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Jews have no history in the city of Jerusalem: They have never lived there, the Temple never existed, and Israeli archaeologists have admitted as much. Those who deny this are simply liars. Or so says Sheik Tayseer Rajab Tamimi, chief Islamic judge of the Palestinian Authority.

His claims, made last month, would be laughable if they weren’t so common among Palestinians. Sheik Tamimi is only the latest to insist that, in his words, Jerusalem is solely “an Arab and Islamic city and it has always been so.” His comments come on the heels of those by Shamekh Alawneh, a lecturer in modern history at Al Quds University. On an Aug. 11 PA television program, “Jerusalem””History and Culture,” Mr. Alawneh argued that the Jews invented their connection to Jerusalem. “It has no historical roots,” he said, adding that the Jews are engaging in “an attack on history, theft of culture, falsification of facts, erasure of the truth, and Judaization of the place.”

As President Barack Obama and his foreign-policy team gear up to propose yet another plan for Israeli-Arab peace, they would do well to focus less on important but secondary issues like settlement growth, and instead notice that top Palestinian intellectual and political leaders deny basic truths about the region’s most important city.

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It is a thorny, contentious issue that brings along with it a multitude of questions. Are people born to cheat? Is the seventh commandment still relevant in a country where more than 40 percent of the marriages end in divorce? What constitutes adultery? Is lying worse than cheating?

To explore all of these questions, “Nightline” went out to the heart of the Bible belt for the fourth installment of the “Nightline Face-Off” series, moderated by co-anchor Cynthia McFadden, asking simply: Are we born to cheat?

The conversation was a powerful, candid and, at times, painful look at adultery and marriage, and the panel was as complex as the topic.

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Love the comment about the parks–watch it all.

In rich countries, more than a third of all energy is used to heat, cool and light buildings, or used within buildings, efficiently or not. Climate change demands we slash that consumption.

That’s one reason why President Obama is hosting this week’s G-20 summit at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center and the Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens — two buildings that are “gold” certified for their energy-efficiency design characteristics by the U.S. Green Buildings Council.

The venues are part of the message: investments in renovation and energy-aware construction can be a big part of a green jobs strategy. If the United States is to be a global competitor in green building technology, it needs to learn from some of the other countries that will be at the table in Pittsburgh.

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If Grady Memorial Hospital succeeds in closing its outpatient dialysis clinic, Tadesse A. Amdago, a 69-year-old immigrant from Ethiopia, said he would begin “counting the days until I die.” Rosa Lira, 78, a permanent resident from Mexico, said she also assumed she “would just die.” Another woman, a 32-year-old illegal immigrant from Honduras, said she could only hope to make it “back to my country to die.”

The patients, who have relied for years on Grady’s free provision of dialysis to people without means, said they had no other options to obtain the care that is essential to their survival. But the safety-net hospital, after years of failed efforts to drain its red ink, is not backing away from what its chairman, A. D. Correll, calls a “gut-wrenching decision”: closing the clinic this month.

The sides confronted each other in state court on Wednesday morning as lawyers for the patients sought to keep the clinic open until other arrangements for dialysis could be secured. Dialysis patients and their families packed the benches and 60-year-old Nelson Tabares, a seriously ill illegal immigrant from Honduras, was wheeled into court in a portable bed.

Despite a judge’s urging that the two sides negotiate a solution Wednesday, there was no agreement by the end of the day on how to go forward. For the time being, a restraining order keeping the clinic open stands. The judge is considering whether to extend it.

The dialysis unit on Grady’s ninth floor might as well be ground zero for the national health care debate.

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There was pomp and pageantry, enough clergy to move a mountain (or at least, to guarantee nice weather), a heavenly choir, and one of the finest bands in the land.

Somewhere amidst all this, Janet Broderick was given the ceremonial keys to St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, as its 17th rector. The Morristown celebration included actor Matthew Broderick, Janet’s brother; former Newark Bishop Jon Shelby Spong and present Bishop Mark Beckwith, and the Blaire Reinhard Band.

