Michael Phelps, Ryan Lochte push each other to be the best

His success in reclaiming that status from U.S. teammate Ryan Lochte in the Olympic swimming trials, which begin today in Omaha, will determine one of the biggest storylines at the upcoming London Games. Will the country of kings and queens host the Olympic coronation of Phelps or the succession of Lochte? "Omaha is going to be a good sign," says television analystRowdy Gaines, a 1984 Olympic swimming champion. "It has to be, because they can't take too many chances in their races." Only first- and second-place finishers in Omaha will qualify for the Olympic team. Given the depth and talent of the U.S. men, Phelps and Lochte will not be able to save their peak performances for the Games. That will make their head-to-head matchups — likely in the finals of the 400-meter individual medley today, the 200 freestyle Wednesday and the 200 IM on Saturday — must-see barometers of how their rivalry will play out in London. "Ryan and I are going to have our hands full with each other, probably all Cheap NBA Jerseys summer," Phelps says. "Hopefully I'm in a better spot than I have been over the last couple years and I'm in better shape." Phelps, 26, says the London Olympics will be his last. He already has 16 Olympic medals, 14 gold. Three more medals of any color would make him the most decorated Olympian of all time, passing Larisa Latynina, a Soviet gymnast who won 18 medals over four Olympics, ending in 1964. Lochte, 27, who has won six medals in two Olympics, plans to continue at least until the 2016 Games. "A lot of people ask me, 'Would I be the same athlete as I am today if he wasn't there?' " Lochte says of Phelps. "No doubt about it, me and Michael, we push each other all the time." When they last met on the international stage, in the 2011 world championships, Lochte beat Phelps in their two head-to-head races, the 200 freestyle and 200 IM, and finished with four individual golds to Phelps' two. That sparked speculation that Phelps, who won a historic eight golds at the 2008 Olympics, could be overshadowed or, perhaps, surpassed in London. Lochte has already become one of the most prominent faces of the U.S. team signing high-profile endorsement deals with companies such as Gatorade and Ralph Lauren and appearing on the cover of this month's Vogue. Lochte could swim nine events in the upcoming Games, including the three relays. Phelps could swim eight again, although he's said he envisions competing in fewer events. For both, their performances at the trials will be crucial to finalizing their London plans. "I want to go down as one of the world's greatest swimmers," Lochte says when asked if he would like to stamp his name on the London Olympics as Phelps did on the Beijing Games. "So it's definitely a goal of mine." Lochte has gotten best-swimmer accolades from Phelps' coach, Bob Bowman, since the 2010 Pan Pacific championships, where Lochte won four individual gold medals while Phelps failed to qualify for the final in what was once his signature event, the 400 IM. "In 2010, I was just kind of like, 'Whatever,' " Phelps says. "But last year I was just like, 'This is so frustrating.' " Phelps cited his lackadaisical training in recent years as the main reason for his subpar results. As he skipped days and even weeks of practice in favor of sleeping in and playing golf, he was doing "30% of what I had planned for him to do," Bowman says. After the world championships last year, that changed. "He's been his normal self," Bowman says. Phelps is back to doing 95% of what Bowman asks, averaging 50,000 meters (31 miles) per week in training. "Michael is really only about one thing and one thing only — and he's been this way for 12 years —and that is the Olympic Games," Gaines says. "This is his measuring stick. Everything else is just preseason for him. "He knows that the only thing that will matter 100 years from now is how he did in the Olympic Games." Phelps' training has not approached the 80,000-meter-a-week peak he reached before Beijing, but it's been enough to get him in shape for the grueling 400 IM, an event that combines all four swimming strokes. Phelps declared after the 2008 Games that he was done swimming it at major meets. Then, at a Grand Prix in March, Phelps posted the fastest U.S. time this year in the 400 IM, 4 minutes, 12.51 seconds. It was far from the world-record 4:03.84 he swam in the Beijing final, but "being able to swim halfway decent times in that event is showing that I am making progress," Phelps says. He began to consider re-inserting the 400 IM into his program. Since the 400 IM is scheduled for the first day at the trials, Phelps could make a strong opening statement by beating Lochte, the two-time defending world champion in the event. "I've spent pretty much the last three years getting beaten every single meet," Phelps says. "It's not fun. … I don't like to lose." Good for each other Phelps and Lochte are friendly outside the pool. In Beijing, where Lochte was third behind Phelps in the 200 and 400 IMs but won gold in the 200 backstroke (an event Phelps didn't swim), they partnered in spades games during evenings at the athletes' village. U.S. swimmer Ricky Berens often plays against them. Why do the rivals make good partners? "Opposites attract," Berens said. "Ryan doesn't think very much, and Michael over-thinks." The familiarity has changed the dynamic Phelps usually has with his rivals. TheWholesale Cheap Jerseys swimmer who would fire up at Bowman's every mention of Australian star Ian Thorpe takes a much more academic approach to swimming against Lochte. "I think both those guys are motivated to race each other," Bowman says. "But I guarantee you that neither one of them walks into the pool every day thinking, 'I've got to