Looking for His glorious appearing! Titus 2:13

WSJ: China’s Economic Miracle May be Over
Apr 19th, 2013
Daily NewsNewsmax
Categories: Today's Headlines;Contemporary Issues

News that Chinese economic growth slid to 7.7 percent in the first quarter from 7.9 percent a quarter earlier may be a sign that the nation’s days of economic glory are over.

Many industries are beginning to sag after 30 years of economic growth averaging about 10 percent, The Wall Street Journal reports.

Retail sales growth slowed to 12.6 percent in March year-on-year from a 15.2 percent pace in December. Industrial production growth also dipped last month.

While China’s growth still remains the envy of the world, it has fallen almost 50 percent from its 2007 peak of 14.2 percent.

Foreign demand for Chinese goods and what was once exploding investment at home have both fallen. Some experts are worried that China is doing too much lending, generating the risk of a serious credit bubble, according to The Journal.

The slump in first-quarter growth came at the same time as record lending by financial firms — 6.1 trillion yuan (about $1 trillion). That combination suggests new money is producing less economic benefit.

Property, infrastructure and factory investments are providing smaller returns. Meanwhile, government agencies are cash-strapped after major spending programs on new offices, train stations and other projects, The Journal reports.

Why is Israel Talking Again About a Solo Strike on Iran?
Apr 19th, 2013
Daily Newsdebkafile
Categories: Today's Headlines;The Nation Of Israel

Less than a month ago, during a very warm and friendly visit to Israel, President Barack Obama persuaded Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to finally agree to abstain from a lone offensive against Iran’s nuclear facilities. This week, a different tune was heard in Jerusalem.
Tuesday, April 16, Netanyahu warned "tough sanctions" may not be enough to prevent Iran from going all the way to a military nuclear capability.
"We have to stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons," he told foreign diplomats at a reception marking the 65^th anniversary of the Jewish state at the presidential residence in Jerusalem. "We've seen what happens when a rogue regime has atomic weapons," he said in reference to North Korea. "Tough sanctions and diplomacy don't always do the job."
Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon, a former opponent of unilateral military action, said in a speech in Herzliya, that the country must prepare for the possibility of having to strike Iran's nuclear program on its own. “Iran is definitely unimpressed by the measures the West has imposed to deter Tehran and its nuclear program is still "the paramount threat facing Israel, the Middle East and today’s world.”
Confronting the regime in Tehran with a stark choice between the bomb and its survival is the only way to stop the project.
The defense minister added: The west, starting with the US must lead the campaign against Iran’s nuclearization, but Israel, as the ayatollahs’ first target, must also prepare “to defend itself with its own forces,” if necessary.

Israel’s top decision-makers sing in unison

Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz picked up his cue when he answered questions put to him in Independence Day interviews: Asked whether the Israel Defense Forces is capable of taking on Iran single-handed, he replied: “Certainly, yes.”
He added sanctions and diplomacy were preferable, but “operational capabilities” (which he did not spell out) were also necessary. “We’ll know what to do when the time comes” he said, adding that the IDF had also drawn up plans to meet the consequences of its actions.
All three of Israel’s top-decision-makers were obviously singing from the same song-book.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly's intelligence and military sources account for their change of tune by the events of the last three weeks:
1. Israel’s faith in the US resolve to abort a nuclear Iran slipped several notches under the influence of the Obama administration’s handling of the Korean crisis. Jerusalem carefully noted how the White House went out of its way to insist that North Korea had not fully developed a nuclear weapon that could be delivered by missile – contradicting the finding of the Pentagon intelligence agency, the DIA.
CIA chief James R. Clapper followed the White House with a cautious denial: The DIA report did not represent the consensus of the (16) US intelligence agencies, he said.
In Jerusalem, this was seen as a maneuver by the US president to step away from confronting a major problem, ready even to impugn the credibility of an important US intelligence agency for the sake of creating a distance from the Korean crisis.

To act or deny – that is the question

Furthermore, if President Obama is so mistrustful of Pentagon intelligence evaluations on North Korean nuclear warheads, how can his administration count on discovering the exact moment when Iran begins assembling its nuclear warheads, as US officials have assured Israel?
Another question asked in Jerusalem is: Where did Obama’s “red lines” go when Bashar Assad started using chemical weapons in Syria?
Former Army Intelligence chief Amos Yadlin commented Friday, April 12, in a TV program that Iran will very soon cross the “red line” which Prime Minister Netanyahu posted in his illustrated speech to the UN last September.
Netanyahu is therefore hanging on the horns of the same dilemma as the US president: He must either deliver on his pledge, which means reverting to Israel’s unilateral strike option, or adopt Obama’s tactic of denial and dismiss Yadlin’s claim as “not proven.”
The strategy of denial provides the ultimate rationale for never letting anything be proven. It allows policymakers to dismiss Intelligence assessments and findings if they don’t suit their agendas.
In this case, Israel has concluded from the Korean affair that what President Obama wants to avoid is the conclusion that if Pyongyang has indeed developed nuclear warheads suitable for mounting on functioning ballistic missiles, Iran has attained – or soon will attain - the same capability, because their parallel nuclear and missile programs have been virtually twinned for many years.

