the same offence after he stole from the same church last year.
Magistrate Khadijat Mustapha convicted Ayeni for the offence without an option of fine, saying the sentence is meant to serve as a deterrent to those who might want to engage in similar acts.
Earlier, the Prosecutor, Sergeat Simon Ibrahim, told the court that (Pastor) Ojo Oyeyemi of Mountain of Fire and Miracles Church, Utako, reported the matter at the Utako Police Station on November 15.
Ibrahim said the convict criminally trespassed into the church just after they had concluded church service and stole an offering bag containing N50,800. He also stole two cheques worth N150,000 and N50,000.
Anthony-Claret is a software Engineer, entrepreneur and the founder of Codewit INC. Mr. Claret publishes and manages the content on Codewit Word News website and associated websites. He's a writer, IT Expert, great administrator, technology enthusiast, social media lover and all around digital guy.
The body of 26 year old Adaobi Michaella Obih (pictured above) was found yesterday Tuesday Nov. 19th at an apartment at Riverstone Apartments in Columbus, Indiana. Her death is being investigated as a homicide.
A spokesman for the Columbus Police Department said her neighbour, 36 year old Ryan Allen Klug, (pictured below) is a person of interest in the case. Ryan also lived in the apartment complex but has gone missing since Adaobi’s body was found.
The Columbus Police have not revealed how and why Adaobi was killed but they’re currently seeking the public’s help in locating Ryan Klug.
Adaobi was the first of two children and was already pursuing her PHD in Electrical Engineering at just 26 years old. So sad! May her soul rest in peace…Amen.
Anthony-Claret is a software Engineer, entrepreneur and the founder of Codewit INC. Mr. Claret publishes and manages the content on Codewit Word News website and associated websites. He's a writer, IT Expert, great administrator, technology enthusiast, social media lover and all around digital guy.
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