Looking for His glorious appearing! Titus 2:13

Tens of Thousands of Domestic Drones Already in U.S.A Nationwide, With More to Come
Mar 4th, 2013
Daily NewsDaily News
Categories: Today's Headlines;Contemporary Issues

Increase of use in drones by law enforcement, movie studios, environmental organizations and the news media, comes as the U.S. government prepares to issue commercial drone permits in 2015. Many of those already flying do so without the proper permits. Currently, 327 FAA-issued permits are active

NEW YORK - They hover over Hollywood film sets and professional sports events. They track wildfires in Colorado, survey Kansas farm crops and vineyards in California.

They inspect miles of industrial pipeline and monitor wildlife, river temperatures and volcanic activity.

They also locate marijuana fields, reconstruct crime scenes and spot illegal immigrants breaching U.S. borders.

Tens of thousands of domestic drones are zipping through U.S. skies, often flouting tight federal restrictions on drone use that require even the police and the military to get special permits.

Armed with streaming video, swivel cameras and infrared sensors, a new breed of high-tech domestic drones is beginning to change the way Americans see the world - and each other.

Powered by the latest microtechnology and driven by billions in defense industry and commercial research dollars, domestic drones are poised for widespread expansion into U.S. airspace once regulation catches up with reality.

Robot Warriors: Lethal Machines Coming of Age
Mar 4th, 2013
Daily NewsBBC News - Jonathan Marcus BBC Diplomatic Correspondent
Categories: Today's Headlines;Warning

The era of drone wars is already upon us. The era of robot wars could be fast approaching.

Already there are unmanned aircraft demonstrators like the arrow-head shaped X-47B that can pretty-well fly a mission by itself with no involvement of a ground-based "pilot".

There are missile systems like the Patriot that can identify and engage targets automatically.

And from here it is not such a jump to a fully-fledged armed robot warrior, a development with huge implications for the way we conduct and even conceive of war-fighting.

On a carpet in a laboratory at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, Professor Henrik Christensen's robots are hunting for insurgents. They look like cake-stands on wheels as they scuttle about.

Christensen and his team at Georgia Tech are working on a project funded by the defence company BAE systems.

Their aim is to create unmanned vehicles programmed to map an enemy hideout, allowing human soldiers to get vital information about a building from a safe distance.

"These robots will basically spread out," says Christensen, "they'll go through the environment and map out what it looks like, so that by the time you have humans entering the building you have a lot of intelligence about what's happening there."

The emphasis in this project is reconnaissance and intelligence gathering. But the scientific literature has raised the possibility of armed robots, programmed to behave like locusts or other insects that will swarm together in clouds as enemy targets appear on the battlefield. Each member of the robotic swarm could carry a small warhead or use its kinetic energy to attack a target.

Report: Obama Wants Timetable for Israeli Pullout
Mar 4th, 2013
Daily NewsINN - Gil Ronen
Categories: Today's Headlines;The Nation Of Israel

U.S. President Barack Obama has demanded a timetable for an Israeli withdrawal from Judea and Samaria, according to an unconfirmed report by World Tribune.

The report quotes anonymous "Israeli sources."

According to the report, Obama, who is scheduled to arrive in Israel on March 20, wants Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to present him with a detailed Israeli withdrawal plan during his visit to Israel. The sources said the Israeli plan "would be considered in what could be an imminent U.S. initiative to establish a Palestinian state in the West Bank in 2014."

“Obama has made it clear to Netanyahu that his visit is not about photo-ops, but the business of Iran and a Palestinian state,” a source said. “The implication is that if Israel won’t give him something he can work with, then he’ll act on his own.”

The sources noted that "Obama aides" have stressed that Congress supports the establishment of a Palestinian state as a U.S. priority.

“The Obama people are making this a litmus test of Netanyahu’s leadership and credibility,” the Israeli sources said. “Obama supporters in Congress have sent Netanyahu a similar message.”

Report: North Korean Test May Mean Iran Has a Nuclear Missile Warhead
Mar 4th, 2013
Daily NewsThe World Tribune
Categories: Today's Headlines;Contemporary Issues;Warning

WASHINGTON — A U.S. think tank has raised the prospect that Iran acquired nuclear weapons capability.

The American Foreign Policy Council said the administration of President Barack Obama was quietly mulling the possibility that Iran and North Korea succeeded in a joint nuclear weapons project. The Washington-based council cited the North Korean nuclear test last month of what was believed to have been that of an Iranian missile warhead.

