Neil Peart, Rush's star drummer, dies at 67

LOS ANGELES, United States - Neil Peart, the drummer and lyricist of Canadian rock group Rush, has died at 67 in California of brain cancer, the group announced Friday.

"It is with broken hearts and the deepest sadness that we must share the terrible news that on Tuesday, our friend, soul brother and band mate of over 45 years, Neil, has lost his incredibly brave battle with brain cancer, glioblastoma," they said in a statement posted on Twitter.

Rush was founded in 1968 and Peart joined in 1974, replacing John Rutsey, alongside singer and bass player Geddy Lee and guitarist Alex Lifeson.

After starting out in hard rock and moving gradually toward jazz rock, Peart was known for his flamboyant style and very precise technique, which won him a legion of admirers among professionals and fans.

Questlove, the drummer for hip-hop group The Roots, posted a black and white photo of Peart on Instagram sitting behind his imposing drum set, sending his condolences.

Danish drummer Lars Ulrich of Metallica also said on Instagram that Peart was a big inspiration for him.

Rush entered the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2013. The band sold 25 million albums in the United States.

source: news.abs-cbn.com

After a week of bipartisan tribute, McCain is laid to rest

WASHINGTON - A nearly weeklong celebration of the life of US senator John McCain -- war hero, maverick, two-time presidential candidate and outspoken critic of Donald Trump -- came to a solemn and subdued end on Sunday as he was laid to rest at the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland.

McCain, who died August 25 aged 81 after a year-long struggle against brain cancer, was interred in a private ceremony in the academy's grassy cemetery overlooking the Severn River.

McCain, the son and grandson of four-star admirals, graduated from the naval academy in 1958.

Large crowds lined the road outside the cemetery to pay their respects as the funeral cortege carrying McCain's flag-draped casket passed by. Some saluted or held signs paying tribute. One woman shouted out, "God bless America!"

"I watched them lay my friend to rest today. I will miss him," Senator Jeff Flake tweeted Sunday along with a photo of him and McCain, in which the former pilot wore a Navy hat.

A day after a nationally televised memorial service at Washington's National Cathedral brought together a remarkable gathering of luminaries from both parties -- including three former presidents, but not the current one -- Sunday's ceremony was designed more as a family affair, including the military family to which McCain proudly belonged.

General David Petraeus, a McCain friend and onetime commander of the US Central Command, was to deliver a tribute.

Pallbearers included US defense secretary James Mattis; rear admiral and former naval academy superintendent Thomas Lynch; Admiral John Richardson; and two men -- Everett Alvarez Jr. and Jon Fer -- who were prisoners of war in Vietnam along with McCain.

BURIED ALONGSIDE BEST FRIEND

The senator was to be buried next to his best friend from Annapolis days, Chuck Larson, who died in 2014. Larson and McCain were roommates through navy flight school, and Larson went on to become the second-youngest admiral in navy history and an academy superintendent.

McCain, a lifelong rebel who graduated near the bottom of his class, had planned a military career. But after his fighter jet was shot down over Vietnam, leaving him with lifelong injuries, he ultimately left the military and turned to politics, representing Arizona in the US Congress for 35 years.

He ran unsuccessfully for president twice, in 2000 and 2008.

The week's memorials, planned mostly by McCain himself in his final year of life, often seemed crafted to draw a contrast between the senator and a man of very different temperament and values with whom he often feuded: Donald Trump.

The president, pointedly excluded from all the McCain events, had a difficult week.

He was widely criticized for keeping White House flags at half staff for only a day, and then reversed the order. A new Washington Post/ABC poll showed Trump's disapproval rating at an all-time high of 60 percent. And critics panned him for playing golf during Saturday's solemn event.

In Annapolis, Sam Smith, a 71-year-old retired federal employee, was among those saluting McCain's cortege as it passed.

"We just feel that he's somebody we admire," he told the Capital Gazette of Annapolis. "He was always a champion of the people."

source: news.abs-cbn.com

US senator John McCain dead at 81: office

WASHINGTON --  U.S. Senator John McCain, a former prisoner of war in Vietnam who ran unsuccessfully for president as a self-styled maverick Republican in 2008 and became a prominent critic of President Donald Trump, died on Saturday, his office said. He was 81.

McCain, a U.S. senator from Arizona for over three decades, had been battling glioblastoma, an aggressive brain cancer, discovered by his doctors in July 2017, and had not been at the U.S. Capitol in 2018. He also had surgery for an intestinal infection in April of this year.

His family had announced on Friday that McCain was discontinuing further cancer treatment.