Iran’s nuke program is on fast forward, ready for weapons-grade uranium

2. Israeli intelligence finds Iran’s weaponized nuclear program advancing by leaps and bounds. Contrary to the reports put out by US official sources that Iran’s leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has put uranium enrichment on hold until after the presidential vote in late June, the uranium enrichment process has been accelerated.
According to DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military sources, just as North Korea is shown to have collected all the military technology and components for fitting nuclear warheads onto missiles, so too has Iran acquired all the elements for assembling a nuclear weapon, including enough enriched uranium.
The head of Iran's Nuclear Energy Commission, Fereidoun Abbasi, was putting out the official cover story when he said Tuesday, April 16, that his country may need to obtain uranium enriched to a higher grade than it was producing.
He was quoted by the semi-official Fars news agency as asserting that Iran had no plan to enrich uranium beyond 20 percent, "But in some special cases like ship and submarines, where we must manufacture small engines, it requires fuel enriched up to 56 percent."
Our military sources stress that Iran has no nuclear ships or submarines or the capacity to build them.
But these phantom vessels provide Tehran with the pretext for raising the level of uranium enrichment to 60 percent which leaves no more than three or four weeks’ work for producing weapons grade (90 percent) material.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly informed its readers four months ago that Iran had completed preparations for raising the uranium enrichment level from 20- to 60-percent.

A Hizballah attack on Israel to punish the US

3. The dramatic military reversal in favor of the Assad regime in Syria has also affected the Israeli government’s faith in leaving critical issues, like a nuclear Iran, to Washington.
The forces loyal to Assad have chalked up major victories in Damascus, the South, Center and North – due in no small measure to the Iranian and Russian officers planning and overseeing the Syrian army’s operations up close in the field. It is therefore unrealistic at this point to judge the Syrian conflict in terms of the substantially buttressed Assad regime’s impending fall.
4. Coming out stronger too is the Iran-Syria-Hizballah axis. This directly affects Israel because its intelligence agencies have picked up the first signs of plans in Tehran, Damascus and Beirut for the Shiite Hizballah to launch a preemptive strike on the Jewish state.
The three radical partners have two motives:
One: Wreaking revenge on US-led Western assistance to the Syrian rebel movement in combat training, intelligence, arms and funds, is one. Tehran sees war on Israel as an object lesson to teach Washington that any strike against Iran’s strategic interests is met with military action against US interests.
Two: Tehran also believes that a Hizballah war offensive against Israel would deter Jerusalem from any plans it may have for a military strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Ya’alon warns Lebanon

This what Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon meant when he warned Tuesday that “although Hizballah was busy fighting for Bashar Assad's regime in Syria, it is also ready to engage Israel in a confrontation with the backing of Iran and Syria.”
In Yaalon’s words, “Hizballah is Tehran's executive officer, both in assisting Syria and in threatening us. However, Lebanese citizens and leaders must understand that Lebanon will be accounted responsible for any Hizballah attack on Israel and pay the price."

Two Dagestani Brothers Nembers of Chechen Wahhabi Cell Identified As Responsible for Boston Terror
Apr 19th, 2013
Daily Newsdebkafile
Categories: Today's Headlines;Contemporary Issues

Two Chechen brothers from Dagestan, members of a Wahhabi cell funded by Saudi al Qaeda, were identified as the terrorists who detonated two bombs at the Boston Marathon last Monday and carried out a bombing-shooting spree at the MIT campus in Waterton outside Boston, Friday, April 19, in which a police officer was killed.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, and Dzhohav Tsarnaev, 19, escaped the MIT campus in a hijacked SUV, chased by the police. As they threw explosives out of the window, critically injuring another police officer, police bullets hit the older brother, who died in custody. The younger one, identified earlier as “Suspect 2 in the white cap” made a run for it.

Warning he is armed and dangerous, the police hunt has placed parts of Boston, Watertown and other outlying towns under curfew and suspended public transport. Hundreds of law enforcement officers, federal agents, national and state police backed by helicopters are scouring the area door to door, backed by helicopters, after warning people to stay home and not open the door to strangers.

The Boston police stress that the event is still ongoing and the investigation is closely coordinated with Washington.

The Chechen government denies the two brothers lived in their country and say the family left some years ago and finally settled in the United States. Boston officials report that the older brother has lived in the US for almost 10 years. The student won a scholarship in 2011 to study at a college in Cambridge.

The incident began with gun shots reported at 10:48 p.m. at Building 32 on Vassar Street near Main Street, off Kendall Square, when the two men armed with guns, explosives and wearing body armor were apparently about to seize the university building. The police officer who responded to the upset was shot dead.

The attack occurred shortly after the FBI released images of the two main Boston Marathon bombing suspects with an appeal to the public for information to identify them. Only later were they linked to the MIT event. A portrait photo of the wanted terrorist has just been released.

