The longer people stay out of work, the more trouble they have finding new work.

That is a fact of life that much of Europe, with its underclass of permanently idle workers, knows all too well. But it is a lesson that the United States seems to be just learning.

This country has some of the highest levels of long-term unemployment ”” out of work longer than six months ”” it has ever recorded. Meanwhile, job growth has been, and looks to remain, disappointingly slow, indicating that those out of work for a while are likely to remain so for the foreseeable future. Even if the government report on Friday shows the expected improvement in hiring by business, it will not be enough to make a real dent in those totals.

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The cruel truth is that Hanukkah is a seasonal festival of light in search of a pretext and as such is doomed to be forever the poor relation of Christmas. No comparable grandeur in the singing, no comparable grandeur in the giving, no comparable grandeur in the commemoration (no matter how solemn and significant the events we are remembering), in which even the candles are small and burn out pretty much the minute you light them.

In countries that turn snowy in December, Christmas has been brilliantly marketed. We see the baby Jesus shivering in his wintry crib, admire the twinkling lights in the Norwegian pines, and go out on to the snow on the new toboggan Santa brought us. It’s of a piece.

Compared to this, no matter how conscientiously we go on reinventing Hanukkah for the electronic age, exchanging animated Hanukkah messages by e-mail and sending one another links to Hanukkah YouTube videos, those Hasmoneans ”” who sound too hot for this time of the year ”” don’t have a chance of engaging our imaginations.

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Inside St. George’s – Baghdad from FRRME on Vimeo.

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Nicholas Sparks donated land in 1832 for Ottawa’s first Anglican church thinking it would help sell his new subdivision. Almost 180 years later, Christ Church Cathedral plans to develop the hilltop parcel he granted.

The green-themed project features two towers — a condominium building and an office building that are 15 to 17 storeys tall — as well as townhouses. It doesn’t touch the cathedral itself and preserves two church heritage buildings; Roper House and Lauder Hall.

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Nick Maiale of Big Nick’s Cold Cuts in Philadelphia does not sell cigarettes to anyone under age 18. Not that he doesn’t get asked.

“I get them every day,” he says of teenagers trying to buy cigarettes despite the law against selling to minors. “I have to card twice a day.” Only once, he says, has the deli been fined for selling to a kid. “My wife got caught” by a teen who looked older, Maiale says. “I could’ve killed her.”

But Philadelphia is an easy place for kids to buy cigarettes illegally. When undercover shoppers for the city’s health department ”” local high school students posing as customers ”” try to buy cigarettes in one of the city’s 4,300 tobacco retailers, they succeed at least 25% of the time.

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What does the U.S. have in common with Ethiopia and Angola? Here’s the disturbing answer: The rate of HIV infection among the poorest Americans has reached the same epidemic levels as that of the two impoverished countries.

This shocking new statistic comes from a recent report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which stated that HIV was detected in 2.4% of adults living at or below the federal poverty line. That’s twice the rate of the general U.S. population and about equal to the HIV prevalence rate among Ethiopians and Angolans.

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While North Korea’s state-run media continued to rage over the military exercises being held off the North’s coastline, saying the four days of drills that ended Wednesday afternoon had brought the Korean Peninsula to “the brink of war,” much of daily life in the secretive North appeared remarkably normal, or at least what passes for normal.

Accounts from the North reaching Seoul suggested that residents of Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, had been calmly discussing last week’s artillery duel with South Korea, foreigners living in the city were worrying about an escalation in tensions with the South and the nation’s leader was celebrated for his legendary contributions to “the brilliant tradition of Korean dancing art.”

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Mary E. Gilbert often drove right by the large, intimidating church buildings in her community, never stopping to go inside because she feared she would not be accepted or welcomed.

God would invite her in, if He was there, but would the all-white congregation be as hospitable? The thought kept her away.

The 26-year-old Jackson State University student recently shared her feelings with a diverse congregation at Central United Methodist Church.

