#Germany tour IND women team

[avitaknews]

हार के साथ खत्म किया महिला हॉकी टीम ने जर्मनी का दौरा, चौथे मैच में 1-2 से मिली हार

हार के साथ खत्म किया महिला हॉकी टीम ने जर्मनी का दौरा, चौथे मैच में 1-2 से मिली हार

भारतीय महिला हॉकी टीम को गुरुवार को जर्मनी के खिलाफ चौथे और आखिरी मैच में 1-2 से हार का सामना करना पड़ा। यह टीम इंडिया की चौथे मैच में लगातार चौथी हार रही और टीम एक भी जीत अपने नाम नहीं कर सकी। जर्मनी की टीम शुरुआत से ही काफी आक्रामक नजर आई और भारतीय टीम को मैच में आने का मौका नहीं दिया। भारत की तरफ से लालरेमसियामी ने एकमात्र गोल 51वें मिनट में किया।  पहले मैच में जबर्दस्त जीत के बाद भारत ने…

[newstfionline]

Karen Pence is the vice president’s ‘prayer warrior’

By Ashley Parker, Washington Post, March 28, 2017

During the first of Vice President Pence’s two unsuccessful races for Congress, he rode a single-speed bicycle more than 250 miles around his district, much of it accompanied by his wife, Karen, along for the journey.

During their time in the Indiana governor’s mansion, the Pences installed twin treadmills upstairs in their residence.

And during his years as a House member in Washington, after he had finally won on his third attempt, Mike Pence proudly displayed an antique red phone on his desk--a Christmas gift from his wife for which only she had the number, a hotline straight from her to him.

More than a decade later, even as cellphones were the norm, Mike Pence had that same red phone installed in his statehouse office--a reminder, both physical and symbolic, of the direct and enduring connection between Mike and Karen Pence.

Now, as second lady, Karen Pence, 60, remains an important influence on one of President Trump’s most important political allies. She sat in on at least one interview as the vice president assembled his staff, accompanied her husband on his first foreign trip and joins him for off-the-record briefings with reporters, acting as his gut check and shield.

On the vice president’s visit last month to Germany and Belgium, the Pences quietly toured Dachau concentration camp, often holding hands, and huddled together on the Air Force Two ride home to debrief on the trip. When Mike Pence, 57, ventured to the back of the plane to chat off the record with reporters, his wife accompanied him, bearing a silver tray of cookies and standing by his side for the 20-minute conversation.

“As governor, Mike Pence had a very tight inner circle, and Karen Pence was very much a part of that,” said Brian Howey, publisher of Howey Politics Indiana, a nonpartisan political newsletter in the state. “I would characterize her as the silent, omnipresent partner. You knew she was there, you knew there was some considerable influence she wielded, but, boy, she was not public about it.”

Over the years, Karen Pence has repeatedly said that one of her “hard and fast rules” is that she never weighs in on or attempts to influence policy.

Friends and aides, meanwhile, say she is the Pence family “prayer warrior,” a woman so inextricably bound to her husband that even then-candidate Trump understood her importance and consulted her in critical campaign moments.

When Trump called to offer Mike Pence the No. 2 slot, the businessman knew Karen Pence was by his side and asked, “I hear Karen is there, too? Can I talk to her?” And nearly three months later, when an Access Hollywood tape revealed Trump talking crudely about women, Trump called his running mate to apologize and then asked him to hand the phone to his wife, so he could apologize personally to her, too.

Though aides said Karen Pence was among those most upset by the tape, they stressed that she also emerged privately as one of Trump’s staunchest defenders overall.

Born Karen Sue Batten in Kansas, she grew up just north of downtown Indianapolis, where she met Steve Whitaker, her first husband, in high school, where she was valedictorian and president of the Speech Club. In a telephone interview, Whitaker recalled few details about his 21-year-old bride. The marriage ended, he said, after they simply grew apart as he, then a medical student, spent long hours at the hospital.

In fact, he added, the last time he saw her was more than three decades ago, when they ran into each other on the street in Indianapolis. He didn’t know who she was married to--or that her husband was Trump’s running mate--until shortly before the election.

“We were kids,” said Whitaker, now the chief medical officer of a Seattle-based biopharmaceutical company. “We probably didn’t necessarily know what we were doing.”

Later, after dating Mike Pence for eight months, Karen engraved a small gold cross with the word “Yes” and slipped it into her purse to give him when he popped the question.

He did, just a month later, as the two were feeding the ducks at a local canal. He hollowed out two loaves of bread, placing a small bottle of champagne in one and the ring box in the other for her to discover as she tore off pieces, according to local news reports. (They later got the bread shellacked, as a keepsake, a local paper noted).

The Pences were married in a Roman Catholic church in 1985 but later became evangelical Christians.

In 2002, Mike Pence told the Hill that he never eats alone with a woman other than his wife and that he won’t attend events featuring alcohol without her by his side, either.

“You can’t get a dime between them,” said Ken Blackwell, senior fellow at the Family Research Council and a senior domestic policy adviser on the Trump transition team. “It is not him seeking her approval, but his doing a sort of gut check with what they have learned together and come up through together in terms of their shared Christianity.”

Friends of Pence--who say she quietly held a small Bible study group during her time in the governor’s mansion--say her faith has sustained her through challenging periods, from when she and Mike first had trouble getting pregnant to the vagaries of politics, including her initial reluctance to support his third attempt to win a congressional seat.

Vicki Lake, the wife of the Pences’ former pastor, recalled a visit from Karen Pence one day at her Greenwood, Ind., home. As Pence was leaving, Lake recalled, “She grabbed my hands, and we prayed together in my laundry room.”

“That’s the kind of person she is, a person who believes in prayer, a godly mother and wife,” Lake said. “In fact, when Mike was a congressman, Karen would send out prayer requests to people--to pray for them as a family, that God would give them the strength to do all that they had to do.”

Marilyn Logsdon, who met Karen Pence when they were elementary-school teachers in the late 1980s and later served on her charitable board when she was the first lady of Indiana, recalled her friend beginning meetings with prayer. “She would say, ‘Before we look at these grants, let’s just ask God for wisdom and discernment,” Logsdon said.

Pence has stayed close with many of the women she met in church, as a teacher and through her children’s play groups, all of whom describe her as a loyal friend. Lake, who has a disease that hinders her red blood cell production, says Pence often prays for her hemoglobin count. “I personally get an occasional text asking me, ‘How are your numbers?’” she said.

“They are in a strong, supportive marriage bound by common faith,” said Peter Rusthoven, a lawyer active in Indiana Republican politics who has known the Pences for more than 25 years. “I don’t think they make decisions separately.”