Read the earlier story in debkafile.

The FBI released Thursday images of two suspects filmed on the move at the site of the Boston Marathon bombings of Monday, April 15. The footage with stills has been widely distributed and an FBI Tipline set up. Public assistance in identifying the two youngish men is considered critical to the investigation.

Suspect 1 is shown wearing a black cap and, walking fast close behind him, Suspect 2 in a white cap. Both carry large black packages and both have Middle East complexions.
FBI Agent Richard Deslauriers who is in charge of the investigation said Suspect 1 planted the first bomb, while a few seconds later, Suspect 2 was filmed placing a package at the site of the second, more powerful bomb, and walking away very fast.
Both men are dangerous, he said, and should not be approached by the public

The images the FBI released of the two suspects have been floating around the Internet for the past 36 hours. And so the suspects must know they are being hunted. debkafile’s counterterrorism sources add that both have either gone to ground in a pre-arranged hideout or have left the United States. The way they walk behind each other as they pass through crowds without losing contact strongly recalls the formation maintained by the suicide bombers who blew up the London Tube train on July 7, 2007

The Old Cross and the New
Apr 19th, 2013
Main StoriesA. W. TOZER
Categories: Printed Newsletter;Inspirational;Contemporary Issues

Unannounced and mostly undetected there has come in modern times a new cross into popular evangelical circles. It is like the old cross, but different: the likenesses are superficial; the differences, fundamental.

From this new cross has sprung a new philosophy of the Christian life, and from that new philosophy has come a new evangelical technique -- a new type of meeting and a new kind of preaching. This new evangelism employs the same language as the old, but its content is not the same and its emphasis not as before.

The old cross would have no truck with the world. For Adam's proud flesh it meant the end of the journey. It carried into effect the sentence imposed by the law of Sinai. The new cross is not opposed to the human race; rather, it is a friendly pal and, if understood aright, it is the source of oceans of good clean fun and innocent enjoyment. It lets Adam live without interference. His life motivation is unchanged; he still lives for his own pleasure, only now he takes delight in singing choruses and watching religious movies instead of singing bawdy songs and drinking hard liquor. The accent is still on enjoyment, though the fun is now on a higher plane morally if not intellectually.

The new cross encourages a new and entirely different evangelistic approach. The evangelist does not demand abnegation of the old life before a new life can be received. He preaches not contrasts but similarities. He seeks to key into public interest by showing that Christianity makes no unpleasant demands; rather, it offers the same thing the world does, only on a higher level. Whatever the sin-mad world happens to be clamoring after at the moment is cleverly shown to be the very thing the gospel offers, only the religious product is better.

The new cross does not slay the sinner, it redirects him. It gears him into a cleaner and jollier way of living and saves his self-respect. To the self-assertive it says, "Come and assert yourself for Christ." To the egotist it says, "Come and do your boasting in the Lord." To the thrill-seeker it says, "Come and enjoy the thrill of Christian fellowship." The Christian message is slanted in the direction of the current vogue in order to make it acceptable to the public.

The philosophy back of this kind of thing may be sincere but its sincerity does not save it from being false. It is false because it is blind. It misses completely the whole meaning of the cross.

The old cross is a symbol of death. It stands for the abrupt, violent end of a human being. The man in Roman times who took up his cross and started down the road had already said good-by to his friends. He was not coming back. He was going out to have it ended. The cross made no compromise, modified nothing, spared nothing; it slew all of the man, completely and for good. It did not try to keep on good terms with its victim. It struck cruel and hard, and when it had finished its work, the man was no more.

The race of Adam is under death sentence. There is no commutation and no escape. God cannot approve any of the fruits of sin, however innocent they may appear or beautiful to the eyes of men. God salvages the individual by liquidating him and then raising him again to newness of life.

That evangelism which draws friendly parallels between the ways of God and the ways of men is false to the Bible and cruel to the souls of its hearers. The faith of Christ does not parallel the world, it intersects it. In coming to Christ we do not bring our old life up onto a higher plane; we leave it at the cross. The corn of wheat must fall into the ground and die.

We who preach the gospel must not think of ourselves as public relations agents sent to establish good will between Christ and the world. We must not imagine ourselves commissioned to make Christ acceptable to big business, the press, the world of sports or modern education. We are not diplomats but prophets, and our message is not a compromise but an ultimatum.

God offers life, but not an improved old life. The life He offers is life out of death. It stands always on the far side of the cross. Whoever would possess it must pass under the rod. He must repudiate himself and concur in God's just sentence against him. What does this mean to the individual, the condemned man who would find life in Christ Jesus? How can this theology be translated into life? Simply, he must repent and believe. He must forsake his sins and then go on to forsake himself. Let him cover nothing, defend nothing, excuse nothing. Let him not seek to make terms with God, but let him bow his head before the stroke of God's stern displeasure and acknowledge himself worthy to die.

