The Standing Committee of the Diocese of South Carolina met on June 9, 2007, immediately following the Diocesan Convention held at St. James Episcopal Church on James Island, South Carolina.
At its meeting, the Committee unanimously agreed:

1. To call for a Special Convention to elect a Bishop. The Convention is to be held at ten o’clock a.m. on Saturday, August 4, 2007 at St. James’ Church, James Island, South Carolina.

2. The Standing Committee unanimously nominated The Very Reverend Mark J. Lawrence to be the next Bishop of South Carolina.

3. Because of the necessity for background checks, no nominations from the floor will be allowed at the Convention. In lieu thereof, the Committee has established a petition process, with the following guidelines:

Read it all.

The Los Angeles Times article is here, and it includes this:

During a teleconference, [Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts] Schori said the panel’s action was “neither go back to the drawing board nor a complete rejection,” suggesting that the “conversation” could continue at the U.S. bishops meeting in September in New Orleans.

But the Rev. Kendall S. Harmon, editor of the Anglican Digest and Canon Theologian of the Diocese of South Carolina, disagreed.

“It’s a clear rejection of any sense of commitment to the Communion and any attempt to engage seriously with the request of the primates,” Harmon said. “They are not interested in any aspects of what the primates have requested. That’s all autonomy and no communion. It’s certainly making a very bad situation worse.”

Read the whole article, and also read the Reuters article there.

Please note that Robert Duncan is a journalist and ombudsman for foreign press in Spain. He is an Executive Board Member and Vice-President for the Organización de Periodismo y Comunicación Ibero-Americana, and Vice-President of the energy and telecommunications association, APSCE–KSH.

What is the state of the Anglican Church in the US and world, and the ongoing talks between the Anglicans and Catholic Church?

I don’t know a lot about the official conversations between the Anglicans and the RC Church, but I think the relations are still cordial, and we have received encouragement from our local bishop and from Pope Benedict XVI when he was still Cardinal Ratzinger, to keep up the defense of the orthodox faith in the face of the revisionism in the Episcopal Church.

Has the crisis (related to the Robinson ordination) accelerated talks, etc. There has been some talk that this may be happening with other related groups, such as those in the Continuum?

This is certainly true here in the USA as the continuing Anglican Churches, which are not in the Anglican Communion, are very excited about meeting with the Anglican Communion Network.

There were several of the Common Cause partners at the conference last month and a great sense of hope for the future.

The key in this process is the figure of Bob Duncan as they all respect him and his leadership.

But of course it is a lot more work for him.

Really in fact the CAN has three different groups that make it up: the Common Cause, the Network dioceses and the Network parishes, which are in dioceses where the bishop is more or less unfriendly (some of these of course are no longer part of ECUSA and now come under the oversight of an African or South American bishop).

It’s quite a mess and we long to see some order restored, but have to conclude that God is doing a new thing, and this includes bringing many different denominations together in a new way. We have no idea how it will work out, but we know it is in God’s hands….

Read it all.

From the Daily News of Newburyport:

West Newbury’s All Saints Episcopal Church may move to a spot just down the street from Amesbury’s existing Episcopal church, but the two churches are unlikely to merge, the assistant rector at All Saints Church said yesterday.

All Saints Episcopal Church wants to buy and move into the Sacred Heart parish building on Friend Street, which the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston has offered for sale. It’s almost within sight of Amesbury’s St. James Episcopal Church, on Main Street.

The Rev. Michael Morse of All Saints said yesterday a merger of the two Episcopal churches is unlikely if the move happens. The leaders of All Saints have had “cordial” discussions with St. James officials about their possible move, he said.

Contacted yesterday, the Rev. Susan Esco Chandler of St. James declined to comment on the situation, saying she doesn’t know much information about it.

Read it all.

The chair of Executive Council’s National Concerns Committee has written to the Bishop of Mississippi informing him that while The Episcopal Church does not support every action of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice (RCRC), Executive Council has no intention of withdrawing its membership.

The Rt. Rev. Duncan M. Gray, III wrote council April 13 noting that at the most recent annual meeting of the Diocese of Mississippi, clergy and lay delegates had approved a resolution objecting to the decision by Executive Council in January 2006 to join RCRC on behalf of The Episcopal Church.

