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The U.S. economy continued to lose jobs last month as small gains in the private sector failed to offset big cuts in government workers, pointing to a still sluggish recovery.

Private-sector employers added only 64,000 jobs in September, the Labor Department said Friday. Overall, nonfarm payrolls fell by 95,000 as temporary census workers were let go and state and local governments also cut employment.

he U.S. labor market remains in the doldrums 15 months after the recession ended. That could hurt Democrats in mid-term elections Nov. 2 and is likely to lead the Federal Reserve to take new steps to jump-start the economy at its next meeting Nov. 2-3. The September data was the last jobs report before these two key events.

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For nearly two weeks, many here on the Duke University campus had been aware of a certain senior “thesis” that a recent graduate wrote, apparently as a private joke, about her sexual exploits with 13 student-athletes.

Then the Internet seized on it….

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The dollar hit fresh lows against several currencies Thursday, raising pressure on global leaders to address worsening tensions among countries vying to keep their currencies weak and exports competitive.

The relentless rise of currencies from the Japanese yen to the Australian dollar is threatening to derail economic recoveries and global cooperation. In the six weeks since the Federal Reserve began discussing the prospect of further easing monetary policy, the dollar has fallen 7% against a basket of currencies.

Compounding matters are frustrations with the Chinese government’s unwillingness to allow its currency, the yuan, to significantly appreciate.

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The Anglican Church of Rwanda has also been at the forefront of the reform movement within the Anglican Communion. While it supports in principle the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Anglican Covenant process, it has been less than enthusiastic about how such a structure might work, given the anarchy now prevalent across the Communion.

At the All African Bishops Meeting in Entebbe in August, discussion of the Anglican Covenant among the gathered bishops took a decided second place to the conciliar programme for a renewed Anglican ecclesiology propounded by Rwanda and the Global South group of churches.

An August 2008 paper prepared by Dr. Kevin Donlon, an American priest of the AMiA, and a member of the Global South Anglican Theological Formation and Education Task Force, argued the Covenant was yesterday’s solution to today’s problems.

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Update: You can now find the full article on George Conger’s blog here.

The Catholic Group in the General Synod was described on Wednesday morning as “incandescent” about Tuesday’s announcement of the membership of the group that will prepare the draft code of practice to accompany the women-bishops Measure.

The drafting group was set up by the House of Bishops, which has the responsibility of presenting a draft code to the General Synod.

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Primates from the Global South are contemplating a boycott of the next Primates’ Meeting because the US Presiding Bishop, Dr Katharine Jefferts Schori, will be present.

The Archbishop of the Indian Ocean, the Most Revd Ian Ernest, has confirmed that he will not attend the meeting, due to take place in Dublin, 25-31 January.

Archbishop Ernest said last week that he had written to the Archbishop of Canterbury in the summer to convey his distress at the election in the United States of the Rt Revd Mary Glasspool, a partnered lesbian, as Bishop of Los Angeles. He had urged Dr Williams to exclude Dr Jefferts Schori from future Primates’ Meetings.

“There were conditions attached in that letter,” he said last week, “and I can confirm I will not attend if those conditions are not fulfilled.”

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Unemployment, as measured by Gallup without seasonal adjustment, increased to 10.1% in September — up sharply from 9.3% in August and 8.9% in July. Much of this increase came during the second half of the month — the unemployment rate was 9.4% in mid-September — and therefore is unlikely to be picked up in the government’s unemployment report… [due out later this morning].

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As the U.S. prepares to embark on a new round of Federal Reserve quantitative easing, there are plenty of reasons to doubt that it is the right course for the economy and job creation.

Here’s another: The voyage might have to be aborted ”” or at least diverted ”” soon after QE2 leaves the dock because the Fed may be sailing into a political hurricane.

Even before the anticipated launch of the next round of Treasury purchases ”” it’s expected to be made official on Nov. 3 ”” the Fed’s unmistakable signals have fueled commodity price gains as the dollar has sagged….

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[Alexander] Hoey, who is from Macungie, Lehigh County, said he always used to feel tired for the first few periods when the Hill School started at 7:55.

“You’d get out of it toward lunch,” he recalled, in between bites of pancakes in the school’s wood-paneled dining hall.

Now, after a schedule manipulation that required shaving off a few minutes here and there from activities throughout the day, he and other students say they feel more alert and productive. Visits to the school nurse went down, and grade-point averages even went up by two-tenths of a point, said Jennifer Lagor, assistant headmaster for student life.

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Mr. [JOHN] DABIRI: I started studying jellyfish during a summer project when I was still in college. I came out to CalTech to work with Morey Gharib, who was my later Ph.D. advisor. And at the time I was primarily focused on studying rockets and jets as an engineering major at Princeton, and when I came to CalTech he said well let’s take a trip to the aquarium to see if you can find something interesting there. And it was there that I sort of fell in love with jellyfish.

{MICHEL] MARTIN: Why jellyfish? I mean a lot of us have our relationship with jellyfish but love is generally not one of them. I mean they’re lovely to look at, but.

Mr. DABIRI: Right, something, certainly not to study and for me I think it was because on the one hand they looked very simple but there’s a lot of interesting complexity there, especially when you start to study how they swim and the field of fluid dynamics, which tries to understand the physics of the water motion that they create.

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O God, who hast taught us something of thy truth: Teach us more, we pray thee. When our minds are confused, direct them; when they are obstinate, win them; when they are filled with thoughts of self, fill them with thoughts of thee; and at all times give us a humble and teachable spirit; for Jesus Christ’s sake.

It shall come to pass in the latter days that the mountain of the house of the LORD shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and shall be raised up above the hills; and peoples shall flow to it, and many nations shall come, and say: “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob; that he may teach us his ways and we may walk in his paths.” For out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem.

–Micah 4:1-2

The world risks “sleepwalking” into a humanitarian disaster as Sudan prepares for a referendum on southern independence, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, warned today.

Up to four million people of southern descent living in the north of the country could be forced out as refugees after the vote, scheduled for January next year, he said.

Dr Williams criticised the international community for “taking its eye off” the looming crisis, as rival forces of the north and south of the country edge closer to conflict.

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The Archbishop of Canterbury has added his voice to those warning that Sudan is sliding back towards civil war.

World leaders, from President Obama to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, have raised concerns in recent weeks.

Now Dr Rowan Williams has said he is “not optimistic” that war can be averted in Africa’s largest country.

“I am very concerned indeed, the forces pulling the country apart are getting stronger,” he said, ahead of a news conference making public his concerns.

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Part of the 20/20 vision had been the truth that mission united us and issues divided us. Since 2003, issues have divided us. While some leaders say we are still doing 20/20 mission, most people in the wider church know this initiative was dead on arrival.

As a consequence, we have returned to our long-standing decline. In only a few more years, the very viability of our church’s structure will begin to be called into question ”” the signs are already there. In the years that followed 2003, I have come to the conclusion that the Episcopal Church is headed toward about 1 million members in 2020, an average Sunday attendance around 400,000 and around 6,000 mainly small congregations. The 20/20 initiative was, among all things, a concerted effort to bring revitalization and growth to a long declining mainline church. It failed and we are now faced with an institutional decline that, save a direct intervention and miracle by God, cannot be reversed. There is insufficient leadership, desire, or institutional will to change.

The failure of the 20/20 initiative, combined with the subsequent controversy around human sexuality, has placed our community in a very precarious position. I am not suggesting that we return to the 20/20 initiative, but I do believe that our community urgently needs toaddress our current realities and find leaders who can point us toward a more hopeful future.

–The Very Rev. Kevin Martin in the October 8, 2010, Living Church (p.10).