Son of Greg Laurie, Christopher Laurie Killed In Car Crash
July 24, 2008 by admin
Filed under Stories Of Interest
Christopher Laurie, the 33-year-old son of Harvest Crusade evangelist Greg Laurie, and his wife, Cathe, died this morning in a car crash in Riverside County in Southern California, ministry publicist Laura Swickard McGowan, said. Details of the crash were not immediately available.
The senior Laurie is the founder of the Harvest Crusade, which is scheduled for Aug. 16 and 17 in Anaheim, Calif. Laurie’s church, Harvest Christian Fellowship, and the crusade headquarters are both based in Riverside. Since the inception of Harvest Crusades, more than 3.6 million people have attended the stadium and arena events in the U.S. Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
According to the church Web site, Christopher Laurie, the oldest of two sons, worked for the church, serving as its art director for the past three years. A resident of Huntington Beach, Christopher celebrated his birthday April 1.
There is no immediate word if Christopher’s death will impact the crusade. In recent weeks, Laurie has been promoting his newest book, “Lost Boy,” which chronicles his redemption from a drug-using rebel to pastor of one of Riverside’s largest church communities.
In addition to his parents, Christopher Laurie is survived by his expectant wife, Brittany, and daughter, Stella. Brittany is due in November. Laurie is also survived by his younger brother Jonathan.
For more info go to Harvest.org
Bird Flu Mutates In Race Against Time
Avian flu — the H5N1 virus experts think could out-kill the infamous 1918 pandemic flu — mutates every time it infects a human, according to new research out of Thailand.
Epidemiologist Dr. Michael Greger, of Rockville, warns the bug only needs to find a way to move from person to person, and mutation is its tool of trade.
“We know another pandemic is inevitable; we don’t know when, we don’t know how bad it will be,” said Greger, director of Public Health and Animal Agriculture at the Washington, D.C.-based Humane Society of the United States. “What this new research can show is what mutations we should be concerned about.”
Scientists in Thailand discovered certain mutations in the bird flu which currently does not transmit efficiently from person to person that could spark a pandemic.
Their study of specimens from three fatal human cases involving H5N1, a “highly pathogenic” type of avian influenza virus, was published recently in the Journal of General Virology.
“Such adaptations may lead to the emergence of a virus that can cause a pandemic,” Dr. Prasert Auewarakul said in a statement.
Auewarakul and four other scientists from Mahidol University in Thailand conducted the research and wrote the paper.
They said their research highlights the need to control infection and transmission to humans to prevent further adaptations.
Record Number of UFOs Spotted
July 21, 2008 by admin
Filed under Stories Of Interest
Some swirled, swooshed and hummed, while others hovered, zipped and zoomed.
Canadians in four provinces reported seeing a record number of unidentified flying objects in 2007, according to an annual report released by a Winnipeg-based non-profit organization that has recorded UFO sightings since 1989.
The UFOlogy Research Institute, which compiles data from sources including Transport Canada and the Department of National Defence, said researchers examined 836 alleged UFO sightings in 2007, an increase of almost 12 per cent over 2006.
While B.C. typically has the highest number of reported sightings, the 2007 compilation found New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Ontario and Quebec each received all-time high numbers of UFO reports.
The reports were filed by witnesses with government and military agencies, police and several online UFO websites. Witnesses ranged from farmhands to airline pilots and included teachers and police officers.
Chris Rutkowski, the lead researcher of the study, said of the hundreds of reports only a fraction — about 16 per cent — were classified as unexplained after review by his investigators. He also cautioned while some UFO sightings can’t be rationally explained, there is still no evidence to suggest extraterrestrial contact.
MI Chief: Hezbollah May Try To Attack North Soon
Military Intelligence Chief Amos Yadlin told cabinet ministers on Sunday that there is a chance Lebanon-based Hezbollah guerillas may attempt a terror attack on Israel’s northern front in the near future.
According to Yadlin, Hezbollah views certain matters as unfinished business, namely the disputed border territories of Shaba Farms and the divided village of Ghajar, as well as Israel Air Force flights over Lebanon. Militants may use these issues as an excuse to carry out attacks, Yadlin said.
The intelligence chief also said that Israel’s enemies are continuing to bolster military force out of concern that tensions in the region will escalate this summer.
Advertisement
Yadlin added that Syria is feeling increased international pressure and isolation because of its continued military support of Hezbollah, amid an environment of renewed ties with the West.
Last week, Israel and Hezbollah completed a long-awaited prisoner exchange, in which Hezbollah returned the bodies of abducted Israel Defense Forces soldiers Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser in return for Lebanese terrorist Samir Kuntar, four Hezbollah militants and 197 bodies of enemy dead.
Now that the exchange has taken place, the defense establishment is worried that Hezbollah may seek a calculated escalation along the Lebanese border, and try to disrupt Israel Air Force flyovers in Lebanese airspace.