“During Secretary of State John Kerry’s listening tour of the Middle East, one troubling regional issue might go unspoken: the possibility that Iran already has nuclear weapons capability,” the council said in a report.

The report, titled “Does Iran Already Have The Bomb?” said Iran was believed to be testing its nuclear warheads in North Korea. Senior fellow James Robbins, who wrote the report, said the likelihood of an Iranian nuclear weapons capability would top Obama’s agenda during his visit to Israel on March 20. The national security specialist said the emergence of an Iranian atomic bomb would “represent a U.S. foreign policy failure of historic proportions.”

“It is not the kind of crisis that Kerry would like to face in his first month on the job or that Obama would like to shape his second term,” Robbins said. “Fortunately for them both, if Teheran does have the bomb, odds are it
will keep it under wraps, at least for the time being.”

[On Feb. 28, the Senate mulled a resolution that would require the United States to help Israel in any war against Iran. The resolution introduced by Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman Robert Menendez and Sen. Lindsey Graham called on Washington to provide military, diplomatic and economic support should Israel attack Iran's nuclear weapons facilities.]

The administration has determined that Iran remained undecided over whether to acquire nuclear weapons. But Western intelligence sources said an Iranian delegation attended the North Korean underground nuclear test on
Feb. 12, believed to have marked a breakthrough in the joint weapons program.

“Iran and North Korea have long cooperated on nuclear and ballistic missile technologies,” Robbins said. “Iran’s ballistic missiles are based on North Korean designs, and the two countries have long exchanged defense
scientists and engineers.”

A senior U.S. official did not rule out that Teheran was using North Korea to test Iran’s nuclear warheads. The official told The New York Times that Iran could not hope to conceal a nuclear explosion. “It’s very possible that the North Koreans are testing for two countries.” the official was quoted as saying.

The Rand Corp., a leading consultant to the U.S. Defense Department and military, determined that the latest North Korean nuclear test differed from the two previous blasts. Rand said the latest explosion was believed to have
been that of highly-enriched uranium, a method developed by Teheran.

“Given the relative seismic readings, this test likely had about 2.5 times the weapon yield of North Korea’s second test, which according to Dr. Sieg Hecker of Stanford was in the range of two to seven kilotons, putting
this test at about 5 to 18 kilotons,” Rand defense analyst Bruce Bennett said.

For his part, Robbins raised the prospect that Iran was already signaling that it reached nuclear weapons capability. He cited a statement by Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei in wake of the North Korean nuclear test that if Teheran “intended to possess nuclear weapons, no power could stop us.”

“This strange construction — saying the Islamic republic does not desire nuclear weapons but there was no way to prevent it from having them — might have been the first in a series of diplomatic signals intending to inform the United States that, with North Korea’s help, the game is already over and Iran has won,” Robbins said.

Obama Plans to Extract Timetable for Israeli Pullout from West Bank
Mar 4th, 2013
Daily NewsThe World Tribune
Categories: Today's Headlines;The Nation Of Israel

JERUSALEM — U.S. President Barack Obama has demanded a timetable for an Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank.

Israeli sources said Obama, scheduled to arrive in Israel on March 20, wants a detailed Israeli withdrawal plan from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during the president’s visit. The sources said the Israeli plan would be considered in what could be an imminent U.S. initiative to establish a Palestinian state in the West Bank in 2014.

“Obama has made it clear to Netanyahu that his visit is not about photo-ops, but the business of Iran and a Palestinian state,” a source said. “The implication is that if Israel won’t give him something he can work with, then he’ll act on his own.”

The sources said Obama’s demand has sparked concern in the office of the Israeli prime minister. They said Netanyahu has been unable to form a coalition amid a boycott by left-wing parties and an alliance by two new movements — Yesh Atid and Jewish Home — with 31 seats in the 120-member parliament and opposed to major territorial concessions in the West Bank.

“The ties between Yesh Atid and Jewish Home are strengthening,” Uri Ariel, the No. 2 member in Jewish Home, said. So far, Netanyahu has been unable to woo any parties except for the U.S.-supported “The Movement,” led by former Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni. The prime minister has received a two-week extension from President Shimon Peres.

“In these past four weeks I tried to form the broadest possible government,” Netanyahu said. “But the main reason that I have not managed to complete the task by today is because there is a boycott of a certain sector.” Netanyahu was referring to a demand by Yesh Atid to ban ultra-Orthodox from the next government. The ultra-Orthodox comprise nearly 20 seats in the Knesset.

