Several people have been shot on the Northern Illinois University campus. The gunman killed himself. We will be updating the site throughout the day. | CLICK HERE to View a LIVE stream

* 27-year-old former student Steven Kazmierczak is the gunman.

*6 Dead, including shooter. 4 Females, 2 Males killed. 4 Dead at scene, 2 dead at hospital. A total of 18 were transported to Kishwaukee hospital, 2 were treated to local hospital. 2 remain in critical condition at Kishwaukee. Total of 4 in critical. 22 casualties, including shooters. All injured were student, including instructor. He was a instructor.

*Officials confirmed that several people were shot at Cole Hall, a large lecture hall on campus, shortly after 3 p.m. and the campus was immediately placed on lockdown.

*Kishwaukee Hospital reported that up to 15 people were being brought to the hospital and that three to four of those victims had suffered head wounds.

*Student journalists at the school’s Northern Television Center reported that there were 18 victims, two of them fatalities, including the gunman.

*Lt. Gary Spangler of the DeKalb Police Department told the school newspaper, the Northern Star, that “The gunman is deceased,” adding that the “majority of the incident happened in Cole Hall.”

*Officials said the immediate danger has passed.

* “He says that the gunmen was a white male dressed in all black. He kicked the door in and opened fire. My brother dove under the desk, and popped his head up to see the gunmen was reloading. He grabbed his girlfriend’s hand and ran to the library where they been in lockdown since.”

*The campus will be closed on Friday.

*"Police are trying to get everyone off campus,’’ said student David Healy, who was near Cole Hall when the shooting happened. “At least five people have been pulled out on stretchers.”

*An alert on the university’s website confirmed “several” people were taken away in ambulances.

*The following hotlines are available for students & parents:

815-753-1573
815-753-6143
815-753-1574
815-753-1575
815-753-9564
815-753-6257

*Counseling is also available on campus for students at all residence halls and at the Neptune Dining Hall, Campus Life Building 100 and the Psychological Services Center in the Psychology/Computer Science Building.

I’ve started my Melbourne vacation from vacation. It has been a pretty productive first day. I got a new site up and running. It is called Where On Google Earth?. It is pretty simple. I put up an image from Google Earth and you guess where it is from.

Starting tomorrow, I’ll be going through my backlog of article I’ve intended to write as well as going through some of the photos which are sitting on my hard drive.

So far, I’m enjoying Australia, but it does seem expensive. The price of a 600ml bottle of Diet Coke (about 20oz) is A$3.50 (about US$3.25). That almost rivals the cost of Tahiti. It is about 3x the cost I’ve seen everywhere else. Other things don’t seem as expensive, but it is still on the high end of prices I’ve seen so far.

The internet here is reasonably fast. Something which I am taking full advantage of.

Tomorrow, in addition to photos, I’ll be going to the US Consulate in Melbourne to get my passport renewed. That should take about 2 weeks to process from what I’ve heard.

Star pitcher Roger Clemens appears before House hearing on steroids; panel chairman says testimony from Andy Pettitte conflicts with Clemens’ accounts on HGH use | WATCH LIVE | CLEMENS’ STATEMENT | MCNAMEE’S STATEMENT | AUTOGRAPH SEEKERS MAY HAVE BROKEN THE LAW

MINNEAPOLIS, Minnesota (AP)—The temperature in International Falls, Minnesota, fell to a record 40 below zero Monday, just a few days after the town won a federal trademark officially making it the “Icebox of the Nation.”

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, residents braved a temperature of 10 degrees on Monday. It was so cold that resident Nick McDougall couldn’t even get his car trunk lid to close after he got out his charger to kick-start his dead battery. By late morning, the temperature had risen all the way to 18 below zero. Keep reading story on CNN.com

So, I wake up this morning before dawn to check my email before my flight. I do what I do, grab my bags and get a cab.  The cab driver doesn’t really speak English and points towards the government palace, makes a shooting action with his fingers and says “very bad, very bad”.

I get to the airport and there are a bunch of Australian troops there with their guns drawn. I didn’t really put the two together and just sort of sat and waited for the plane to load. There were no maintainace workers, no weather problems and no one seemed late. Nonetheless, the flight was 90 minutes late in taking off.

When we land in Darwin, we are met by some Australian police and they tell us that the President of East Timor was assassinated this morning.