beat Ryan today,' or 'I've got to beat Michael today.' They're thinking, 'I want to swim a certain time in the 200 back or the 200 IM' or whatever it is, and I think that's why they're good for each other." That's not to say that each one does not think about how or what the other is doing. "You can't be swimming events that Michael's in and not be aware of him," says Lochte's coach, Gregg Troy. "There's an awareness in training in that direction." While Phelps' training has picked up only in the last year, Lochte has been drawing on his constant underdog mentality to go hard since the 2008 Olympics. He added Strongman training — pulling boat chains and throwing tires — and boxing to his regimen and is on a healthier diet after eating fast food every day in Beijing. As is typical for Lochte, who seemingly has perfected the science of peaking at big meets and using everything else as a training session, his times at Grand Prix events this season haven't been eye-popping. His best time in the 200 IM ranks fourth in the world (Phelps is first). He hasn't posted a top-25 time in the 200 freestyle, where Phelps ranks second, or the 400 IM. Just as a reading of times could not point to which way the rivalry will tilt at the trials, neither would an evaluation of the swimmers' strengths and weaknesses, which seem to balance each other out. Phelps, for example, is stronger in the butterfly leg of the IM, but Lochte has an advantage in the breaststroke and, to some extent, the backstroke. The winning difference likely will come down to something much more intangible, something that Gaines says is within Phelps, that in Beijing got him through a 200 butterfly race when his goggles filled with water and that gave him the edge in his razor-close finish in the 100 butterfly. "If the desire is there in London," Gaines says, "he won't be beat."

Congress investigates air leak, possible safety lapses at CDC lab

It's a highly secured, sophisticated research lab studying deadly diseases such as bird flu, monkeypox, tuberculosis and rabies. It's in a facility called Building 18, which cost taxpayers $214 million. And now, the Biosafety Level 3 lab at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta is also the subject of a congressional investigation after a potentially dangerous airflow leak at that lab, CNN has learned. The leak occurred on February 16, when air flowed the wrong way out of a germ lab into a clean-air corridor, rather than through the powerful HEPA filter that cleans the air, congressional sources and CDC officials said. Visitors touring the facility were in the clean corridor when they observed a puff of air being pushed out from the lab through a slot in a door window. If experiments had been under way at the time of that air leak, experts Cheap Football Jerseys say, unprotected visitors could have been exposed to deadly germs, although an epidemic would have been unlikely. According to U.S. Rep. Michael Burgess, a Texas Republican and a medical doctor, the House Energy and Commerce Committee has asked the CDC for documents about that incident. The request came in the wake of a report on internal CDC e-mails about the incident, first reported by USA Today last week. "The biggest concern was that there was a contingent of visitors who were walking through the building," Burgess said. "And had one of those people been stricken or made ill or worse, obviously that would have been devastating." The lab handles small mammals such as rats, ferrets and mice as part of its experiments with pathogens, according to CDC officials. They say animals were in the lab at the time of the air leak, but they were secured in filtered cages. CDC officials say the lab was clean, was not active at the time, and no one got infected. "At no time during recent incidents featured in the media were CDC workers or the public in harm's Wholesale Cheap Jerseys way," agency spokesman Tom Skinner said. "This unique facility features multiple security layers specifically designed to protect workers and the public in the event of an incident." In a statement released to CNN, Burgess' committee said, "We will actively work to find out if there are additional concerns or incidents associated with Building 18. Any anomaly or breach is of concern, and we will work to ensure the integrity of the facility is maintained and that our scientists are safe." There has been at least one other safety-related incident in that same building where February's air leak occurred. In 2008, it was discovered that a high-containment lab door was sealed with duct tape. That incident was first reported by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and confirmed to CNN by Skinner. Robert Hawley, former safety chief at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, said the CDC has many safety layers in place at its labs. Hawley says researchers at the Biosafety Level 3 lab work in biosafety "cabinets" within the lab itself. "Nothing is handled outside that cabinet," Hawley said. "So they're working with minute amounts of material, and the chances of aerosol are negligible." But there are questions about a possible cover-up. In an internal e-mail, reported by USA Today, CDC biologist Kismet Scarborough said the centers "... will do anything ... to hide the fact that we have serious problems with the airflow and containment in this whole building." CNN has not been able to independently verify that e-mail. But in response, Skinner said, "CDC will continue to take an open, transparent and inclusive approach to address any safety challenge in a manner that will ensure the safety of our workforce and the public." Skinner said the agency "intends to cooperate fully with Rep. Burgess and the committee to address any questions they may have about Building 18 at CDC."

