Reading between the lines, and thinking outside the box . . .
Benedict XVI told a delegation of Catholic and Orthodox theologians that the unity of the Body of Christ is an "essential dimension" of the Church and of its mission in the world.
The unity of Christians is an "essential dimension of the Church to the world," toward which "we all have a duty to work," he said.
"The world needs a visible sign of the mystery of unity that binds the 3 divine Persons and, that 2,000 years ago, with the Incarnation of the Son of God, was revealed to us."
(And: FULL TEXT OF ADDRESS)
Benedict XVI is asking the Catholic bishops of Russia to make a renewed commitment to dialogue with the Orthodox Church. He affirmed this in an audience with prelates from the Russian episcopal conference in Rome for their 5-yearly visit.
This visit in particular, Benedict XVI told the prelates, throws light on "the communion that binds you to the Successor of Peter."
"Communion with the Bishop of Rome, guarantor of ecclesial unity, permits the communities entrusted to your pastoral care, though in the minority, to feel that they are cum Petro and sub Petro, a living part of the Body of Christ extended throughout the earth.
Although Vatican City is small, it's not "insignificant," said Cardinal Lajolo upon announcing plans for the official celebration of the 80th anniversary of the state's foundation.
The president of the Governorate of Vatican City State said this in a press conference in which he unveiled the program for the celebrations, which will include a concert -- to be attended by Benedict XVI -- an exposition and an academic conference.
The Lateran Pacts, which were signed Feb. 11, 1929, gave origin to the establishment of Vatican City State.
A second German Catholic bishop Saturday raised unusual criticism of Pope Benedict XVI for rehabilitating Holocaust denier Bishop Williamson, adding his objections to the pope's ultraconservative direction.
It is a morally grave matter when a priest or bishop, in communion or not with the Church, denies the Holocaust and the extermination of millions of Jews at the hands of the Nazis, says the Vatican spokesman.
He criticized statements made by Bishop Williamson in which he denied the extent of the Holocaust and the use of gas chambers to kill millions of Jews during WW2.
"Those who deny the Holocaust don't know anything about the mystery of God, nor of the cross of Christ. It's even more grave when the denial comes from the mouth of a priest or bishop, that is, from a Christian minister, be that he is united or not to the Catholic Church."
(Truth!: WHAT IS "HOLOCAUST DENIAL"?)
(Truth!: LET'S HEAR BOTH SIDES)
Israel's Minister for Religious Affairs has threatened to suspend relations with the Vatican, following the pardon issued to Bishop Williamson, a German news magazine reported on Saturday.
Cohen told the weekly Spiegel magazine that he recommended "completely cutting off connections to a body in which Holocaust deniers and anti-Semites are members.".
The sources of tension in Jewish-Vatican relations are many, and Jesuit Father David Neuhaus calls this a moment for "patience, wisdom and prayer."
The secretary-general of the Hebrew-speaking Catholic Vicariate in Israel said he was "following with great sadness and anxiety the deterioration of relations between the Holy See and the Israeli Chief Rabbinate."
Fighter pilots were put on red alert in a UFO drama over Germany, it emerged yesterday. Air traffic controllers tracked a mystery object speeding across the entire country.
There were dozens of reports of the object as it flew across southern Germany on January 19. It vanished above an area used by US troops on training exercises.
Germany's air traffic safety office said: "We have ruled out all the conventional possibilities — it is a mystery. It confused radar operators because it kept flicking on and off the screen. Then it simply vanished."
Germans rarely find a rule they don't want to embrace. There is a saying in the country: "Everything is forbidden; apart from that, do what you like". Here are some of the more quirky Teutonic laws.
After 12 months of caretaker rule, a new regional cabinet has been selected in the German state of Hesse, where the conservative Christian Democrats won a significant majority 2 weeks ago.
The closely watched Munich security conference, which starts next week, has become a large-scale summit for world leaders.
This year the US is sending a high-ranking delegation, led by Joe Biden, which may seek informal dialogue with Iran on the event's sidelines.
And a lot is in fact possible in Munich. When it goes well, the conference is a no-nonsense event where decision-makers can talk frankly about current international hot spots.
