Reading between the lines, and thinking outside the box . . .
Pope Benedict XVI today told US Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, a Catholic who supports abortion rights, that Catholic politicians have a duty to protect life "at all stages of its development," the Vatican said.
Pelosi is the first top Democrat to meet with Benedict since the election of Barack Obama, who won a majority of the Catholic vote despite differences with the Vatican on abortion.
The Vatican released remarks by the pope to Pelosi, saying Benedict spoke of the church's teaching "on the dignity of human life from conception to natural death."
Benedict said all Catholics — especially legislators, jurists and political leaders — should work to create "a just system of laws capable of protecting human life at all stages of its development."
German Catholics expressed shock at a threat of discipline issued to theology professors by a bishop, in the aftermath of the row over Rome's readmission of Holocaust-denier Richard Williamson.
A spokesman for the Church in Jordan says Benedict XVI's visit to Israel will take place May 8-11.
[WAR: So ol' B16 will be in Israel for the Passover -- how 'bout that! But hardly anyone will know the true significance of this because they are not observing/following the correct calendar.]
Women are prouder than men, but men are more lustful, according to a Vatican report which states that the 2 sexes sin differently.
A Catholic survey found that the most common sin for women was pride, while for men, the urge for food was only surpassed by the urge for sex.
The secretariat of the Commission of the Bishops' Conferences of the European Community has welcomed a proposed EU law that would safeguard Sunday as a day of rest from work.
According to L'Osservatore Romano, the secretariat issued a statement praising the measure proposed by 5 EU parliamentarians to recognize the value of "Sunday rest as part of the 'cultural patrimony' and 'European social model'."
Sunday work "puts those who work on Sunday into a socially disadvantageous position, affecting everything from family life to their own personal health."
The proposed measure, which would need 394 votes to pass in the EU parliament, would call on member states and EU institutions to "protect Sunday as the weekly day of rest" in order "to improve the protection of workers' health and the balancing of work and family life."
The German cabinet has agreed on a draft law that will allow it to temporarily nationalise troubled banks.
The law would allow private sector banks to be nationalised through the seizure of their shares to support Germany's financial system.
The draft law, which still has to be approved by the German parliament, said nationalisation would be a last resort.
Germany has for the first time publicly raised the idea of bailing out nations in the eurozone that are struggling in the face of the economic crisis, mentioning Ireland in particular.
"We have a number of countries in the eurozone that are clearly getting into trouble on their payments," said German finance minister Peer Steinbrueck, according to Reuters.
"Ireland is in a very difficult situation. The euro-region treaties do not foresee any help for insolvent states, but in reality the others would have to rescue those running into difficulty."
Frank-Walter Steinmeier landed in Baghdad on Tuesday for the first visit to Iraq by a German foreign minister in 22 years. The gesture underscores a significant shift in Germany's policies toward the war-torn country.
A new study by the EU Commission says that jobless rolls in the European Union will swell by a further 3.5 million this year as the global economic slowdown batters labor markets across Europe.
Rising unemployment threatens not only to worsen the global economic slowdown, but to pit individual EU member states against one another as national governments try to save jobs for their own constituencies.
Such talk of repatriation is supposed to be anathema in the European Union, where the internal market is a core, treaty-enshrined ideal.
But Sarkozy's protectionist language ripped off the veneer of European unity over the economic crisis.
The proliferation of national measures has alarmed the European Commission, which fears that France and others will use the downturn to undermine market and competition law.
One year on from its unilateral declaration of independence, the issue of Kosovo's status remains contested and contorted.
Simmering tensions in the north of Kosovo, meanwhile, inflamed by the establishment of a Kosovo security force, indicate the potential for further destabilisation in the forthcoming period.
In a Spiegel interview, Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov discusses positive diplomatic signals from the Obama administration, the possibility of nuclear disarmament and opportunities for cooperating in the conflict with Iran.
The Israeli president, Shimon Peres, will hold talks with party leaders today before deciding whom he should ask to form a new government after an indecisive election.
(Analysis: AND THE WINNER IS: LIKUD OR LIKUD)
Israeli aircraft struck 2 targets in the southern Gaza Strip today causing some damage but no casualties.
(And: GAZA RESPONDS WITH ROCKET)
At a weekend meeting in Istanbul, 200 religious scholars and clerics met senior Hamas officials to plot a new jihad centred on Gaza.
In rare interview, Syrian leader calls on Obama to restore envoy and make good on promise of dialogue.
The US will put pressure this week on its NATO allies to increase their commitments to Afghanistan but is not optimistic of fresh pledges of troops.
