The General Assembly of the Church of Scotland drew to a close yesterday after a week of debate and deliberation which saw Scotland's "national" Church scrutinise everything from human trafficking to the correct weight of a hymn book.
Yet has the voice of the Kirk in annual communion now trailed to a faint whisper of what it once was, muttering only to itself, where it once spoke loudly for a nation? Or, is it in a transitional stage, negotiating the swift currents of an increasingly secular society, losing ground, but far from being swept away?

There is little doubt that the spotlight which once burned so brightly on the General Assembly has dimmed. In the 1950s, when active membership was about 1.5 million, the Church of Scotland had a genuine claim to represent the people of Scotland, while in the 1980s, a disgruntled nation turned to the assembly to articulate its opposition to the premiership of Margaret Thatcher. Today, membership is at an all-time low of just 500,000, while the establishment of the Scottish Parliament has provided domestic control over political action, replacing the Church's largely impotent political arguments.

Yet there were two occasions when the Church appeared to avoid controversy and take a softer line than might at first have been expected. The decision that a ten-year study on human sexuality, an attempt to re-examine the Kirk's attitude to homosexuality, required yet more study was described as a classic fudge to avoid a schism between liberals and traditionalists. In the gallery, eyebrows were raised when the Rev Colin Renwick, convener of the World Mission Council, explained that the Church would not issue a direct condemnation of the Mugabe regime in Zimbabwe for fear of the consequences for churches there.

In the opinion of Professor David Fergusson, the head of the school of divinity at Edinburgh University, that time has come: "The Church is having to become, not the national Church, but a significant presence in a multi-faith and secular society. It is not the national Church of 50 years ago. It is more a Church of gathered congregations, rather than one that can represent the majority of Scots."

The Saudi regime's Expatriates Monitoring Committee used a new high-tech finger-print system to identify Nirosh Kamanda of Sri Lanka as a Christian, reported Arab News, the government-approved English-language paper.

"The Grand Mosque and the holy city are forbidden to non-Muslims," said Col. Suhail Matrafi, head of the department in charge of Expatriates Affairs in Mecca. "The new fingerprints system is very helpful and will help us a lot to discover the identity of a lot of criminals and overstayers." Kamanda came to the Saudi city of Dammam to work as a truck driver and left his sponsor to sell goods near Mecca's Grand Mosque, Arab News reported. The sponsor reportedly denied he knew where Kamanda was working.

"He fled six months after coming to the kingdom," the sponsor said. "I have no idea how he reached Mecca."
Arab News said that after Kamanda's identity became known, he admitted he was a Christian and had come to Mecca to earn money. "I heard that Mecca is a safe place, where I could hide my identity," he said.

The U.S. State Department, in its annual reports on human rights worldwide, consistently has stated "religious freedom does not exist" in Saudi Arabia, which is dominated by the strict Wahhibist interpretation of Islam. In the kingdom, the State Department says, non-Muslim "WORSHIPPERS RISK ARREST, IMPRISONMENT, LASHING, DEPORTATION AND SOMETIMES TORTURE FOR ENGAGING IN RELIGIOUS ACTIVITY THAT ATTRACTS OFFICIAL ATTENTION."

The Saudi royal family has stated it permits non-Muslims to practice their own religion in the privacy of their homes, but many arrests have been made of worshippers in house churches. In 2004, for the first time, the State Department named Saudi Arabia a "country of particular concern," subjecting it to possible sanctions for egregious and ongoing violations of religious freedom.

IN THE U.S., AN ESTIMATED 80 PERCENT OF MOSQUES ARE SUPPORTED LARGELY WITH FUNDS AND IMAMS FROM SAUDI ARABIA..

As WorldNetDaily reported, the Senate Judiciary Committee held hearings in 2005 in response to a yearlong study by a Washington human-rights group asserting the government of Saudi Arabia is disseminating propaganda through American mosques that teaches hatred of Jews and Christians and instructs Muslims that they are on a mission behind enemy lines in a land of unbelievers.

Responding to the report by the Center for Religious Freedom at Freedom House, 15 senators, including Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., wrote Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice demanding the Bush administration take stronger action against Riyadh.

It is extracted from either open-cast pits or by underground mining. Although uranium occurs naturally all over the world, only a small fraction is found in concentrated ores. When certain atoms of uranium are split in a chain reaction, energy is released. This process is called nuclear fission. In a nuclear power station this fission occurs slowly, while in a nuclear weapon, very rapidly. In both instances, fission must be very carefully controlled.

Nuclear fission works best if isotopes - atoms with the same number of protons, but different numbers of neutrons - of uranium 235 (or plutonium 239) are used.These isotopes have almost identical chemical properties, but different nuclear properties. Uranium-235 is known as a "fissile isotope" because of its propensity to split in a chain reaction, releasing energy in the form of heat.

When a U-235 atom splits, it emits two or three neutrons. When other U-235 atoms are present, these neutrons collide with them causing the other atoms to split, producing more neutrons.

A nuclear reaction will only take place if there are enough u-235 atoms present to allow this process to continue as a self-sustaining chain reaction. This requirement is known as "critical mass". However, every 1,000 atoms of naturally-occurring uranium contain only seven atoms of U-235, with the remaining 993 being denser U-238.

