The M+G+R Foundation

News Commentary

May 2013

"...Fr, Mark Hallinan, SJ, pronounced his final vows....on October 14, 2001.....(with) these words:

I (my name) make my profession to Almighty God, in the presence of the Virgin Mother, the whole heavenly court, and all those here present, and to you, Reverend Father (Provincial's name), representing the Superior General of the Society of Jesus and his successors and holding the place of God, perpetual poverty, chastity and obedience; and, in conformity with it, special care for the instruction of children, according to the manner of living contained in the apostolic letters of the Society of Jesus, and its Constitutions. I further promise a special obedience to the Sovereign Pontiff in regard to the missions according to the same apostoiilc letters and the Consitutions.

Francis' new Legion (1)

The Pope received Cardinal De Paolis, the Legion of Christ's “chief”, in audience, confirming that the Congregation would have new superiors and constitutions by the end of 2013.

A general chapter will be held at the end of 2013 to elect the Legion of Christ’s new superiors and approve the new constitutions. This morning the Pope received Cardinal Velasio De Paolis President emeritus of the Prefecture for Economic Affairs of the Holy See, in a private audience. Cardinal De Paolis has been a papal delegate to the Legion of Christ since 2010 and was conferred full decision-making powers by Benedict XVI so as to break completely with the Congregation’s previous leadership. The Congregation was founded and led (until 2005) by Marcial Maciel, a coke-sniffing, child abusing Mexican priest who raped his own children.

.... the Pope listened to the cardinal’s detailed report and was informed about the next steps that would be taken in the “purification” process started in the Legion and the Regnum Christi movement, the Legion’s lay branch.

De Paolis’ three-year mandate ends in July. He explained to Francis what was next on the Congregation’s agenda: the approval of the constitutions and the general chapter which will elect the Legion’s new government. The cardinal explained the problems that emerged within the order during its three years under the administration of an external commissioner. In 2012, De Paolis formally dismissed all superiors who had been nominated by Maciel.

Maciel himself had enjoyed the protection of John Paul II’s collaborators until the Pope’s death. All except Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger. He was the only one who did not accept the large offerings made to the Roman Curia.

When the Bavarian cardinal was elected Pope in 2005, he was finally able to get the ball rolling and punish the Legion’s corrupt founder (in 2006) and above all encourage the Congregation’s purification process, which is still underway. This was in fact the subject of the Pope’s audience with De Paolis.

The constitutions that will regulate the life of the Legion’s members will be ready by the end of 2013 and the date of the next general chapter will also be announced within the year. ..... “Some bits were lost along the way but this was inevitable,” Curia sources say. “given how critical the situation was, losses on the whole were minimal: the vast majority of the Legion’s 1200 priests gave confirmation of their devotion and service.”


The Legion is made up of priests, 40 thousand lay people (who are members of the Regnum Christi movement and carry out their apostolate mainly in universities) and consecrated members (700 women and about a hundred or so men).” The Legion’s role will be lessened compared to the Regnum Christi’s vast galaxy, De Paolis told the Argentinean Pope. During their meeting, Francis showed a great interest in the activities of this important Church body, especially given that Latin America is its biggest field of influence. Changing the Legion’s leadership is part of the cardinal’s plan to clean up the Congregation. The man he has chosen as the Legion’s head, is Brazilian priest, Deomar De Guedes Vaz.

This has been a difficult time in the religious congregation’s history,” De Paolis stressed. “A time marked by sin, discouragement, distress and humiliation.” The cardinal told Vatican Insider that “Despite being afflicted in every way as Saint Paul says, the vast majority of the Legion’s priests battled on and did not lose their spirits, showing perseverance in their vocation. The days of “pars destruens” are over. “Pars construens” will now give Francis and the Church a strong and dynamic body, boosted by the growing role of the Regnum Christi.”

Chinese hackers have managed to access the designs for dozens of America's most advanced weapons systems, according to a confidential report from the Defense Science Board obtained by the Washington Post.

The designs accessed include the heart of the Pentagon's missile defense shield for Asia, along with combat aircraft and ships like the Black Hawk Helicopter, the V-22 Osprey, the new Littoral Combat Ship, and the most expensive weapons system ever, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter jet.

"That's staggering," says the head of one think tank covering Asia security issues. "These are all very critical weapons systems, critical to our national security. When I hear this in totality, it's breathtaking."

An asteroid more than 1½ miles long will zoom past Earth this week from a far-off distance.

The big rock called Asteroid 1998 QE2 will make its closest approach Friday. It will keep a safe distance of 3.6 million miles, or 15 times the distance between Earth and the moon. You won't be able to see it without a powerful telescope.

It's believed to be about 1.7 miles long, or about nine times the length of the Queen Elizabeth 2 cruise ship. But that has nothing to do with its name. The letters and number in the name represent the timing and sequence of the asteroid's discovery in 1998.

Scientists will use large radar telescopes to study its shape, rotation and surface features.

Facebook seems to now be openly engaged in censorship and violations of the First Amendment. It has suspended accounts that post photos of children holding up protest signs during the March Against Monsanto rally. (1)

Right after NaturalNews posted the story (1), Facebook flagged NaturalNews.com as a "spam" web site, further trying to suppress traffic to Natural News by spreading false and fraudulent information about us.

Perhaps coming as no surprise to those who watched it at the festival, Abdellatif Kechiche’s 'La Vie d'Adèle' is the Palme d'Or winner.

The film, called 'Blue is the Warmest Colour' in English, tells the story of a lesbian couple and has been praised by many who have seen it.

The true problems regarding homosexuality lie in:

1.- The persecution of homosexuals; and
2.- The promotion of the proliferation of homosexual lifestyle.

But, Why?

Without ignoring the reasons and/or traumas which have caused the homosexual behavior in a human being, which is compounded by the homophonic attitude, let us look at why it is not practical to promote a homosexual lifestyle where it does not already exist. (2)

As the degeneration of the world becomes obvious to more people, what we have said for over two decades should make more sense to them now.

What I have said for over two decades is: "If God materialized before me and asked: 'Should I go ahead with My plans for the regeneration of Creation, as you know them, or cancel them?' My response would be: Step on it! lest even the Elect be lost too'"

Half a century ago, the birth-control pill offered women the ability to switch off ovulation, to separate sex from reproduction. It played a part, as the '60s got under way, in propelling a host of profound changes, cultural as well as reproductive, societal as well as intimate....

The promise of Lybrido and of a similar medication called Lybridos, which Tuiten also has in trials, or of whatever chemical finally wins the race for F.D.A. approval, is that it will be possible to take a next step, to give women the power to switch on lust, to free desire from the obstacles that get in its way.

"Female Viagra" is the way drugs like Lybrido and Lybridos tend to be discussed. But this is a misconception. Viagra meddles with the arteries; it causes physical shifts...

A female-desire drug would be something else. It would adjust the primal and executive regions of the brain. It would reach into the psyche.

Studies conducted recently are beginning to hint that female eros isn't in the least programmed for fidelity. These range from close focus on the sexual habits of our primate ancestors to research exploring women's wish for casual sex.