Having done this let him gaze with simple trust upon the risen Saviour, and from Him will come life and rebirth and cleansing and power. The cross that ended the earthly life of Jesus now puts an end to the sinner; and the power that raised Christ from the dead now raises him to a new life along with Christ....

Dare we, the heirs of such a legacy of power, tamper with the truth? Dare we... alter the pattern shown us in the Mount? May God forbid. Let us preach the old cross and we will know the old power.

Let the Headlines Speak
Apr 19th, 2013
Daily NewsFrom the Internet
Categories: Today's Headlines;Contemporary Issues

NRA chief: Obama 'bit off more than he could chew'
David Keene told Secrets that the president and his team misplayed their hand because they don't have a sense of the public's attitude toward gun control. "They just can't gauge the public reaction to what they do because they don't have any sense that the public has feelings different than they do," said Keene.

Is Pope Francis Laying The Groundwork For A One World Religion?
Does Pope Francis intend to help the global elite achieve their goal of uniting all of the religions of the world under a single banner? Will he be instrumental in establishing a single global religion for the glorious “new age” that the global elite believe is coming? After he was elected, the cover of Time Magazine declared Pope Francis to be the “New World Pope“, and since his election Pope Francis has made it abundantly clear that he is going to make ecumenical outreach a top priority. For example, in one recent address he made it a point to say that he believes that Muslims worship and pray to the “one God” that he also worships.

The Jews in Prophecy Have they been cast aside, or are they destined for glory?
The Scriptures reveal the Jews as "the apple of God's eye" (Zechariah 2:8). Their land is described as "holy" (Zechariah 2:12). Their city of Jerusalem is termed the "center of the nations" (Ezekiel 5:5). They are pictured as the wayward wife of God (see Ezekiel 16 and the book of Hosea). And the Bible makes it clear that they will be the object of both God's wrath (Jeremiah 30:7) and His grace (Zechariah 13:1) in the end times.

Giant ‘star-factory’ at the beginning of the universe could upend what we know about how galaxies were formed
NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA) and researchers at Caltech have found what they believe to be a massive “star factory,” an early galaxy that produced stars when the rest of the galaxies in the universe were still just clouds of dust.

Still dreaming of peace
Had we been Micronesia, Switzerland or Brazil, we would never have doubted the continued existence of our country, but the truth is that after 65 years of intense building and successes in almost every field, the continued existence of the State of Israel is still not obvious.

Israel to buy new missiles, refueling planes from US
The US Defense Department is expected to finalize a $10 billion arms deal with Israel, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates next week that will provide missiles, warplanes and troop transports to help the Mideast countries counter any future threat from Iran, the New York Times reported Friday.

The decision by some members of the media to come down so firmly on one side of a policy debate has only served to reinforce conservatives’ longstand
Two brothers from Russian region near Chechnya, suspected of carrying out Monday's terror attack in Boston, kill MIT police officer on campus late Thursday, then steal car at gunpoint; one suspect killed during firefight with police

Gun vote triggers media outcry
If you thought President Obama was outraged after the Senate killed the plan to expand background checks on guns, you should have seen some members of the press. The decision by some members of the media to come down so firmly on one side of a policy debate has only served to reinforce conservatives’ longstanding suspicions that the mainstream media has a deep-seated liberal bias. “I guess the liberal media get annoyed when Senators listen to their constituents and think for themselves, rather than doing the media’s bidding,

Experts gathering to focus on H7N9 bird flu transmission mystery
Almost three weeks after China reported finding a new strain of bird flu in humans, experts are still stumped by how people are becoming infected when many appear to have had no recent contact with live fowl and the virus isn't supposed to pass from person to person.

Yellowstone's Volcano Bigger Than Thought
Yellowstone's underground volcanic plumbing is bigger and better connected than scientists thought, researchers reported here today (April 17) at the Seismological Society of America's annual meeting. The shallowest magma, in the northeast, also matches up with the park's most intense hydrothermal activity, Farrell said. The new study is the best view yet of this zone, which lies outside the youngest caldera rim.

Massive geyser erupts in Russian parking lot
It takes but seconds for a small cloud of steam, appearing harmless at first, to erupt into a hot water geyser rivaling Old Faithful. What you don't see from the video are the brick-sized chunks of pavement and rocks that were launched into the air and onto the surrounding vehicles.

Powerful earthquake hits off Japan
A 7.0-magnitude earthquake has struck in seas off far northern Japan and far eastern Russia, but no damage was expected. The Japan Meteorological Agency said sea changes were possible. No tsunami warnings have been issued.

Texas Waco fertiliser plant blast search for survivors
Emergency services are still searching for survivors after a blast at a US fertiliser plant that police say killed up to 15 people. More than 160 people were injured and dozens of buildings destroyed in the town of West, near Waco in Texas. The town's Mayor Tommy Muska said he believed at least 14 people were dead, including four firefighters who attended the original fire.