“Its position of advocacy, both in terms of legislative initiatives, and organized opposition to specific Supreme Court nominees, unnecessarily disrupts our Church’s carefully balanced and nuanced position on abortion as articulated by General Convention,” Bishop Gray stated.

Read it all.

As Canada’s Anglican Church prepares for its historic ”“ and possibly schismatic ”“ decision on blessing homosexual unions, six of its most senior clerics Thursday called for a yes vote that would show “justice, compassion and hope for all God’s people.”

The declaration from the half-dozen retired archbishops from across the country reveals a sharp division in the church’s hierarchy.

While the archbishops said that blessing the unions of same-sex couples does not touch on the church’s “core doctrine,” last month the national House of Bishops issued a pastoral statement saying that the “doctrine and discipline of our church does not clearly permit [same-sex blessings].”

The vote will be taken at the church’s general synod, or parliament, meeting next week in Winnipeg.

Read it all.

THOSE OF US who have lived with the Bay State’s marriage war for years can lose sight of how extreme we appear to much of the rest of the country.

This afternoon, the Legislature shot down the proposed constitutional amendment that would have banned same-sex marriage. A few minutes after the vote, I was on the air discussing it with Dennis Prager, a nationally syndicated radio host based in Los Angeles. Citizen initiatives and referendums are nothing new to Californians, who vote on ballot issues all the time, but Prager wanted me to shed some light on the convoluted process a citizen-proposed constitutional amendment in Massachusetts must go through before it reaches the voters.

So I explained that even though 170,000 Bay State voters had signed petitions to put a marriage amendment on the ballot, it first had to undergo a vote in two consecutive sessions of the Legislature, and win support from at least 25 percent of the lawmakers each time. Since it had failed to do that, the amendment was now dead.

Read it all.

From the Wall Street Journal:

For many Americans, Sunday is unlike any other day of the week. They spend its luxurious hours curled up in bed with the paper, meeting friends for brunch, working off hangovers, watching golf, running errands and preparing themselves for the workweek ahead. But Sunday is also, for many, the Sabbath–a special day for religious reasons. Not that you would notice.

“Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy,” we are told in Exodus. Of all the gifts Jews gave the world, that of a weekly day of rest is certainly one to be cherished. And yet the Sabbath is now marked more by its neglect than its keeping. Or so says Christopher Ringwald in his new book “A Day Apart.”

Mr. Ringwald notes that in the late 18th century, states banned entertainment, hunting or unnecessary travel on Sundays. The Second Great Awakening in the early 1800s spread Sabbath-keeping to the frontiers. Church membership doubled, Sunday schools proliferated and long sermons dominated the morning. It was unthinkable that the general store would remain open on the Sabbath. “Nothing strikes a foreigner on his arrival in America more forcibly than the regard paid to the Sabbath,” Alexis de Tocqueville wrote in 1840. “Not only have all ceased to work, but they appear to have ceased to exist.” The so-called blue laws that were a part of American culture–closing down bars and preventing the sale of liquor on Sunday–were commonplace well into the 20th century.

But the Sabbath today is at odds with commercial culture. To generalize shamelessly from personal experience: My brother-in-law, who manages a national retail store in Colorado, works on Sundays, following church. He was shocked recently to find out he is now required to open the store on Easter Sunday. Easter used to be the one Sunday each year when retail stores closed. No longer.

Read it all.

Here is an excerpt from one:

Our problem is coming from American. Now Akinola is walking with someone named Martyn Minns but we know that Akinola is a puppet for Minns. Most of what Akinola says and his press releases are written
by Minns and coming from America. We want to attend the Lambeth Conference to make the presence of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered people in Nigeria known. TEC can help us with that. Now we need your help, your spiritual help and your financial help.”

The question was asked, “If we speak out and come to your aid, we risk loosing our place in the Communion. That means you will loose our voice on your behalf. What do you say about that?” He replied, “That is a sort of black mail. If you are quiet and TEC doesn’t come to help us, we do not stand a chance.”

A second question came about his plans for the future. He replied, “I was frightened and had to leave Nigeria… I went to a conference in England and then demonstrated in Geneva. I don’t want to live in Europe. What I am doing is for my people in Nigeria. The Nigerian government is still pursuing me and they want to kill me. Colin (Changing Attitudes, England) gave me money to go to Dar es Salaam and I tried to confront Akinola. He said he was ill. ”

Several gay activists in the room started commenting, saying that Nigeria’s behavior towards gays violates international and human rights treaties and that Nigeria routinely kills gays.