Susan Powell had been married about a year when she started writing a journal. She was a love-struck, 20-year-old newlywed, dreaming of the future she would build with her husband.

"I just feel incredibly lucky to have Josh," she wrote in 2002.

Before long, however, she found herself torn. A growing sense of danger was telling her to grab her kids and flee, but her strong religious faith led her to believe she could save her young family. The journal entries turned grim.

"If I die, it may not be an accident even if it looks like one," she wrote in 2008. "Take care of my boys."

She went missing the following year and hasn't been seen since. Her husband later killed their sons and himself. No one was ever charged in her disappearance, and the people at the center of the police investigation — her husband, his brother and their father — are all either dead or in prison.

Following his recent visit ad limina with the bishops of his region, the Bishop of Molfetta (Apulia, Italy), Luigi Martella, spoke of the conversation they had with the new Pope, including the following:

Then, he spoke to us about Benedict XVI with such tenderness: "When I met him for the first time in Castelgandolfo, I noticed that he had a very lucid memory - he said -, even though physically challenged. Now he is clearly better." In the end, he wished to exchange a confidence, almost a revelation: Benedict XVI is finishing writing the encyclical on faith that will be signed by Pope Francis. Then, he will himself prepare his first encyclical on the poor: Beati pauperes!

It seems that the Vatican continues to monitor our pages or.... we posses powers unknown to us.

Back on September 5th, 2010 (a), we discussed the pagan cult of Mithraism and its circumstantial connection with the mitre ("mitra" in latin) worn by Roman Church officials. We quote from that post:


Flashing back to our earlier post of September 1st, 2010 (a) - which we quote below in its entirety:


Then, on October 10, 2010 [10-10-10] Benedict XVI unveiled his "new and improved" Coat of Arms and, you probably guessed it by now.... The Mitre is out and the Tiara is back in! (b) Amazing, isn't it?

By the way, it was on 10-10-10 (Sunday) when he inaugurated the Synod on the Middle East and on 10-11-10 (Monday), speaking to the Synod members, according to Moynihan's Inside the Vatican Magazine: (c)


For our comments on Benedict XVI's words we refer the reader to our October 13th, post. (d)

Paul is annoyed at the slave girl who keeps pursuing him, telling the world that he and his companions are slaves of God. She is quite right. She's telling the same truth Paul and others claim for themselves. But Paul is annoyed, perhaps for being put in his place, and he responds by depriving her of her gift of spiritual awareness. Paul can't abide something he won't see as beautiful or holy, so he tries to destroy it. It gets him thrown in prison.

....

It makes me wonder what would have happened to that slave girl if Paul had seen the spirit of God in her.

(16) And it came to pass, as we went to prayer, a certain girl, having a pythonical spirit, met us, who brought to her masters much gain by divining. (17) This same following Paul and us, cried out, saying: These men are the servants of the most high God, who preach unto you the way of salvation. (18) And this she did many days. But Paul being grieved, turned, and said to the spirit: I command thee, in the name of Jesus Christ, to go out from her. And he went out the same hour. (19) But her masters, seeing that the hope of their gain was gone, apprehending Paul and Silas, brought them into the marketplace to the rulers. (20) And presenting them to the magistrates, they said: These men disturb our city, being Jews; ...

Name a target anywhere in China, an official at a state-owned company boasted recently, and his crack staff will break into that person's computer, download the contents of the hard drive, record the keystrokes and monitor cellphone communications, too.

Pitches like that, from a salesman for Nanjing Xhunter Software, were not uncommon at a crowded trade show this month that brought together Chinese law enforcement officials and entrepreneurs eager to win government contracts for police equipment and services.

"We can physically locate anyone who spreads a rumor on the Internet," said the salesman, whose company's services include monitoring online postings and pinpointing who has been saying what about whom.

The culture of hacking in China is not confined to top-secret military compounds where hackers carry out orders to pilfer data from foreign governments and corporations. Hacking thrives across official, corporate and criminal worlds. Whether it is used to break into private networks, track online dissent back to its source or steal trade secrets, hacking is openly discussed and even promoted at trade shows, inside university classrooms and on Internet forums.

The Ministry of Education and Chinese universities, for instance, join companies in sponsoring hacking competitions that army talent scouts attend, though "the standards can be mediocre," said a cybersecurity expert who works for a government institute and handed out awards at a 2010 competition.

Roman Catholic priests who are sex abusers are being paid to handle prayer requests from unsuspecting families.

For centuries, the Catholic faithful have arranged masses for sick relatives, deceased loved ones or in the memory of friends. They're called "intentions" and usually Catholics offer a small donation. The I-Team has discovered some intentions are being farmed out to priests who are sex offenders; men banned from regular ministry - now paid to pray - and some of the faithful are not informed.

These newly-obtained records from the Diocese of Joliet reveal church findings that O'Connor had sexually abused many boys in numerous parishes. The priest was quoted once as saying "it's better than shacking up with a woman." One of his victims committed suicide according to the diocese files.

But just one month after O'Connor was permanently removed from any public ministry, he was sent a letter from the diocese chancellor asking if he was "in need of mass stipends... just let us know the number you would need...and a check will be issued every three months."

Monster tornado measuring 17 miles long and 1.3 miles wide was 600 times more powerful than atomic bomb as NASA releases images of twister from space

Wind speed, air moisture, temperature and timing all came together to create the perfect storm, which left at least 24 dead, including nine children, and some 237 injured

Meteorologists estimate the tornado had eight times to more than 600 times the power of the bomb that flattened the Japanese city during World War II, with more experts at the high end

Calculations are based on energy measured in the air and then multiplied over the size and duration of the storm

News comes as NASA released spectacular images of the fierce twister from space

A 53-year-old British father has become the first man to have his prostate removed because tests revealed he was carrying a "faulty" cancer gene.

A clinical trial at London's Institute of Cancer Research revealed that he carried the BRCA2 gene, which research shows is associated with a high risk of developing prostate cancer.

After receiving the news the man asked doctors to remove his prostate, which tests had shown to be healthy.

Surgeons were initially reluctant, since the potential side effects of the operation include infertility, incontinence and sexual dysfunction.

Doctors believe that other men who know they carry the rogue gene may now opt for a similar procedure.

Prostate cancer is the most common form of male cancer in the UK. It affects about one in eight men, and kills approximately 10,000 each year.

(1) News Reports

A simple test could have alerted officials that the drinking water at Camp Lejeune was contaminated, long before authorities determined that as many as a million Marines and their families were exposed to a witch's brew of cancer-causing chemicals.

But no one responsible for the lab at the base can recall that the procedure - mandated by the Navy - was ever conducted.

The U.S. Marine Corps maintains that the carbon chloroform extract (CCE) test would not have uncovered the carcinogens that fouled the southeastern North Carolina base's water system from at least the mid-1950s until wells were capped in the mid-1980s. But experts say even this "relatively primitive" test — required by Navy health directives as early as 1963 - would have told officials that something was terribly wrong beneath Lejeune's sandy soil.

