Looking for His glorious appearing! Titus 2:13

US needs to honor its commitments, says Israeli minister
Jul 6th, 2009
Daily NewsIsrael Today
Categories: Today's Headlines;The Nation Of Israel;Peace Process

Turning the table on the Obama Administration, Israeli Minister-without-Portfolio Benny Begin on Monday said that Washington needs to honor its commitments in regards to the Middle East peace process.

Begin said that the previous administration's guarantees, even its verbal guarantees, regarding the continued natural growth of Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria cannot just be brushed aside.

US President Barack Obama's staff insists that because those guarantees were never part of a signed agreement, he is not bound by them. At the same time, Obama is insisting that Israel comply with a very excessive interpretation of its own commitments, going so far as to demand a halt to the building of Jewish homes on the eastern side of Jerusalem.

Begin's remarks were made in an interview with Voice of Israel radio just hours before Defense Minister Ehud Barak was scheduled to meet with US Middle East envoy George Mitchell in London.

The fact that Barak and not Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman is holding talks with Mitchell was the focus of the Israeli media on Monday. Lieberman later explained that as a Jewish settler himself, he views it as a conflict of interests to negotiate a total freeze of the sector of society he calls home.

Second Temple Stone Quarry Discovered
Jul 6th, 2009
Daily NewsArutz Sheva - Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu
Categories: Today's Headlines;The Nation Of Israel;Archaeology

 
Archaeologists have discovered a quarter-acre (one dunam) quarry in Jerusalem that apparently was the source for mammoth stones used by Herod to build the Second Temple. The Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) discovered the quarry prior to the planned construction of apartment buildings on Shmuel HaNavi Street.

The ancient quarry dates back 2,030 years, according to excavation director Dr. Ofer Sion. The immense size of the stones, which measure up to three meters long and two meters high and wide, “indicates it was highly likely that the large stones that were quarried at the site were destined for use in the construction of Herod’s magnificent projects in Jerusalem, including the Temple walls,” he said.

He also estimated that a large work force among Herod's estimated 10,000 laborers produced the stones by creating detachment channels with the use of a one-pound chisel. “After the channels were formed, the stones were severed from the bedrock using hammers and chisels,” Dr. Sion explained.

“We know from historical sources that in order to build the Temple and other projects which Herod constructed, such as his palace, hundreds of thousands of various size stones were required – most of them weighing between two and five tons each”, said the director of the excavation. “The dimensions of the stones that were produced in the quarry...are suitable for the Temple walls."

“The massive quarrying effort, on the order of hundreds of thousands of stones, lowered the topography of Jerusalem in the vicinity of the Old City," Dr. Sion said.  "Today, with the exposure of this quarry, the intensity of the building projects as described in the historical sources can be proven… It is clear that Herod began quarrying closest to the Temple and worked away from it: first he exploited the stone on the nearby ridges and subsequently he moved on to quarry in more distant regions.”

Dr. Sion described the ancient “high-tech method of removing and transporting the stones on rolling wooden fixtures, some of which were pulled by camels."

Other artifacts discovered at the site include metal plates, referred to in the Talmud and which were used as fulcrums to sever the stones from the bedrock, as well as coins and pottery shards from the end of the Second Temple period in the first century, before the beginning of the non-Jewish calendar.

More than 60 people worked on the dig, which lasted approximately two weeks.

S. Korea: N. Korea missiles can hit key targets
Jul 6th, 2009
Daily NewsAP
Categories: Today's Headlines;Warning

Biden calls barrage of rockets ‘attention-seeking behavior’

SEOUL, South Korea - The ballistic missiles that North Korea test-fired this weekend were likely capable of striking key government and military facilities in South Korea, a defense official said Sunday, amid growing concerns over Pyongyang's firepower.

North Korean state media did not mention the launches but boasted that the country's military could impose "merciless punishment" on those who provoke it.

Pyongyang launched seven missiles into waters off its east coast Saturday in a show of force that defied U.N. resolutions and drew international condemnation.

The missiles appear to have traveled about 250 miles (400 kilometers), meaning they could have reached almost any point in South Korea, an official at the South Korean Defense Ministry said on condition of anonymity, citing department policy.

The official said the exact details of the launches were still under investigation.

The launches on U.S. Independence Day appeared to be a poke at Washington as it moves to enforce U.N. as well as its own sanctions against the isolated regime for its May 25 nuclear test.

Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, warned they were "very destabilizing, potentially."

But Vice President Joe Biden indicated the U.S. would not be baited. He described the flurry of rockets as "attention-seeking behavior."