U.S. 'deporting Saudi person of interest'
The Reuters news agency reported President Barack Obama met with Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal on Wednesday, noting “the meeting was not on Obama’s public schedule.” After that meeting was mentioned, Emerson told Hannity, “That’s very interesting because this is the way things are done with Saudi Arabia. You don’t arrest their citizens. You deport them, because they don’t want them to be embarrassed and that’s the way we appease them.”

Report: Israel, UAE, Saudis in huge US arms deal
The US Department of Defense is nearing the finalization of a $10 billion arms deal with Israel, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates... According to the Times, Israel would be permitted to purchase from American contractors the KC-135 refueling tanker planes, "antiradiation" missiles that target air-defense radars, new advanced radars for jets and the V-22 Osprey aircraft.

Drugs to Fight Deadly Superbugs in Short Supply
An antibiotic apocalypse looms, and only seven new drugs are in development to combat the most lethal superbugs, including carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE), the often incurable “nightmare bacteria” that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) warned about last month, citing a new report from the Infectious Disease Society of America (IDSA).

Boston Marathon bomber manhunt: One suspect dead, second on the run, police say
A late-night police chase and shootout has ended with one marathon bombing suspect dead and another on the run here, Boston Police commissioner Ed Davis said early Friday morning. One police officer was killed and a transit officer seriously wounded during the pursuit.

Israel ready to act on Syria weapons, warns Netanyahu
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has told the BBC that Israel has a right to prevent weapons from falling into the wrong hands in Syria. He said that if terrorists seized anti-aircraft and chemical weapons they could be "game changers" in the region.

Floodwaters rising after storms deluge heartland
Volunteers worked into the night to stack sandbags against rising Midwest floodwaters and evacuate people in its path — or rescue those already under water — after a powerful spring storm system unleashed downpours from Oklahoma to Michigan.

Kings of the East Reveal Growing Military Power
Apr 19th, 2013
Daily Newsnationalpost.com
Categories: Today's Headlines;Prophecy

Implantable or Ingestible - How will You Take Your Microchips?
Apr 19th, 2013
Daily Newsforbes.com
Categories: Today's Headlines;Prophecy

Gosnell Trial Witness: Baby Abortion Survivor Was ‘Swimming’ in Toilet ‘tTying to Get Out’
Apr 19th, 2013
Daily NewsTruNews
Categories: Today's Headlines;Contemporary Issues

Kareema Cross, a “medical assistant” who worked at Gosnell’s Women’s Medical Society clinic for four-and-a-half years, testified in a Philadelphia court today, telling of the horrors of babies who survived abortions only to have their necks snipped with scissors.

“Did you ever see those babies move?” asked Prosecutor Joanne Pescatore.

“Yes, once in the toilet,” said Cross.

The baby “was like swimming,” she said. “Basically, trying to get out.”

Adrienne Moton, an employee at the clinic, then took the baby and snipped the back of its neck while its mother was still in the room.

Cross told the jury that when Shayquana Abrams came into the clinic in July 2008 she was pregnant, “and she was big.”

“That was the largest baby I ever saw,” Cross said.

When the baby was born alive, Abrams was sleeping. Cross said Dr. Gosnell took the baby boy, which she described as 12 to 18 inches long, and put him inside a plastic container the size of a shoebox.

“The baby was still breathing,” she said. “He didn’t cut the neck right there.”

The baby was too big for the plastic container, with his arms and legs hanging over the sides.

“The Doctor cut the back of the baby’s neck but didn’t do suction—normally Dr. Gosnell would do suction … to suck the brains out,” Cross said.

“I called people over to come see it [the baby] and we took pictures,” she said.

The baby boy had curled himself into the fetal position and laid on his side in the box. An image of the baby taken by Cross was shown to the court, showing him laying lifeless on his side. (the photo of the infant, Baby A, is included in the Grand Jury Report and is posted in this article.)

“It was supposed to go upstairs in the freezer, but it was still there the next day because the janitor complained,” Cross added.

She said Dr. Gosnell told her “the baby is big enough that it could walk to the store or the bus stop.”

Eventually the baby boy went in the freezer, Cross said.

Abrams was 17 when she went to the Women’s Medical Society for a late-term abortion on

July, 12, 2008. Earlier in the trial, Abrams testified that she was 29 weeks (slightly more than 7 months) pregnant and that the abortion sent her to the hospital for two weeks with complications, including a blood clot in her heart. Abortions after 24 weeks are illegal in Pennsylvania.

Cross also testified that she witnessed Steven Massof, an unlicensed medical school graduate who worked at the clinic, snip babies necks (spinal cords) 25 to 30 times.

Cross said she saw babies that were still breathing after botched abortions at least 10 times. Dr. Gosnell would cut the back of their necks with scissors, she said.

“He just said they’re not breathing,” Cross said.

“Linda’s baby,” as described by the prosecution, was also still alive following an abortion, moving its arm back and forth. Cross said the baby was breathing for 10 to 20 minutes before its neck was cut with scissors.

On another occasion, Cross said she heard a “soft whine,” or whimper coming from a baby in another other room.