This year 73 big-name delegates have been announced, including prime ministers and presidents, foreign and defense ministers, ambassadors and members of parliament.
German polticians expressed dismay over the fact that NATO's high commander wants to permit the targeted killing of drug traffickers even without proof that they are involved in terrorist developments.
NATO is trying to downplay the paper, saying it is merely a "guidance," but that's not correct.
European Union warships may be circling off the coast of Somalia, but pirates continue to plunder.
A day after the German tanker Longchamp was seized by bandits, the EU mission controlling the area's waters complained that the German vessel had ventured into the perilous zone without traveling in a convoy.
[WAR: Is it possible that Germany wanted this to happen -- in order to pursue an agenda?]
Britain's Conservative Party leader should make up his mind by end-April whether his party is to leave the European People's Party grouping in the European Parliament, the head of the EPP told a press conference.
According to Deutschland Radio's website, the tensions between the German and the British delegations have lately sharpened, especially on EU integration issues, where the Tories mostly vote against the group's line.
Another issue where Cameron is at odds with the German conservatives is the Lisbon treaty. Strongly championed by the EPP, the Lisbon treaty would likely be scrapped if Cameron won the UK general election this year.
(And: THIS WEEK IN THE EU)
President Sarkozy has been accused of ruling France like a "monarch from another age." "When he moves around the country, he would like to stay living in a bubble like those monarchs or dictators from another age."
Europe faces the risk of more social unrest unless measures are taken to quickly tackle the global economic crisis, France's finance minister says.
Europe's time of troubles is gathering depth and scale. Governments are trembling. Revolt is in the air.
Europe's mood of euphoria over Barack Obama masks anxiety about what the new president will demand.
As the exhilaration over Barack Obama's inauguration fades, Europeans have begun to absorb an uncomfortable truth.
In his inaugural speech, he did not mention the European Union once. Obama may be at the centre of Europe's preoccupations. But Europe does not appear to be at the centre of his.
The gas supply crisis between Russia and the EU has been resolved; the larger crisis in Ukraine has just begun. The timing could not be worse for Ukraine's economy.
The new gas price may very well bankrupt the country. Already the country is living on life support.
Thousands of Russians have marched in protests demanding the resignation of the prime minister, Vladimir Putin, for his handling of the country's flailing economy.
The Russian Orthodox Church has enthroned its new head, Patriarch Kirill, in a ceremony attended by political leaders including President Medvedev and Prime Minister Putin.
Hundreds crowded into the cathedral for the ceremony, the first enthronement of a new Russian Orthodox patriarch since Soviet times when the Church was brutally oppressed by the officially atheist government.
Kirill is seen by experts as a forceful traditionalist who believes that the Church should play a strong role in society and who could create headaches for Russia's political leaders with his outspoken views.
An ultra-rightwinger, who is said to favor flattening Tehran if Iran develops nuclear weapons, has emerged as the politician gaining the most ground in next week's general election in Israel.
He has also denounced Egypt, despite its peace treaty with Israel. He once suggested that in the event of war with Egypt, Israel should destroy the Aswan dam on the Nile and flood the country.
Israel has vowed to strike back at Hamas with "disproportionate" force in the wake of renewed rocket fire from Gaza.
"We will not agree to return to the old rules of the game and we will act according to new rules that will guarantee that we are not dragged into an incessant tit-for-tat war that will not allow normal life in the south of the country. The response will come at the time, the place and the manner that we choose."
Hamas must somehow be brought into the Middle East peace process because the policy of isolating Gaza in the quest for a settlement will not work, Tony Blair has told The Times.
Israeli expansionists, their intentions to take full control of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and permanently keep the Golan Heights of Syria and expand into southern Lebanon already well known, also have their eyes on parts of Iraq considered part of a biblical "Greater Israel."
Israel reportedly has plans to relocate thousands of Kurdish Jews from Israel, including expatriates from Kurdish Iran, to the Iraqi cities of Mosul and Nineveh under the guise of religious pilgrimages to ancient Jewish religious shrines.
Kurdish Israelis began to buy land in Iraqi Kurdistan, after the US invasion in 2003, that is considered historical Jewish "property."
