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“You weren’t just pretty, you were as beautiful as a woman could be. People didn’t just like you, Whitney. They loved you. I was your pretend bodyguard once not so long ago, and now you’re gone, too soon, leaving us with memories – memories of a little girl that stepped bravely in front of this church, in front of the ones that loved you first. In front of the ones that loved you best and loved you the longest. The bolder you stepped into the white-hot light of the world stage, and what you did is the rarest of achievements.

“You set the bar so high that professional singers, your own colleagues, they don’t want to sing that little country song. What would be the point? Now, the only ones who sings your songs are young girls like you, who are dreaming of being you some day. And so to you, Bobbi Kristina and to all those young girls who are dreaming that dream, that maybe thinking, are they good enough? I think Whitney would tell you, ‘Guard your bodies, guard the precious miracle of your own life, and then sing your hearts out,’ knowing that there’s a lady in heaven who is making God himself wonder how he created something so perfect.

“So off you go, Whitney, off you go. Escorted by an army of angels to your heavenly father, and when you sing before him, don’t worry . . . you’ll be good enough.”

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You can check here and there. This is what stood out to me:

1414 Thomas Arundel, Archbishop of Canterbury, Chancellor of England, died.

1878 Thomas Edison received a U.S. patent for “an improvement in phonograph or speaking machines.”

1968 Damages are to be awarded under a settlement agreed in the High Court to 62 children born with deformities, after their mothers took the drug thalidomide during pregnancy.

1985 William Schroeder (d.1986) was the 1st artificial heart patient to leave [the] hospital. He spent 15 minutes outside Humana Hospital in Louisville, Ky.

What stands out to you?

‘Corporate paedophilia’ is a worrying global trend on the rise.

For those who might have missed it, Witchery has just launched a new clothing range for eight- to 14-year-old girls called “8fourteen”. In a brilliant stroke of imagination, the launch occurred on Valentine’s Day ”“ because, of course, girls from the age of eight need to understand that male romantic approval, and attracting it through your physical appearance (euphemistically termed “personal style”), is what really matters in life.

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O Lord God, perfect in us that which is lacking of thy gifts; of faith, to increase it, of hope, to establish it, of love, to kindle it; and make us to fear but one thing only, the fearing aught more than thee, our Father, our Saviour, our Lord, for ever and ever.

Praise the LORD! Praise the LORD from the heavens, praise him in the heights! Praise him, all his angels, praise him, all his host! Praise him, sun and moon, praise him, all you shining stars! Praise him, you highest heavens, and you waters above the heavens! Let them praise the name of the LORD! For he commanded and they were created. And he established them for ever and ever; he fixed their bounds which cannot be passed. Praise the LORD from the earth, you sea monsters and all deeps, fire and hail, snow and frost, stormy wind fulfilling his command! Mountains and all hills, fruit trees and all cedars! Beasts and all cattle, creeping things and flying birds! Kings of the earth and all peoples, princes and all rulers of the earth! Young men and maidens together, old men and children! Let them praise the name of the LORD, for his name alone is exalted; his glory is above earth and heaven. He has raised up a horn for his people, praise for all his saints, for the people of Israel who are near to him. Praise the LORD!

–Psalm 148

She told ABC’s Diane Sawyer in 2002: “The biggest devil is me. I’m either my best friend or my worst enemy.”

Houston tried to stage a comeback with the 2009 album I Look To You, but things fell apart when a concert to promote the album was clearly off-key.

Broadcaster and music journalist Paul Gambaccini described Whitney Houston’s voice as “the template for female vocal performers for the last 30 years”.

But in the end, he told the BBC, she became the victim of a “self-administered decline” and, sadly, threw all it all away.

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Facebook, YouTube and even texting will be the salvation of many of the world’s endangered languages, scientists believe.

Of the 7,000 or so languages spoken on Earth today, about half are expected to be extinct by the century’s end.

Globalisation is usually blamed, but some elements of the “modern world”, especially digital technology, are pushing back against the tide.