On March 1, the Israeli daily Makor Rishon reported that the next Netanyahu government would destroy numerous Jewish communities in the West Bank. The newspaper quoted Likud negotiators as saying that the plan depended on Yesh Atid ending its alliance with Jewish Home, led by Naftali Bennett.

“We are going to difficult decisions,” a Likud negotiator was quoted as telling a Yesh Atid parliamentarian. “If you do not break up your pact with Bennett we won’t be able to uproot communities if there is a need for difficult decisions. Together we can do it.”

Other Israeli newspapers, quoting Likud sources, carried similar reports. They said the first step by Netanyahu would be the dismantling of Jewish communities in the West Bank deemed isolated.

The sources said the White House warned that Obama’s forthcoming visit could characterize U.S. relations with Israel over the next four years. They said Obama aides stressed that Congress, which approved $3.1 billion in military aid to Israel for 2013, supported the establishment of a
Palestinian state as a U.S. priority.

“The Obama people are making this a litmus test of Netanyahu’s leadership and credibility,” the Israeli source said. “Obama supporters in Congress have sent Netanyahu a similar message.”

MK Feiglin Explains Attempt to Enter Dome of the Rock
Mar 4th, 2013
Daily NewsINN - Gil Ronen
Categories: Today's Headlines;The Nation Of Israel

MK Moshe Feiglin (Likud) explained on his Facebook page Monday why he asked to enter the Dome of the Rock, which is located atop the spot where the Holy of Holies of the Jewish Temple stood.

Entry into the actual area where the Jewish Temple stood is strictly forbidden by all major streams in Judaism, and this is doubly true as regards the area of the Holy of Holies.

MK Feiglin explained, however, that in attempting to enter the Dome of the Rock, he is relying on statements by Rabbi Shlomo Goren Z"l, who was the Chief Rabbi of the IDF and Israel's Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi.

"In the introduction to his book, 'The Temple Mount,' Rabbi Gorn ztz"l wrote: 'There is no doubt that in a case such as this, when there is a danger of a takeover by foreigners of Har Hamoriah [the Temple Mount], it is permitted even to enter the zone of the Azara [which includes the Temple building itself and the place of the altar], so as not to give them a foothold on the Mount of G-d, because the ascent of Jews to the Mount in this situation is considered an act of conquest and prevention of a foreign takeover of [the Mount]."

"From the moment I became a Knesset Member – in other words, a representative of Jewish sovereignty in the Land of Israel – I felt that this statement by Rabbi Goren obligates me to enter any place on the Temple Mount. This morning, I did so, and I had no idea how right I was. It turns out that the Dome of the Rock (which is not a mosque), was blocked to the entry of Jews and tourists about two years ago.

"'Only Muslims may enter,' the Waqf man told me when I politely asked to enter. I explained to the police officer who showed up at the spot that according to law, an MK's entry into a location may not be impeded, and this is certainly true of a place to which other citizens may enter. The officer's answer was amazing: 'The place belongs to the Muslim Waqf.' It turns out that the heart of hearts of the Land of Israel, the place of the Holy of Holies, has been handed over de facto to Muslim sovereignty – for the simple reason that no Jewish foot has stepped there because of its sanctity."

"It is important to stress," MK Feiglin added, "that I am not calling on Jews to begin making pilgrimage to the location of the Temple itself. There is a difference between me as an MK and the general public. But what has become clear, based upon what happened this morning, is that there is a clear admission of the loss of Jewish sovereignty on the Mount, and we must all begin to 'use our feet' in order to change the situation."

Let the Headlines Speak
Mar 4th, 2013
Daily NewsFrom the Internet
Categories: Today's Headlines;Contemporary Issues

N Ireland police seize van with mortars, arrest 3
Northern Ireland police say they have seized a van containing four mortars and arrested three men in a security operation that stopped an attack on a police station in the city of Londonderry. About 100 homes were evacuated overnight after police stopped the van Sunday night as it drove into the city. Police arrested the driver of the van, a man riding a motorcycle behind the van and a third man during a follow-up search. No group claimed responsibility, but Irish Republican Army splinter groups are active in the predominantly Irish Catholic city.

Another Earthquake Shakes Oklahoma
The earthquake had a magnitude of 3.5. There were no reports of injuries or damage. Last week, two earthquakes shook central Oklahoma on the same day.

