Russia
To Export Warplanes
To India
MOSCOW—Russia will meet its obligations to
deliver to India multi-mission planes Su-30 MKI by the end of this year,
the president of Irkut Corporation, Alexei Fyodorov, said. "Four planes
of a ten aircraft series are
already in India, and the remaining six will be delivered by December
20," he told a news conference on Tuesday.
The 1.5 billion dollar contract
for exporting
40 warplanes to India was signed. Russia signed during the
implementation of
the contract several other accords with India, in particular on
delivering ten planes of the Su-30 family and licensed production of
140 planes in India.
Joint projects of Irkut
Corporation with
India have a total price of about five billion dollars, Fyodorov said.
He said a program of joint work of Russia and
India to manufacture a fifth-generation plane was outlined. "This will
allow Russia to stay on the world
market of high-technology aviation products for more than one decade,"
Fyodorov said.
itar-tass.com
12/7/04
The Devil
And The Deep Blue Sea
LONDON—Britain's Royal Navy stirred
the waves
last month when, for the first time, it gave official recognition
to the practice of Satanism.
According to an Oct. 24 report in the
Telegraph, Chris Cranmer, a naval technician serving on the frigate
Cumberland, is now allowed to perform Satanic rituals on board ship. He
would also be able to have a funeral carried out by the Church of Satan
if he were to be killed in action.
Cranmer is now
petitioning the Minister of
Defense so that Satanism can be a registered religion in the armed
forces. According to the Telegraph, the Church of Satan was founded in
San Francisco in 1966 by Anton Szandor LaVey, author of "The Satanic
Bible."
The article quoted a
Royal navy spokesman as
saying that Cranmer's unconventional beliefs would not cause problems
on board ship. "We are an equal
opportunities employer and we don't
stop anybody from having their own religious values," he said.
In an Oct. 26 commentary,
in the Scotsman
newspaper, Bruce Anderson said that naval authorities gave the go-ahead
to Cranmer because they feared a lengthy legal action that could have
ended up before the European Court of Human Rights at Strasbourg,
costing millions of pounds. The
government, he said, is at fault
for "nervously allowing a rights-based legal culture to intrude upon
the armed forces."
The navy's recognition of
Satanism is just
one in a series of news items detailing the decline in Christianity
in Britain. On Aug. 18, the
newspaper Independent published details
of a report by the UK Home office showing that while most white Britons
still call themselves Christian, in practice religion plays little part
in their lives...
Britain is not alone in the trend toward
the occult and alternative spiritualities. In the United States,
for instance, Halloween continues to grow in popularity, the Los
Angeles Times reported Oct. 11.
Although many celebrate
Halloween on a merely
superficial level, the article noted that sales of
Halloween goods this
year are projected to grow faster,
at 5.4% than those of
Christmas,
4.5%. According to the Los Angeles Times the National Retail Federation
estimates that Americans will have spent more than $3
billion this
season on Halloween products
zenit.org 11/13/04
Stay Close To
Mary, Advises John Paul II
VATICAN CITY—Mindful of the rapid
changes that
mark contemporary society, John
Paul II encouraged Catholics to
maintain their relationship with the Blessed Virgin Mary.
The Pope explained this
in a letter sent to
Cardinal Salvatore De Giorgi, archbishop of Palermo, congratulating him
for Sicily's celebration of the 150th anniversary of the proclamation
of the dogma of the immaculate conception of Mary.
"In a rapidly changing
world, there are some
things that should not change" the Holy Father wrote. "Among them,
surely, is the bond of filial love between members of the Church and
the Virgin, 'full of grace,' whom Jesus, from the cross, entrusted to
us as Mother."
"Amid the joys and hopes,
sadness and sorrows
of life, Mary is the sign of consolation and sure hope," he stated.
"She is so for the elderly and youth, for
families and consecrated persons," the Holy Father added, imploring
"the maternal protection of
Mary Immaculate."
zenit.com 11/9/04
Blending Of
Humans,
Animals Opens Ethical
Can Of Worms
WASHINGTON—In Minnesota, pigs are
being born
with human blood in their veins. In Nevada, there are sheep whose
livers and
hearts are largely human. In California, mice peer from their cages
with human brain cells firing inside their skulls.