The Taliban has staged repeated attacks on Afghanistan's perilous Khyber Pass against trucks loaded with NATO supplies. The international security forces, including Germany's Bundeswehr, are scrambling to find safer routes -- and might even consider one through Iran.
The CIA is secretly using an airbase in southern Pakistan to launch the Predator drones that observe and attack al-Qaeda and Taleban militants on the Pakistani side of the border with Afghanistan.
Iran has a clean bill of health, as far as its nuclear program is concerned. This is not what Israel, its lobby in the US, and its neoconservative allies had expected.
Such a clean bill of health deprives them of any justification for advocating military attacks on Iran. So the War Party has resorted to an international campaign of exaggerations, lies, and distortions.
This campaign involves planting lies in the major media and on the Internet, making absurd interpretations of what the IAEA reports on Iran, and issuing dire – but bogus – warnings about the speed at which Iran's uranium-enrichment program is progressing.
Barack Obama has made many references to his respect and admiration for the assassinated US Civil War era president Abraham Lincoln. Obama went so far as to even swear his oath upon the Lincoln Bible.
Though modern US mythology paints Lincoln as a great defender and champion of freedom and human rights, a close study of history paints a very different and very disturbing alternate image.
(Cartoon: "YES WE CAN" KOOL-AID)
Financial gloom was everywhere Tuesday. On Wall Street, the Dow Jones industrial average came within sight of its lowest levels in more than a decade.
Financial shares were battered. And rattled investors clamored to buy rainy-day investments like gold and Treasury debt.
It was a global wave of selling spurred by rising worries about how banks, automakers - entire countries - would fare in a deepening recession.
Barack Obama has not ruled out another stimulus package, even as with a few strokes of the pen he enacted the most expensive piece of legislation in US history at $787 billion.
The US government may have to nationalise some banks on a temporary basis to fix the financial system and restore the flow of credit, Alan Greenspan has told the Financial Times.
"It may be necessary to temporarily nationalise some banks in order to facilitate a swift and orderly restructuring," he said. "I understand that once in a hundred years this is what you do."
Troubled GM and Chrysler have asked the US government for another $21.6bn in support, on top of the $17.4bn already received.
They also plan to axe 47,000 and 3,000 jobs respectively, as well as shedding a number of car models.
The deepening recession spells trouble for a little-known government corporation that insures the pensions of 44 million workers and retirees.
The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. already has an $11 billion deficit that seems sure to grow larger as Corporate America suffers through the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.
With companies reporting shortfalls in their pension funds, it's all but certain that the PBGC will be forced to take over the pension plans of a rising number of bankrupt businesses.
We have been making good market calls; end the tax havens; bankrupt America, no solution from the banks; we believe the bailouts wont work; no return to confidence in the markets; re-inflation may be what will keep it all going...
Respected economist John Williams, editor of ShadowStats.com, is advising that people hoard physical gold as well as food items in bulk so that they have some means with which to barter as the economic crisis turns ugly.
Gold has surged to an all-time high against the euro, sterling, and a string of Asian currencies on mounting concerns that global authorities are embarking on a "Zimbabwe-style" debasement of the international monetary system.
It is not yet clear how well the eurozone's 16-strong bloc of disparate states will respond to extreme stress.
The trend by central banks and global wealth funds to shift reserves into euro bonds may have peaked as it becomes clear that the European region is tipping into a slump that is as deep – if not deeper – than the US downturn.
The recent plunge in currencies across Eastern Europe had come as a brutal shock. "The rout could potentially lead to substantial problems, if not an outright collapse of the financial system."
Crucially, gold has decoupled from oil and base metals, finding once again its ancient role as a store of wealth in dangerous times.
(And: ON THE PRICE OF GOLD)
Currencies have crumbled across Eastern Europe on mounting fears of a debt crisis as foreign creditors withdraw from the region.
"We're nearing the level were things could get out of hand," said the currency chief strategist at BNP Paribas.
The mushrooming crisis has already started to spill over into Germany's debt markets. "Investors are beginning to ask whether Germany is going to have to pay for the rescue of Eastern and Central Europe."
Eastern Europe is about to blow. If it does, it could take much of the EU with it.
It's an emergency situation but there are no easy solutions.
Finance ministers and central bankers are running in circles trying to put out one fire after another. It's only a matter of time before they are overtaken by events.
If one country is allowed to default, the dominoes could begin to tumble through the whole region. This could trigger dramatic changes in the political landscape.
The rise of fascism is no longer out of the question.
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An odd, greenish backward-flying comet is zipping by Earth this month, as it takes its only trip toward the sun from the farthest edges of the solar system.
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