The U.S. employers cut payrolls for a third month in a row in March, slashing 80,000 jobs for the biggest monthly job decline in five years as the economy headed into a downturn, government data on Friday showed.

The Labor Department revised the first two months of the year’s job losses to a total of 152,000 from a previous estimate of 85,000. The March unemployment rate jumped to 5.1 percent from 4.8 percent, the highest since a matching rate in September 2005.

The March job report was more bleak than expected. Economists polled ahead of the report forecast a decline of 60,000 in non-farm payrolls and a rise in the unemployment rate to 5 percent.

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A Fairfax circuit judge has awarded a favorable judgment to a group of 11 Anglican churches that were taken to court last fall after breaking away from the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia in late 2006.

In an 83-page opinion released late last night, Judge Randy Bellows ruled that Virginia”s Civil War-era “division statute” granting property to departing congregations applies to the Northern Virginia congregations, which are now part of the Nigerian-administered Convocation of Anglicans in North America.

“The court finds that a division has occurred in the diocese,” the judge wrote. “Over 7 percent of the churches in the diocese, 11 percent of its baptized membership and 18 percent of the diocesan average attendance of 32,000 [per Sunday] have left in the past two years.”

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ECUSA Diocese argue that the historical evidence demonstrates that it is only the “major” or “great” divisions within 19th-century churches that prompted the passage of 57-9, such as those within the Presbyterian andMethodist Churches. ECUSAjDiocese argue that the current “dispute” beforethis Court is not such a “great” division, and, therefore, this is yet another reason why 57-9(A) should not apply. The Court agrees that it was major divisions such as those within the Methodist and Presbyterian churches that prompted the passage of 57-9. However, it blinks at reality to characterize the ongoing division within the Diocese, ECUSA, and the Anglican Communion as anything but a division of the first magnitude, especially given the involvement of numerous churches in states across the country, the participation of hundreds of church leaders, both lay and pastoral, who have found themselves “taking sides” against their brethren, the determination by thousands of church members in Virginia and elsewhere to “walk apart” in the language of the Church, the creation of new and substantial religious entities, such as CANA, with their own structures and disciplines, the rapidity with which the ECUSA’s problems became that of the Anglican Communion, and the consequent impact-in some cases the extraordinary impact-on its provinces around the world, and, perhaps most importantly, the creation of a level of distress among many church members so profound and wrenching as to lead them to cast votes in an attempt to disaffiliate from a church which has been their home and heritage throughout their lives, and often back for generations.

Whatever may be the precise threshold for a dispute to constitute a division under 57-9(A), what occurred here qualifies. For the foregoing reasons, this Court finds that the CANA Congregations have properly invoked 57-9(A). Further proceedings will take place in accordance with the Order issued today.

Read it carefully and read it all (over 80 pages).

Watch it all-wonderful stuff.

Naom Chomsky said that “if you believe in freedom of speech you believe in freedom of speech for views you don’t like”. But many of faith often complain that freedom of speech and expression shouldn’t mean freedom to deliberately offend. Yet how does one avoid offending when the freedom to exchange ideas is seen as the very pillar of a tolerant society?

In out current climate, debates on faith and society have become so polarised that one can almost imagine the two armies of secularism and religion engaged in a bloody ideological war. Yet I expect most of us who have faith do not recognise ourselves in such battles. For me, religion is not weakened but strengthened by humour. The ability to see the bad with the good, the problems as well as the gifts of faith demands that we be honest and reflective, able to engage with a wide array of cultural and social perspectives. The ability to see ourselves as others might see us is a sign of humility. The ability to laugh at ourselves is a sign of confidence and maturity, that we take neither ourselves nor what we believe to be the only moral arbiters of society. Laughter not only connects us to each other but lifts the soul – as e.e. cummings said, the most wasted of all days is one without laughter.