I get to a computer a few minutes ago and find out he wasn’t killed. Him and the Prime Minister were both attacked. Someone mentioned something about a rebel leader who was out in the bush being killed last night, but I have heard no confirmation of that in the news.

I took some video yesterday of a protest or a march or something I saw on the streets of Dili. I have no idea if the two are linked.

Anyway, I’m safely in Darwin, Australia. Going to get something to eat and try to kill 10 hours until I go back to the airport. I’ll be sleeping in an airplane tonight.

A gunman opened fire at a city council meeting in this St. Louis suburb Thursday night, hitting the mayor and several city officials, a newspaper reported.

MyFOXStLouis.com reports that the six people, including the mayor and two police officers, were killed, as well as the gunman. Keep reading. 

Dozens of people were injured—at least 30 of them critically—in an explosion at a sugar refinery near Savannah, Georgia, tonight, a hospital official said. Ambulances were rushing the injured to area hospitals while rescuers searched for other victims. Read more

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney will suspend his Republican presidential campaign after a disappointing showing in this week’s “Super Tuesday” primaries and caucuses, GOP sources said today. Romney is expected to announce his decision this afternoon at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, three Republican sources told

Police say five people, including one SWAT officer and the gunman, are dead after a nightlong standoff at a Los Angeles home. Los Angeles police killed a man who had shot two officers and barricaded himself in a house after telling police he had killed three relatives. Ten hours after he initially called police, the house caught fire. Keep Reading

By Wesley McDermott

In this article I will be talking to you about a simple tip that was used years ago for explosive muscle growth, but for some reason it’s not used as much these days and it should be!

This popular weight training technique was used by muscle building enthusiasts long before you where lifting and even walking for that matter. For it not to be used as much now is a real downer and people are missing out on the results it can bring them. So, follow me and read on below to start seeing more in your muscle building efforts.

In weight training, in order for the muscle to grow and develop, there needs to be a high tension and stimulus placed on the muscles (well durrr!). When the muscles are overloaded with more tension than they were put through the last time round the musculatory system requires your muscles to undergo hypotrophy, or increase in mass. Therefore, resulting in an increase in both muscle size and strength.

The larger the force of tension put on your muscles, the larger more they muscle tissue is stimulated. So in order for your muscles to get the best possible chance of growth, you need to implement a good stimulating technique into your weight training program.

Now, that’s enough of me babbling on, I guess you wanna here this old super powerful technique this whole article is about.

Well….Have you ever heard of the negative lift? Or eccentric contraction training? It’s a weight training technique that places a huge demand on the muscle, even more so than just lifting a conventional weight. This increased amount of stress on the muscle is what is responsible for delivering increased results in muscle growth.

An eccentric contraction or negative contraction is the lowering position of a lift. When you lift a weight, the strain on the muscle is less than that of when you lower the weight.  The increased tension on the muscle when lowering is because the muscle fibres are lengthened and the strain on each individual muscle fibre is increased. Thus, resulting in an increase in muscle growth potential.

Another example of this is included in a bench press. When you lift the bar up to the point of full extension, and then you begin to lower it again, trying not to let it come down too fast and smack you in the throat, this is what is known as an eccentric contraction. The longer you take to lower the bar the more muscle fibres are stimulated, and the chance of muscle growth are increased.

The human muscles are a wonderful thing, they can lift up to 40% more weight during the negative motion (or eccentric contraction) than they can do during the positive muscle contraction.  The positive contraction of the lift is when there is a shortening of the muscle fibers. In other words, the concentric contraction (which is the positive contraction) is when you undergo lifts such as curling, pressing, or pulling down resistance.

That 40% of extra weight which can be lifted on a negative contraction increases your weight training intensity, and places a higher stimuli on the muscles. Therefore, resulting in optimum tension and stimulus for maximum muscle growth and development.

Please be advised that the negative weight training technique is proven to increase muscle fiber damage, and in turn intensify muscle soreness. This extra muscle trauma is the result of higher intense and more targeted muscle training. Along with this increase of intensity comes shorter training times and increased speed of the muscle growth process.

Building the muscle you want is easier than you thought, as long as you utilize the negative repetition. Introduce it to your weight training program now so you can increase the speed of which you build muscle mass.

About Wesley McDermott

Wesley is an avid bodybuilding enthusiast and he has been writing articles and teaching hard gainers and beginners how to gain weight and build muscle naturally for years. You can check out his site at www.weightgain4you.com

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