“It feels wonderful,” Janet Broderick said afterward. “I felt all the love. It’s incredible. I wanted to do one of these for everybody there.”

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A person was able to access Cunningham’s e-mail account and sent the note to nearly everyone on her e-mail list. That’s about 1,200 people, Cunningham estimated.

”It’s been really embarrassing,” Cunningham said. “People have called thinking I’ve been held hostage in England and was forced to send this message. It’s been crazy. I’ve had lots of phone calls and e-mails from people.”

Cunningham, who was first alerted to the e-mail by her daughter, who called her about 6:30 a.m. Thursday, said she was thankful no one seemed to have wired money, like the e-mail requested.

She believes the person was able to access her account when she provided her e-mail login and password to what she thought was a request from Google customer service.

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Homeowners and businesses were not alone in taking on piles of debt over the last decade. Nonprofits of all sizes did the same, and now they, too, are paying the price.

Far from being conservative stewards of their assets, many nonprofits engaged in what some experts call risky financial behavior. “They did auction-rate securities, interest-rate arbitrage, complex swaps ”” which backfired on them the same way it would backfire on any hedge fund or asset manager,” said Clara Miller, chief executive of the Nonprofit Finance Fund, which has experienced a huge increase in organizations turning to it for assistance with soured bonds. “Organizations got to be all fancy-pants with their financial management.”

Those struggling now include the full range of nonprofits, including museums, colleges, orchestras and small local social service providers.

For example, Brandeis University, with $208 million in tax-exempt bonds outstanding, plans to close its art museum and sell off the collection to raise money. The Orange County Performing Arts Center, with $265 million in bonds, has laid off staff members. Copia, a culinary center in Napa, Calif., went bankrupt in December with $78 million in bond-related debt that its lawyer blames for its failure.

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President Obama and the leaders of Britain and France will accuse Iran Friday of building a secret underground plant to manufacture nuclear fuel, saying it has hidden the covert operation from international weapons inspectors for years, according to senior administration officials.

The revelation, which the three leaders will make before the opening of the Group of 20 economic summit here, appears bound to add urgency to the diplomatic confrontation with Iran over its suspected ambitions to build a nuclear weapons capability. Mr. Obama, along with Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Britain and President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, will demand that the country allow the International Atomic Energy Agency to conduct an immediate inspection of the facility, which is said to be 100 miles southwest of Tehran.

American officials say that they have been tracking the covert project for years, but that Mr. Obama decided to make public the American findings after Iran discovered, in recent weeks, that Western intelligence agencies had breached the secrecy surrounding the project. On Monday, Iran wrote a brief, cryptic letter to the International Atomic Energy Agency, saying that it now had a “pilot plant” under construction, whose existence it had never before revealed.

But President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said nothing about the plant during his visit this week to the United Nations, where he repeated his contention that Iran had cooperated fully with inspectors, and that allegations of a nuclear weapons program are fabrications.

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In the 1980s, a small group of Episcopalians came together in a Temecula basement to worship. Over the years, the congregation grew in size and began meeting in strip malls around town.

Finally, after nearly three decades of relocation, they have a place to call home.

On the first Sunday in September, St. Thomas of Canterbury Episcopal Church and School held services in its new facility, a 17,000-square-foot mission-style church in southern Temecula.

With its pristine white paint, red brick roof and three-story bell tower, meeting in the church was a coming home of sorts for the congregation of about 200 families, Senior Warden Kay Bemis said.

“To be in an actual church instead of a storefront is amazing,” she said. “Some of our parishioners that started 30 years ago are still here, so it was really exciting for them.”

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The Bishop of Exeter, the Rt Revd Michael Langrish, welcomed the greater clarity provided by the DPP’s guidelines, “so long as there can be confidence that it will not in prac­tice lead to an erosion of respect for the present law”. The C of E would make a formal response in due course, he said.