Cross took photographs of the clinic in 2008 out of concern. The photographs, shown in the courtroom, depicted over 50 jars filled with baby’s feet stored at the clinic, which Gosnell said he was keeping for “DNA purposes.”

More photos showed bloody equipment, and Gosnell’s cat sleeping on a chair at the clinic. The cat would roam freely, even in the procedure rooms, and go to the bathroom on the first and second floor, Cross said.

The trial of Gosnell, 72, in the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas is currently in its fifth week. He is charged with seven counts of first-degree murder (seven babies), one count of third-degree murder of a mother, as well as infanticide, conspiracy, abortion at 24 or more weeks, abuse of a corpse, theft, corruption of minors, solicitation and other related offenses.

Cyprus Bail - Out Vote Stirs Fresh Jitters As Slump Fears Grow in Europe
Apr 19th, 2013
Daily NewsTruNews
Categories: Today's Headlines;Revived Roman Empire

Carbon Bubble will Plunge the World Into Another Financial Crisis – Report
Apr 19th, 2013
Daily NewsTruNews
Categories: Today's Headlines;World Government

The world could be heading for a major economic crisis as stock markets inflate an investment bubble in fossil fuels to the tune of trillions of dollars, according to leading economists.

“The financial crisis has shown what happens when risks accumulate unnoticed,” said Lord (Nicholas) Stern, a professor at the London School of Economics. He said the risk was “very big indeed” and that almost all investors and regulators were failing to address it.

The so-called “carbon bubble” is the result of an over-valuation of oil, coal and gas reserves held by fossil fuel companies. According to a report published on Friday, at least two-thirds of these reserves will have to remain underground if the world is to meet existing internationally agreed targets to avoid the threshold for “dangerous” climate change. If the agreements hold, these reserves will be in effect unburnable and so worthless – leading to massive market losses. But the stock markets are betting on countries’ inaction on climate change.

The stark report is by Stern and the thinktank Carbon Tracker. Their warning is supported by organisations including HSBC, Citi, Standard and Poor’s and the International Energy Agency.

Be Watchful!
Apr 19th, 2013
CommentaryCharles Haddon Spurgeon (1834-1892)
Categories: Exhortation

“We die, daily” said the apostle. This was the life of the early Christians; they went everywhere with their lives in their hands. [Most of us are not yet] called to pass through the same fearful persecutions. But if we were, the Lord would give us grace to bear the test. The tests of Christian life, at the present moment, though outwardly not so terrible, are yet more likely to overcome us than even those of the fiery age.

We have to bear the sneer of the world - [but] that is little! Its soft words, its oily speeches, its fawning, and its hypocrisy are far worse. Our danger is lest we grow rich and become proud, lest we give ourselves up to the fashions of this present evil world, and lose our faith. Or if wealth be not the trial, worldly care is quite as mischievous. If we cannot be torn in pieces by the roaring lion, we may be hugged to death by the bear. The devil little cares which it is, so long as he destroys our love for Christ, and our confidence in him.

I fear that the Christian church is far more likely to lose her integrity in soft and silken days than in those rougher times. We must be awake now, for we... are most likely to fall asleep to our own undoing, unless our faith in Jesus be a reality, and our love to Jesus a vehement flame. 

Many in these days of easy profession are likely to prove tares, and not wheat; hypocrites with fair masks on their faces, but not the true-born children of the living God. Christian, do not think that these are times in which you can dispense with watchfulness or with holy ardor; you need these things more than ever, and may God the eternal Spirit display his omnipotence in you, that you may be able to say, in all these softer things, as well as in the rougher,  “We are more than conquerors through him that loved us."

Assad is Poised to Attack Jordan - Unless Obama Stops Him
Apr 19th, 2013
Daily Newsdebkafile
Categories: Today's Headlines;Contemporary Issues

Addressing senior members of the Senate Armed Services Committee on efforts to oust Bashar Assad, US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said Wednesday, April 17: “You better be damn sure, as sure as you can be, before you get into something. Because once you’re into it, there isn’t any backing out, whether it’s a no-fly zone, safe zone ... whatever it is,” Reuters quoted him as saying..

“Once you’re in, you can’t unwind it. You can’t just say, Well, it’s not going as well as I thought it would go so we’re gonna get out”.
These words carried the opposite message to the Pentagon statement issued a short time earlier, which announced that Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel was ordering the deployment of up to 200 troops to Jordan. The troops, which will come from the headquarters of the 1st Armored Division at Fort Bliss, Texas, "create an additional capability" beyond what has been there.
The group will give the United States the ability to "potentially form a joint task force for military operations, if ordered."
The new deployment will include communications and intelligence specialists who will assist the Jordanians and "be ready for military action" if President Barack Obama were to order it, Defense officials said.

