Iceland Shaken by Magnitude 6.2 Earthquake
A strong earthquake shook southern Iceland on Thursday, injuring at least 15 people as it rocked buildings in the capital, touched off landslides and forced evacuations in outlying towns, officials and local media said.
Government officials reported that 15 to 30 people were injured, none of the seriously, when the quake hit near Selfoss, 30 miles southeast of the capital of Reykjavik. They were taken to a local health center for treatment.
The U.S. Geological Survey said the quake had a magnitude of 6.2 and hit at 3:46 p.m.
Sharp aftershocks were feared over the next few hours in the southwest of the country, and police traveled around the nearby town of Hveragerdi, 28 miles east of Reykjavik, with a bullhorn, advising residents to stay outdoors.
An Associated Press Television News cameraman in Hveragerdi reported at least two aftershocks, and said residents were beginning to pitch tents outside because they were not allowed to return home.
“It was a horrific experience. Everything inside my house is ruined,” Sveinn Ingvason, a 51-year-old construction worker, told Iceland’s Channel 2 from the town.
Adalheidur Gudmunsdottir, the 52-year-old director of nursing at a clinic in Selfoss, said many of her patients were frightened by the tremors.
“Some of the patients asked to moved outside,” she told Channel 2. “The initial idea was to evacuate the clinic … (but) we decided to move beds from walls and close off the elevators.”
Bird Flu Strains Mutate To Heighten Pandemic Scare
With more and more people in various nations across the globe falling prey to the deadly avian virus, the news that some strains of the virus are found to have mutated to adapt themselves as per us humans, comes as an alarming discovery, further raising the scare of a widespread human pandemic.
It is found that the H7 subtype of the avian virus has evolved to make itself more adaptive to human beings, thereby increasing its chances to move freely between humans and birds.
The virus found in the respiratory tract of ferrets is said to breed well in the sugars found in human tracheal cells. This is becoming the primary reason for concern, as the virus is following the same sugar binding tendencies as seen in previous viral pandemics around the globe.
“These findings suggest that the H7 class of viruses have partially adapted to recognize the receptors that are preferred by the human influenza virus,” said Terrence Tumpey, a senior microbiologist with the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.
According to the researchers such virus mutations call for stricter surveillance and screening on the part of health agencies and governments across the world.
Though, research also says that the mutations and adaptations are not strong enough as yet, to trigger off an epidemic in the near future for sure. However, the possibility of one, can not be overlooked and thus, the H7 virus needs to be kept under the scanner constantly.
Young Muslims More Open to Interfaith Dialogue Says Vatican
Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, head of the Catholic Church’s interfaith council says a new spirit of openness among younger Muslims is improving the “climate” of interreligious dialogue
Younger Muslims are radically altering the “climate” of interfaith dialogue, the head of the Vatican’s Council for interreligious dialogue has said.
“There is a change of climate [in interreligious dialogue] now” said Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, head of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue said on Wednesday: “It is more open minded, there is greater cordiality. Many young Muslims in Eygpt, Lebanon, Syria, or Qatar have learned in local Catholic schools, where we welcome Muslim students. They all say the same thing: “We have been in your schools for years but you have never proselytised.”’ The young generation realise we can’t be against each other. Believers of all religions have greater responsibility towards the human family.”
Report: Iran Arrests Suspected Converts to Christianity
Amid a growing crackdown on religious freedom, Iranian police reportedly have been rounding up people they suspect have converted to Christianity.
On May 11, police arrested eight people in the southern city of Shiraz, according to Carl Moeller, president of Open Doors USA, a Christian organization that fights religious persecution.
Converting from Islam is a crime in Iran; converts can face jail and other penalties.
Most of those detained have been released, but at least one of them, 21-year-old Mojtaba Hussein, is still behind bars and is not cooperating with his captors, according to Moeller.
“He may not be willing to give up the names of other Muslim converts. He may not be willing to recant his faith himself,” Moeller said.
Numerous calls to Iranian government representatives in the U.S. have not been returned.
Though they are protected under the Iranian constitution, Christians are not given the same freedoms as other citizens in Iran. Christians can’t worship freely or hold public office, and they can be arrested for even speaking to Muslims about Christianity.
Russia Arming Rebels For War
Russia is pushing the rebel Georgian region of Abkhazia towards war with Tbilisi by arming separatist fighters to stop Georgia from joining NATO, a top Georgian minister said in an interview on Wednesday.
