After a time of holidays, we return to our normal catechesis. We have spoken about the Twelve Apostles, then the disciples of the apostles, and now we turn to the great personalities of the nascent Church, of the ancient Church. Last time, we had spoken about St. Irenaeus of Lyons and today we will speak of Clement of Alexandria, a great theologian who was probably born in Athens, sometime around the turn of the 2nd century.
His Holiness Benedict XVI has received in audience the secretary-general of the UN, Mr. Ban Ki-moon. He has wanted to visit the pope so as to officially invite him to visit the see of the UN.
On a visit aimed at overcoming his image as an ultraconservative skeptic of the EU, Prime Minister Kaczynski warned that the EU's faltering constitution would undermine Poland.
Poland's drive to re-negotiate EU voting rights stems from its painful experience of "hegemonies" in European history Polish prime minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski said in Brussels on Wednesday, declining to rule out a Polish veto on a new EU treaty if other states do not agree.
Talk to satellite officials in Brussels and the mood is one of frustration and bitterness. The reason is that the EU's most ambitious technological project, a satellite navigation system designed to provide users with unprecedented accuracy, faces disaster as national goals override the common welfare.
Ongoing EU disunity over Kosovo has knocked the Balkan topic off the agenda of an EU foreign ministers' gathering next Monday, putting EU foreign policy chiefs in an awkward position when they meet with Russian diplomats later the same day.
The US plan to put forward to the UN within weeks a resolution on independence for Serbia's Kosovo province is destructive, Russia's ambassador to the UN said. "It's a somewhat direct position and, in my opinion, it is destructive. I think that this is some kind of element of psychological attack on the Security Council."
A US proposal to plant antimissile missiles in Poland is prompting European queasiness about American influence on the Continent.
White House emissaries will soon be entrusted with a special job to make the governments of foreign countries accountable to the US in terms of democracy standards propagandized by the US. This is the essence of the new strategic foreign policy plan of the US administration. This plan will most likely cause an outburst of indignation worldwide.
Likud Chairman Binyamin Netanyahu has decided to abandon his wait-and-see strategy and to launch a public campaign for toppling Prime Minister Olmert's government. In a rally held in Tel Aviv, Netanyahu reportedly told his supporters "this government has to go home and we need to start acting to make this happen."
Iraq's oil reserves could be almost twice as vast as current estimates, and its production could also double in 5 years, a report from consultancy IHS has showed. Doubling Iraq's oil reserves would mean an increase of 100 billion barrels of oil, which would make it the second-biggest source of oil reserves in the world, after Saudi Arabia and ahead of Iran.
President Bush warned Sudan's president that he has one last chance to stop violence in Darfur or else the US will impose sanctions and consider other punitive options.
While Tehran stares down Washington and deflects Arab concerns over its nuclear ambitions, it is now also fighting a skirmish with militants across its Western border with Pakistan, fanning concerns that an area already mired in Taliban violence and an ethnic insurgency could be further destabilized.
Iran's national pride has been hurt by a British official's reference to the "Arabian Gulf" instead of the "Persian Gulf." The official Iranian news agency, IRNA, said the embassy "expressed its strongest protest at such a serious oversight," saying the name of the Persian Gulf was "distorted."
The Iranian government has refused to rule out the option of withholding supplies of its oil as a weapon if the standoff with the West over its nuclear programme intensifies.
This belief that the President is the last word and supreme commander on all matters of war and foreign policy grows out of what can only be called a myth: the myth that the phrase "Commander in chief of the Army and Navy" from article II, section 2 somehow endows the President with almost limitless power to direct foreign policy within the US government. We've been trained to think that the term "commander in chief" confers some kind of omnipotent authority, but in reality, these powers are very slight when compared to the foreign policy prerogatives of the Congress.
German press...
Two days after the Blacksburg massacre, media commentators in Germany say that however absurd America's lax gun laws may seem in Europe, they are a fact of life in the US and won't change.
After SPIEGEL published a summary of European press reactions to the tragic shootings at Virginia Tech, our in-boxes were flooded with hundreds of letters from Americans who were angered by editorials critical of America's lax gun policies. Conservative blogs also stormed the barricades. Here's a compilation of some of the mails.
It's deeply damaging to portray fit fully formed adults as children who need to be protected. We should be raising them to understand that there will be moments in life when you need to protect yourself — and, in a "horrible" world, there may come moments when you have to choose between protecting yourself or others. The default position is a terrible enervating passivity. Murderous misfit loners are mercifully rare. But this awful corrosive passivity is far more pervasive, and, unlike the psycho killer, is an existential threat to a functioning society.
A Utah attorney alleges informants gathering information on Timothy McVeigh or his associates warned the FBI about the plot to bomb the Oklahoma City federal building but the agency took no action to stop the 1995 attack.
Showing Germany's involvement in the Oklahoma City bombing.
The assault against the US dollar intensifed yesterday as the greenback slumped to historic lows against currencies as diverse as the UK pound and the Polish zloty amid growing conviction among investors higher returns lie beyond US borders.
Major stock markets slumped in Europe - even as US blue chips flirt with a new high - on fears that the roaring European economy could begin to suffer as its exports lose their competitive edge. Among the European shares hit were exporters like BMW, which could face tougher competition globally as German cars become relatively more expensive.
In another piece of news that cast a shadow on an otherwise bright outlook for the euro-zone economy, figures released Tuesday showed that the region's trade deficit with China and Japan continued to grow. The trend highlights the euro's uncomfortable appreciation against the yuan and yen and raises the prospect of political tension if it carries on.
Bee colonies have been dying in Europe and America for years. Scientists have studied the usual suspects - climate change, genetic engineering - but a new theory is even more bizarre. Maybe mobile phones are to blame.
Today in Scripture
* By the 1st day of the 1st month of Noah's 601st year, the water had dried up from the earth. (Gen 8:13)
* YHWH said to Moses and Aaron in Egypt: "This month is to be for you the 1st month, the 1st month of your year." (Exo 12:1,2)
* YHWH said to Moses and Aaron in Egypt: "This month is to be for you the 1st month, the 1st month of your year." (Exo 12:1,2)
* "Set up the tabernacle, the Tent of Meeting, on the 1st day of the 1st month." ... So the tabernacle was set up on the 1st day of the 1st month in the 2nd year. (Exo 40:2,17)
* They began the consecration on the 1st day of the 1st month ... (2Chron 29:17)
* He had begun his journey from Babylon on the 1st day of the 1st month ... (Ezra 7:9)
* And by the 1st day of the 1st month they finished dealing with all the men who had married foreign women. (Ezra 10:17)
* In the 27th year, in the 1st month on the 1st day, the word of YHWH came to me ... (Eze 29:17)
* This is what the Sovereign YHWH says: "In the 1st month on the 1st day you are to take a young bull without defect and purify the sanctuary. (Eze 45:18)
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