Columbia leaders are trying to prepare the Midlands for an economy based on a leaner federal government and more white-collar jobs in the private sector.

“Everyone is rather bullish on the economy here in the Midlands, but I think nationally we’re seeing people come out of this Great Recession and focus on getting people back to work,” Mayor Steve Benjamin said. “We are aggressively seeking to attract more corporate headquarters, more white-collar jobs and make sure people are prepared for these jobs in the new economy.”

Columbia is projected to lose 16 percent of its federal jobs over the next 10 years as the overextended federal government trims down, according to a new report from IHS Global Insight, prepared for the U.S. Conference of Mayors, which is holding a meeting on workforce skills this week in Dallas.

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Check it out. For those of you following this closely, you will notice there have been significant changes and movements.

What sort of man ”“ for man it will be ”“ does the church need at the see of Canterbury to succeed Rowan Williams?

He should be learned but with a populist touch; a man of prayer as well as a man of action; a sensitive pastor with a hide of leather; a good manager but also a visionary leader with a servant heart; decisive yet subtle; a poet, a prelate, a star performer. In other words, he needs to be “a realised impossibility” as George Bernard Shaw said of William Temple when he was appointed to the job in 1942.

One thing we know is this. He will be a currently serving bishop. This makes it easy for editors to assemble the longlist of candidates and for punters to get the odds. To be honest, they look a dreary lot. But maybe that’s also a prerequisite for high office nowadays.

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Who would you like to be your next Archbishop of Canterbury? You may think this an odd way to put it. You may be Muslim, Jewish, Roman Catholic, atheist, or just vague. How can the Archbishop of Canterbury belong to you?

Yet if you live in England, he does. The Church of England is “by law established”, and so it is there for any citizen who wants it. The Queen is the Church’s Supreme Governor, and her people, regardless of what they believe, are its people. The Archbishop of Canterbury, who stands at the Church’s head, must serve them. He belongs to them.

But we shall not choose him. This process is nowadays controlled by something referred to, with varying degrees of affection, as the Wash House. The Wash House is the old laundry of Lambeth Palace, the Archbishop’s London residence, and it is now inhabited by the Crown Nominations Committee (CNC).

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In 1948, his career as scholar and teacher took a leap forward with his election as fellow and tutor of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, where he could exhibit his talents in a more formidable academic setting. He swiftly became known as an inspiring New Testament tutor, forming a tutorial “circus” with JR Porter, the Oriel College Old Testament specialist, and Dennis Nineham, the brilliant young chaplain of the Queen’s College, to teach doctrine. With Nineham, Evans gave a memorable series of lectures on the Gospels and the Jesus of history, while not neglecting his pastoral duties.

It was always likely that Evans would be offered a chair; after 10 years at Corpus, he was appointed to the Lightfoot professorship at Durham. However, despite relishing its historic character, he never really settled in the city and the chance to return south came in 1962 with his becoming professor of New Testament studies at King’s College London, where he remained for the next 15 years, teaching and lecturing and continuing his challenging and questioning approach to the New Testament.

In 1977 he retired to a bungalow in the village of Cuddesdon, Oxfordshire, a stone’s throw from the theological college, where he was a frequent and honoured guest. The death of his wife in 1980 was a grievous blow, but he continued to live positively, tending to the students and staff of the college and keeping a host of friendships from earlier days. To one visitor, at age 98 and over a pub lunch, to the inquiry “What’s it like being 98, Christopher?” he replied: “Part of you feels that you shouldn’t be here.”

Read it all (another from the long queue of should-have-already-been-posted material).

In “Something Understood” for BBC Radio 4, Mark Tully talks to the Archbishop of Canterbury about some of the controversies the Archbishop has negotiated throughout his time in office, and considers the premise that “discretion is the better part of valour”

Listen to it all via the link provided.

Average national reading scores on the SAT college entrance exam fell to the lowest level in four decades and only 43 percent of 2012 high school seniors who took the test showed they were fully prepared for college, according to new data released on Monday.

College-bound seniors scored an average of 496 points in reading, down one point from 2011 and a 34-point drop since 1972, the College Board, which administers the SAT test, said in a report.

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Civilians are being “terrorised” 24 hours a day by CIA drone attacks that target mainly low-level militants in north-west Pakistan, a US report says.

Rescuers treating the casualties are also being killed and wounded by second drone strikes, says the report by Stanford and New York Universities.

Drone attacks are thought to have killed hundreds of militants in Yemen and Afghanistan as well as Pakistan.

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Just when the anger and complaints from a weekend of contempt toward replacement officials couldn’t get any hotter, a disputed call trumps it all.