Russia, India Question Dollar Reliance Before Summit
Jul 6th, 2009
Daily NewsBloomberg - Mark Deen and Simon Kennedy
Categories: Today's Headlines;World Government

July 6 (Bloomberg) -- Russia and India said the world economy is too reliant on the U.S. dollar and called for changes in how $6.5 trillion in currency reserves are managed, as Group of Eight leaders prepare to meet this week.

“The dollar system or the system based on the dollar and euro have shown that they are flawed,” Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said in an interview with Corriere della Sera, repeating his proposal for a new international reserve currency.

Suresh Tendulkar, an economic adviser to Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, said in a July 3 interview that he is urging his nation to diversify its foreign holdings away from the dollar.

The challenge to the dollar, a linchpin of world finance and trade since 1945, underlines the shift in relative economic power toward emerging markets and away from the developed nations that spawned the global crisis.

French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde, speaking yesterday at a conference in Aix en Provence, France, said that “we must explore better coordination of exchange-rate policy.”

Questions need to be asked about “the balance of currencies and the role of currencies in a world that has changed because of the crisis and the growing role of emerging countries,” she told reporters.

Bank of France Governor Christian Noyer said at the same conference, “We really need to make sure there is a greater stability between the big currencies in the period to come.”

Dollar Share Grows

“People know that it won’t happen overnight, but the dollar will take the brunt of growing calls by such developing countries as China and Russia for a review of the single reserve currency system,” said Akira Takeuchi, a Tokyo-based currency dealer at Chuo Mitsui Trust & Banking Co., a unit of Japan’s seventh-largest banking group.

The dollar traded at $1.3974 per euro as of 10:12 a.m. in Tokyo from $1.3980 in New York on July 3. The U.S. currency declined to 95.72 yen from 96.04 yen. The euro fell to 133.75 yen from 134.26 yen.

RFID could be in all cell phones by 2010
Jul 6th, 2009
Daily Newsnews.zdnet.com
Categories: Today's Headlines;World Government;Warning

All cell phones will come packed with an RFID chip by next summer — giving your phone the possibility of also becoming the keys to your car or house.

That was the prediction of Ericsson's vice-president of systems architecture, Håkan Djuphammar, speaking at the company's Business Innovation Forum in Stockholm on Tuesday. 

He told delegates: "A year from now, basically every new phone sold will have [near field communication]. It's a two-way, bio-directional RFID communication link that makes this device work as a tag or reader." 

Djuphammar said devices with RFID chips will have a secure environment on the SIM card, where "trusted identities" or "secure elements" can be downloaded. This will enable phones to take on other roles, such as the keys for your car or house, or a credit card or concert ticket. He said Ericsson is working with a utilities company that has 700 separate unmanned facilities and around 15,000 keys — a logistical nightmare it wants to eliminate via the use of RFID-enabled mobiles. 

"They don't know really where those keys are, so they want to replace all the locks with RFID locks, put RFID-capable phones in the hands of all their personnel, and then they can control the access to these sites." 

Using RFID in this way would enable a mobile to be assigned to open a door for a certain period of time only, meaning the company could better manage access to its facilities, while also replacing the hassle of dealing with thousands of physical keys. 

"All sorts of things will be enabled by [RFID] — a small piece of technology, but with an ecosystem around it that opens up tremendous opportunities for innovation," Djuphammar added. 

Mobile phones could also become instruments of fraud detection. Djuphammar said credit card companies could make use of mobile user location data and IP mapping to ascertain whether a transaction is taking place in the vicinity of the official card holder, thereby judging whether the transaction is likely to be genuine or not. 

"In some countries, there's a lot of credit card fraud, so it is in the interest of the issuer to be able to match the position of the phone that belongs to the person who has a card. If the phone is close to where the card is used, the fraud risk is low. But if the phone suddenly moves away from where the card is used, the issuer can be alerted to check that particular transaction — it's most likely fraud, because now the phone and the card are separated," he explained. 

Another example of leveraging location data is to create real-time road traffic maps generated by analysing the speed of the mobile phone base station hand-off to ascertain how fast cars are travelling. This data could then be sold to GPS device companies, enabling them to provide dynamic travel information to motorists. 

Djuphammar said selling access to mobile user information in this way would open up new revenue streams in a "win-win" scenario for all parties involved — the end user, the operator and the broker who manages the sharing of that user data. 

"That is a typical win-win, where the operators share their assets/knowledge through a broker and the GPS company can sell a service to the end user. The end user wins, the GPS service provider wins, the broker provider wins and the operator wins," he added.