A just-released study from the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry cited a February 1985 level for trichloroethylene of 18,900 parts per billion in one Lejeune drinking water well - nearly 4,000 times today's maximum allowed limit of 5 ppb. Given those kinds of numbers, environmental engineer Marco Kaltofen said even a testing method as inadequate as CCE should have raised some red flags with a "careful analyst."

The company revealed some new search tools on Wednesday at I/O, its annual developers conference. Taken together, they are another step toward Google's trying to become the omnipotent, human-like "Star Trek" search engine that its executives say they want it to be.

When people ask Google certain questions, it will now try to predict the person's follow-up questions and answer them, too. Ask for the population of India, for instance, and you will also get the population of China and the United States, because Google knows those are the most common follow-up questions.

"The 'Star Trek' computer shouldn't just answer questions, it should make you more intelligent, should anticipate what you expect next," said Amit Singhal, senior vice president for search at Google, in an interview before the conference.

This is an extension of Google's knowledge graph - its semantic search product that aims to understand the meaning of things, not just keywords. It is why a search for Barack Obama brings up links to Hillary Clinton and Honolulu, for instance.

Google Now, the service that sends you information on traffic and weather before you even ask for it, is also digging deeper into our minds.

A Texas startup has developed a "smart rifle"that barely needs to be aimed.

The maker of the gun, being shipped to stores last week, brags that "even a novice shooter can become an elite long-range marksman in minutes."

The company, TrackingPoint, has said its "world's first" long range Precision Guided Firearms (PGF) integrate precision hardware, digital optics, and tracking technology to deliver an unmatched shooting experience. The line of rifles starts at about $22,500 and each comes packaged with an iPad mini including the interactive TrackingPoint mobile app.

"We're taking centuries old tech, firearms and ammunition, and introducing 21st century technology to it," TrackingPoint CEO Jason Schauble told ABC News.

The PGF line of rifles come equipped with what the company is calling the XactSystem, which uses a network tracking scope with digital display interface, laser tagging to "paint" a moving target, and a guided trigger that only lets the shooter fire when there is a high percentage shot.

Staffers at a zoological conservation center in Greenwich, Conn., are very confused - as are the rest of us - because their female giant anteater, Armani, has managed to conceive a baby, apparently without the presence of a male anteater.

... one April morning, a zoo staffer entered Armani's abode and found ... an unexpected baby. Chamoff explains, "The sudden appearance of little Archie was a surprise, to say the least. The gestation period for anteaters is six months. Armani and Alf (the male anteater) had not been back together long enough to do what they needed to do to put the cycle of life into gear a second time."

Hypotheses began to fly about the conservation center and beyond. Some people thought it was "immaculate anteater conception" (though probably no one really thought that).

Visit USA.gov's America's Most Wanted Criminals to find government websites with photos and descriptions of fugitives. In some cases, rewards are offered.

The page includes links to Most Wanted sites from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI); the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF); Interpol, an international police organization that tracks criminals across borders; and many other agencies.

You'll also find links to National Sex Offender Registries and resources related to Missing Children.

Be sure to check your passport long before your trip. Routine processing times for passport services are 4-6 weeks (expedited services take approximately 2-3 weeks).

Renew Your Passport - Check your passport's expiration date. If your passport expires before you plan to return to the United States, then you'll need to get a new passport before you leave the U.S.

Apply for a Passport - If you are eligible for a U.S. passport and plan to travel abroad, get application instructions.

Change or Correct Your Passport - If you need to makes changes or corrections (due to a name change, for example) or add visa pages to your passport, see which forms you need to submit.

Report Your Lost or Stolen Passport - If your passport has been lost or stolen, report it as soon as you can. Call 1-877-487-2778 (TTY 1-888-874-7793) in the U.S., or contact the nearest U.S. embassy if you're overseas.

Get Additional U.S. Passport Services - Look up passport fees, get the status of your passport application, find information about photo requirements, and more.

On May 31, 2013, asteroid 1998 QE2 will sail serenely past Earth, getting no closer than about 3.6 million miles (5.8 million kilometers), or about 15 times the distance between Earth and the moon.

And while QE2 is not of much interest to those astronomers and scientists on the lookout for hazardous asteroids, it is of interest to those who dabble in radar astronomy and have a 230-foot (70-meter) -- or larger -- radar telescope at their disposal.

The closest approach of the asteroid occurs on May 31 at 1:59 p.m. Pacific (4:59 p.m. Eastern / 20:59 UTC). This is the closest approach the asteroid will make to Earth for at least the next two centuries. Asteroid 1998 QE2 was discovered on Aug. 19, 1998, by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Lincoln Near Earth Asteroid Research (LINEAR) program near Socorro, New Mexico.

The asteroid, which is believed to be about 1.7 miles (2.7 kilometers) or nine Queen Elizabeth 2 ship-lengths in size, is not named after that 12-decked, transatlantic-crossing flagship for the Cunard Line.

An Alaska volcano exhibiting "elevated seismic activity" has spewed ash clouds skyward -- as high as 20,000 feet (just under 4 miles high) above sea level -- an observatory reported Wednesday.

As was the case a day earlier, the Pavlof Volcano was on "watch" status on Wednesday because of heightened activity, and it was also under an orange code that relates to how its rumblings might affect planes flying over its summit. Both these alert levels are the second most serious out of four options, according to the Alaska Volcano Observatory.

The same alert levels also continue to apply Wednesday to the Cleveland Volcano, which like Pavlof is in the Aleutian Island range southwest of mainland Alaska. Lava was reported flowing Tuesday at Pavlof and Cleveland.

"They are very similar, and both have the ability to erupt," John Power, a scientist from the U.S. Geological Survey, said this week.

President Barack Obama will meet with Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and other leaders of the U.S. military on Thursday to discuss their efforts to stop sexual assaults in the armed forces, a White House spokeswoman said.

On Tuesday, the military said another one of its advocates for victims of sexual assault was himself being accused of sex crimes, including allegations linking him to prostitution.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin Dempsey, the president's top uniformed military adviser, will attend the meeting with Obama.

Angelina Jolie inspires women to maim themselves by celebrating medically perverted double mastectomies

by Mike Adams, NaturalNews Editor

Originally published by Natural News on May 15 2013

(NaturalNews) Angelina Jolie announced yesterday that she had both of her breasts surgically removed even though she had no breast cancer. She carries the BRCA1 gene, and she has been tricked into believing that genetic code is some sort of absolute blueprint to disease expression -- which it most certainly is not. Countless millions of women carry the BRCA1 gene and never express breast cancer because they lead healthy, anti-cancer lifestyles based on smart nutrition, exercise, sensible sunlight exposure and avoidance of cancer-causing chemicals.

Jolie, like many other women who have been deluded by cancer quackery, decided the best way to prevent the risk of breast cancer was not to lead a healthy, anti-cancer lifestyle, but rather to surgically remove her breasts in what she describes as "three months of medical procedures."

Let me set the record straight: Your breasts are not your enemy! The cancer industry is far more likely to kill you than your breasts.


Women's liberation crusade: Off with your breasts!

