Manchester City reached the FA Cup Final for the first time in 30 years with victory over derby rivals Manchester United at Wembley.
Yaya Toure demonstrated power and poise to take advantage of Michael Carrick’s mistake to score after 52 minutes and set up another Wembley date against either Bolton Wanderers or Stoke City in May.
The University of Texas Investment Management Co., the second-largest U.S. academic endowment, took delivery of almost $1 billion in gold bullion as the metal reaches a record, according to the fund’s board.
The fund, whose $19.9 billion in assets ranked it behind Harvard University’s endowment as of August, according to the National Association of College and University Business Officers, last year added about $500 million in gold investments to an existing stake, said Bruce Zimmerman, the endowment’s chief executive officer. The holdings reached about $987 million yesterday, as Comex futures closed at $1,486 an ounce….
“Central banks are printing more money than they ever have, so what’s the value of money in terms of purchases of goods and services,” [Kyle] Bass said today in a telephone interview. “I look at gold as just another currency that they can’t print any more of.”
Tens of millions of Nigerians have taken part in Africa’s biggest presidential election, amid hopes of the most credible poll in two decades.
Votes are already being counted in parts of the country, with official results expected on Monday.
Voting is reported to have generally gone smoothly, despite some reports of fraud and incidents of violence.
President Goodluck Jonathan’s main challenger is Muhammadu Buhari, an ex-military leader popular in the north.
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At first, “The Good Book: A Humanist Bible” (Walker & Company, $35) looks like the Bible that Christians believe in, politicians take oaths on and the Gideons put in hotel rooms. It is divided into books like Genesis, Lamentations and Proverbs. Each book is organized into chapters and verses. It is written in the stately cadences that signal the presence of important, godly matters.
Begin to read, however, and you immediately see that God is not present. Instead, there are uncredited quotations from Aristotle, Darwin, Swift, Voltaire and hundreds more pre-Christian, anti-Christian or indifferent-to-Christian thinkers, assembled into an alternative genealogy of nature, human origins and ethics. Here are history and wisdom, without the divine attribution. Without any attribution, actually, which is why the Internet is a required study aid.
…[James Levine, a researcher at the Mayo Clinic]’s initial question ”” which he first posed in a 1999 study ”” was simple: Why do some people who consume the same amount of food as others gain more weight? After assessing how much food each of his subjects needed to maintain their current weight, Dr. Levine then began to ply them with an extra 1,000 calories per day. Sure enough, some of his subjects packed on the pounds, while others gained little to no weight.
“We measured everything, thinking we were going to find some magic metabolic factor that would explain why some people didn’t gain weight,” explains Dr. Michael Jensen, a Mayo Clinic researcher who collaborated with Dr. Levine on the studies. But that wasn’t the case. Then six years later, with the help of the motion-tracking underwear, they discovered the answer. “The people who didn’t gain weight were unconsciously moving around more,” Dr. Jensen says. They hadn’t started exercising more ”” that was prohibited by the study. Their bodies simply responded naturally by making more little movements than they had before the overfeeding began, like taking the stairs, trotting down the hall to the office water cooler, bustling about with chores at home or simply fidgeting. On average, the subjects who gained weight sat two hours more per day than those who hadn’t.
The most comprehensive survey of Britain’s churches ever carried out has shown a “critical” number in desperate need of financial help.
Nearly 4,000 of the nation’s 47,000 churches ”” 8 per cent ”” are in poor or very poor condition, needing an average of £80,000 spending each for repairs and restoration.
The survey, to be published on Monday, has found that 1.6 million people take part in voluntary activities involving the Church, averaging out at 33 per church. The biggest area was community activities, followed by faith activities and then administration.
O Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, who didst devote thy life and thy death to our most plenteous redemption: Grant that what thou hast wrought for us may also be wrought in us: that, growing into thy likeness, we may serve and share thy redeeming work; who livest and reignest in the glory of the eternal Trinity now and for evermore.
“Behold, the days are coming, says the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant which I made with their fathers when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant which they broke, though I was their husband, says the LORD. But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it upon their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each man teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, `Know the LORD,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the LORD; for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.”
–Jeremiah 31:31-34
Keller did get his dander up after Assange said that watching the American news media cover international events is like watching a goldfish bowl where readers pay little attention to outside perspectives.
Keller seemed to take that as a slight against the prestigious New York Times overseas correspondents. “I have to object to the idea that we’re not interested in what happens outside the U.S.,” he said. “We have 40 correspondents and stringers overseas, and we have four people who have been killed covering the wars.”
Assange said he meant no disrespect to the work of Times correspondents living or dead. But he did get the last word on that topic.