The time allotted ended and Davis was embraced and encouraged as a hero. Both committees had confidential meetings. As of tonight, there is no decision on whether he will be allowed to address the full Council. He is still here. Davis plans to return to Togo in East Africa soon.

I have not had the opportunity to full research his claims….

Read it all and the other two as well.

From the ACC News:

More than 400 people including delegates, partners and staff will gather in Winnipeg next week for the Anglican Church of Canada’s 38th General Synod — a crucial assembly that will elect a new national leader or Primate and once again tackle the difficult and divisive issue of the blessing of same-gender relationships.

The General Synod meets every three years and consists of bishops, clergy and lay people elected as delegates locally in each of the church’s 30 dioceses. It is the Anglican church’s chief governing body, dealing with everything from changes to church laws and practices to finances and the membership of committees that oversee church programs in years when General Synod does not meet.

The synod is being held at the Marlborough Hotel in downtown Winnipeg, with the diocese of Rupert’s Land acting as host.

The seven-day synod will be chaired by Archbishop Andrew Hutchison, the current Primate, who has announced his retirement, effective June 22. On that day, clergy and lay delegates will elect a new Primate. Church practice is that Canadian Anglican Bishops nominate candidates for the primacy but do not participate in the actual election.

At their spring meeting, the bishops nominated bishops Bruce Howe of Huron, Fred Hiltz of Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, George Bruce of Ontario and Victoria Matthews of Edmonton as candidates for the primacy. It is possible for electors to ask the bishops for more nominees after the electoral process has begun.

The new Primate will be formally installed in office at a special service the evening of Monday, June 25.

Read it all.

From here:

“I am delighted to hear of the proposed consecration of Canon Dr Bill Atwood by the Primate of Kenya which seems to be an entirely reasonable response to the current wayward reaction of TEC from the standard of teaching of the Anglican Communion. I wish him well and God’s richest blessing on his ministry.”

From the diocese of new Westminster:

The Anglican Communion described in 1930 at the Lambeth Conference: “…a fellowship, within the one Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, of those duly constituted dioceses, provinces or regional Churches in communion with the See [Diocese] of Canterbury…”

In other words, “dioceses, provinces, or regional Churches” are in the Anglican Communion if they are “duly constituted” and Canterbury wants to be in communion with them.

In practice, how you can tell whether you’re still on the good side of the See of Canterbury seems to work out as being invited by the Archbishop of Canterbury to the Lambeth Conference.

It’s up to the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Rev. Rowan Williams, to decide who to invite. Up till now at least, the Archbishops of Canterbury have invited everyone, except in very rare instances of competing bishops in the same geographical area.

There’s nothing said about heads of the various national Anglican Churches, the Primates, helping the Archbishop of Canterbury decide who’s to come – although the present Archbishop of Canterbury in some statements seems to have suggested he might seek advice.

To turn to history, it was North Americans who got us into this strange situation in the first place.

It was an American bishop from Vermont who originally had the idea of a Lambeth Conference. But it was Canadian Bishops, who in 1865 urgently asked for the then 144 bishops in the Anglican Communion to meet at Lambeth in 1867.

Read it all. Please note that the author fails to give adequate attention to the way in which the controversy focused on how to work with and understand Holy Scripture. As Bishop Colenso wrote:

the Pentateuch, as a whole, cannot personally have been written by Moses, or by anyone acquainted personally with the facts which it professes to describe, and, further, that the (so-called) Mosaic narrative, by whomsoever written, and though imparting to us, as I fully believe it does, revelations of the Divine Will and Character, cannot be regarded as historically true.

The executive council of the Episcopal Church announced yesterday that it would not comply with demands from leaders of the global Anglican Communion to retract the church’s liberal position on homosexuality and create alternative supervision for disaffected conservative Episcopalians.

The announcement came a day after the Anglican archbishop of Kenya said he would consecrate an American bishop in Texas to minister to alienated Episcopalians in the United States. In May, the archbishop of Nigeria installed a bishop in Virginia, a step considered by many to be outside the bounds of Anglicanism’s traditional lines of authority.

The churches in the Anglican Communion, which trace their heritage to the Church of England, have been brought to the brink of schism over the issue of homosexuality. The executive council’s action makes clear that the Episcopal Church, Anglicanism’s American branch, does not intend to back down.