Worse than merely maiming herself in an act of outright medical quackery, Angelina Jolie has positioned her decision as some sort of women's liberation crusade, acting and talking as if her "choice" to remove her breasts somehow blazes a new path of female power for all women.

Oh, what a mess Jolie has made of herself. She has maimed her own body with no medical justification whatsoever, then celebrated this horrible disfiguration through some sort of twisted perception of what womanhood really is.

A vivacious, confident, healthy woman who protects her fertility and nourishes her unborn child is far more heroic and empowering than someone who maims her own body as some sort of sick sacrifice to the cancer industry. Angelina Jolie, as much as she is often viewed as a symbol of female power, seems to have completely lost touch with the core truths of honoring the "temple" of your own female body.


Celebrating the medical abuse of women

The mainstream media is heralding Jolie's decision to cut off both her perfectly healthy breasts, announcing Jolie is "admired for bravery." In a NYT op-ed, Jolie wrote, "I hope that other women can benefit from my experience." (No, I'm not making this up. She literally wants other healthy women to cut off their breasts, too...)

The medical industry, never known to back down from an opportunity to physically abuse women for profit, is jumping on the double mastectomy bandwagon. In a Businessweek article, a genetic counselor named Rebecca Nagy declares, "Having this conversation empowers us all. It's wonderful what she's done."

Wonderful? To cut off parts of your body that have NO disease? With this logic, abortions are cancer prevention, too, because those babies might one day grow up and develop tumors. Better to kill them early and "prevent cancer," right?

You don't have to be a rocket scientist to see where this medical insanity ultimately leads. Got a risk of kidney cancer? Remove your kidneys. Risk of colon cancer? Take out your colon. Lung cancer, perhaps? Remove your lungs, just in case! That's the logic of Angelina Jolie who has been completely deceived by the cancer industry into maiming her own body based on nothing for medical fear mongering and cancer quackery.

Never doubt the fact that fear can be an effective marketing tool when it comes to breast cancer, by the way. The cancer industry rakes in billions of dollars a year based on irrational fears spread by misinformed women.


Medical maiming going viral across the population of sheeple

There's nothing quite as exciting and heroic as having your body parts chopped off by surgeons and then declaring yourself to be a "pre-vivor" of cancer. Yep, that's the new term. You're not really a "survivor" of cancer, since you never had it. You're a "pre-vivor" because you preempted the cancer.


Why aren't male cancer doctors cutting off their own testicles?

You'll note, by the way, that men never have their testicles removed to lower the risk of testicular cancer. Not even the male cancer doctors, oncologists and surgeons who are slicing off women's breasts all day long. Sure, they think cutting off breasts is a great idea, but ask one of them to part with their own testicles to "prevent" cancer, and they'll look at you like you've gone, well, nuts.

So why is it somehow acceptable to cut off the breasts of "empowered women" who think they are making some sort of social statement by maiming their own perfectly healthy bodies?

Full Column

Federal investigators secretly seized two months of phone records for reporters and editors of The Associated Press in what the news organization said Monday was a "serious interference with A.P.'s constitutional rights to gather and report the news."

The A.P. said that the Justice Department informed it on Friday that law enforcement officials had obtained the records for more than 20 telephone lines of its offices and journalists, including their home phones and cellphones. It said the records were seized without notice sometime this year.

The organization was not told the reason for the seizure.

In an angry letter to Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. on Monday, Gary Pruitt, the president and chief executive of The A.P., called the seizure, a "massive and unprecedented intrusion" into its news gathering activities. "

"There can be no possible justification for such an overbroad collection of the telephone communications of The Associated Press and its reporters," he wrote.

These records potentially reveal communications with confidential sources across all of the news gathering activities undertaken by The A.P. during a two-month period, provide a road map to A.P.'s news gathering operations, and disclose information about A.P.'s activities and operations that the government has no conceivable right to know."

"As you are fully aware, the Department of Defense is facing a historic shortfall in our budget for the current fiscal year. This is the result of current law that went into effect March 1. It imposes deep across-the-board cuts on DoD and other federal agencies. Combined with higher than expected wartime operating costs, we are now short more than $30 billion in our operation and maintenance (O&M) accounts -- which are the funds that we use to pay most civilian employees, maintain our military readiness, and respond to global contingencies.

"The department has been doing everything possible to reduce this shortfall while ensuring we can defend the nation, sustain wartime operations, and preserve DoD's most critical asset -- our world-class civilian and military personnel. To that end, we have cut back sharply on facilities maintenance, worked to shift funds from investment to O&M accounts, and reduced many other important but non-essential programs.

"Still, these steps have not been enough to close the shortfall. Each of the military services has begun to significantly reduce training and maintenance of non-deployed operating forces -- steps that will adversely impact military readiness. And even these reductions are not enough. Since deeper cuts to training and maintenance could leave our nation and our military exposed in the event of an unforeseen crisis, we have been forced to consider placing the majority of our civilian employees on administrative furlough.

"After extensive review of all options with the DoD's senior military and civilian leadership on how we address this budget crisis, today I am announcing that I have decided to direct furloughs of up to 11 days for most of the department's civilian personnel. I have made this decision very reluctantly, because I know that the furloughs will disrupt lives and impact DoD operations. I recognize the significant hardship this places on you and your families.

"After required notifications, we will begin the furlough period on July 8 at the rate of one furlough day per week for most personnel. We plan to continue these furloughs through the end of the current fiscal year.

A new wave of cyberattacks is striking American corporations, prompting warnings from federal officials, including a vague one issued last week by the Department of Homeland Security. This time, officials say, the attackers' aim is not espionage but sabotage, and the source seems to be somewhere in the Middle East.

The targets have primarily been energy companies, and the attacks appeared to be probes, looking for ways to seize control of their processing systems. The attacks are continuing, officials said. But two senior administration officials said Sunday that they were still not certain exactly where the attacks were coming from, or whether they were state-sponsored or the work of hackers or criminals.

Last week's warning was unusual because most attacks against American companies - especially those coming from China - have been attempts to obtain confidential information, steal trade secrets and gain competitive advantage.

By contrast, the new attacks seek to destroy data or to manipulate industrial machinery and take over or shut down the networks that deliver energy or run industrial processes.

Secretary of State John Kerry said Thursday the transfer of advanced missile defense systems from Russia to Syria would be a "destabilizing" factor for Israel's security.

Kerry said the U.S. has expressed concerns about what such defensive systems in Syria would mean for Israel's security. He wouldn't address what the missiles might mean for Syria's civil war. "We have previously stated that the missiles," Kerry said, "are potentially destabilizing with respect to the state of Israel."

"We have made it crystal clear that we prefer that Russia would not supply them assistance," Kerry told reporters alongside new Italian Foreign Minister Emma Bonino. "That is on record. That hasn't changed."

Israeli officials said they have asked Russia to cancel the imminent sale to the Assad regime of advanced ground-to-air missile systems. Such weapons would enhance the Syrian government's defensive ability and make it even harder for the U.S. and other governments to consider even the possibility of trying to enforce a no-fly zone in the country or otherwise intervening militarily.