The Israelis are particularly interested in the shrine of the Jewish prophet Nahum in al Qush, the prophet Jonah in Mosul, and the tomb of the prophet Daniel in Kirkuk.
Israelis are also trying to claim Jewish "properties" outside of the Kurdish region, including the shrine of Ezekiel in the village of al-Kifl in Babel Province near Najaf and the tomb of Ezra in al-Uzayr in Misan Province, near Basra, both in southern Iraq's Shi'a-dominated territory.
Israeli expansionists consider these shrines and tombs as much a part of "Greater Israel" as Jerusalem and the West Bank, which they call "Judea and Samaria."
Violence in Afghanistan rose by just under a third last year, the highest rise since coalition operations began more than 7 years ago.
African leaders set aside the first day of an annual summit today to discuss Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi's long-standing pet project to establish a United States of Africa.
The confrontaion between North and South Korea has escalated with Kim Jong-il's regime claiming it was on the "brink of war" after tearing up a non-aggression pact signed in 1991.
Iran has begun 10 days of celebrations to mark the 30th anniversary of the Islamic revolution that overthrew the US-backed former ruler, the Shah.
Europeans fret that this year will be the trickiest so far for dealing with Iran.
Germany's foreign minister warned Iran against rebuffing Obama's offer to hold direct talks as diplomats from 6 nations trying to push Tehran to curb its nuclear ambitions meet next week in Berlin.
Barack Obama's offer to talk to Iran shows that America's policy of "domination" has failed, the government spokesman said on Saturday.
"This request means Western ideology has become passive, that capitalist thought and the system of domination have failed. Negotiation is secondary, the main issue is that there is no way but for (the US) to change."
Former US envoy to the UN John Bolton says Washington has suffered a humiliating defeat in its drive against Iran's nuclear activities.
In a Friday interview, Bolton said Washington's efforts to curb Tehran's nuclear achievements have come to naught as Tehran has successfully managed to defend its national interests.
Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's leading candidate for prime minister, said Saturday that Iran "will not be armed with a nuclear weapon."
Netanyahu said if elected prime minister his first mission will be to thwart the Iranian nuclear threat. He called Iran the greatest danger to Israel and to all humanity.
When asked if stopping Iran's nuclear ambitions included a military strike, he replied: "It includes everything that is necessary to make this statement come true."
Britain wants Obama to put a bronze bust of Sir Winston Churchill back in the Oval Office, where it stood for the past 8 years as a symbol of an enduring special relationship with America.
The White House is not so sure. Obama shows little evidence of the Anglophilia that led his predecessors to pepper speeches with quotations from Churchill.
Instead, there have been suggestions that he has reason to disdain the former Prime Minister.
In 1952 Churchill declared the Kenya emergency, sending in troops to crush the Mau Mau rebellion against colonial rule. Among the Kenyans who were detained without trial and allegedly tortured by the British was Hussein Onyango Obama, Barack Obama's grandfather.
(Truth: CHURCHILL'S UNSETTLED LEGACY)
(Truth: CHURCHILL AND US ENTRY INTO WW2)
A new lawsuit is challenging Barack Obama's eligibility to be president, and this one targets Congress as a defendant for its "failure" to uphold the constitutional demand to make sure Obama qualified before approving the Electoral College vote that actually designated him as the occupant of the Oval Office.
Barack Obama's bipartisan honeymoon has ended even sooner than anyone expected. In other words: it's politics as usual.
Obama warmly welcomed trade union leaders into the White House as he reversed restrictions on organised labour set up by the Bush administration.
Promising to "level the playing field" for workers, he offered the most pro-union sentiments heard from a US president for many years. "I do not view the labour movement as part of the problem. To me, it's part of the solution."
Robert Gates has become a champion of American warmongery and, in many ways, a more effective handmaiden of the neoconservative agenda than Rummy ever was.
Pass a thumbnail over his rhetoric and you'll find a man with the plan to keep America perpetually mired in Third World wars while arming itself to fight WW3.
Assuming Obama was serious about effecting change in US foreign policy, he could hardly have made a bigger mistake than keeping Robert Gates on as secretary of defense.
In of the most monumental and sweeping, though frequently overlooked, efforts by the former Bush administration to project worldwide military dominance and in so doing further vitiate international relations is what its initiator, John Bolton, called the Proliferation Security Initiative.