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The Church in Wales … voted not to consecrate women bishops. The motion, proposed by Archbishop Dr Barry Morgan, fell by three votes. In the laity it was 52-19, in the clergy 27-18. It fell after the amendments that would have offered alternative oversight for the clergy opponents also failed. Canon Mary Stallard, chaplain to the bishop of St Asaph and pictured on the far right of this picture, said: ‘The moment will come back. We are very disappointed. It is not totally unexpected. But we are looking forward to bringing it back. This issue will not be ignored.’

Read it all and Archbishop Barry Morgan’s piece in the Guardian is here also.

President Robert Mugabe’s government raided the offices of the main opposition movement and rounded up foreign journalists Thursday in an ominous indication that he may use intimidation and violence to keep his grip on power.

Police raided a hotel used by the opposition Movement for Democratic Change and ransacked some of the rooms. Riot police also surrounded another hotel housing foreign journalists, and took away several of them, according to a man who answered the phone there.

“Mugabe has started a crackdown,” Movement for Democratic Change general secretary Tendai Biti told The Associated Press. “It is quite clear he has unleashed a war.”

Biti said the raid at the Meikles Hotel targeted “certain people … including myself.” Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai was “safe” but had canceled plans for a news conference, he said.

Biti said that Thursday’s clampdown was a sign of worse to follow but that the opposition would not go into hiding.

Predictable but sad-read it all.

A true story, and a lot of fun..

Karelis, a professor at George Washington University, has a simpler but far more radical argument to make: traditional economics just doesn’t apply to the poor. When we’re poor, Karelis argues, our economic worldview is shaped by deprivation, and we see the world around us not in terms of goods to be consumed but as problems to be alleviated. This is where the bee stings come in: A person with one bee sting is highly motivated to get it treated. But a person with multiple bee stings does not have much incentive to get one sting treated, because the others will still throb. The more of a painful or undesirable thing one has (i.e. the poorer one is) the less likely one is to do anything about any one problem. Poverty is less a matter of having few goods than having lots of problems.

Poverty and wealth, by this logic, don’t just fall along a continuum the way hot and cold or short and tall do. They are instead fundamentally different experiences, each working on the human psyche in its own way. At some point between the two, people stop thinking in terms of goods and start thinking in terms of problems, and that shift has enormous consequences. Perhaps because economists, by and large, are well-off, he suggests, they’ve failed to see the shift at all.

If Karelis is right, antipoverty initiatives championed all along the ideological spectrum are unlikely to work – from work requirements, time-limited benefits, and marriage and drug counseling to overhauling inner-city education and replacing ghettos with commercially vibrant mixed-income neighborhoods. It also means, Karelis argues, that at one level economists and poverty experts will have to reconsider scarcity, one of the most basic ideas in economics.

“It’s Econ 101 that’s to blame,” Karelis says. “It’s created this tired, phony debate about what causes poverty.”

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This is the tale of two churches. And one Alaskan village. And a road trip with an Episcopal priest.

I met the Rev. Bessie C. Titus at the Chena River Convention Center in Fairbanks. Bessie was sitting behind a laptop at a registration booth next to a table where beaded wallets, beaver skin hats and other native crafts were being sold.

Ten minutes into our conversation about faith, Bessie suggested I visit a village in Alaska’s interior. I jumped at the opportunity.

The drive to Minto winds into the Alaskan Interior over mountain passes with blowing snow, icy pavement, steep hills, and semi-trucks hauling supplies to Prudoe Bay. Roads are few. There are Moose, bears and other animals.

I was traveling with a priest, I reassured myself. How bad could it be?

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Listen to it all.

What more could we expect from the bishop of Rome than that, like Peter, he strengthen the whole church’s faith in Christ’s resurrection? How could he better serve the unity of an Easter people than by proclaiming insistently the event that brought the church into being: the resurrection of the crucified Jesus? The pope must also lead the church with the loving authority of a chief pastor and be a model for all worshipers in celebrating the sacraments. But his great task for all the world is to announce that Christ is risen. Nothing can or should ever count against the power and joyfulness of that unique message.