Hezbollah secretary general Hassan Nasrallah declared last Wednesday, Appearing alongside Samir Kuntar on the day of the prisoner exchange, that his organization would now try to free the Lebanese land still occupied by Israel.
9 Iranians Convicted of Adultery Set to Be Stoned to Death
July 21, 2008 by admin
Filed under Stories Of Interest
Eight women and one man convicted of adultery are set to be stoned to death in Iran, activists said Sunday.
Lawyer and women’s rights activist, Shadi Sadr, said the nine were convicted of adultery in separate cases in different Iranian cities.
“Their verdicts are approved, and they may be executed at any time,” she told reporters.
Sadr, who has been leading a campaign in Iran against stoning deaths since 2006, said trial protocol was not applied properly in the cases. Six of the nine were convicted based solely on judges’ decisions with no witnesses or the presence of their lawyers during their confessions, she said.
Most of the nine come from areas of Iran that have low rates of literacy and some did not understand the cases against them, she said.
One of Sadr’s colleagues, Mohammad Mostafai, said his client, Malak Qorbani, had plead guilty to adultery even though she did not know the meaning of the charge.
The nine are between 27 and 50 years old, among them a male music teacher who was convicted of adultery for having an affair with one of his students, the activists said.
Treasury Secretary Paulson Braces Public for Tough Times Ahead
Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson sought to reassure an anxious public Sunday that the banking system is sound, while also bracing people for more troubled times ahead.
“I think it’s going to be months that we’re working our way through this period — clearly months,” he said.
Paulson said the number of troubled banks will increase as they struggle to cope with big losses on bad mortgages. The government this month took over IndyMac after a run led it to become the largest regulated thrift to fail.
“Of course the list is going to grow longer given the stresses we have in the marketplace, given the housing correction. But again, it’s a safe banking system, a sound banking system. Our regulators are on top of it. This is a very manageable situation,” he said in broadcast interviews.
Paulson used appearances on the Sunday talk shows to tell people that deposits up to $100,000 are fully insured. He said no one has lost a single penny on an insured deposit in the 75 years that the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation has operated.
“We’re going through a challenging time with our economy. This is a tough time. The three big issues we’re facing right now are, first, the housing correction which is at the heart of the slowdown; secondly, turmoil of the capital markets; and thirdly, the high oil prices, which are going to prolong the slowdown,” he said.
Will San Francisco Legalize Prostitution ?
July 21, 2008 by admin
Filed under Moral Decay
Petitioners have succeeded in moving a measure that would effectively decriminalize prostitution in the city of San Francisco to the Nov. 4 ballot.
While prostitution is unlawful under the California Penal Code, the measure – if passed by voters – would ban the San Francisco Police Department from allocating any financial resources for the investigation and prosecution of sex workers on prostitution charges.
Section four of the ballot measure – under the heading “Prostitution Shall Be Decriminalized” – further states that the city, county, and district attorney “shall not subject sex-workers to life long economic discrimination associated with having a criminal record.”
San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris criticized the measure, unofficially titled “Enforcement of Laws Related to Prostitution and Sex Workers.” Harris told the San Francisco Chronicle, “This measure is nothing more than a welcome mat for prostitutes and pimps to come and hang out in San Francisco.”
Overseas Investors Take Hard Look at U.S. Mortgage Giants – Major Implications
For more than a decade, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the housing giants that make the American mortgage market run, have attracted overseas investors with a simple pitch: The securities they issue are just as good as the U.S. government’s – and they usually pay better.
The marketing plan worked: About one-fifth of securities issued by Fannie, Freddie and a handful of much smaller quasi-government agencies, some $1.5 trillion worth, were held by foreign investors at the end of March. One-tenth of all American mortgages are, in effect, in the hands of institutions and governments outside the United States.
Now that the two companies are at risk, these foreign holders are watching closely to determine the future of hundreds of billions of dollars of investments. How Fannie and Freddie’s rescue is handled will ultimately test the world’s faith in U.S. markets and could influence the level of interest rates and weigh on the strength of the dollar for years to come, analysts say.
“No less than the international perception of the credit quality of the U.S. government is at stake,” said Richard Hofmann, an analyst with Credit Sights, an independent research house with offices in London and New York.
Also at stake is the ability of Americans to access credit in the future. If foreign companies and governments abandon these investments, home, auto and credit card loans will be much more difficult to come by.
Anglicans Seek To Prevent Church Split Over Bible, Homosexuality
The world’s Anglican bishops turned Saturday to the enormous task at the heart of their once-a-decade summit: trying to keep the Anglican family from breaking apart over the Bible and homosexuality.
With its private prayer phase over, the Lambeth Conference gets down to business but is hobbled by a boycott: about one-quarter of the invited bishops — mostly theological conservatives from Africa — are not attending.
The 650 bishops who are here include a mix of traditionalists, moderates and liberals, all with divergent ideas about what Anglicans should believe and how their fellowship should operate.
The conference’s opening public worship is set for Sunday in Canterbury Cathedral. The Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, the Anglican spiritual leader, has led a three-day closed-door session this week focused on the role of the bishops as seen through the Gospel.