Replacement ref rage peaked Monday night thanks to Seattle’s Golden Tate, and a bizarre touchdown call that will be debated, questioned and re-ignite frustrations over the locked-out officials.

Tate pushed a Green Bay defender out of the way, wrestled another for the ball and was awarded a touchdown on the final play to give the Seahawks a 14-12 victory over the Packers.

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If you had to guess the profile of a person most likely to commit suicide, chances are you would conjure up the image of an angst-ridden teenage boy or young man. Ten years ago, you would have been right; men aged 15-24 were the highest risk group.

However, the Samaritans last week warned that middle-aged men are more likely to take their own life than any other group; older men now account for just under half of the 5,600 or so suicides a year in the UK.

Over the past eight years the number of younger men (while still worrying) who commit suicide has gone down, while the rate of suicides of men aged between 35 and 54 has gone up, almost unnoticed.

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The 14-minute trailer on YouTube enraged Muslims worldwide with its depiction of Muhammad as a womanizer, religious fraud and child molester. Most Egyptian Christians in the U.S. have rejected the movie and say the man and the nonprofit tied to the film are fringe players who are not well-known in the Coptic Orthodox Church, the church for the vast majority of Coptic Christians in America.

A tiny minority of U.S. Copts, however, have used their adopted nation’s free speech protections to speak out against Islam in a way that would not be tolerated in their native Egypt. The few who engage in this anti-Muslim, evangelical activism _ including those behind the movie trailer _ are fueled by that history, said Eliot Dickinson, an associate professor of political science at Western Oregon University who has written a book on U.S. Copts.

“Whoever made this film is such an outlier in their community that it’s completely unrepresentative,” Dickinson said. “But what it does is, it taps into this frustration of always being persecuted back in Egypt and let’s not downplay that. To be a Copt in Egypt now is a very, very difficult life because, especially after the Arab Spring, it’s open season.”

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O God, whose blessed Son became poor that we through his poverty might be rich: Deliver us, we pray thee, from an inordinate love of this world, that inspired by the devotion of thy servant Sergius of Moscow, we may serve thee with singleness of heart, and attain to the riches of the age to come; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.

Almighty God, who hast bestowed thy grace upon thy people by thy Son Jesus Christ: Grant us, we beseech thee, to be enriched with his manifold gifts; that patiently enduring through the darkness of this world, we may be found shining like lamps in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ, when he cometh in his kingdom; to whom be praise and glory for ever and ever.

I will open my mouth in a parable; I will utter dark sayings from of old,

things that we have heard and known, that our fathers have told us.

We will not hide them from their children, but tell to the coming generation the glorious deeds of the LORD, and his might, and the wonders which he has wrought.

He established a testimony in Jacob, and appointed a law in Israel, which he commanded our fathers to teach to their children;

that the next generation might know them, the children yet unborn, and arise and tell them to their children,

so that they should set their hope in God, and not forget the works of God, but keep his commandments….

–Psalm 78:2-7

Parishioners of St Paul’s Sarhadi Lutheran Church in Mardan, Khyber Pakhthunkwa are calling for the Government to restore their church back to it’s “former glory.” The church which was built in 1937 provides education and health services to the local community ”“ Muslim and Christian alike ”“ and provided substantial support to victims of floods and a major earthquake in recent years, regardless of their religious affiliation.

During a local “protest”on Friday afternoon (21st Sept), over the release of and anti-Muslim movie called “The innocence of Muslims”, a mob broke into a church compound in Mardan near Pashawer, burnt down the church, and destroyed 27 homes in the church compound including the houses of two priests and the school head teacher. The mob burnt bibles and other religious artifacts including books with Islamic text and many question whether blasphemy charges will be laid against the those that have been caught.

The attack took place after the Government called a national holiday, purportedly in sympathy of protests against the film.

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Lahore Bishop Rt Rev Dr Alexander John Malik has strongly condemned the burning of a church in Mardan, reiterating that Pakistani Christians have nothing to do with the people who made the profane movie.

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A mob of hundreds of Muslim men attacked and burnt an 82-year-old church and an adjoining school in northwest Pakistan during a protest against an anti-Islam film, sparking concerns among the minority Christian community.

The mob broke through the gate of the St Paul’s Lutheran Church inside the cantonment in Mardan city, 48 km from the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa capital of Peshawar, on Friday while returning from a rally against the film Innocence Of Muslims.

According to reports from Christians in Mardan, the mob attacked and set on fire the church, St Paul’s high school, a library, a computer laboratory and houses of four clergymen, including Bishop Peter Majeed.