Volcanic Aerosols, Not Pollutants, Tamped Down Recent Earth Warmingl
A team led by the University of Colorado Boulder looking for clues about why Earth did not warm as much as scientists expected between 2000 and 2010 now thinks the culprits are hiding in plain sight -- dozens of volcanoes spewing sulfur dioxide.

'We are above the law of the land'
“If we are practicing Muslims, we are above the law of the land,” said Mustafa Carroll, the executive director of the Dallas-Fort Worth CAIR branch, a keynote speaker as the recent rally.

Solar Cycle Update: Twin Peaks?
Something unexpected is happening on the sun. 2013 is supposed to be the year of Solar Max, the peak of the 11-year sunspot cycle. Yet 2013 has arrived and solar activity is relatively low. Sunspot numbers are well below their values in 2011, and strong solar flares have been infrequent for many months. The quiet has led some observers to wonder if forecasters missed the mark. Solar physicist Dean Pesnell of the Goddard Space Flight Center has a different explanation:

Top Central Banker In China Says Beijing Is Ready For The 'Currency War' To Begin
A top Chinese banker said Beijing is "fully prepared" for a currency war as he urged the world to abide by a consensus reached by the G20 to avert confrontation, state media reported on Saturday. Yi Gang, deputy governor of China's central bank, issued the call after G20 finance ministers last month moved to calm fears of a looming war on the currency markets at a meeting in Moscow.

Swarms of locusts descend on Cairo
Swarms of locusts have been seen in several districts of Cairo on Saturday, including Moqatam and New Cairo. Some citizens burned tires to create a black fog to keep the locusts from settling in the city. Swarms were earlier reported to have reached Egypt's Red Sea city of Zafarana, some 200 kilometres from Cairo, and then the Upper Egyptian city of Qena where locusts appeared in at least three major villages. There has earlier been reports of a "plague of locusts," which some experts say could hit Egypt's Nile Delta.

Newly Found Asteroid to Pass Within Moon’s Orbit on March 4, 2013
A newly found asteroid will pass just inside the orbit of the Moon, with its closest approach on March 4, 2013 at 07:35 UTC. Named 2013 EC, the asteroid is about the size of the space rock that exploded over Russia two and a half weeks ago, somewhere between 10-17 meters wide (the Russian meteorite is estimated to be about 15 meters wide when it entered Earth’s atmosphere). 2013 EC was discovered by the Mt. Lemmon Observatory in Arizona on March 2. . There is no chance this asteroid will hit Earth.

Japan's record snowfall still not the deepest ever
This is proving a freakish year for weather, but Japan is having an odder time of it than most. The country has had a record winter for snow, and northern Japan is currently coated by unprecedented volumes of the white stuff – more than five metres at higher altitudes, with houses turned into igloos and roads into snow tunnels.

No tsunami from 4.3 magnitude California earthquake
Authorities say they don't have any reports of damage or injuries after an earthquake with a magnitude of 4.3 was recorded off the Northern California coast. No tsunami warnings were issued. The U.S. Geological Survey says the quake hit about 46 miles southwest of Eureka at 9:46 a.m. (7:46 a.m. Hawaii time) Sunday.

Cardinals could set date to elect new pope at first round of meetings
Cardinals from around the world gathered Monday inside the Vatican for their first round of meetings before the conclave to elect the next pope, amid scandals inside and out of the Vatican and the continued reverberations of Benedict XVI's decision to retire. Cardinals were treated like rock stars as they entered the Vatican on Monday morning, with television crews swarming around the red-capped churchmen and their handlers pushing their way through the crowds.

Earthquake of 5.5 magnitude jolts southwest China
A 5.5-magnitude earthquake jolted southwest China's Yunnan province today. The quake struck Eryuan county at 1:41 pm local time, located in Dali Bai Autonomous Prefecture, close to Myanmar border. The China Earthquake Networks Center said the epicenter was detected at a depth of 9 km, state-run Xinhua reported.

China earthquake collapses hundreds of homes
A moderate earthquake in southwest China has caused hundreds of homes to collapse and injured at least 30 people. The quake damaged 2,500 houses and that 700 others collapsed.