Biologists call these hybrid animals
chimeras, after the mythical Greek creature with
a lion's head, a
goat's body and a serpent's tail.
They are the products of
experiments in which human stem cells were added to
developing animal
fetuses.
Chimeras are allowing
scientists to watch,
for the first time, how nascent human cells and organs mature and
interact—not in the cold isolation of laboratory dishes but inside the
bodies of living creatures. Some are already revealing deep
secrets of human biology and pointing the way toward new medical
treatments. But with no federal guidelines in place, an
awkward question hovers above the work: How human must a chimera be
before more stringent research rules should kick in?
The National Academy of
Sciences, which
advises the federal government, has been studying the issue and hopes
to make recommendations by February. Yet the range of opinions it has
received so far suggests that reaching consensus may be difficult.
During one recent meeting, scientists
disagreed on such basic issues as whether it would be unethical for a
human embryo to begin its development in an animal's womb and whether a
mouse would be better or worse off with a brain made of human neurons.
Chimeras (ki-MER-ahs)—meaning
mixtures of two
or more individuals in a single body—are not inherently
unnatural. Most
twins carry at least a few cells from the sibling with whom they shared
a womb, and most mothers carry in their blood at least a few cells from
each child they have born.
Recipients of organ
transplants are also
chimeras, as are people whose defective heart valves have been replaced
with those from pigs or cows. Scientists for years have added human
genes to bacteria and even to farm animals—feats of
genetic engineering
that allows those critters to
make human proteins such as insulin for
use as medicines.
But chimerism becomes a more
sensitive topic
when it involves growing entire human organs inside animals.
It becomes
especially sensitive when it deals in brain cells, the building
blocks
of the organ credited with
making humans human.
In experiments like
those, Greely told the
academy last month, "there is a nontrivial risk of conferring some
significant aspects of humanity" on the animal.
Greely and his colleagues did not
conclude
that such experiments should never be done. Indeed, he and many other
philosophers have been wrestling with the question of why so many
people believe it is wrong to breach the species barrier.
Many turn to the
Bible's
invocation that
animals should multiply "after their kind" as evidence that such
experiments are wrong. Others however, have concluded that the
core
problem is not necessarily the creation of chimeras but the way they
are likely to be treated.
"Imagine," said Robert
Streiffer, a professor
of philosophy and bioethics at the University of Wisconsin, "a
human-chimpanzee chimera endowed with speech and an enhanced potential
to learn—what some have called a 'humanzee'." "There's a knee-jerk
reaction that enhancing
the moral status of an animal is bad," Streiffer said. "But if you did
it, and you gave it the protections it deserves, how could the animal
complain?"
The potential power of
chimeras as research
tools became clear about a decade ago in a series of dramatic
experiments by Evan Balaban, now at McGill University in Montreal.
Balaban took small sections of brain from developing quails and
transplanted them into the developing brains of chickens.
The resulting chickens
exhibited vocal trills
and head bobs unique to quails, proving that the transplanted parts of
the brain contained the neural circuitry for quail calls. It also
coffered astonishing proof
that complex behaviors could be transferred
across species.
No one has proposed
similar experiments
between, say, humans and apes. But the discovery of human embryonic
stem cells in 1998 allowed researchers to envision related experiments
that might reveal a lot about how embryos grow.
The cells, found in
5-day-old human embryos,
multiply prolifically and—unlike adult cells—have the potential to turn
into any of the body's 200 or so cell types. Scientists hope to
cultivate them in
laboratory dishes and grow replacement tissues for patients. But with
those applications years away, the cells are gaining in popularity for
basic research.
The Plain Dealer
11/21/04
Pakistan Test
Fires
Short-Range
Nuke-Capable
Missile
Islamabad:
Pakistan today (Dec.
8,2004) "successfully"
test-fired a nuclear-capable ballistic missile having a range of 700 km
that could target most Indian cities,
the second such launch in
eight days.
