So guess who designed the website and branding for The Ordinary Restaurant? Local whizzes Fuzzco. Check it all out here and their blog is there.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Blogging & the Internet • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Corporations/Corporate Life • * South Carolina

The Ordinary Restaurant. We ate here for Elizabeth graduation celebration--oh my goodness it was wonderful. Check it out.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Dieting/Food/Nutrition • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Corporations/Corporate Life • * South Carolina

Even before rogue abortionist Kermit Gosnell was convicted in Philadelphia May 13 of delivering and then killing late-term infants, abortion opponents were convinced they had a case that could reshape an abortion debate that has remained static over the years.

After the verdict, they were even more confident.

“Dr. Gosnell is only the front man; and the real trial has only just begun. The defendant is the abortion license in America,” Robert P. George, a Princeton law professor and leading conservative activist, wrote after a jury convicted Gosnell of three counts of first-degree murder for snipping the spines of babies after botched abortions.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Health & Medicine • Law & Legal Issues • Life Ethics • Science & Technology • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General

Whn Shinzo Abe resigned after just a year as prime minister, in September 2007, he was derided by voters, broken by chronic illness, and dogged by the ineptitude that has been the bane of so many recent Japanese leaders. Today, not yet five months into his second term, Mr Abe seems to be a new man. He has put Japan on a regime of “Abenomics”, a mix of reflation, government spending and a growth strategy designed to jolt the economy out of the suspended animation that has gripped it for more than two decades. He has supercharged Japan’s once-fearsome bureaucracy to make government vigorous again. And, with his own health revived, he has sketched out a programme of geopolitical rebranding and constitutional change that is meant to return Japan to what Mr Abe thinks is its rightful place as a world power.

Mr Abe is electrifying a nation that had lost faith in its political class. Since he was elected, the stockmarket has risen by 55%. Consumer spending pushed up growth in the first quarter to an annualised 3.5%. Mr Abe has an approval rating of over 70% (compared with around 30% at the end of his first term). His Liberal Democratic Party is poised to triumph in elections for the upper house of the Diet in July. With a majority in both chambers he should be able to pass legislation freely.

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Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Economy • Currency Markets • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • Asia • Japan

Can we get real? For starters, $642 billion is serious money, and despite the modest improvements of the latest CBO report, the basic trends in federal finances remain the same. From 2014 to 2023, the government will spend $6 trillion more than it collects in taxes. The budget never comes close to balancing. Expanding spending on the elderly and health care continues to strangle the rest of government. As a share of the economy (gross domestic product), military and domestic discretionary programs (examples: drug approval, environmental regulation, Head Start, federal courts) drop about 40 percent from 2010 to 2023.

Nothing of consequence has changed. A few numbers have shifted slightly. That’s all. They moved in a favorable direction. Next time, they might go the other way. What’s also constant is the unwillingness of leaders of both parties, beginning with the president, to discuss budget choices candidly. The budget passed by the Democratic Senate barely touches entitlements for the elderly, which constitute the largest chunk of federal spending. The budget passed by the Republican House avoids a large tax increase only by making draconian and unrealistic spending cuts that would never pass Congress or be signed by the president.

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Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Economy • Taxes • The U.S. Government • Budget • Medicaid • Medicare • Social Security • The National Deficit • Politics in General • House of Representatives • Office of the President • President Barack Obama • Senate

Nigeria's military has imposed a 24-hour curfew in parts of the north-eastern city of Maiduguri as its offensive against militants continues.

A statement named 11 areas of the city where people must remain inside their homes until further notice.

Maiduguri, capital of Borno state, has been an important base for Boko Haram Islamist militants.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Violence • * Economics, Politics • Defense, National Security, Military • Politics in General • Terrorism • * International News & Commentary • Africa • Nigeria

About 41 percent of master’s of divinity graduates expect to pursue full-time church ministry, down from 52 percent in 2001 and from 90-something percent a few decades ago, according to the Association of Theological Schools, the country’s largest such group.

Americans, particularly young ones, are becoming less religiously affiliated, and many see churches as too focused on internal politics and dogma and not enough on bettering the outside world. Institutional religion doesn’t have the stature it once did, and pastor jobs are fewer and less stable.

The skepticism about religious institutions has led to a broadened concept of what it means to minister. Like Allen, seminary graduates today use the words “ministry” and “calling” to describe their plans to employ their understanding of theology in a new career or to use their degrees to bring more purpose to what they are already doing. And seminaries are busily trying to accommodate them, creating new degrees for careers in such areas as urban ministry and psychology.

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Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Corporations/Corporate Life • Labor/Labor Unions/Labor Market • * Theology • Seminary / Theological Education

With much of Capitol Hill riveted by IRS audits, AP phone records, and Benghazi e-mails, top US scholars gathered to testify in a little-watched congressional hearing Friday about the growing threat the use of drones in US airspace may pose to civil liberties.

They warned that unmanned aircraft carrying cameras raise the specter of a “significant new avenue for surveillance of American life,” as Christopher Calabrese, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, characterized it for lawmakers Friday.

“Many Americans are familiar with these aircraft – commonly called drones – because of their use overseas in places like Afghanistan and Yemen. But drones are coming to America,” he said.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • Police/Fire • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General

Christine Lagarde, the IMF managing director, captured a sense of fragmentation last month when she spoke of a “three-speed” global economy. On this week’s evidence, however, there are even more speeds than that.

Falling commodity prices and a rising dollar show the broad picture: the global outlook is weakening a little and becoming more dependent on the US. For every country putting out good news, such as Japan, there are weaker data elsewhere – for example in China.

It is a global economy that lacks a strong source of demand growth.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Globalization • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • The Credit Freeze Crisis of Fall 2008/The Recession of 2007-- • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • Asia • England / UK • Europe

Barclays has "repeatedly let down society" and needs to clean up its culture in the wake of the £290m fine for rigging Libor, the Church of England said on Wednesday

The annual investment report by the Church Commissioners shows that the discussions with Barclays will be reviewed in July, a year on from the interest rate scandal that led to the departure of the chairman Marcus Agius, the chief executive Bob Diamond and chief operating officer Jerry del Missier.

In the report the commissioners, working with the Ethical Investment Advisory Group (EIAG), said they had "commenced an intensive engagement with Barclays seeking robust assurance that, having repeatedly let down society with its conduct, Barclays is making a determined and successful effort to effect a fundamental turnaround in culture".

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Provinces • Church of England (CoE) • * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Corporations/Corporate Life • The Banking System/Sector • The Credit Freeze Crisis of Fall 2008/The Recession of 2007-- • * International News & Commentary • England / UK • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

The Palmetto State has stars in its eyes.

Film industry professionals Thursday celebrated a new law they think will expand their industry in South Carolina.

Richard Futch, former casting director for the TV show “Army Wives,” said the Film Rebates Bill, which was passed by the Legislature and signed into law last week by Gov. Nikki Haley, makes South Carolina competitive with neighboring Georgia and North Carolina.

The new law, which provides incentives to filmmakers, will bring more movie and TV productions to the state, he said.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Movies & Television • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Corporations/Corporate Life • * South Carolina

Of the crises facing American troops today, suicide ranks among the most emotionally wrenching — and baffling. Over the course of nearly 12 years and two wars, suicide among active-duty troops has risen steadily, hitting a record of 350 in 2012. That total was twice as many as a decade before and surpassed not only the number of American troops killed in Afghanistan but also the number who died in transportation accidents last year.

Even with the withdrawal from Iraq and the pullback in Afghanistan, the rate of suicide within the military has continued to rise significantly faster than within the general population, where it is also rising. In 2002, the military’s suicide rate was 10.3 per 100,000 troops, well below the comparable civilian rate. But today the rates are nearly the same, above 18 per 100,000 people.

And according to some experts, the military may be undercounting the problem because of the way it calculates its suicide rate.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Health & Medicine • Psychology • Suicide • * Economics, Politics • Defense, National Security, Military • Iraq War • War in Afghanistan

Spring may have sprung, but not all economists are sprightly about the outlook for the global economy.

In fact, as a Toronto audience heard Wednesday morning, the risk of a recession in Canada is “higher than normal,” the U.S. is set for “unspectacular” growth, Europe is poised for another downturn and even the BRIC countries will not be the economic drivers they had been in the past decade.

Those are the views of one of the more Eeyore-ish research firms around: London-based Capital Economics, whose conference Wednesday was entitled: “Is the world on the road to recovery?” (The answer: Sort of. But it will be a “long and fairly bumpy” road, one in which Europe is in danger of veering off).

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Globalization • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • Housing/Real Estate Market • Labor/Labor Unions/Labor Market • * International News & Commentary • Africa • America/U.S.A. • Asia • Canada • England / UK • Europe

Since the ouster of Mr. Mubarak in February 2011, a growing number of Copts, including some of the most successful businessmen, have left Egypt or are preparing to do so, fearing persecution by an Islamist-controlled government as much as the stagnant economy that is smothering their industries.

