Cheney Says A Palestinian State Is Long Overdue
Declaring that an independent Palestinian state was “long overdue,” Vice President Dick Cheney said on Sunday that the success of the U.S.-sponsored peace negotiations depends on the Palestinian ability to rein in militant groups that favor armed resistance over negotiations.
“Terror and rockets do not merely kill civilians, they also kill the legitimate hopes and aspirations of the Palestinian people,” Cheney said after meeting with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank city of Ramallah. “The future belongs to the advocates of peace and reconciliation.”
Abbas is largely unable to limit the activities of the largest Palestinian militant group, Hamas. After a unity government between Hamas and Abbas Fatah party collapsed in June, Hamas gunmen drove Fatah forces out of the Gaza Strip, leaving Abbas in control of only the West Bank.
Efforts to reconcile the warring Palestinian factions continued Sunday in Yemen, with both sides agreeing only to continue talking.
Abbas, after meeting with Cheney, said that Israeli actions in both the West Bank and Gaza were undermining Palestinian faith in a negotiated settlement with Israel.
“Peace and stability will not be achieved through settlement expansion, or the setting up of checkpoints around towns and villages, and the military escalation against Gaza,” he said.
Nearly 20 Earthquakes Shake The San Francisco Bay Area
If you live in the East Bay your house may have rattled overnight. Nearly two dozen earthquakes have hit the Dublin area since Thursday afternoon. Three more small shakers were recorded early Friday morning.
This comes as a new report warns that the Bay Area is not ready for the big one coming on the Hayward fault.
Geologists say that with a cluster of quakes like this – the Bay Area could continue to feel the quakes for the next several days or even weeks.
Canadian Hate Crime Laws Shuts Down Christian Ministry
The Canadian government has ordered a Christian ministry that teaches doctrine and the differences between Christians and cults shut down because its reference materials were “critical” of the beliefs of those who are not Christian, WND has learned.
So what used to be called MacGregor Ministries with offerings in how to recognize and eliminate “faulty fads” in Christian churches has been re-created in the United States, and now operates under the name MM Outreach Media Ministries.
Lorri MacGregor, who has dedicated her life to explaining the straight and narrow of Christian beliefs since she found her way out of the Jehovah’s Witness system years ago, told WND Canada’s version of a “hate crimes” law prevented their work from continuing as it had for nearly 30 years.
“Canada is no longer a Christian nation,” she said. “And watch out America!”
The issue of the ministry’s charities license in Canada, allowing it to operate as a ministry, came up during a routine audit of the ministry’s finances, which was uneventful.
“The auditor that originally looked at our books told us her supervisor had said she wanted us shut down,” Mrs. MacGregor told WND. “Canada has very strong hate laws.”
She said the ministry points out the differences between Christianity and various cult beliefs, but also with respect, and never as a proponent. She said the work always is in response to a question or issue.
“When a group such as Jehovah’s Witnesses said of our doctrine we’re worshipping a freakish three-headed God (the Trinity), we should be able to respond,” she said. “We say, ‘Here’s the doctrine of the Trinity and here is where it is in the Scripture.’”
That, however, violates Canada’s hate crimes laws, and the ministry was ordered to either make wholesale changes in its presentations, or shut down.
More Than 5 million Americans Have Alzheimer’s
An estimated 5.2 million Americans have Alzheimer’s disease, and it could steal the minds of one out of eight baby boomers, according to a report released on Tuesday by the Alzheimer’s Association.
The report found there were 411,000 new cases of Alzheimer’s in 2000, a number expected to grow to 454,000 new cases a year by 2010. By 2050, 959,000 people will be diagnosed with the disease every year, the report predicts.
The report, available on the Internet here, says that 14 percent of all people age 71 and over have dementia.
That includes 16 percent of women and 11 percent of men in that age group.
Alzheimer’s disease is the most common type of dementia, accounting for 60 to 80 percent of cases.
UFO’s – Strange Lights In Skies May Have Been A Warning Of Earthquake That Sent Tremors Across Britain
March 19, 2008 by admin
Filed under Stories Of Interest
Strange lights spotted in Lincolnshire’s skies may have been a warning of the earthquake which sent tremors across Britain.
Several sightings of lights appearing in the sky were reported in the days leading up to the quake, which had its epicentre near Market Rasen when it struck early on February 27.
And some believe that these could be “earthquake lights” – caused by changes in the electrical properties of the ground before a quake occurs.
