International
De Bruin wins monobob bronze, Canada roars into women’s hockey final
BEIJING — Christine de Bruin wore an Olympic medal around her neck for the first time in her career, and the Canadian bobsledder liked the feeling.
“It feels awesome,” she said of the bronze medal she claimed in the Olympic debut of the monobob. “It feels heavy. It’s nice.”
No doubt, the feeling of two medals would be even nicer.
The native of Stony Plain, Alta., picked up Canada’s first sliding medal of the Beijing Olympics on Monday when she raced to third place in the monobob in a time of four minutes 21.03 seconds.
She will have a chance to add to Canada’s coffers in the two-woman event on Saturday. She said the knowledge of the track at Yanqing National Sliding Centre gained during her monobob runs should serve her well.
“It means that I have a really good understanding of the track and with Buj (Kristen Bujnowski), my brakewoman behind me, we have a very competitive push,” de Bruin said.
“Put the two together and we should have a great result.”
Kaillie Humphries, de Bruin’s former teammate, led a one-two punch atop the podium for the United States with a dominating time of 4:19.27. American veteran Elana Meyers Taylor took silver in 4:20.81.
Humphries picked up her fourth Olympic medal. She won two gold and a bronze in the two-woman event as a competitor for Canada before switching to represent the United States after the 2018 Pyeongchang Games.
Elsewhere on Monday, Canada assured itself of at least one more medal in Beijing with a 10-3 win over Switzerland in the women’s hockey semifinals. The Canadians will face the winner of a later semifinal between the United States and Finland for gold on Thursday.
Canada’s women’s curling team rebounded from a three-game losing streak with an 11-5 win over Russia, and looked to even its record with a win over Britain later Monday. The men’s curling squad improved to 4-2 with a comfortable 7-3 win over Italy. And the nation’s snowboarders look poised to add to their success after a total of five athletes qualified for the finals of the men’s and women’s big air events.
Max Parrot will be looking to follow up his gold-medal slopestyle performance from last week with a similar result in the big air, and appeared on form after topping the men’s qualifier.
Parrot said he was “stoked” by his performance, despite making a mistake on his third jump, but said his focus was firmly on the future.
“I’ve got my ticket for the final so really just focusing on that,” he said. “That’s what’s important. It’s not to finish first in (qualifiers) or second or third, it’s to make it to the final.”
Teammate Mark McMorris was eighth and Darcy Sharpe finished 12th to secure the last spot in the final. Sébastien Toutant, the event’s defending champion, fell twice and did not advance.
On the women’s side, Laurie Blouin qualified fourth for the big air final and Jasmine Baird was 10th.
Seventeen-year-old Olivia Asselin also qualified for the finals of the women’s freestyle skiing slopestyle. Asselin finished in 11th after scoring a 64.68 on her first run at the Genting Snow Park in Zhangjiakou. Megan Oldham, who finished fourth in the big air, did not advance to the final.
Humphries’ first gold medal sliding for the United States came after a trying four years that included an acrimonious split with Bobsleigh Canada Skeleton — the sport’s national governing body.
Humphries filed a harassment complaint with the organization in 2018, claiming she was “repeatedly and horribly verbally and mentally abused by the head coach.”
Todd Hays, who led the U.S. women’s team from 2011 to 2014, has been Canada’s head coach since 2017.
The allegations remain under investigation.
Asked if she had any words for Canada, Humphries started off by saying “not really” before continuing.
“I’m still Canadian,” said the dual citizen. “I will never forget my time as part of Canada, and I am so proud and honoured to still consider myself Canadian. I am also American. To me, it’s not a rivalry. I’m not picking and choosing one country over the other.
“Canada will always hold my past. Every single time I represented Team Canada, I did so with my heart and soul. The U.S.A. has my future.”
Toronto’s Cynthia Appiah was eighth on the 1,615-metre, 16-turn track located about 90 kilometres north of Beijing.
In women’s hockey, team captain Marie-Philip Poulin scored twice and Claire Thompson had a goal and two assists as the Canadians set a new Olympic tournament record with 54 goals.
“I know when you look at the Olympic scores, you kind of think it has been an easy road for us, but that could not have been any further from the truth,” forward Sarah Nurse said.
“We want to generate a ton of offence but we know we have to clean things up defensively. I know going into the championship (game) we will have to tighten some things up defensively.”