Among the most prominent are the heads of the Sawiris family, who for several months have been running their enormous business empire from abroad.

“Every week I learn of 10 people who are leaving or who have already left,” Mr. [Wasfi Amin] Wassef said. “They know that what happened to the Sawiris’ can happen to them tomorrow.”

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • Religion & Culture • Violence • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • Middle East • Egypt • * Religion News & Commentary • Inter-Faith Relations • Other Churches • Coptic Church • Other Faiths • Islam • Muslim-Christian relations

As the Prime Minister knows, I am very suspicious that behind the plans to change the nature of marriage, which will be debated in the House of Lords within the next two months there lurks an aggressive secularist and relativist approach towards an institution that has glued society together for time immemorial. By dividing marriage into religious and civil the government threatens the church and state link which they purport to support. But they also threaten to empty marriage of its fundamental religious and civil meaning as an institution orientated towards the upbringing of children.

If this is not enough, the legislation fails to provide any protection for religious believers in employment who cannot subscribe in conscience to the new meaning of marriage. There will be no exemptions for believers who are registrars who can expect to be sacked if theycannot, in all conscience, support same-sex marriage. Strong legal opinion also suggests that Christian teachers, who are required to teach about marriage, may face disciplinary action if they cannot express agreement with the new politically-correct orthodoxy.

The danger I believe that the government is courting with its approach both to marriage and religious freedom, is the alienation of a large minority of people who only a few years ago would have been considered pillars of the community.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Provinces • Church of England (CoE) • * Christian Life / Church Life • Church History • * Culture-Watch • History • Law & Legal Issues • Marriage & Family • Multiculturalism, pluralism • Religion & Culture • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • England / UK • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Secularism

Five years after the financial crisis first hit Europe, citizens of European Union member states are growing increasingly wary of the body that was supposed to provide them with economic benefits. Public confidence in the E.U. has dropped to staggering new lows, according to an annual survey conducted by the nonpartisan, Washington-based Pew Research Center.

“The European Union is the new sick man of Europe,” according to Pew’s report of the survey results. “The effort over the past half century to create a more united Europe is now the principal casualty of the euro crisis. The European project now stands in disrepute across much of Europe.”

Support for the EU has taken a huge hit over the past year, falling in five of the eight E.U. countries surveyed by Pew.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Psychology • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • Europe

Imagine your company has more than 16,000 buildings in the UK alone, many built years before energy efficiency became a hot topic for corporates, and some that predate the industrial age altogether.

How would you even begin to start lowering their energy consumption given that each and every one of those buildings is an independent entity in control of its own operation and finances?

This is the precise challenge facing David Shreeve, environmental adviser to the Church of England, who has to steer the Church towards meeting its self-imposed goals of reducing greenhouse gas emissions 42 per cent by 2020, before then delivering an 80 per cent reduction by the middle of the century.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Provinces • Church of England (CoE) • * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Stewardship • * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Energy, Natural Resources • * International News & Commentary • England / UK • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

One day this month, a pair of Russian Mi-17 assault helicopters delivered two teams of Afghan commandos, their faces obscured by black masks, in a touch-and-go landing at this camp in a lush valley encircled by frosty peaks about 50 miles from Kabul.

A training squadron drawn from the most secretive counterterrorism units fielded by the United States and its NATO allies watched as the Afghan commandos stormed and cleared a three-story office building that was left conspicuously unfinished — the kind of structure favored by insurgents.

This is the combination of Afghan and allied troops that the Obama administration and the government in Kabul say will assume an increasing share of the combat burden in Afghanistan as the NATO alliance gradually hands over responsibility for security operations to Afghan troops.

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Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Defense, National Security, Military • Foreign Relations • Politics in General • War in Afghanistan • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • Asia • Afghanistan

Sandra Duck thinks she’s the victim of an undeclared Medicaid boycott. And she’s probably right.

When her artificial right hip became infected with the superbug MRSA in late 2009, Dr. Dale Mitchum, a general surgeon, drained, cleaned and closed the infected area. But when the infection returned in early 2010, Mitchum knew Duck needed another hip replacement surgery, which he couldn’t perform. He tried to find an orthopedic surgeon who would operate. More than a year later, he’s still trying.

“I cannot find a living soul that will touch her,” he said recently. “And I’ve tried everywhere, from Tallahassee to Pensacola.”

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Health & Medicine • --The 2009 American Health Care Reform Debate • Law & Legal Issues • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • Personal Finance • The U.S. Government • Medicaid • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

Washington is now sinking its teeth into a real scandal: the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) using ideological criteria to choose the targets of its attention. What we already know is bad enough. Given the seriousness of the charges and the unreliability of IRS disclosures so far, purposeful, sober investigation is exactly what is needed.

At first, the IRS’s admission that it flagged applications for tax-exempt status from tea party-type groups brought reaction that broke along partisan lines. But on Monday, President Obama called the news “outrageous,” adding: “I’ve got no patience with it. I will not tolerate it. And we will make sure that we find out exactly what happened on this.” Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (Nev.) joined other Democratic lawmakers to support an investigation in his chamber, something Republican leaders in the House had pledged on Friday.

Any unequal application of the law based on ideological viewpoint is unpardonable — toxic to the legitimacy of the government’s vast law-enforcement authority.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Taxes • The U.S. Government • Politics in General • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

Google is set to introduce a subscription music feature to compete against fast-growing new streaming services like Spotify, according to several people briefed on its plans.

Google is planning to introduce the new service on Wednesday at Google I/O, the company’s annual conference for software developers. The subscription feature will be connected to Play, Google’s online media hub, complementing its download store and “locker” feature, which lets people store their digital entertainment collections in the cloud, according to these people, who spoke on condition of anonymity before Google’s official announcement.

News of the announcement first appeared on The Verge. A Google spokeswoman declined to comment.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Blogging & the Internet • Music • Science & Technology • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life

The Primate of All Nigeria (Anglican Communion), Nicholas Okoh, on Monday opposed the call for emergency rule in parts of the country affected by armed conflict.

Mr. Okoh said this in Abuja at a press conference on the forthcoming 2013 Synod session of the Abuja Diocese of the Anglican Communion.

He said that government should rather support a national dialogue by various interest groups to address the myriad of problems militating against the country's quest for socio-economic development.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Provinces • Church of Nigeria • * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • Police/Fire • Religion & Culture • Violence • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • Africa • Nigeria • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

A United Methodist woman in Richmond, Va., said she was acting out of Christian compassion in helping to arrange the burial of Tamerlan Tsarnaev, a suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings.

“Jesus tells us to love our enemies, not hate them after they’re dead,” said Martha Mullen, in a phone interview. “That’s why I kind of got this ball rolling.”

Ms. Mullen, a 48-year-old counselor in private practice who studied at a United Methodist seminary, was distressed at news accounts about the difficulty of finding a burial place for Tsarnaev, who died in an April 19 shootout with police.

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Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Death / Burial / Funerals • * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • * Economics, Politics • Terrorism • * Theology • Anthropology

Today 12% of websites are pornographic, and 40 million Americans are regular visitors—including 70% of 18- to 34-year-olds, who look at porn at least once a month, according to a recent survey by Cosmopolitan magazine (which, let's face it, is the authority here). Fully 94% of therapists in another survey reported seeing an increase in people addicted to porn. It has become a whole generation's sex education and could be the same for the next—they are fumbling around online, not in the back seat. One estimate now puts the average age of first viewing at 11. Imagine seeing "Last Tango in Paris" before your first kiss.

Countless studies connect porn with a new and negative attitude to intimate relationships, and neurological imaging confirms it. Susan Fiske, professor of psychology at Princeton University, used MRI scans in 2010 to analyze men watching porn. Afterward, brain activity revealed, they looked at women more as objects than as people. The new DSM-5 will add the diagnosis "Hypersexual Disorder," which includes compulsive pornography use.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Blogging & the Internet • Pornography • Psychology • Sexuality • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • * Theology • Anthropology • Ethics / Moral Theology

...[the Government's] difficulty, however, is that if you are trying to make a really radical change in human society, you must understand what you are doing and argue your case with conviction in public. With gay marriage, the Coalition proposes to alter fundamentally the most important social structure ever known to mankind. If it hopes to slip this quietly past the country over the summer, without any serious consequences, it is being not only dishonest, but stupid....

[Nowhere is this clearer than on the question of]...the nature of marriage itself. Most advocates of gay marriage have not previously given much thought to this. Nor, over the years, have many of them done anything to advance its cause – although, to be fair, Mr Cameron himself has always been a strong advocate of wedlock. Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats, for instance, are passionately opposed to helping marriage through the tax system. Obloquy has been poured on the heads of those who argue that marriage is a better way of bringing up children than cohabitation or single parenthood.