Kerry Talks Economics, Finds Morsi Preoccupied With Islamizing Egypt
Mar 4th, 2013
Daily Newsdebkafile
Categories: Today's Headlines;Contemporary Issues

When visiting US Secretary of State John Kerry sat one-on-one with Egyptian President Morsi in Cairo, Sunday, March 3, he talked at length about Egypt’s calamitous economic straits, relations with Israel, democratization and essential reforms. He had hoped to find the Egyptian president amenable to getting to grips with his country’s fast approaching bankruptcy. In the event, Morsi nodded politely but, debkafile’s Middle East sources report, he was far more preoccupied with pushing forward the three-point plan he and the Muslim Brotherhood’s supreme leader Mohammed Badie have begun implementing:

1. The Muslim Brotherhood will not settle for a parliamentary majority in the coming general election – most likely in April or June; it is aiming for 100 percent of the seats.
2. To set the stage for this campaign, the Brothers have installed their loyalists in the governates of Egypt’s 19 provinces. The spreading of Brotherhood values in the national constituency is going full steam ahead across Egypt.
The MB turned to this course when they saw they had no hope of exercising total control over the restive capital and the protest movements springing up regularly in Tahrir Square. So they decided to build up their support in the country at large in the hope of making Cairo an isolated Island in the predominantly Islamist country.

3. To boost their popularity in the coming election, Morsi and Badie decided they could not afford the painful measures required by the International Monetary Fund for a $4.8 billion loan to tide the economy over its current crisis - spending cutbacks, downsizing the vast Egyptian civil service, reducing food subsidies and cutting away dead wood.

Instead, they dropped their credit application to the IMF altogether and so avoided mass unemployment and widespread hardship in the months leading up to the election.
However, the US Secretary of State sternly called the Egyptian president’s attention to three major concerns which need to be addressed with the utmost urgency:
a) Egyptian foreign currency reserves continue to bleed dangerously and no one knows how to stop the disastrous drain. By April, it is predicted that no more than $4 billion will be left to sustain a population of 80-90 million souls.
2. Egypt’s industrial plants are working at just 50 percent capacity because fuel is scarce and the money to buy it even scarcer.
3. Gas for powering electricity is running out. More and more areas no longer receive regular electricity – some none at all. The water supply is also affected.
debkafile’s sources report two conflicting approaches on how to resolve Egypt’s calamitous economic emergency:

The Morsi Badiah upbeat approach which maintains that Egypt can keep going for three or four months until parliamentary elections. The Brotherhood will win 100 percent of the house and can then safely impose the necessary harsh economic measures that would hurt every part of the population, but hope to put the economy on its feet.
This pie-in-the-sky approach has Washington up in arms. They don’t believe the Egyptian economy can wait another three to four months before tough remedies are put in place. They warn that a delay that long will see the Muslim Brotherhood and President Morsi crash and Egypt slump into a failed state.
Whichever approach is realistic, the Egyptian people will very soon be faced with extreme hardship and a heavy price tab for their revolution.

Kerry Skips Israel, Scheduled to 'Lunch' With Abbas
Mar 4th, 2013
Daily NewsINN - Rachael Hirshfeld
Categories: Today's Headlines;Peace Process

While Secretary of State John Kerry will not travel to Israel during his first tour of the Middle East since assuming the top U.S. diplomatic post, he will be meeting with Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmud Abbas in Riyadh on Monday, a state department official told reporters.

Kerry, who is on his first trip to the region since succeeding Hillary Rodham Clinton as the top United States diplomat, will have lunch with the PA leader, who arrived unexpectedly in Riyadh on Sunday, AFP reported.

Kerry's tour does not include Israel, but he will reportedly accompany President Barack Obama when he meets Israeli and Arab leaders in Jerusalem and Ramallah during a visit on March 20-22.

Abbas "will present the Palestinian point of view to the new US administration ahead of Obama's visit," PA envoy in Riyadh Jamal al-Shawbaki told the “Voice of Palestine” radio station.

Abbas, in his first meeting with Kerry, will also highlight the so-called “Israeli violations” in Jerusalem, “settlements”, and the issue of “Palestinian prisoners on hunger strike," said Shawbaki.

The issue of Arab prisoners in Israeli jails once again made headlines as the PA accused the Israeli Shin Ben of assassinating Arafat Juradat, a terrorist detainee who died while in Israeli custody in his Megiddo prison cell.

According to an intermediate autopsy report released by the Health Ministry, there was no evidence of poisoning or physical violence against Jaradat, as the PA had claimed. The fractures in the ribs and hemorrhages on the skin were consistent with the intensive resuscitation efforts on behalf of an Israeli medical team to save his life.