One picture of St. Peter has fixed itself forever in my mind: a huge 17th-century painting of Peter’s martyrdom. The painting had been taken down from a church and brought for restoration to the studio of an Italian friend of mine. It shows two soldiers using ropes to pull Peter upside down onto a cross. The saint looks stiff and old, but his face is calm and peaceful. Two cheerful little angels watch the scene as Peter faces death and prepares to meet his master in glory.

Classical painters aimed to express the final character and significance of those they portrayed. They wanted to lead us to the reality and identity of the persons they had chosen to represent. That old painting of Peter in my friend’s studio in Rome catches the apostle’s courage in the face of death. Originally martyr (a Greek word) meant “witness.” Peter the great witness became Peter the martyr. He could face martyrdom with such serenity because he had faithfully witnessed to his master’s victory over death. He knew that Jesus had died but was now alive forever. In that resurrection Peter found his destiny and final identity.

When he was elected pope, Benedict XVI found his own final destiny and identity. A serene figure in white, he faithfully preaches the Easter faith that holds us all together. When I see him proclaiming the resurrection, he reminds me of another figure also dressed in a white robe: the angelic messenger sitting in the empty tomb of Jesus and announcing to Mary Magdalene and her companions: “He has been raised” (Mk 16:5-6).

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Dr. Michele Morgan migrated last fall from Detroit to Phoenix, taking a job as a psychiatrist. She expected her husband, Sam Kirkland, to soon join her, since he was accepting an early retirement package from his employer, General Motors. But he cannot move, he says, because he has not been able to sell the four-bedroom family home.

“As things now stand,” said Mr. Kirkland, who is 51 and intends to seek work in Phoenix, if he ever gets there, “my wife might decide to give up her job in Phoenix and come back to Detroit for a while, until we can sell the house.”

The rapid decline in housing prices is distorting the normal workings of the American labor market. Mobility opens up job opportunities, allowing workers to go where they are most needed. When housing is not an obstacle, more than five million men and women, nearly 4 percent of the nation’s work force, move annually from one place to another ”” to a new job after a layoff, or to higher-paying work, or to the next rung in a career, often the goal of a corporate transfer. Or people seek, as in Dr. Morgan’s case, an escape from harsh northern winters.

Now that mobility is increasingly restricted. Unable to sell their homes easily and move on, tens of thousands of people like Mr. Kirkland and Dr. Morgan are making the labor force less flexible just as a weakening economy puts pressure on workers to move to wherever companies are still hiring.

Signaling an incipient recession, nearly 85,000 jobs disappeared in the United States from December through February, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics is expected to announce on Friday that March failed to produce a turnaround in hiring.

“You hear a lot about foreclosure and the thousands of families who are being forced out,” said Joseph S. Tracy, director of research at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. “But that is swamped by the number of people who want to sell their homes and can’t.”

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An impending foreclosure is a highly stressful situation ”” certainly for the people that could lose a home, and sometimes for the people trying to help them. Richard Pittman, a counselor with a HUD-approved agency, talks about the challenges of being a mortgage counselor these days.

What a difficult job–listen to it all.

One of the all-time greats in baseball was Babe Ruth. His bat had the power of a cannon, and his record of 714 home runs remained unbroken until Hank Aaron came along. The Babe was the idol of sports fans, but in time age took its toll, and his popularity began to wane. Finally the Yankees traded him to the Braves. In one of his last games in Cincinnati, Babe Ruth began to falter. He struck out and made several misplays that allowed the Reds to score five runs in one inning. As the Babe walked toward the dugout, chin down and dejected, there rose from the stands an enormous storm of boos and catcalls. Some fans actually shook their fists. Then a wonderful thing happened. A little boy jumped over the railing, and with tears streaming down his cheeks he ran out to the great athlete. Unashamedly, he flung his arms around the Babe’s legs and held on tightly. Babe Ruth scooped him up, hugged him, and set him down again. Patting him gently on the head, he took his hand and the two of them walked off the field together.