“The Russians are forcing the Abkhaz to prepare for war” against Georgia, Interior Minister Vano Merabishvili told Russia’s Kommersant daily.
“Russia is giving them money and weapons for them to fight against us,” including by financing the purchase of a Buk-M1 air defence system worth 150 million dollars (95 million euros), he said.
Merabishvili said this was all part of Russia’s plans “to guarantee Georgia does not get into NATO” by stirring unrest in the region.
“If there is a war and there is a single shot from the Georgian side, Georgia will never become a member of NATO,” he said.
The Black Sea region of Abkhazia broke away from the rest of Georgia in a war in the early 1990s that killed several thousand people and forced hundreds of thousands to flee their homes.
Abkhazia has since operated as a de facto independent state with strong backing from Russia. Russia last month further boosted ties with the separatists despite strong objections from Georgia.
Gay Marriage Gaining Ground Even Among Younger Evangelicals
May 30, 2008 by admin
Filed under Stories Of Interest
For conservative Christian activists, this months California Supreme Court ruling legalizing gay marriage provides an opportunity to rekindle interest in an issue that has fallen well behind the price of gas in the national consciousness.
But it wont be easy, and not just because of pressing secular issues like the housing downturn and an unpopular war in Iraq.
Voices within evangelicalism are pushing for a broader agenda, and evidence suggests younger evangelicals are more accepting of gays and lesbians. Meanwhile, anti-gay marriage amendments are on the ballot in only a few states and the issue doesnt play to presumptive GOP presidential nominee John McCains strengths.
Yet gay marriage opponents say the California ruling will help them broaden their religious coalitions to include more Hispanic Catholics and evangelicals.
The ruling, they say, made their argument for them: Constitutional measures are needed to prevent judges from subverting the will of the people and reinventing a sacred institution they believe is central to societys well-being and part of Gods design.
“I think the California decision does refocus our movement on the threat of marriage being redefined,” said John Stemberger, who as head of the Florida Family Policy Council is supporting a proposed amendment in that swing state that would define marriage as between one man and one woman. It would prohibit civil unions providing the same benefits of marriage.
Unless a stay is granted on the California ruling, gender-neutral marriage certificates will begin being issued June 17. Acceptance of gay marriage is growing in the state, with a Field Poll released Wednesday showing that 51 percent of respondents support legalizing same-sex marriage and 42 percent oppose it.
US Banks Likely To Fail As Bad Loans Soar
U.S. banks set aside a record $37.1bn to cover losses on real estate loans and other credits during the first quarter in a sign of the growing economic pain being caused by the global credit crisis, regulators said on Thursday.
Sheila Bair, chairwoman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, said it was likely loan-loss provisions and bank failures would rise in coming quarters as the fallout from market turmoil hits the real economy.
“While we may be past the worst of the turmoil in financial markets, we’re still in the early stages of the traditional credit crisis you typically see during an economic downturn,” she said, adding: “What we really need to focus on is the uncertainty surrounding the economy . . . and again it is all about housing.”
Ms Bair spoke as the FDIC released its quarterly banking profile, which showed loan-loss provisions in the first quarter were more than four times higher than last year’s level. That was the main reason bank earnings fell 46 per cent to $19.3bn from the first quarter in 2007 for the commercial banks and savings institutions where the FDIC insures customer deposits.
Following restatements by banks, the FDIC revised the industry’s net income for the fourth quarter of last year from $5.8bn to $646m – the lowest since the end of 1990.
Meanwhile, the FDIC said the number of “problem” banks rose in the first quarter from 76 to 90, with combined assets of $26.3bn. Three US banks have failed this year, compared with three for the whole of last year and none in 2005 and 2006.
Ms Bair said she expected more bank failures but emphasised that the number of problem institutions remained well below the record levels of the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s and 1990s – when one in 10 banks were in that category.
Computer Trained To “Read” Mind
A computer has been trained to “read” peoples minds by looking at scans of their brains as they thought about specific words, researchers said on Thursday.
They hope their study, published in the journal Science, might lead to better understanding of how and where the brain stores information.
This might lead to better treatments for language disorders and learning disabilities, said Tom Mitchell of the Machine Learning Department at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, who helped lead the study.
“The question we are trying to get at is one people have been thinking about for centuries, which is: How does the brain organize knowledge?” Mitchell said in a telephone interview.
“It is only in the last 10 or 15 years that we have this way that we can study this question.”