The RC Archbishop of Cardiff, the Most Revd Peter Smith, said that the law against assisted suicide “gives expression to a profound moral in­tuition about the value of every human life”. He conceded that not every criminal case should be pros­ecuted. “There can indeed be a par­ti­cular combination of circumstances which will justify in a specific case a decision not to prosecute, in the public interest.” But he welcomed the assurance that the present law would still be applied.

The campaigning group Dignity in Dying hailed the guidance as “a breakthrough”.

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(Please note that the headline above is the one found in the print edition–KSH)

The oil industry has been on a hot streak this year, thanks to a series of major discoveries that have rekindled a sense of excitement across the petroleum sector, despite falling prices and a tough economy.

These discoveries, spanning five continents, are the result of hefty investments that began earlier in the decade when oil prices rose, and of new technologies that allow explorers to drill at greater depths and break tougher rocks.

“That’s the wonderful thing about price signals in a free market ”” it puts people in a better position to take more exploration risk,” said James T. Hackett, chairman and chief executive of Anadarko Petroleum.

More than 200 discoveries have been reported so far this year in dozens of countries, including northern Iraq’s Kurdish region, Australia, Israel, Iran, Brazil, Norway, Ghana and Russia. They have been made by international giants, like Exxon Mobil, but also by industry minnows, like Tullow Oil.

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–Anglican Church in Ghana, from 100,000 in 1970 to 236,000 in 2000

–Anglican Church of Kenya from 582,600 in 1970 to 3.1 million in 2000

–Anglican Church in Nigeria from 2.914 million in 1970 to 18 million in 2000

–Anglican Church in Rwanda from 161,899 in 1970 to 700,000 in 2000

–Anglican Church in the Sudan from 300,000 in 1970 to 2.2 million in 2000

–Anglican Church in Uganda from 1.281 million in 1970 to 8.580 million in 2000

–The American Episcopal church from 3.196 million in 1970 to 2.325 million in 2000

–The Anglican Church in Britain from 27.659 million in 1970 to 23.983 million in 2000

–The Anglican Church of Canada from 1.176 million in 1970 to 784,000 in 2000

–The Scottish Episcopal Church from 86,351 in 1970 to 48,300 in 2000

(ACNS) The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, currently visiting the Anglican Church in Japan, today took part in an Act of Remembrance at the epicentre of the atomic bomb blast in Nagasaki. During the Act of Remembrance, Dr Williams laid flowers at the memorial and spoke about the pressing importance of working for a world free from nuclear weapons:

“There are no victories in human history without their element of tragedy. Victory in human affairs always means that someone has lost …sometimes the victory has been gained at the price of such violence that we have to say that everyone has lost. Those who have won the conflict have lost some dimension of their own life, their own welfare and integrity.”

“To see the effects of the use of the atomic bomb here in Nagasaki is to see how this degree of slaughter and violence leaves everyone defeated. The wholesale killing of the innocent and the destruction of an entire environment, natural as well as cultural, the long-term effects, physical and psychological, on those who survived – all of this constitutes a would that affects the attackers as well as the victims.”

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Dr Williams, who yesterday was visiting the Anglican Church in Japan, welcome the news that the pope is set to visit, the first visit in almost 30 years.

“Some time ago, following similar invitations from Roman Catholic bishops and the British Government, I personally expressed my hope to Pope Benedict that he would accept the invitation to visit Britain,” he said.

“I am therefore delighted to hear that there is every possibility that the Pope may indeed visit Britain in the course of the next year.

“I’m sure I speak on behalf of Anglicans throughout Britain, in assuring him that he would be received with great warmth and joy.”

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Pope Benedict XVI will come to Britain next year, making the first state visit by a pontiff. He is expected to meet the Queen, the Supreme Governor of the Church of England, and may stay at Buckingham Palace.

The historic event, probably in September, is likely to overshadow even the triumphant pastoral visit of Pope John Paul II in 1982. Unlike John Paul II, whose visit almost did not take place because of the Falklands conflict, the pontiff will meet the Prime Minister in a series of events over three days, which it is hoped will finally consign to the past Britain’s post-Reformation legacy of anti-Catholic prejudice.