Editors Note....These moves toward RFID technology are always sold as in the consumers interest, total control of society is marching steadily forward.

Obama speech inspires mass Quran distribution - CAIR plans to give 'holy texts' to 100,000 local, st
Jul 6th, 2009
Daily NewsWND
Categories: Today's Headlines;Warning

The Council on American-Islamic Relations intends to launch a nationwide campaign to distribute copies of the Islamic Quran to 100,000 local, state and national leaders, a campaign the organization's public relations department claims was inspired by President Obama's speech to Muslims earlier this month. 

In a statement released prior to a planned news conference next week announcing the "Share the Quran" campaign, CAIR described the scope of the outreach: 

"In the multi-year initiative, American Muslims will sponsor Qurans for distribution to governors, state attorneys general, educators, law enforcement officials, state and national legislators, local elected and public officials, media professionals and other local or national leaders who shape public opinion or determine policy," the statement said. 

According to the press release from CAIR, the "Share the Quran" educational campaign "was prompted by President Obama's recent address to Muslims worldwide in which he quoted from that holy text." 

As WND reported, during his speech "to the Muslim world" from Cairo on June 4, Obama referred to the Quran as "holy" four times and quoted several verses from the Islamic text. He also used Muslim terminology, such as the Quranic obligation of "zakat" or charity. 

"As the Holy Quran tells us, 'Be conscious of God and speak always the truth,'" Obama said. "That is what I will try to do – to speak the truth as best I can, humbled by the task before us, and firm in my belief that the interests we share as human beings are far more powerful than the forces that drive us apart." 

Obama was reading from chapter 9 verse 119 of the Quran, which scholars pointed out to WND carries two interpretations: the primary exegesis, or tafsir, which deals with speaking the truth, and a second, underlying tafsir urging Muslims to follow Muhammad in waging jihad against nonbelievers. 

CAIR's announced intention for the Quran distribution, however, seems more in line with an old English playwright's saying, "The pen is mightier than the sword." 

"Through this ground-breaking outreach initiative," said Larry Shaw, CAIR's board chairman and a Democrat state senator from North Carolina, "we hope not only to educate policy-makers and opinion leaders about Islam, but also to provide an opportunity for American Muslims to reach out to their fellow citizens of other faiths." 

The "Share the Quran" initiative, according to the CAIR statement, is part of the celebration of the council's 15th anniversary. 

CAIR was founded in 1994 and bills itself as the nation's largest Muslim civil liberties and advocacy organization.

Editors Note....Can you imagine bibles being distributed in Muslim countries? In many cases Christians have gone to jail for less.

Malaysia Set to Rule on Use of 'Allah' among Non-Muslims
Jul 6th, 2009
Daily NewsCompass Direct News
Categories: Today's Headlines;The Church;Persecution

MUMBAI, India, July 6  – With the Kuala Lumpur High Court in Malaysia scheduled to determine the legality of the word “Allah” in non-Muslim literature tomorrow, what is at stake goes beyond the sanctioned name for God among non-Muslims in the majority-Muslim nation. Such a limit on free speech in Malaysia is especially biting for Muslim converts to Christianity; already the Malaysian government does not recognize their conversions and marriages and still considers their offspring to be legally Muslim. With non-Muslims increasingly feeling the sting of discrimination and Muslims feeling a need to assert a national Islamic identity, the skirmish over “Allah” is clearly part of a greater cultural war. Malaysian authorities and Malaysia’s Roman Catholic Church have continued to lock horns over use of the word “Allah” in the Malay-language edition of the Herald, the church’s newspaper, as they await the ruling. The newspaper had been allowed to use the term until a final court decision, but the Kuala Lumpur High Court on May 30 overturned that brief reprieve. 

IAF to train overseas for Iran strike op
Jul 6th, 2009
Daily NewsJpost
Categories: Today's Headlines;Warning

On the day that US Vice President Joe Biden seemed to give Israel a green light for military action to eliminate Iran's nuclear threat, The Jerusalem Post learned that the IAF plans to participate in aerial exercises in the US and Europe in the coming months with the aim of training its pilots for long-range flights.

Biden was asked on ABC's This Week whether the US would stand in the way militarily if the Israelis decided they needed to take out Iran's nuclear program.

The US "cannot dictate to another sovereign nation what they can and cannot do," he said.

"Israel can determine for itself - it's a sovereign nation - what's in their interest and what they decide to do relative to Iran and anyone else," he said in an interview broadcast Sunday.

