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...a God who could make good children as easily a bad, yet preferred to make bad ones; who could have made every one of them happy, yet never made a single happy one; who made them prize their bitter life, yet stingily cut it short; who gave his angels eternal happiness unearned, yet required his other children to earn it; who gave is angels painless lives, yet cursed his other children with biting miseries and maladies of mind and body; who mouths justice, and invented hell--mouths mercy, and invented
hell--mouths Golden Rules and foregiveness multiplied by seventy times seven, and invented hell; who mouths morals to other people, and has none himself; who frowns upon crimes, yet commits them all; who created man without invitation, then tries to shuffle the responsibility for man's acts
The Christian’s Bible is a drug store. Its contents remain the same; but the medical practice changes… The world has corrected the Bible. The church never corrects it; and also never fails to drop in at the tail of the procession — and take the credit of the correction. During many ages there were witches. The Bible said so. the Bible commanded that they should not be allowed to live. Therefore the Church, after eight hundred years, gathered up its halters, thumb-screws, and firebrands, and set about its holy work in earnest. She worked hard at it night and day during nine centuries and imprisoned, tortured, hanged, and burned whole hordes and armies of witches, and washed the Christian world clean with their foul blood.
Man is a Religious
Animal. He is the only Religious Animal. He is the only animal that has the True Religion--several of them. He is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself and cuts his throat if his theology isn't straight. He has made a graveyard of the globe in trying his honest best to smooth his brother's path to happiness and heaven. - "The Lowest Animal"
I am quite sure now that often, very often, in matters concerning religion and politics a man's reasoning powers are not above the monkey's. - Mark Twain in Eruption
The Israeli military said it had targeted weapons storage facilities in the central Gaza Strip, in Gaza City in the north and the southern Gaza Strip, all in response to rockets fired from Gaza.
Late on Thursday and just two hours before the air strikes, the military said a Palestinian
rocket fired from Gaza had landed in an open area of southern Israel.
There was no claim of responsibility for the rocket, which caused no casualties.
Israeli warplanes have carried out at least 13 air strikes on the Hamas-ruled Gaza
Strip, Palestinian sources have told the BBC.
There were no immediate reports of casualties.
Four of the strikes took place near the town of Khan Younis, where two Israeli soldiers were killed in clashes with Palestinian fighters last week.
The Israeli strikes are the most serious for more than a year, says the BBC's Jon Donnison from Jerusalem.
As long as you are not a Palestinian you could almost make an argument that the Middle East game of “Smoke and Mirrors” is actually amusing. Again, it is only amusing if you do not have to actually witness and deal with the nasty end of the Israel stick on a daily basis. For those that do, the Palestinians and all of their friends and neighbors in that part of the world...
Israeli planes and helicopters carried out at least seven missile attacks on the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip on Friday, causing damage and slightly wounding two children, Palestinian witnesses and officials said. They said four air strikes took place in open areas near the central town of Khan Younis, the site of a deadly clash last week between Israeli troops and Palestinian gunmen.
Two caravans were destroyed there in Friday's attack but there were no
casualties, officials said. A fifth missile hit a cheese factory in Gaza City, setting it on fire, witnesses and Hamas officials said. Hospital officials said two children were injured by flying debris.
Helicopters struck twice in the central refugee camp of Nusseirat, destroying a metal foundry. There were no casualties.
Israeli warplanes carried out at least five missile attacks on the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip on Friday, Palestinian witnesses said.
North Texas elected officials today said they're concerned about low census response rates in parts of the state and urged residents to return their census forms as soon as possible.
Gideon Levy: Zionism has many meanings. For sure, the common concept of Zionism includes the occupation, includes the perception that Jews have more rights in Palestine than anyone else, that the Jewish people are the chosen people, that there can’t be equality between Jews and Arabs, Jews and Palestinians. All those beliefs which are very basic in current Zionism, I can’t share them. In this sense, I can define myself as an anti-Zionist.
As I listened to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu address an animated crowed of supporters on March 22, I felt physically sick. The man has already displayed time and again a complete lack of moral sense or ethical framework in his words and actions. In his recent arguments, he once again twisted history, manipulated facts and fabricated his own selective, self-interested and highly questionable narrative. Netanyahu, a colonialist from a faraway land, also had the audacity to convince himself and a few others that he had legal, moral and historic rights over my land. While I am the son of a Palestinian family rooted in Palestine since time immemorial, Netanyahu is the son of an immigrant from Lithuania. While he
giddily robs more Palestinian land in Jerusalem, I live in exile.
