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.
Israel Peace Talks In Paris Called Off
A meeting between Israel’s prime minister and a senior US envoy has been canceled amid growing differences over settlement building in the West Bank.
Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharonot said the US put off the meeting in response to Benjamin Netanyahu’s refusal to heed US demands to halt settlement activity.
But Mr Netanyahu’s aides say it was the prime minister who cancelled Thursday’s meeting with George Mitchell in Paris.
They said “more professional work” was needed, without adding further details.
Instead, Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak is now scheduled to travel to Washington on Monday to meet Mr Mitchell.
Mr Netanyahu has arrived in Paris from Rome, on his first trip to Europe since he took office.
Cash To Become Extinct As Chips Take Off
June 24, 2009 by admin
Filed under new world order
Cash is accelerating down the path to extinction as new technologies threaten to mark the end of loose change within a decade.
Bank and credit union bosses say cash won’t be alone, with wallets and credit cards also likely to disappear too.
They told The Advertiser’s round table forum that cash and cards will be replaced by computer chips embedded in mobile phones, watches or other portable devices.
Can 3rd Temple Be Built Without Destroying Dome Of The Rock?
A new Jewish interfaith initiative launched last week argues building the Third Jewish Temple in Jerusalem would not necessitate the destruction of the Dome of the Rock.
“God’s Holy Mountain Vision” project hopes to defuse religious strife by showing that Jews’ end-of-days vision could harmoniously accommodate Islam’s present architectural hegemony on the Temple Mount.
“This vision of religious shrines in peaceful proximity can transform the Temple Mount from a place of contention to its original sacred role as a place of worship shared by Jews, Muslims and Christians,” said Yoav Frankel, director of the initiative.
The Interfaith Encounter Association at the Mishkenot Sha’ananim’s Konrad Adenauer Conference Center in Jerusalem is sponsoring the program, which includes interfaith study and other educational projects.
According to Islamic tradition, the Dome of the Rock, built in 691, marks the spot where Muhammed ascended to Heaven.
But according to Jewish tradition, Mount Moriah, now under the Dome of the Rock, is where the Temple’s Holy of Holies was situated.
Until now Jewish tradition has assumed that destruction of the Dome of the Rock was a precondition for the building of the third and last Temple.
However, in an article that appeared in 2007 in Tehumin, an influential journal of Jewish law, Frankel, a young scholar, presented a different option.
His main argument is that Jewish doctrine regarding the rebuilding of the Temple emphasizes the role of a prophet.
What the World Thinks of God – Poll Results
Britain is one of the most secular nations in the world, a new poll in 10 countries finds
Levels of religious belief and activity in the UK are far lower than in almost all other countries surveyed across the globe in a special poll undertaken for the BBC.
The ICM poll of 10,000 people in the USA, UK, Israel, India, South Korea, Indonesia, Nigeria, Russia, Mexico and Lebanon was carried out for What the World Thinks of God – BBC TWO, Thursday 26 February, 9.00pm.
It reveals that only 46% of respondents in the UK said they have always believed in God – 27% less than the average.
Only Russia (42%) and South Korea (28%) were lower.
Furthermore just 52% of UK respondents believed God (or a Higher Power) created the universe, compared to 85% in the USA, 83% in Mexico, 99% in Indonesia and 96% in Lebanon.
The highest levels of belief are found in the poorer nations of Nigeria (98%), India (92%) and Indonesia (97%).
However, the USA – the richest nation polled – has a very high level of belief.
Only 13% of those polled in America said they found it hard to believe in God (a Higher power) when there was so much suffering in the world.
Yet this compares to more than half (52%) of those polled in the UK – the highest of all the countries – and more than twice the average. The figures for Lebanon were 2% and Nigeria 12%.
The survey found that only 19% of those in the UK said they would die for their God/beliefs.
This compares to 37% in Israel, 90% of those polled in Indonesia and Nigeria, and 71% in the USA and Lebanon.
A staggering 78% of those polled in the USA claimed to have studied religious texts, by far the largest figure, followed by 51% in Nigeria and 42% in the UK. This compares to an average of 33%.
The poll also looked at the place of religion in the world.
Almost a third (29%) of people in the UK believe that the world would be a more peaceful place without beliefs in God but very few people in other countries agreed.
Russia Aims To Host Mideast Peace Meeting
The Russian president said in Cairo on Tuesday that Moscow aimed to hold a Middle East peace conference before the end of 2009, a move backed by Egypt and which Russia said also had Israel’s approval.
Russia, which has proposed such a conference in the past, is a member of the Quartet of Middle East negotiators, along with the European Union, the United States and the United Nations.
“We paid special attention to Middle East issues. We highly appreciate efforts by the Egyptian president to create an atmosphere of trust and cooperation in the region,” Dmitry Medvedev said after talks with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.
“(The) Moscow Middle East conference, which we plan to hold before the end of the year, will also contribute to achieving this goal,” he said at a joint news conference in Cairo.
Mubarak, speaking after the two sides signed cooperation agreements, said Egypt backed the conference in Moscow.
Israeli spokesman Yigal Palmor said Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman recently told Russia that Israel “would, in principle, agree to attend, provided, of course, that anti-peace elements such as Hamas and Hezbollah are not invited”.
