Eyeblast.tv -
London Sunday Times
Iran has moved ballistic missiles into launch positions, with Israel’s Dimona nuclear plant among the possible targets, defence sources said last week.
The movement of Shahab-3B missiles, which have an estimated range of more than 1,250 miles, followed a large-scale exercise earlier this month in which the Israeli air force flew en masse over the Mediterranean in an apparent rehearsal for a threatened attack on Iran’s nuclear installations. Israel believes Iran’s nuclear programme is aimed at acquiring nuclear weapons.
The sources said Iran was preparing to retaliate for any onslaught by firing missiles at Dimona, where Israel’s own nuclear weapons are believed to be made…
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -
The good news in northern California is that more than a thousand wildfires aren’t growing. The bad news: There’s no relief in sight.
No new major fires had broken out Sunday as fire crews inched closer to getting some of the largest of 1,420 blazes surrounded, according to the state Office of Emergency Services. Some 364,600 acres—or almost 570 square miles—have burned.
A “red flag warning”—meaning the most extreme fire danger—was still in effect for Northern California until 8 a.m. EDT Monday. And the coming days and months are expected to bring little relief.
Lower-than-average rainfall and record levels of parched vegetation likely mean a long, fiery summer throughout northern California, according to the Forest Service’s state fire outlook released last week.
The fires burning now were mostly sparked by lightning storms that were unusually intense for so early in the season. But summer storms would probably be even fiercer, according to the Forest Service…
CNSNews.com -
While Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has vowed to make pay equity for women a top priority if elected president, an analysis of his Senate staff shows that women are outnumbered and out-paid by men.
That is in contrast to Republican presidential candidate John McCain’s Senate office, where women, for the most part, out-rank and are paid more than men.
Obama spoke in Albuquerque, N.M. last week about his commitment to the issue and his support of a Senate bill to make it easier to sue an employer for pay discrimination.
“Mr. McCain is an honorable man, we respect his service. But when you look at our records and our plans on issues that matter to working women, the choice could not be clearer,” Obama told the audience in New Mexico, a voter-swing state. “It starts with equal pay. Sixty-two percent of working women in America earn half or more than of their family’s income. But women still earn 77 cents for every dollar earned by men in 2008. You’d think that Washington would be united it its determination to fight for equal pay.”…
...On average, women working in Obama’s Senate office were paid at least $6,000 below the average man working for the Illinois senator. That’s according to data calculated from the Report of the Secretary of the Senate, which covered the six-month period ending Sept. 30, 2007. Of the five people in Obama’s Senate office who were paid $100,000 or more on an annual basis, only one — Obama’s administrative manager — was a woman…
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AFP
The commander of the US navy’s Fifth Fleet warned on Monday that the United States will not allow Iran to shut the Strait of Hormuz, the Gulf sea lane through which much of the world’s oil is supplied.
“They will not close it… They will not be allowed to close it,” Vice-Admiral Kevin J. Cosgriff told a press conference in Bahrain, where the Fifth Fleet is based.
His remarks followed comments by the chief of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards, General Mohammad Ali Jafari, who issued a new warning last week against any attack against his country over its controversial nuclear drive.
“It is natural that when a country is attacked it uses all of its capabilities against the enemy, and definitely our control of the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz would be one of our actions,” Jafari said.
The strait between Iran and Oman is a vital conduit for energy supplies, with as much as 40 percent of the world’s crude passing through the waterway from Gulf suppliers…
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WorldNetDaily
“F— off” is an acceptable answer that earned one student two points on his English exam for accurate spelling and properly conveying meaning.
Students are receiving credit for foul language on the British General Certificate of Secondary Education English examinations, the London Times reported. In some cases, the foul answers have little to do with the question.
The boy’s test was graded by chief examiner Peter Buckroyd who teaches other examiners to grade using the same standard. Buckroyd gave graders strict instructions to adhere to his scoring guidelines, even giving credit to students who wrote only foul words on their tests.
According to the report, Buckroyd said he awarded two points, out of a possible 27, to the boy who scribbled the F-word into a test blank in response to the statement, “Describe the room you’re sitting in.”
To receive a minimum grade on the test, a student must show “some simple sequencing of ideas” and “some words in appropriate order.” Buckroyd claimed the boy had attained the stated goal…
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WorldNetDaily
San Francisco is now providing free, taxpayer-funded plane tickets home for illegal aliens – with an open invitation to visit again.