–Source Unknown

It’s crucial to note that these very different bishops begin with references to the Resurrection — expressed in different ways — and then build on that doctrine to talk about issues in modern life, noted Phyllis Tickle, an Episcopalian best known for writing “God Talk in America” and other books on spirituality and culture.

The bishops do have different reference points, she said.

Jefferts Schori seems to be “starting inside the church” and then saying, “Look out there. Look at the world and see what we need to go and do.”

Meanwhile, Minns is “starting inside the church” and then saying, “Come in here. This is what happens when the church is really alive.”

The sad reality in Anglicanism today, she said, “Is that both of these leaders are talking to their people, to the people that they lead, but they are no longer part of the same body.”

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Over the weekend, 18-year-old Chavez Clarke became the 22nd Chicago high school student to die violently this year. Clarke was trying to earn extra credits towards his diploma, when he was shot to death after Saturday classes.

The killing triggered student-led protests for tougher gun laws and exasperation among school administrators and police struggling to shield city schools from gang violence.

Makes the heart very sad–read it all.

Improved security has contributed to an economic revival in Baghdad, and the United States has a “moral imperative” to keep bringing violence down, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq said Wednesday.

In a likely preview of his report to Congress next week on the state of the war, Ryan Crocker told USA TODAY that the Iraqi military’s recent attempt to disarm Shiite militias “had its share of problems.” He said the United States only had about 48 hours advance notice of the operation, which caused a wave of violence in Baghdad and southern Iraq.

However, Crocker said security and other areas have shown significant improvement since he last testified in September. “I think you can expect to see a continuation of that political and economic progress,” he said.

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The chief executive of Wal-Mart has criticised US business for not taking a lead in the debate on the future of US healthcare ahead of the presidential elections in November.

Lee Scott said in a Financial Times interview that he was “not particularly encouraged” by the public debate on the issues.

“I think business has been absent in this debate on healthcare. I’m not sure why,” he said.

“I think government is going to be engaged after this election regardless of who wins, and I think business should be more involved in the discussion. I think it has long-term ramifications for our global competitiveness.”

Mr Scott said Wal-Mart, which has more than 1.3m US employees, had not taken “a firm stand” on what a national healthcare system might look like.

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Is the pope Catholic? That used to be a sarcastic way of saying, could anything be more obvious? Is fire hot? Is water wet?

Now, however, that nothing in the world is obvious, when Pope Benedict XVI arrives in the United States on April 15 there will surely be voices in the media apparently disconcerted to discover that, yes, the pope is Catholic.

Yes, he disagrees with Richard Dawkins that atheism is necessary for salvation. Yes, he believes that Jesus of Nazareth is the son of God and the center of human history. Yes, he thinks that Catholic Christianity is truer than Islam or Buddhism or Hinduism or even Protestant Christianity. Astounding. What next?

This will now be the eighth or ninth papal trip to the United States, depending on whether one counts John Paul II’s several hours of layover in Anchorage in 1981. What is surprising about every papal visit, at least after 1965, when Paul VI addressed the United Nations, is what so many people find surprising. Each time they are surprised, for example, that the pope hasn’t abandoned the notion that all human lives, even in their earliest, embryonic phases, deserve protection and that therefore abortion is wrong.

They are similarly surprised that many American Roman Catholics honor the pope yet disagree with papal positions, whether about using contraception, restricting legal access to abortion, ordaining married men or women to the priesthood, or recognizing same-sex relationships.

This kind of disagreement may signal, as some argue, a severe crisis in church authority. Or it may be more of a norm throughout Catholic history than is widely realized. But whatever it is, it is not new.

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Hackers have turned their attention to search engines in the latest attempt to invade the computers of unsuspecting Web users.

In the past few weeks, they have taken advantage of Web pages that incorrectly use JavaScript, a computer language used in features like interactive maps, to infect thousands of sites. The altered sites show up in a Google search, and when clicked on, redirect the user to a malicious program that aims to steal information.