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Saying there are “troubling signs” of abuse in the way hospitals use electronic records to bill for Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement, the Obama administration warned in a letter to hospital associations Monday that it would not tolerate what it called “gaming the system” and vowed to vigorously prosecute doctors and hospitals implicated in fraud.

The strongly worded letter, signed by Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. and Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of health and human services, said that “electronic health records have the potential to save money and save lives.” But the letter continued: “There are troubling indications that some providers are using this technology to game the system, possibly to obtain payments to which they are not entitled. False documentation of care is not just bad patient care; it’s illegal.”

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States saw little relief from poverty in the past year, especially among children, the unemployed and those in the lowest income brackets.

The latest Census figures show that 17 states had increases in the number of people living in poverty between 2010 and 2011. Only one state, Vermont, had a decrease; the other 32 showed no change.

Although the national poverty rate has been steady at 15.9%, the Census data show pockets of increases by geography and among demographic groups. The data reflect the economy’s slow recovery and anemic job growth, policy analysts say.

“The problem is high unemployment,” says Chuck Sheketoff, executive director of the Oregon Center for Public Policy….

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The York Fairness Commission will present its Final Report to the leaders of City of York Council on Thursday 27th September at an event at Bishopthorpe Palace.

The presentation of the report will be the culmination of months of work to see how inequality and unfairness can be tackled across York, in the face of a difficult economic situation nationally.

Whilst research shows two fifths of York residents are relatively well off, living in the best 20% of places in the country, around 13,000 residents in the City live in the most deprived 20% of the country. In addition , City of York Council must make £19.7m worth of savings over the next two years due to cuts imposed by central government.

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Would an expansion of Medicaid under the federal health-care law help or hinder South Carolina’s finances? Depends who you ask.

Strains of disagreement are building against the backdrop of a campaign by Gov. Nikki Haley’s administration to build opposition to an expansion.
Generally opposed by Republicans and favored by Democrats, the debate over whether to expand the Medicaid program in the states is set to play out in many statehouses across the country. That’s because a June Supreme Court ruling made the extension of coverage optional.

In the Palmetto State, advocates for the expansion contend Haley’s administration is emphasizing the costs and underselling offsetting economic benefits of an expansion.

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[Ludwig ] Guttmann was a refugee from Nazi Germany. Born into an orthodox Jewish family, by 1933 he was Germany’s leading brain surgeon. Then Hitler came to power and in 1939 he came to Britain where his skill in neurology led to his being asked by the government to set up the National Spinal Injuries Centre at Stoke Mandeville hospital, which he did in 1943.

At that time it was assumed that paraplegics would never be able to live any kind of normal life. The best that could be done for them was to keep them sedated by high doses of drugs, and left hospitalized and bed-ridden until they died.

Guttmann was appalled. He believed that they each had a life ahead of them, not just behind them. With faith and determination, they could leave their beds, go out into the world, have jobs, marry,find happiness and the dignity of achievement. The film tells how, by sheer will and unshakable obstinacy, he gave paraplegics back their life.

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In the passage where the New Testament says that every one must work, it gives as a reason “in order that he may have something to give to those in need.” Charity-giving to the poor-is an essential part of Christian morality: in the frightening parable of the sheep and the goats it seems to be the point on which everything turns. Some people nowadays say that charity ought to be unnecessary and that instead of giving to the poor we ought to be producing a society in which there were no poor to give to. They may be quite right in saying that we ought to produce that kind of society. But if anyone thinks that, as a consequence, you can stop giving in the meantime, then he has parted company with all Christian morality. I do not believe one can settle how much we ought to give. I am afraid the only safe rule is to give more than we can spare. In other words, if our expenditure on comforts, luxuries, amusements, etc, is up to the standard common among those with the same income as our own, we are probably giving away too little. If our charities do not at all pinch or hamper us, I should say they are too small. There ought to be things we should like to do and cannot do because our charitable expenditure excludes them. I am speaking now of “charities” in the common way. Particular cases of distress among your own relatives, friends, neighbours or employees, which God, as it were, forces upon your notice, may demand much more: even to the crippling and endangering of your own position. For many of us the great obstacle to charity lies not in our luxurious living or desire for more money, but in our fear-fear of insecurity. This must often be recognised as a temptation.Sometimes our pride also hinders our charity; we are tempted to spend more than we ought on the showy forms of generosity (tipping, hospitality) and less than we ought on those who really need our help.

—Mere Christianity (New York: Harper Collins, 2001), Book III, Chapter 3 [emphasis mine]

While addressing over 50 religious leaders at the Democracy and Peace Week dialogue, Rwaje said some members of the public shun going to church due to disappointment of messages relayed.