There have been many similar reports of “earthquake lights” throughout history.
The most well known case was in Lincoln’s twin town, Tangshan, in China in 1976, before a massive quake that killed 240,000 people across the country.
Husband and wife Jamie and Emily Goddard, of Alexandra Terrace, in Lincoln, managed to capture the lights on a mobile phone camera just as they appeared above Drury Lane at around 8.30pm on February 22.
And other people have contacted the Echo to say they saw lights on the same night – with some wondering at first whether it was a ‘UFO’ from an RAF base.
Dr Richard England, from the Department of Geology at the University of Leicester, said that there is little evidence to explain the phenomenon – but there have been enough sightings to suggest there could be a link.
Is Atheism Getting a Free Pass
The Institute examined the apparent “rise in atheism,” subject covered in broadcast news programs, three leading weekly news magazines, and four programs on taxpayer-funded National Public Radio, all shown during 2007
Although only eight percent of Americans call themselves atheists, the report found that not only is the news media hostile toward religion, particularly Christianity, but the media may be spreading a “Gospel of Godlessness” on the American public.
“Whether deliberately or not, the news media did not subject atheism or atheists to the same skepticism to which they subject Christians and Christianity,” the report said. “Journalists who look at America’s majority religion through a skeptical prism should equally apply their critical faculties to atheism.”
In their report, CMI details their discovery of imbalances in the media’s coverage of the religion. Among the findings:
Hillary’s Secret Weapon – Catholics
Hillary Clinton’s hopes for saving her candidacy by winning in Tuesday’s crucial primaries in Rhode Island, Vermont, Ohio, and Texas may hinge on a specific voting bloc — Catholics.
According to CNN’s Anderson Cooper show on Monday night, Catholics vote for Democratic candidates by substantial margins, and this year exit polls showed that Hillary has won the Catholic vote in every Democratic primary but that in Connecticut.
In general elections, Catholics vote Democratic over Republican by 44 percent to 41 percent, and have favored Hillary over Obama in this year’s prinaries.
In California, Hillary won 66 percent of the Catholic vote to Obama’s 30 percent and took New York by the same lopsided margins.
In Massachusetts, it was 64 percent for Hillary and 33 percent for Obama, despite Ted Kennedy’s and John Kerry’s endorsements of Obama. Both Kennedy and Kerry are Catholics.
Obama, CNN’s Gary Tuchman recalled, won his home state of Illinois but even there lost among Catholics.
Professor Wendy Schiller, who teaches political science at Brown University, explained “The Catholic vote today in America, particularly Democratic Catholics, is dominated by older women.” She said that such women are key to Hillary’s success among Catholics.
“There are more women who identify themselves as Catholic than men, and they are more predictable in their voting behavior. They tend to vote more and they sometimes dominate the household. They volunteer more; they tend to get involved in campaigns more; and they care about the kinds of issues that Hillary Clinton has been emphasizing.
Said Tuchman, “Catholics have become the ultimate swing vote. Since 1972, the presidential candidate who received the most votes in the general election, received the most Catholic support. In the 2000 election, a very interesting example, Al Gore lost it, but won the popular vote but also won the Catholic vote.”
CNN noted that of the 10 states in the country with the highest percentage of Catholics, Obama has only won one state overall, Connecticut.
Fed Acts Sunday To Prevent Global Bank Run Monday
Acting quickly to prevent a run on major global financial firms, the Federal Reserve cut its discount rate by a quarter percentage point to 3.25% and offered to lend money to a longer list of firms than ever before.
Circle of Doom For The Dollar
Ben S. Bernanke’s interest-rate cuts have touched off a vicious circle of doom for the dollar.
The Federal Reserve reduced the rate on direct loans to commercial banks by a quarter-point to 3.25 percent before Asian financial markets opened today. It will likely lower its target rate for overnight loans between banks tomorrow to at least 2.25 percent from 3 percent, according to futures traded on the Chicago Board of Trade. Lower borrowing costs work against the dollar by making fixed-income securities issued by the government less appealing to global investors.
“The relative return on U.S. assets is not attractive enough and we have moved back into looking for dollar weakness,” said Robert Robis, a bond fund manager in New York at OppenheimerFunds Inc., which oversees $260 billion. Robis last month was betting the dollar would rally versus the euro.