“I say that 40 people covering the entire world in the New York Times, which is the opinion leader of the United States, is a state of desperation,” he said.
Residents of Hawaii, Alaska, and Wyoming are the most likely among residents of U.S. states to be “thriving,” based on how they rate their lives at this time and five years from now, while residents of West Virginia and Kentucky are the least likely.
Perhaps the even more serious challenge looming relates to same-sex relationships and marriage. When in 2004 the Civil Partnership Act gave those entering legal same-sex partnerships fundamentally the same legal status as husbands and wives there were two exceptions: there could be no religious ceremony at the registration and marriage remained between a man and a woman. So, for example, a married person undergoing sex reassignment has formally to divorce his spouse before being legally recognised in the new gender and entering a civil partnership with his former spouse.
The former distinction was legally removed last year and discussions are now underway about how to enable civil partnerships on religious premises. Under the pretense of extending religious freedom, the state risks giving support to one perspective within churches’ internal debates on how to respond to civil partnerships by permitting religious premises to apply for authorization to host their registration. While this could create difficulties for a number of denominations, the Church of England as the national, established church will come under particular scrutiny.
Although there will be no compulsion and the Church of England has said it will not seek to gain authorization, conflicts could still result….
Delegates attending the first consultative conference for the Anglican Alliance in Nairobi have called for the Communion initiative to have as two of its key priorities the development of an Anglican Bank for savings and loans and a public education campaign on financial literacy and rights.
The consultation to take forward proposals for development, relief and advocacy across the Anglican Communion yesterday (April 14th) received a strong endorsement from Archbishop Eliud Wabukala, the Primate of Kenya.
Yesterday’s economic empowerment workshop heard presentations from Peter Warutere of the World Bank, Moses Ochieng of the Consultative Group to Assist the Poor and Peterson Kamau from the church’s own micro-finance agency Five Talents. They set out the challenges facing developing countries and set out strategies to overcome poverty globally, nationally and locally.
Of all Jewish holiday traditions, the most popular remains the Passover seder””the festive ritual meal, celebrated next week, at which family and friends gather to recount the Israelites’ Exodus from Egypt and deliverance from bondage to freedom. It’s so popular, in fact, that these days more and more of those seated at seder tables are non-Jews. Not only that: An increasing number of churches now offer their own versions of the Passover seder.
The Passover seder’s embrace by Christians seems an unlikely phenomenon. The Passover haggadah””the book that guides the seder service as prescribed by Jewish tradition””is designed to fulfill the Torah’s commandment that Jews remember and retell the journey from slavery to freedom every year. The haggadah’s reminder is explicit: “If the most holy, blessed be He, had not brought forth our ancestors from Egypt, we, and our children, and children’s children, had still continued in bondage to the Pharaohs in Egypt.” Jews are taught to celebrate each Passover as if they themselves were embarking on that journey from Egypt.
What makes Christians’ embrace of Passover all the more unusual is that for centuries””even into the 20th””the holiday’s proximity to Good Friday and Easter routinely sparked violent anti-Jewish riots and pogroms, especially in Europe.
Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond President Jeffrey Lacker Thursday said U.S. firms are increasingly looking for an opportunity to raise prices as more expensive commodities squeeze profit margins, raising the risk of inflation.
“In the absence of further energy-price increases, most forecasters do not foresee a significant acceleration in prices this year. We should not take that outcome for granted,” Lacker said at the University of Baltimore.
Earlier Thursday, the Labor Department said prices U.S. manufacturers and wholesalers pay for goods and materials rose a seasonally adjusted 0.7% in March as gasoline prices jumped and food prices fell.
The overall impact of earthquake and tsunami according to the government has been:
Death: about 13,200 people
Missing: about 14,300 people
Displaced: about 167,000 people
Totally demolished homes: 52,800 homes
Most damage has been caused by the tsunami rather than earthquake itself. In addition we are facing the potential impact of nuclear radiation caused by malfunction of the nuclear power plant. We are experiencing many aftershocks with some of them causing more damage to already weakened structures.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon in the Victorian era, preachers, pastors and students recently gathered at Spurgeon’s College in South London for the preaching conference entitled: Preaching: Past, Present and Future.
The speakers challenged today’s preachers to look at new approaches to speaking to modern Christians, all with a similarly unique message: step back in order to charge forward.
The justice system has its place, but I would argue if you want long-term solutions, then you must instead look at the root cause of the problem….
…we should not pretend that these crimes are caused solely by failures of society. These crimes are caused by the choices made by those holding the gun. They are caused by families not intervening. They are caused by those who turn a blind eye.