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Google Inc. officials were sued for violating users’ privacy rights on Apple Inc.’s Safari Web browser by bypassing computer settings designed to block monitoring of consumers’ online activity.

Google, the world’s biggest Internet-search company, has been dodging privacy settings in Safari, which serves as the primary Web browser on Apple’s iPhone and iPad products, lawyers for an Illinois man who uses the Safari browser said in a lawsuit filed today in federal court in Delaware.

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Hollywood veteran Brian Robbins has a new production studio under construction and 35 shows in development. There’s a sitcom set in a high-school bathroom, a talk show modeled on “The View” but hosted by young Twitter celebrities and a series about an outlandish teen wrestling league.

Mr. Robbins, a producer and director known for Eddie Murphy movies and TV shows including “Smallville,” plans to produce 120 hours of teen programming this year, all of it destined exclusively for the Web. “We consider ourselves a network,” he says.

Mr. Robbins is part of a teeming new ecosystem, as some of Hollywood’s biggest names””with support from Silicon Valley’s deepest pockets””are racing to create new shows, and in some cases, dozens of them, for the Web.

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In mid-December, a small group of people brought the practice of an “ancient faith” to the Battle-Friedman House on Greensboro Avenue.

St. Paul’s Anglican Church is not the first Anglican church in Tuscaloosa’s history, but it’s the only one currently active.

“We’re brand new, and we want to let people know we’re here and have a sense what we’re all about,” said the Rev. Lanier Nail, pastor of St. Paul’s.

Read it all. Also, the Church website is there.

First please go here and reread the necessary procedures for a petition nomination. Observe especially the following:

“A petition should come after a prayerful discernment about the preliminary slate and as a way to strengthen the slate,” advises Dean [George] Werner.

A nomination by petition requires ten signatures from individuals representing at least three parishes. Four of those signing must be canonically resident clergy, and of the six lay communicants in good standing in parishes of the diocese, three must be deputies to the Diocesan Convention. The petition must also include the consent signature of the person being nominated.

Now see what you make of Lionel Diemel’s take on this matter.

The Three Main lectures are on the following topics:

“Justification and the Future of Anglicanism”

“Luther and the English Reformation”

“Justification from Hooker to Newman”

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Right mission depends on power, and that power comes from the Holy Spirit.

At the Transfiguration they saw it. And they lived with it, in Jesus. And that power would be proclaimed, and lived. The mission of the church, from beginning to end, when done the way God wants it done, is accomplished through the power of God.

Lord God, empower our missionaries in the Holy Spirit as they go, and as they point to and proclaim Jesus. May each of us be open to the invitation to go ourselves. We pray that all of us may be empowered and living in the Holy Spirit that we will all live the mission no matter where we are, to the Glory of God and the building up of Your Kingdom. Amen.

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It used to be called illegitimacy. Now it is the new normal. After steadily rising for five decades, the share of children born to unmarried women has crossed a threshold: more than half of births to American women under 30 occur outside marriage.

Once largely limited to poor women and minorities, motherhood without marriage has settled deeply into middle America. The fastest growth in the last two decades has occurred among white women in their 20s who have some college education but no four-year degree, according to Child Trends, a Washington research group that analyzed government data.

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Jeremy Lin is anomalous in all sorts of ways. He’s a Harvard grad in the N.B.A., an Asian-American man in professional sports. But we shouldn’t neglect the biggest anomaly. He’s a religious person in professional sports….

The modern sports hero is competitive and ambitious. (Let’s say he’s a man, though these traits apply to female athletes as well). He is theatrical. He puts himself on display….

…[Yet] there’s no use denying ”” though many do deny it ”” that this ethos violates the religious ethos on many levels. The religious ethos is about redemption, self-abnegation and surrender to God.