E-Mail Surveillance Renews Concerns in Congress
June 19, 2009 by admin
Filed under Stories Of Interest
The National Security Agency is facing renewed scrutiny over the extent of its domestic surveillance program, with critics in Congress saying its recent intercepts of the private telephone calls and e-mail messages of Americans are broader than previously acknowledged, current and former officials said.
The agency’s monitoring of domestic e-mail messages, in particular, has posed longstanding legal and logistical difficulties, the officials said.
Since April, when it was disclosed that the intercepts of some private communications of Americans went beyond legal limits in late 2008 and early 2009, several Congressional committees have been investigating. Those inquiries have led to concerns in Congress about the agency’s ability to collect and read domestic e-mail messages of Americans on a widespread basis, officials said. Supporting that conclusion is the account of a former N.S.A. analyst who, in a series of interviews, described being trained in 2005 for a program in which the agency routinely examined large volumes of Americans’ e-mail messages without court warrants. Two intelligence officials confirmed that the program was still in operation.
via E-Mail Surveillance Renews Concerns in Congress – NYTimes.com.
North Korea May Fire Missile Toward Hawaii
North Korea may be preparing to launch a long-range ballistic missile, possibly in the direction of Hawaii, a Japanese newspaper said Thursday, citing an analysis by the Japanese Defense Ministry.
South Korean kindergartners play near displays of models of mock North Korea’s Scud-B missile, right, and other South Korean missiles at Korea War Memorial Museum in Seoul, South Korea, Thursday, June 18, 2009. North Korea may fire a long-range ballistic missile toward Hawaii in early July, a Japanese news report said Thursday, as Russia and China urged the regime to return to international disarmament talks on its rogue nuclear program. Collapse
(Ahn Young-joon/AP Photo)
The conclusion was reached after analyzing North Korea’s recent activities and looking at intelligence gathered by U.S reconnaissance satellites, according to the The Yomiuri Shinbun, one of Japan’s major dailies.
Most analysts, however, doubt that a North Korean missile could reach Hawaii, roughly 4,500 miles from the Korean Peninsula and just out of reach of even an upgraded Taepodong-2, which has an estimated range of 4,038 miles, the paper reported.
The paper said the Japanese ministry is now studying the possibility of deploying Aegis-equipped destroyers with surface-to-air missiles, which could intercept a North Korean missile, sources told the paper.
Related
North Korea to Fire Missile That Can Reach US?
N. Korea Touts ‘Military Muscle’
Obama Condemns N. Korea’s Nuclear Test
The Japanese government has already deployed PAC3 anti-missile sy
via Will North Korea Fire a Missile Toward Hawaii? – ABC News.
Countries Form Bloc To Challenge US Dominance
June 19, 2009 by admin
Filed under new world order
With public hugs and backslaps among its leaders, a new political bloc was formed yesterday to challenge the global dominance of the United States.
The first summit of heads of state of the BRIC countries — Brazil, Russia, India and China — ended with a declaration calling for a “multipolar world order”, diplomatic code for a rejection of America’s position as the sole global superpower.
President Medvedev of Russia went further in a statement with his fellow leaders after the summit, saying that the BRIC countries wanted to “create the conditions for a fairer world order”. He described the meeting with President Lula da Silva of Brazil, the Indian Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, and the Chinese President, Hu Jintao, as “an historic event”.
The BRIC bloc brings together four of the world’s largest emerging economies, representing 40 per cent of the world’s population and 15 per cent of global GDP. The leaders set out plans to co-operate on policies for tackling the global economic crisis at the next G20 summit in the US in September.
Ahmadinejad Stresses Need For New World Order
June 19, 2009 by admin
Filed under new world order
Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad calls for the creation of a new world order in dealing with the many challenges arising in the international political arena.
“What we need now is a dramatic change in world political thought,” said President Ahmadinejad in a Tuesday address to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in Moscow.
“Western-style capitalism is falling apart, marking the end of the age of Imperialism,” he added.
Ahmadinejad said the new world order should be less US-centric. “Washington’s many political and economic woes show that its judgment can no longer be trusted,” he explained.
Brazilian President Calls For New World Order
June 19, 2009 by admin
Filed under new world order
The global financial crisis has reduced the differences between nations and created the opportunity to form a new world order, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said Wednesday.
Speaking after a meeting with Kazakhstan’s President Nursultan Nazarbayev in the Kazakh capital Astana, Lula called on the global community to seize on the crisis to create a fairer world for developing nations.
“I want to say that before the crisis, there were many countries which had greater significance than others, and some countries which had no significance at all,” he said through a translator.
“After the crisis, everyone has become similar. We have the possibility to create a new world order and together we should improve our relations.”
U.N. Protocol Used To Regulate Homeschoolers
June 17, 2009 by admin
Filed under new world order
A British plan to allow local authorities “the right of access to the home” and “the right to speak with each child alone” in order to evaluate homeschooling families and make certain they do what the government wants is a warning about what could happen in the United States, according to the world’s largest homeschool advocacy organization.
“On June 11, 2009, a report on home education in England by Graham Badman, a former Managing Director of Children, Families and Education in the County of Kent, was accepted in full by the British Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families,” according to today’s report from the Home School Legal Defense Association.