"Whether we agree or not, they're entitled to do that. Any sovereign nation is entitled to do that. But there is no pressure from any nation that's going to alter our behavior as to how to proceed," Biden added.

"If the Netanyahu government decides to take a course of action different than the one being pursued now, that is their sovereign right to do that. That is not our choice," he said.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's government says it prefers to see Iran's nuclear program stopped through diplomacy, but has not ruled out a military strike.

Asked about Biden's comments, Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the US position on Iran and a military strike involved a "political decision."

"I have been, for some time, concerned about any strike on Iran. I worry about it being very destabilizing, not just in and of itself but unintended consequences of a strike like that," Mullen said on CBS's Face the Nation.

"At the same time, I'm one that thinks Iran should not have nuclear weapons. I think that is very destabilizing," he said.

IAF planes will take part this year in a joint aerial exercise with a NATO-member state that cannot be identified.

In addition, later this month, the air force will send F-16C fighter jets to participate in the Red Flag exercise at the Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada. At the same time, several of the IAF's C-130 Hercules transport aircraft will participate in the Rodeo 2009 competition at the McChord Air Force Base in Washington state.

Defense officials said the overseas exercises would be used to drill long-range maneuvers. Last summer, more than 100 IAF jets flew over Greece in what was viewed as a test-run for a potential strike on Iranian nuclear facilities.

Israel has a number of defense pacts with countries under which the air force is allowed to fly in foreign airspace. In May, the French newsweekly L'Express reported that the IAF had staged military exercises over Gibraltar, some 4,000 km. away from Israel.

In 2006, then-defense minister Shaul Mofaz signed a five-year cooperation agreement allowing IDF forces to deploy in Romania for joint training exercises. In 1996, Israel and Turkey signed a bilateral defense alliance allowing their air forces to fly in each other's airspace.

The IAF did not participate in the recent multi-nation Anatolian Eagle aerial exercise in Turkey, "but defense officials said that the absence was not due to tensions between the countries sparked by Operation Cast Lead earlier this year."

Israel's rare absence from the exercise earlier this month drew attention and was reported on by the Turkish media. Another and larger Anatolian Eagle exercise will be held later this year. Israel has yet to announce if it will participate.

In the recent exercise, 83 jets drilled live bombing runs under a simulated surface-to-air threat environment.

On Sunday, the London Sunday Times reported that Saudi Arabia would allow IAF jets to fly over the kingdom during any strike on Iranian nuclear facilities.

According to the report, Mossad chief Meir Dagan held talks with Saudi officials earlier this year on the topic and recently conveyed news of the green light to Netanyahu.

The Prime Minister's Office issued an official denial on Sunday morning, saying the report was "completely false and baseless."

The Israeli media has already carried unconfirmed reports that high-ranking officials, including former prime minister Ehud Olmert, held meetings with Saudi officials, but the kingdom has denied the reports.

"The Saudis have tacitly agreed to the Israeli air force flying through their airspace on a mission which is supposed to be in the common interests of both Israel and Saudi Arabia," the Sunday Times quoted a diplomatic source as saying.

Former US ambassador to the UN John Bolton, who recently visited the Gulf, said it was "entirely logical" for the Israelis to use Saudi airspace.

Bolton, who has talked recently to a number of Arab leaders, added: "None of them would say anything about it publicly, but they would certainly acquiesce in an overflight if the Israelis didn't trumpet it as a big success."

Arab states would publicly condemn a raid when they spoke at the UN, but would be privately relieved to see the threat of an Iranian bomb removed, Bolton said.

While most experts are in agreement that there's a good chance Iran could have a usable nuclear bomb sometime during his presidency, President Barack Obama told The Associated Press in an interview Thursday, "I'm not reconciled with that."

A nuclear-armed Iran, Obama said, "probably would lead to an arms race in the volatile Mideast and that would be "a recipe for potential disaster."

He said opposing a nuclear weapons capacity for Iran was more than just "a US position" and that "the biggest concern is not simply that Iran can threaten us or our allies, like Israel or its neighbors."

Christian Left Mounts Political Campaigns
Jul 6th, 2009
Daily Newsonline.wsj.com
Categories: Today's Headlines;The Church;Warning

Randy Brinson, a conservative political consultant in Alabama, has been fielding anxious calls for weeks from business interests across the South.

Their concern is massive ad blitz on Christian and country-music stations across 10 states. The ads, funded by a left-leaning coalition, urge support for congressional legislation to curb greenhouse-gas emissions -- by framing the issue as an urgent matter of Biblical morality.