“Religious leadership is a calling from God and it is about teaching the word of God, but not looking for money from the faithful. There are biblical principles urging churchgoers to give offerings and tithes, but it should not be used as a platform to squeeze money out of believers,” Rwaje advised.

He added: “Religious leaders are allowed to have their personal business ventures besides performing their church duties; therefore, they should act faithfully and please God by keeping the two positions independent of each other. They must separate God’s work from their personal work”.

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[BOB] ABERNETHY: Our managing editor Kim Lawton has been covering the campaigns. Kim, what do we know so far from the polls about how faith-based people are dividing?

KIM LAWTON (Managing Editor, Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly): Well, of course, it’s just a snapshot for right now but there were some new numbers this week that suggested that evangelicals, that all important group for Republicans, do seem to be supporting Mitt Romney at around the same levels they supported John McCain, which is very high, so that’s good news for Governor Romney. Catholics seem to be more divided as they were last time around although some new numbers this week suggest that they are leaning more towards Obama as they did in the last election. I was surprised to see this week numbers suggesting that mainline Protestants, who went principally for John McCain last time around or slightly more for John McCain, are, more of them are leaning towards Obama this time around.

ABERNETHY: Is there anything at all in the data to suggest that Romney’s religion is making any difference?

LAWTON: Well, in these snapshots that we have right now it doesn’t appear to be the case.

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I will take comments on this submitted by email only to at KSHarmon[at]mindspring[dot]com.

A decade after his military service, McLean faces 15 years to life in prison if he’s convicted of first-degree burglary. He makes no excuses for the addict he’s become.

Six months in jail awaiting a court date have provided him some quality detox time. Abusing alcohol and crack cocaine, McLean was homeless when he was arrested.

“I’ve never gotten into trouble except when drugs and alcohol were involved,” he says.

He admits he needs help.

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When I think back to the Summer of ’92, for example, I picture meandering around the town square with my best friend. The hostess at the corner cafe got used to seeing us, and would sometimes catch our attention to motion us in for free glasses of freshly-squeezed lemonade. We’d see familiar cars rolling down the street and wave at them when they passed by. We’d say hi to the owner of the clothing boutique as she swept off the entryway of her building, and gaze at the new titles on display at the used books store nextdoor. Each of these small moments is like a brush stroke on a canvass, and together they form a richly colored picture that will remain with me for the rest of my life…but I was only able to experience them because I was fully present to the world around me.

I compared that to a memory of a recent event that I attended. I had some childcare issues come up, and ended up moving to a back corner of the room so that I could send text messages to my mother and husband to get the situation worked out. I made every effort to pay attention to the event, and was genuinely interested in it, but I don’t remember it well. I had one foot in the physical world around me, and another in the virtual world inside of my phone. My memories of that summer 20 years ago are far more vivid than my memories of this event two months ago.

It says something about the ultimate hollowness of virtual activities that they’d don’t leave us with memories. With rare exceptions, nobody remembers what texts they sent last month, or the status updates they read and posted last year.

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Fans and players of both Liverpool and Manchester United paid their respects at Anfield to the 96 fans who died at Hillsborough in 1989.

Flowers, shirts and cards were placed outside the Shankly Gates and the by the memorial to the victims of the tragedy 23 years ago.

And as both teams emerged wearing tracksuits bearing the number 96, while United legend Sir Bobby Charlton presented flowers to Liverpool counterpart Ian Rush before respective skippers Steven Gerrard and Ryan Giggs released 96 red balloons.

Take the time to look at the pictures–deeply moving.

As doctors, we swear to do no harm. But on the job we soon absorb another unspoken rule: to overlook the mistakes of our colleagues. The problem is vast. U.S. surgeons operate on the wrong body part as often as 40 times a week. Roughly a quarter of all hospitalized patients will be harmed by a medical error of some kind. If medical errors were a disease, they would be the sixth leading cause of death in America””just behind accidents and ahead of Alzheimer’s. The human toll aside, medical errors cost the U.S. health-care system tens of billions a year. Some 20% to 30% of all medications, tests and procedures are unnecessary, according to research done by medical specialists, surveying their own fields. What other industry misses the mark this often?

It does not have to be this way. A new generation of doctors and patients is trying to achieve greater transparency in the health-care system, and new technology makes it more achievable than ever before.

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Every six minutes, a child goes missing in India.

They are boys like Irfan, drugged and abducted at the age of 9 by two men on a motorbike as he walked home one day after playing with friends.

“It was living hell these past two years, trying to figure out where we could find him,” said his father, Iqbal Ali. “I used to run a biscuit bakery, but from the day he disappeared, I got so caught up trying to meet politicians, police and people who claim to do magic to get children back, that I had to shut down my bakery. I had no time for it.”

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