Tittle-tattles regarding the possibility of a military strike against Iran are being renewed these days. President Obama, to whom I still wonder why the Nobel Peace Prize has gone, is confessing that former President Bush was right in his belief that Iran poses a serious threat to the international community; Russia is cowardly retreating from its position, joining the rest of world's tyrannical powers who favor the imposition of new sanctions against Iran; fueled up by Israel and AIPAC, American corporate media are laying the groundwork to prepare the public opinions forcefully, convincing them that Iran is the most dangerous country in the Middle East and should be disarmed as soon as possible, otherwise, it may attack Israel to wipe it off the map.
Little dismisses ClimateGate as about a “small handful of scientists.” As I’ve explained before, and has Ed Morrissey has compiled, the scandal reaches far beyond East Anglia University—we have since learned plenty of troubling things about the poor standards, selective measurements, biased work, and intellectual intolerance that tarnishes not just their work, but the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration, NASA’s Goddard Institute, and the United Nations’ very own Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In fact, earlier today Morrissey blogged about how NASA’s numbers are in even worse shape than we feared
Sticky, flat wafers, be damned! I’m going to confession and getting some rosary beads. The Redhead has found her calling, as she likes getting into boys’ pants as much as this organized bastion for sin. I mean, seriously – this dude, The Pope, is a guy I want to work for. He’s a talented dude! Not only can he turn a blind eye towards indiscretions while managing the largest real estate holding
organization in the world, but he’s not intimidated by “petty gossip” that alludes to his employees. Damn straight, Pope Baby – you shut ‘em up and I get ‘em to sign-up. The Redhead and The Pope? An unbeatable combination of management and rationalization. Let’s review the top five reasons to convert to Catholicsm today:
While amateur climatologist McIntyre spent years begging in vain for the raw data, Webster eventually managed to convince Jones to send them to him. He is the only scientist to date who has been given access to the data. "To be
honest, I'm shocked by the sloppy documentation," Webster told SPIEGEL.
Unnoticed by the public, Webster has spent several months searching for inconsistencies in the Jones curve. For example, it has been known for some time that there are noticeable jumps in ocean temperature readings. The reason for the inconsistencies is that, beginning in the 1940s, water temperature was no longer measured in buckets filled with seawater, but at the intake valves for the water used to cool ship engines.
Tim Geithner told the Today
Show that:
It's "deeply unfair" that some financial institutions that got taxpayer-paid bailouts are emerging in better shape from the recession than millions of ordinary Americans.
Geithner also argued that President Barack Obama had no choice when confronted with a financial crisis.
"As the president has said, we had to do some very unpopular things," Geithner said. "People looked at what had happened."
"It's not fair. It's deeply unfair," he said. "He (Obama) had to decide whether he was going to act to fix it or stand back ... and that would have been calamitous for the American economy."
There are only a couple of minor inaccuracies in Geithner's statements:
* The government hasn't done anything to fix the economy
A Chechen militant leader claimed responsibility last night for sending “Black Widow” suicide bombers into the Moscow Metro as the head of Russia’s Security Council accused Georgia of backing terrorism in his country.
Doku Umarov said that he had personally ordered the attacks at Lubyanka and Park Kultury stations that killed 39 people on Monday. In a video posted on a Chechen separatist website, he warned that more were
planned.
Ross McKitrick, an economist at the University of Guelph, has written an interesting and troubling essay about his misadventures in trying to correct via publication in the peer reviewed literature a statement in the IPCC AR4 WGI report that he characterizes as a
"fabrication" or a "lie" (here as a PDF). Whatever you might think about Professor McKitrick or his academic work, the accuracy of his claim that the IPCC published an obvious misrepresentation of his work should be without doubt, as you can read for yourself in his essay. The misrepresentation is straightforward and obvious, and I agree that the terms "fabrication" or "lie" in this context are not too strong. If anyone reading has an argument to the contrary (such as "innocent mistake"), I'd love to hear it.
Drug gangs in Mexico have attacked two army bases in a serious escalation in the country's drug
war...