The Hataf IV (Shaheen 1)
missile "is capable
of reaching 700 km and can
carry nuclear and other types of warheads.
Additional technical parameters required to be tested were successfully
validated," an official statement in Islamabad said. "India has
been informed about today's test.
As per standard practice, all neighboring countries have been
informed," the statement said.
This was the second missile
test by Pakistan
in eight days and fifth since June this year. The recent missile tests
are "indicative of the Government's resolve to consolidate and
strengthen Pakistan's nuclear deterrence capability," said the official
statement.
It said that the range of
missiles like
Hataf-III (Ghaznavi) and Hataf-V (Ghauri), Hataf-IV (Shaheen-1)
currently in Pakistan's arsenal have been handed over to the Army
Strategic Force Command. On Nov. 29, Pakistan had test-fired its
short-range ballistic missile Hataf-III-Ghaznavi that could carry
nuclear and conventional warheads up to the range of 290 kms.
This was also the second
missile test to have
been carried out by Pakistan during the current foreign tour of
President Pervez Musharraf during which he visited Brazil, Argentina,
Mexico, United States and Britain. He is currently touring France in
the last leg of his long foreign tour.
On Oct. 12, Pakistan test fired
Ghauri V
missile, which has a range of 1500 kms and could reach several Indian
cities. Ghaznavi, developed as a rival to India's
Prithvi series has the ability to strike border States and cities.
Pakistan claims that all its
missiles,
including Ghaznavi, were indigenously developed while critics point out
their strong resemblance in looks and parameters to the North Korean
missiles. A recent survey by Washington based nuclear
watchdog Institute for Science and International Security said that
Pakistan possesses 50-90 nuclear missiles of different categories.
12/8/04 aolnews.com
U.S. To Test Its
Missile Defense System
WASHINGTON—The military planned to
conduct the first full flight
test of its national missile defense system
in nearly two years, with the test coming possibly as early as
Wednesday evening.
Weather conditions at an
Alaska launch site
would determine when the test will go forward, said Rick Lehner, a
spokesman for the Missile Defense Agency. The $85 million test
comes as the military is
in final preparations to activate missile defenses designed to protect
against an intercontinental ballistic missile attack from north Korea
or elsewhere in eastern Asia. During
the test, a target missile will be
launched from Kodiak Island, Alaska, and an interceptor missile will
fire from Kwajalein Island in the central Pacific Ocean.
Because the launches will
test several new
aspects of the missile defense system, Lehner said the interceptor
actually shooting down the target is not a primary goal of the
mission. The test is the first in which the
interceptor uses the same booster rocket that the operational system
uses, Lehner said. It is also the first in which a target missile is
launched from Kodiak.
In earlier testing, which
critics deride as
highly scripted, the interceptors went five-for-eight when launched
with the goal of hitting target missiles. Two previous tests scheduled
for this year
were delayed due to technical problems. The next test, which will
attempt to hit a target missile, is scheduled for early 2005.
In April, the then-chief
of missile defense
programs, Air Force L.t. Gen. Ron Kadish, said failures in upcoming
tests could mean "big problems" for the controversial program.
The Bush administration has made the
deployment of missile defenses a key aspect of its national security
policy, saying it is vital to defend the nation against missiles
launched by hostile nations.
Sometime this month, the
military expects to
announce the missile defense system is operational. It is initially
built around six interceptors at Fort Greely, Alaska, as well as radars
in the Aleutians, in California, and on warships at sea. In addition,
two more interceptors will be placed at Vandenberg Air Force Base,
Calif. The Kwajalein interceptor site is for testing only.
Lehner said the missile
defense system is
technically functional except for mechanical blocks that prevent
interceptors from being fired. Senior military officials are still
working out chain-of-command authorities over who could order an
interceptor launch during an attack, he said.
Associated Press
12/8/06
Pope Calls For
Rediscovery Of Meaning Of
Sunday
VATICAN CITY—John
Paul II called for the
rediscovery of the meaning of Sunday, as Advent opened in the year
he has dedicated to the Eucharist.