When such people start calling for gay marriage, then, it is reasonable to conclude that it is not marriage itself that they are interested in, but Equality for homosexuals. The Government has listened too much to pressure groups and far too little to people who know about marriage....

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Provinces • Church of England (CoE) • * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • Marriage & Family • Religion & Culture • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • England / UK

Indeed, evangelical elites have a rosier view of immigrants than do the Republican rank and file. According to a recent Pew Research Center study, 55 percent of Republicans view immigrants as a “burden because they take jobs, housing, and health care.”

“Leaders are usually ahead of the laity — that’s called leadership,” Richard Land said. “But the gap is closing.”

This debate is not just about immigration policy. For Latino evangelicals, making life better for immigrants requires investment in education and the social safety net as well as legal reform. If demographers are right, and America’s political future lies in the hands of Latinos and other minorities, conservative evangelicals cannot resurrect the Republican Party without following their political campaign to its theological conclusion.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • * Economics, Politics • Immigration • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Evangelicals

Radical and intolerant Islamist leaders preached to crowds of students at almost 200 official events in the past year, according to a study of external speakers at universities including Cambridge, Birmingham and University College London.

Segregated seating for male and female students is understood to have been implemented for at least a quarter of those public meetings held by the Islamic societies at 21 universities.

Two institutions have announced investigations into segregated meetings. But research by Student Rights, which was set up to tackle extremism on campus, indicates that the practice is prevalent across Britain, despite university equality rules forbidding it.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Education • Religion & Culture • Violence • Young Adults • * Economics, Politics • Terrorism • * International News & Commentary • England / UK • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Islam • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

The staffers in the Cincinnati field office were making high-level decisions on how to evaluate the groups because a decade ago the IRS assigned all applications to that unit. The IRS also eliminated an automatic after-the-fact review process Washington used to conduct such determinations.

Marcus Owens, who oversaw tax-exempt groups at the IRS between 1990 and 1999, said that delegation “carries with it a risk” because the Cincinnati office “isn’t as plugged into what’s [politically] sensitive as Washington.”

Owens, now with the firm Caplin & Drysdale, said that before the agency’s most recent reorganization, it had a series of “tripwires in place” that could catch unfair targeting, including the fact that the IRS identified its criteria for special scrutiny in a public manual.

“There’s no longer that safety valve, and as a result, the IRS has been rolling the dice ever since.....

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Taxes • The U.S. Government • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

The mystery surrounding the burial of the body of Tamerlan Tsarnaev has come to an end. The Boston Marathon bombing suspect was buried this week at a small Muslim cemetery in Doswell, Va.

According to his completed death certificate, which was released on Friday, Mr. Tsarnaev was buried on Thursday at Al-Barzakh Cemetery, about half an hour north of Richmond. Officials in Massachusetts had said the body was moved to a burial site out of state. But they had refused to disclose where.

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Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Death / Burial / Funerals • * Culture-Watch • Urban/City Life and Issues • Violence • * Economics, Politics • Terrorism • * Theology • Anthropology • Pastoral Theology

Indian Christians are celebrating the result of recent elections in Karnataka, a southwestern state known for having the highest rates of violence against Christians. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), a Hindu nationalist party which supports extremist groups, has finally lost power "after nine years of unchallenged rule."

"The BJP is decimated," reports AsiaNews. "Its defeat is good news especially for social and religious minorities of Karnataka, victims in these years of violence and persecution of the Hindu ultranationalist groups, openly supported by the BJP."

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • Religion & Culture • Violence • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • Asia • India

"We are very excited to expand our relationship with Google and Charleston Digital Corridor to offer residents and visitors several hotspots to connect to the Internet," said Charleston Mayor Joseph Riley. "Having this Wi-Fi network makes life easier for people doing business here and helps our tourists find the attractions they want to visit. And in the case of the trekker, get a sneak peek of the places before you visit. It's all done at no cost to the taxpayer."

A Google community grant to the Charleston Digital Corridor supports the Wi-Fi network, and the project uses no public funds. The Charleston Digital Corridor Foundation is responsible for maintaining the network.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Blogging & the Internet • Science & Technology • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Corporations/Corporate Life • * South Carolina

Responding to Carson’s testimony at a House Subcommittee on Africa hearing in July 2012, Subcommittee Chairman, U.S. Rep. Christopher Smith (R-NJ), remonstrated that poverty alone does not drive people to violence. And in any case, Boko Haram is well funded by outside Islamists. “Heavy machine guns” and “buses and pickup trucks mounted with machine guns” are just the latest examples to show that Boko Haram is not just a motley crew of impoverished, marginalized local Muslims. In February 2013 it was revealed that hundreds of Boko Haram members had trained for months in terrorist camps in northern Mali with the local “Ansar Dine” al Qaeda of Mali. Their former chef, explained that he cooked for over 200 Nigerians who had “arrived in Timbuktu in April 2012 in about 300 cars, after al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) swept into the city.”

In its 2013 Nigeria briefing, human rights group Justice for Jos +, a project of Jubilee Campaign USA, remarked, “Ironically, in northern Nigeria, it is Christians who are totally disenfranchised politically, economically, and socially in their own states and by their own ethnic groups due to their religious identity.” This is worse than just “political marginalization,” Mr. Carson! Justice for Jos + continues, “Christians are regarded as inferior to Muslims and suffer ongoing, systematic and comprehensive discrimination even by local and (Sharia) state governments.”

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They come in all shapes and sizes, claiming a dizzying variety of capabilities. They date back decades, or just a year or two. And when you think there couldn’t possibly be much more than 50 marketing agencies in this relatively small town, another one seems to pop up.

Public relations, advertising, web marketing, however you want to “brand” it, digital media is a growth industry in 2013 Charleston.

While not entirely new, the prevalence of do-it-all media shops is becoming hard to miss. What’s behind the message machine?

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Blogging & the Internet • Media • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Corporations/Corporate Life • * South Carolina • * Theology

Pakistanis went to the polls in high numbers on Saturday, in a vote that carried the historic prospect of the country’s first fully democratic political cycle despite being carried out under threat of fresh violence from Taliban insurgents.

A bomb in the southern port city of Karachi killed at least 11 people, doctors said, offering an ominous start to the day following Taliban threats to dispatch suicide bombers to targets across the country. And intensifying claims of vote irregularities in Karachi raised the prospect that some of the vote would be invalidated in the country’s largest metropolis.

But in several cities the turnout was very strong, supporting predictions of unusually high voter participation. Long lines remained at many polling places well into the evening, leading to the announcement that the formal poll-closing time would be extended by an hour, to 6 p.m. local time, and that even then lines would not be cut off.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • History • Violence • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • Asia • Pakistan

So is the case about Pentagon policy closed? Not at all, say some religious-liberty advocates.

For one thing, the Pentagon statement clarifying that military personnel would not be court-martialed if they "evangelize" also said that "proselytization" is considered a Uniform Code of Military Justice offense. Yet the definitions of those two words are almost identical: Merriam-Webster defines proselytization as "to recruit or convert especially to a new faith, institution, or cause" and evangelize as "to preach the gospel to or to convert to Christianity."

In response to the Pentagon statement, two Southern Baptist leaders issued their own statement on May 6 voicing concern about religious freedom, even while cautioning Christians to refrain from jumping to conclusions. "What incidents have taken place, we wonder, that would call for this seemingly arbitrary distinction between 'evangelizing' and 'proselytizing'?" asked the Rev. Russell Moore, president-elect of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, and the Rev. Kevin Ezell, president of the North American Mission Board. "With a subjective interpretation and adjudication of such cases, we need reassurance that such would not restrict the free exercise of religion for our chaplains and military personnel."

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • * Economics, Politics • Defense, National Security, Military

The former Lord Chancellor, Lord Falconer, will present a bill to the House of Lords next week which would introduce a system similar to that in place in the US state of Oregon.

It would allow doctors to provide a fatal dose of drugs to patients judged to have less than six months to live....The bill, which will be tabled on May 15, is based on the conclusions of Lord Falconer’s Commission on Assisted Dying, a group of peers and academics which held hearings in the style of a royal commission.

The Commission was dismissed by critics, including the Church of England, as a “self appointed” group of euthanasia supporters.

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In majority Muslim Pakistan, religious minorities say democracy is killing them.

Intolerance has been on the rise for the past five years under Pakistan’s democratically elected government because of the growing violence of Islamic radicals, who are then courted by political parties, say many in the country’s communities of Shiite Muslims, Christians, Hindus and other minorities....

More than a dozen representatives of Pakistan’s minorities interviewed by The Associated Press expressed fears the vote will only hand more influence to extremists. Since the 2008 elections, under the outgoing government led by the left-leaning Pakistan People’s Party, sectarian attacks have been relentless and minorities have found themselves increasingly targeted by radical Islamic militants. Minorities have little faith the new election will change that.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • Religion & Culture • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • Asia • Pakistan • * Religion News & Commentary • Inter-Faith Relations • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

The war in Ambon and the wider Maluku islands started for a variety of reasons. But it quickly boiled down to a question of identity, of Christians versus Muslims, as more than 5,000 people were killed and 500,000 were displaced from their homes between 1999 and 2002.