A statement from his office said: "Senator John Sidney McCain III died at 4:28 p.m. on August 25, 2018. With the senator when he passed were his wife Cindy and their family. At his death, he had served the United States of America faithfully for sixty years."

No further details were immediately provided.

"My heart is broken. I am so lucky to have lived the adventure of loving this incredible man for 38 years," Cindy McCain wrote on Twitter. "He passed the way he lived, on his own terms, surrounded by the people he loved, in the place he loved best."

Alternatively affable and cantankerous, McCain had been in the public eye since the 1960s, when as a naval aviator he was shot down during the Vietnam War and tortured by his North Vietnamese communist captors during 5-1/2 years as a prisoner.

He was edged out by George W. Bush for the Republican presidential nomination in 2000, but became his party's White House candidate eight years later. After gambling on political neophyte Sarah Palin as his vice presidential running mate, McCain lost in 2008 to Democrat Barack Obama, who became the first black U.S. president.

McCain, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, was a frequent critic as well as a target of his fellow Republican, Trump, who was elected president in November 2016.

McCain denounced Trump for among other things his praise of Russian President Vladimir Putin and other leaders the senator described as foreign "tyrants."

"Flattery secures his friendship, criticism his enmity," McCain said of Trump in his memoir, "The Restless Wave," which was released in May.

McCain in July had castigated Trump for his summit with Putin, issuing a statement that called their joint news conference in Helsinki "one of the most disgraceful performances by an American president in memory." He said Trump was "not only unable but unwilling to stand up to Putin."

Sources close to McCain have said Trump would not be invited to the funeral.

Shortly after McCain's death was announced, Trump tweeted: My deepest sympathies and respect go out to the family of Senator John McCain."

McCain, a foreign policy hawk with a traditional Republican view of world affairs, was admired in both parties for championing civility and compromise during an era of acrid partisanship in U.S. politics. But he also had a famous temper and rarely shied away from a fight. He had several with Trump.

THUMBS DOWN

He was the central figure in one of the most dramatic moments in Congress of Trump's presidency when he returned to Washington shortly after his brain cancer diagnosis for a middle-of-the-night Senate vote in July 2017.

Still bearing a black eye and scar from surgery, McCain gave a thumbs-down signal in a vote to scuttle a Trump-backed bill that would have repealed the Obamacare healthcare law and increased the number of Americans without health insurance by millions.

Trump was furious about McCain's vote and frequently referred to it at rallies, but without mentioning McCain by name.

After Trump in 2015 launched his presidential campaign, McCain condemned his hard-line rhetoric on illegal immigration and said Trump had "fired up the crazies." Trump retorted that McCain was "not a war hero," adding: "I like people who weren't captured."

After Trump became president, McCain blasted what he called the president's attempts to undermine the free press and rule of law, and lamented the "half-baked, spurious nationalism" of the Trump era.

McCain denounced Trump's performance at a summit meeting with Putin in July as "a tragic mistake," adding, "The damage inflicted by President Trump’s naivete, egotism, false equivalence, and sympathy for autocrats is difficult to calculate."

MCCAIN VS OBAMA

McCain, the son and grandson of U.S. Navy admirals, was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from Arizona in 1982 after more than two decades of Navy service.

He served four years in the House before Arizona voters elected him to the Senate in 1986 to replace Barry Goldwater, the 1964 Republican presidential nominee revered by conservatives.

In running for president in 2008, McCain tried to succeed an unpopular fellow Republican in Bush, who was leaving office with the country mired in wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and stuck in a financial crisis.

It was a stark contrast between McCain, then a 72-year-old veteran of the Washington establishment, and the 47-year-old Obama, who was offering a "Yes, we can" message of change.

McCain tried to inject some youth and enthusiasm into his campaign with his selection of Palin, Alaska's governor, as his running mate. But the choice backfired as her political inexperience and shaky performances in media interviews raised concerns about her qualifications.

In his new book, McCain voiced regret for not choosing then-Senator Joe Lieberman, a Democrat turned independent, as his running mate.

McCain wrote that he had originally settled on Lieberman, Democrat Al Gore's running mate in the 2000 election, but was warned by Republican leaders that Lieberman's views on social issues, including support for abortion rights, would "fatally divide" the party.

"It was sound advice that I could reason for myself," McCain wrote. "But my gut told me to ignore it and I wish I had."

Obama won 53 percent of the vote to McCain's 45.6 percent.

WAR INJURIES

During the Vietnam War, McCain flew attack planes off aircraft carriers. He was preparing for a bombing run in 1967 when a missile inadvertently fired from another plane hit his fuel tanks, triggering a fatal explosion and fire. He suffered shrapnel wounds.

