Removal of Woman Referee By Religious School Stirs Controversy
February 27, 2008
The school is owned and operated by the Society of St. Pius X, a group founded in 1970 in response to reforms that the Roman Catholic Church initiated with the Second Vatican Council. The group follows pre-Vatican II practices, such as the Latin Mass. Pope John Paul II excommunicated the society’s world leader, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, in the late 1980s. Lefebvre died in 1991.
St. Mary’s, which houses students in kindergarten through 12th grade, separates boys and girls in virtually all endeavors. Some women teach boys, and the girls can participate in intramural-type sports.
According to the St. Mary’s Web site, “The ultimate goal of our schools is to form good Catholics and good citizens in such a manner that the whole person may be submitted to the reign of Jesus Christ in the spiritual, moral, intellectual, and physical spheres.”
For Fred Shockey, the message that came from the school that day was far different.
A basketball official who lives in Wamego, Kan., Shockey worked two games at St. Mary’s just before Campbell’s game. He was getting ready to leave when the school’s athletic director approached him and said there had been an emergency.
The school needed Shockey to stay and referee another game. Reluctantly, Shockey agreed to do so — until he found out what the emergency was.
In a show of solidarity, Shockey and Putthoff walked off the court with Campbell.
“I said, ‘There’s no way I’m staying,’ ” Shockey said. “I kept going, ‘Wow. Wow.’
“I was so disgusted.”
Shockey and others said the game was played after a referee from an earlier game and the school’s athletic director agreed to officiate.
For her part, Campbell has no interest in being a crusader. She’s 49, a retired police officer who enjoys her quiet life in Ozawkie. She certainly isn’t angry at St. Mary’s, she insists, and isn’t exactly thrilled that this brouhaha is “growing legs.”
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Americans Switching Faiths And Dropping Out
February 25, 2008
The study released Monday by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life is unusual for it sheer scope, relying on interviews with more than 35,000 adults to document a diverse and dynamic U.S. religious population.
While much of the study confirms earlier findings — mainline Protestant churches are in decline, non-denominational churches are gaining and the ranks of the unaffiliated are growing — it also provides a deeper look behind those trends, and of smaller religious groups.
“The American religious economy is like a marketplace — very dynamic, very competitive,” said Luis Lugo, director of the Pew Forum. “Everyone is losing, everyone is gaining. There are net winners and losers, but no one can stand still. Those groups that are losing significant numbers have to recoup them to stay vibrant.”
Third Major Earthquake Rocks Island of Sumatra
February 25, 2008
Another powerful earthquake struck Indonesias Sumatra island Monday, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
The latest on Monday evening was at least the third: a 6.9-magnitude aftershock strike off the coast of Sumatra, according to UGS.
No tsunami warning was immediately issued.
It appeared to be at least the third in a series of quakes, with two or more strong ones reportedly hitting the same region earlier on Monday.
There was a brief tsunami warning after the first quakes, but no reports of damage, injuries or deaths.
The second quake had a preliminary magnitude of about 6.7. Another, which occurred early Monday morning, had a magnitude of 7.3, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
Doomsday Seedbank To Be Opened On Arctic Island
February 25, 2008
On a windswept Arctic island 1000 kms from the North Pole, a group of Norwegian engineers and scientists have been constructing a gigantic seed bank inside a frozen mountain.
To be managed by the Global Crop Diversity Trust, a group dedicated to the ongoing diversity of plants through a variety of genetic strains, the International Seed Bank will open this week.
Known as the Doomsday vault, the seed bank has the capacity to hold 4.5 million batches of seeds from all known varieties of the planet’s main food crops — more than “…twice as many varieties of agricultural crops as we think exist,” says Dr Cary Fowler, executive director of the Global Crop Diversity Trust and project mastermind.
“It will not be filled up in my lifetime, nor in my grandchildren’s lifetime,” he says.
The seedbank is located on the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard and has the capacity to store samples from all the world’s existing seedbanks so they can be replaced should they come under threat from a natural catastrophe or war.
The Svalbard site was chosen because of its remoteness and freezing temperatures where the mercury plummets to an average of minus 14 degrees Celsius in winter.
It is also testing the storage of seeds in permafrost conditions.
“It’s also an experiment, what they call a 100-year experiment, ” says Dr Fowler. “They’re testing the germination rate of the seeds here under permafrost conditions.”
“We have no mechanical refrigeration in this Nordic collection here and the seeds have been just fine since 1984. This experiment is what enables us to know that the seed vault will be working quite well for decades even if the mechanical refrigeration in the seed vault goes off,” he added.
The vault has an alarm system and is protected by fortified concrete walls and an armoured door. The seed bank has also been built to withstand nuclear missile attacks or a plunging plane and, at 130 metres above current sea level, is high enough that it is not in danger of flooding should the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets melt due to global warming.