The religious passions and communal hatred stirred up in the war put a question mark over Indonesia's moves to build a democracy after 40 years of dictatorship. Could Indonesia's Muslim majority coexist with Christians and other religious minorities without an authoritarian hand on the tiller?

Sitting in Ambon's Joas Coffee House 13 years after the fighting ended, the answer is clear: Yes. And sitting across from me is Jacky Manuputty, one member of a brave group of local community leaders, Muslim and Christian alike, who have helped heal the wounds of war and today act as the first responders of harmony when the fragile peace looks threatened.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • Violence • * Economics, Politics • Defense, National Security, Military • * International News & Commentary • Asia • Indonesia • * Religion News & Commentary • Inter-Faith Relations • Other Faiths • Islam • Muslim-Christian relations

A former top level church boss has appeared in court charged with lying about his degree to win his £45,000 a year job.

Maximilian Manin, 54, was the most senior official in the Lincoln Diocese, which is responsible for all Church of England parishes in the county.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Provinces • Church of England (CoE) • * Culture-Watch • Education • Law & Legal Issues • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Labor/Labor Unions/Labor Market • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

Hospitals around the Lowcountry are billing Medicare at vastly different prices for the exact same procedures, according to data published Wednesday by the federal government.

For example, in 2011, Trident Medical Center billed Medicare an average $98,352 to insert a permanent pacemaker, while the Medical University of South Carolina billed $38,902 for the same surgery.

Read it all from the local paper.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Health & Medicine • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • The U.S. Government • Medicare • * South Carolina

Cemeteries and even some mosques have refused to take his body. His city, Cambridge, has urged family members to bury him elsewhere. Republican U.S. Senate candidate Gabriel Gomez and local talk radio host Dan Rae want him dumped in the ocean, like Osama bin Laden. Clergy have largely kept mum.

“The only signs of people who are showing some sort of moral conscience are those few who stand with a card near the funeral home saying (burial) is a corporal work of mercy,” said James Keenan, a moral theologian at Boston College. “To say, ‘we won’t bury him’ makes us barbaric. It takes away mercy, the trademark of Christians. … I’m talking about this because somebody should.”

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Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Death / Burial / Funerals • * Culture-Watch • Urban/City Life and Issues • * Economics, Politics • Terrorism • * Religion News & Commentary • Inter-Faith Relations • Other Faiths • Islam • * Theology • Anthropology • Eschatology

America's credit crunch is easing. For the past six years, consumers and businesses have struggled to borrow money, but slowly, things are getting easier.

Large U.S. companies are taking advantage of low interest rates to borrow record amounts of capital in bond markets. Banks are opening the spigots for commercial and industrial firms, and loans grew at an 11% annualized rate in the first quarter of this year, the sixth double-digit percentage increase in seven quarters, Federal Reserve data show. According to the Fed's survey of senior bank-lending officers released Monday, 28% of banks lowered the cost of credit lines early this year to smaller firms like Mr. Aaron's that have annual sales of less than $50 million. Residential lending began edging up last year, and even people with bad credit can get a loan to buy a car these days.

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Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Housing/Real Estate Market • Labor/Labor Unions/Labor Market • Personal Finance • The Credit Freeze Crisis of Fall 2008/The Recession of 2007--

Former Gov. Mark Sanford completed the trail to political redemption Tuesday with a win over Democrat Elizabeth Colbert Busch to reclaim his old seat in Congress.

Sanford defeated Colbert Busch 54 percent to 45 percent, according to full unofficial results. Turnout was heavier than expected, with about 32 percent of the district’s 455,702 registered voters casting ballots.

Sanford, who has never lost an election, returns to the 1st District seat he held for three terms from 1995-2001. It’s a remarkable comeback for a man many pundits had written off after his highly publicized affair with an Argentine mistress made him the source of national ridicule in 2009.

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Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • House of Representatives • * South Carolina

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle reacted swiftly to the news that the Pentagon’s estimated number of sexual assaults jumped 35 percent, with several introducing legislation in the House and Senate to protect victims and improve response following report of an incident.

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., chairwoman of the Senate Armed Services personnel panel, plans to introduce legislation next week that would eliminate a commander’s authority to overturn rulings in cases of sexual assault.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • Men • Sexuality • Violence • Women • * Economics, Politics • Defense, National Security, Military • Economy • The U.S. Government • Politics in General • House of Representatives • Senate

The problem of sexual assault in the military leapt to the forefront in Washington on Tuesday as the Pentagon released a survey estimating that 26,000 people in the armed forces were sexually assaulted last year, up from 19,000 in 2010, and an angry President Obama and Congress demanded action.

The study, based on a confidential survey sent to 108,000 active-duty service members, was released two days after the officer in charge of sexual assault prevention programs for the Air Force was arrested and charged with sexual battery for grabbing a woman’s breasts and buttocks in an Arlington, Va., parking lot.

At a White House news conference, Mr. Obama expressed exasperation with the Pentagon’s attempts to bring sexual assault under control.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • Men • Sexuality • Violence • Women • * Economics, Politics • Defense, National Security, Military • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

Former South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford has redeemed a political career sidelined by scandal by winning his old congressional seat.

Sanford defeated Elizabeth Colbert (KOHL'-buhrt) Busch Tuesday in the state's 1st Congressional District. Colbert Busch is the sister of political satirist Stephen Colbert (kohl-BEHR'). With 71 percent of precincts reporting, Sanford has 54 percent of the vote.

Read it all. Also, a USA Today article is there.

Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • House of Representatives • * South Carolina

(Yes indeed it is in my district! KSH).

Perhaps it is fitting that inclement weather could play a role in deciding the outcome of Tuesday’s special U.S. House election in South Carolina’s 1st District. After all, the race has been turbulent and unpredictable from the get-go.

Forecasts called for intermittent showers and thunderstorms around Charleston as voters head to the polls, adding a wrinkle to both sides’ turnout models, which were already steeped in guesswork.

The high-profile battle between former Republican Gov. Mark Sanford and Democrat Elizabeth Colbert Busch has seen everything from an embarrassing accusation of trespassing from Sanford’s ex-wife to rare, out-of-character appearances by Colbert Busch’s brother Stephen Colbert, the satirist best known for lampooning members of Congress rather than helping them raise money.

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Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • House of Representatives • * South Carolina

(Please note that you may find an earlier discussion of the importance of U-6 as a measure of the real labor market situation in this blog post and discussion from Februaryl--KSH).

Voluntary plus involuntary part-time employment rose by a whopping 441,000 jobs. Take away part-time jobs and there is not all that much to brag about. Indeed, full-time employment fell once again, this month by 148,000.

Read it all and there is another article there. For the table of all six employment/unemployment measures, you may go there.

Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Economy • Corporations/Corporate Life • Labor/Labor Unions/Labor Market • The Credit Freeze Crisis of Fall 2008/The Recession of 2007-- • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • * Theology • Anthropology • Ethics / Moral Theology

Its surprising how many people still marry. As everyone knows, it’s a risky proposition; the divorce rate, though down from its peak of one in two marriages in the early 1980s, remains substantial. Besides, you can have a perfectly respectable life these days without marrying.

When the Pew Research Center asked a sample of Americans in 2010 what they thought about the “growing variety in the types of family arrangements that people live in,” 34 percent responded that it was a good thing, and 32 percent said it made no difference. Having a child outside of marriage has also become common. According to a report by the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia, 47 percent of American women who give birth in their 20s are unmarried at the time.

And still, demographers project that at least 80 percent of Americans will marry at some point in their lives.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Marriage & Family • Middle Age • Psychology • Sociology • Young Adults • * Economics, Politics • Economy • The Credit Freeze Crisis of Fall 2008/The Recession of 2007-- • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • * Theology • Anthropology • Ethics / Moral Theology

Beijing is engaged in systematic cyber spying on the US military and private businesses to acquire technology to boost military modernisation and strengthen its capacity in any regional crisis, according to the Pentagon.

In its annual report to Congress on the People’s Liberation Army, the Pentagon gives new emphasis to the threat of cyber-espionage from China, an issue that has been the subject of top-level complaints to Beijing by Washington.

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In a white-walled room tucked behind the garage in one of those unremarkable houses, Sonny Vu sits at a folding-leg table, the kind you might see in a church basement. He's convincing a banker he doesn't need any money.

The banker is dressed in northern California business attire—tailored suit, no tie, a nice watch peeking out from beneath his sleeve. Vu is dressed in a black knit T-shirt, jeans, and indoor flip-flops. He opens a MacBook Pro and talks through a presentation about the company he founded, Misfit Wearables.