The US/NATO War on Syria and Iran likely in Spite of Security Council Veto

A nsnbc source within U.S.-Special Forces at Ft.Bragg, NC gave already in August 2011 evidence that US Special Forces were on the ground in Syria and that a war against Syria, Lebanon and Iran was actively prepared and implemented.(1) Frequent nsnbc readers are aware of that NATO has planned and prepared for a war on Syria and Iran for years. That active operations with special forces on the ground have been carried out since 2011.Last years chance to initiate an attack on Syria before September/October was missed. The heated diplomatic positioning games, the increased violence and brutality of the conflict, that is cynically provoked and utilized for manufacturing public and political support.The regular attack scares against Syria and Iran shall prepare a pretext for a long planned war; the waters are tested, the waters are heated, and the only questions that seem to remain are, how long time will the covert war, the terror against Syrians, the murder NFL Jerseys Cheap on Iranian nuclear scientists and other tactics be used before an overt aggression.How precisely will an overt NATO aggression be initiated. When will it be initiated, since it is unlikely that NATO will let the time line of August-September pass without an attack one more time. How will NATO try to diplomatically outflank Russia and China, and what will the consequences of a NATO attack be in terms of regional and global implications.After the abuse of the UNSC Resolution 1973-2011 on Libya, Russia and China drew a clear line in the Syrian Sand.(2) While Russia was supportive of the Syrian Peoples legitimate aspirations towards political reforms, which as we see later have taken place in an unprecedented manner compared to other Arab countries, Russia as well as China vehemently opposed and oppose foreign intervention and the use of NATO led terrorist death squads and mercenaries.Form the very beginning of what was and is being sold as popular uprising in the Syrian conflict by Western politicians and main stream media, it was obvious that there was a strong foreign element at play.The Saudi Lebanese billionaire Saad Hariri, a stern Saudi, US, and not so openly Israeli ally became implicated in arming and financing the Saudi and GCC-backed insurgents. (3) The ongoing spill-over of the Syrian conflict to Lebanon and the fighting in Lebanon can not be understood without taking into account that Hariri and his “Future Movement” have been fermenting a Syrian as well as Lebanese civil war as part of a plan to destabilize the region sufficiently to mandate a UN-sanctioned NATO intervention or to create other pretexts for a military intervention without the sanction of the Security Council.Also the leader of the Lebanese Druze community and chairman of Lebanons Progressive Socialist Party, Walid Jumblatt, who has been strongly opposed to Syrian influences in Lebanon since the protracted civil war is actively involved in arming NATO and Israeli backed insurgents in Syria.In a previous nsnbc article we informed that Jumblatt, according to sources with ties to Jordanian Intelligence, has been implicated in a shipment of 50 Tons of Israeli military equipment worth over 650 million USD, that arrived at Erbil Airport in Kurdistan. The weapons have reportedly been paid for by the Israeli “Rafael Industries”. The shuttling of Jumblatt, just prior to the shipment, to Qatar, Iaqi Kurdistan and Turkey have been tied to the arms delivery as well.(4) The vehicle for bringing about the intervention would be created by a relentless terror campaign with the use of Al-Qaeda mercenary forces from Libya, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and other. A nsnbc article by Christof Lehmann from September 2011 described the strategy as modified Chechnyan model.(5) Others, like Prof. Michel Chossudovsky of the Center for Research on Globalization likened the situation to the Death Squads in El Salvador. (6)The fact that NATO was not able to intervene in Syria latest August or September last year is caused by the fact that the people of Syria in spite of their ethnic and religious diversity are extremely coherent, that the Syrian government has managed to fight the insurgency rather successfully, that the Syrian government has managed to implement unprecedented political reforms that have been endorsed by the majority of the population, and that Russia and China so far have blocked for an overt NATO aggression at the Security Council.The successful establishment of and referendum for a new Syrian constitution that emphasizes Syria´s definition of itself as Arab State within an Arab Nation, a constitution that provides more safeguards and guaranties for freedom, democracy, protection of minorities than any of it´s neighbors, a constitution that embraces diversity in unity and solidarity, and in particular, a constitution that defines Syria as a nation that has rid itself from colonialism in the region was a direct slap into the face of both NATO, the GCC member states, Jordan, and not least Israel. (7)nsnbc has published the full text of the draft constitution. (8) The constitution was endorsed by a majority of the Syrian