Milk And Coffee Produced From... Blood?!

Scientists from the Russian city of Voronezh managed to produce milk and coffee from blood.

Scientists from a technological academy located in the Russian city of Voronezh developed a revolutionary technique of producing an entire array of food products such as milk, yogurt, chocolate and coffee from blood, reported the academy's administration to Interfax.

According to the scientists, a local meat-packing factory looses nearly 7 tons of blood daily. The newly developed technology allows the researchers to use this blood.

Some food products made of blood, which taste like the real thing, have already been manufactured. All of such products made of blood contain unique proteins that are digested twice as fast as egg proteins, notes the academy.

In the meantime, all food products that have been manufactured by means of the new technology were sent to Moscow for further examination.

pravda.ru 7/12/04

European Bishops Eye Ways To Re-evangelize Continent
Pope Stresses Need for Christian Witness In New Evangelization

LEEDS, England—Catholic leaders from 34 European countries have met for the first time in England to discuss the role of Christianity in Europe.

The event—a four-day assembly of the Council of the Bishops' Conferences of Europe (CCEE) at Hinsley Hall, Leeds—has been the largest gathering of senior Catholic bishops in Britain since the Synod of Whitby in 664, more than 1,300 years ago.

In a message to the meeting, John Paul II said he would pray that "you will guide your respective peoples to rediscover their common spiritual roots and the enduring wisdom of their Christian heritage."

The main issue discussed by the meeting included Christianity's significance in Europe today; ecumenism; the Churches and the European Constitution; a third Ecumenical Assembly; cooperation between bishops' conferences; and CCEE projects, particularly in the areas of evangelization and pastoral strategy.

Liverpool Archbishop Patrick Kelly, vice president of the British-Welsh bishops' conference, said: "In 1794 we were assured freedom of worship, of cult; in 1825 we were guaranteed by law complete emancipation, freedom of religion. I am convinced one of the most searching issues across this country, the whole of Europe, the Middle East is: What does freedom, not only of cult but of religion, mean for people of all faiths?"

Bishop Amedee Grab, CCEE president, set the tone for the discussion with two questions: How do others see us? And how do we see ourselves?

Bishop Grab, 74, added: "We are fully, but not exclusively, citizens of this world. This world's values are not enough for us—yet we do not despise them or look down on our culture. Our culture is the context for our mission, and the more we understand and respect it, the less of a problem there will be with our work for this culture and for those who live it. Our challenge: to belong to two societies at one and the same time."

Archbishop Jean-Pierre Ricard of Bordeaux, introduced the main theme: the significance and role of Christianity in Europe today.

Archbishop Ricard, 60, also spelled out the ways in which the presence of the Church can enrich European society: in defending the dignity of each and every person and family, and especially those most in need such as the poor; creating a distinct and proper relationship between politics and religion; forming a truly ecumenical and interreligious dialogue; and bringing about a culture of solidarity in a Europe truly open to the world.

Three practical engagements were formulated: to strengthen the dialogue with contemporary culture; to look for a closer dialogue with the Islamic communities in Europe, especially in the universities; and to campaign for the defense of Sunday as a day dedicated to God.

One of the highlights of the four-day meeting was the visit of the Anglican archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams... He spoke of the drive within the Church of England for a "mission-shaped church," dedicated to evangelizing and giving a new shape to society. The Anglican said churches have a responsibility to contribute to the development of society. He said the Anglican and Catholic churches need to develop together a theology and a culture of service.

On the future of the ecumenical movement, the archbishop of Canterbury affirmed that there are uncertainties about the institutional form of unity the churches will reach, but still the journey has to go on.

On one side, divisions still exist between the Orthodox and Catholic Churches, including persisting mutual ignorance, proselytism and incomprehension.

But on the other side, there is growing trust that unity is a gift of God; a new ecumenical commission is being built in Russia; and consciousness is increasing about sharing common challenges, such as violence and terrorism.

zenit.org 10/4/04

Half Of World's Youths At Risk

Early marriage, unwanted pregnancy and HIV/AIDS among the world's adolescents are a threat to development and must be combatted as part of the war on poverty, the United Nations said Wednesday.

A fifth of the world's population—1.2 billion people—is between 10 and 19, more than ever before, the United Nations says. Half are poor and a quarter live in extreme poverty, on less than a dollar a day.

"How well we prepare them to face adult challenges in a fast-changing world will shape humanity's common future," the United Nations Population Fund said on its website in a prelude to Wednesday's publication in London of its annual State of the World's Population report.