Officially launched on May 31, 2003, the PSI was the broadest application of international power projection by the US in the post-Cold War era, entailing as it does nothing less than the ability to conduct naval surveillance, interdiction and eventually unbridled military action in all the world's oceans.
And lying behind and underpinning the PSI is what the current Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the US armed forces Michael Mullen, while developing this strategy as Chief of Naval Operations, called the Thousand-Ship Navy.
Worldwide, the mightiest force of the 20th century, ethnonationalism – that creator and destroyer of nations and empires; that enduring drive of peoples for a nation-state where their faith and culture is dominant and their race or tribe is supreme – seems more manifest than ever.
Are we really in a post-racial America, or is our multicultural multiethnic America, too, destined for Balkanization and break-up?
America, and individual Americans, have been living profligately for years in an unreal economy, propped up by easy credit which inflated the value of real estate to incredible levels, and which led people to spend way beyond their means. Now this is all crashing down.
The truth is that we are not threatened by Communism, by drug lords, or by Muslim Jihadists in any serious way. Rather, we have become our own worst enemy.
Barack Obama is expected to water down "Buy American" plans in his economic stimulus package after European diplomats privately threatened to launch a trade war in retaliation.
Obama officials are under pressure from what European diplomats in Washington describe as a discreet but outspoken campaign of "quiet fury" from America's closest allies.
They regard the move as a provocative shift away from free trade and towards economic populism at a time of turmoil.
Taxpayers are tribal. They do not want precious stimulus to feed the foreigner. The world watches and waits in horror, especially in Davos.
So, as the world's leaders awaken to the danger that the sole superpower may turn its back on the open system that keeps us all afloat, they line up to plead for free trade.
This year's forum, taking place in the midst of a global financial meltdown and economic slump that have shattered the complacent verities about the superiority of the "free enterprise system," presents a picture of deep crisis and disarray among the leaders of world capitalism.
The mood that prevails, according to all accounts, is one of gloom and foreboding.
While general statements are being issued at Davos abjuring protectionism, and warnings are being made about the disastrous implications for the world economy of such policies, the reality is a growth of economic nationalism.
The Davos forum underscores the impossibility of developing a rational and coordinated international policy to resolve the economic crisis within the capitalist framework of private ownership of the means of production and finance and the division of the world between rival nation states.
Within the existing economic and political system, the only future is one of increasing poverty and repression and the growth of national antagonisms leading inevitably, as in the last great depression, to the horrors of global war.
The World Economic Forum has ended with a call to rebuild the global economic system. Founder Klaus Schwab announced a "global redesign initiative" to reform banking, regulation and corporate governance.
For 5 days, more than 2,000 business and political leaders discussed what some here called the "crisis of capitalism". However, most discussions described the problems, not solutions.
With the old certainties of the free market gone, even free marketeers accepted the need for more regulation, quick. What had once been seen as a long schmoozefest, a show-off party of the rich and powerful, had bumped into reality.
Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has denounced the unfettered capitalism of the past 3 decades and called for a new era of "social capitalism" in which government intervention and regulation feature heavily.
In an essay to be published next week, he is scathing of the neo-liberals who began refashioning the market system in the 1970s, and ultimately brought about the global financial crisis.
"The time has come, off the back of the current crisis, to proclaim that the great neo-liberal experiment of the past 30 years has failed, that the emperor has no clothes. Neo-liberalism and the free-market fundamentalism it has produced has been revealed as little more than personal greed dressed up as an economic philosophy. And, ironically, it now falls to social democracy to prevent liberal capitalism from cannibalising itself."
The collapse of large swathes of the global financial system has left a void into which global organisations such as the IMF will have to step, Gordon Brown said.
As he unveiled the outline for the forthcoming Group of 20 meeting in London in April, the Prime Minister said it was essential that international institutions are beefed up in response to the financial crisis. The need to create a global financial regulation system will be one of the main topics on the agenda for the meeting, he said.
"We have a global financial system, but until now no global co-ordination or supervision, only national supervisors. We need to reform and strengthen international institutions, giving them power and resources to invest at a global level."