Russia rarely comments publicly on arms sales or transfers, and there has been no official word on the deal in Moscow.

Two respiratory viruses in different parts of the world have captured the attention of global health officials - a novel coronavirus in the Middle East and a new bird flu spreading in China.

Last week, the coronavirus related to SARS spread to France, where one patient who probably caught the disease in Dubai infected his hospital roommate.

Officials are now trying to track down everyone who went on a tour group holiday to Dubai with the first patient as well as all contacts of the second patient. Since it was first spotted last year, the new coronavirus has infected 34 people, killing 18 of them. Nearly all had some connection to the Middle East.

The World Health Organization, however, says there is no reason to think the virus is restricted to the Middle East and has advised health officials worldwide to closely monitor any unusual respiratory cases.

At the same time, a new bird flu strain, H7N9, has been infecting people in China since at least March, causing 32 deaths out of 131 known cases.

WHO, which is closely monitoring the viruses, says both have the potential to cause a pandemic - a global epidemic - if they evolve into a form easily spread between people.

No longer would Mahony preside at springtime rites in which teenagers receive the sacrament that marks full passage into the Catholic Church, the spokesman said.

But three months later, Mahony is back doing confirmations. Since Easter, he has officiated at eight services, including one last week in which he anointed more than 120 youths at a Wilmington parish

When Archbishop Jose Gomez stripped his predecessor, Cardinal Roger Mohoney, of public duties for mishandling clergy sex abuse cases, a church spokesman said the retired prelate's life would remain largely the same with one exception: confirmations.

His presence has caused controversy, with some parents threatening to pull their children from the liturgies and at least one parish priest asking that Mahony not attend. It has also raised questions about why Gomez's rebuke of Mahony, an unprecedented move that won him praise from victims and their supporters around the world, had so little lasting effect.

Several said they found Mahony's decision to speak about the abuse scandal at each of 20 regional deanery meetings this spring to be inappropriate. "It's almost as if he doesn't know he's retired," one said.

But Msgr. David O'Connell, a pastor at St. Michael's in South Los Angeles, said he welcomed the cardinal's planned presentation in his region later this month. "He feels there's a wrong perception with how the press is portraying his role," he said.

The age of consent for sex should be lowered to 13 years-old to end the ''persecution of old men'' in the wake of the Savile sex abuse scandal, a leading barrister has claimed.

In a controversial intervention, Barbara Hewson, a senior barrister at Hardwicke chambers in London, also called for the end of anonymity for complainants.

The lawyer, who specialises in reproductive rights also claimed crimes committed by disgraced broadcaster Stuart Hall were ''low level misdemeanours''.

Her comments come as Scotland Yard operates Operation Yewtree, an investigation split into three inquiries into allegations involving deceased presenter Jimmy Savile, involving Savile and others and those involving just others.

A number of high-profile figures have been arrested under Yewtree such as entertainer Rolf Harris, former pop star Gary Glitter, DJ Dave Lee Travis, comedian Jim Davidson and PR guru Max Clifford. All deny any wrongdoing.

In an article for online magazine Spiked, she argued that ''the post-Savile witch-hunting of ageing celebs echoes the Soviet Union'' and says that it is not difficult to see why some elderly defendants ''conclude that resistance is useless''.

She added: ''But the low-level misdemeanours with which Stuart Hall was charged are nothing like serious crime.''

''As for law reform, now regrettably necessary, my recommendations are remove complainant anonymity, introduce a strict statute of limitations for criminal prosecutions and civil actions and reduce the age of consent to 13.''

Frances Swaine, managing partner at law firm Leigh Day, which represents one of Savile's victims as well as a dozen other victims of historic sexual abuse, said: "Our clients would be distressed by any suggestion the age of consent should be reduced to 13 or to hear their abuse defined as 'low-level misdemeanours'.

Barbare Hewson is regularly ranked as a Leading Junior by The Legal 500 in the fields of public and administrative law, human rights and civil liberties, and professional discipline and regulatory law, according to her chambers' website.

She has won cases in the European Court of Human Rights, the Supreme Court and High Court of the Republic of Ireland.

Technology has given us many gifts, among them dozens of new ways to grab our attention. It's hard to talk to a friend without your phone buzzing at least once. Odds are high you will check your Twitter feed or Facebook wall while reading this article. Just try to type a memo at work without having an e-mail pop up that ruins your train of thought. (That is what is commonly called "multitasking")

But what constitutes distraction? Does the mere possibility that a phone call or an e-mail that will soon arrive drain your brain power? And does distraction matter - do interruptions make us dumber?

Quite a bit, according to new research by Carnegie Mellon University's Human-Computer Interaction Lab.

In fact, multitasking is a misnomer. In most situations, the person juggling e-mail, text messaging, Facebook and a meeting is really doing something called "rapid toggling between tasks," and is engaged in constant context switching.

There have been a few efforts to do so: Gloria Mark of the University of California, Irvine, found that a typical office worker gets only 11 minutes between each interruption, while it takes an average of 25 minutes to return to the original task after an interruption.

A strange ghost town that spent a quarter century under water is coming up for air again in the Argentine farmlands southwest of Buenos Aires.

Epecuen was once a bustling little lakeside resort, where 1,500 people served 20,000 tourists a season.

The saltwater lake was particularly attractive because it has 10 times more salt than the ocean, making the water buoyant. Tourists, especially people from Buenos Aires' large Jewish community, enjoyed floating in water that reminded them of the Dead Sea in the Middle East.

Then a particularly heavy rainstorm followed a series of wet winters, and the lake overflowed its banks on Nov. 10, 1985. Water burst through a retaining wall and spilled into the lakeside streets. People fled with what they could, and within days their homes were submerged under nearly 10 meters (33 feet) of corrosive saltwater.

Now the water has mostly receded, exposing what looks like a scene from a movie about the end of the world.

People come to see the rusted hulks of automobiles and furniture, crumbled homes and broken appliances. They climb staircases that lead nowhere, and wander through a graveyard where the water toppled headstones and exposed tombs to the elements.

It's a bizarre, post-apocalyptic landscape that captures a traumatic moment in time.

Individuals employed around the world by a sophisticated cyber crime ring stole $45 million from thousands of bank automated teller machines within a matter of hours, using hacked debit-card data, U.S. prosecutors said on Thursday.

Members of the global criminal organization hacked into two credit card processors and used stolen data to make more than 40,500 withdrawals in 27 countries, during two separate coordinated incidents in December 2012 and February 2013, the Justice Department said.

The government charged eight individuals in New York with participating in the larger scheme by withdrawing $2.8 million in thousands of ATM transactions, in what U.S. Attorney Loretta Lynch said was the second-biggest bank robbery in the history of New York City.

The problem of sexual assault in the military leapt to the forefront in Washington on Tuesday as the Pentagon released a survey estimating that 26,000 people in the armed forces were sexually assaulted last year, up from 19,000 in 2010 (37% !!), and an angry President Obama and Congress demanded action.