There's no watch on Vu's wrist. Instead he wears a thin wristband that holds a tapered, dark-gray aluminum disk about the size of a quarter. This is Misfit's first product, Shine. It's a device that attracted 127 online articles about Misfit in the tech press, everywhere from Wired to Mashable to TechCrunch—"without anyone knowing what it did," Vu says, grinning. He pops it out of its holder and sets it on the screen of his iPhone. "This has been tracking my activity for the past week. I just set it here, and it uploads all my data. No cable, no Bluetooth," he explains as tiny lights blink around the circumference of the disk.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • Science & Technology • * Economics, Politics • Economy • * Theology • Anthropology

In a time when the whetted and arbitrary deficit-reduction knife is cutting bone out of critical U.S. government programs, the image of shopping bags stuffed with CIA cash handed off on a monthly basis to Afghan President Hamid Karzai — who reigns over one of the most corrupt governments on the planet — has outraged many Americans.

The New York Times, which revealed the years of payoffs this week, noted that "there is little evidence the payments bought the influence the CIA sought."

In fact, regular cash handouts of this type may do the opposite. They may well have enabled Karzai's frequent and theatrical outbursts against U.S. officials and policies, not to mention his collusion with some of his country's most corrupt and abusive officials. Such payoffs signal to Karzai — or other leaders like him — that he enjoys the unwavering support of the CIA, no matter what he does or says, and embolden him to thumb his nose at the United States whenever he feels like it.

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Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Economy • The U.S. Government • Foreign Relations • Politics in General • War in Afghanistan • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • Asia • Afghanistan

Israel’s reported airstrikes in Syria — and the threat of a retaliatory strike by the Syrian government — are likely to accelerate the decision-making of the Obama administration, which was already moving toward a sharp escalation of U.S. involvement in the two-year-old crisis.

Senior officials said the deployment of U.S. troops to Syria remains unlikely, but they have indicated that a decision will come within weeks on options ranging from the supply of weapons to the Syrian rebels to the use of U.S. aircraft and missiles to ground President Bashar al-Assad’s air power by destroying planes, runways and missile sites inside Syria.

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Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Defense, National Security, Military • Foreign Relations • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • Middle East • Israel • Syria

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Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • * South Carolina

The way some schools in Nevada teach sex education could be changing.

A bill moving its way through the Nevada Legislature would require all districts to provide uniform, medically accurate and age-appropriate sex education lessons. Topics would include abstinence, abortion, contraceptives, domestic violence and sex trafficking. Students would be automatically enrolled in sex education classes under the proposed law, and parents would need to sign a document for their children to opt out of the instruction.

Currently, sex education instruction varies by county, although all counties have sex education advisory boards by law.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Education • Sexuality • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • State Government

Recent Israeli strikes inside Syria may have exposed weaknesses in the regime’s air defenses and could embolden the U.S. and its allies to take more steps to aid rebels fighting the regime there, said lawmakers on Sunday.

“The Russian-supplied air defense systems are not as good as said,” Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) said on NBC’s "Meet the Press." Leahy, who heads the appropriations subcommittee on foreign operations, said the Israeli defense forces were using American-made F-16 Fighting Falcon jets to launch the missiles against Syrian targets.

“Keep in mind the Israelis are using weapons supplied by us,” Leahy said. “They have enormous prowess with those weapons.”

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Science & Technology • * Economics, Politics • Defense, National Security, Military • Foreign Relations • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • Middle East • Israel • Syria

Photographer Lalage Snow photographed and interviewed members of 1st Battalion The Royal Regiment of Scotland before they were sent to Afghanistan, after three months' service, and days after they returned home. Their faces show the toll that fighting in Afghanistan takes on our troops.

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Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Death / Burial / Funerals • * Culture-Watch • Military / Armed Forces • Violence • * Economics, Politics • War in Afghanistan • * International News & Commentary • England / UK

....as the Obama administration prepares to pull 34,000 U.S. troops out of the country by next February and most of the remaining troops by the end of 2014, estimates of the size of the Afghan force trained to take over this lead security role suddenly have grown fuzzy and possibly unreliable.

A new report made public this week by the government’s top watchdog over U.S. spending in Afghanistan casts doubt on whether the U.S.-led coalition and the Afghan government met a goal set in 2011 of enlisting and training a total of 352,000 Afghan security personnel by October 2012. Pentagon officials have said that target was meant to strike a balance between what was needed and what America and its allies could deliver in concert with the Afghan government. Earlier this year, in conjunction with President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address, the White House declared that the goal had been met.

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Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Defense, National Security, Military • Economy • The U.S. Government • Politics in General • War in Afghanistan • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

BOB ABERNETHY, host:....The president referred to self-radicalizing. What—how does that work, and what can the Muslim community do to prevent it?

HARIS TARIN (Muslim Public Affairs Council): Well, the phenomenon of self-radicalization is where individuals who do not find a place in mainstream Muslim institutions, places like mosques and organizations, they don’t find a place for their fiery rhetoric, for their violent, extremist rhetoric, so they go online, and they listen to sermons, and they listen to individuals like Anwar al-Awlaki or Adam Gadahn or other folks who misinterpret the religion to give it a violent, violent ideology, and they fall prey to these individuals who are basically online predators, and they get influenced by these individuals to address their grievances through violence....

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Blogging & the Internet • Religion & Culture • Urban/City Life and Issues • Violence • Young Adults • * Economics, Politics • Terrorism • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Islam

Call it freedom of religion vs. freedom from religion: The Defense Department was engulfed in a firestorm over religious expression last week, caught in the middle of a tit-for-tat fight between Mikey Weinstein, the former Air Force officer and lawyer at the head of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, and retired Army Lt. Gen. Jerry Boykin, a senior official with the conservative Family Research Council.

Weinstein met with Air Force officials April 24demanding that the Air Force take stiffer action to stop the intrusion of religion in the work place. The only way to do that, he contends, is to slap offenders with nonjudicial and judicial punishment — including courts-martial.

That was enough to light up the opposition....

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • Military / Armed Forces • Religion & Culture • * Economics, Politics • Defense, National Security, Military

The airstrike that Israeli warplanes carried out in Syria was directed at a shipment of advanced surface-to-surface missiles from Iran that Israel believed was intended for Hezbollah, the militant Lebanese organization, American officials said Saturday.

It was the second time in four months that Israel had carried out an attack in foreign territory aimed at disrupting the pipeline of weapons from Iran to Hezbollah. The missiles, known as Fateh-110s, had been sent to Syria by Iran and were being stored at an airport in Damascus when they were struck in the attack, according to an American official.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Science & Technology • * Economics, Politics • Defense, National Security, Military • Foreign Relations • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • Middle East • Iran • Israel • Syria

Speaking at a gathering of digital advertisers in New York City last night, Mr Schmidt refused to forecast when internet video would displace television, instead declaring: "That's already happened."

"It's not a replacement for something that we know," he added. "It's a new thing that we have to think about, to program, to curate and build new platforms."

YouTube recently surpassed the milestone of a billion unique users a month. Only the Google search engine and social network Facebook are frequented more often by those browsing the internet worldwide.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Blogging & the Internet • Movies & Television • Science & Technology • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Corporations/Corporate Life

Employers kept hiring at a steady pace in April and the government revised up job tallies for February and March, easing fears that the economy is tumbling into a spring slump and propelling blue-chip stocks to record highs.

Nonfarm payrolls rose by 165,000 last month and the jobless rate ticked down to 7.5%, the lowest level since December 2008. The Labor Department also significantly raised hiring estimates for the two prior months, by a combined 114,000 jobs.

But the job gains in April, which were tilted toward the retail and business-services sectors, come alongside mixed signals for the economy almost four years into the recovery. While the housing and auto sectors are accelerating after years of industry turmoil, other major sectors are showing signs of trouble. In short: The Federal Reserve is looking for more broad-based and sustained job growth before easing up on its easy-money policies.

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Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • Labor/Labor Unions/Labor Market • Personal Finance • Stock Market • The Credit Freeze Crisis of Fall 2008/The Recession of 2007-- • The U.S. Government • Federal Reserve

First, like many others, I am profoundly disappointed that Rhode Island has approved legislation that seeks to legitimize “same-sex marriage.” The Catholic Church has fought very hard to oppose this immoral and unnecessary proposition, and we are most grateful to all those who have courageously joined us in this effort. When all is said and done, however, we know that God will be the final judge of our actions.

As I have emphasized consistently in the past, the Catholic Church has respect, love and pastoral concern for our brothers and sisters who have same-sex attraction. I sincerely pray for God’s blessings upon them, that they will enjoy much health, happiness and peace. We also offer our prayerful support to families, especially parents, who often struggle with this issue when it occurs in their own homes.