Helping young people with reproductive health issues has become an urgent priority, the report says, calling for more investment in youth-friendly services, family planning and education programs.

HIV/AIDS has become a disease of the young, fueled by poverty and severe lack of information and prevention services, the report says. Half of all new HIV infections are among people aged 15 to 24 and a majority of the young don't know how the disease is transmitted.

In sub-Saharan Africa, where the spread of HIV/AIDS among youths is fastest, about 8.6 million have HIV/AIDS—67 percent of them female.

South Asia follows, with 1.1 million youths infected—62 percent of them female.

Poverty is a factor in the spread of HIV, the report says, because some poor girls exchange sex for money for school fees or to help their families, placing them at risk of infection.

cbsnews.com 10/8/03

Jerusalem Could Be A Source Of Peace, Says Cardinal
Addresses A Meeting on the Holy City

ROME—Jerusalem could change from being a problem to being a motive for peace in the Holy Land, says Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran.

The cardinal suggested this at the closing of the meeting entitled "Jerusalem, Where Does Your Name Dwell?" organized by the Italian Monastery of Camaldoli at the initiative of Il Regno magazine.

The cardinal, who for 13 years was Vatican secretary for relations with states, highlighted Jerusalem as the "fulcrum" of a possible solution of the Palestinian-Israeli controversy and as a city of peace and element of union and pacification between both peoples.

In this context, Cardinal Tauran on Sunday reiterated the Holy See's position that to guard the unique character of Jerusalem, it is necessary "to elaborate a special status, guaranteed in the international realm for the most sacred places of the city."

The cardinal recalled three related concerns of Pius XII, Paul VI and John Paul II: "the safeguarding of the sacred character of Jerusalem;" "the survival of the religious communities," in particular, the Catholic; and "peace in the Holy Land."

"The Popes have always been aware that Jerusalem offers an image of three worlds" and "that none of the three monotheist religions must prevail over the others with a full hegemony over the city" said the cardinal, who is currently the librarian of the Holy Roman Church.

What must be avoided is "that this holy city be turned into a museum of stones and shrines for pilgrims," the cardinal said, referring to the unease over the number of Christians who are emigrating from Jerusalem.

zenit.org 9/14/04

Mad Cow Ban Now Covers Cosmetics

Closing loopholes in protections against Mad Cow Disease, the Food and Drug Administration on Friday banned using brains and other cattle parts that could carry the disease's infectious agent from use in cosmetics and dietary supplements.

The action puts the agency's restrictions in line with those issued by the agriculture Department to keep those cattle parts out of meat after the brain-wasting disease was found in December in a Holstein cow in Washington state.

The ban affects products made from animals 30 months of age and older, the age at which the government has said the brain-wasting disease can be found. The restrictions prohibit the use of the brain and spinal cord, where the misshapen proteins blamed for mad cow disease are considered most likely to be found.

Mad Cow Disease is also known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE. People who eat meat containing the misshapen proteins, known as prions, face a risk of contracting a rare but fatal human condition, variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.

"Today's actions continue our strong commitment to public health protections against BSE," said Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson.

HHS continues to study even tougher measures, including tighter record keeping by manufacturers, processing equipment designed to prevent contamination, and a national animal identification system, reports CBS News Correspondent Barry Bagnato.

The goal is to block transmission of the prions through feed.

The proposed restrictions would remove the risky materials from animals that die on farms or which are taken to slaughterhouses but cannot stand up. The aim is to guard against the possibility that such animals could have BSE that could get passed into the supply chain.

Another proposal is a ban on the use of all mammalian and poultry protein in feed for cud-chewing animals, which includes sheep as well as cattle. Sheep can get scrapie, a condition similar to BSE.

cbsnews.com 7/9/04

Number Of Single-Sex Classes Grows
States experimenting with single-sex schools

DALLAS, Texas—For an increasing number of public schools, the formula for a better education requires a little arithmetic: Divide the girls from the boys.

That's just fine with Kristielle Pedraza, a 13-year-old who says she will not miss the boys while she attends the Irma Rangel Young Women's Leadership School, Dallas' first all-girls public school and one of a growing number of such schools nationally.

"Usually it's the guys that distract the whole class. They're usually the class clowns," said Kristielle, who entered the seventh grade last week. "With no guys in the school, I can know we will really get busy without much distraction."

At least 10 single-sex public schools were to open this fall in five states—Texas, Ohio, Pennsylvania, new York and South Carolina.

