Parents are angry and Roseville City School District officials have plans to sue after St. John’s School trustees announced the small private school is broke and will close at the end of the month.
The 32-year-old Episcopal school is more than a half million dollars in debt, including owing more than $170,000 to the Roseville school district for leasing the Barbara Chilton Middle School campus.
One out of five families owes more on credit cards, medical bills, student loans and other unsecured debt than they have in savings, according to a new University of Michigan report. And the number of families surveyed at the end of 2011 that have no savings at all increased to 23.4%, compared with 18.5% in 2009.
“The people who were down and out, without much money, in the recession have ended up staying there or even worse,” says Frank Stafford, professor of economics at University of Michigan Institute for Social Research and co-author of the report.
And the mortgage crisis is not over.
IVF clinics in the UK are practising aggressive fertility treatments that are putting women and children at unjustified risk, experts say.
The commercially driven industry uses unnecessary procedures, high doses of powerful drugs and risky interventions to help desperate couples spending thousands of pounds to conceive.
At a black Pentecostal church in Raleigh, N.C., the Rev. Patrick Wooden entered the sanctuary on Sunday to a standing ovation, exulting that God’s “high hand” had led voters last week to pass a statewide amendment banning same-sex marriage. He took to the pulpit and denounced President Obama for taking a stand “in support of sin,” and “in opposition to the biblical model of marriage.”
A thousand miles away, at a predominantly white, Lutheran church in Madison, Wis., where a rainbow banner greets churchgoers arriving for services, the Rev. Susan Schneider preached that gay men and lesbians were included when Jesus commanded his followers to love one another: “Knocking down the walls is what Jesus was after.”
Mr. Obama’s declaration last week that he supports same-sex marriage prompted ministers around the country to take to their pulpits on Sunday and preach on the issue. But in the clash over homosexuality, the battle lines do not simply pit ministers against secular advocates for gay rights. Religion is on both sides in this conflict. The battle is actually church versus church, minister versus minister, and Scripture versus Scripture.
Read it all, it is lengthy pdf file containing photos, autobiographies, and the nominees’ answers to four essay questions posed by the Search and Nomination Committee
We are keenly aware of the great suffering caused by the non-implementation of several key parts of the CPA. The cry of pain continues to be heard from South Kordofan, Blue Nile and Abyei, as well as from those affected by the escalation of conflict in the border region between Sudan and South Sudan. I pray that the UN Security Council Resolution and the AU Roadmap will result in real progress in settling the outstanding issues.
The church’s dedicated efforts in peace-building and advocacy continue to represent a powerful witness to the gospel. We are inspired by the untiring efforts to bring peace in Jonglei. We also stand in special solidarity with the church’s situation in the Republic of Sudan and will continue to press for freedom of religion and worship and the safety of the Christian community.
St. David’s Episcopal Church of Austin would be among the first Episcopal congregations in Texas allowed to offer a liturgy blessing same-sex unions if the Episcopal Church, as expected, approves the trial rite at its general convention in July.
The Rt. Rev. Andy Doyle, bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Texas, has named only one other church, St. Stephen’s Episcopal in Houston, as among the first with permission to bless same-gender covenants.
Like other denominations, the Episcopal Church has wrestled with the issue of homosexuality for decades. Texas does not recognize same-sex unions, and a number of traditionalists in the Episcopal Church do not favor them.
The departure of the Anglican congregation by close of business May 15 from The Falls Church leaves Bill Deiss with mixed feelings.
In 1985 Deiss, parish administrator for the last 16 years, wed his second wife in the church. His son also married there. He watched the baptism of his grandchildren inside the church.
Now the Anglican congregation has been asked to leave the premises.
“It was always a possibility but we didn’t think it would actually happen,” Deiss said Friday. “It’s sad but exciting as well.”
O God, who didst ordain thine only-begotten Son to be the Saviour of mankind, and didst command that his name should be called Jesus: Mercifully grant that as we do love and honour his holy name upon earth, so we may evermore enjoy the vision of him in heaven; through the same thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord.