Our respect and pastoral care, however, does not mean that we are free to endorse or ignore immoral or destructive behavior, whenever or however it occurs. Indeed, as St. Paul urges us, we are required to “speak the truth in love.” (Eph 4:15)

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • Marriage & Family • Religion & Culture • Sexuality • --Civil Unions & Partnerships • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • State Government • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Roman Catholic • * Theology • Anthropology • Ethics / Moral Theology • Theology: Scripture

Many part-timers are facing a double whammy from President Obama's Affordable Care Act.

The law requires large employers offering health insurance to include part-time employees working 30 hours a week or more. But rather than provide healthcare to more workers, a growing number of employers are cutting back employee hours instead.

The result: Not only will these workers earn less money, but they'll also miss out on health insurance at work.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Health & Medicine • --The 2009 American Health Care Reform Debate • Law & Legal Issues • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Corporations/Corporate Life • Labor/Labor Unions/Labor Market • Personal Finance • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

he surviving suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings told F.B.I. interrogators that he and his brother considered suicide attacks and striking on the Fourth of July as they plotted their deadly assault, according to two law enforcement officials.

But the suspect, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, told investigators that he and his brother, Tamerlan, 26, who was killed in a shootout with the police, ultimately decided to use pressure-cooker bombs and other homemade explosive devices, the officials said.

The brothers finished building the bombs in Tamerlan’s apartment in Cambridge, Mass., faster than they had anticipated, and so decided to accelerate their attack to the Boston Marathon on April 15, Patriots’ Day in Massachusetts, according to the account that Dzhokhar provided to authorities.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • Police/Fire • Urban/City Life and Issues • Violence • Young Adults • * Economics, Politics • Defense, National Security, Military • Terrorism

A US government-appointed panel urged Washington Tuesday to step up pressure on Pakistan over religious freedom, warning that risks to its minorities have reached a crisis level.

In an annual report, the US Commission on International Religious Freedom also raised concerns about what it called a worsening situation in China, as well as problems in Egypt, Iran, Myanmar, Saudi Arabia and other nations.

The commission, which advises the government but does not make decisions, called for the United States to designate Pakistan, among eight other countries, as a “country of particular concern,” meaning it could be subject to sanctions if it fails to improve.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Globalization • Religion & Culture • * Economics, Politics • Foreign Relations • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • Asia • Pakistan • * Religion News & Commentary • Inter-Faith Relations • Other Churches • Other Faiths • Islam • Muslim-Christian relations

The economy lurched this spring into an even lower gear, from manufacturing to services to construction, leaving the Federal Reserve poised to prolong or expand its bond-buying stimulus.

Central bankers Wednesday kept benchmark rates near zero and quantitative easing purchases at $85 billion a month. But changes in their statement highlighted shifting emphasis.

"The Committee is prepared to increase or reduce the pace of its purchases to maintain appropriate policy accommodation as the outlook for the labor market or inflation changes," it said.

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Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • Housing/Real Estate Market • Labor/Labor Unions/Labor Market • The U.S. Government • Federal Reserve • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A.

Italian police arrested four men on Tuesday, who are suspected of planning terrorist attacks in Italy, the US and Israel, reports Reuters News. One of the arrested men is believed to be a Tunisian former imam at a mosque in the city of Andria, in the southern Italian region of Puglia, where police said the terror cell was based. According to paramilitary police, the men aimed to train terrorists and send them to fight abroad, and are suspected of conspiracy to commit international terrorism and incite racial hatred.

According to investigators, the four men focused their recruitment activities among illegal immigrants, who were subsequently sent to training camps in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen and Chechnya. Police described the group as being characterized by "fierce anti-Semitism and anti-Western sentiment" and an aversion to states viewed as enemies in the context of religious war.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • Police/Fire • Religion & Culture • * Economics, Politics • Terrorism • * International News & Commentary • Europe • Italy • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Islam

In the thirty or so years that I have been following EU affairs – or is it nearer 35 years now since I studied in French literature in Paris, and German philosophy in Mainz – I have never seen ties between Europe’s two great land states reduced so low.

The French Socialist Party crossed a line by lashing out at Chancellor Angela Merkel in person. It is one thing to protest “German austerity”, it is quite another to rebuke the “selfish intransigence of Mrs Merkel, who thinks of nothing but the deposits of German savers, the trade balance recorded by Berlin and her electoral future”.

There is no justification for such an ad hominem attack. German policy is indeed destructive, but that is structural. It is built into the mechanisms of EMU and the anthropological make-up of the enterprise.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • History • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Credit Markets • Currency Markets • Euro • European Central Bank • The Banking System/Sector • The Credit Freeze Crisis of Fall 2008/The Recession of 2007-- • Foreign Relations • Politics in General • City Government • * International News & Commentary • Europe • France • Germany

[Neil] Diamond flew his private jet to Boston. He showed up unannounced to Fenway about 30 minutes before start time, called the control room and asked if he could sing.

When the eighth inning came, Neil walked out in a Red Sox cap and the 35,000-strong crowd cheered. ''What an honour it is for me to be here today!'' Diamond told them. ''I bring love from the whole country.''

Then they sang along, out of sync to the backing track but that hardly mattered. Neither did the fact the Red Sox beat the Royals something to something else.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Music • Sports • Urban/City Life and Issues • Violence • * Economics, Politics • Terrorism • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • Australia / NZ

Donald Kagan is engaging in one last argument. For his "farewell lecture" here at Yale on Thursday afternoon, the 80-year-old scholar of ancient Greece—whose four-volume history of the Peloponnesian War inspired comparisons to Edward Gibbon's Roman history—uncorked a biting critique of American higher education.

Universities, he proposed, are failing students and hurting American democracy. Curricula are "individualized, unfocused and scattered." On campus, he said, "I find a kind of cultural void, an ignorance of the past, a sense of rootlessness and aimlessness." Rare are "faculty with atypical views," he charged. "Still rarer is an informed understanding of the traditions and institutions of our Western civilization and of our country and an appreciation of their special qualities and values." He counseled schools to adopt "a common core of studies" in the history, literature and philosophy "of our culture." By "our" he means Western....

Mr. Kagan offers another explanation. "You can't have a fight," he says one recent day at his office, "because you don't have two sides. The other side won."

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • History • Philosophy • Young Adults • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A.

The British public hold Google and religious institutions in equally low regard, with less than one in five saying they believe the search giant and faith leaders have their best interests at heart.

By contrast, almost 40 per cent said they thought the NHS put their needs first, the highest scoring institution on the list, followed by the police, who have the confidence of more than a quarter of Britons.

And in a secular world of Sunday shopping, Tesco and Sainsburys were ranked as more trustworthy than religious groups, with 19 per cent saying they trusted supermarkets, compared with just 17 per cent for Google and religious institutions.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Provinces • Church of England (CoE) • * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Corporations/Corporate Life • * International News & Commentary • England / UK

The Latino evangelical Christian movement is ascending from a remote constituency to a force, while also striving to reshape culture and politics in our country.

Believers such as Rodriguez want to marry the righteousness of Billy Graham with the justice of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Those two world views are not typically associated in a meaningful way but have found a nexus in Latino cultures, where people are comfortable with invoking God in everyday life while taking a less strident tone on immigration.

Given Latinos' strong influence on the last presidential election, the work of faith leaders such as Rodriguez hint at greater changes within our political culture – some of which could prove surprising.

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Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Ministry of the Ordained • * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • * Economics, Politics • Immigration • Politics in General • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Evangelicals

President Hamid Karzai acknowledged Monday that the Central Intelligence Agency has been dropping off bags of cash at his office for a decade, saying the money was used for “various purposes” and expressing gratitude to the United States for making the payments.

Mr. Karzai described the sums delivered by the C.I.A. as a “small amount,” though he offered few other details. But former and current advisers of the Afghan leader have said the C.I.A. cash deliveries have totaled tens of millions of dollars over the past decade and have been used to pay off warlords, lawmakers and others whose support the Afghan leader depends upon.

The payments are not universally supported in the United States government. American diplomats and soldiers expressed dismay on Monday about the C.I.A.’s cash deliveries, which some said fueled corruption. They spoke privately because the C.I.A. effort is classified.

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Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Defense, National Security, Military • Foreign Relations • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • Asia • Afghanistan • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

Mr. [Reed] Hastings said he realized that the company’s attempt to both raise prices and separate into two companies, one the legacy DVD-by-mail business and the other the up-and-coming broadband streaming business, was trying to do too much too fast. Angry subscribers abandoned the company in droves (800,000 in the fourth quarter of 2011 alone), revenue missed estimates and the stock plunged.

“I messed up,” Mr. Hastings wrote in an unusually forthright September 2011 blog post. Citing the precedents of AOL and Borders Books, which struggled or failed to make the digital transition, “my greatest fear at Netflix has been that we wouldn’t make the leap from success in DVDs to success in streaming.” But in the rush to accelerate the transition, he wrote, “In hindsight, I slid into arrogance based upon past success.” He also made a video apology.