Russia Warns It Will Use Force To Back Serbia
February 24, 2008
The international split over Kosovo grew more ominous yesterday as Russia raised the spectre of using force to back Serbia’s bid to retain the territory.
Russia’s envoy to NATO warned the Western military alliance, which has a 16,000-strong peacekeeping force in Kosovo, and the European Union against formally backing Pristina’s declaration of independence.
“If the European Union works out a common position, or if NATO breaches its mandate in Kosovo, these organizations will be in conflict with the United Nations,” said Dmitry Rogozin. Russia believes the UN Security Council resolution on Kosovo does not authorize a unilateral move to independence.
“We, too, would then have to proceed from the view that in order to be respected, we must use brute force, in other words armed force.”
He spoke a day after a mob in the Serbian capital Belgrade torched the U.S. embassy. They were among 250,000 people attending a rally protesting Pristina’s unilateral declaration of independence move and Washington’s recognition of the breakaway state.
New Quakes Add To Trembling Trend In West
February 24, 2008
The West has been rocking lately, and it has nothing to do with loud guitar music.
Several earthquakes have struck the region this week, including two more Friday near the California-Mexico border.
The first quake struck at 11:31 a.m. Friday in an area about 16 miles south of Mexicali, a Mexican border town. Its magnitude was measured at 4.7.
The second quake, a magnitude 4.1 temblor, hit three minutes later about 8 miles west of Ocotillo, an unincorporated community in east San Diego County.
That comes on the heels of a magnitude 5.0 quake on Tuesday that hit an area about 21 miles southeast of Mexicali. No injuries were reported in that quake.
The West’s largest recent quake registered 6.0 magnitude in northeastern Nevada. That quake struck Thursday and damaged hundreds of homes, toppled chimneys and reduced part of a historic district to rubble, but no serious injuries were reported.
In the two quakes that struck Friday, San Diego Sheriff’s Lt. William Donahue says there were no immediate damage or injury reports on the U.S. side of the border.
U.S. Faces Disaster Over Oil Wealth Exodus
February 24, 2008
One of America’s most influential businessmen, legendary oilman T. Boone Pickens, says the nation’s wealth is being plundered by oil exporters and the U.S. faces a potential financial disaster if our energy policy is not reformed.
Pickens, who correctly predicted that oil would top $100 a barrel, also says he expects oil prices to drop sharply in the near term.
Appearing on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” Thursday morning, Pickens pointed out that the U.S. is currently sending half a trillion dollars out of the country each year to buy oil, in some cases from people who “are our enemies.”
Said Pickens, “You take 10 years and you’ve got $5 trillion … That’s more than $1 billion a day.
“We can’t stand that. Wealth is moving out of the country…
“Not one presidential candidate has addressed this … The candidates have to get up to speed on what energy cost is doing to our country.” Pickens even turned on his own industry, oil, and called for an increase in alternative energy sources.
“If we do not get on the alternative energy bandwagon and if we don’t have a global recession, we could be sitting on $150 oil in two years,” he told CNBC.
Cleanup Begins After 6.0-Magnitude Earthquake Jolts Nevada
February 24, 2008
A powerful earthquake damaged hundreds of homes, toppled chimneys and reduced part of a historic district to rubble, but residents of this rural northeastern Nevada town are grateful it wasn’t worse.
No one was killed and no serious injuries were reported after the magnitude-6.0 quake jolted the high desert town at 6:16 a.m. Thursday and rumbled across much of the West.
About 20 to 25 buildings suffered heavy damage in the largely vacant historic district of Wells, where brick facades tumbled off several buildings, signs fell and windows broke. A support beam crushed one unoccupied car.
Flu Epidemic Kills 22 Children Nationally
February 24, 2008
The flu has spread across the country and the centers of disease control is now calling it an epidemic.
At least 22 children have died from the flu in Florida this season. Florida is the only state seeing just regional outbreaks.
Twenty states have seen increases in flu activity over the past two weeks.
The symptoms are sudden onset of a high fever, headache, cough, and respiratory congestion. One big problem is that not all of the flu strains are targeted in this years vaccine.
Study: 3 in 4 U.S. Mosques Preach Anti-West Extremism
February 24, 2008
An undercover survey of more than 100 mosques and Islamic schools in America has exposed widespread radicalism, including the alarming finding that 3 in 4 Islamic centers are hotbeds of anti-Western extremism, WND has learned.
The Mapping Sharia in America Project, sponsored by the Washington-based Center for Security Policy, has trained former counterintelligence and counterterrorism agents from the FBI, CIA and U.S. military, who are skilled in Arabic and Urdu, to conduct undercover reconnaissance at some 2,300 mosques and Islamic centers and schools across the country.
“So far of 100 mapped, 75 should be on a watchlist,” an official familiar with the project said.
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