Chancellor Merkel called Friday for the creation of an international economic body, similar to the UN Security Council, to help avert the kind of wrenching financial crisis currently engulfing the world.
Economic principles need to be enshrined in "a new charter for a global economic order," she told the business and political leaders gathered at the World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos.
She emphasized that "the forces of free market economy" had to underpin the rules that emerge from the crisis.
She lauded the German system, which mixes capitalism with a strong social safety net and potent regulators, but said she had no interest in "socialist command economies" and alluded to her own past as a child of the communist system.
European Commission President Barroso and Chinese Prime Minister Jiabao have pledged to co-operate on tackling online piracy, climate change and the financial crisis, with a new EU-China summit envisaged for April.
"It is a strategic priority of the Chinese government to develop relations with the EU and we are firm and steadfast in that commitment," said Mr Wen.
China's willingness to continue buying US Treasury securities in large numbers will depend on its need to protect the value of its foreign investments, the Chinese premier, Wen Jiabao, said Saturday.
"Whether we will buy more US Treasury bonds, and if so by how much — we should take that decision in accordance with China's own need and also our aim to keep the security of our foreign reserves and the value of them."
The ECB is not hurrying to cut interest rates—mostly for the wrong reasons.
Europe's top officials have been forced into repeated assurances that the eurozone is in no danger of falling apart, despite growing stress in the Greek, Italian, Irish, Spanish and Austrian bond markets.
"There is no risk that the euro will break apart," said Jean-Claude Trichet, the European Central Bank's president.
Friday was the 2nd day Trichet has had to parry questions about the viability of monetary union.
EU officials are furious over comments this week by the head of the International Monetary Fund who said the euro could prove unworkable unless the member states give up some control over fiscal policy. "Otherwise, differences between states will become too big and the stability of the currency zone is in danger," he said.
The ECB has increased its balance sheet by more than the Fed, accepting housing debt as collateral from banks. But it has not gone to the next stage by purchasing bonds outright.
Such a radical move would open a political can of worms, raising suspicions that German taxpayers were funding a covert bail-out of Club Med.
It seems timely to resurrect this Americanism from the 1930s - one of many evocative words the US has contributed to the English language.
What happened, put simply, is that the people who thought of themselves as the smartest guys in the room - and were paid accordingly - weren't so smart after all.
They brought down the financial system. They lost so much money that only the government can save them.
The scolding they got from Obama this week suggests that they're going to be paying a price - richly deserved, I might add - for a good long time.
The bailout packages aimed at shoring up financial markets in Europe are getting increasingly expensive.
A creeping depreciation of currency is inevitable and state bankruptcies can no longer be ruled out.
Could the euro zone also fall victim to the global financial crisis?
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Today is no ordinary Sunday: it's Super Bowl Sunday. At approximately 6:20 pm EST, and some unearthly hour Greenwich mean time, the Arizona Cardinals will square off against the Pittsburgh Steelers for Super Bowl XLIII in Tampa, Florida.
It will attract more viewers than Obama's inauguration, spark more heated debate than the war in Iraq and practically bring the country to a standstill.
But it will pass with barely a murmur in the UK where American Football is still widely seen as a bunch of over-padded men throwing a rugby ball in the wrong direction and stopping every 30 seconds for a snack.
(Cartoons: SUPER BOWL 43)
Lurking in the solar system's dark recesses, rumour has it, is an unsighted world -- Planet X, a frozen body perhaps as large as Mars, or even Earth.
(Or is it: THE "LOST STAR OF MYTH & TIME"?)
What if the doomsayers are right? What if society, as we know it, really is about to collapse? Do you have what it takes to make it in a world without electricity and running water?
Once one of the nation's most popular televangelists, Robert H. Schuller is watching his life's work crumble.
His son and recent successor has abruptly resigned as senior pastor of the Crystal Cathedral.
The shimmering, glass-walled megachurch is home to the "Hour of Power" broadcast, an evangelism staple that's been on the air for more than 3 decades.
The church is in financial turmoil: It plans to sell more than $65 million worth of its Orange County property to pay off debt. Revenue dropped by nearly $5 million last year.
"Then it came about at the end of 40 days, that Noah opened the window of the ark which he had made." (Gen 8:6)
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