Meanwhile, Hamas’s Prime Minister in Gaza, Ismail Haniyeh, on Sunday urged Palestinian Authority Arabs to continue what he termed the “prisoners' intifada” to support terrorist detainees in Israeli jails.

"We will fight in all arenas, take responsibility and pay the toll for the sake of their freedom," Haniyeh said at a photo exhibition in Gaza City in support of prisoners, according to a report in the Bethlehem-based Ma’an news agency.

Israel Turns Cold Shoulder on Big - Power Nuclear Talks With Iran
Mar 4th, 2013
Daily Newsdebkafile
Categories: Today's Headlines;The Nation Of Israel

Wendy Sherman, head of the US delegation to last week’s Kazakhstan six-power nuclear talks with Iran, arrived in Jerusalem Friday, March 1 with a report on the session. She was not received by cabinet ministers - only National Security Adviser Yakov Amidror. In his briefing to the cabinet Sunday, Binyamin Netanyahu stressed that Israel stands by its refusal to have any truck with the six-power-versus-Iran diplomatic track because for Tehran it is nothing but a device to carry on uranium enrichment free of interference. The Sherman report, said Netanyahu, confirmed this was happening and Iran was getting nearer to its goal.

Turning to the stalled coalition negotiations, the prime minister commented: “As our enemies get together – not just to eventually build nuclear arms for aiming against us, but also stockpiling another type of WMD (ballistic missiles, chemical weapons), we are obliged to unite and gather all our strength for repulsing these menaces. Unfortunately, this is not happening.”

Gay Sex Rings, 'The Filth' Corrupting the Vatican...and Why the Pope Really Quit
Mar 4th, 2013
Daily Newsmailonline - John Cornwell
Categories: Today's Headlines;Commentary

Sickened by moral corrosion in his own shadowy cabal, Benedict can only rid Rome of its malign influence by resigning... a leading Catholic writer's explosive analysis

The former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger wrung his hands above his head in triumph as he emerged as Pope on to the balcony of St Peter’s eight years ago. He had won!

He had longed to be Pope. He has loved being Pope. He expected to die as Pope.

Two weeks ago he announced in Latin he wasn’t up to it any more. Up to what? He spent most of his time writing and took time off to tinkle on the piano and stroke his cat.

He’s been waited on hand and foot. He has his handsome secretary Georg Ganswein to do his every bidding.

There’s been talk of frailty, encroaching dementia, mortal illness. There’s been pious spin about a holy act of ‘humility’.

But one of his predecessors, sprightly Leo XIII, who died 110 years ago, went on until he was 93. Benedict knew from the start, aged 76, that he would grow old in office.

We’ve heard about the so-called papal ‘resignation’ almost 600 years ago. But there wasn’t one. There were three rival Popes back then, and one of them was a psychopath.

They were sacked by a council of all the bishops and cardinals to get back to one Pope at a time. Since then, every Pope has died in office.

Resignation isn’t in Benedict’s vocabulary. The real reason he has quit is far more spectacular.

It is to save the Catholic Church from ignominy: he has voluntarily delivered himself up as a sacrificial lamb to purge the Church of what he calls ‘The Filth’. And it must have taken courage.

Here is the remarkable thing you are seldom told about a papal death or resignation: every one of the senior office-holders in the Vatican – those at the highest level of its internal bureaucracy, called the Curia – loses his job.

A report Benedict himself commissioned into the state of the Curia landed on his desk in January. It revealed that ‘The Filth’ – or more specifically, the paedophile priest scandal – had entered the bureaucracy.

He resigned in early February. That report was a final straw. The Filth has been corroding the soul of the Catholic Church for years, and the reason is the power-grabbing ineptitude and secrecy of the Curia – which failed to deal with the perpetrators. Now the Curia itself stands accused of being part of The Filth.

Benedict realises the Curia must be reformed root and branch. He knows this is a mammoth task.

He is too old, and too implicated, to clean it up himself. He has resigned to make way for a younger, more dynamic successor, untainted by scandal – and a similarly recast Curia.

Benedict was not prepared to wait for his own death to sweep out the gang who run the place.

In one extraordinary gesture, by resigning, he gets rid of the lot of them. But what then?

The Curia are usually quickly reappointed. This time it may be different. It involves scores of departments, like the civil service of a middling-sized country.

It has a Home and Foreign Office called the Secretariat of State. There’s a department that watches out for heresy – the former Holy Inquisition which under Cardinal Ratzinger dealt with, or failed to deal with, paedophile priests.