And so, from the day we heard of it, we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, to lead a life worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God. May you be strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy, giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. He has delivered us from the dominion of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
–Colossians 1:9-14
In the first edition of my book “The Elephant, the Tiger and the Cell Phone,” I reported that, in April 2007, India set a world record by selling 7 million cell phones that month, more telephone connections than any country had ever established in one month. By the time the book was printed, bound and distributed to bookstores, that figure was already out of date. And in 2010, India sold 20 million cell phones three months in a row.
India has now overtaken the United States as the world’s second-largest telephone market, with 857 million SIM cards in circulation and an estimated 600 million individual users. China has more, but India is ahead in phones per capita, is adding them faster and is projected to overtake China before the end of 2012.
What is wonderful about this capitalist “mobile miracle” is that it has accomplished something that our previous socialist policies proclaimed but did little to achieve — it empowered the less fortunate.
President Obama’s comments today in support of the redefinition of marriage are deeply saddening. As I stated in my public letter to the President on September 20, 2011, the Catholic Bishops stand ready to affirm every positive measure taken by the President and the Administration to strengthen marriage and the family. However, we cannot be silent in the face of words or actions that would undermine the institution of marriage, the very cornerstone of our society. The people of this country, especially our children, deserve better. Unfortunately, President Obama’s words today are not surprising since they follow upon various actions already taken by his Administration that erode or ignore the unique meaning of marriage. I pray for the President every day, and will continue to pray that he and his Administration act justly to uphold and protect marriage as the union of one man and one woman. May we all work to promote and protect marriage and by so doing serve the true good of all persons.
Concurrently the vicar of St John’s-St Margaret’s Church in Dover Avenue, he will succeed Bishop John Chew, who steps down in October after 12 years at the helm.
Sergio Aguero won the Premier League title for Manchester City with a winning strike against 10-man QPR – four minutes into stoppage time at the Etihad Stadium.
City appeared destined to suffer the most remarkable collapse in Premier League history after falling 2-1 behind to Mark Hughes’s team.
But Edin Dzeko’s header from David Silva’s 92nd-minute corner, followed by Aguero’s strike, sealed the title in the most dramatic of circumstances.
Speaking exclusively to The Sunday Telegraph, Theodoros Pangalos said he was “very much afraid of what is going to happen” after Greek voters rejected the deal in elections last Sunday.
“The majority of the people voted for a very strange mental construction,” he said. “We want to be in the EU and the euro, but we don’t want to pay anything for the past.”
In yet another blow to the Afghan peace process, gunmen assassinated a senior member of Afghanistan’s High Peace Council on Sunday morning. The attackers reportedly pulled up next to Maulvi Arsala Rahmani while he was stuck in Kabul’s rush hour traffic and opened fire killing the peace broker.
The murder of Mr. Rahmani comes less than a year after insurgents managed to kill the then head of the High Peace Council, Burhanuddin Rabbani, in his own home using a suicide bomber disguised as a Taliban messenger.
California is facing a much deeper budget deficit than expected due to weak tax revenues and slow progress in cutting budgets, Governor Jerry Brown said on Saturday.
Brown said the shortfall for the fiscal year ending on June 30 now stood at $16 billion, up from a previous estimate of $9.2 billion made in January.
When the Chinese activist Chen Guangcheng stole the show at an emergency Congressional hearing this month by calling into the chamber during a live television broadcast, few people noticed who was holding the cellphone.
But those within the tightknit community of Chinese dissidents in the United States, and their supporters, immediately recognized the man, who had arranged for Mr. Chen’s voice to be carried to Washington directly from his Beijing hospital bed: Bob Fu, a Chinese-born pastor who operates out of a squat, whitewashed house opposite a Family Dollar store here in Midland.
“When it comes to contacts in China, Bob’s network can’t be beat,” said Representative Christopher H. Smith, Republican of New Jersey, who convened the hearing to put pressure on the Obama administration and help ensure that Mr. Chen, a self-taught lawyer, would be allowed to leave China with his family to study law in the United States….
For anyone who has lost a parent long before he or she expected to, Mother’s Day and Father’s Day are unsettling occasions, prompts to show appreciation that become prods to revisit grief.
