THE HOLY ROMAN ...
Pope Benedict XVI is preparing to release a motu proprio extending permission for priests to celebrate the traditional Latin Mass, Vatican sources have confirmed.
Here is a translation of Benedict XVI's address at yesterday's General Audience, dedicated to presenting the figure of the Apostles Simon the Cananaean and Jude called Thaddaeus.
The very existence of Catholic universities shows that God cannot be irrational, said the rector of Regina Apostolorum university and the European University of Rome, on opening the academic year.
Interreligious dialogue, especially with Muslims, is a priority for Benedict XVI, said the Vatican secretary of state.
Instead of simply criticizing Pentecostal churches that draw Catholics as members, Catholic leaders should consider why their parishes aren't meeting the needs of those who leave, said Cardinal Walter Kasper.
... EMPIRE OF THE GERMAN NATION
In Munich, Putin will meet with Bavaria’s powerful minister-president Edmund Stoiber, head of the Christian Social Union party and other key officials, including German Economy Minister Michael Glos (CSU).
At the end of a two-day visit, Putin traveled to Bavaria to meet with politicians and business leaders. Bavaria, Germany's most prosperous state, has about 1,000 firms doing business with Russia, could become a 'locomotive' in helping his country, the president said. Bavarian Premier Edmund Stoiber said Germany was willing to cooperate with Russia in the economic and scientific fields, except where strategic industries were involved.
Russian President Vladimir Putin lashed out at "hysteria" against Russian investment after being rebuffed on a bid to boost Moscow's role in troubled European aerospace group EADS. Earlier Wednesday, Putin received a firm rebuttal to his efforts to raise Moscow's 5% stake in EADS, which has its German headquarters in Bavaria. "In certain strategic sectors of the economy there are some limits to mutual participation," Bavaria's premier Edmund Stoiber said.
Bavaria's prime minister Wednesday spoke in favor of creating a free-trade zone with Russia. "I think it is a very interesting idea to set up a free-trade zone between the internal markets of the European Union and Russia," Stoiber said, after talks with Putin.
[WAR: This proposal would seem to be a slap against Merkel and her proposed free-trade zone with the US. Hmmm ... ]
Merkel is spending more of her time fending off attacks, not only from her partners in the grand coalition, the Social Democrats, but from her own party. The bitter infighting has already undermined her ambitious foreign policy agenda and domestic reform program.
EUROPE/RUSSIA
Chancellor Angela Merkel called for reviving the failed European Union constitution but admitted that next year's German EU presidency would not achieve any breakthrough on the issue.
The German government will seek to revive the European Union's constitution and have it in place before the next European parliamentary elections in 2009, Chancellor Angela Merkel said.
The European Commission warned Wednesday that growth in the 12-country euro zone was expected to fall to near 0% in the first quarter of next year as a planned increase in Germany's value- added tax dampened economic activity.
Prof. Oran says France is using Armenians and the "genocide" question to exclude Turkey from the EU: "Fear of globalization has spread everywhere". Economist Sonmez warns that this debate can put Tukey off the rail on the way to EU membership.
The 7th EU-India economic summit will open on Friday in Finnish capital Helsinki. DW-WORLD takes a look at the current state of EU-Indian relations.
It produces more crude oil today than Saudi Arabia, and its petroleum exports alone last year brought it a cash windfall of more than $100 billion. Russia will continue to find itself in a commanding position, the full implications of which we and they are only beginning to experience.
MIDEAST/AFRICA/ASIA
Memo to the Bush administration: solve the Middle East crisis now before it gets even more complicated -- and deadly.
Despite intense pressure from the Bush administration for tough sanctions against North Korea over Monday’s nuclear test, the five permanent members of the UN Security Council have not yet reached any agreement. The result of the Bush administration’s reckless policies is now evident: by provoking North Korea to carry out a nuclear test, the US is encouraging a regional arms race that threatens to take the intensifying rivalry in North East Asia to a new and more dangerous level.
POUNDING PERSIA
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said that his country has only one more step to reach the tops in the domain of nuclear technology.
[WAR: That's one big step for the Iranians ... and a big step towards war.]
Iranian Ambassador to Paris Ali Ahani said here Wednesday evening that an Iranian proposal for France to form an international consortium to monitor nuclear enrichment in Iranian territory invites companies all over the world to participate, adding that this new initiative to try to settle the standoff over Iran's nuclear activities proves they are for peaceful purposes.
[WAR: Come on Germany - especially Bavaria - take Iran up on this offer and expose Washington's true motives for the coming war.]
Iranian Ambassador to Paris Ali Ahani here on Wednesday said the Islamic Republic of Iran respects Jews and has nothing against them. Making a distinction between Jews and Zionists, he said the fact that the Islamic Republic of Iran does not recognize the Zionist regime does not mean that Jews are placed in the same category.
The craze for blogging in Iran has reached an unlikely set of adherents - the country's conservative Islamic clerics. Following the example of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, ayatollahs, seminary students and theologians are receiving training in setting up their own weblogs.
HOUSE OF ISRAEL
If the expanding political mobilization against an "October Surprise"—a military attack against Iran—succeeds in thwarting the Cheney-Bush drive, at least through the middle of October, it is likely that the war party will be forced to postpone its planned war of aggression until after the Nov. 7 mid-term elections. This means that the period immediately after Americans go to the polls, would be equally fraught with danger, as Cheney et al. could hit Iran, in the context of a broader provocation against Russia and China, the ultimate targets of their permanent-war policy.
The Bush regime is proceeding exactly as the Nazi regime proceeded. Americans are too inattentive and distracted to be aware of the grave danger that the neoconservative Bush regime presents to American liberty and to world stability.
The American journalist Bob Woodward became an icon in the 1970s for his work in uncovering the Watergate scandal, which helped end Richard Nixon's presidency. Now he writes bestselling investigative books, and his new one is a devastating -- and controversial -- account of the Bush era.
US star journalist Bob Woodward, 63, discusses in an interview with DER SPIEGEL the resonance of his new book "State of Denial," which explores the Bush administration's policies in the wake of the Iraq invasion.
At the same time as realists and conservatives in the Republican Party are hoping to challenge the dominance of the neoconservatives over their party's foreign policy, many leading Democratic activists and liberal intellectuals seem to be calling on their party to embrace an even more "pure" or radical version of the neoconservative ideology.
Foreign aid from the United States should be used for humanitarian purposes and to advance the foreign policy goals of the nation. But the Bush administration is shortchanging both objectives by channeling much of its aid money through Christian groups.
ECONOMY
The present world financial system is, functionally, in a hopelessly morbid condition. There is no possible way in which the present world monetary-financial system could continue to exist much longer, in its present, hopelessly decadent, teetering, drunken condition. The world's present world monetary system is virtually as good as dead.
Terrorist attacks on energy supply facilities worldwide aimed at hindering the delivery of gas and oil have risen sharply, the head of Germany's foreign intelligence agency said today.
MISC
It's been one hellish ride for the iconoclastic professor since 1987, when he first published his critique of the HIV-AIDS hypothesis in a lengthy, highly technical, invited review in the prestigious journal Cancer Research. He argues in this post-induction, and career-defining article that the ordinary retrovirus, HIV, is not a killer, and therefore not the cause of AIDS.
Science cannot explain everything. Science cannot explain purpose in life, and it cannot explain purpose in manhood or womanhood. If we are to locate dignity at all in this fallen world, we must take in the claims of science always with a grain of salt.
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