“Photographs by Charlotte Dumas of privately owned dogs who were mobilized, with their owners, to search for victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. They are now retired.”
Enjoy them all. Some of you know we have three dogs. I have been saving this until today since this week begins the anticipation of the 10th anniversary of 9/11. Like a lot of dog lovers I teared up at these pictures–KSH.
The Vatican forcefully denied it undermined the Irish bishops’ efforts to protect children from sexual abuse and characterized as “unfounded” claims the Vatican tried to interfere in government investigations regarding church handling of sex abuse cases.
The Vatican recognizes “the seriousness of the crimes” detailed in a government report about cases in the Diocese of Cloyne, Ireland, and “has sought to respond comprehensively,” said a communique released by the Vatican Sept. 3.
Update: I see a NY Times article on it here as well.
Comprised of people who were part of the Church of the Good Shepherd, Rosemont, the Fellowship of Blessed John Henry Newman, under the leadership of Bishop David Moyer, is an Ordinariate-bound community of Anglicans, and they will celebrate their inaugural Mass this Sunday, September 4th, at 10 a.m.
Every day, Michael G. Vickers gets an update on how many in Al Qaeda’s senior leadership the United States has removed from the battlefield, and lately there has been much to report. Al Qaeda’s No. 2 died in a C.I.A. drone strike late last month, another senior commander was taken out in June, and the Navy Seals made history when they dispatched Osama bin Laden in May.
“I just want to kill those guys,” Mr. Vickers likes to say in meetings at the Pentagon, with a grin.
Mr. Vickers’s preoccupation ”” “my life,” he says ”” is dismantling Al Qaeda. Underneath an owlish exterior, he is an ex-Green Beret and former C.I.A. operative with an exotic past. His title is under secretary of defense for intelligence, and he has risen to become one of the top counterterrorism officials in Washington.
Libya’s interim government plans to begin bringing irregular rebel militias under government control, either disbanding them or incorporating them into regular police and military forces, said Ali Tarhouni, the deputy chairman of the rebels’ executive board, speaking at a news conference here on Saturday.
Mr. Tarhouni, the highest-ranking rebel official in Tripoli, the capital, so far, announced the formation of a Supreme Security Committee of civilian officials and militia leaders, which would take control of all security matters in Tripoli. He said he had been appointed its chairman.
You may find the website here.
Elizabeth and I both thought it was very good–KSH.
American officers deployed as mentors in Afghanistan’s main military hospital discovered a shocking secret last year: Injured soldiers were routinely dying of simple infections and even starving to death as some corrupt doctors and nurses demanded bribes for food and the most basic of care.
The discovery, which hasn’t previously been reported, added new details to longstanding evidence of gross mismanagement at Dawood National Military Hospital, where most salaries and supplies are paid for by American taxpayers.
Yet the patient neglect continued for months after U.S. officials discovered it, as Afghan officials rebuffed American pressure to take action, multiple documents and testimonies viewed by The Wall Street Journal show.
Three years ago Church of Ireland archbishop Alan Harper caused a fierce backlash from traditional Church of Ireland members when he entered the debate on same-sex unions, writes Sam McBride.
It was one of the few times when the church’s divisions over homosexuality came fully into public view….
“These folks are not professional theologians and, except in a few cases like Huckabee, they haven’t been to seminary,” said Gary Smith, author of “Faith & the Presidency” and a historian at Grove City College, a Christian school in Pennsylvania. Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor and 2008 GOP presidential hopeful, is a Southern Baptist minister.
“Most of them haven’t had more education about the relationship between Christianity and politics than the average person on the street,” Smith said. “While they have their own personal faith, it isn’t usually well informed by history and theology.”
Voters have started pushing for specifics because they no longer consider belief separate from action and faith unrelated to policymaking, said Kathleen Flake, who specializes in American religious history at Vanderbilt University.
Save us, we beseech thee, merciful Lord, from all pride and self-assertion, and all desire for the praise of men; that whatever we do for thy Church may be done for his sake alone who loved us and gave himself for us, Jesus Christ our Lord.
Thou hast turned for me my mourning into dancing: thou hast put off my sackcloth, and girded me with gladness;
To the end that my glory may sing praise to thee, and not be silent. O LORD my God, I will give thanks unto thee for ever.
–Psalm 30: 11-12 (KJV)
For years he stood on one side of the altar as couples said their marriage vows on the other.
But roles were almost reversed over the weekend when a Roman Catholic priest wed the woman he loved.
Sean Page (53) and Clarice Young (47) were married in a low-key ceremony in an Anglican church in front of four of her five children.