From the window of his study, the Pope
addressed the 30,000 pilgrims gathered today in St. Peter's Square,
before praying the midday Angelus with them.
The Holy Father noted it was
the first Sunday
of Advent, the liturgical period of preparation for Christmas. During
Advent, "we will contemplate with
particular fervor the face of Christ present in the Eucharist," he
said.
Mentioning the Eucharistic Congress that
the Church in Italy is organizing in Bari from May 21-29, the Holy
Father recalled its main theme, "Without Sunday, We Cannot Live." The
initiative motivated the Pope to
encourage the Christian community "to rediscover with new intensity the
meaning of Sunday: its mystery,
its celebration, its significance
for Christian and human life." John
Paul II, who in recent years
has
given central importance to the rediscovery of the Eucharist, is
concerned about the loss of the meaning of Sunday, as he says in
the 1998 apostolic letter "Dies Domini."
zenit.org 11/28/04
European
Union Salutes Arafat
The European Union yesterday paid
tribute to
Yasser Arafat, President of the Palestinian Authority, and pledged to
continue the push towards a durable peace and the "aspirations of the
Palestinian people."
After Mr. Arafat's death
yesterday, Bernard
Bot, Foreign Minister of the Netherlands, which holds the rotating EU
presidency, passed on his "profound condolences" to the Arafat
family
and the Palestinian people.
"In him, the Palestinian
people, both within
and outside the Palestinian territories, have lost a historic leader
and a democratically elected President, whose devotion and
single-minded commitment to the Palestinian national cause throughout
his life was never in doubt," the Dutch minister said. "Although he has
not lived to see the birth
of the Palestinian state, we
will work with the Palestinian authorities
and the international community to contribute to realizing the
aspirations of the Palestinian people."
The EU's foreign policy
chief Javier Solana,
also expressed his "great sadness" at Mr. Arafat's death and pledged
to push ahead with the roadmap for peace.
"The
best tribute to President Arafat's
memory will be to intensify our efforts to establish a peaceful and
viable state of Palestine as foreseen by the roadmap," Mr. Solana
said.
Commission President
Romano Prodi, in a
letter to the Palestinian Authority's Prime Minister Ahmed Quriei,
expressed his "most sincere condolences" on the death of President
Arafat.
"The Palestinians have
lost a leader who
symbolized their aspirations of a Palestinian state. I wish to offer my
deepest sympathy to the family of President Arafat and to the
Palestinian people," he said.
Mr. Prodi said that the European
Commission wishes to express its continued commitment to a resolution
of the Middle East conflict. The
Commission, he said, was working
with the Palestinian Authority towards this goal and towards ensuring a
peaceful and democratic transition in the days and weeks to come.
timesofmalta.com
11/12/04
Bulldozer Plows
through Church's Home
County man jailed for felony
vandalism;
hate crime feared
A man was in jail on felony vandalism
charges
Saturday after a bulldozer plowed through the mobile-home church of a
black congregation that meets on U.S. 80, prompting calls from members
for a federal hate-crime investigation.
The bulldozer ran through
the building owned
by First Assemblies of Yahweh, Vicksburg, 3820 U.S. 80, about two miles
east of Mount Alban Road. Warren County deputies were called to the
scene at 3:03 a.m.
Zane Bearrick, 21, was
arrested Saturday
afternoon and charged with felony malicious mischief, Detective Todd
Dykes said.
The church's education chairman, Richard
Hudson Jr., said other church members said they suspected the damage
was racially motivated, and they requested that the FBI be called to
investigate.
Dykes said the sheriff's department
had
contacted the FBI.
"It's
customary to call the FBI on anything
to do with churches, and they
offer any assistance that we need
through them," he said. "If the evidence shows that it was racially
motivated, then it would be a hate crime and the maximum penalty would
be doubled," District Attorney Gil Martin said of state law. A person
can receive up to five years in prison and a $10,000 fine if convicted
of malicious mischief, meaning a hate-crime conviction on the same
charge could result in a 10-year prison term and a $20,000 fine.