SOS pleas from Jordan’s King Abdullah to Obama

Clearly scratching his head over the mixed signals coming from the administration, Senator Carl Levin, the Michigan Democrat who is chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, wondered aloud if the Obama administration was sending a muddled message.
After huddling briefly with Mr. Hagel and General Dempsey, America’s top soldier, Sen. Levin told reporters that he had asked them if the United States was looking for a way to send a tough message to Mr. Assad.
“Their answer is yes,” he said. “That’s not what came out today in their testimony. We didn’t hear it.”
DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military and intelligence sources disclose that the White House decided to post the 200 troops to Jordan in response to urgent phone calls from King Abdullah to the White House starting in early April. The Jordanian king said: “The Syrian army is about to attack Jordan. You (the US) must immediately activate the US-Jordan-Israel-Turkey military cooperation pact to halt a Syrian attack, and execute the joint US-Arab-Israeli intervention in Syria which we decided on when you visited Jordan in the third week of March.”
The mood in the palace in Amman and Jordan’s high command was described by US intelligence agents on the spot as verging on panic. A senior Jordanian officer confided to an American contact that the Hashemite throne and military were in dire peril, unlikely to survive a Syrian assault that would certainly be backed by Iran, Hizballah and Iraq-based Shiite terrorist networks.

Panic in Amman

As weeks went by with no clear answers from the White House, King Abdullah called Jerusalem and spoke with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu several times. Netanyahu promised him Israel would come to Jordan’s aid if it came under Syrian attack.
Concerns for the kingdom were aggravated by a transcript reaching Washington, Jerusalem and Amman Wednesday, April 17, of an interview with President Bashar Assad for the Syrian channel al-Ikhbariya to air that night. It showed Assad grimly determined to attack Jordan as punishment for providing a base for Western and Gulf States' support for the Syrian rebels.
In especially harsh tones, Assad accused Syria's southern neighbor of allowing thousands of armed fighters to cross into Syria to join the war against him and warned that the Syrian conflict would spill over into Jordan.
A Syrian defense emissary had been dispatched to Amman in recent weeks, he said, to investigate the reports of fighting strength crossing the border and rebel training camps maintained in the kingdom. The envoy was greeted with "total denial" of both charges, said Assad, and went on to say, “It makes no sense for thousands of men to be able to cross into Syria with full military gear(from Jordan) without being stopped or arrested, whereas not a single person armed with a simple weapon is allowed to cross into Palestine to join the resistance.”

Syrian, Iraqi Shiite and Hizballah terrorists

His declaration – "The fire will not stop at our border and everybody knows that Jordan is as just as exposed as Syria” - seriously raised the fear that the Syrian ruler, rather than detaching army contingents to attack Jordan, would use small Syrian commando units trained for this mission and draw on allied terrorist groups, such as the radical Iraqi Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr’s Badr Brigades and the Lebanese Hizballah.
They would be smuggled out of Syria into Iraq and infiltrate Jordan from there bent on sowing terror, chaos and subversion in the royal capital.
There is little America, Israel or Turkey would be able to do against these tactics, except to try and seal the capital off from the incoming tide of terror and safeguard the Hashemite throne.
This development threatens to draw Israeli into very dangerous waters, DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military sources say. Up until now, Israel tried to stay out of involvement in the Syrian conflict while at the same time keeping a wary finger on the pulse of the turbulent events on its northern border.
Limited military and medical aid was extended to the rebel groups in southern Syria which keep their distance from Al Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra and other radical Islamists. Israel hoped that a close watch on the Golan border would prevent the Syrian war sliding into Israel proper.
But if the war does spill over into Jordan, Israel’s western neighbor, control of events may slip out of Israeli hands because Jordan-based terrorist groups will be set loose to cross into Palestinian areas of the West Bank and be able to set up convenient bases for striking into Israel’s heartland.

Jordan’s peril may force Israel to intervene in Syria

With this danger in mind, Prime Minister Netanyahu Thursday morning, April 18, told a BBC interviewer:
“Israel has a right to prevent weapons from falling into the wrong hands in Syria. The main arms of concern to us are the arms that are already in Syria - these are anti-aircraft weapons, these are chemical weapons and other very, very dangerous weapons that could be game changers," he said.
"They will change the conditions, the balance of power in the Middle East. They could present a terrorist threat on a worldwide scale. It is definitely our interest to defend ourselves, but we also think it is in the interest of other countries.”
In other words, chemical weapons, Israel’s sole declared casus belli for intervention in the Syrian war until now, is no longer the only one. Syrian military intervention in Jordan would force Israel to take up arms against the aggressor.
Middle East capitals, Moscow and Tehran are waiting on tenterhooks for President Obama’s response to the new peril. Sending 200 US troops to Jordan is too weak a signal to convince Assad that substantial American strength is on the way and make him pause before attacking Jordan. So will the US president bite the bullet and act resolutely to preempt the Syrian ruler in time to save Jordan? Or will such a step be preceded by a joint US-Israeli-Turkish-Jordanian military operation in Syria?
The answers await events.