City juvenile probation officers are shielding Honduran crack cocaine dealers from federal deportation and citing San Francisco’s sanctuary status as justification for its policy, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
William Siffermann, chief of San Francisco’s Juvenile Probation Department, claims federal authorities have never ordered him to stop flying illegal aliens back to their home countries. He cited city policy against turning young illegal alien offenders over to the federal government.
“We are not obligated to,” he said. “We are abiding by the sanctuary city ordinance. I don’t believe we’ve done anything wrong.”…
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WorldNetDaily
The case involving Andreas and Katharina Plett is being addressed by Joel Thornton, chief of the International Human Rights Group, who alleges Germany is violating articles 8, 9, 10, 14, and 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights with its persecution of homeschooling families.
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by Kimberly Winston
Religion News Service
SAN JOSE, Calif. — The nation’s largest Presbyterian denomination on Friday (June 27) cracked open the door to ordaining non-celibate gay and lesbian clergy, though the decades-old fight is far from over.
Delegates at the Presbyterian Church (USA) meeting here voted 54 percent to 46 percent to remove a clause in their constitution that requires clergy to be either married and faithful or single and chaste.
But the action still needs approval by a majority of the denomination’s 173 regional bodies, called presbyteries, and similar moves in recent years have twice failed to win ratification on the local level.
In a related move, delegates approved an “authoritative interpretation” of church rules on gay clergy, a move that was meant to piece back together a delicate compromise forged two years ago that was rejected by the church’s highest court…
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Denver Post
Give them that old-time religion — ancient religion — and then watch an exploding population of modern pagans give it contemporary twists.
Their numbers roughly double about every 18 months in the United States, Canada and Europe, according to the Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance.
Neopaganism, whether a careful reconstruction of ancient practice or a completely modern interpretation of ancient lore, is now among the country’s fastest-growing religions.
People, especially teens, are rejecting what they see as the “autocracy, paternalism, sexism, homophobia and insensitivity to the environment” of some more traditional religions, the Canadian group concludes.
Denverite Jesse Walter describes himself as a recovering Irish Catholic, conservative Republican and Army reservist. He is also a druid who follows one of the most difficult traditions of his religion — taking his livelihood for at least a year and a day from a grove of trees.
Walter, 33, who became a druid at age 18, first took a literal approach and bought land near the Wyoming state line where he could hunt. Then he and his wife, Kantis, who calls herself a generic pagan, were inspired to open a community center/coffee shop, Witches Brew, across the street from Berkeley Lake Park in north Denver…
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WorldNetDaily
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit issued a 7-4 ruling Friday to lift an injunction against the South Dakota informed consent abortion law. Attorneys representing the Alliance Defense Fund filed a friend-of-the-court brief on behalf of the Family Research Council in defense of the law.
“A woman’s life is worth more than Planned Parenthood’s bottom line,” said ADF Senior Counsel Jordan Lorence in a press release…
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WorldNetDaily
A brief has been filed in a federal appeals court asking the justices to overturn a judge who ordered a school district specifically to ban the Bible in its policy regarding the distribution of literature to students.
WND reported just a week ago when a federal judge declared unconstitutional a Florida law that was used to prevent Gideons from handing out Bibles to students on public property near schools.
Now comes another dispute, this one in Missouri and pursued by Liberty Counsel in its request to the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis. It wants the court to overturn a district judge’s ruling that could be used to allow distribution of the Quran, but specifically censors the Bible under the district’s open forum policy that is content-neutral…
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WorldNetDaily
The effort, however, raised $1.5 million for packages for the tens of thousands of soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, which will mean “thousands and thousands” of packages being dispatched by tomorrow and Wednesday so they arrive in time for the 4th of July.
The sponsorship campaign was promoted with a “From the Front Lines” Web-a-thon at Ustream.tv.
Morgan told WND the packages will continue going out even after the Wednesday deadline as long as donations arrive and the funding holds.
“I was ecstatic, shocked and fantastically delighted,” she told WND. “It’s a new technology, is a busy time of year with a contentious election cycle. I thought if we could get to $500,000 it would be a miracle.”…
King James Version
The centurion answered and said, Lord, I am not worthy that thou shouldest come under my roof: but speak the word only, and my servant shall be healed.
New International Version
The centurion replied, Lord, I do not deserve to have you come under my roof. But just say the word, and my servant will be healed.