They’re also proof that the world is full of accidental actuaries. I don’t know how else to explain it: the number of people who look at you and seem to calculate, correctly, that when you’re 33 years old, your mother should not yet be gone, and that there’s a good chance, according to median life expectancies, that she’s still around when you’re 37 and even when you’re 40, unless she had you late.
When the Good Lord was creating mothers, He was into his sixth day of “overtime” when an angel appeared and said, “You’re doing a lot of fiddling around on this one.”
And the Lord said, “Have you read the specs on this order?”
Ӣ She has to be completely washable, but not plastic;
”¢ Have 180 movable parts… all replaceable;
Ӣ Run on black coffee and leftovers;
Ӣ Have a lap that disappears when she stands up;
Ӣ A kiss that can cure anything from a broken leg to a disappointed love affair;
”¢ And six pairs of hands.”
The angel shook her head slowly and said, “Six pairs of hands… no way.”
Pope Benedict XVI will continue the expansion of the new Catholic Church structure created for former Anglicans by launching an ordinariate for Australia on June 15.
“I am confident that those former Anglicans who have made a journey in faith that has led them to the Catholic Church will find a ready welcome,” said Archbishop Denis Hart of Melbourne, who serves as president of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference.
I see her doing something simple, paying bills,
or leafing through a magazine or book,
and wish that I could say, and she could hear,
that now I start to understand her love
for all of us, the fullness of it.
It burns there in the past, beyond my reach,
a modest lamp.
—David Young (1936- )
Heavenly Father and gracious Lord, we thank thee for our mothers and all that they do for us. Help us to repay their love by being kind and cheerful in our homes, helping our mothers and the other members of our families; for Jesus Christ’s sake.
We beseech thee, O Lord, to enlighten our minds and to strengthen our wills, that we may know what we ought to do, and be enabled to do it, through the grace of thy most Holy Spirit, and for the merits of thy Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.
The LORD reigns; he is robed in majesty; the LORD is robed, he is girded with strength. Yea, the world is established; it shall never be moved; thy throne is established from of old; thou art from everlasting. The floods have lifted up, O LORD, the floods have lifted up their voice, the floods lift up their roaring. Mightier than the thunders of many waters, mightier than the waves of the sea, the LORD on high is mighty! Thy decrees are very sure; holiness befits thy house, O LORD, for evermore.
–Psalm 93
Congressional lawmakers seem to agree on two things: College student loan debt is out of control and something should be done about it.
Where they disagree is how to solve the problem. Currently they are looking at one piece of this puzzle: how to keep a lower interest rate on federally subsidized undergraduate student loans for low- and middle-income students which is set to double to 6.8 percent this June.
Isaiah Toney, a senior at George Washington University in Washington, said he is “extraordinarily happy” this issue is being raised, but he thinks the discussion has been too narrow.
Kelsey Griffith graduates on Sunday from Ohio Northern University. To start paying off her $120,000 in student debt, she is already working two restaurant jobs and will soon give up her apartment here to live with her parents. Her mother, who co-signed on the loans, is taking out a life insurance policy on her daughter.
“If anything ever happened, God forbid, that is my debt also,” said Ms. Griffith’s mother, Marlene Griffith.
Ms. Griffith, 23, wouldn’t seem a perfect financial fit for a college that costs nearly $50,000 a year. Her father, a paramedic, and mother, a preschool teacher, have modest incomes, and she has four sisters. But when she visited Ohio Northern, she was won over by faculty and admissions staff members who urge students to pursue their dreams rather than obsess on the sticker price.
In 2006, The Falls Church and six sister congregations in Northern Virginia voted (overwhelmingly) to pull out of the Episcopal Church because, in our view, it had drifted so far from orthodox Christianity that we could not remain in good conscience.
Reasons for the division have been mainly theological, particularly focused on how we interpret the Bible, and what doctrines of the Christian faith are essential for leaders to maintain. The doctrinal divides have been widening for several decades, and in 2003 when a practicing homosexual was consecrated as Episcopal bishop, many realized that the divisions in the church were unresolvable.
We will stay in the Anglican Communion under the Archbishop of Canterbury, but through a different branch.