Gordon Brown extended an invitation during an audience in February and preparations have been under way for some time. The draft itinerary is understood to include Birmingham, Oxford and Edinburgh. The Pope is not expected to visit Northern Ireland.

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A slug from a .357-caliber Magnum ended Ken Cooper’s 13-year career as a bank robber and started him on the path toward redemption and a network of five prison ministries.

Carter describes the moment when he encountered a sheriff’s deputy as he walked out of his last score in 1982.

“As if in slow motion, fire flashed from the shooter’s pistol. The plate glass exploded into fragments, coming at me like glistening darts. A slug slammed into my chest, knocking me backward. Shards of glass pierced and sliced my skin. Fire burned in my chest. Someone screamed, the sound bouncing around my mind like an echo. Everything faded to black,” Cooper wrote in his book, Held Hostage: A Serial Bank Robber’s Road to Redemption.

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Verses 2 and 4 present another important point about being successful evangelizers: we need to tell the truth about the glory of God in Christ. Verse 2 says that we refuse to do anything underhanded but “by the open statement of the truth we would commend ourselves to everyone’s conscience in the sight of God.”

St. Paul is warning us against the wrong sort of success orientation. We can want so much to succeed at evangelism that we will try anything that works ”“ like dressing up a story to make things sound better than they are, or relying on dazzling evangelistic presentations to bring people to conversion. This verse does not rule out a concern for the methods we use to present the gospel, but it does make us consider how we are stating the truth.

Even more crucial is verse 4: “What we preach is not ourselves, but Jesus as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake.”

We are not winning people to ourselves. We are not trying to convince them to accept us as their lord. We have something people need. They would want it if they realized what it would do for them. We are like waiters bringing food to hungry people or nurses administering medicine to patients who are in danger of death.

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Standing in the lobby of a Downtown hotel, a key adviser to the U.S. delegation to the G-20 Summit promised an array of religious leaders that he would carry their concern for the poor into the economic conclave.

“We value your input and we know you hold us accountable,” said Michael Froman, dubbed the “sherpa,” after Himalayan mountain guides, because he leads the way to the summit. He is a deputy national security adviser specializing in global economics. “I appreciate your prayers. We will need them. This summit is about fixing financial systems … but also about addressing the needs of the most vulnerable.”

He cautioned the 30 religious leaders against expecting major new initiatives. He expects to focus on fixing “gaps in the infrastructure of how nations deal with crises,” he said. “I hope you will see that this is a meeting that advances the agenda we jointly care about. But it is one step in an ongoing crisis.”

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Sometimes there are no fireworks. Turning points can pass in silence, almost unobserved.

It may be that way with the “Great Schism,” the most serious division in the history of the Church. The end of the schism may come more quickly and more unexpectedly than most imagine.

On Sept. 18, inside Castel Gandolfo, the Pope’s summer palace about 30 miles outside Rome, a Russian Orthodox Archbishop named Hilarion Alfeyev, 43 (a scholar, theologian, expert on the liturgy, composer and lover of music), met with Benedict XVI, 82 (also a scholar, theologian, expert on the liturgy and lover of music), for almost two hours, according to informed sources. (There are as yet no “official” sources about this meeting — the Holy See has still not released an official communiqué about the meeting.)

The silence suggests that what transpired was important — perhaps so important that the Holy See thinks it isn’t yet prudent to reveal publicly what was discussed.

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And this is the fatal flaw that lies at the heart of ECUSA’s “winner-take-all” strategy. It tries to argue that a Diocese may never vote to leave, and that the only result of such a vote is that people leave, but the structure remains intact. But the people in question do not conveniently resign their positions, because in their view, they are leaving and taking the entire diocesan legal structure with them. So in their view, they are keeping their positions. Thus ECUSA has to come up with a way of claiming that those positions are in fact vacant. It goes through the charade of “deposing” the Bishop with far less than the required number of votes, but that does not solve the problem. The clergy deputies who voted for the amendment cannot be summarily removed without deposing them as well — a process that takes six months. And there is no mechanism whatsoever for summarily “deposing” or “removing” a lay deputy from office.