Plagued by reports of sloppy work, falsifications and exaggerations, climate research is facing a crisis of confidence. How reliable are the predictions about global warming and its consequences? And would it really be the end of the world if temperatures rose by more than the much-quoted limit of two degrees Celsius?
The UK Parliamentary Committee was always going to be a whitewash. They put no skeptics on the committee; they interviewed no skeptics; they didn’t ask Steven McIntyre to speak. They tried to put people on the committee like Phillip Campbell, who had already pronounced it was a done deal and ClimateGate was a non-event, but were forced to settle for people who were more covertly sympathetic: “impartial” people like committee chairman Phil Willis, who had
already made up his mind in January and announced it in the Telegraph:
Lisa Jackson, Obama’s EPA director, has just announced the agency’s new auto regulations of gas mileage based on global warming. In addition, the agency asserts the right to regulate carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions under the Clean Air Act.
There is absolutely no scientific justification for this and, indeed, many observers believe the EPA lacks the legal authority regarding its stance on CO2.
There is NO need to limit greenhouse gas emissions because there is NO “global warming.”
Base Camp 2010 will be held April 2, 3, and 4 (Friday, Saturday,
Sunday) 2010.
Veterans and friends are cordially invited to attend Base Camp 2010. The purpose of Base Camp is to provide a location for veterans and friends to assemble and share camaraderie. Live music and entertainment is provided on Saturday night. FREE ADMISSION
There are more demands tonight for a Fresno priest accused of child molestation to leave the ministry. A Southern California woman who says she is a survivor of priest abuse is protesting Bishop John Steinbock's decision not to suspend Father Eric Swearingen.
Mary Grant claims she was raped by a priest as a teenager growing up in Orange County. Now, she's the Western Director of SNAP, or Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests. Grant is demanding Bishop John Steinbock remove Father Eric Swearingen from the priesthood. Mary Grant says, "To allow that parish to be placed at
risk of abuse is inconceivable; he needs to be removed immediately."
A former priest of the Cleveland Catholic Diocese reported Monday to Lorain County Jail where he began a 90-day sentence for having sexual contact with a 15-year-old boy in 1997.
Patrick O'ConnorThe Rev. Patrick O'Connor, 52, who had ministered at Our Lady of Lourdes Shrine in Euclid, St. Jude in Elyria and St. Joseph in Cuyahoga Falls, pleaded guilty in September
to corruption of a minor.
He was originally charged with sexual battery, which carries a five-year prison sentence, but a plea bargain reduced the crime.
Raymond Larger in court Monday, after he was found not guilty
A Roman Catholic priest who was fined for soliciting sex in a park and later acquitted of separate charges that he raped a boy has been reinstated, the Archdiocese of Cincinnati announced Thursday.
The move came after the Vatican reviewed the case and gave approval for the Rev. Raymond Larger to be returned to active duties.
In a surprising, yet reassuring turn of events, Pope Benedict XIV, the head of the Catholic Church has announced that he is willing to excommunicate any and all Catholic Priests who have been rightfully accused of pedophilia while in service to the Catholic Church.
"It is my sworn duty to uphold the tenets of the faith which rest securely on the never changing, holy scripture, which speaks succinctly, yet passionately, against sexual sin within the body of Christ." Pope Benedict wrote in a letter addressed to "Fellow Catholics, Christians, and citizens of this great planet."
Under Leo X (1513-21) – who cursed and excommunicated Martin Luther - specific prices were enumerated by the Roman Chancery for every imaginable crime. For instance, a deacon accused of murder could be absolved for 20 crowns. Once pardoned, he could not be prosecuted by civil authorities. Two hundred years earlier, John XXII had done much the same thing, setting prices for crimes ranging from incest to sodomy.
Seder is the traditional Passover Festive meal….
Seger is the traditional closure on the West Bank during Jewish Festivals….
“Don’t shop here for Ahava lotion,
Human rights are a better notion.”
“Ahava, you can’t hide,
We can see your dirty side.”
Chants at the demonstration at Ricky’s NYC
Nineteen "black widow" female suicide bombers trained by an Islamist terrorist known as "the Russian Bin Laden" remain at large and may launch fresh attacks on Moscow, Russian investigators have warned.
Why do I get the feeling this is Israel's doing in response to Russia not going along with sanctions against Iran?
Armed Israel settlers have invaded Palestinian-owned buildings and lands designated by the Palestinian Authority for the construction of the first centrally-planned Palestinian town called Rawabi.