Sunday Morning Segregation: How much has changed since the days of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was the latest topic of The Medgar Evers/Ella Baker Civil Rights Lecture Series.

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The global prosperity of much of the 20th century would seem to belie the pessimists, but I don’t think there is much doubt the moral authority of the West has dramatically declined in the face of the financial crisis. It has revealed deep fault lines within Western economies that have spread to the global economy.

The majority of Western governments are running fiscal deficits of 10 percent or more relative to GDP, but it is increasingly clear that there will be no quick fixes, that big government and fiscal deficits will not bring us back to the status quo ante. Indeed, the tidal wave of red ink has meant that the leverage-led or debt-led growth model is dead.

Developed countries will be forced to deal with their debt on every level, from the personal to the corporate to the sovereign. Being able to borrow may have made people feel richer, but having to repay the debt is certainly making them feel poorer, particularly since the unfunded liabilities that many governments face from aging populations will have to be paid for by a shrinking band of workers.

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Foreign banks were among the biggest beneficiaries of the $3,300bn in emergency credit provided by the Federal Reserve during the crisis, according to new data on the extraordinary efforts of the US authorities to save the global financial system.

The revelation of the scale of overseas lenders’ borrowing underlines the global nature of the turmoil and the crucial role of the Fed as the lender of last resort for the world’s banking sector.

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It is important to share in both in the good times and bad times. The Bible says “laugh with those that laugh and cry with those that cry”. Well, there have been both celebrations and struggles over the last 5 years.

On Ash Wednesday I went out and met shoppers in York city centre and heard about the many challenges individuals were facing and said prayers with them. I visited Redcar to meet the workers at Corus who were facing redundancy because of the mothballing of the local steelworks. When Alan Johnston was kidnapped in Palestine and we prayed for his release ”“ and then when he was freed – it was a time of such joy.

And then when Madeleine McCann was abducted from her bedroom and Claudia Lawrence went missing on her way to work ”“ such terrible sadness and pain. I pray for the families that one day Madeleine and Claudia will be returned safely to us.

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In one cable from January 2010, Spanish prosecutor Jose “Pepe” Grinda Gonzales claimed that in Russia, Belarus and Chechnya “one cannot differentiate between the activities of the Government and OC (organised crime) groups”.

Judge Grinda led a long investigation into Russian organised crime in Spain, leading to more than 60 arrests.

A cable from the US embassy in Madrid talks about the “unanswered question” of the extent to which Mr Putin is implicated in the mafia and whether he controls its actions.

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Almighty and everlasting God, we thank thee for thy Servant Channing, whom thou didst call to preach the Gospel to the peoples of Asia. Raise up, we beseech thee, in this and every land heralds and evangelists of thy kingdom, that thy Church may proclaim the unsearchable riches of our Saviour Jesus Christ; who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.

O Lord, who hast taught us in thy holy Word that the night is far spent and the day is at hand: Awaken us from all sloth and slumber, that we may live as sons of light and of the day, putting on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation; for his sake who died for us and rose again, even our Lord Jesus Christ.

And Jesus said to them, “The sons of this age marry and are given in marriage; but those who are accounted worthy to attain to that age and to the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage, for they cannot die any more, because they are equal to angels and are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection. But that the dead are raised, even Moses showed, in the passage about the bush, where he calls the Lord the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. Now he is not God of the dead, but of the living; for all live to him.” And some of the scribes answered, “Teacher, you have spoken well.” For they no longer dared to ask him any question.

–Luke 20:34-40

In a confidential diplomatic cable sent back to the State Department, the American Embassy warned of increasing mistrust of the United States by its northern neighbor, with which it shares some $500 billion in annual trade, the world’s longest unsecured border and a joint military mission in Afghanistan.