Williams designed the entire gathering without any votes or resolutions. Instead, starting Monday, the bishops will hold daily Bible study and small group discussions. They plan to release their collective “reflections” on the meeting when it ends Aug. 3.
Drought Threatens Water Supply For One Million Australians
Up to a million people in Australia could face a shortage of drinking water if the country’s worst drought in over a century continues, a report on the state of the nation’s largest river system revealed Sunday.
The report said the situation was critical in the Murray-Darling system, which provides water to Australia’s “food bowl”, a vast expanse of land almost twice as big as France that runs down the continent’s east coast.
“We are in real trouble in the Murray-Darling basin,” Climate Change Minister Penny Wong told Channel Nine television.
“We’ve had very low inflows, we’ve had a very dry June and the focus absolutely has to be critical human needs, that is the needs of the million-plus people who rely on the basin for drinking water.
World Warned Over Killer Flu Pandemic
The world is failing to guard against the inevitable spread of a devastating flu pandemic which could kill 50 million people and wreak massive disruption around the globe, the Government has warned.
In evidence to a House of Lords committee, ministers said that early warning systems for spotting emerging diseases were “poorly co-ordinated” and lacked “vision” and “clarity”. They said that more needed to be done to improve detection and surveillance for potential pandemics and called for urgent improvement in rapid-response strategies.
The Government’s evidence appeared in a highly critical report from the Lords Intergovernmental Organisations Committee, which attacked the World Health Organisation WHO as “dysfunctional” and criticised the international response to the threat of an outbreak of disease which could sweep across the globe.
The Government said: “While there has not been a pandemic since 1968, another one is inevitable.” Ministers said it would could kill between two and 50 million people worldwide and that such an outbreak would leave up to 75,000 people dead in Britain and cause “massive” disruption.
Peers joined ministers calling for urgent action to build up early warning systems across the Third World that can identify and neutralise outbreaks of potentially deadly new strains of disease before they are swept across the globe by modern trade and travel. Peers also called for new action to monitor animal diseases, warning of the potentially disastrous effects of conditions such as the H5N1 bird flu virus jumping to humans and demanded that Britain step up funding for the WHO to tackle the threat.
Gulf of Mexico’s ‘Dead Zone’ Largest on Record
U.S. researchers have forecasted that this summer’s “dead zone” off the coast of Louisiana and Texas in the Gulf of Mexico will be the largest ever recorded.
A team of scientists from Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium and Louisiana State University (LSU), who are supported by the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) say the zone will cover an area of 8,800 square miles or roughly the size of New Jersey, said an NOAA release.
The dead zone is where there is a lack of life in bottom or near bottom waters caused by seasonal oxygen levels which drop too low to support most sea life. It is caused by an excess of nutrients from fertilizers and other sources which stimulate an overgrowth of algae which sinks and decomposes and robs the seawater of its oxygen.
Major U.S. City Officially Condemns Catholic Church
July 16, 2008 by admin
Filed under Moral Decay
A San Francisco city and county board resolution that officially labeled the Catholic church’s moral teachings on homosexuality as “insulting to all San Franciscans,” “hateful,” “defamatory,” “insensitive” and “ignorant” will be challenged tomorrow in court for violating the Constitution’s prohibition of government hostility toward religion.
Resolution 168-08, passed unanimously by the City and County of San Francisco Board of Supervisors two years ago, also accused the Vatican of being a “foreign country” meddling with and attempting to “negatively influence San Francisco’s existing and established customs.”
It said of the church’s teaching on homosexuality, “Such hateful and discriminatory rhetoric is both insulting and callous, and shows a level of insensitivity and ignorance which has seldom been encountered by this Board of Supervisors.”
Run On Banks Spells Big Trouble for US Treasury
In a modern financial system nothing is more frightening than a run on the bank. The US has now suffered a series of them, and they are escalating in size and scope, posing a serious threat to an already reeling economy.
Rumours swamped financial markets on Friday that the US Government would be forced to step in to aid the mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which together own or guarantee $US5 trillion ($5.16 trillion) in US home loans.
In Wall Street’s version of a run on the bank, investors drove Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac shares to 17-year lows, signalling a gnawing lack of faith in the companies’ ability to survive rising mortgage defaults without the Government’s help.
Later on Friday regulators took over IndyMac Bank of Pasadena, saying the $US32 billion lender had collapsed under the weight of bad home loans and withdrawals by spooked depositors. It was the second-largest bank to fail in US history.
Friday’s events were felt around the world, knocking the battered US dollar lower and driving up interest rates.
“This is a flare-up in the financial forest fire that is far beyond anything we’ve seen before,” said Christopher Low, chief economist at the investment firm FTN Financial in New York.
It is triggering worries that would have been unthinkable even a year ago, including that the US Treasury’s debt might lose its AAA credit grade because of heavy blows to the nation’s fiscal health from the housing mess.
