Reading between the lines, and thinking outside the box . . .
Here is a Vatican translation of the homily Benedict XVI gave at Christmas Eve Mass at the Vatican.
Here is a Vatican translation of Benedict XVI's Christmas message, which he delivered from the main balcony of St. Peter's Basilica yesterday at noon.
Every day, retired florist Rita Wunderle prays for the souls of bankers.
She lives in the Fuggerei, a Roman Catholic housing settlement for the poor that Jakob Fugger "The Rich" built in this southern German city nearly 500 years ago.
Praying for Fugger and his descendants to enter the Pearly Gates is a condition for living here, at an annual rent of 1 Rhein guilder ($1.23), the same as in 1520.
Jakob the Rich minted coins for the Vatican, bankrolled the Holy Roman Empire and helped steer Europe's spice trade in the early 16th century to become one of the wealthiest and most powerful financiers in history.
2009 was supposed to be the year when Europe and Russia would diversify their energy sources and routes.
The Russians and the EU have made such ambitious plans because the Europeans need gas and Russia needs Europe's rich markets.
Moscow's likely pullout of a US-Russia treaty on medium and short range missiles could be met with retaliation from Washington one expert says. "It will have an excuse for returning Pershings, ground-based cruise missiles, and perhaps the latest, more sophisticated systems to Europe."
The Dead Sea could be saved from drying up under a groundbreaking plan to flood millions of gallons of seawater in from the Red Sea more than 110 miles away.
Eight years after the site was heavily desecrated by Palestinians, Jews this week quietly returned to Joseph's Tomb in the northern West Bank to rebuild the structure in hopes of a continued Jewish presence at the tomb - Judaism's 3rd holiest site.
Iran's Red Crescent is sending a shipment of aid to the Gaza Strip in the face of a blockade of the Hamas-ruled territory by Islamic republic's archfoe Israel, the state broadcaster reported today.
"Despite the Zionist regime's opposition...this consignment will leave Bandar Abbas for Palestine on Saturday and will arrive in 12 days."
Al-Qaida and other Sunni Salafist forces are gathering in Lebanon at the instigation of Saudi Arabia, making the country a potential flashpoint for a future Middle East conflict and a candidate for certain destruction.
Security officials for months have seen an infiltration of al-Qaida from Iraq. Elements of the radical Muslim group have been moving into various Palestinian camps in Lebanon, particularly Ein-el-Hilweh near Sidon south of the Lebanese capital of Beirut.
Much rides on the stability of the nearly 4-year-old agreement between the Arab Muslim government in Khartoum and the former rebel movement in the mostly Christian and animist southern Sudan: considerable oil wealth; the calm, such as it is, in Sudan and several neighboring states; and the future of Darfur.
Sabre-rattling from Pakistan reached a new level on Thursday as its Foreign Minister warned India of "stern response" to any surgical strikes and Pakistani armed forces marched towards Jhelum.
Pakistan has purportedly moved its 10th brigade to Lahore and ordered its 3rd Armed Brigade to march towards Jhelum. It has also reportedly put its 10th and 11th divisions on high alert.
"A lot of military movement is being noticed in districts just across the international border for the last few days, which is not normal."
Meanwhile, presidential spokesman Farhatullah Babar said "some elements in both India and Pakistan" did not want peace between the two neighbours.
"As Pakistan-India relations were improving...Mumbai happened. There are elements on both sides who not want Pakistan-India relations to improve. The Mumbai incident has occurred at that very moment when relations were not only improving but I think a strategic advancement was being made."
Barack Obama should put aside plans to hold high-level talks with Iran until the Islamic republic's elections, Israeli President Peres said in remarks published today.
The larger and more complex a system, the more likely it is to break down.
America now has some 300 million people, 50 states, and more federal, state and local agencies than anyone can possibly list. It is hard to govern such a large, complex and populous system when anything goes seriously wrong.
And a lot is going wrong right now.
The US military agrees that the chance of a break down in the system is real.
And the government is predicting that systems will break down. But instead of doing anything to actually fix the underlying problems which are leading to the break down, the government is just planning on implementing police state measures to quell protests.
Having wrecked the Right, will neoconservatives revert to their left-wing origins or double down on the GOP?
In the past decade, China has invested upward of $1 trillion, mostly earnings from manufacturing exports, into American government bonds and government-backed mortgage debt.
That has lowered interest rates and helped fuel a historic consumption binge and housing bubble in the United States.
China has said it is to allow some trade with its neighbours to be settled with its currency, the yuan.
The collapse of Communism as a political system sounded the death knell for Marxism as an ideology.
But while laissez-faire capitalism has been a monumental failure in practice, and soundly defeated at the polls, the ideology is still alive and kicking.
It's time to drive the final nail into the coffin of laissez-faire capitalism by treating it like the discredited ideology it inarguably is.
Hear the phrase "medieval credit crunch" and you might think of a row about peasants not being paid or a local merchants running out of gold coins.
But an unusual new research project at Reading University reveals that the medieval economy was a lot more sophisticated than we might think, with international crises to match ours today.
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A striking feature of many cancer cells is that the DNA in their chromosomes is all jumbled up. Chunks of DNA containing one or more genes have been ripped out of their chromosome and reinserted in a different place. Other lengths of DNA have been transferred to a different chromosome altogether.
On Thursday, December 25, 2008, what is generally termed 'Christmas Day" was marked across the world with din, pomp and fanfare.
But in my household, it was just another Thursday.
The reason was quite simple: I do not believe that December 25 is the birthday of our Lord and Saviour.
In fact, what my research has shown is that, just like Easter before it, this clearly heathen feast called Christmas, rooted in hideous idolatrous observances, predates the coming of Christ.
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