Mr. Hastings said he didn’t expect the apology alone to “turn it around,” adding, “I wasn’t naïve enough to think most customers care if the C.E.O. apologizes, but I thought it was honest and appropriate.”

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Blogging & the Internet • History • Movies & Television • Psychology • Science & Technology • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Corporations/Corporate Life

Justin Welby, the new leader of nearly 80m Anglicans around the world, has won a respectful hearing for his ideas on banking and the British economy. Even if they disagree with the details, people have generally not reacted by saying "this man hasn't a clue what he is talking about" or "he should go back to singing hymns."

On April 21st, the archbishop of Canterbury suggested that big, unhealthy banks should be broken up into regional ones, as part of a "revolution in the aims" of banks designed to make sure that they served society as well as their own narrow interests. That sounded very like the proposal made last month by Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, for local lenders modelled on the German system. It comes at a time when the government faces hard decisions about the future of the Royal Bank of Scotland after its rescue by the tax-payer. Given the immediacy of the issue, some people will accuse the archbishop (who lists his hobbies as French culture, sailing and politics) of making narrow political points rather than broad moral ones.

But he also had some longer-term ideas on the financial sector. Drawing on his experience as a member of a parliamentary Banking Standards Commission, he said senior positions in banking ought to form a regulated profession which required qualifications.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Archbishop of Canterbury • --Justin Welby • * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Corporations/Corporate Life • Credit Markets • Currency Markets • Stock Market • The Banking System/Sector • The Credit Freeze Crisis of Fall 2008/The Recession of 2007-- • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

After four years of increasing tensions between some Christian missionaries and local Muslims, the annual Arab International Festival in Dearborn is being moved from a street that has open access to a public park that could restrict admission to paid attendees.

Dearborn Mayor Jack O’Reilly said Friday that the city plans to shift the festival — the biggest annual outdoor gathering of Arab Americans in the U.S. — from Warren Avenue to Ford Woods Park, near the corner of Ford and Greenfield roads. One of the reasons for the move is liability concerns; the city has been hit with lawsuits from some Christian missionaries alleging their free speech rights were curtailed at the festival.

“Considering everything we’ve been through and what happened in the past,” said O’Reilly, the city wanted a place “where you can have a controlled site.”

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • City Government • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • * Religion News & Commentary • Inter-Faith Relations • Other Faiths • Islam • Muslim-Christian relations

The nephew of bishop Yohanna Ibrahim, one of the two archbishops kidnapped in Syria a week ago, said he hopes Syrian Christians will not use the incident as an incentive to flee the country.

Bishop Ibrahim, head of the Syriac Orthodox Church in Aleppo, was kidnapped last Monday, alongside his counterpart from the Greek Orthodox Church, Bishop Boulos Yaziji, close to the Turkish border.The driver of the vehicle, Fathallah Kaboud, was killed.

Kaboud had been the personal chauffeur of bishop Ibrahim for a number of years. He leaves behind a wife and two children.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Marriage & Family • Religion & Culture • Violence • * Economics, Politics • Defense, National Security, Military • Foreign Relations • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • Middle East • Syria • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Orthodox Church

In the latest reported attack on a high-ranking Syrian official, Prime Minister Wael Nader al-Halqi survived what appeared to be an assassination attempt Monday in an upscale neighborhood of the capital, Damascus, when a car bomb exploded near his convoy, according to state-run media and opposition reports saying that a bodyguard was killed.

The reports said the attack had taken place in Mezze, a central district where many senior officials live. The prime minister was reportedly unhurt, thought state media said others had been injured. Video on state television showed a car reduced to a charred skeleton and, nearby, a bus with its windows shattered.

The assault fit a pattern of attempts to attack high officials.

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Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Defense, National Security, Military • Foreign Relations • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • Middle East • Syria

Speaking on Radio 4... [on Saturday], the Archbishop of Canterbury stressed the implications of Christian ethics for the City of London

The Christian Gopsel has "always had strong social implications" and been concerned with "the common good", the Archbishop of Canterbury said....

In an interview for Radio 4's Week in Westminster, Archbishop Justin said his main mission wasn't to inject morality back into British business. But he said that how the City of London - which “is so important and so full of very gifted people” – behaves in relation to the common good is a major concern not just for the Church but for society generally.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Archbishop of Canterbury • --Justin Welby • * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Corporations/Corporate Life • Credit Markets • Currency Markets • Stock Market • The Banking System/Sector • * International News & Commentary • England / UK • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they are taking, in conjunction with other Governments, to document the scale and nature of the alleged use of sexual violence as an instrument of war by the Government of Syria and other parties involved in the conflict in Syria....

To ask Her Majesty's Government what is their assessment of the extent of the use of sexual violence as an instrument of war in Syria....

To ask Her Majesty's Government what resources they are providing, either unilaterally or as part of international action, to ensure that victims of sexual violence in Syria are provided with the necessary medical and trauma support.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Provinces • Church of England (CoE) • CoE Bishops • * Culture-Watch • Sexuality • Violence • Women • * Economics, Politics • Defense, National Security, Military • Foreign Relations • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • England / UK • Middle East • Syria • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

Set amid the rolling plains outside Aleppo, the town of al-Safira looks just like another vicious battleground in Syria's civil war. On one side are lightly-armed rebels, on the other are government troops, and in between is a hotly-contested no-man's land of bombed-out homes and burned-out military vehicles.

The fight for al-Safira is no ordinary turf war, however, and the prize can be found behind the perimeter walls of the heavily-guarded military base on the edge of town. Inside what looks like a drab industrial estate is one of Syria's main facilities for producing chemical weapons - and among its products is sarin, the lethal nerve gas that the regime is now feared to be deploying in its bid to cling to power.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Science & Technology • * Economics, Politics • Foreign Relations • Politics in General • Terrorism • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • England / UK • Middle East • Syria

To retirees, the offers can sound like the answer to every money worry: convert tomorrow’s pension checks into today’s hard cash.

But these offers, known as pension advances, are having devastating financial consequences for a growing number of older Americans, threatening their retirement savings and plunging them further into debt. The advances, federal and state authorities say, are not advances at all, but carefully disguised loans that require borrowers to sign over all or part of their monthly pension checks. They carry interest rates that are often many times higher than those on credit cards.

In lean economic times, people with public pensions — military veterans, teachers, firefighters, police officers and others — are being courted particularly aggressively by pension-advance companies, which operate largely outside of state and federal banking regulations, but are now drawing scrutiny from Congress and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Aging / the Elderly • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Labor/Labor Unions/Labor Market • Personal Finance • Pensions • The Credit Freeze Crisis of Fall 2008/The Recession of 2007-- • * Theology • Anthropology • Ethics / Moral Theology

The Boston Marathon bombings last week shocked America and served as a reminder that the threat of terrorism in the western world is still alive. While offering condolences to the victims, one group is pointing out that Nigerian Christians face such horrors every week in the face of Islamic extremist group Boko Haram.

In an open letter to the American people this week, the Christian Association of Nigerian-Americans (CANAN) wrote, "The evil of terrorism in today's world are now well-known and so too must be the demand of vigilance in the overall protection of the common good."

Laolu Akande, executive director of CANAN, is urging Americans to help protect Christians who are regularly attacked in Nigeria.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • Violence • * Economics, Politics • Terrorism • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Islam • Muslim-Christian relations

The Anglican bishops of the West Indies have urged their governments to hold fast and resist pressure from Britain and the United States to legalize gay rights and gay marriage.

In a statement released on 25 April 2013 following the House of Bishops meeting in Barbados, bishops of the Church the Province of the West Indies (CPWI) reiterated their belief in marriage “defined as a faithful, committed, permanent and legally sanctioned relationship between a man and a woman.”

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Provinces • West Indies • * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • Marriage & Family • Religion & Culture • Sexuality • --Civil Unions & Partnerships • * Economics, Politics • Foreign Relations • Politics in General • * Theology • Anthropology • Ethics / Moral Theology • Theology: Scripture

In ways both big and small, both fleeting and transformational, this time simply felt different.

On the lawn of the First Baptist Church in the Jamaica Plain neighborhood of Boston, Eve Nagler stood at a prayer vigil two days after terrorists attempted to shred the joy of Boston's biggest day with nails and BB's and bits of hurtling metal.

This, she knew, was not 9/11 – the scale, the shock, the fear were nothing like people had felt 12 years ago. Yet something else had shifted, too – something perhaps less easily definable but no less palpable to many of those at the vigil and across the suburbs that bound themselves together as "Boston Strong."

There was a calm, not only in the streets but in raw and wounded hearts.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • History • Urban/City Life and Issues • Violence • * Economics, Politics • Terrorism • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A.

Justin Welby, the archbishop of Canterbury, laughs when it is suggested that he has a mission to raise moral standards in the City. “My key mission is to lead the Church in worshipping Jesus Christ,” he says.