Speaking moments before his marriage to the two-time divorcee, Mr Page said: “This is a house of God, and that’s all that matters.”
I will take comments on this submitted by email only to at KSHarmon[at]mindspring[dot]com.
You can check out the chart here.
Treasuries rose, pushing 10-year note yields below 2 percent, as the government’s payrolls report showed no jobs were added in August, stoking speculation that the Federal Reserve may consider additional stimulus measures to boost the economy.
U.S. 30-year yields fell to the lowest in since January 2009 as U.S. employment data were the weakest reading since September 2010. Minutes of the Federal Reserve’s Aug. 9 meeting released on Aug. 30 showed policy makers will debate stimulus options at their September gathering. German government debt rallied and credit defaults swaps rose, reflecting concern the European debt crisis is worsening.
“The markets were expecting some positive rate of job growth, and with that not materializing, everyone wants the safety of Treasuries,” said Guy LeBas, chief fixed-income strategist at Janney Montgomery Scott LLC in Philadelphia. “The nonexistent job growth has decreased fear of inflation and replaced it with increased fear of recession.”
In June, 14.6% of the U.S. population relied on food stamps. Food stamp rolls have risen 9.5% in the past year, though recent months show the pace of growth is slowing.
Mississippi reported the largest share of its population relying on food stamps, more than 21%, though that included some disaster assistance. One in five residents in New Mexico, Tennessee and Oregon were also food stamp recipients.
Why did I leave the Islamic Society while others stayed””and even, in some cases, wound up in Pakistan networking with fellow Islamists? What was the difference between us? The answer may be found somewhere in our earlier lives.
Those men who were the most opposed to the perverted messages being peddled by the Islamic Society were those who had been brought up by religious parents. One friend, who had been steeped in mainstream Islam as a child, used to tell me that the doctrine being preached at the Islamic Society was, in his view, so aberrant that it risked becoming toxic. He firmly believed that MI5 (British domestic intelligence) ought to be keeping an eye on these guys, and that was 10 years before 9/11. Those who had no exposure to Islam prior to the encounter with extremist recruiters seemed more likely to follow them.
Now there is a growing body of research explaining why that was….
The nonfarm payrolls numbers were unchanged in August after a prolonged increase in economic anxiety that began with the brinksmanship in Washington’s debt-ceiling debate and was followed by the country’s loss of its triple-A credit rating, stock market whiplash and renewed concerns about Europe’s sovereign debt.
The jobs figure, a monthly statistical snapshot by the Department of Labor, may appear more negative because it does not include 45,000 Verizon workers who were on strike when the survey was taken.
Economists blamed both sluggish demand for goods and services and the heightened uncertainty over the economy’s direction for the slow pace of job creation, saying political deadlock was in effect creating economic paralysis.
Tax evasion in Greece threatened to take organised form on Thursday when café and restaurant owners refused to pay a 10-point VAT rise, as a deep recession clashes with the government’s increasingly desperate search for revenue.
The steep rise in value added tax on the hospitality sector from 13 per cent to 23 per cent is part of a package of fiscal measures agreed in return for the country’s second financial rescue by European Union partners.
But for many of Greece’s ubiquitous cafés and souvlaki stands, which have already seen a 20-40 per cent decline in business in the past year as customers rein in spending, the VAT rise is the final straw….
The Bishop of Chelmsford, the Rt Revd Stephen Cottrell, believes that the planned eviction of travellers from a farm near Basildon will create “havoc and chaos” for the 90 families involved.
Bishop Cottrell and the Roman Catholic Bishop of Brentwood, the Rt Revd Thomas McMahon, visited the site at Dale Farm, in Crays Hill, on Tuesday. At midnight on WednesÂday, Basildon Council was due to start removing the travellers who have built illegally on part of the site.
…[This potential] threat came into sharp focus last week, when shaking from the largest earthquake to hit Virginia in 117 years appeared to exceed what the North Anna nuclear power plant northwest of Richmond was built to sustain.
The two North Anna reactors are among 27 in the eastern and central U.S. that a preliminary Nuclear Regulatory Commission review has said may need upgrades. That’s because those plants are more likely to get hit with an earthquake larger than the one their design was based on.
In South Carolina, SCE&G’s V.C. Summer nuclear plant, about 25 miles northwest of Columbia, is among the 27 facilities possibly needing upgrades to better withstand earthquakes, the NRC records show. So are three reactors operated by Duke Energy near Seneca.