Without such resignations, and without any mechanism for removing lay Convention deputies, the very next “special meeting” of the Diocese which is called is null and void itself. For the duly elected deputies from the last Convention are the ones who should be seated, but they are barred from attending by the unconstitutional device of imposing a “loyalty oath”. And there cannot be a legal (one-third) quorum of loyalist clergy, because nearly nine-tenths of them went with Bishop Iker.

The problem of ECUSA and its remnant “Diocese” is that they just will not follow their own procedures to organize and become legitimate in the eyes of the law. Mr. Nelson, Bishop Gulick’s attorney, even (unwittingly) described his own clients to the court and spelled out what they ought to have done (id. at 57):

MR. NELSON: What I’m saying is that the body gets together, and then it must be approved by the general convention in order to be a valid diocese. It can get together and call itself a diocese, but until it’s approved and until that diocese agrees to accede to the constitution and canons of the Episcopal Church, it is not a diocese and cannot be a diocese.

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Quite something–watch it all.

As we reported last Wednesday, at the conclusion of its hearing the 141st Court granted partial relief in response to our Rule 12 Motion by amending the text of the motion.

In a Motion for Reconsideration (below), filed yesterday, the Diocese is asking the Court to grant full relief by declaring that, as a matter of law, there is only one Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth and one Corporation of the diocese. This would not prevent attorneys Jonathan Nelson and Kathleen Wells from representing the individuals who hired them, but they would not represent them as duly-elected officers of the Diocese or Corporation.

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When world leaders gathered in April to coordinate action on the international economy, it was in shambles. Billions of dollars in government spending and financial bailouts later, it’s on the road to recovery.

The challenge facing leaders gathering here today for the third summit in less than a year is to stay the course rather than declare victory and reverse it, U.S. officials and outside experts say.

“Pittsburgh is not intended to be a victory lap,” says Michael Froman, deputy national security adviser for international economic affairs. “We may have come back from the brink, but I don’t think people are at all complacent about where we are.”

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Six months after proclaiming a new commitment to the war in Afghanistan, President Barack Obama is under growing pressure to make what would amount to a U-turn in US policy and scale back America’s commitment to a conflict that many experts ”“ and a majority of the public ”“ now fear may be unwinnable.

The debate, which divides Mr Obama’s most senior advisers, was thrown into stark relief by the leaked report of General Stanley McChrystal, the commander of US and allied forces in Afghanistan, warning that the war might be lost within a year without a further boost in troop strength and a major change in strategy to combat the spreading Taliban insurgency.

General McChrystal’s bleak assessment coupled with Washington’s frustration with the Afghan leader Hamid Karzai and the fraud-ridden election over which he presided, has reignited a rift between Vice-President Joseph Biden and Hillary Clinton, the Secretary of State, over how the war should be waged. It has also left Mr Obama facing a fateful choice: whether to go along with his generals and send yet more troops, or stand current policy on its head.

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The U.S. government will have issued $7 trillion in bonds by the time the current fiscal year ends next week, but it expects the debt deluge to stabilize by mid 2010, a Treasury official said on Wednesday.

Though markets and the economy are improving, efforts to provide a firm foundation for recovery will require increases to the U.S. Treasury’s conventional bonds going forward, as well as debt securities that are indexed to inflation.

However, this expansion may take place in an environment where investors consider leaving the safe-haven Treasury market for riskier assets, and debt issuance is likely to level off mid next year, said Treasury Acting Assistant Secretary for Financial Markets Karthik Ramanathan.

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The average British man or woman has slept with 2.8 million people — albeit indirectly, according to figures released on Wednesday to promote awareness of sexual health.

A British pharmacy chain has launched an online calculator which helps you work out how many partners you have had, in the sense of exposure to risk of sexually transmitted diseases (STIs).

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