One goal is to infect users’ computers, possibly by installing a device to capture keystrokes, and therefore passwords and other sensitive information.

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Benedict XVI says that even consecrated persons need to guard against an increasing process of secularization that is gaining ground in modern times.

The Pope said that today when he received in audience participants in the 26th General Chapter of the Salesian Society of Don John Bosco which is, he told them, taking place “in a period of great social, economic and political changes,” of “more intense communication among peoples,” and of “lively debate on the spiritual values that give meaning to existence.”

“Don Bosco,” the Holy Father added, “wished the continuity of his charism in the Church to be guaranteed by the choice of consecrated life. Today, too, the Salesian movement can grow in charismatic faithfulness only if it continues to maintain a strong and vibrant nucleus of consecrated people.”

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Zimbabwe’s official election commission has confirmed that the Zimbabwe Africa National Union-Patriotic Front (Zanu-PF), the party which has ruled the country for nearly 30 years, has lost its parliamentary majority, news agencies report.

The figures were released hours after the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) claimed victory in both the parliamentary and presidential elections. However, the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) has yet to announce the results of the presidential election.

Reuters reported the ZEC as announcing that President Robert Mugabe’s party had won 94 of the 210 seats in parliament. With only seven results outstanding, the party could not win the 106 seats it would need to control parliament.

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HUMAN-cow embryos have been created in a world first at Newcastle University in England, hailed by the scientific community, but labelled “monstrous” by opponents.

A team has grown hybrid embryos after injecting human DNA into eggs taken from cows’ ovaries, which had most of their genetic material removed.

The embryos survived for three days and are intended to provide a limitless supply of stem cells to develop therapies for diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and spinal cord injuries, overcoming a worldwide shortfall in human embryos.

Dr Teija Peura, director of human embryonic stem cell laboratories at the Australian Stem Cell Centre, said somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) had been done between animal species, but the “99 per cent human” embryos could boost research.

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The already crazed competition for admission to the nation’s most prestigious universities and colleges became even more intense this year, with many logging record low acceptance rates.

Harvard College, for example, offered admission to only 7.1 percent of the 27,462 high school seniors who applied ”” or, put another way, it rejected 93 of every 100 applicants, many with extraordinary achievements, like a perfect score on one of the SAT exams. Yale College accepted 8.3 percent of its 22,813 applicants. Both rates were records.

Columbia College admitted 8.7 percent of its applicants, Brown University and Dartmouth College 13 percent, and Bowdoin College and Georgetown University 18 percent ”” also records.

“We love the people we admitted, but we also love a very large number of the people who we were not able to admit,” said William R. Fitzsimmons, dean of admissions and financial aid at Harvard College.

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A Tomah High School student has filed a federal lawsuit alleging his art teacher censored his drawing because it featured a cross and a biblical reference.

The lawsuit alleges other students were allowed to draw “demonic” images and asks a judge to declare a class policy prohibiting religion in art unconstitutional.

“We hear so much today about tolerance,” said David Cortman, an attorney with the Alliance Defense Fund, a Christian legal advocacy group representing the student. “But where is the tolerance for religious beliefs? The whole purpose of art is to reflect your own personal experience. To tell a student his religious beliefs can legally be censored sends the wrong message.”

Tomah School District Business Manager Greg Gaarder said the district hadn’t seen the lawsuit and declined to comment.

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Intelligence centers run by states across the country have access to personal information about millions of Americans, including unlisted cellphone numbers, insurance claims, driver’s license photographs and credit reports, according to a document obtained by The Washington Post.

One center also has access to top-secret data systems at the CIA, the document shows, though it’s not clear what information those systems contain.

Dozens of the organizations known as fusion centers were created after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks to identify potential threats and improve the way information is shared. The centers use law enforcement analysts and sophisticated computer systems to compile, or fuse, disparate tips and clues and pass along the refined information to other agencies. They are expected to play important roles in national information-sharing networks that link local, state and federal authorities and enable them to automatically sift their storehouses of records for patterns and clues.