A few months later on Oct. 26, 1967, McCain's A-4 Skyhawk was shot down on a bombing mission over North Vietnam's capital and he suffered two broken arms and a broken leg in the crash. A mob then dragged him from a lake, broke his shoulder and stabbed him.

Held at the notorious "Hanoi Hilton" prison and other sites, McCain was beaten and tortured, suffering broken bones and dysentery. He was released on March 14, 1973, but was left with permanent infirmities.

In Congress, McCain built a generally conservative record, opposing abortion and advocating higher defense spending. He supported Bush's 2003 invasion of Iraq and criticized Obama for not doing more to intervene in Syria's civil war.

Still, he prided himself on his reputation as a maverick and had a history of working across party lines on immigration, climate change and campaign finance reform.

He also spoke out against the Bush administration's use of waterboarding, a torture technique that simulates drowning, and other harsh interrogation tactics on detainees in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

He urged the closure of the prison for foreign terrorism suspects at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and also sponsored an anti-torture measure that passed Congress in 2005.

In a 2002 memoir, McCain wrote, "I'm an independent-minded, well-informed public servant to some. And to others, I'm a self-styled, self-righteous maverick pain in the ass."

John Sidney McCain III was born on Aug. 29, 1936, at an American naval installation in the Panama Canal Zone - U.S. territory at the time - when his father was stationed there.

He conceded he was a "smart ass" during his years at the U.S. Naval Academy and graduated fifth from the bottom of his class.

McCain divorced his wife Carol after 15 years of marriage in 1980 and weeks later married the former Cindy Henley, daughter of a wealthy beer distributor in Arizona.

A dark period for McCain came as one of the "Keating Five" group of senators accused of improperly intervening with federal regulators to help political contributor and bank executive Charles Keating, whose Lincoln Savings and Loan failed in 1989 at a cost to taxpayers of $3.4 billion.

McCain was cleared of wrongdoing in 1991, but the Senate Ethics Committee rebuked him for poor judgment.

On July 25, 2017, McCain delivered a Senate floor speech not long after his cancer diagnosis that was widely seen as his farewell address. It included a call to fellow Republicans to stand up to Trump and for all lawmakers to work together to keep America as a "beacon of liberty" in the world.

"That is the cause that binds us and is so much more powerful and worthy than the small differences that divide us," McCain said.

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Lakers sign fan battling brain cancer to 1-day contract

Sometimes, there are things that are just bigger than basketball.

In the middle of another lost season and suffering a 10th straight defeat, tied for the worst in franchise history, the Los Angeles Lakers signed 18-year-old Yitzi Teichman to a one-day contract prior to their home game against the Charlotte Hornets.

10 months prior, Teichman underwent surgery to remove a brain tumor and was granted the incredible opportunity via the Make-A-Wish Foundation.

Lakers are ceremoniously signing Yitzi Teichman to a 1-day contract against the Hornets - a  Make-A-Wish moment - will shoot around w/Lakers

— Eric Pincus (@EricPincus) January 31, 2016



Teichman got to be with the team before, during and after the Lakers game against the Hornet and signed the contract with general manaer Mitch Kupchak.

He also got to hang out with Julius Randle and of course, Kobe Bryant.

For more of this amazing story and selfless act by a multi-billion dollar NBA franchise, watch the short clip

This story was originally published on the ABS-CBN Sports website.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

Video of US woman planning own death goes viral

LOS ANGELES -- A newlywed US woman with terminal cancer has announced plans online to end her life on November 1 to die with dignity and without debilitating pain.

In January, Brittany Maynard, 29, was given six months to live due to brain cancer, and told her death would be long and painful because of the aggressive nature of the disease.

She was trying for a first child with her husband Dan at the time, but gave up on that hope due to the cancer.

"The thoughts that go through your mind when you find out you have so little time is everything that you need to say to everyone that you love," she said in the video which has been seen over 5.5 million times on YouTube.

Maynard and her husband Dan, who had just married when she first began having severe headaches, moved from their home in California to Oregon, one of a handful of states with a right-to-die law in force.

A doctor could therefore prescribe her the medication she needs to end her own life, surrounded by her family in the bedroom she shares with her husband.

Maynard is currently on medication to limit the swelling of her brain, but which has the side effect of making her gain weight.

She agreed to make the six-and-a-half minute video publicizing her case "in spite of some profound shyness regarding her new prescription drug-induced appearance," her fundraising website said.

"I didn't launch this campaign because I wanted attention... I did this because I want to see a world where everyone has access to death with dignity, as I have had," it said.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com