Advocates say separating the sexes can improve learning by easing the peer pressure that can lead to misbehavior as well as low self-esteem among girls.

"John Kerry, George W. Bush, his father and Al Gore all went to all-boys schools. We don't think that's a coincidence," said Dr. Leonard Sax, a Maryland physician and psychologist who founded a nonprofit group that advocates single-sex public education. "We think single-sex education really empowers girls and boys from very diverse backgrounds to achieve."

The number of U.S. public schools offering single-sex classes jumped from four to 140 in the past eight years, Sax said. At 36 of those schools, at least one grade will have only single-sex classes this year.

Advocates said they expect the number to increase now that the U.S. Education Department has announced plans to change its enforcement of the landmark discrimination law Title IX, which bars sex discrimination in schools.

"Many school districts wanted to offer this option, but they feared being sued by interest groups," said Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, a Texas Republican who fought for an amendment in the No Child Left Behind Act that encouraged districts to experiment with single-sex education.

The 126 seventh- and eighth- graders at the Dallas school will take pre-honors classes with a heavy emphasis on math, science and technology courses, which traditionally enroll fewer girls than boys.

Focusing On Different Ways Boys, Girls Learn

Sax said separating the sexes allows teachers and administrators to focus on the different ways boys and girls learn. Girls, he said, learn better in quiet classrooms and intimate schools where they are on a first-name basis with their teachers. Boys learn better when teachers challenge them to answer rapid-fire questions and address them by their last names.

Single-sex schools also reduce the pressure to preen for boyfriends or girlfriends, Sax said.

"Single-sex schools, in ways that matter, are much more like the real world. Because unless you are a model or an actress, how you look is not the most important thing in your life," Sax said.

cnn.com 8/25/04

Tainted Flu Shots Cause Shortage

The nation's supply of vaccine for the impending flu season took a big hit Thursday when Chiron Corp. announced it found tainted doses in its factory.

The company said it will hold up a shipment of about 50 million shots—about half of the supply U.S. health officials had hoped to have on hand this year—while it investigates what went wrong and determines whether the vaccine is safe to use.

U.S. health officials said some people may not get flu shots when they want this year, but that they were hopeful Chiron's production problems are only temporary. Demand typically peaks in October and November.

"Based on what we know, we don't expect a major delay and we believe we can effectively vaccinate the population at risk," CDC director Dr. Julie Gerberding said. "We are in daily contact with chiron and we will be tracking this along with the Food and Drug Administration."

Flu kills 36,000 people and hospitalizes another 114,000 in an average year, primarily the elderly, according to the CDC.

Last year's flu season got off to an unusually early and harsh start, which raised fears and caused demand for vaccines to outstrip supply for the first time.

Health officials expect a record number of people to request vaccinations this year owing to the publicity generated by last year's season and the subsequent shortage. The CDC ordered 100 million doses to be made for this season, about 17 million more doses than last year.

Chiron officials Thursday said the company now hopes to ship between 46 million and 48 million doses by early October, about a month later than usual.

Last year the company made 38 million shots, accounting for about $230 million in revenue.

cbs.com 8/27/04

Twin Tower Terror Toys Recalled

Small toys showing an airplane flying into the World Trade Center were packed inside more than 14,000 bags of candy and sent to small groceries around the United States before being recalled.

Lisy Corp., the wholesaler that distributed the candy, said Friday that the toys were purchased in bulk from a Miami-based import company.

The toys came in an assortment package purchased sight unseen from L&M Import in Miami and included the toys depicting the Sept. 11, 2001 attack on the twin towers, whistles and other small toys, said Luis Pedron, Lisy's national sales manager. The invoice said the toy was a plastic swing set.

Pedron said Lisy did not notice the small plastic figurines until two people complained, but there is no mistaking what the toys represent: At the bottom of each is the product number 9011.

cbs.com 8/27/04

Court Tosses Internet Porn Law

A federal judge threw out on Friday a Pennsylvania law requiring Internet service providers to block Web sites containing child pornography, saying the law was unconstitutional and cannot be enforced.

Enacted in 2002, the law gave Pennsylvania's attorney general the power to require that companies like America Online Inc. block customers from viewing Web sites that had been identified by the state as containing illegal content.

No one challenged the state's right to stop the distribution of child porn, which is already illegal under federal law, but lawyers for the Center for Democracy and Technology and the American Civil Liberties Union had argued that the technology used to block those Web sites was clumsy.