Around 60 settlers associated with the group “Youth for the Land of Israel” attempted to take over the area hanging Israeli flags on the buildings.
Two suicide bombers including one impersonating a police officer have killed at least 12 people and injured 18 others in the southern Russian province of Dagestan on Wednesday, officials said.
Why do I get the feeling this is Isreal's doing in response to Russia not going along with sanctions against Iran?
An undercover federal agent infiltrated a Christian militia group that authorities say plotted to incite violent revolt, and the agent
built explosives under the direction of the group's suspected ringleader, a prosecutor said Wednesday.
The Holy See press office director under John Paul II, Dr. Joaquin Navarro-Valls, has today criticized the media for “a raging phobia” against the Church over pedophilia while ignoring the problem in the rest of society which he says is widespread.
During the recent healthcare “debate” in the US, advocates of universal coverage were ridiculed as silly dreamers. ‘Given the current political/socio-economic climate’ – so the
thinking goes – ‘the idea of covering every man woman and child is so completely implausible that anyone who demands it is guilty of impeding critical progress. If the passage of this reform covers more of society’s underprivileged, it’s a WIN for progressives’, they say. [...] By this line of reasoning striking down a crappy bill and taking a few steps back down the mountain is seen as irrational and inhumane. But as Slavoj Zizek argues in the passage above, these “true friends of the idea of ascent” aren’t really worth listening to.
The memristor — the
so-called “missing link of electronics” memory technology that can change its resistance in varying levels — has been around on paper for nearly 40 years. However it wasn’t until 2010 that a group at the University of Michigan led by Dr. Wei Lu demonstrated that it can be used to build brain-like computers in a paper just published in Nano Letters.
CNN continued what has become a precipitous decline in ratings for its prime-time programs in the first quarter of 2010, with its main hosts losing almost half their viewers in a year.
Does it seem right to you that a state's ability to stay afloat should be the stuff of secretive betting pools? That's just what's happening. While states like California struggle to pay their teachers, librarians and cops, traders are gambling -- by buying credit default swaps -- on the fate of our biggest state. And that's just half the story.
The very same banks that sell and profit off the swaps, at the same time underwrite and price the state's assets -- their municipal bonds. That means that even as JP Morgan Chase, Barclays, Goldman Sachs and Citigroup deal out the bonds that the state issues to raise cash, they're making money, separately, on the risks involved. They get their fees coming and going.
KV Pharmaceutical Co. continued its purge of employees Wednesday to lower operating costs, handing out pink slips to 289 employees, company officials said.
The former pastor of St. Raphael the Archangel Catholic Church, in south St. Louis, pleaded guilty Wednesday to a federal charge of possessing child pornography, and admitted that he tried to pay for sex with a 16-year-old girl.
The Rev. James Patrick Grady, 58, was nabbed in an FBI pedophile sting last summer, in which he had agreed to pay $80 for oral sex. Investigators later discovered child porn on his laptop
computer, which had been purchased by his parish.
A great-grandmother has been ordered to wear an electronic tag for breaching new animal welfare laws by selling a goldfish to a 14 year-old boy.
Joan Higgins, a pet shop owner, was caught selling the fish to the teenager in a 'sting' operation by council officials. She was then prosecuted in an eight month court process estimated to have cost the taxpayer more than £20,000.
Under new animal welfare laws, passed in 2006, it is it illegal to sell goldfish to under 16s. Offenders can be punished with up to 12 months in
prison.
Torture humans? No problem!!
Invade non-aggressive countries, and kill innocents? No problem!!
Sell a goldfish to a 14 year-old? Slap 'em with a ten week
curfew, an electronic tag, and 1750 in fines.
Rabbi Marvin Hier’s Los Angeles-based Museum of Tolerance, part of
the Simon Wiesenthal Center, is building a $150 million branch in Jerusalem. The Museum, whose mission is confronting “global anti-Semitism, extremism, hate … and promoting unity and respect among Jews and people of all faiths,” is being built atop part of the Mamilla Muslim cemetery, some of whose burials date to the 11th century.
You finally got mad when the government decided that people in America deserved the right to see a doctor if they are sick.
It is to be expected that two adults could figure out how to restrain a rampaging 10-year-old without striking or electrocuting him. This feat was beyond the competence of two police officers from Martinsville, Indiana, who were put on paid vacation after they physically assaulted a troubled 10-year-old and then shot him with a Taser.