Leaders of the Anglican Communion’s geographical provinces, known as primates, issued an ultimatum to the Episcopal Church in February demanding that it stop blessing same-sex unions and agree not to consecrate another openly gay bishop. The primates gave the Episcopal Church until Sept. 30 to comply.

Read it all.

I am extremely pleased that the Anglican Church of Kenya has named Canon Bill Atwood as a Bishop Suffragan. Bill has served as my chaplain and is therefore well known to me both as a colleague and a good friend. He is a Christian priest of character and faithful service. In the painful circumstances of the Anglican Communion I deeply appreciate the bonds which link many primates together. I welcome the prospect of congregations under my care and protection working more closely with those of Kenya and other provinces. In the absence of even a tiny indication of willingness from the Episcopal Church to address the crisis, those who wish to remain orthodox within the US cannot be abandoned. Collaboration among Provinces working in the States and the Network is helping build a unified future for those who share the historic Biblical faith.

–The Most Rev. Gregory Venables is Primate of the Southern Cone

From ENS:

Episcopal Church dioceses that change their constitutions in an attempt to bypass the Church’s Constitution and Canons were warned by the Executive Council June 14 that their actions are “null and void.”

The Council passed Resolution NAC023, reminding dioceses that they are required to “accede” to the Constitution and Canons, and declaring that any diocesan action that removes that accession from its constitution is “null and void.” That declaration, the resolution said, means that their constitutions “shall be as they were as if such amendments had not been passed.”

The action came on the last day of its four-day meeting at the Sheraton hotel in Parsippany, New Jersey. The Council spent June 11, 13, and 14 in New Jersey, and on June 12 traveled to the Episcopal Church Center at 815 Second Ave. in New York City. Earlier in the day, the Council issued its reply to the communiqué issued by the Anglican Primates at the end of their February meeting in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. ENS coverage of that statement and a link to the statement itself is available here.

At the close of the meeting, Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori congratulated the Council for engaging a variety of issues “faithfully and with clarity,” recognizing the diversity of opinion that exists within the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion. She also noted that Council learned that there are sometimes other ways to cope with tough issues rather than legislation that can result in winners-and-losers situations. She observed that during the Parsippany meeting, members worked pastorally behind the scenes to achieve consensus on some issues.

Read it all.

A key Episcopal panel defied conservatives Thursday, saying that Episcopal leaders should not cede authority to overseas Anglicans who want the church to halt its march toward full acceptance of gays.

The Episcopal Executive Council said that Anglican leaders, called primates, cannot make decisions for the American denomination, which is the Anglican body in the United States.

“We question the authority of the primates to impose deadlines and demands upon any of the churches of the Anglican Communion,” the council said in a statement, after a meeting in Parsippany, N.J.

The worldwide Anglican Communion has moved toward the brink of splitting apart since the Episcopal Church consecrated its first openly gay bishop, V. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire, in 2003.

In February, Anglican leaders demanded that Episcopalians allow a panel ”” that would include Anglican conservatives from other countries ”” to oversee conservative Episcopal parishes in the U.S. Episcopalians also were given until Sept. 30 to unequivocally pledge not to consecrate another openly gay bishop or authorize official prayers for same-sex couples.

The Executive Council did not speak directly to the other demands in its statement Thursday, but said it has struggled “to embrace people who have historically been marginalized.”

Read the whole article.

Ruth Graham, who surrendered dreams of missionary work in Tibet to marry a suitor who became the world’s most renowned evangelist, died Thursday. She was 87.

Graham died at 5:05 p.m. at her home at Little Piney Cove, surrounded by her husband and all five children, said a statement released by Larry Ross, Billy Graham’s spokesman.

“Ruth was my life partner, and we were called by God as a team,” Billy Graham said in a statement. “No one else could have borne the load that she carried. She was a vital and integral part of our ministry, and my work through the years would have been impossible without her encouragement and support.

Read it all.

The Lord be with them.

From the New York Times:

THE Holocaust has always been marked by numbers. There was the numbering of arms in death camps and the staggering death toll where the words six million became both a body count and a synonym for an unspeakable crime. After the Holocaust, Germany performed the necessary long division in paying token reparations to survivors. More recently, Swiss banks and European insurance companies have concealed bank account and policy numbers belonging to dead Jews.

Only with the Holocaust have dehumanization and death been as much a moral mystery as a tragic game of arithmetic. And the numbers continue, although now largely in reverse.