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In May 2010, an unsung numbers hobbyist named Ed Weiland wrote a long-term forecast of Jeremy Lin for the basketball website Hoops Analyst. At the time, Lin was a lightly regarded, semi-known point guard who had completed his final season at Harvard. But Weiland saw NBA material. He emphasized how well Lin played in three nonconference games against big schools: Connecticut, Boston College and Georgetown. He noted how Lin’s performance in two unsexy statistical categories””two-point field-goal percentage (a barometer of inside scoring ability) and RSB40 (rebounds, steals and blocks per 40 minutes) compared favorably with college numbers put up by marquee NBA guards like Allen Iverson and Gary Payton. Weiland concluded that Lin had to improve on his passing and leadership at the point, but argued that if he did, “Jeremy Lin is a good enough player to start in the NBA and possibly star.

“In the wake of Lin’s historic New York explosion, Weiland’s eerily prescient post has quickly recirculated around the Internet, as a rare example of someone who saw potential in a player who wasn’t drafted and was abandoned by two teams before getting a chance with the Knicks. Traffic rushing to Weiland’s 2010 Lin piece briefly crashed the Hoops Analyst website after Lin torched the Lakers for 38 points Friday, and his wisdom has been compared with the groundbreaking number-crunching in the baseball best seller “Moneyball,” which became a recent Hollywood movie. A tribute to Weiland’s foresight on Yahoo’s The Post Game ended with, “Brad Pitt’s on line 1.”

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O God, our refuge and our strength, who didst raise up thy servant Martin Luther to reform and renew thy Church in the light of thy word: Defend and purify the Church in our own day and grant that, through faith, we may boldly proclaim the riches of thy grace, which thou hast made known in Jesus Christ our Savior, who, with thee and the Holy Spirit, liveth and reigneth, one God, now and for ever.

O God, who art Spirit, and wiliest to be worshipped in spirit and in truth: Grant to us that, loving thee in all things and above all things, we may please thee by our prayers and by our lives; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. But if any one has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him? Little children, let us not love in word or speech but in deed and in truth.

–1 John 3:16-18

Much of the biblical scholarly world has been buzzing since Feb. 1, when a New Testament professor made a claim during a debate that was news to most everyone who heard it — a first-century fragment of Mark’s Gospel may have been found.

It would be the earliest-known fragment of the New Testament, placing it in the very century of Christ and the apostles.

The claim by Dallas Theological Seminary’s Daniel B. Wallace took place during a debate with University of North Carolina professor Bart Ehrman, an author whose popular books claim the New Testament cannot be trusted because the original manuscripts aren’t in existence.

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Nigeria, a strategically important oil producer and Africa’s most populous country, is unraveling in violence from a growing insurgency known as Boko Haram that is bent on revenge for the killing of its leader by police. The group is demanding job-creation programs and the imposition of Islamic law in the country’s impoverished north, where it emerged with ferocity nine years ago.

Late Wednesday, about 20 gunmen presumed by officials to belong to the rebel group stormed a prison south of Nigeria’s capital, Abuja, and freed at least 119 inmates, a government spokesman said.

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“As business capital is assumed to be both outside the intent of the prohibition and an indispensable element of the modern economy, it was considered appropriate to find a method to allow it,” says Rabbi Daniel Feldman of Yeshiva University. While some authorities historically opposed the heter iska, which is only to be used for business purposes, it is widely accepted as meeting both the letter and the spirit of the law, says Rabbi Feldman.

In our difficult economic times, interest-free loans may be more important than ever. In Dallas, the local Hebrew Free Loan Association offers a variety of them, including for life-cycle events, adoptions, home health care and education. And Hebrew free-loan societies boast inordinately low default rates of less than 1%. “There is a sense of religious obligation on both sides,” says Mr. Sarna.

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The Federal Bureau of Investigation may soon be forced to shut down a number of key Domain Name System (DNS) servers, which would cut Internet access for millions of Web users around the world, reports BetaBeat. The DNS servers were installed by the FBI last year, in an effort to stop the spread of a piece of malware known as DNSCharger Trojan. But the court order that allowed the set up of the replacement servers expires on March 8.