Beholden to a handful of financial oligarchs, congressional democrats passed Obamacare, over the opposition of millions of Americans, while republicans in Washington kept the left/right paradigm alive by pretending to oppose the new Healthcare "Reform" Bill.
With the plutocrats of the International Monetary/Banking Cartel in control of all US intelligence agencies, democratic senators and congress-persons had little fear of being voted out of office, when voting for Obamacare, no matter how much their constituents opposed that
legislation. You see, its the Cartel's intelligence agents who implement electronic voting machines, that "elect" Cartel minions to congress. And, we the people can go ... well, we can go on pretending we live in a democratic country.
Washington Post Article Authenticating Ryder Truck Photos at Camp Gruber-Braggs
Here is the article in its entirety from the Washington Post June 14th 1997.
Many Militia Groups Scale Back, Distance Themselves From
McVeigh
Though he hoped to spark an armed revolution, Timothy J. McVeigh ended up weakening the anti-government militia movement, whose visible membership has declined since the Oklahoma City bomber’s capture and trial, experts who monitor extremism said yesterday. Militia members expressed a cool indifference about McVeigh’s fate, saying he stigmatized their cause and is no martyr.
READ MORE...
A Quran teacher faces a possible death sentence after he was charged with raping a student and presenting child pornography to him.
Studies have shown that the right temporo-parietal junction (TPJ) lights up with activity when we engage in moral judgments like evaluating the intentions of another person, indicating the region is important to making moral decisions. But while we like to think we're very consistent in our morality, the MIT team showed that an electromagnetic field applied to the scalp impairs our ability to evaluate the intentions of others, leaving us with little by which to hand down a moral judgment.
The 40-year-old prince had no deputy director at the $650 billion fund, which invests Abu Dhabi's oil revenue. Experts believe his death is likely to spark a power struggle within the emirate's royal family. The sheik wasn't part of the powerful clique controlled by his nephew, the crown prince, who is now expected to attempt to gain control of the fund and consequently control of virtually all of Abu Dhabi's economy.
Police were sent to her apartment to conduct a “welfare
check.” For some reason, the woman didn’t want to be “helped” by the friendly state functionaries with guns.
Oh, but we insist, replied the “Blue Angels,” as they summoned their khaki-clad comrades from the Tactical Squad. Eventually, because of “threats” she supposedly made against the stormtroopers, the police (in the words of a local TV reporter) “were forced to shoot her.”
We want to know what you think about this.
Did Pope Benedict deliberately hide sexual abuse committed by Catholic
priests?
Vote in the FOX UP poll below, and leave a comment telling us why or why not.
A 1963 letter to then-Pope Paul VI indicates the Vatican was aware of clergy abuse in the U.S. nearly five decades ago.
In the letter, obtained by The Associated Press on Wednesday, the head of a Roman Catholic order that oversaw treatment of pedophile priests tells the pope he recommends removing pedophile priests from active ministry.
On Larry King Live last night, professional overzealous defender of the Catholic Church Bill Donohue explained to Sinead O'Connor that it's not pedophilia if the victim is 12 or 13.
Just moments after Dr. Martin Luther King was killed by a sniper's bullet, a photographer took the above picture. Dr. King lies on the balcony floor. The witnesses are all pointing in the direction the fatal shot was fired from. There is no confusion among the witnesses as to where the source of the shot was. They are not confused by echoes. There is no uncertainty. All three witnesses are pointing in exactly the same direction.
The official story is that these men are pointing at the bathroom window in the rear of the rooming house from which James Earl Ray is supposed to have fired a gunshot.
But is that where the witnesses are pointing?
WikiLeaks is getting a lot of publicity in anticipation of a classified film Wikileaks claims to have in its possession that shows evidence of a US massacre of civilians. Images have power – think Abu Ghraib, think Mi Lai – and efforts at "perception management" by the department of defence will be much complicated by documentary evidence that leaves little to
interpretation or "perception" of a human rights crime committed by US forces. Wikileaks plans to show the video at the National Press Club in Washington, DC on 5 April.
But Wayne Madsen is reporting that WikiLeaks may well be a CIA/Mossad operation.
Then again maybe Madsen is an operative.
Who can you trust?