After 60 years, Holocaust survivors are inching toward extinction. According to Ira Sheskin, director of the Jewish Demography Project at the University of Miami, fewer than 900,000 remain, residing primarily in the United States, Israel and the former Soviet Union. Most are in their 80s and 90s. Unless immediate measures are taken, many of those who survived the Nazi evil will soon die without a proper measure of dignity.

According to Dr. Sheskin’s data, more than 87,000 American Holocaust survivors ”” roughly half the American total ”” qualify as poor, meaning they have annual incomes below $15,000. The United Jewish Communities, the umbrella organization of the American Jewish Federations, determined that 25 percent of the American survivors live at or below the official federal poverty line. (The poverty figure in New York City is even higher.) Many are without sufficient food, shelter, heat, health care, medicine, dentures, eyeglasses, even hearing aids.

Conditions worldwide are similar. It’s a sad twist that the teenagers who mastered the art of survival so long ago have been forced, in their old age, to call on their survival instincts once again.

It doesn’t have to be this way….

Read it all.

(ENS)

I therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, 2with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, 3making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. 4There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, 5one Lord, one faith, one baptism, 6one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all. Ephesians 4:1-6

Conversations among Anglican sisters and brothers during the past several years have raised important questions of Anglican identity and authority. These questions speak to the nature of relationships among us.

We understand the requests made by the Primates from Dar es Salaam in February, 2007 as a good-faith contribution to that on-going conversation. Still, the requests of the Primates are of a nature that can only properly be dealt with by our General Convention. Neither the Executive Council, the Presiding Bishop, nor the House of Bishops can give binding interpretations of General Convention resolutions nor make an “unequivocal common commitment” to denying future decisions by dioceses or General Convention. We question the authority of the Primates to impose deadlines and demands upon any of the churches of the Anglican Communion or to prescribe the relationships within any of the other instruments of our common life, including the Anglican Consultative Council.

Assertions of authority met by counter-assertions of polity are not likely to lead to the reconciliation we seek. As important as we hold our polity, the questions before us now are fundamentally relational. Our salvation is not in law but in the grace of God in Jesus Christ our Savior; so too with our relationships as Anglicans.

One part of this grace is that we, all of us, are bound together irrevocably into the body of Christ by the Holy Spirit through the waters of Baptism. We are, whether we wish it or not, God’s gift to each other. It is our bounden duty to respond to God’s grace, a grace that we believe warrants gratitude and respect and that must be reflected in a deep and abiding honesty with one another in the context of living relationships.

We strongly affirm this Church’s desire to be in the fullest possible relationship with our Anglican sisters and brothers, but in truth the only thing we really have to offer in that relationship is who we are ”“ a community of committed Christians seeking God’s will for our common life. At various times in our history, we have struggled to embrace people who have historically been marginalized. We still struggle with those concerns, sometimes in new forms. Today this struggle has come to include the place of gay and lesbian people and their vocations in the life of the Church.

We cannot tell our brothers and sisters with certainty what the future holds or where the Holy Spirit will guide this Church. We can say with certainty that we have heard what some of our sisters and brothers have said about our actions with the utmost seriousness. We have attempted to respond to those concerns sensitively and positively. The sincerity of The Episcopal Church’s responses to matters before the Anglican Communion, particularly the responses of the General Convention 2006, have been attested to by the Report of the Communion Sub-Group of the Joint Standing Committee of the Primates’ Meeting and the Anglican Consultative Council.

We can promise that our engagement with the churches of the Anglican Communion and our deep and sincere listening will continue. The truth spoken in love by our sisters and brothers in Christ, and particularly the truth lived out in our relationships with Anglicans throughout the world, will be very much on our minds and held at the center of our hearts. The advice of the larger community will continue to find reflection in the actions we take.

We have received from the House of Bishops of our Church a request to decline to participate in the proposed Pastoral Scheme; with an explanation for the reasons our bishops believe that the scheme is ill-advised. We agree with the bishops’ assessment including the conclusion that to participate in the scheme would violate our Constitution and Canons. We thus decline to participate in the Pastoral Scheme and respectfully ask our Presiding Bishop not to take any of the actions asked of her by this scheme. We affirm the pledge of the bishops to “continue to work to find ways of meeting the pastoral concerns of the Primates that are compatible with our own polity and canons.”