Mitchells team used functional magnetic resonance imaging, a type of brain scan that can see real-time brain activity.
They calibrated the computer by having nine student volunteers think of 58 different words, while imaging their brain activity.
“We gave instructions to people where we would tell them, We are going to show you words and we would like you, when you see this word, to think about its properties,” Mitchell said.
They imaged each of the nine people thinking about the 58 different words, to create a kind of “average” image of a word.
“If I show you the brain images for two words, the main thing you notice is that they look pretty much alike. If you look at them for a while you might see subtle differences,” Mitchell said.
Energy Fears Looming, New Survivalists Prepare
A few years ago, Kathleen Breault was just another suburban grandma, driving countless hours every week, stopping for lunch at McDonald’s, buying clothes at the mall, watching TV in the evenings.
That was before Breault heard an author talk about the bleak future of the world’s oil supply. Now, she’s preparing for the world as we know it to disappear.
Breault cut her driving time in half. She switched to a diet of locally grown foods near her upstate New York home and lost 70 pounds. She sliced up her credit cards, banished her television and swore off plane travel. She began relying on a wood-burning stove.
“I was panic-stricken,” the 50-year-old recalled, her voice shaking. “Devastated. Depressed. Afraid. Vulnerable. Weak. Alone. Just terrible.”
Convinced the planet’s oil supply is dwindling and the world’s economies are heading for a crash, some people around the country are moving onto homesteads, learning to live off their land, conserving fuel and, in some cases, stocking up on guns they expect to use to defend themselves and their supplies from desperate crowds of people who didn’t prepare.
The exact number of people taking such steps is impossible to determine, but anecdotal evidence suggests that the movement has been gaining momentum in the last few years.
These energy survivalists are not leading some sort of green revolution meant to save the planet. Many of them believe it is too late for that, seeing signs in soaring fuel and food prices and a faltering U.S. economy, and are largely focused on saving themselves.
Some are doing it quietly, giving few details of their preparations – afraid that revealing such information as the location of their supplies will endanger themselves and their loved ones. They envision a future in which the nation’s cities will be filled with hungry, desperate refugees forced to go looking for food, shelter and water.
My Way News – Energy fears looming, new survivalists prepare
End To Fatherhood – Women Win Right To Children Without Fathers – UK
May 28, 2008 by admin
Filed under Moral Decay
Single women and lesbian couples won landmark parental rights last night as MPs voted to remove the requirement that fertility clinics consider a child’s need for a father.
The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill will replace the rule with a “need for supportive parenting” after opponents were defeated in two votes by unexpectedly wide margins.
The Government had been prepared for defeat but won the free votes by majorities of 75 and 68. The decisions mean that the legislation will grant the most significant extension to homosexual family rights since gay adoption was sanctioned.
It will stop fertility clinics turning away lesbians and single women because their children will not have a father or male role model. While the current law does not block such therapy, it is sometimes used to justify refusals.
In another landmark decision last night, MPs rejected moves to prevent women having abortions up to 24 weeks into pregnancy. In the first vote on the issue in 18 years, an attempt to reduce the limit to 22 weeks was rejected by 71 votes. An attempt to reduce the limit to 20 weeks was defeated by a majority of 142.
Orthodox Jewish Youths Burn New Testaments in Israel
May 28, 2008 by admin
Filed under Stories Of Interest
Orthodox Jews set fire to hundreds of copies of the New Testament in the latest act of violence against Christian missionaries in the Holy Land.
Or Yehuda Deputy Mayor Uzi Aharon said missionaries recently entered a neighborhood in the predominantly religious town of 34,000 in central Israel, distributing hundreds of New Testaments and missionary material.
After receiving complaints, Aharon said, he got into a loudspeaker car last Thursday and drove through the neighborhood, urging people to turn over the material to Jewish religious students who went door to door to collect it.
The books were dumped into a pile and set afire in a lot near a synagogue, he said.
The Israeli Maariv daily reported Tuesday that hundreds of Jewish religious school students took part in the book-burning. But Aharon told The Associated Press that only a few students were present, and that he was not there when the books were torched. Not all of the New Testaments that were collected were burned, but hundreds were, he said.
He said he regretted the burning of the books, but called it a “commandment” to burn materials that urge Jews to convert.
“I certainly don’t denounce the burning of the booklets,” he said. “I denounce those who distributed the booklets.”
Jews worship from the Old Testament, including the Five Books of Moses and the writings of the ancient prophets. Christians revere the Old Testament as well as the New Testament, which contains the ministry of Jesus.