“The degree of comfort with which Canadian broadcast entities, including those financed by Canadian tax dollars, twist current events to feed longstanding negative images of the U.S. ”” and the extent to which the Canadian public seems willing to indulge in the feast ”” is noteworthy as an indication of the kind of insidious negative popular stereotyping we are increasingly up against in Canada,” the cable said.

A trove of diplomatic cables, obtained by WikiLeaks and made available to a number of publications, disclose a perception by American diplomats that Canadians “always carry a chip on their shoulder” in part because of a feeling that their country “is condemned to always play ”˜Robin’ to the U.S. ”˜Batman.’ ”

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You think your heating bills are high?

Be glad you aren’t in charge of the St. Chad’s building in Regina, where thousands of dollars were spent last winter to keep things toasty.

The Anglican Diocese of Qu’Appelle was paying $2,000 a month to keep the chill away from the 98-year-old Regina building, although thanks to some renovations, the bills are expected to be lower this winter, according to archdeacon Rob Hardwick.

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The Anglican Church has expressed fears that violence could occur in the forth coming presidential elections due to increasing voter bribery.

The Archbishop of the Church of Uganda Henry Luke Orombi says according to the recent concluded party primaries which were marred by irregularities and election malpractice the same might occur again in 2011 general elections.

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Appearing on Conan O’Brien’s show last year, comedian Louis C. K. lamented how frustrated people get when cell phones and cross-country flights are slow or faulty. “Everything is amazing right now and nobody’s happy,” he said. When people complain that their flight boarded 20 minutes late or that they had to sit on the runway for 40 minutes before takeoff, he asks a few additional questions.

“Oh really, what happened next? Did you fly through the air, incredibly, like a bird? Did you partake in the miracle of human flight?”

The appearance hit a nerve””with over a million YouTube views and counting””because it’s true: Whether it’s our impatience with technology or, more likely, with family members and friends, our complaints reflect how much we take for granted.

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Chris Hughes, one of the founders of Facebook and the chief digital organizer for Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, knows a thing or two about building online communities.

Now he is applying his expertise to a new venture called Jumo, which aims to connect people with nonprofits and charitable organizations.

The site, which is being unveiled on Tuesday, aims to “do what Yelp did for restaurants,” Mr. Hughes said, indexing charities “to help people find and evaluate them.”

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Cerise Mayo expected better of her bees. She had raised them right, given them all the best opportunities ”” acres of urban farmland strewn with fruits and vegetables, a bounty of natural nectar and pollen. Blinded by devotion, she assumed they shared her values: a fidelity to the land, to food sources free of high-fructose corn syrup and artificial food coloring.

And then this. Her bees, the ones she had been raising in Red Hook, Brooklyn, and on Governors Island since May, started coming home to their hives looking suspicious. Of course, it was the foragers ”” the adventurers, the wild waggle dancers, the social networkers incessantly buzzing about their business ”” who were showing up with mysterious stripes of color. Where there should have been a touch of gentle amber showing through the membrane of their honey stomachs was instead a garish bright red. The honeycombs, too, were an alarming shade of Robitussin.

“I thought maybe it was coming from some kind of weird tree, maybe a sumac,” said Ms. Mayo, who tends seven hives for Added Value, an education nonprofit in Red Hook. “We were at a loss.”

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Delta Air Lines is having what might possibly be the most-popular job search in a long time. More than 100,000 people have applied for just 1,000 openings as flight attendants.

Part of the reason behind the huge turnout might be the nation’s persistently high unemployment rate, but the airline says that a lot of people just want to fly.

“I realized that I didn’t want to be in an office 9 to 5,” said Jordan Leonard, a flight attendant who has worked 20 years for Delta and now also helps with hiring. “I’m about to go all around the world; Europe, South America, Asia. You name it, I’ve probably been there.”

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The idea of a do-not-track mechanism that could be built into Web browsing software is gaining steam in Washington. This week, a House subcommittee on consumer protection is holding a hearing about do-not-track proposals and the Federal Trade Commission is expected to release an online privacy report that will promote a do-not-track mechanism.