Noted Italian exorcist Father Gabriele Amorth, commented this week that the recent defamatory reporting on Pope Benedict XVI, especially by the
New York Times, was “prompted by the devil.”
All is not well between the states and the federal government. Across the land, states in recent months have signed sovereignty statements, reminders of sorts that the 9th and 10th Amendments imbue the states with certain powers.
No verdict yet in trial of 2 men in shooting death of Jane Creba in Toronto
On Wednesday, the 12-member panel asked the judge for clarification on the timeline of
events that led to the 15-year-old girl's death while she was shopping in downtown Toronto.
Jurors also asked if the two accused understood that firing a gun on the crowded Yonge Street could have resulted in someone getting hit.
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Now, imagine burly cops, hopped up on adrenaline rush, chasing a supposed terrorist in the subway, at rush hour. Something bad WILL EVENTUALLY happen.
This article provides a list of proven home remedies and self-help strategies that readers can begin utilizing today to maintain health while avoiding costly medical
care.
While I have written articles in the past at LR that have addressed heart disease, cancer and other maladies, I hadn’t yet addressed every-day and emergent health problems that cause Americans to run to the doctor.
The smartest genius President evah is nothing more than a carboard cutout. A fraud. Doesn't exist. We don't even know how he did in school because to this day his transcripts are sealed. Turns out now that when he was an instructor at the Chicago, his colleagues who were actual Professors didn't like him and didn't want him. Obama's position was obtained through political channels.
Is the President's resume accurate when it comes to his career and qualifications? I can corroborate that Obama's "teaching career" at Chicago was, to put it kindly, a sham.
Investing in the production of porn. “The Christian Brothers are one of the largest investors of Catholic institutional money in the world. They invest billions of dollars for over 1,000 Catholic “dioceses, religious institutes, educational institutions and health care organizations.”
“the seamiest and steamiest hardcore porn films are brought into our
living rooms and hotel rooms everyday through the investments of a veritable who’s who of Catholic religious groups.”
Of all the ways the RCC can make money, they chose porn as one.
They are scenes of tediousness rather than of terror or torture.
But the shackles and barbed wire imply the threat behind the boredom, as these never-before-seen images of life inside the prison at Guantanamo Bay show.
Today, the high-level advisory group on climate change financing will meet for the first time in London. The group will be chaired by Gordon Brown and his Ethiopian counterpart Meles Zenawi, and will include many finance ministers as well as independent financial experts like Lord Nicholas Stern and George Soros.
This gathering of financial "wizards" has been asked identify new ways to raise the money needed to protect all of us from the risks of dangerous climate change.
The ISVPAA was quoted as saying at this commemoration of murder and pestilence visited upon the Egyptian people: “the enduring story of the Exodus teaches us that wherever we live, there is oppression to be fought and freedom to be won.”
Okay President Obama, what about the Palestinians?
Barring an about face by nature or adjustments, it appears that for the first time since 2001, Arctic Sea ice will hit the “normal” line as defined by the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) for this time of year.
...
Instead of ice extent declining through March like it usually does, it continued to increase through the month and is now at the high (so far) for the year.
If it keeps this trend unabated, in a day or two it will likely cross the “normal” line.
Boots and Mothercare are selling baby bottles made with a chemical that scientists fear may cause breast cancer, heart disease, obesity, hyperactivity and other disorders, The Independent can disclose.
The behaviour of Britain's biggest infant-products retailers contrasts with that of manufacturers, who have quietly stopped putting bisphenol A, or BPA, into baby bottles "to allay parents' fears", amid peer-reviewed studies in medical journals associating it with serious health problems in laboratory animals.
Hotel foreclosures in California climbed 27 percent in the first quarter from a year earlier as unemployment cut business travel.
Foreclosures, including the 469-room Los Angeles Marriott Downtown, rose to 79 properties from 62 in the first three months of 2009. Defaults increased 6.5 percent to 327, Irvine, California-based Atlas Hospitality Group said in a statement. The company specializes in selling hotels.
Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa once organized for a teacher's union here, and later ran a branch of the American Federation of Government Employees. That makes him an unlikely
advocate for cutting the benefits of the city's workers.
But with the city facing a budget deficit that could drain its reserves by summer, Mayor Villaraigosa wants to re-open contract talks with 45,000 cops, firefighters, librarians and other city employees in hopes of persuading them to contribute more to their pensions and health-care costs. His deputy chief of staff, Matt Szabo, puts it bluntly: "Unions have priced themselves out of a job."