And there is a Vatican Bank, the dubiously named Institute for Works of Religion (IOR), which was rocked by scandal in the early Eighties for links with the mafia.

The Curia is a big operation. It maintains contact with all the bishops of the world, more than 3,000, in 110 countries.

The Curia oversees the hundreds of thousands of priests who care for the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics. The flow of information, and money, in and out of the Vatican is prodigious.

What makes the bureaucrats different from normal executives is they don’t go home and have another life.

Unless you’re a full cardinal, with a nice flat and housekeeper, you go back on a bus to the microwave and TV in a Vatican-owned garret.

Rivalries between departments, vendettas between individuals, naked ambition, calumny, backstabbing and intrigues are endemic.

The former president of the Vatican Bank, Archbishop Paul Marcinkus, once told me that the Curia is a ‘village of washerwomen. They wash clothes, punch ’em, dance on ’em, squeezing all the old dirt out’.

But who was he to talk? In that same interview Marcinkus admitted he appropriated $250 million from the Vatican pension fund to pay a fine, levied by the Italian government, for financial misdemeanours. Amazingly, he saw nothing wrong with that.

Not surprisingly, some of the bureaucrats let off steam in unpriestly ways. Some are actively gay men who cannot normalise their lives with a partner because of Catholic teaching.

They frequent discreet bars, saunas and ‘safe houses’. On another level there are individuals known to have a weakness for sex with minors.

It appears the people who procure these sexual services have become greedy. They have been putting the squeeze on their priestly clients to launder cash through the Vatican. There is no suggestion that the bank has knowingly collaborated.

But in January, Italy’s central bank suspended credit-card activities inside Vatican City for ‘anti-money-laundering reasons’.

The Pope was already furious over the theft by his butler of private correspondence and top-secret papers last year. The thefts were probably an attempt to discover how much the Pope knew of malfeasance within the Curia.

Then news of a Vatican sex ring and money scams reached his ears late last year. Benedict should not have been surprised. Hints of a seamy Vatican underworld have been surfacing for years.

In March 2010, a 29-year-old chorister in St Peter’s was sacked for allegedly procuring male prostitutes, one of them a seminarian, for a papal gentleman-in-waiting who was also a senior adviser in the Curial department that oversees the church’s worldwide missionary activities.

Last autumn Benedict ordered three trusted high-ranking cardinals to investigate the state of the Curia. This was the report that was delivered to him just weeks ago.

It was meant for Benedict’s ‘eyes only’ but details of a sex ring and money-laundering scams last week reached the Italian weekly Panorama. Then the daily La Repubblica ran the story.

The timing of the report has coincided with fresh allegations of priestly sexual abuse in Germany. Meanwhile, Cardinal Roger Mahony of Los Angeles and Cardinal Sean Brady of Ireland have been accused of covering up paedophile abuse.

Benedict has resigned to ensure that the whole ‘Filth’ from many countries of the world right up to the Vatican centre is cleansed. He has given up his job to kick out all the office-holders and start again.

While the college of cardinals appears to have been shocked by the resignation, Benedict’s drastic decision was both predicted and strongly recommended two years ago by an eminent American psychologist and former priest.

In 2011, Dr Richard Sipe, a greatly respected world expert on the priestly abuse scandal, declared that only the Pope’s resignation would resolve the paedophile priest crisis. Sipe charged that ‘along with other bishops, Benedict was complicit earlier in tolerating and covering up the crimes of the priests’.

This month a documentary film, Mea Maxima Culpa, is on release in the UK. It claims that Benedict, as Cardinal Ratzinger, refused to remove a paedophile priest called Father Murphy in the Nineties.

Sipe concluded that the Church’s only hope was a ‘courageous act’ on the part of the Pope. He could begin to heal the Church ‘by resigning from the papacy and calling for the resignation of all the other bishops, like him, who were complicit in the abuse scandal’.

So the Pope’s resignation could be just the beginning of a wave of resignations, and/or sackings, when the new Pope comes in.

With just three days left of his pontificate, Benedict accepted with lightning speed Cardinal Keith O’Brien’s resignation. O’Brien was not involved in covering up for paedophile priests – but allegations that he had made inappropriate advances towards priests in the Eighties were enough for Benedict to confirm that he was not to join the conclave.

On Tuesday, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, former head of the Catholic Church in England, declared that the Vatican must ‘put its own house in order’.