The study, based on a confidential survey sent to 108,000 active-duty service members, was released two days after the officer in charge of sexual assault prevention programs for the Air Force was arrested and charged with sexual battery for grabbing a woman’s breasts and buttocks in an Arlington, Va., parking lot.

At a White House news conference, Mr. Obama expressed exasperation with the Pentagon's attempts to bring sexual assault under control.

"The bottom line is, I have no tolerance for this," Mr. Obama said in answer to a question about the survey. "If we find out somebody's engaging in this stuff, they've got to be held accountable, prosecuted, stripped of their positions, court-martialed, fired, dishonorably discharged. Period."

The president said he had ordered Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel "to step up our game exponentially" to prevent sex crimes and said he wanted military victims of sexual assault to know that "I've got their backs."

Three women found alive after a decade in captivity endured lonely, dark lives inside a dingy home where they were raped and allowed outside only a handful of times in disguises while walking to a garage steps away, investigators say.

The 52-year-old former school bus driver accused of kidnapping and raping the women will make his first public appearance in court Thursday after emerging as the lone suspect.

While many questions remain about how Ariel Castro maintained such tight control over the women for so many years before one of them made a daring escape Monday, the horrors they suffered are beginning to come to light.

Castro was accused of twice breaking the nose of his children's mother, knocking out a tooth, dislocating each shoulder and threatening to kill her and her daughters, according to a 2005 domestic-violence filing in Cuyahoga County Domestic Relations Court.

The filing for a protective order by Grimilda Figueroa also said that Castro frequently abducted her daughters and kept them from her. Figueroa died in April 2012 after a battle with cancer. Figueroa's father, Ismail Figueroa, said Wednesday that Castro would regularly lock his daughter inside a second-floor apartment in the house where they lived when they were first together.

A huge tornado has struck the Emilio-Romagna region of northern Italy last weekend. Amateur footage from small towns near the regional capital of Bologna showed the storm tearing through the countryside.

Farmers who were out in their fields were blasted by the winds as well as pummelled by a barrage of hail stones. Italian media reported 11 people wounded and damage to several properties.

The governor of Emilio-Romagna has asked the central government to declare a state of emergency. For local residents when it pours it rains as around the same time a 3.8 magnitude earthquake was detected in nearby Ferrara

This is also the region that was struck by a devastating earthquake and subsequent aftershocks last summer, killing 27 and destroying hundreds of buildings.

A tornado has swept through the Sant'Erasmo island in Venice's lagoon, ripping the roofs off buildings and uprooting trees on its path of destruction. Althought the city's historic centre survived unscathed. Despite the force of the wind, so far only one minor injury was reported.

FBI agents did not tell Boston police they had receiving warnings from Russia's government in 2011 about suspected bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev and had performed a cursory investigation, Boston Police Commissioner Edward Davis told Congress Thursday, in the first hearing into last month's terror attack on the Boston Marathon.

Davis said that none of four people he had assigned to the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force was aware that the FBI investigated the vague warning, found nothing and had closed the file. One of his detectives was in the dark despite being assigned to the unit that investigated Tsarnaev, Davis said.

"They tell me they received no word about that individual prior to the bombing," Davis said.

Davis said he would have liked to have known but conceded that it might not have prevented the attack. The commissioner said his detectives would have wanted to interview Tsarnaev.

"The FBI did that and they closed the case out," he said. "I can't say I would've come to a different conclusion based on the information at the time."

The Air Force stripped an unprecedented 17 officers of their authority to control - and, if necessary, launch - nuclear missiles after a string of unpublicized failings, including a remarkably dim review of their unit's launch skills.

The group's deputy commander said it is suffering "rot" within its ranks. "We are, in fact, in a crisis right now," the commander, Lt. Col. Jay Folds, wrote in an internal email obtained by The Associated Press and confirmed by the Air Force.

Asked about this at a Senate hearing Wednesday, Air Force Secretary Michael Donley, the service's top official, explained the problem by stressing that launch control officers are relatively junior in rank - lieutenants and captains...

Sen. Richard Durbin, chairman of the Senate Appropriations defense subcommittee, expressed outrage, saying the AP report revealed a problem that "could not be more troubling."

The tip-off to trouble was a March inspection of the 91st Missile Wing at Minot Air Force Base, N.D., which earned the equivalent of a "D" grade when tested on its mastery of Minuteman III missile launch operations.

The Air Force publicly called the inspection a "success."

1. Far more complacent.
2. Filled with a sense of (totally false) security.
3. Confident of being invincible - financially and militarily.
4. A completely (ethnically) divided nation. The melting pot was reversed and polarization is almost total.
5. More interested in self gratification and self indulgence than the common good and our great nation.
6. Distrustful of our Presidents and, frankly, could not care less as long as the material well being is not disturbed.

[I could give dozens of conclusive examples of the above but I know that you could produce hundreds of them of your own accord!]

A former altar boy, now a man of 34, alleges in lawsuits that three priests at St. Jude Parish in Alamogordo molested him for years. The plaintiff, Eran Joseph McManemy, also says the Catholic church's hierarchy knew that one of the priests had been sexually abusing boys since the 1960s but did nothing to stop him.

This priest was the Rev. David A. Holley, who left a long trail of molestations at churches from Worcester, Mass., to ones in New Mexico and Texas. Finally, in 1993, Holley was sentenced to 275 years in prison for sodomizing and molesting eight other boys in Alamogordo. He died in prison in 2008 at age 80.

The other two priests that McManemy identified as his molesters at St. Jude were the Revs. Daniel Barfield and Wilfrid Diamond.

McManemy was a child of 9, living with his grandparents, when they moved to Alamogordo and joined St. Jude Parish in 1987. McManemy became an altar boy for Diamond, the parish priest. He says Diamond began molesting him almost immediately.

"The abuse occurred several times each week until Father Diamond eventually retired in or about 1988," McManemy's lawsuit says. Barfield received an appointment as pastor of the parish in approximately 1990. McManemy says Barfield also sexually and physically assaulted him.

McManemy says he was not abused by a priest who served in between the tenures of Diamond and Barfield. McManemy, unlike many who say they were victims of sexual assault, decided to file the lawsuits using his real name. Bennett said McManemy believed that identifying himself was a necessary step in his attempt to heal, and because he wanted to confront the church for its misdeeds.

[4] Woe to the sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a wicked seed, ungracious children: they have forsaken the Lord, they have blasphemed the Holy One of Israel, they are gone away backwards. [5] For what shall I strike you any more, you that increase transgression? the whole head is sick, and the whole heart is sad.

[6] From the sole of the foot unto the top of the head, there is no soundness therein: wounds and bruises and swelling sores: they are not bound up, nor dressed, nor fomented with oil. .... [10] Hear the word of the Lord, ye rulers of Sodom, give ear to the law of our God, ye people of Gomorrha.

[11] To what purpose do you offer me the multitude of your victims, saith the Lord? I am full, I desire not holocausts of rams, and fat of fatlings, and blood of calves, and lambs, and buck goats. [12] When you came to appear before me, who required these things at your hands, that you should walk in my courts? [13] Offer sacrifice no more in vain: incense is an abomination to me. The new moons, and the sabbaths, and other festivals I will not abide, your assemblies are wicked. [14] My soul hateth your new moons, and your solemnities: they are become troublesome to me, I am weary of bearing them. [15] And when you stretch forth your hands, I will turn away my eyes from you: and when you multiply prayer, I will not hear: for your hands are full of blood.