Though officials have publicly discussed the fusion centers’ importance to national security, they have generally declined to elaborate on the centers’ activities. But a document that lists resources used by the fusion centers shows how a dozen of the organizations in the northeastern United States rely far more on access to commercial and government databases than had previously been disclosed.

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The Episcopal Diocese of Southern Ohio is embarked on a new venture in Avondale, and I want to enlist the wisdom and the support of the community as we move forward. We intend to develop a ministry center on the site of historic St. Michael & All Angels Church, 3626 Reading Road. This center will preserve and revitalize the beautiful landmark church, while extending established ministries and developing new ones in the surrounding neighborhood.

As some know, the parish of St. Michael & All Angels has been closed, owing to dwindling numbers. This is understandably a sad time for those who are losing their accustomed weekly gathering for worship in a place they love. But this is not the whole story. The Episcopal Church is not leaving Avondale. On the contrary, we are convinced that now, more than ever, we are called to stand with those who seek peace and justice and the possibility of common life in the inner city. God has provided us in St. Michael’s with a strategic location for such a ministry, and we intend to move forward as quickly as possible to make this a reality.

I know there are Episcopal parishes in Cincinnati who stand ready to pledge financial and personal resources to create an effective urban mission at St. Michael’s. I dream of a powerful ministry to children in Avondale – providing a space on St. Michael’s ample property for tutoring, athletics and after-school events. A focus on children would make great sense, given the proximity of Cincinnati Children’s Hospital.

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If Al Qaeda strikes the West in the coming months, it’s likely the mastermind will be a stocky Egyptian explosives expert with two missing fingers.

His alias is Abu Ubaida al Masri. Hardly anyone has heard of him outside a select circle of anti-terrorism officials and Islamic militants. But as chief of external operations for Al Qaeda, investigators say, he has one of the most dangerous — and endangered — jobs in international terrorism.

He has overseen the major plots that the network needs to stay viable, investigators say: the London transportation bombings in 2005, a foiled transatlantic “spectacular” aimed at U.S.-bound planes in 2006, and an aborted plot in this serene Scandinavian capital last fall.

But pursuers have captured or killed his predecessors and have been gunning for him. He prowls Pakistani badlands one step ahead of satellites and security forces.

Although periodic reports of his death have proved false, rumors resurfaced after recent American airstrikes. Asked whether Masri is alive, a Western anti-terrorism official said, “It’s a question mark.”

Masri himself can be described that way. Authorities know only bits and pieces of his biography. They know his face, having identified an unreleased photo, but not his real name.

“He is considered capable and dangerous,” said a British official, who like others in this report declined to be identified. “He is not at the very top of Al Qaeda, but has been part of the core circle for a long time. He is someone who has emerged and grabbed our attention as others were caught or eliminated in the last couple of years. Perhaps he rose faster than he would have otherwise.”

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Just hours from now, Ngo and Cerghizan will drive far away from Minnesota. They’re moving to Texas, to the town where Ngo was stationed in the Army. They’ll leave behind all the doctors, therapists, friends and family they’ve counted on.

“It’s a real big step in my life ”” moving,” Ngo says. “And a really big step in a relationship, ’cause we’re both going down there just by ourselves and it’s just gonna be us.”

Friends and family are here to help them pack up, but there’s one person missing ”” Ngo’s mother. She had been at his side throughout his injury. She hurried to the Army hospital in Germany and saw him with his head swollen grotesquely. She didn’t know if her only child would live or die. Then, at Walter Reed, she’d sit by his hospital bed and hold his hand till he fell asleep at night. And she would sneak back into his room early the next morning to hold his hand when he woke up.

Ngo and his mother don’t talk to each other anymore.

“She’s got to apologize to me and Ani before any contact will happen,” Ngo says.

A haunting reminder of the personal and emotional cost of the war. Read or listen to it all.