Human Sperm Created In Lab From Stem Cells
July 7, 2009 by admin
Filed under Stories Of Interest
Women who say they don’t need a man may well be right – after human sperm was created in the lab.
The breakthrough could give hope to infertile couples and men left unable to have children after having cancer treatment.
But don’t worry guys, the scientists who created the sperm using stem cells don’t plan to take you out of the baby-making process just yet.
Russia, India Question Dollar Reliance Before Summit
Russia and India said the world economy is too reliant on the U.S. dollar and called for changes in how $6.5 trillion in currency reserves are managed, as Group of Eight leaders prepare to meet this week.
“The dollar system or the system based on the dollar and euro have shown that they are flawed,” Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said in an interview with Corriere della Sera, repeating his proposal for a new international reserve currency.
Suresh Tendulkar, an economic adviser to Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, said in a July 3 interview that he is urging his nation to diversify its foreign holdings away from the dollar.
The challenge to the dollar, a linchpin of world finance and trade since 1945, underlines the shift in relative economic power toward emerging markets and away from the developed nations that spawned the global crisis.
China Calls To Replace Dollar With World Currency
China’s central bank has reiterated its call for a new reserve currency to replace the US dollar.
The report from the People’s Bank of China PBOC said a “super-sovereign” currency should take its place.
Central bank chief Zhou Xiaochuan has loudly led calls for the dollar to be replaced during the financial crisis.
The bank report called for more regulation of the countries that issue currencies that underpin the global financial system.
“An international monetary system dominated by a single sovereign currency has intensified the concentration of risk and the spread of the crisis,” the Chinese central bank said.
The dollar fell after the report was released. The US currency dropped 1% against the euro to $1.4088, and declined 0.8% versus the British pound to $1.6848.
Russia – World Needs New Reserve Currency
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said Tuesday the world needs new reserve currencies.
Medvedev told a regional summit that the creation of new reserve currencies in addition to the dollar is needed to stabilize global finances.
Medvedev has made the proposal before. It reflects both the Kremlin’s push for greater international clout and a concern shared by other countries that soaring U.S. budget deficits could spur inflation and weaken the dollar.
Airing it at a summit meeting underlined the challenge to U.S. clout.
Medvedev spoke at a summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which includes China and four Central Asian nations.
Later Tuesday he hosts a summit of the BRIC group of leading emerging economies — Brazil, Russia, India and China.
The Kremlin’s top economic adviser said Russia may put part of its currency reserves in bonds issued by Brazil, China and India.
Arkady Dvorkovich said Russia could make the move if the other three nations reciprocate. Brazil, Russia, India and China are the members of the BRIC group of leading emerging economies.
Judge Bans Bible from Childs Show and Tell
June 2, 2009 by admin
Filed under Stories Of Interest
A U.S. court says a kindergartner’s mother cannot read Scripture during show and tell, even if the Bible is the boy’s favorite book.
Monday’s ruling is a victory for the Marple Newtown School District in suburban Philadelphia.
The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals says the school’s decision does not violate First Amendment rights given the nonpublic nature of the classroom and the tender age of the children.
The mother, Donna Kay Busch, argues the students heard stories related to Passover, Christmas and other religious holidays.
The appeals court says there is a “significant difference” between identifying those holidays and reading from Scripture.
U.S. Inflation to Approach Zimbabwe Level
May 29, 2009 by admin
Filed under new world order
The U.S. economy will enter “hyperinflation” approaching the levels in Zimbabwe because the Federal Reserve will be reluctant to raise interest rates, investor Marc Faber said.
Prices may increase at rates “close to” Zimbabwe’s gains, Faber said in an interview with Bloomberg Television in Hong Kong. Zimbabwe’s inflation rate reached 231 million percent in July, the last annual rate published by the statistics office.
“I am 100 percent sure that the U.S. will go into hyperinflation,” Faber said. “The problem with government debt growing so much is that when the time will come and the Fed should increase interest rates, they will be very reluctant to do so and so inflation will start to accelerate.”
Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia President Charles Plosser said on May 21 inflation may rise to 2.5 percent in 2011. That exceeds the central bank officials’ long-run preferred range of 1.7 percent to 2 percent and contrasts with the concerns of some officials and economists that the economic slump may provoke a broad decline in prices.