…[Tammy] Wynette was a forerunner of a trend that has, according to new research, taken root today. One hundred and one family lawyers, interviewed by the consultancy ï¬rm Grant Thornton, concluded that intolerance ”“ that is, boredom ”“ has become the greatest threat to couples staying together. Inï¬delity, which formerly topped the list of reasons for marriage breakdown, has been surpassed by couples saying they no longer felt in love and had “grown apart”.
As a sign of the times, this appears depressing beyond words. Can we really have reached the stage where an erstwhile commitment to love and to cherish until death do us part has come down to so casual and seemingly frivolous a reason for walking out on the union, and quite possibly children, too? Have the past money-obsessed, self-indulgent decades really created such narcissism that we will not put up with a relationship that doesn’t give us perpetual bliss?
The Primate of the Episcopal Church of the Sudan has called upon Muslim leaders in South Sudan to set aside sectarian concerns and work towards building a free and tolerant nation.
Speaking at a dinner held by President Salva Kiir of South Sudan at the State House in Juba on 20 August for Muslim leaders in Africa’s newest nation, Archbishop Daniel Deng called upon Christians and Muslims to work together for the common good.
Central banks and official bodies have parked record sums of dollars at the US Federal Reserve for safe-keeping, indicating a clear loss of trust in commercial banks.
Data from the St Louis Fed shows that reserve funds from “official foreign accounts” have doubled since the start of the year, with a dramatic surge since the end of July when the eurozone debt crisis spread to Italy and Spain.
“This shows a pervasive loss of confidence in the European banking system,” said Simon Ward from Henderson Global Investors. “Central banks are worried about the security of their deposits so they are placing the money with the Fed.”
“Evangelical Catholicism” is a term being used to capture the Catholic version of a 21st century politics of identity, reflecting the long-term historical transition in the West from Christianity as a culture-shaping majority to Christianity as a subculture, albeit a large and influential one. I define Evangelical Catholicism in terms of three pillars:
–A strong defense of traditional Catholic identity, meaning attachment to classic markers of Catholic thought (doctrinal orthodoxy) and Catholic practice (liturgical tradition, devotional life, and authority).
–Robust public proclamation of Catholic teaching, with the accent on Catholicism’s mission ad extra, transforming the culture in light of the Gospel, rather than ad intra, on internal church reform.
–Faith seen as a matter of personal choice rather than cultural inheritance, which among other things implies that in a highly secular culture, Catholic identity can never be taken for granted. It always has to be proven, defended, and made manifest.
Now, in 2011, The New Puritans has been revised and brought up to date with a new title: Sydney Anglicans and the Threat to World Anglicanism: The Sydney Experiment. As with the earlier book, Muriel Porter acknowledges quite openly that she is “obviously not able to report on Sydney objectively and even-handedly.”
The acknowledgement was unnecessary. Even without it, the highly polemical nature of the book – and a significant degree of distortion that inevitably arises from that – is obvious. The book is littered with unsubstantiated assertions introduced with words such as, “Some have suggested …” and “I suspect the real reason …” and “Perhaps …….”
Unfortunately, it is also littered with factual error, half-truth and the attribution of false or hidden motives to those with whom she disagrees. Sydney Anglicans might think they are taking a stand on the teaching of Scripture but in reality, she repeatedly asserts, their motivation is much more sinister.
Almighty God, we remember before thee this day the blessed martyrs of New Guinea, who, following the example of their Savior, laid down their lives for their friends; and we pray thee that we, who honor their memory, may imitate their loyalty and faith; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.
Lord, who alone art God, the gracious and merciful; who commandest them that love thy name to cast away all fear and care, and to lay their burden upon thee: Receive us under thy protection, and give us now and evermore that everlasting rest which thou hast promised to them that obey thy Word; through Jesus Christ our Lord.
In thee, O LORD, do I put my trust; let me never be ashamed: deliver me in thy righteousness.
Bow down thine ear to me; deliver me speedily: be thou my strong rock, for an house of defence to save me.
For thou art my rock and my fortress; therefore for thy name’s sake lead me, and guide me.
–Psalm 31:1-3 (KJV)
When President Obama unveils his jobs plan to Congress next week, he’ll have to balance his desire for spending on programs that might stimulate the economy against the nation’s current appetite for cost cutting. We examine the pros, cons and politics of six proposals that might make Obama’s list….
One picture I really liked was this one (maybe because of the red House).
Due to a total loss of power and heavy flooding the area, the Cranford Police Department has been evacuated. Police Chief Eric Mason, who is serving as the emergency management coordinator, was unavaiable to talk to the media regarding the evacuation.