In a bold castigation of the papacy and the Curia, the cardinal said: ‘There is no doubt that today there needs to be renewal in the Church, reform in the Church, and especially of its government.’

The cardinal was referring to the decision made at an historic meeting of the world’s bishops in 1962, known as the Second Vatican Council, which called for devolution of power from Rome.

Bishops and lay Catholics throughout the world complain that the shift of authority away from Rome to the local churches has not happened. As a result, the absolute power of the Vatican has been corrupting absolutely.

The establishment of a large, over-powerful Curia is a quirk of history. When the Pope lost his papal territories, which stretched from Venice down to Naples, in the mid 19th Century, the civil service stayed on to run the Church from Rome.

The culture of a highly centralised Church government is now deeply entrenched. John Paul II, the energetic superstar Pope, seemed just the man to clean up the Curia.

But he bypassed it, preferring to spend his time travelling the world. Benedict might have made a start on it – but he retreated into bookish pursuits.

But even if a reformer gets in, he is going to have his work cut out to change an institution that has amassed such a centralised grip. Choosing a new team to be trusted may take just as long. There is every chance that the old ways will return.

But Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor may well be disappointed if a Pope in the mould of Benedict is elected. Benedict believes in strong central government. He has no time for devolution. And he may still have influence.

He has gone on record to assert that those who dissent from Catholic teaching should leave. He has said that he would be happier with a smaller, totally loyal and faithful Church.

Benedict’s favoured candidate would likely bring a puritanical pressure to bear on sexually active Catholics living together outside of marriage, or using contraception, or in gay relationships.

The coming conclave is set to be the most contentious for centuries. Whichever side wins – the conservatives, the reformers or the devolutionists – will create tensions and antagonism between Catholicism’s different pressure groups.

My guess is that we are going to get a younger Benedict. I believe that we will get a Pope who will remove any cardinal, bishop or priest who is in any way implicated in the paedophile scandal.

But he will also move to exclude Catholics, high and low, who are not prepared to follow the Church’s teachings on sexual morality as a whole.

Benedict’s stunning self-sacrifice constitutes, in my view, the greatest gamble in the papacy’s 2,000-year history. If it works, the Church will begin to restore its besmirched reputation. If it fails, we Catholics are headed for calamitous conflict and fragmentation.

DHS Built Domestic Surveillance Tech Into Predator Drones
Mar 4th, 2013
Daily NewsC/net - Declan McCullagh
Categories: Today's Headlines;Warning

Homeland Security's specifications say drones must be able to detect whether a civilian is armed. Also specified: "signals interception" and "direction finding" for electronic surveillance.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has customized its Predator drones, originally built for overseas military operations, to carry out at-home surveillance tasks that have civil libertarians worried: identifying civilians carrying guns and tracking their cell phones, government documents show.

The documents provide more details about the surveillance capabilities of the department's unmanned Predator B drones, which are primarily used to patrol the United States' northern and southern borders but have been pressed into service on behalf of a growing number of law enforcement agencies including the FBI, the Secret Service, the Texas Rangers, and local police.

Homeland Security's specifications for its drones, built by San Diego-based General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, say they "shall be capable of identifying a standing human being at night as likely armed or not," meaning carrying a shotgun or rifle. They also specify "signals interception" technology that can capture communications in the frequency ranges used by mobile phones, and "direction finding" technology that can identify the locations of mobile devices or two-way radios.

Cardinal O'brien Makes 'Sexual Conduct 'Admission As New Gay Accusations Emerge
Mar 4th, 2013
Daily NewsThe Telegraph - John Bingham
Categories: Today's Headlines;Moral Decline

Cardinal Keith O’Brien, formerly the most senior Roman Catholic cleric in the UK, signalled that he did make homosexual advances towards young men.

Barak: Israel will Never Let Iran Develop a Nuclear Weapon
Mar 4th, 2013
Daily Newsdebkafile
Categories: Today's Headlines;The Nation Of Israel

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak told thousands of delegates at the opening of the annual conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) Sunday: "It is Iran's pursuit of a nuclear capability which is the greatest challenge facing Israel, the region and the world today," He added: "Frankly, while exhausting all diplomatic means is understandable, I do not believe it will lead to… the ayatollahs giving up their nuclear status. Therefore, all options must remain on the table because Israel will never allow them to develop a nuclear weapon.” On another issue, Barak said he did not believe Israel would ever achieve a comprehensive and final peace with the Palestinians.