Reading between the lines, and thinking outside the box . . .
Benedict XVI's catechesis on justification at the general audience and his comments regarding Martin Luther were welcomed by a Lutheran leader in Rome.
Lutherans and Catholics have officially professed a common faith on the doctrine of justification, signing a joint statement Oct. 31, 1999.
The campaign to convince the citizens of the Reich that world Jewry is combining with the democracies in a vast anti-German conspiracy continued unabated during the weekend.
There are calls, even in Germany, for the chancellor to become more visible.
It would be good for Germany and the world if Angela Merkel had a higher profile.
Kosovo police arrested Thursday 3 German citizens suspected of throwing an explosive device last week at the Pristina office of the international community's representative.
The background and possible motives for the attack remain unclear.
Sweden has become the 24th of the EU's 27 member states to ratify the controversial Lisbon Treaty.
France's sneaky plans to continue Europe's farming follies.
Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mairead Maguire said Thursday the United Nations should suspend or revoke Israel's membership.
She said Israel should be punished for ignoring a series of United Nations resolutions over the years.
A pair of polls published Thursday showed opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu's hardline Likud party leading Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni's moderate Kadima party in the run-up to Israel's elections.
The polls also indicated strong support for Netanyahu's hard-line allies. If that support stands through the elections, it would position Netanyahu to put together a hawkish coalition.
Foreign Minister and Kadima Chairwoman Tzipi Livni on Thursday reiterated her vow not to "sell" Israel to ultra-Orthodox parties in return for parliamentary support.
"Kadima will represent Israel and will determine its identity as a Jewish state, without doing so by selling the state to Haredim. I refuse to pawn Israel's future for the prime minister's chair."
Britain's Queen Elizabeth II awarded President Shimon Peres honorary knighthood on Thursday in an official ceremony in Buckingham Palace in London. But Peres will not be able to use the title "sir," as he is not a British national.
Jewish settlers in Hebron spray-painted insults to the Prophet Muhammad on a mosque and defaced Muslim gravestones with the Star of David yesterday as they defied a court order to leave a disputed building.
Israeli Prime Minister Olmert and Defence Minister Barak made a secret visit to Jordan and met with King Abdullah II, Israeli public radio reported on Thursday.
During the meeting on Tuesday the king urged the Israeli leaders not to launch a large-scale military operation in the Gaza Strip.
The radio station said the Jordanian monarch took the initiative to seek to avoid a confrontation that might also cause trouble in his country, home to many Palestinians.
President Ahmadinejad has had a good run. For how much longer?
Iran has categorically rejected a report which accuses the country of having enough nuclear fuel to make nuclear weapon. Iran's ambassador to the IAEA said that the report was unjustified and politically motivated.
Here it comes!...
President Bush is to hold White House talks with the Israeli Prime Minister Olmert on Monday after publication of a nuclear watchdog's report this week showing that Iran may have stockpiled enough enriched uranium to make a nuclear bomb.
During his visit to Washington, which begins on Sunday, Olmert is expected to meet Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, and Robert Gates.
Intelligence sources have told The Times that the prospect of Israel taking preemptive military action to knock out Iran's nuclear facilities appears to have become significantly more likely in recent weeks.
People in a vast seismic zone in the southern and midwestern United States would face catastrophic damage if a major earthquake struck there and should ensure that builders keep that risk in mind, a government report said on Thursday.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency said if earthquakes strike in what geologists define as the New Madrid Seismic Zone, they would cause "the highest economic losses due to a natural disaster in the United States."
FEMA predicted a large earthquake would cause "widespread and catastrophic physical damage" across Alabama, Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri and Tennessee -- home to some 44 million people.
Reports from Russia's Northern Fleet to Prime Minister Putin, who this past summer had expanded their operating range into the Arctic Ocean Regions, are stating that the US has reinstituted its "Operation Plowshare" programme and detonated a series of hydrogen bomb explosions in the Arctic in an attempt to locate what these American's claim are vast undersea oil and gas deposits belonging to their Nation.
When the new Congress debuts in January 2009, a record 45 Jews will take the oath of office: 32 in the House of Representatives and - regardless of the outcome in the still-contested Minnesota election - 13 Jews in the Senate.
A drag on the whole country!...
"The evangelical, right-wing, oogedy-boogedy branch of the GOP is what ails the erstwhile conservative party and will continue to afflict and marginalize its constituents if reckoning doesn't soon cometh."
So much for those pledges of "open government." So much for those promises of "change." So much for his upcoming oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States of America.
Barack Obama is still refusing to disclose to the American public something as innocent and as basic as his full, undoctored birth certificate to establish beyond any shadow of a doubt – and that doubt is growing daily – that he is a natural-born American citizen.
Ironically, now that the election is over, the pressure is building. A few bold members of Congress are getting interested in demanding hearings on the issue.
The lawsuits are increasing. More pundits and activists are beginning to mobilize.
(And: IS HE OR ISN'T HE?)
On Dec. 15, the US will endure a quadrennial ritual born in the economics and politics of slavery and the quill-pen era.
Members of the Electoral College are scheduled to meet in each of the 50 states and the District of Columbia to formally choose the next president.