[16] Wash yourselves, be clean, take away the evil of your devices from my eyes: cease to do perversely, [17] Learn to do well: seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge for the fatherless, defend the widow. [18] And then come, and accuse me, saith the Lord: if your sins be as scarlet, they shall be made as white as snow: and if they be red as crimson, they shall be white as wool. [19] If you be willing, and will hearken to me, you shall eat the good things of the land. [20] But if you will not, and will provoke me to wrath: the sword shall devour you because the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it.

May 06, 2013

Today, a former high ranking New Hampshire diocesan Catholic official has stepped down from his position because of allegations of sexual and financial impropriety.

He is Msgr. Edward Arsenault of the St. Luke’s Institute in Maryland, where hundreds of child molesting clerics have been housed over the years.

We’re saddened but not surprised by this news. All too often Catholic officials who are in charge of pedophile priests turn out to have accusations of sexual misdeeds against them as well.

We hope that anyone who may have seen suspected or suffered misdeeds by Arsenault will come forward, get help, call police, expose wrongdoing, protect others and start healing.

The official communication follows:

From: GibbsMedia
Date: Mon, May 6, 2013 at 3:48 PM
Subject: Saint Luke Institute Leadership Transition

Saint Luke Institute Leadership Transition - May 6, 2013

Monsignor Edward J. Arsenault has stepped down as president and CEO of Saint Luke Institute (www.sli.org), effective May 3, 2013. Leadership responsibilities will be shared between Monsignor Stephen J. Rossetti, Ph.D., who will serve as interim president, and Sheila Harron, Ph.D., who will serve as interim CEO

Msgr. Arsenault offered his resignation in light of investigations announced today by the Diocese of Manchester (in New Hampshire, www.catholicnh.org) into possible improprieties, including improper financial transactions and a possible inappropriate adult relationship. Msgr. Arsenault is a priest of that diocese and held a number of leadership positions there prior to joining Saint Luke Institute in 2009.

New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan is rushing to judgment and defending a priest being investigated for potential financial misdeeds.

In New York Magazine, Dolan says this about the just-resigned president of St. John’s University, Fr.Donald Harrington: "I am delighted to learn that in his retirement Father Harrington will be available to the Church to continue to champion Catholic education," Dolan said in a statement. "I expect to call on him."

This kind of premature rallying around a potential criminal that discourages people who see suspect and suffer wrongdoing in the church from speaking up.

Dolan should be using his massive resources to encourage, not discourage, those with information or suspicions about Fr. Harrington to step forward.

Even someone who is professionally accomplished can be a criminal. Dolan knows this. Yet, like thousands of other Catholic officials, he chooses to publicly back an accused wrongdoer, rather than stay silent or help with the investigation.

These aren’t petty or hastily-made accusations.

According to the New York Times, Fr. Harrington “acknowledged going on trips with a former dean who committed suicide while on trial for corruption,” accused of “pocketing tens of thousands of dollars.”

The Times also reports that there is “a pending inquiry requested a few months ago by the board of trustees into possible financial improprieties involving officials at the university.”

In court, Fr. Harrington testified that he had traveled several times . . to Asia, where he (and the accused dean) stayed at opulent hotels.” He also admitted “accepting gifts, like a designer watch and suits custom-made in Hong Kong, from Chinese businessmen.”

And Dolan is essentially defending Fr. Harrington, and sending an unfortunate and likely chilling message to others who are pondering whether to step forward with other allegations of wrongdoing in the archdiocese.

May 6, 2013

Bishop Robert McManus of Worcester was charged DUI, leaving the scene of an accident and refusal to submit to a breathalyzer test after a hit-and-run accident in Arraigns on Saturday night.

Police say the incident happened on Boston Neck Road. Police were notified by the driver allegedly hit by McManus's vehicle. The driver followed McManus to his home in Bonnet Shores.

Police arrived to his home and arrested McManus. He is scheduled to be arraigned on charges in Washington County Courthouse tomorrow.

The Bishop released the following statement regarding the issue:

"On Saturday evening, May 4, I made a terrible error in judgment by driving after having consumed alcohol with dinner. There is no excuse for the mistake I made, only a commitment to make amends and accept the consequences of my action. More importantly, I ask forgiveness from the good people whom I serve, as well as my family and friends, in the Diocese of Worcester and the Diocese of Providence."

McManus was a priest at St. Luke's Parish for over ten years and served as the Auxiliary Bishop of Providence from 1999 to 2004. In 2004 he was appointed by Pope John Paul II to be the Bishop of Worcester.

Any day now, billions of cicadas with bulging red eyes will crawl out of the earth after 17 years underground and overrun the East Coast. The insects will arrive in such numbers that people from North Carolina to Connecticut will be outnumbered roughly 600-to-1. Maybe more.

Scientists even have a horror-movie name for the infestation: Brood II. But as ominous as that sounds, the insects are harmless. They won't hurt you or other animals. At worst, they might damage a few saplings or young shrubs. Mostly they will blanket certain pockets of the region, though lots of people won't ever see them.

They're looking for just one thing: sex. And they've been waiting quite a long time. Since 1996, this group of 1-inch bugs, in wingless nymph form, has been a few feet underground, sucking on tree roots and biding their time. They will emerge only when the ground temperature reaches precisely 64 degrees.

After a few weeks up in the trees, they will die and their offspring will go underground, not to return until 2030.

And they will make a big racket, too. The noise all the male cicadas make when they sing for sex can drown out your own thoughts, and maybe even rival a rock concert. In 2004, Gene Kritsky, an entomologist at the College of Mount St. Joseph in Cincinnati, measured cicadas at 94 decibels, saying it was so loud "you don't hear planes flying overhead."

There are ordinary cicadas that come out every year around the world, but these are different. They're called magicicadas — as in magic — and are red-eyed. And these magicicadas are seen only in the eastern half of the United States, nowhere else in the world.

Researchers reported so at the Seismological Society of America's annual meeting.

"We are getting a much better understanding of the volcanic system of Yellowstone," said Jamie Farrell, a seismology graduate student at the University of Utah. "The magma reservoir is at least 50 percent larger than previously imaged."

Knowing the volume of molten magma beneath Yellowstone is important for estimating the size of future eruptions, Farrell told OurAmazingPlanet.

The last caldera eruption was 640,000 years ago. Smaller eruptions occurred in between and after the big blasts, most recently about 70,000 years ago.

Astronomers from around the world were blown away by a record-setting blast of gamma rays from a dying star in a distant galaxy.

The eruption, which is classified as a gamma-ray burst, or GRB, produced the highest-energy light ever detected from such an event.

"We have waited a long time for a gamma-ray burst this shockingly, eye-wateringly bright," Julie McEnery, project scientist for the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md said.