In figure skating, Toronto’s Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier of Unionville, Ont., finished a disappointing seventh in ice dance in what could be their last Olympics.
Gilles and Poirier botched a rotational lift, which was reflected in their score of 204.78.
Gilles fought back tears as she tried to explain what went wrong. Poirier said to her gently: “You were amazing.”
They could still capture a medal in the team event, pending the decision on the Russian team. Canada was fourth in the team event, but Russia, which was first, could be disqualified after it was revealed that 15-year-old superstar Kamila Valieva tested positive for a banned heart drug.
Valieva was cleared to continue competing by the Court of Arbitration for Sport on Monday, but any medal she wins could still be taken from her.
Those issues will be dealt with in a separate, longer-term investigation of the positive doping test that will be led by the Russian anti-doping agency.
The International Olympic Committee said Monday afternoon that if Valieva finishes in the top three, there will be no medal ceremony during the Games. There will also be no ceremony for the team event.
Canada’s Marion Thénault was seventh in women’s aerials. Thénault, from Sherbrooke, Que., just missed out on the superfinal with a 91.29 on her second run of the final. Thénault was part of the team that won the bronze medal in the mixed team aerials event.
China’s Xu Mengtao won gold with 108.61 points in the superfinal.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 14, 2022.
The Canadian Press
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“The basis and determining factor” for employment will be “that the individual possesses the requisite knowledge, skills, and abilities associated with the role, and is believed to have the ability to successfully perform the essential functions, responsibilities, and duties associated with the position for which the individual is being considered.”
The University System of Georgia’s Board of Regents has recommended a number of new and revised policies for its institutions, such as a commitment to institutional neutrality, the prohibiting of DEI tactics, and a mandatory education in America’s founding documents.
The University System of Georgia (USG) is made up of Georgia’s 26 public colleges and universities as well as Georgia Archives and the Georgia Public Library Service.
“USG institutions shall remain neutral on social and political issues unless such an issue is directly related to the institution’s core mission,” the board’s proposed revisions read.
“Ideological tests, affirmations, and oaths, including diversity statements,” will be banned from admissions processes and decisions, employment processes and decisions, and institution orientation and training for both students and employees.
“No applicant for admission shall be asked to or required to affirmatively ascribe to or opine about political beliefs, affiliations, ideals, or principles, as a condition for admission,” the new policy states.
Additionally, USG will hire based on a person’s qualifications and ability.
“The basis and determining factor” for employment will be “that the individual possesses the requisite knowledge, skills, and abilities associated with the role, and is believed to have the ability to successfully perform the essential functions, responsibilities, and duties associated with the position for which the individual is being considered.”
Beginning in the 2025-2026 academic year, the school’s civic instruction will require students to study founding American documents among other things.
USG students will learn from the Declaration of Independence, the United States Constitution and Bill of Rights, the Articles of Confederation, the Federalist Papers, the Gettysburg Address, the Emancipation Proclamation, and Martin Luther King Jr.’s Letter from Birmingham Jail, as well as the Georgia Constitution and Bill of Rights.
When reached for comment, the Board of Regents told The Center Square that “these proposed updates strengthen USG’s academic communities.”
The recommended policies allow a campus environment “where people have the freedom to share their thoughts and learn from one another through objective scholarship and inquiry,” and “reflect an unyielding obligation to protect freedom, provide quality higher education and promote student success,” the board said.
The board told The Center Square that it proposed strengthening “the requirements for civics instruction” with the inclusion of “foundational primary sources” because of higher education’s duty to students.
Colleges and universities “must prepare [students] to be contributing members of society and to understand the ideals of freedom and democracy that make America so exceptional,” the board said.
As for ditching DEI, the board explained that “equal opportunity and decisions based on merit are fundamental values of USG.”
“The proposed revisions among other things would make clear that student admissions and employee hiring should be based on a person’s qualifications, not his or her beliefs,” the board said.
The Board of Regents also said it wants to “ensure [its] institutions remain neutral on social and political issues while modeling what it looks like to promote viewpoint diversity, create campus cultures where students and faculty engage in civil discourse, and the open exchange of ideas is the norm.”
USG’s Board of Regents recently urged the NCAA to ban transgender-identifying men from participating in women’s sports, in line with the NAIA rules, The Center Square previously reported.