He points out, however, that Christian teaching concerns the “common good”, and he is concerned about “how the City of London, which is so important and so full of very gifted people”, relates to this concept.

Dr Welby is in a unique position to do something about it. Outside the cathedral he enjoys two political pulpits from which to shape the debate: in the House of Lords and on the cross-party parliamentary banking commission.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Archbishop of Canterbury • --Justin Welby • * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Corporations/Corporate Life • Credit Markets • Currency Markets • Stock Market • The Banking System/Sector • * International News & Commentary • England / UK • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

Millennials got a bad rap during the recession. They have been working less, earning less, and, as I’ve pointed out in this magazine before, buying far fewer houses and cars than their parents did—or than the economy needs them to in order to move forward. But all of this is poised to change. In the near future, these same young people may be the very ones to supercharge the recovery. How? By growing up.....

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • History • Marriage & Family • Young Adults • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Personal Finance

The City of London has been affected by a "culture of entitlement" at variance with what others think reasonable, the new Archbishop of Canterbury has said.

But the Most Reverend Justin Welby told the BBC business morality was in many ways much better than in the past.

He also defended his description of the UK's economic situation as a depression rather than a recession.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Archbishop of Canterbury • --Justin Welby • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Corporations/Corporate Life • Credit Markets • Currency Markets • Stock Market • The Banking System/Sector • * International News & Commentary • England / UK • * Theology • Anthropology • Ethics / Moral Theology

On Tuesday, “Pope Francis: His Life in His Own Words,” a book of conversations with the man who was then Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, will be published in English (Putnam; $24.95). These interviews from 2010 with two journalists in Argentina yield cute facts about the new boss of the church — a favorite movie? “Babette’s Feast” — but not much interesting theology.

But one passage in the book, at first glance rather slight, ends up insinuating a radical note into the proceedings. On a close read, it seems that Pope Francis believes that we must — indeed, that God is calling us to — relax.

Responding to the question, “Do we need to rediscover the meaning of leisure?” Pope Francis replies: “Together with a culture of work, there must be a culture of leisure as gratification. To put it another way: people who work must take the time to relax, to be with their families, to enjoy themselves, read, listen to music, play a sport. But this is being destroyed, in large part, by the elimination of the Sabbath rest day. More and more people work on Sundays as a consequence of the competitiveness imposed by a consumer society.” In such cases, he concludes, “work ends up dehumanizing people.”

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Books • Religion & Culture • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Roman Catholic • Pope Francis • * Theology • Anthropology • Ethics / Moral Theology

Pastor Greg Laurie knows a thing or two about prayer in tough times.

The honorary chairman of this year’s National Day of Prayer (May 2) says prayer was the only thing that got him through his son’s death five years ago. When fellow megachurch pastor Rick Warren lost his son Matthew to suicide, Laurie was the man he most wanted to hear from.

Laurie, 60, who leads the evangelical Harvest Christian Fellowship in Riverside, Calif., talked about prayer, grief and what not to say when a friend’s loved one dies. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

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Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Death / Burial / Funerals • Spirituality/Prayer • * Culture-Watch • Psychology • Violence • * Economics, Politics • Terrorism • * Theology • Pastoral Theology

The U.S. economy expanded in the first quarter but failed to gather as much steam as expected, raising concerns of another year of sluggish growth.

Consumer spending advanced during the first quarter despite tax increases, but those gains were held in check by slowing business investment and government cutbacks.

The nation's gross domestic product, a measure of all goods and services produced in the economy, advanced at a 2.5% annual rate between January and March, the Commerce Department said Friday. Economists had forecast a 3.2% expansion.

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Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • Housing/Real Estate Market • Labor/Labor Unions/Labor Market • Personal Finance • The Credit Freeze Crisis of Fall 2008/The Recession of 2007--

The Rev. John Wykes, director of the St. Francis Chapel at Boston's soaring Prudential Center, and the Rev. Tom Carzon, rector of Our Lady of Grace Seminary, were among the priests who were turned away right after the bombings. It was jarring for Father Wykes, who, as a hospital chaplain in Illinois a decade ago, was never denied access to crime or accident scenes.

"I was allowed to go anywhere. In Boston, I don't have that access," he says.

But Father Wykes says he has noticed a shift in the societal role of clergy over the past few decades: "In the Bing Crosby era—in the '40s, '50s, '60s—a priest with a collar could get in anywhere. That's changed. Priests are no longer considered to be emergency responders."

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Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Ministry of the Ordained • * Culture-Watch • Sports • Urban/City Life and Issues • Violence • * Economics, Politics • Terrorism • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Roman Catholic

In recent years, I often recall the first time I saw my dad pray. It was unsettling. I came upon him in church, where he was kneeling, his hands shading his eyes. He had a type of intensity that, at three or four years old, I had never seen before. Nor had I had ever seen him kneel before his God—or anyone else, for that matter.

My mind drifts back, because what I witness today in times of worship is such a contrast. My father was spiritual, as we might say today, but he was not very religious. It is not the memory of his posture that remains vividly with me; it was the demonstration of an aspect of his heart—a spiritual point of view—that captured my budding spiritual imagination. Today, we may kneel, but so many of us, I fear, have strayed far from the reverence of heart that our elders knew, not so long ago.

Our worship has been deeply influenced by a culture that is immersed in the consumption of media. We bring that point of view to our worship. What will it give me? What will I learn? Is it helpful? The focus has shifted from deity to the consumer.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Provinces • Anglican Church of Canada • * Christian Life / Church Life • Spirituality/Prayer • * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • * International News & Commentary • Canada • * Theology • Anthropology • Ethics / Moral Theology • Pastoral Theology

Security experts at Twitter were fighting a seemingly losing battle yesterday against the Syrian Electronic Army, a shadowy group that sparked panic on financial markets this week by faking a news report about an bomb attack on the White House.

The group, which purports to support the regime in Damascus, hacked the Associated Press news agency’s Twitter account and reported that explosions in the White House had injured President Obama, sending markets into a tailspin, and wiping $136 billion (£89 billion) off the [value of the top 500 U.S. stocks in seconds]....

Read it all (requires subscription) and there is a lot more there from the WSJ.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Blogging & the Internet • --Social Networking • Media • Science & Technology • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Stock Market • * International News & Commentary • Middle East • Syria

“We are all saddened by the deaths of innocent people during the recent violence that took place in Muxungue, Mozambique,” said the Bishop. “We call on all to follow in the way of peace, creating space and opportunity for all voices to be heard in a transparent process that renounces violence and serves the common good.”

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • Violence • * Economics, Politics • Defense, National Security, Military • * International News & Commentary • Africa • Mozambique

A state House bill aimed at giving S.C. courts clearer guidelines on when to terminate parental rights, especially in cases where parents or guardians have a history of child or drug abuse, passed a key vote in the House Thursday.

The House voted 104-0 to give second reading to the bill, named Jaidon’s Law after a toddler who died from a drug overdose a week after the state returned him to his parents, who had prior drug charges.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Law & Legal Issues • Marriage & Family • Violence • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • State Government • * South Carolina

Since the very first days of the Syrian conflict in March 2011, we have prayed as we watched in horror and sorrow the escalating violence that has rent this country apart. We have grieved with all Syrians - with the families of each and every human life lost and with all communities whose neighbourhoods and livelihoods have suffered from escalating and pervasive violence.

And today, our prayers also go with the ancient communities of our Christian brothers and sisters in Syria. The kidnapping this week of two Metropolitan bishops of Aleppo, Mar Gregorios Ibrahim of the Syriac Orthodox Church and Paul Yazigi of the Greek Orthodox Church of Antioch, and the killing of their driver while they were carrying out a humanitarian mission, is another telling sign of the terrible circumstances that continue to engulf all Syrians.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Archbishop of Canterbury • --Justin Welby • * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • Violence • * Economics, Politics • Defense, National Security, Military • Foreign Relations • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • Middle East • Syria • * Religion News & Commentary • Ecumenical Relations • Other Churches • Roman Catholic

The White House said on Thursday that American intelligence agencies now believed, with “varying degrees of confidence,” that the Syrian government had used chemical weapons, but it said it needed conclusive proof before President Obama would take action.

The disclosure, in letters to Congressional leaders, takes the administration a step closer to acknowledging that President Bashar al-Assad has crossed a red line established by Mr. Obama last summer, when he said the United States would take unspecified action against Syria if there was evidence that chemical weapons had been used in the civil war.

The White House emphasized that, “given the stakes involved,” the United States still needed “credible and corroborated facts” before deciding on a course of action. The letter, signed by the president’s director of legislative affairs, Miguel E. Rodriguez, said the United States was pressing for a “comprehensive United Nations investigation that can credibly evaluate the evidence and establish what happened.”

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Science & Technology • * Economics, Politics • Defense, National Security, Military • Foreign Relations • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • Middle East • Syria • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology