Looking for His glorious appearing! Titus 2:13

Uk to Send Warships to Get Stranded Britons
Apr 19th, 2010
Daily NewsAP
Categories: Today's Headlines

LONDON — Britain announced Monday it will send Royal Navy warships to rescue those stranded across the Channel by the volcanic ash cloud, and the aviation industry blasted European transport officials, claiming there was "no coordination and no leadership" in the crisis that shut down most European airports for a fifth day.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown said the aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal and assault ship HMS Ocean would be sent across the English Channel. A third ship is being spent to Spain to pick up soldiers trying to get back to Britain after a tour of duty in Afghanistan.

"I expect Ocean to be in the Channel today. I expect the Ark Royal to moving towards the Channel later," Brown said after a meeting of the government's emergency committee, known as COBRA.

He says Britain was speaking with Spanish authorities to see whether Britons stranded overseas could be flown there and then taken home by boat or bus.

Brown said the ash cloud had created "the biggest challenge to our aviation transport network for many years."

The International Air Transport Association says the airport lockdowns are costing the aviation industry at least $200 million a day. Millions of travelers have been stuck since the volcano under Iceland's Eyjafjallajokull glacier begun erupting Wednesday for the second time in a month.

Air space in countries including Britain, France, Germany, and the Netherlands — home to Europe's largest airports — have been closed for days.

Meeting in Paris, the IATA expressed its "dissatisfaction with how governments have managed it, with no risk assessment, no consultation, no coordination, and no leadership" and called for greater urgency in reopening Europe's skies.

The aviation industry sharply criticized European governments on Monday for their handling of airport closures, saying there was "no coordination and no leadership" in the volcanic ash crisis that shut down European airports for a fifth straight day.

Some smaller airports reopened, and European officials had hoped that flights could return to about 50 percent of normal on Monday if the skies were clearing.

The New York Times Makes It Official: Obama Has Shifted U.S. Policy Against Israel
Apr 19th, 2010
Daily NewsJWR - Jonathan Tobin
Categories: Today's Headlines;The Nation Of Israel

If there were any lingering doubts in the minds of Democrats who care about Israel that the president they helped elect has fundamentally altered American foreign policy to the Jewish state's disadvantage, they are now gone. The New York Times officially proclaimed the administration's changed attitude in a front-page story last week that ought to send chills down the spine of anyone who believed Barack Obama when he pledged in 2008 that he would be a loyal friend of Israel

Poll: Trust in Big Government Near Historic Low
Apr 19th, 2010
Daily NewsAP
Categories: Today's Headlines;Warning

The poll illustrates the ominous situation facing President Barack Obama and the Democratic Party as they struggle to maintain their comfortable congressional majorities in this fall's elections.

WASHINGTON -- Nearly 80 percent of Americans say they can't trust Washington and they have little faith that the massive federal bureaucracy can solve the nation's ills, according to a survey from the Pew Research Center that shows public confidence in the federal government at one of the lowest points in a half-century.

The poll released Sunday illustrates the ominous situation facing President Barack Obama and the Democratic Party as they struggle to maintain their comfortable congressional majorities in this fall's elections. Midterm prospects are typically tough for the party in power. Add a toxic environment like this and lots of incumbent Democrats could be out of work.

Netanyahu: Israel Can Only Rely on Itself
Apr 19th, 2010
Daily NewsIsrael Today
Categories: Today's Headlines;The Nation Of Israel;World Government

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday reminded his fellow cabinet members that in the midst of Israel's most serious rift with the US in decades, they must remember that Israel can only truly rely on itself.

Echoing the words of Zionist philosopher Theodor Herzl in 1901, Netanyahu said, "Don’t rely on help from strangers, don’t trust even the charitable and don’t wish for stones to grow soft, for the charitable give degrading charity at most, and stones do not soften. A nation that wishes to stand tall must place all its trust in itself only."

Netanyahu was addressing the cabinet on the day before Israel's Independence Day, which will begin at sunset on Monday, April 19.

Art's Commentary.... God will bring Israel to the end of herself, to the place where they trust only in God. Then the Messiah will come and bless Israel and the world through them.

Netanyahu on Remembrance Day: Peace Requires Strong Defense
Apr 19th, 2010
Daily NewsArutz Sheva - Maayana Miskin
Categories: Today's Headlines;The Nation Of Israel

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu paid tribute to Israel's fallen soldiers on Sunday evening, at a ceremony marking the beginning of Remembrance Day, at Ammunition Hill in Jerusalem. Netanyahu recalled his own experience with bereavement, when his brother Yoni fell during the daring rescue of the hijacked Israelis in Entebbe, Uganda, in 1976.

"My brothers and sisters, I am all too familiar with the pain and the feeling of loss... I know the loss experienced by bereaved families,” he told his audience.

Netanyahu said peace will come only if Israel remains strong. “Over the course of the years, we learned that the olive branch of peace is attainable only if we remain strong, only if we are prepared to defend our country, as soldiers did here,” he said.

He compared Jerusalem in the days of the 1967 battle of Ammunition Hill to Jerusalem of today. “Forty-three years ago, this hill, Ammunition Hill, symbolized a wounded city, a city cut in half with a wall through its heart. But today, along the path of that wall lie train tracks that will connect Jerusalem's flourishing neighborhoods, the neighborhoods built in the decades that have passed since that day,” he said.

"The life that we create here is a debt that we pay every day to our fallen soldiers,” the prime minister said. “It is an ancient, inner duty – to establish a state here that will be the pride of generations, that will justify their painful sacrifice with its existence and its future

Israel Pays Tribute to 22,684 Fallen
Apr 19th, 2010
Daily NewsGlobes on line
Categories: Today's Headlines;The Nation Of Israel

This evening and tomorrow (Monday) the State of Israel honors the memory of the 22,684 people who have died in Israel's wars. On Tuesday, Independence Day, the country celebrates the 62nd anniversary of its founding in 1948.

At the ceremony that opened the 24-hour period of remembrance for the fallen, at the Western Wall plaza in the Old City of Jerusalem, President Shimon Peres spoke to the bereaved families and paid tribute to those who gave their lives in seven wars. He also commented on current threats the country faces.

From Mourning to Joy: Israel Marks Remembrance and Independence Days
Apr 19th, 2010
Daily NewsIsrael Today
Categories: Today's Headlines;The Nation Of Israel

As they do every year, Israelis on Monday made the incredible transition from deep mourning to bounding joy as they first marked the nation's Remembrance Day for its fallen soldiers before moving immediately into Independence Day.

Nearly every Israeli has lost a family member of friend to war or terrorism, meaning that for nearly every Israeli, Remembrance Day is a very solemn time.

At sunset on Monday, those same Israelis burst into celebration over what the sacrifice of their loved ones had purchased - a safe and secure Jewish homeland after millennia of exile and persecution.

As usual, the Israeli army imposed a blanket closure on the Palestinian-controlled areas of Judea and Samaria to prevent Muslim terrorists from marring the celebrations.

On the eve of its 62nd Independence Day, the population of the State of Israel stood at just over 7.5 million people, 75 percent of whom are Jewish.

Adl: Obama Should Tell PA to Stop Saying
Apr 19th, 2010
Daily NewsArutz Sheva - Maayana Miskin
Categories: Today's Headlines;The Nation Of Israel

The Anti-Defamation League has termed United States President Barack Obama's Middle East policy “faulty” and “deeply distressing” in a recent statement. Obama is wrongly shifting responsibility from the Arab world to Israel, said director Abraham Foxman.

"The significant shift in U.S. policy toward Israel and the peace process, which has been evident in comments from various members of the Obama administration and has now been confirmed by the president himself in his press conference at the Nuclear Security Summit, is deeply distressing,” Foxman wrote.

At his press conference, Obama said, “I think that the need for peace between Israelis and Palestinians and the Arab states remains as critical as ever,” later adding, “It is a vital national security interest of the United States to reduce these conflicts because whether we like it or not, we remain a dominant military superpower, and when conflicts break out, one way or another we get pulled into them.  And that ends up costing us significantly in terms of both blood and treasure.”

His statements followed rumors that US General David Petraeus had blamed Israel for US military deaths. Petraeus later denied those rumors, but they continue to be quoted.

“Saying that the absence of a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict undermines U.S. interests in the broader Middle East and the larger issue of resolving other conflicts is a faulty strategy,” the ADL statement said. “It is an incorrect approach on which to base America's foreign policy in the Middle East and its relationship with its longtime friend and ally, Israel."

"ADL has long expressed its concern from the very beginning of the Obama administration about advisers to the president who see the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a major impediment to achieving the administration's foreign policy and military goals in the wider region. The net effect of this dangerous thinking is to shift responsibility for success of American foreign policy away from Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt and directly onto Israel. It is particularly disturbing in light of the blatantly disproportionate number and the nature of statements issued by this administration criticizing Israel as compared to what has been said about the Palestinians.”

In order to achieve peace, the Obama administration must force Arab nations to take responsibility, the statement continued. "The best way to move the peace process between the Israelis and Palestinians forward is for all parties to demand that the Palestinians abandon their tactic of 'just saying no' and insist that the rest of the Arab world move toward normalization of relations with Israel.”

'Seven Dead' As Earthquake Rocks Afghanistan
Apr 19th, 2010
Daily NewsBBC News
Categories: Today's Headlines

At least 11 people were killed and more than 70 injured when an earthquake shook parts of northern Afghanistan, officials say

The Samangan province deputy governor said the quake hit just before midnight local time on Sunday.

Samangan is 190km (120 miles) north-west of the capital Kabul and the same distance from Mazar-e-Sharif city.

The 5.7 magnitude quake occurred at a depth of 10km, the US Geological Survey reported.

It was felt in Kabul and the neighbouring countries of Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, the Associated Press news agency reported.