In November of last year, authorities arrested six men in Estonia for the creation and spread of DNSCharger, which reconfigures infected computers’ Internet settings, and re-routes users to websites that contain malware, or other illegal sites. DNSCharger also blocks access to websites that might offer solutions for how to rid the computer of its worm, and often comes bundled with other types of malicious software.

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The blog Hoops Analyst has crashed in the last 24 hours. Normally this wouldn’t be problematic for anyone beyond Harlan Schreiber, the site’s founder. But these are not normal times in the NBA, and Hoops Analyst had something like the Zapruder film of the basketball world: In 2010, an amateur geek named Ed Weiland published on Hoops Analyst his vision of Lin lighting up NBA arenas.

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The West looks with great concern towards North Africa, with the changes in the countries marked by the so-called “Arab Spring”. This has led to the downfall of totalitarian regimes which once seemed untouchable! All this is about very complex movements, not only in the societies where it happens, but also involves struggles regarding international interests. Will the populations be able to “control the situation” and direct the changes to their common good? The situation is very complex. These very young democracies have entrusted the power to parties of Islamic matrix, and have come out with new realities causing alarm, especially among the youth, and in the Christians locally. One only needs to look at the results of the last elections in Tunisia, Egypt and Morocco (a country not rocked by the Arab Spring but advancing seriously on the paths of reform through the will of King Mohammed VI).

These scenarios lead us to look at Islam and its spread in North Africa, taking into account the fact that the Christian presence goes back to six centuries before the birth of Islam, and that the Christian communities (Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant) are part and parcel of the local social fabric, a significant part of the cultural richness of the Countries and of the Region, and cannot be considered as a “foreign” body, or a “presence” affiliated to “something” western, as often seen by fundamentalist Islamic movements, motivated by ignorance or political interests!

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Shakila, 8 at the time, was drifting off to sleep when a group of men carrying AK-47s barged in through the door. She recalls that they complained, as they dragged her off into the darkness, about how their family had been dishonored and about how they had not been paid.

It turns out that Shakila, who was abducted along with her cousin as part of a traditional Afghan form of justice known as “baad,” was the payment.

Although baad (also known as baadi) is illegal under Afghan and, most religious scholars say, Islamic law, the taking of girls as payment for misdeeds committed by their elders still appears to be flourishing. Shakila, because one of her uncles had run away with the wife of a district strongman, was taken and held for about a year. It was the district leader, furious at the dishonor that had been done to him, who sent his men to abduct her.

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Only a “tiny minority” of coun­cillors object to the saying of prayers at local council meetings, the Bishop of Exeter, the Rt Revd Michael Langrish, said on Tuesday.

Bishop Langrish was speaking after the High Court ruled last Friday that prayers should not be on the agenda for council meetings. The National Secular Society (NSS) and the former Bideford town councillor Clive Bone brought judicial-review proceedings against Bideford Town Council, in Devon, after councillors there twice rejected Mr Bone’s request for prayers to be abolished.

Bishop Langrish said: “My per­sonal experience is that it is a tiny minority who object to it [prayers at a council meeting]; at most of the councils I know in Devon it isn’t an issue. . . Leading public prayers in the chamber is an opportunity to articulate very particular issues that the council is dealing with.”

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Mormons believe that vicarious baptisms give the deceased, who exist in the afterlife as conscious spirits, a final chance to join the Mormon fold, and thus gain access to the Celestial Kingdom. To Mormons, only members of the LDS priesthood possess the power to baptize.

“It doesn’t matter if you’re a Baptist or a Buddhist,” said Kathleen Flake, a Vanderbilt University scholar who has studied the church, “it’s about who has the authority to perform the sacrament.”

Flake said Mormons are encouraged to baptize at least four generations of forebears to seal the family for eternity. So the LDS church has built the world’s most extensive genealogical library in Salt Lake City with 700 employees and more than 2 billion names.

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