Also, donut-pattern black
tire tracks from a
pickup were found on the concrete pad where construction was planned,"
Dykes said.
"We were shocked to see this
occurred,"
Hudson said. Church member and real estate developer Fred
Clark said he owns the bulldozer and the land where the trailer sits.
He said the key had been left in the ignition. It never had been
bothered," Clark added. "I
don't see why it's necessary to take it out every time I leave."
The church has about 30 members,
mainly from
Warren and Claiborne counties, Hudson said. It normally meets on
Saturdays from 11 a.m. until 3 p.m.
"Our
beliefs are in the Holy Bible,"
Hudson said. "The 10 Commandments. Obeying Yahweh's law." Hudson
said he didn't know why anyone would
want to damage the church's building.
The church is the only
one of its kind in
Warren County, said the church's pastor, the Rev. Robert Lewis Jr., who
suggested that whoever caused the damage may have incorrectly
associated the church with the Muslim religion. Some acts of
terrorism
have been carried out under leadership associated with extreme
fundamentalist Muslims.
The church's beliefs are
"not even close" to
the Muslim faith, Lewis said. Attached to the back of the trailer is a
deck with a small, above-ground pool the church uses as a baptismal
font. Tracks showed the bulldozer was driven from
where it had been parked, about 300 yards away and out of view of
vehicles passing on the highway, through the back of the trailer and
into a concrete pad in front onto which the church planned to add a
covered expansion.
Dykes said the scene led
him to believe the
bulldozer's driver left it before the machine tore through the trailer,
hit the raised concrete pad and dug a hole in the front lawn. Material
torn from the trailers's sides was
left hanging on the bulldozer; and Hudson said when he and other church
members arrived some of the debris was on fire.
Pastor Lewis and church
members gathered
Saturday afternoon at their church home said they were all former
Baptists who founded the church in December 1997. Since the church has
met on Washington and Cherry streets and in members' homes. It moved to
its current location, in what Hudson described as a racially mixed
residential area, in August.
Hudson said the church
had planned to expand
and build a permanent home on the property, and that those plans will
not change because of the damage.
"We ain't going nowhere," Hudson said.
"It's
a little setback but it's like stumping your toe. It's going to hurt
for a minute, but I'm going to shake it off."
The Vicksburg Post
11/4/04
Project Aims To
Heal The Wounds Of 1
Billion
Souls
Carita-Rome Is Among Its Promoters
ROME—The health
ministers of dozens of
countries will soon endorse a plan of action to help people
psychologically scarred by violence and armed conflicts.
The plan to be endorsed next month in
Rome
will comprise health programs and projects for development and
reconstruction.
It is estimated that 1 billion people are
currently caught up in situations of war, terrorism and torture, which
result in devastating psychological traumas whose effects last for
decades.
The One Billion Project
is named after their
estimated number, giving an idea of the extent of this phenomenon and
of the project's scope.Among others, the project presented last
Wednesday in Rome is promoted by Carita-Rome, Harvard University, the
Higher Institute of Health, and the Assumption Institute of Higher
Studies, together with numerous public institutions, such as the Latium
Region and the Province of Rome, which have given their backing.
Initiated three years
ago, the One Billion
Project will reach a key phase with an international congress Dec. 3-4.
The director of Caritas-Rome,
Monsignor
Guerino Di Tora, explained that it will be the moment in which "the
ministers of health of close to 50 countries will sign a document
called an Action Plan, that is, a plan of international action to heal
the 'invisible wounds'."
"Sadly, no democracy, no
development, will on
its own be able to relieve the sufferings of the victims of men's
cruelty. In their lives, they will always have memories, circumstances,
moments in which the past, their sufferings, and fears will reappear,"
he added. "They are the wounds of the soul."
The declaration of
intentions, which will be
signed in Rome by government representatives, agencies and
international organizations of the scientific, medical and academic
realm, will be the basis of future social and humanitarian
interventions in postwar phases.
zenit.com 11/10/04