At the 75th General Convention, The Episcopal Church reaffirmed its abiding commitment to the Anglican Communion (A159). As a demonstration of our commitment to mutual responsibility and interdependence in the Anglican Communion, The Episcopal Church supports the process of the development of an Anglican Covenant, and through the Executive Council is responding to the proposed draft now before the Anglican Communion (A166).

It is our most earnest hope that we continue to walk with our Anglican brothers and sisters in the journey we share together in God’s mission. We believe The Episcopal Church can only offer who we are, with openness, honesty, integrity, and faithfulness, and our commitment never to choose to walk apart.

Read it all.

The link is here.

From Zenit:

Benedict XVI says contemplating the history of the Church should lead the faithful to be awed by God’s great work of salvation.

The Pope said this today when dedicating his reflection at the general audience to Eusebius of Caesarea, the first to write a history of the Church.

Eusebius was born around the year 260 and lived during the first years of peace for the Church under Constantine. He was one of the main protagonists at the ecumenical Council of Nicaea in 325.

The Holy Father explained: “Eusebius [”¦] sought to reflect upon and take stock of the three centuries of Christianity, three centuries lived under persecution. He consulted, for the most part, the original Christian and pagan sources that had been preserved in the great library of Caesarea.

“He was the first to write a history of the Church, and to this day his work is still foundational, mainly due to the sources Eusebius puts forever at our disposal. His ‘History’ preserved from sure oblivion numerous events, people and literary works of the ancient Church. His work is therefore a primary source for knowing the first centuries of Christianity.”

The Pontiff showed that Eusebius covered various topics in his 10-volume “Ecclesiastical History”: “apostolic succession, as the structure of the Church, the spreading of the Message, errors, persecutions by pagans, and the great testimonies which constitute the shining light of this ‘History.’ Amid it all, shine the mercy and goodness of the Savior.”

Read the whole thing.

From The Living Church:

In other news, council approved a resolution declaring “null and void” attempts by a number of dioceses to revise their constitution to qualify their accession to the Constitution and Canons of the General Convention.

“Any amendment to a diocesan constitution that purports in any way to limit or lessen an unqualified accession to the constitution of The Episcopal Church is null and void, and be it further resolved that the amendments passed to the constitutions of the dioceses of Pittsburgh, Fort Worth, Quincy and San Joaquin, which purport to limit or lessen the unqualified accession to the constitution of The Episcopal Church are accordingly null and void and the constitutions of those dioceses shall be as they were as if such amendments had not been passed,” council stated in Resolution NAC-023.

After the resolution was approved, the Rt. Rev. Stacy Sauls, Bishop of Lexington, said Episcopalians had all agreed to live by certain principles and rules and that council believed it would be “helpful to have an authoritative statement [on the matter] with respect to any litigation that might occur in the future.”

Read it all.

from the Jerusalem Post:

At least 25 Palestinians were killed and 80 were wounded as Hamas fighters overran two of Fatah’s most important security installations in the Gaza Strip on Thursday. Witnesses said the victors dragged vanquished gunmen from the building and shot them to death gangland-style in the street in front of their families.

The headquarters of the General Security Service, commanded by Ramallah-based General Tawfik Tirawi, fell to Hamas gunmen. Hamas said documents it found there prove that the Fatah-affiliated security apparatus has close ties with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Hamas said it would show the documents on television in the coming hours.

Elsewhere, the capture of the Preventive Security headquarters was a major step forward in Hamas’s attempts to complete its takeover of all of Gaza. Hamas followed up that victory by demanding Fatah surrender another key security installation.

Read it all.

from the Anglican Watchman of Newark:

Christ Church, East Orange seems to be OK–at least for now. But just a few miles away lie the corpses of what, just a year or two ago, were three integrated, black majority parishes, who favored traditional worship.

The first to go was St. Mark’s in West Orange. One of the oldest parishes in the diocese, St. Mark’s had a large building badly in need of repair, but with an endowment that would cover the expenses. Because they were only allowed to draw on the income, the parish went to court in order to change the terms. In the meantime, the diocese loaned the parish money for repairs, but at some point, it tired of the arrangement, closed the parish, sold the building (built 1827) –and of course, pocketed the remaining endowment.