From the Brownstone Institute
The House report on HHS Covid propaganda is devastating. The Biden administration spent almost $1 billion to push falsehoods about Covid vaccines, boosters, and masks on the American people. If a pharma company had run the campaign, it would have been fined out of existence.
HHS engaged a PR firm, the Fors Marsh Group (FMG), for the propaganda campaign. The main goal was to increase Covid vax uptake. The strategy: 1. Exaggerate Covid mortality risk 2. Downplay the fact that there was no good evidence that the Covid vax stops transmission.
The propaganda campaign extended beyond vax uptake and included exaggerating mask efficacy and pushing for social distancing and school closures.
Ultimately, since the messaging did not match reality, the campaign collapsed public trust in public health.
The PR firm (FMG) drew most of its faulty science from the CDC’s “guidance,” which ignored the FDA’s findings on the vaccine’s limitations, as well as scientific findings from other countries that contradicted CDC groupthink.
The report details the CDC’s mask flip-flopping through the years. It’s especially infuriating to recall the CDC’s weird, anti-scientific, anti-human focus on masking toddlers with cloth masks into 2022.
President Biden’s Covid advisor Ashish K. Jha waited until Dec. 2022 (right after leaving government service) to tell the country that “[t]here is no study in the world that shows that masks work that well.” What took him so long?
In 2021, former CDC director, Rochelle Walensky rewrote CDC guidance on social distancing at the behest of the national teachers’ union, guaranteeing that schools would remain closed to in-person learning for many months.
During this period, the PR firm FMG put out ads telling parents that schools would close unless kids masked up, stayed away from friends, and got Covid-vaccinated.
In March 2021, even as the CDC told the American people that the vaxxed did not need to mask, the PR firm ran ads saying that masks were still needed, even for the vaxxed. “It’s not time to ease up” we were told, in the absence of evidence any of that did any good.
In 2021, to support the Biden/Harris administration’s push for vax mandates, the PR firm pushed the false idea that the vax stopped Covid transmission. When people started getting “breakthrough” infections, public trust in public health collapsed.
Later, when the FDA approved the vax for 12 to 15-year-old kids, the PR firm told parents that schools could open in fall 2021 only if they got their kids vaccinated. These ads never mentioned side effects like myocarditis due to the vax.
HHS has scrubbed the propaganda ads from this era from its web pages. It’s easy to see why. They are embarrassing. They tell kids, in effect, that they should treat other kids like biohazards unless they are vaccinated.
When the Delta variant arrived, the PR firm doubled down on fear-mongering, masking, and social distancing.
In September 2021, CDC director Walensky overruled the agency’s external experts to recommend the booster to all adults rather than just the elderly. The director’s action was “highly unusual” and went beyond the FDA’s approval of the booster for only the elderly.
The PR campaign and the CDC persistently overestimated the mortality risk of Covid infection in kids to scare parents into vaccinating their children with the Covid vax.
In Aug. 2021, the military imposed its Covid vax mandate, leading to 8,300 servicemen being discharged. Since 2023, the DOD has been trying to get the discharged servicemen to reenlist. What harm has been done to American national security by the vax mandate?
The Biden/Harris administration imposed the OSHA, CMS, and military vax mandates, even though the CDC knew that the Delta variant evaded vaccine immunity. The PR campaign studiously avoided informing Americans about waning vaccine efficacy in the face of variants.
The propaganda campaign hired celebrities and influencers to “persuade” children to get the Covid vax.
I think if a celebrity is paid to advertise a faulty product, that celebrity should be partially liable if the product harms some people.
In the absence of evidence, the propaganda campaign ran ads telling parents that the vaccine would prevent their kids from getting Long Covid.
With the collapse in public trust in the CDC, parents have begun to question all CDC advice. Predictably, the HHS propaganda campaign has led to a decline in the uptake of routine childhood vaccines.
The report makes several recommendations, including formally defining the CDC’s core mission to focus on disease prevention, forcing HHS propaganda to abide by the FDA’s product labeling rules, and revamping the process of evaluating vaccine safety.
Probably the most important recommendation: HHS should never again adopt a policy of silencing dissenting scientists in an attempt to create an illusion of consensus in favor of CDC groupthink.
You can find a copy of the full House report here. The HHS must take its findings seriously if there is any hope for public health to regain public.
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