Former Cedarville star Smart wins national championship in Sweden

Brittany Smart will be long remembered at Cedarville University. She’s the all-time leading scorer in Yellow Jackets history and in all of Ohio women’s college basketball with 3,236 points.

Now the Shawnee High School graduate has made a name for herself in Sweden as one of the key players on Northland’s first national championship team. Northland beat Norrkoping 76-72 to win the Damligan title last month. Smart, a 5-foot-9 guard, had 18 points, six rebounds and three assists in the final.

Northland, located in Lulea, swept the best-of-five championship series. Smart averaged 19 points in the three games and scored 26 in the second game, a 77-69 victory.

“This was probably the highest stage I have played on,” Smart said. “To battle withof their condition."

Nearly 55 million people died in 2016, while 129 million were born, leaving a net gain of 74 humans on the planet.

Global life expectancy last year was 75.3 years for women, and nearly 70 for men.

The Japanese averaged 83.9 years, while citizens of the Central African Republic beat the odds if they make it past 50, a discrepancy of more than three decades between highest and lowest lifespans.

Nearly three quarters of all deaths in 2016 were caused by non-communicable diseases, with heart disease related to restricted blood flow -- 9.5 million deaths -- the single biggest killer of all.

That's an increase of nearly 20 percent in a decade.

Similarly, mortality due to another so-called "lifestyle" disease, diabetes, went up by more than 30 percent over the same