Terrorist Tape to Call for Use of WMDs
Intelligence and law enforcement sources tell ABC News they are expecting al Qaeda supporters will post a new video on the Internet in the next 24 hours, calling for what one source said is “jihadists to use biological, chemical and nuclear weapons to attack the West.”
Officials say they expect a new tape from al Qaeda to call for the use of weapons of mass destruction against civilians. The group has released messages with increasing frequency this year.
“There have been several reports that al Qaeda will release a new message calling for the use of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) against civilians,” FBI spokesman Richard Kolko told ABC News in an e-mail.
“Although there have been similar messages in the past, the FBI and [Department of Homeland Security] have no intelligence of any specific plot or indication of a threat to the U.S.,” the e-mail said. “The FBI and U.S. intelligence community will review the message for any intelligence value.”
While there is no evidence of any direct threat, the FBI sent a bulletin to 18,000 law enforcement agencies across the country, out of an abundance of caution.
Some independent analysts don’t think the public should worry much.
ABC News: Terrorist Tape to Call for Use of WMDs
Israel Offers 91% of W. Bank In New Map
Palestinian officials close to peace talks said Sunday that Israel has offered a West Bank withdrawal map that leaves about 8.5 percent of the territory in Israeli hands, less than a previous plan but still more than the Palestinians are ready to accept.
Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat and other PA officials, however, told The Jerusalem Post that the report is unsubstantiated.
Also Sunday, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas was quoted as telling backers that the negotiations have achieved no progress since they were restarted last November with a pledge to US President George W. Bush to try for a full peace treaty by the end of the year.
The Palestinian officials said that Israel presented its new map three days ago in a negotiating session. The last map Israel offered had 12 percent of the West Bank remaining in Israel. Israel wants to keep West Bank land with its main settlement blocs, offering land inside Israel in exchange. The land would be between Hebron in the southern West Bank and Gaza – at least part of a route through Israel to link the two territories.
The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because the negotiations are being conducted behind closed doors, said Palestinians were ready to trade only 1.8% of the West Bank for Israeli land.
Israeli officials refused to comment.
U.S. On Track To Smash Record for Tornadoes
Another week, another rumbling train of tornadoes that obliterates entire city blocks, smashing homes to their foundations and killing people even as they cower in their basements.
With the year not even half done, 2008 is already the deadliest tornado year in the United States since 1998 and seems on track to break the U.S. record for the number of twisters in a year, according to the National Weather Service. Also, this year’s storms seem to be unusually powerful.
But like someone who has lost all his worldly possessions to a whirlwind, meteorologists cannot explain exactly why this is happening.
“There are active years and we don’t particularly understand why,” said research meteorologist Harold Brooks at the National Severe Storms Lab in Norman, Okla.
Over the weekend, an extraordinarily powerful twister ripped apart Parkersburg, Iowa, destroying 288 homes in the town of about 1,000 residents, said Gov. Chet Culver. At least four people were killed there. Among the buildings destroyed were City Hall, the high school, and the lone grocery store and gas station. Some of those killed were in basements.
The brutal numbers for the U.S. so far this year: at least 110 dead, 30 killer tornadoes and a preliminary count of 1,191 twisters (which, after duplicate sightings are removed, is likely to go down to around 800). The record for the most tornadoes in a year is 1,817 in 2004. In the past 10 years, the average number of tornadoes has been 1,254.
“Right now we’re on track to break all previous counts through the end of the year,” said warning meteorologist Greg Carbin at the Storm Prediction Center, also in Norman.
And it’s not just more storms. The strongest of those storms – those in the 136-to-200 mph range – have been more prevalent than normal, and lately they seem to be hitting populated areas more, he said. At least 22 tornadoes this year have been in the top part of the new Enhanced Fujita scale, rating a 3 (for “severe”) or a 4 (”devastating”) on the 1-to-5 scale.
The twister that devastated Parkersburg was a 5 – the first in the U.S. since a tornado nearly obliterated Greensburg, Kan., just over a year ago. The Parkersburg tornado was the strongest to hit Iowa in 32 years.
So far, more than 50 of the deaths this year have been in mobile homes, the wrong place to be during a tornado. They have been a factor in nearly half of all tornado fatalities in recent years.
And if that’s not bad enough, computer models show that the conditions that make tornadoes ripe are going to stick around Tornado Alley for about another week, according to Brooks.
The nagging question is why.