The Electoral College is more than just an antiquated institution: It actively disenfranchises voters and occasionally makes the candidate with fewer popular votes president.
Congress might adjourn without acting on the deepening economic crisis, leaving Obama to inherit the catastrophe.
It has become a rather common yearly and some times even monthly occurrence that the imperial elites of America gallop up on their white horses to read the riot act to the rest of the world, some times even to the EU, on how to be a republic.
The CEO of Ford Germany has called on the European Union to make $50 billion in loans available to the continent's auto sector, emphasizing that the move would in no way resemble a government bailout.
Democratic congressional leaders on Thursday said that the executives of America's foundering automakers had failed miserably in persuading Congress or the public that $25 billion in aid from the government would be well spent and they gave industry leaders 12 days to come back with plans showing otherwise.
Exactly!...
No wonder people don't trust politicians.
In the acrimonious debate over an emergency loan to Detroit, we saw some of the worst examples of political preening, pretending and pontificating ever. And not just by Republicans.
Suddenly, before approving any financial help to automakers, members of Congress demanded answers from them that they never demanded from Wall Street.
Congress members were hypocrites in demanding answers to those questions from Detroit automakers when they had so recently approved a $700 billion bailout of Wall Street banks and financial institutions with nary a peep: no oversight, no accountability, no conditions, no restrictions.
(And: BAILOUT OR BUST?)
What killed Detroit was Washington, the government of the US, politicians, journalists and muckrakers who have long harbored a deep animus against the manufacturing class.
As far back as the 1950s, an intellectual elite that produces mostly methane had its knives out for the auto industry.
It appears that the Chinese car makers SAIC and Dongfeng have plans to acquire the Big 3. A take-over of a large overseas auto maker would fit perfectly into China's plans.
As reported before, China has realized that its export chances are slim without unfettered access to foreign technology.
The solution: Buy the joint venture partner. Especially, when he's in deep trouble.
At current market valuations, the Chinese government can afford to buy GM with petty cash.
All the Shock Doctrine fanatics cheering to drive the the Big 3 into bankruptcy "restructuring" might want to think about the implications of this.
The global economy is being sucked into a black hole and most Americans have no idea why.
Rome is burning. It's time to stop tinkering with a failed system and move on to "Plan B" before it's too late.
(And: THE BLOODBATH CONTINUES)
What countries around the world urgently need to do is to ditch the US dollar, particularly the Middle Eastern states. As long as they trade in the dollar, they give it strength.
Furthermore, since they, along with the Chinese, have some of the largest reserves of dollars that exist, they are only losing out as America criminally dumps more such dollars into the world.
The real solution is to deal with the actual underlying capitalistic model that legitimizes such behavior.
We must recognize now that, as with the communist system before it, capitalism has proven to be a failure.
The world must now search for another model to govern its finances.
Citigroup, which a matter of months ago was the biggest bank in the US, is reported to be considering selling parts of its business or merging with another company as the bank scrambles to shore up investors' confidence.
Citi insists that it has a "very strong capital and liquidity position", but shares in the bank have continued to plumb new lows. Trading at $54 a share 2 years ago, the shares closed yesterday in New York at $4.71.
The European Investment Bank, the world's largest multilateral lender, has seen its arrears rate surge over recent weeks, prompting concern over its ability to fulfil its new role as the spearhead of Europe's spending blitz.
The EIB is a powerful arm of EU policy, using its AAA credit-rating to raise some €45bn a year on global bond market to finance ports, roads, sewers, and lately high-tech projects.
Its loan portfolio is 3 times as big as the World Bank's.
What remains to be tested is whether investors will keep buying bonds from a body evolving into an all-purpose fireman.
At the end of the day, the EIB has no sovereign entity behind it. Hedge funds are already on the prowl.
Germany has rejected calls to contribute more funds to a European Union fiscal stimulus package for recession-hit economies, with a government spokesman saying Thursday that Berlin was doing enough already.
Vowing to protect French industry from foreign predators and a worsening economic slump, President Sarkozy introduced a €20 billion strategic investment fund on Thursday and announced its first investment.
"I won't let foreign funds get bargains thanks to the current levels of the stock market. I won't let French industry move out."
The global economy suffered a new blow yesterday as Maersk, the world's largest shipping company, announced that it would no longer put its tankers at the mercy of pirates off Somalia.
Pressure is mounting for an international solution to the menace in and around the Gulf of Aden as world leaders urged shipping companies and their insurers not to embolden the buccaneers by giving in to ransom demands.
(Cartoon: SINK THE WHOLE COUNTRY?)
The farmers said it would not last, and they were right.
When the price of wheat, corn, soybeans and just about every other food grown in the ground began leaping skyward 2 years ago, American farmers were pleased, of course.
But generally they refused to believe that the good times would be permanent. They had seen too many booms that were inevitably followed by busts.
Now, with the suddenness of a hailstorm flattening a field, hard times are back on the American farmstead.
The price paid for crops is dropping much faster than the cost of growing them.
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Doctors in Arizona thought a Phoenix-area woman had a possible brain tumor, but it turned out there was something else penetrating her brain – a worm.
No one knows exactly where she picked up the worm –- doctors said worms can come from eating undercooked pork or spread by people who don't wash their hands after using the bathroom.
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