Officials from Mozilla and Lotame are expected to appear at a separate panel this week to discuss how the industry could create its own do-not-track mechanism before “government tries to legislate how browsers function,” according to the event organizer, Jules Polonetsky, director of the Future of Privacy Forum, an Internet-industry funded think tank.
The group will discuss a technical method that would allow Web browsers to broadcast a “do not track” message at a user’s request.

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The chairmen of President Obama’s debt-reduction commission have been unable to win support from any of the panel’s elected officials for their proposed spending cuts and tax increases, underscoring the reluctance of both parties to risk short-term political backlash in pursuit of the nation’s long-term fiscal health.

The chairmen of the commission ”” former Senator Alan K. Simpson, a Republican, and Erskine B. Bowles, a Democrat and former chief of staff to President Bill Clinton ”” delayed for two days, until Friday, a final vote by its 18 members.

They said the delay was to provide more time to look at the final package, but it also gave them further opportunity to woo some of the 12 members of Congress on the commission, six from each party, whose support will be critical if the plan is to be taken seriously as a blueprint for eventual legislation.

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Proliferation of churches in the society is due to selfishness and greed, the Rt. Rev. Isaac Orama, the Bishop of the Uyo Diocese of the Anglican Communion, has said.

He told newsmen in Uyo that the situation was disturbing, recalling that in the early history of the churches, what could lead to proliferation of churches was “doctrinal differences”.

“But nowadays, churches spring up for greed and selfish reasons because people just want to be church owners.”

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The Auckland service will be led by Anglican Church and Catholic Church leaders and will feature representatives from other faiths and the wider Auckland community.

“At times like this, it is important for the community to come together to remember those who have been lost and support those left behind,” says Anglican Bishop of Auckland, the Right Reverend Ross Bay.

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Father Lee Kenyon said his parishioners at St. John’s are not leaving out of anger.

“We didn’t vote to leave the Anglican Church of Canada, we voted to accept the invitation of the Pope,” said Kenyon, who will be ordained as a Catholic priest despite being married with two children.

Many elements of the conversion must still be negotiated — including what will happen to the century-old church, which still belongs to the Anglican diocese.

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The “new atheism” promoted by academics and writers such as Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett and Christopher Hitchens came under fire at a debate in Cambridge.

Terry Eagleton, distinguished professor of English literature at Lancaster University, opened the discussion, titled Responses to the New Atheism. He said that the last time he had spoken at the University of Cambridge’s Great St Mary’s Church was in 1968, during a debate on student radicalism – something, he noted, that we are likely to see a good deal more of.

“Why is God back centre stage again?” he asked. “Just when grand narratives seemed to be over, He’s back in the spotlight.”

It was the events of 11 September 2001, Professor Eagleton suggested, that brought the issue of religion “to a new focus of intensity and politicised the debate, not entirely to its benefit”.

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Some 12,000 South Carolinians will wake this morning to find the safety net they depend on to pay mortgages, buy food and heat their homes has been pulled out from under them.

The lame-duck Congress on Tuesday did not extend benefits to the long-term unemployed beyond the two years’ worth of aid already provided by the state and federal government.

For those at the deadline, the clock has run out.

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Cities are bracing to lose millions of dollars in funding for transportation and community projects, from subway lines to youth centers, because of a renewed push in Congress to ban lawmaker-directed spending known as “earmarks.”

With the incoming Republican majority in the House of Representatives committed to ending the practice and the Senate facing a vote to ban earmarks today, local officials are scrambling to find ways to pay for projects in case the federal funding never arrives.

Spending bills in the House for the 2011 fiscal year include more than 3,000 earmarks worth $3 billion, according to the budget watchdog Taxpayers for Common Sense ”” from $2.5 million for a transportation center in Rochester, N.Y., to $250,000 for park upgrades in Gonzales, La.

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