"As our seas rise, crops wither and rivers run dry, God's creation cries out for relief," begins one ad, narrated by an evangelical megachurch pastor. Another opens with a reference to the Gospel of John, slams energy interests for fighting the bill, and concludes: "Please join the faithful in speaking out against the powerful."

Dr. Brinson tells his clients they are right to be worried. Such an aggressive political campaign by the religious left is unexpected, he says, and could prove powerful. "This is the first time I've seen a moderate group of evangelicals come together and do a coordinated campaign," said Dr. Brinson. He is warning clients: "You're going to hear a lot more of this."

Emboldened by what they see as a kindred spirit in the White House, progressive and liberal Christians are stepping up their political activism in a big way.

A religious coalition called the American Values Network spent nearly $200,000 placing the global warming ads. Some political analysts credit the campaign with boosting support for the Waxman-Markey climate bill, which narrowly passed the House last week.

The coalition plans to spend an additional $150,000 in the coming months to enlist pastors in Nevada, Arizona and Colorado to rally support in the pews as climate-change legislation moves through the Senate.

Another left-leaning religious coalition will begin airing scripture-citing radio ads in key congressional districts this weekend, calling for legislation to make health insurance more affordable. The coalition -- which includes Faith in Public Life, Sojourners and Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good -- also is distributing an eight-page guide, full of Biblical quotes and health-care statistics, to encourage pastors to raise the issue in sermons.

Democratic lawmakers representing conservative districts say such efforts help them make the case to skeptical constituents that they aren't simply toeing the party line -- or turning into bleeding-heart liberals -- when they support President Barack Obama's calls for health-care and climate-change legislation.

"It's important for people to see that it's not just [Democrats] saying this is important, but people who are coming at it from a moral background," said Rep. Tom Perriello, a freshman Democrat who has come under fire in his rural Virginia district for supporting the climate bill.

The religious right and secular conservatives are taking notice. In recent weeks, key religious-right groups such as Focus on the Family and the Family Research Council have heavily promoted the work of a group called the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation. The Cornwall Alliance dismisses global-warming alarms as hype and argues that forceful action to cut greenhouse-gas emissions could cripple the economy and harm the poor. It is organizing conservative pastors to carry this message to the pews.

The religious left has a long tradition of activism on social issues, including the civil-rights movement. But for the past quarter century, faith-based politicking has been dominated by the religious right, which built a powerful army of activists -- and a formidable fund-raising machine -- on the strength of leaders such as the Rev. Jerry Falwell of the Moral Majority and radio host James Dobson of Focus on the Family.

The religious left's re-emergence as a strong voice -- with the financial backing to make aggressive media buys -- is a "seismic shift," said D. Michael Lindsay, a sociologist at Rice University who studies evangelical politics.

"The religious left is experiencing today what the religious right had in 1981," Mr. Lindsay said. "They've finally found a White House that's not just tolerating but welcoming, affirming, of their involvement."

Left-leaning Christian groups also have started to attract funding from secular donors who share their political goals -- and who see Biblical appeals as a promising way to broaden public support.

Oxfam America has worked with churches for years, but on relatively non-controversial campaigns such as staging fasts to call attention to world hunger. Now, the group is teaming up with the religious left to push for congressional action to cut greenhouse-gas emissions.

E. Calvin Beisner, a spokesman for the conservative Cornwall Alliance, says the right has to respond forcefully to the well-funded campaigns from the religious left, because "they're certainly not being silent."

Editors Note.....The apostasy of the Evangelical Church continues to grow.

Biden: ‘We misread how bad the economy was’
Jul 6th, 2009
Daily NewsAP
Categories: Today's Headlines;Warning

He stands by stimulus package, says jobs will be created in months ahead

WASHINGTON - Vice President Joe Biden said the Obama administration "misread how bad the economy was" but stands by its stimulus package and believes the plan will create more jobs as the pace of its spending picks up.

Biden, in an interview airing Sunday on ABC's "This Week," said the nation's 9.5 percent unemployment rate is "much too high."

"The figures we worked off of in January were the consensus figures and most of the blue chip indexes out there," Biden said.

"We misread how bad the economy was, but we are now only about 120 days into the recovery package," Biden added. More jobs will be created in coming months, he said.

Biden noted that the $787 billion economic stimulus package was set up to spend the money over 18 months. Major programs will take effect in September, including $7.5 billion for broadband Internet service, plus new money for high-speed rail and the nation's electrical grid, he said.

Biden said it's premature to say whether the country will need a second stimulus package.