The role of the family is key. Parents must shoulder the responsibility for where their children are, who they are with and what they are doing.
The Archbishop of the province of Jos, Dr Benjamin Kwashi, said that “solidarity” with Christians in Nigeria, who have been subjected to violence in recent years, “is missing” from the wider Anglican CommunÂion.
Speaking in London on Thursday of last week, during his two-week visit to the UK, Dr Kwashi said that the Primate of Nigeria, the Most Revd Nicholas Okoh, had “shown deep interest and concern over the situation in Jos”. The Primate had “not only visited but . . . made rehabilitation possible for some of the displaced and suffering people.
“Unfortunately, you can’t say the same thing for the rest of the Anglican Communion,” Dr Kwashi went on. “We do get letters and encourageÂment, which is wonderful . . . but the solidarity is missing.”
[Herbert] McCabe’s starting point in the essay “Transubstantiation and the Real Presence” is a straight affirmation of standard Catholic teaching. He contrasts it with an understanding of the presence that is, at one extreme, metaphorical, and at the other extreme, materialistic. He talks about the food and drink of the Eucharist being “radically or as we say ”˜substantially’ transformed”, and about it not “remaining ontologically the same”.
Early on he makes an important distinction between what it means to say “Christ” is present in the Eucharist and to say “the body of Christ” is present. It is by speaking of “body of Christ”, rather than just of “Christ” that he can make the most of the word “sacramental” that defines the mode of presence that is believed to occur in the Eucharist.
His theology of the Eucharist is a theology of it as sacrament of the body, and blood, of Christ. His concern with the bread and wine will not be directly with what happens to them, but with what it means to say they are sacraments of the body and blood of Christ.
The leaders of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa also called for stronger regulation of commodity derivatives to dampen excessive volatility in food and energy prices, which they said posed new risks for the recovery of the world economy.
Meeting on the southern Chinese island of Hainan, they said the recent financial crisis had exposed the inadequacies of the current monetary order, which has the dollar as its linchpin.
What was needed, they said in a statement, was “a broad-based international reserve currency system providing stability and certainty” — thinly veiled criticism of what the BRICS see as Washington’s neglect of its global monetary responsibilities.
Here’s another good reason to lose weight: It may improve your memory and concentration, new research suggests.
Scientists know that overweight and obese people are at a greater risk for memory problems and other cognitive disabilities, but the latest study is one of the first to indicate that substantial weight loss improves brain health.
O thou high and lofty one that inhabitest eternity, whose name is holy, who hast promised to dwell with those that are of a contrite and humble spirit: Cleanse our hearts, we pray thee, from every stain of pride and vainglory; that though the heaven of heavens cannot contain thee, yet thou wouldest consent to abide with us for ever; through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Now when Jesus came, he found that Laz’arus had already been in the tomb four days. Bethany was near Jerusalem, about two miles off, [and many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console them concerning their brother.
When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, while Mary sat in the house. Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. And even now I know that whatever you ask from God, God will give you.” Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.”
–John 11:17-23
There is a pathway to peace that promises new hope for the people of Libya ”” a future without Qaddafi that preserves Libya’s integrity and sovereignty, and restores her economy and the prosperity and security of her people. This needs to begin with a genuine end to violence, marked by deeds not words. The regime has to pull back from the cities it is besieging, including Ajdabiya, Misurata and Zintan, and return to their barracks. However, so long as Qaddafi is in power, NATO must maintain its operations so that civilians remain protected and the pressure on the regime builds. Then a genuine transition from dictatorship to an inclusive constitutional process can really begin, led by a new generation of leaders. In order for that transition to succeed, Qaddafi must go and go for good. At that point, the United Nations and its members should help the Libyan people as they rebuild where Qaddafi has destroyed ”” to repair homes and hospitals, to restore basic utilities, and to assist Libyans as they develop the institutions to underpin a prosperous and open society.
An early morning stroll saved a 12th century Dorset church from destruction last week, when a dog-walker saw smoke rising from St Mary’s Church in Maiden Newton and called for help.
While out walking his spaniel, Alex Adair-Charlton (39) of Maiden Newton saw a cloud of smoke or mist hovering above the village’s medieval church. His curiosity turned to alarm, however, when he saw flames rising from the church’s roof, and he telephoned the fire services from his mobile phone.
A team from the village fire service arrived within four minutes of the 6:20 am alarm, and by the end of the day approximately 30 firefighters were able to extinguish the blaze. An aerial platform was brought in to fight the blaze, so as not to damage the church’s wooden doors, believed to be among the oldest in England.