Over two years, the groups said, ISPs trying to obey blocking orders were forced to cut access to at least 1.5 million legal Web sites that had nothing to do with child pornography, but were part of the same Internet cluster as the offending sites.

Lawyers for the state said the technology exists for ISPs to block selectively and blamed Internet companies for not wanting to upgrade their systems.

U.S. District Judge Jan E. Dubois disagreed, saying current state of technology meant the law "cannot be implemented without excessive blocking of innocent speech in violation of the First Amendment."

In June, the U.S. Supreme Court made a similar ruling on a federal indecency law.

The high court divided 5-to-4 over a law passed in 1998, signed by then-President Clinton and later backed by the Bush administration. The majority said a lower court was correct to block the law from taking effect because it likely violates the First Amendment.

The court did not end the long fight over the law, however. The majority sent the case back to a lower court for a trial that could give the government a chance to prove the law does not go too far. That decision will hinge on whether technology exists that can block obscene material without limiting access to other Web sties.

The Law, which never took effect, would have authorized fines up to $50,000 for the crime of placing material that is "harmful to minors" within the easy reach of children on the Internet.

cbsnews.com 9/10/04

Insanity Verdict In Mom Beheading

A 28-year-old man who decapitated his mother and displayed her head on the front porch of their home because he believed she was Satan was acquitted of murder by reason of insanity.

Judge John Scotillo ruled Tuesday that Karl Sneider of Palatine suffered from mental illness and "lacked substantial capacity to appreciate the criminality: of killing his 49-year-old mother, Kathryn Sneider.

During four days of testimony, four doctors said Sneider was schizophrenic and suffered from delusions and hallucinations.

According to court testimony, Sneider told police he was Jesus Christ, his mother was Satan and that her death in January 2003 signaled the triumph of good over evil.

According to police and prosecutors, the two got into a fight after she told him he should be committed to a mental hospital. He then stabbed her, cut off her head with a kitchen knife and put her head on the front porch.

The next morning he stole a neighbor's car and crashed it before police tracked him down, reports said.

Scotillo ordered Sneider to be evaluated by mental health experts within 30 days. The judge will then determine the number of years and what type of mental-health supervision Sneider will receive. He will remain in Cook County jail until then.

cbsnews.com 8/25/04

Bird Flu Ravages Africa Ostriches

An outbreak of bird flu has killed 6,000 ostriches in the past three weeks, leading authorities to ban all poultry exports from South Africa agriculture officials said Monday.

Authorities have identified the strain of avian influenza as H5N2, regarded as less dangerous than the H5N1 variety, which ravaged chicken farms across Asia and crossed over to humans earlier this year killing 24 people in Thailand and Vietnam.

The South African outbreak poses little risk to humans, but authorities were still trying to identify the source, said Dr. Johann van Wyk, head of animal health at the Department of Agriculture and Land.

The country supplies about 70 percent of the world's ostrich meat, producing about 950,000 tons a year. But the main source of ostrich revenue is from the bird's skin, which is used to make handbags, shoes, jackets and other leather goods.

The first cases were reported in Middleton, home to some of South Africa's largest ostrich farms—an industry that rings in about $200 million in export earnings annually.

Fifteen farms within a nine-mile radius of the initial outbreak have been quarantined, van Wyk said.

Police and military have also set up checkpoints up to 18 miles away to prevent the movement of birds in or out of the quarantined area.

On Friday, the government banned all poultry exports in a bid to safeguard the international credibility of its industry. South Africa imports most of its chicken meat, so the ban primarily affects ostrich farmers.

Authorities here hope to reduce the number of birds that must be culled by isolating any determined to be carrying the virus.

Trenches have already been dug on certain farms to receive the culled birds, which will be buried and covered with quicklime to prevent further spread of the disease, van Wyk said.

cbsnews.com 8/9/04

HBO To Air Polygamy Drama

Think Tony Soprano, but without all the violence or swearing—and with a wife who doesn't care if he sleeps with other women.

That's the star of HBO's new original drama series, the Tom Hanks-produced "Big Love," about a polygamous, fictional Utah family living in the present day.

After viewing a pilot, the cable channel announced this week it had green-lit the production of 10 episodes, starring Bill Paxton and Chloe Sevigny.

HBO has won critical acclaim with original series like "The Sopranos," "Sex And The City," and "Six Feet Under," dominating the Emmys this year with 124 nominations.

Whether "Big Love" will follow that tradition remains to be seen, but it will be closely watched in Utah, which still carries some stigma for its polygamous history.

cbsnews.com 8/5/04