"The GRB lasted so long that a record number of telescopes on the ground were able to catch it while space-based observations were still ongoing," she said.

Experts warn of danger that the new viral strains created by mixing bird-flu virus with human influenza could escape from the laboratory to cause a global pandemic killing millions of people.

"They claim they are doing this to help develop vaccines and such like. In fact the real reason is that they are driven by blind ambition with no common sense whatsoever," Lord May told The Independent.

"The record of containment in labs like this is not reassuring. They are taking it upon themselves to create human-to-human transmission of very dangerous viruses. It's appallingly irresponsible," he said.

The controversial study into viral mixing was carried out by a team led by Professor Hualan Chen, director of China's National Avian Influenza Reference Laboratory at Harbin Veterinary Research Institute.

Professor Chen and her colleagues deliberately mixed the H5N1 bird-flu virus, which is highly lethal but not easily transmitted between people, with a 2009 strain of H1N1 flu virus, which is very infectious to humans.

When flu viruses come together by infecting the same cell they can swap genetic material and produce "hybrids" through the re-assortment of genes.

Syrian state TV says Israeli rockets have hit a military research centre on the outskirts of the capital Damascus.

Huge explosions have been heard in the Mount Qassioun area of the city. The research centre there was the target of a Israeli strike in January.

Earlier, Israeli officials speaking on condition of anonymity said that on Friday Israeli aircraft had attacked a shipment of missiles inside Syria.

The missiles were believed to be destined for Lebanon's Hezbollah. Heavy explosions shook Damascus overnight. Amateur footage posted online claimed to show the explosion near the Jamraya military research facility, with a huge ball of fire seen rising into the night sky.

"The new Israeli attack is an attempt to raise the morale of the terrorist groups, which have been reeling from strikes by our noble army," Syrian state TV said, referring to recent offensives by President Bashar al-Assad's forces against rebels.

Along the irrigation canal that cuts through this centuries-old New Mexico town, a small group of churchgoers gathers to recite the rosary before tossing rose petals into the water.

Remnants of a tradition that stretches back to the days of Spanish explorers, the humble offerings are aimed at blessing this year's meager irrigation season and easing a relentless drought that continues to march across New Mexico and much of the western half of the U.S.

On Sunday, congregations across eastern New Mexico and West Texas are planning a day of prayer for moisture and rain. "We're worried, but we're maintaining our traditional ways and cultural ways. Together we pray, and individually we pray," said Peter Pino, administrator of Zia Pueblo. "We haven't lost hope in the spiritual world, that they'll be able to provide us resources throughout the year.

"We're not giving up. That's pretty much all we can do at this point."

In its wake, the drought has left farmland idle, herds of cattle have been decimated, the threat of wildfire has intensified and cities are thinking twice about the sustainability of their water supplies.

A company that describes itself as a vault for personal data has suffered an embarrassing heist: intruders penetrated its computer system and looted its customers' names, addresses and in some cases, dates of birth and login passwords.

Passwords are especially coveted items because many people reuse them across multiple Web sites, and cyberthieves have in turn developed new automated ways to try and reuse them to ferret out more valuable data from different Web sites.

In its e-mail to users, Reputation said it had "identified, interrupted and swiftly shut down an external attack on our secure network." The company said it had encrypted user passwords, which could theoretically still protect them, but has not yet said what algorithm it used to protect customer data.

Reputation's co-founder, Michael Fertik, has described the company as a "data vault," or "a bank for other people's data."

Police and politicians across the U.S. are pointing to the example of surveillance video that was used to help identify the Boston Marathon bombing suspects as a reason to get more electronic eyes on their streets.

From Los Angeles to Philadelphia, efforts include trying to gain police access to cameras used to monitor traffic, expanding surveillance networks in some major cities and enabling officers to get regular access to security footage at businesses.

Some in law enforcement, however, acknowledge that their plans may face an age-old obstacle: Americans' traditional reluctance to give the government more law enforcement powers out of fear that they will live in a society where there is little privacy.

"Look, we don't want an occupied state. We want to be able to walk the good balance between freedom and security," Los Angeles police Deputy Chief Michael Downing, who heads the department's counter-terrorism and special operations bureau.

The FDA announced today that the emergency contraceptive will be available without a prescription to those ages 15 and older. The pill also no longer needs to be behind pharmacy counters. Instead, it can sit on drugstore shelves just like condoms, but buyers will have to prove their age at the cash register.

City Health Department numbers for 2009 showed that of all viable pregnancies here, 87,273 were terminated, compared with 126,774 live births.

Excluding miscarriages, 48 percent of Bronx pregnancies, were aborted, compared with 39 percent in Brooklyn and Queens, 38 percent in Manhattan and 32 percent on Staten Island. The most recent national figure: 19 percent.

Imagine 13 and 14-year-old girls being instructed to ask one another for a lesbian kiss in a class exercise. The girls had no choice. The parents were NOT informed. But hey, if it falls under "anti-bullying," than who are you to question it, right?

A recent anti-bullying presentation at a middle school in New York that focused on homosexuality and gender identity has angered parents after their daughters have come home to tell them they were forced to ask another girl for a kiss.

According to reports, the session occurred last week at Linden Avenue Middle School in Red Hook, New York, near Poughkeepsie. A group of students from Bard College led two workshops for the youth, separated by gender.

During the workshop for girls, the 13 and 14-year-olds were told to ask one another for a lesbian kiss. They were also taught words such as "pansexual" and "genderqueer."

NASA has signed a $424 million modification to its contract with the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) for full crew transportation services to the International Space Station in 2016 with return and rescue services extending through June 2017.

NASA is committed to launching U.S. astronauts aboard domestic spacecraft as soon as possible. Full funding of the administration's Fiscal Year 2014 budget request is critical to making these domestic capabilities possible by 2017.

The leader of the Lebanese-based militant group, Hezbollah has warned Syrian rebels fighting the troops of President Bashar al-Assad they will never be able to topple him by force.

Hassan Nasrallah also indicated that his fighters have been assisting Syrian government forces by admitting some of his men had been killed in Syria.

In a televised speech from an undisclosed location, Nasrallah, who is a staunch ally of President Assad, expressed his support: "Syria," he said, “has real friends in the region and the world who will not allow Syria to fall into the hands of America or Israel or infidels. They will not allow that."

The US is pretty sure someone has used chemical weapons in Syria - but it's not sure who, President Obama revealed at a White House press conference today, at which he invited reporters to ask him questions on whatever they pleased.

"What we now have is evidence that chemical weapons have been used in Syria," Obama said, according to the Guardian's liveblog. "We don't know how they were used, when they were used, who used them."

He said he wanted to avoid "rushing to judgment without hard effective evidence." Obama also said that, while chemical weapon use is indeed a "game-changer," that didn't necessarily mean war. "By game-changer I mean we would have to rethink the range of options that are available to us."

61% of adults believe in hell

61% believe in the virgin birth (Jesus born of Mary)

60% believe in the devil

42% believe in ghosts

32% believe in UFOs

26% believe in astrology

23% believe in witches

20% believe in reincarnation – that they were once another person.

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