If that weren’t enough to make bears out of bulls, the weakest dollar since at least 1971 based on a Fed trade-weighted index is helping push oil, grains and metals, which are priced in the U.S. currency, to record highs. That in turn is causing economists to lower growth forecasts for the U.S. and preventing central banks concerned that inflation is accelerating from cutting interest rates, further undermining the dollar.
6 Signs U.S. May Be Readying For War With Iran
Is the United States moving toward military action with Iran?
The resignation of the top U.S. military commander for the Middle East is setting off alarms that the Bush administration is intent on using military force to stop Iran’s moves toward gaining nuclear weapons.
In announcing his sudden resignation today following a report on his views in Esquire, Adm. William Fallon didn’t directly deny that he differs with President Bush over at least some aspects of the president’s policy on Iran. For his part, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said it is “ridiculous” to think that the departure of Fallon — whose Central Command has been working on contingency plans for strikes on Iran as well as overseeing Iraq — signals that the United States is planning to go to war with Iran.
Fallon’s resignation, ending a 41-year Navy career, has reignited the buzz of speculation over what the Bush administration intends to do given that its troubled, sluggish diplomatic effort has failed to slow Iran’s nuclear advances. Those activities include the advancing process of uranium enrichment, a key step to producing the material necessary to fuel a bomb, though the Iranians assert the work is to produce nuclear fuel for civilian power reactors, not weapons.
Here are six developments that may have Iran as a common thread. And, if it comes to war, they may be seen as clues as to what was planned. None of them is conclusive, and each has a credible non-Iran related explanation:
1. Fallon’s resignation: With the Army fully engaged in Iraq, much of the contingency planning for possible military action has fallen to the Navy, which has looked at the use of carrier-based warplanes and sea-launched missiles as the weapons to destroy Iran’s air defenses and nuclear infrastructure. Centcom commands the U.S. naval forces in and near the Persian Gulf.
In the aftermath of the problems with the Iraq war, there has been much discussion within the military that senior military officers should have resigned at the time when they disagreed with the White House.
Israel On High Alert Near Lebanese Border
Israel intensified patrols near the Lebanese border over the weekend its in anticipation for a possible attack by the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah as the end of the mourning period of its assassinated military commander Imad Mughaniyeh approached, a Lebanese security source said Sunday.
Hezbollah has blamed Israel for the February 12 car bombing that killed Imad Mughaniyeh, a Hezbollah leader suspected of masterminding a series of terrorist attacks against US and Jewish targets in and outside Lebanon. The Israeli government has so far denied the charge.
Mughaniyeh was killed in a car bomb blast in Damascus.
Immediately after Mughaniyehs killing, Israel put its military and embassies on alert, and advised Jewish institutions worldwide to do the same, fearing a large-scale revenge attack would be carried by the group to avenge the assassination of Mughaniyeh.
Usually in Muslim traditions, there is a 40-day mourning period.
According to the source, Israeli patrols near the Lebanese borders were intensified Sunday and soldiers were seen sitting behind bunkers on high alert.
Mughaniyeh was one of the worlds most wanted men. He was linked to a series of attacks that killed hundreds of Americans, including 241 US Marines in Lebanon, and the kidnappings of Westerners in the 1980s.
His attacks were believed to have extended into the 1990s, with the bombing of the Israeli Embassy in Argentina, a Jewish centre in Buenos Aires and an attack on foreign military housing in Saudi Arabia. Dozens were killed in those attacks.
Hezbollah chief Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah vowed at Mughaniyehs funeral last month to retaliate against Israeli targets anywhere in the world.
Honey Bees Wiped Out In 10 Years
Beekeepers have warned that most of the country’s honey bees could be wiped out by disease in 10 years unless an urgent research program is launched to find new treatments and drugs. They are to launch a nationwide campaign, including protests, to force the government to fund the £8m research project which they say is needed to save the nation’s bees.
Ministers say they have no budget for such a program, a claim rejected by keepers, who are to lobby MPs, gather at the House of Commons for a protest meeting and begin a letter campaign to raise support for research funds.
‘Beekeeping is still reeling from the varroa mite, which carries a number of viruses and which devastated thousands of hives across the country when it reached Britain 10 years ago,’ said Tim Lovett, president of the British Beekeeping Association. ‘Now there is a real danger that colony collapse disease – which has wiped out 80 per cent of bees in parts of the US – will appear in this country. Unless we develop effective protection, there could then be massive losses of bees across the country.’
