Pope Benedict XVI celebrates his 80th birthday today with a twinkle in those dark-ringed eyes. Benedict is not planning to change any of the Church's teachings, but he has set himself a daunting task: he wants to make churchgoing enjoyable again. Benedict's message is that traditional Christianity can be fun. Many Anglicans agree, which is why they should join their Catholic friends in wishing this enigmatic but loveable Pope many happy returns.
Pope Benedict XVI marked his 80th birthday Sunday with a mass before thousands of worshippers in which he spoke of "darkness" threatening the world in the form of war, oppression and hate.
Pope Benedict XVI is to receive the prime minister of Bavaria, Edmund Stoiber and his colleague Peter Harry Carstensen, a German politician and member of the Christian Democratic Union from the state of Schleswig-Holstein, in a private audience today.
"It is not a marginal book, but rather very central to this papacy. He wanted to select this argument because it is absolutely central."
Needs to look in the mirror...
A book by Pope Benedict XVI to appear in Italian, German and Polish stores tomorrow is billed as his answer to popular publications such as Dan Brown's best-selling The Da Vinci Code. In the work, Benedict laments "the worst books, which destroy the figure of Jesus and dismantle faith, filled with the supposed results" of scriptural study - a clear allusion to The Da Vinci Code, which was harshly criticised by the Catholic church. "The interpretation of the Bible can become an instrument of the Antichrist" if it goes down mistaken paths, he warned.
For Benedict XVI, one finds in the Scriptures the compelling elements to be able to assert that the historical personage, Jesus Christ, is also the Son of God who came to Earth to save humanity. In page after page, he examines these one by one, guiding and challenging the reader - the believer but also the nonbeliever - by way of an enthralling intellectual adventure.
The Vatican's ambassador to Israel agreed to attend a Holocaust memorial service on Sunday, reversing an earlier decision to boycott the event that threatened to upset relations between Israel and the Vatican.
Chancellor Merkel is facing a rebellion inside her conservative party after Günther Oettinger, premier of the conservative southern German state of Baden-Württemberg, refused to retract a funeral eulogy in which he praised a disgraced Nazi judge. Merkel, who until now has managed to maintain some discipline in her Christian Democratic Union party since being elected chancellor, will meet senior party leaders today in an attempt to prevent the crisis from growing.
The most unpredictable French elections in years will take place on Sunday with the rest of Europe gripped to see the outcome of the first round of a vote whose final result will have profound implications for the bloc.
Europeans from the four biggest EU member states largely favour Socialist candidate Segolene Royal to become the next French president, but her centre-right competitor Nicolas Sarkozy continues to lead the polls in France.
With the French presidential election just one week away, frontrunner Nicolas Sarkozy is expected to attract a large percentage of the crucial Jewish vote. France's Jewish community numbers around 600,000, the largest in Western Europe. The 52-year-old former Interior Minister, who is the son of a Hungarian immigrant and a French mother of Greek Jewish origin, is seen by many Jews as a "valeur-refuge" or value-shelter against anti-Semitism and anti-Israel attitudes.
According to European reports of the events surrounding Don Imus, it was during an interview with another American media personality, Tim Russert - who is the host of a television programme frequently used by US War Leaders - wherein while decrying the state of care being given to American War wounded stated: "So those bastards want to keep these boys [in reference to US Soldiers] secret? Let's see how they like it if I start talking about their [in reference to US War Leaders] secrets, starting with 9/11."
All in the family...
I'm not one who easily embraces conspiracy theories. I try to keep an open mind though and I also do not easily dismiss beliefs. This causes me to want to dig deeper on a number of fascinating theories. One of these objects of conjecture is the idea that the US is still a colony of Britain. Before you laugh, consider the past and the present.
Housing balances the economy, the failure of sub prime lenders, Paul Wolfowitz loses his job at the World Bank for promoting his own girlfriend to a senior position...
Americans' knowledge of national and international affairs has changed little in two decades despite the emergence of 24-hour cable news and the Internet as major news sources.
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