people, and the mere fact that the referendum could be held without major disturbances was a victory of the people of Syria against the foreign aggression. (9) Non of these developments have been reported in a fair and balanced manner in Western Media. Neither was it reported that parliamentary elections have been held in Syria.So far, Syria has in spite of the onslaught and immense suffering kept the upper hand on all but one front, which is that of Public Relations. It has not effectively countered an aggressive Western media campaign directed against Syria and Iran which makes it relatively easy for NATO and allied countries to convince the Western populations that another “humanitarian War” must be waged to protect the people of Syria.The Cognitive Manipulation of the Western Public into accepting another NATO-led “Humanitarian War”.Complicit Western media continue with their cognitive manipulation of the public to accept yet another UN-US/NATO military aggression under the pretext of Human Rights and the “responsibility to protect”. The responsibility to protect and interventionism, Libya-Style have become part of official NATO doctrine at the 25th NATO Summit in Chicago this year. (10)Western media follow suit and close ranks without questioning the concept while perpetuating often fraudulent reports that sale a NATO Narrative about a horrific Syrian Regime that butchers it´s citizens. The reports about the recent massacre in al-Houla are but one of thousands of examples that could be documented where false reports, fabricated images and video have been sold as news. The BBC went so far as to recycle images from Iraq. (11)One-sided reports blame the violence on Assad and the Syrian Government. While Western media maintain that the Syrian Military was responsible for the massacre, and while many reports consequently maintain the narrative that the military was shelling the civilian area with artillery, the report shows a quite different picture. In spite of the preliminary report, the narrative that people died at the hands of the military is perpetuated in media as well as at the UN. The report states:The majority of the homicides were committed with small arms and at close range, many of them execution style. The majority of the victims were families who refused to endorse the war on the Syrian government and who opposed the involvement of foreign al-Qaeda fighters, armed Muslim Brothers, and other mercenary forces.The overwhelming majority of the murders were committed by foreign and foreign backed terrorists. (12)Regardless the evidence to the opposite, the Pentagon spokesman Capt. John Kirby told media at a Pentagon press briefing, “We remain deeply troubled and concerned by the ongoing violence in Syria and by the horrific acts of the Assad regime against its own people,” Kirby also reiterated that Iran was helping the Syrian “regime”, and most likely to counter pertinent questions, he stated that al-Qaeda was in Syria for it´s own purposes.Navy Capt. Kirby has most likely had advise of a skilled spin-doctor to find semantic twists about al-Qaeda´s own purposes. NATO has it´s own purposes, and the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group or Tripoli Military Council, the Omar Brigade, and other al-Qaeda fractions that are controlled by NATO Intelligence, Saudi Intelligence, Muslim Brothers controlled by MI6 and Qatar naturally have their own and specific utilities too. Thus Capt. Kirby is telling the truth while misinforming the public.Kirby also positioned Iran as potential and legitimate target for US/NATO-aggression, stating that ” we have certainly seen reports and have reason to believe that Iran continues to assist the Assad regime in committing these acts of atrocities against the Syrian people“. I would say, I have seen “reports of Alien Bases and heard of Wholesale Cheap Jerseys Alien abduction cases“. So, because Kirby states that “we have seen some reports” we are all expected to wear alien costumes, right”?In other words, the Pentagon is covering over the well established fact that NATO Special Forces are liaison to, supervising, and co-operating with al-Qaeda units in Syria, including the at least 18.000 al-Qaeda mercenaries under command Tripoli Military Governor and al-Qaeda Commander Abdelhakim Belhadj.(13) The Pentagon also positions Iran as legitimate target for NATO aggression because it has “certainly seen reports and have reason to believe” that Iran supports Assad. Now if Iran supports Assad or Syria, it is supporting them in their battles against the NATO led al-Qaeda units that have committed the atrocities that are blamed on “the Assad Regime”.Another manufacturing of public consent is the recent release of a report that states that Obama had vetoed a French-Saudi plan to attack the Governmental Palace of Syria to decapitate the regime. Let alone the fact that such action would be a serious war crime, which NATO obviously does not care about, the main function of “leaking” such information via DEBKA File is to prepare the Western Public for a war. Other functions will be related to intelligence gathering as well as that of adding pressure on Russia and China at the Security Council – and beyond.