There are around 250,000 honey bee hives in Britain and a recent estimate by the Department for Farming, Environment and Rural Affairs revealed that bees contribute £165m a year to the economy through their pollination of fruit trees, field beans and other crops. In addition, the 5,000 tonnes of British honey sold in UK stores generates a further £12m.
But, despite the importance of bees to the nation’s economy, the government has said it has no cash left for agricultural research projects. ‘If nothing is done about it, the honey bee population could be wiped out in 10 years,’ the Farming Minister, Lord Rooker, has admitted in the House of Lords. However, Lovett said the minister had since written to his association saying there was no money available for a research programme.
‘The pollinating of farmers’ crops carried out by our bees is provided free of charge,’ said Lovett. ‘Over five years that work raises £800m for the nation. We are asking for an £8m research programme to save our bees to run for five years. That is 1 per cent of the money our bees generate.’
Fifteen years ago, bees in Britain were in a relatively healthy state. Then varroa destructor appeared in Britain from the continent and began infecting hives. ‘The varroa carries viruses that can infect and kill hives,’ said beekeeper Alan Johnston. ‘It had a devastating effect on our bees.’ Most estimates suggest about half Britain’s hives were affected and, although there has been a slight recovery in recent years, the chemicals used to counter varroa are expensive and only partially effective, so the bee population remains in a precarious condition.
On top of this problem is the danger of colony collapse disease. The cause of CCD is unknown, but it has already spread to most American states and there have been reports of cases in France, Germany and Italy in the past year. Most keepers believe its arrival in Britain is now inevitable. ‘We have to be prepared for that happening and to have some line of defence,’ added Lovett. ‘We need to know what is causing this disease and find ways to combat it so we are not completely exposed when it arrives here. At the moment the government is refusing to act and that is why we are launching our campaign.’
Keepers have also warned that the weather is now causing problems in many areas for bees. Bright sunshine has brought them into the open, but sudden cold snaps have caught many before they can return to their hives. The result has been large numbers of dead bees being reported around the country.
Deadly Superbug Evades Hospital Screening
March 12, 2008 by admin
Filed under Stories Of Interest
Efforts to screen patients for drug-resistant staph infections at the time of their hospital admissions appear to be ineffective in stemming the spread of the potentially deadly “superbug” known as MRSA, new research suggests.
The finding is the latest bad news for the control of the bacteria MRSA — short for methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus. The germ, which doctors believe gained its drug-resistant properties from years of inappropriate antibiotic use, garnered headlines in October when researchers from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention identified it as the culprit in an estimated 94,000 life-threatening infections and 18,650 deaths in 2005.
The latest research, published Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association, shows that the stubborn bug appears to evade hospital screening efforts intended to keep it in check.
Between July 2004 and May 2006, researchers looked at more than 20,000 surgical patients at a Swiss teaching hospital. Roughly half were part of hospitalized groups in which all patients were screened for the disease upon admission. The other half were not subject to such screening measures.
One In Four U.S. Teenage Girls Has An STD Study Finds
For too many teenage girls, the numbers released Tuesday hold the threat of infertility and cancer.
For the experienced U.S. health experts who reported them, the data were alarming and disappointing.
More than one in four teenage girls in the U.S. has a sexually transmitted disease, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.
That translates to 3.2 million girls ages 14 to 19 who are infected with human papillomavirus (HPV), chlamydia, herpes simplex virus, or trichomoniasis. Among girls with STDs, 15 percent had more than one.
The numbers came as no surprise to Daryl Lynch. As a physician in the Teen Clinic of Children’s Mercy Hospital, he deals with the children behind the statistics every day.
“We have historically seen lots and lots of STDs among teens in Kansas City,” Lynch said. “It’s a very sexually active, sexually promiscuous crowd that doesn’t practice safe sex. And therein lies the problem.”
Many adolescents have the attitude that nothing can hurt them, Lynch said.
“So motivating them to use condoms, it’s a tough sell,” he said. “Even among teens who have had an STD.”
While many of these diseases are also common among teenage boys, the researchers focused on girls because females are at higher risk of the most severe consequences of sexually transmitted diseases.
“What these numbers tell us is that we need to do a better job on lots of different fronts,” said John M. Douglas Jr., director of CDC’s Division of STD Prevention. “Better education of our young people, better promotion of prevention practices and better … screening practices.”
The CDC report, issued at a conference in Chicago, is the first national look at the combined prevalence of these infections among teenage girls, lead author Sara Forhan said.