Some people in New York are wondering whether the presence of police officers toting machine guns through the city's subway tunnels is really a necessary response to the subway bombings in Moscow on Monday.
Job cuts accelerated in March, driven by planned reductions on government payrolls, a report released Thursday showed.
The US ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice, said China was ready to hold "serious" talks with Western powers on a new UN resolution.
This would mark a policy shift for China, which has strong ties with Iran. China says it wants a peaceful outcome.
Pope claims legal immunity; Vatican, Bishops, defend cover-up. The never ending tragedy of the sexual abuse of children by Catholic clergy and the cover-up of that abuse by top Church officials continues to dominate the headlines.
With its unparalleled views of Central Park and dramatic black-glass façade wrapped in travertine marble, the swooping tower at 9 West 57th Street in Manhattan is among the world's most prestigious business addresses.
Today, it sits half empty.
Roughly 24 of the building's 50 floors are now vacant, including the top three, according to people familiar with the building. Even in today's dismal real-estate market, the amount of empty space in 9 West, as the building is
known, is unique among high-end New York City office towers.
After surviving 9/11, the credit crisis and the Great Recession, the
commercial real estate market in lower Manhattan finally shows signs of exhaustion. But investors are looking ahead to the resilient neighborhood's recovery.
When left-wing icon Naomi Wolf warned that America was heading towards fascism under George W. Bush, characterized by illegal surveillance, arbitrary detention of suspects, and paramilitary martial law, she was lauded, but when she continued to issue the same warning as a result of Obama’s failure to reverse any of those policies, many on the left abandoned support for her.
However, as Wolf’s recent interview with leftist website Alternet makes plain, liberals may
finally be starting to understand that both political parties in Washington are part of the problem, not the solution.
A spokesman for Al Gore has issued a questionable response to the news that in October 2007 the High Court in London had identified nine “errors” in his movie An Inconvenient Truth. The judge had stated that, if the UK Government had not agreed to send to every secondary school in England a corrected guidance note making clear the mainstream scientific position on these nine “errors”, he would have made a finding that the
Government’s distribution of the film and the first draft of the guidance note earlier in 2007 to all English secondary schools had been an unlawful contravention of an Act of Parliament prohibiting the political indoctrination of children.
The Obama administration has announced changes to its signature foreclosure prevention program, Making Home Affordable. The initial foreclosure relief program unveiled a year ago was supposed to help up to four million struggling homeowners. So far fewer than
200,000 borrowers have been granted permanent loan modifications. Meanwhile, a record 2.8 million properties with mortgages received foreclosure notices last year, this according to RealtyTrac.
More than $2 billion in state aid payments to public school districts across the state are being delayed, possibly until June, because of the state's worsening financial crisis, Gov. David A. Paterson said Tuesday.
As Toronto Hydro switches its customers to time-of-use rates – which mean higher prices at peak periods – 92 per cent have seen the energy portion of their bill rise by about 7 per cent, said Toronto Hydro chief executive Anthony Haines. The average jump was $2.38 a month.
The collapse of talks leaves EMI battling to raise 120 million pounds by mid-June to meet its commitments on loans from U.S. bank Citigroup.
If funds can't be raised from investors and the loan goes into default, Citigroup could seize EMI and cause it to be sold or broken up.
EMI has been struggling to stay afloat since it was bought by private equity firm Terra Firma Capital Partners for 4.2 billion pounds on the eve of the credit crunch in 2007, saddling the company with debt.
Pope Benedict, accused by victims' lawyers of being ultimately responsible for a cover-up of sexual abuse of children by priests, cannot be called to testify at any trial because he has immunity as a head of state, a top Vatican legal official said on Thursday.
A controversy is erupting over Sarah Palin's June speaking engagement at a campus of California State University.
A student protest group and other critics want the university to reveal how much they're paying her, which they suspect might be more than $100,000. A professor has started a Facebook gripe group. And a state senator is pressuring
university officials to disclose Ms. Palin’s compensation or be prosecuted under state law.
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The absence of belief is not a belief.
Equating atheism with belief is like calling "barefoot" a type of shoe.
All of this tortured logic and spin is, of course, an attempt by the Vatican to pull the focus off of the real issue, which is the epidemic of molested children and the subsequent cover-up.