Less than two years later, the Diocese closed two mostly black High Church parishes. All Saints was in Orange, one mile east of St. Mark’s, while Trinity Montclair was just over 3 miles to the west. All Saints was shut down in October 2006; Trinity followed in February 2007. The diocese could, logically, have merged these two similar parishes. Had it thought ahead (and had that endowment not been so tempting!) three parishes could have been merged. The sanctuary at St. Mark’s was more than big enough, and the proceeds from selling the other buildings would have paid for a lot of repairs.

Read it all.

Sony’s video game unit said Wednesday it is talking with the Church of England about a complaint that a famous cathedral is the scene of a violent shooting game for the new PlayStation 3 console.

Sony Computer Entertainment spokeswoman Nanako Kato declined to give details of the talks and said more time may be needed for an agreement because the problem was complex.

“This is a sensitive topic,” Kato said. “Many historical buildings are used in entertainment such as movies, including Godzilla and the Tokyo Tower and King Kong in Manhattan.”

Read it all.

From Southcoast Today:

With the vote too close to call, Gov. Deval Patrick and national Democratic leaders were pressuring lawmakers to defeat a proposed constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage when the state Legislature meets in Constitutional Convention today.

U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and U.S. Sen. Edward Kennedy called wavering legislators in the past several days. And former Gov. William F. Weld asked state House Speaker Salvatore DiMasi for a list of lawmakers he could call to urge them to oppose the amendment.

Evelyn Reilly of the Massachusetts Family Institute complained of “unprecedented pressure” from the governor and national political leaders. But she was confident the amendment would pass today and go to the statewide ballot in November 2008.

Both Speaker DiMasi and Senate President Therese Murray, who presides over the convention, oppose the amendment.

Political insiders openly speculated that Sen. Murray would postpone the vote if there were not enough votes to defeat the amendment. Gov. Patrick said last week the convention could be put off if there are not enough votes to defeat it.

Opponents of gay marriage were undaunted.

“I think there is a very strong likelihood that there will be a vote, and that our votes will hold,” Ms. Reilly said outside the House chamber. “These legislators have already withstood tremendous pressure. We don’t think that they are going to fade.”

Arline Isaacson, the co-chairwoman of the Massachusetts Gay and Lesbian Political Caucus, said gay marriage supporters had to pick up at least four to five votes to defeat the amendment. She planned to work through the evening.

“We’re not there yet,” she said, ducking into a side entrance of the Statehouse.

Read it all.

Almost 300 million people worldwide are now accessing the internet using fast broadband connections, fuelling the growth of social networking services such as MySpace and generating thousands of hours of video through websites such as YouTube.

There are more than 1.1 billion of the world’s estimated 6.6 billion people online and almost a third of them are now accessing the internet on high-speed lines. According to the internet consultancy Point Topic, 298 million people had broadband at the end of March and that is already estimated to have shot over 300 million. The statistics, however, paint a picture of a divided digital world.

Read the whole article.

From The Independent:

Scientists have criticised a major review of the world’s remaining oil reserves, warning that the end of oil is coming sooner than governments and oil companies are prepared to admit.

BP’s Statistical Review of World Energy, published yesterday, appears to show that the world still has enough “proven” reserves to provide 40 years of consumption at current rates. The assessment, based on officially reported figures, has once again pushed back the estimate of when the world will run dry.

However, scientists led by the London-based Oil Depletion Analysis Centre, say that global production of oil is set to peak in the next four years before entering a steepening decline which will have massive consequences for the world economy and the way that we live our lives.

According to “peak oil” theory our consumption of oil will catch, then outstrip our discovery of new reserves and we will begin to deplete known reserves.

Colin Campbell, the head of the depletion centre, said: “It’s quite a simple theory and one that any beer drinker understands. The glass starts full and ends empty and the faster you drink it the quicker it’s gone.”

Dr Campbell, is a former chief geologist and vice-president at a string of oil majors including BP, Shell, Fina, Exxon and ChevronTexaco. He explains that the peak of regular oil – the cheap and easy to extract stuff – has already come and gone in 2005. Even when you factor in the more difficult to extract heavy oil, deep sea reserves, polar regions and liquid taken from gas, the peak will come as soon as 2011, he says.

This scenario is flatly denied by BP, whose chief economist Peter Davies has dismissed the arguments of “peak oil” theorists.

“We don’t believe there is an absolute resource constraint. When peak oil comes, it is just as likely to come from consumption peaking, perhaps because of climate change policies as from production peaking.”

Read it all.