“There are some concerns of a risk from inflation from all the liquidity injected into the banking system but it’s not an immediate threat right now given all the excess capacity in the U.S. economy,” said David Cohen, head of Asian economic forecasting at Action Economics in Singapore. “I have a little more confidence that the Fed has an exit strategy for draining all the liquidity at the appropriate time.”
Brazil and China Eye Plan To Axe The Dollar
Brazil and China will work towards using their own currencies in trade transactions rather than the US dollar, according to Brazil’s central bank and aides to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Brazil’s president.
The move follows recent Chinese challenges to the status of the dollar as the world’s leading international currency.
Beijing this week, and Hu Jintao, China’s president, first discussed the idea of replacing the dollar with the renminbi and the real as trade currencies when they met at the G20 summit in London last month.
An official at Brazil’s central bank stressed that talks were at an early stage. He also said that what was under discussion was not a currency swap of the kind China recently agreed with Argentina and which the US had agreed with several countries, including Brazil.
“Currency swaps are not necessarily trade related,” the official said. “The funds can be drawn down for any use. What we are talking about now is Brazil paying for Chinese goods with reals and China paying for Brazilian goods with renminbi.”
Henrique Meirelles and Zhou Xiaochuan, governors of the two countries’ central banks, were expected to meet soon to discuss the matter, the official said.
Mideast’s Christians Are Losing Numbers and Sway
May 13, 2009 by admin
Filed under Stories Of Interest
Christians used to be a vital force in the Middle East. They dominated Lebanon and filled top jobs in the Palestinian movement. In Egypt, they were wealthy beyond their number. In Iraq, they packed the universities and professions. Across the region, their orientation was a vital link to the West, a counterpoint to prevailing trends.
But as Pope Benedict XVI wends his way across the Holy Land this week, he is addressing a dwindling and threatened Christian population driven to emigration by political violence, lack of economic opportunity and the rise of radical Islam. A region that a century ago was 20 percent Christian is about 5 percent today and dropping.
Since it was here that Jesus walked and Christianity was born, the papal visit highlights a prospect many consider deeply troubling for the globe’s largest faith, adhered to by a third of humanity — itsmost powerful and historic shrines could become museum relics with no connection to those who live among them.
“I fear the extinction of Christianity in Iraq and the Middle East,” the Rev. Jean Benjamin Sleiman, the Catholic archbishop of Baghdad, said in a comment echoed across the region.
The pope, in a Mass on Tuesday at the foot of the Mount of Olives, addressed “the tragic reality” of the “departure of so many members of the Christian community in recent years.”
He said: “While understandable reasons lead many, especially the young, to emigrate, this decision brings in its wake a great cultural and spiritual impoverishment to the city. Today I wish to repeat what I have said on other occasions: in the Holy Land there is room for everyone!”
Obama Could Address Muslims From Top Mosque
May 11, 2009 by admin
Filed under Stories Of Interest
The grand mufti of Egypt has invited President Obama to address Muslims around the globe from one of the most important mosques in the Islamic world.
The invitation to speak from Egypt’s Al Azhar mosque follows an announcement over this past weekend that Obama will travel to Egypt next month to deliver his promised address to the Muslim world.
According to Al-Masri Al-Yawm, a state-run Egyptian newspaper, Grand Mufti Ali Gomaa and other scholars from Egypt’s Al Azhar University invited Obama to use the mosque as venue for the president’s upcoming visit, explaining it would promote a culture of dialogue between Islam and the West.
Al AZhar University is the most respected Sunni Islamic learning center in the world and is the second oldest degree-granting school in the world. Clerics at the university’s attendant mosque decide Islamic sharia law matters for Sunni Muslims internationally.
via Obama could address Muslims from top mosque.
Pope Stresses Deep Respect For Islam
Pope Benedict XVI underlined his “deep respect” for Islam on Friday in Jordan, on his first trip as pontiff to an Arab state, and stressed that religious freedom is a fundamental human right.
He also called the church a spiritual force that could contribute to progress in bringing about peace in the Middle East.
Speaking after a red carpet welcome from Abdullah II and Queen Rania at Queen Alia Airport as he began his eight-day tour of the Holy Land amid strict security, the pope said he came to Jordan “as a pilgrim.”
He said his visit “gives me a welcome opportunity to speak of my deep respect for the Muslim community, and to pay tribute to the leadership shown by His Majesty the King in promoting a better understanding of the virtues proclaimed by Islam.”
The pope also called religious freedom “a fundamental human right.”
“It is my fervent hope and prayer that respect for the inalienable rights and dignity of every man and woman will come to be increasingly affirmed and defended, not only throughout the Middle East, but in every part of the world,” he said.
Can Christians Serve In The New World Order Army?
Many patriotic Americans, including many retired and former military personnel, are increasingly chagrined at the direction the U.S. armed forces are taking. For one thing, there were numerous instances in the Clinton and both Bush administrations when American GIs were required to serve under foreign or United Nations commanders. Does anyone remember the Michael New case? How can any American GI, who has taken an oath to the U.S. Constitution, willingly surrender himself to a foreign commander, flag, or uniform? That is a potential conflict that has caused many to question modern military service.
Another potential moral conflict in modern military service (at least for Christians) is the inter-sex training and quartering that is now required in every branch of military service (except the Marine Corps). To put healthy young adults of the opposite sex in such close and, many times, compromising environments is more than problematic for those wishing to stay morally pure. (Christian parents should know that many state colleges and universities now require students to live in coed dorms, including using coed bathrooms and showers.) Add to this President Barack Obama’s determination to expunge the Department of Defense’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, thereby allowing open homosexuals to serve in the military. All of the above has many Christians questioning the wisdom of giving their sons and daughters to today’s U.S. military.
Another disconcerting element of modern military service is the reality that today’s American military is more and more being used as the tool of globalists to forge an international New World Order. For instance, both Republican and Democratic Presidential administrations will send U.S. military personnel (including the National Guard) to guard the borders of foreign countries, but never ask them to protect our own borders. Sending the National Guard overseas, especially, strains the principles of constitutional government. But maybe that explains why we have so many foreign troops on U.S. soil. After all, did President George W. Bush not ask foreign troops to monitor our borders and skies in the weeks and months following the attacks on 9/11?
Obama To Be No-show At National Day of Prayer
President Obama is distancing himself from the National Day of Prayer by nixing a formal early morning service and not attending a large Catholic prayer breakfast the next morning.
All Mr. Obama will do for the National Day of Prayer, which is Thursday, is sign a proclamation honoring the day, which originated in 1952 when Congress set aside the first Thursday in May for the observance.
For the past eight years, President George W. Bush invited selected Christian and Jewish leaders to the White House East Room, where he typically would give a short speech and several leaders offered prayers.
Obama White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said Tuesday that the president is simply reverting back to pre-Bush administration practice.
Student Wins Classroom Creationism Case
May 5, 2009 by admin
Filed under Stories Of Interest
A federal judge ruled that a public high school history teacher violated the First Amendment when he called creationism “superstitious nonsense” during a classroom lecture.
[...]
Farnan sued in U.S. District Court in 2007, alleging that Corbett violated the establishment clause of the First Amendment by making repeated comments in class that were hostile to Christian beliefs.
The lawsuit cited more than 20 statements made by Corbett during one day of class, all of which were recorded by Farnan, to support allegations of a broader teaching method that “favors irreligion over religion” and made Christian students feel uncomfortable.
[...]
But Selna ruled Friday that one comment, where Corbett referred to creationism as “religious, superstitious nonsense,” did violate Farnan’s constitutional rights.
Peres Wants To Yield Sacred Sites To Vatican
President Shimon Peres is willing to hand over Israeli sovereignty of key Christian holy sites to the Vatican, a proposition that is reportedly opposed by Interior Minister Eli Yishai and that has ruffled feathers among other senior government officials, Army Radio reported on Monday.
Local Catholic community prepares for Papal visit
Beit Hanassi could not be reached for comment on Monday, as it does not issue statements to the press while the president is abroad.
According to the radio report, the president is exerting pressure on the government to give up sovereignty over six sites, including the Church of the Annunciation in Nazareth, the Coenaculum on Mount Zion, Gethsemane on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem, and the Church of the Multiplication on the Kinneret.