A New Idf Military Framework to Guard Borders and Fight Al Qaeda
Apr 19th, 2013
Daily Newsdebkafile
Categories: Today's Headlines;The Nation Of Israel

Al Qaeda’s Grad missile attack from Egyptian Sinai on Israel’s southernmost town of Eilat Wednesday, April 17, found all three intelligence services of the US, Israel and Egypt wanting.
None were ready, although they had all been forewarned as early as April 1 of plans by Al Qaeda cells and local Salafi elements in Sinai and Gaza for a large-scale assault on southern Israel. In fact, the Israeli Defense Forces doubled its strength on the its Sinai border with Egypt and placed two Iron Dome missile interceptor batteries outside Eilat and the town of Ashkelon opposite the Gaza Strip.
The US administration did its bit by urging Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi and Egyptian Defense Minister Gen. Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi to make every effort to prevent this attack being mounted from their territory.
Washington was directly concerned by the danger, lest it also put the US units of the Multinational Force and Observers-MFO stationed in Sinai, some belonging to the US 82^nd Airborne Division, in harm’s way.
Using Cairo, Qatar and Turkey as intermediaries, Washington tried to get the Hamas rulers of Gaza to crack down on the Salafi elements, which in the last couple of weeks, had revived rocket fire against Israel after eight months of calm.
Although Hamas police made some arrests, it did not stop the rockets, which now appear to have been the starting signal for the main part of Al Qaeda’s offensive from Sinai.

Fortifying and rebuilding old border defenses

In Sinai and Gaza, Al Qaeda hides behind the title of 'Shura Mujahedeen Brigades around Jerusalem.
Last Thursday, April 11, a special Israeli military delegation flew to Cairo to evaluate with Egyptian military and intelligence officials their joint steps for thwarting al Qaeda attacks on Israel from Sinai.
But on Wednesday, six days later, those steps proved wholly unequal to preventing al Qaeda from launching Grad missiles at Eilat. (Pop. 50,000, holiday resort and Israel's only Red Sea naval port.)
For Israel, the failure was both strategic and military.
Even though a state of alert had been in force for three weeks, nothing worked: The warning sirens switched on after the rockets exploded and the Grads sailed into Eilat past a silent Iron Dome which failed to detect it.
By good fortune, the Grads exploded in unoccupied buildings under construction in Eilat and caused no casualties. But next time might not be so lucky.
Israel’s southwestern border with Egypt and the Gaza Strip is just one of three fronts on which the IDF is getting ready for war with al Qaeda.
On the northern front, the IDF is preparing to contend with Syrian Islamic militias – first and foremost, Jabhat al-Nusra, the Syrian branch of Al Qaeda in Iraq. (DEBKA-Net-Weekly 583 of April 12 first revealed their merger.)
Israeli intelligence on this sector reports that Al Qaeda’s Iraqi terrorists are preparing to cross into Syria and Jordan to reach the two Israeli borders. From there, they plan to launch attacks on targets inside Israel.
So Israel is now rebuilding the old defense lines drawn on the Jordanian border before the two countries signed peace in 1994, after beefing up its defenses and electronic surveillance systems on the borders with Egypt and Syria.

New units for countering Al Qaeda draw on haredi manpower

DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military sources reveal that the Israeli military command last week placed before Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and the new Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon a five-part plan for recasting the IDF into the shape for contending with the threat of Al Qaeda on three fronts:
1. Although Israel, like many countries including the US, has been trying to reduce its combat units and pare military spending, the IDF is now bidding for a 30 percent increase in fighting manpower.
Spending cuts are ruled out at a time when it is imperative for the armed forces to create new brigades and divisions especially trained and equipped for safeguarding the country’s borders against the menace of al Qaeda.
2. The plan is to string troops and positions along the entire 900 kilometers of Israel’s borders with Egyptian Sinai, Gaza, Golan and Syria, Lebanon and Jordan.
This increment of manpower is needed in addition to the fighting personnel which stands prepared for potential wars with Iran and Hizballah.
3. The Israeli general staff is therefore asking the government to rule out proposals presented by various political parties to shorten compulsory military service for men from three to two or two and-a-half years. The IDF is flat against those proposals.
4. The five-point blueprint would draw the extra fighting men for the new units from the ultra-Orthodox (haredi) community, taking advantage of their increasing willingness to join up in growing numbers.
More and more military frameworks are being established for haredi soldiers in combat brigades.
This suggests an unforeseen consequence may come about whereby extreme Orthodox Jewish troops face off against Islamist terrorists across Israel's borders.

'Intolerable That Jews Cannot Pray on Temple Mount'
Apr 19th, 2013
Daily NewsIsrael Today - Staff
Categories: Today's Headlines;The Nation Of Israel

Despite being the most holy site on earth for Jews and many Christians, both religious groups are barred from praying at or bringing Bibles to the Temple Mount for fear of a Muslim backlash.

Regev said it is intolerable that Jews do not have freedom of religion at Judaism's holiest site, and she will soon visit the Temple Mount with other committee members with the expressed aim of changing that reality.

Regev's bold stand has earned her the scorn of ultra-secular Israelis who believe appeasing the Muslims is more important than fulfilling Israel's biblical mandate.