MAJOR URANIUM PRODUCERS: Australia, Canada, China, Kazakhstan, Namibia, Niger, Russia, Uzbekistan

Full article:- http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/sci_nat/05/nuclear_fuel/html/mining.stm

Interfax reported that Archbishop Tadeusz Kondrusiewicz, of the Archdiocese of the Mother of God in Moscow, said in a letter to Patriarch Alexy II of Moscow and All Russia: "The bridging of divisions between Christians always means triumph of a love that overcomes everything.

"It is an instance of direct obedience to the commandment of Christ, 'That they may all be one'; it is a good example for all people who are divided, an example not only for Christians, and not only for believers."
Archbishop Kondrusiewicz added: "The healing of the schism and the Eucharistic reunification of Orthodox Christians will have a deep peacemaking effect on the entire Russian society, on the hearts and minds of our compatriots living both in Russia and outside of it."

The archbishop also said that the agreement, reuniting the Moscow-based Russian Orthodox Church and the New York-based Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia, is a sign of hope for further dialogue between the Russian Orthodox and Catholic Church.

The Pope's remarks today found favor in the audience he granted to Macedonian Parliament Speaker Ljubisa Georgievski, who was accompanied by government members and representatives of the Orthodox Church. The meeting took place in honor of Sts. Cyril and Methodius, the ninth-century apostles of the Slavic peoples. Of these co-patron saints of Europe, the [Pontiff] said, they left behind "a human and spiritual legacy that has made your land a place of meeting for various cultures and religions."

Benedict XVI expressed his desire that not only "the spiritual patrimony you have inherited be shared, but also that your particular identity be granted its due consideration by the other European peoples who are close to you in terms of tradition and culture." Of the 2 million people in Macedonia, 64.7% are Orthodox and 33.3% are Muslim.

The [Pope] concluded, "The peaceful coming together of the aspirations of the people who live in your country is an example for the European continent, upon which the Holy See looks with favor."

Benedict called the May 12 Family Day rally, organized by Catholic groups and family associations, a "great and extraordinary popular festival." Hundreds of thousands of people turned out for the demonstration to protest a bill that would grant legal rights to unmarried couples, including hospital visits and inheritance rights. The bill does not legalize gay marriage, as was done in other European countries, such as Spain.

The bill has angered the Vatican, which under Benedict has been conducting a fierce campaign to protect traditional family based on marriage between man and woman. In a speech to Italian bishops, Benedict said he respected the distinction between the church and politics. But he added that the church cannot ignore "what is good for man ... what is good for the common good of Italy." He said the Family Day rally "confirmed that the family itself is profoundly rooted in the heart and life of Italians."

Benedict's speech came as the government opened a conference on the family in Florence to help it create family policies that are, according to organizers, "more European and more modern." The conference was organized by the two Cabinet ministers spearheading the legislation on legal recognition for unmarried couples.

In a keynote speech, Italian President Giorgio Napolitano urged lawmakers to listen to the church and not create an artificial confrontation between Catholics and laity. But he said that de facto unions were "a reality" that had to be taken into account.

Sarkozy, on his first visit to the European Commission on Wednesday, said: I believe Turkey does not have its place in the EU and I haven't changed my opinion." Sarkozy, who replaced Jacques Chirac as president in the middle of May did not say what France would do about ongoing EU membership negotiations with Ankara which started in 2005.

He said his priority was the simplification of the EU's constitution treaty and that the groups was "making headway". Sarkozy said he was now campaigning to unblock the impasse of what to do with the constitution - notably on getting EU leaders to accept a scaled-back, simplified EU treaty passed, and doing away with the current draft constitution.

"We need to move forward and a simplified treaty is the way forward " Europe cannot remain at a standstill, we cannot remain in this relative paralysis - we have to find a way out of this impasse," he said. The EU constitution was to have streamlined how the bloc makes decisions and bolster its role on the world stage.

Ending two days of talks in Washington, the Chinese delegation rejected US calls to accelerate the revaluing of the yuan to enable higher US exports to China. In the absence of a breakthrough, members of the US congress have vowed to pass laws to penalise China, and a proposal to cite it as a currency manipulator in the next congressional report on trade, a move that could lead to economic sanctions.

US manufacturers claim the yuan has been artificially undervalued by as much as 40 per cent, making Chinese exports unfairly cheap and American goods costlier in the Chinese market. Henry Paulson, the US treasury secretary, told the visiting Chinese delegation that a perceived foot-dragging on the pace of reforms was causing a growing anti-China feeling among some US politicians.

"I believe it would be in their interest and the rest of the world's interest for them to move more quickly," he said.
Despite the lack of substantial progress at the talks, Paulson and Wu Yi, the Chinese vice premier, both sounded positive notes on the importance of the discussions, pointing to "tangilble results".

The US Business and Industry Council, which represents small and medium-size manufacturers, said the Bush administration should scrap the dialogue process, launched last year by the US and Chinese presidents, based on the poor results so far. "It's clear that this dialogue has been nothing but a cynical Bush administration exercise in spin and public relations," said Kevin L Kearns, its president.

"The failure of the White House's approach is now clear, so the ball is clearly in congress' court."

Mary Cheney's pregnancy caused a stir with traditional family activists, including James Dobson, chairman of Colorado-based Focus on the Family.

"We should not enter into yet another untested and far-reaching social experiment, this one driven by the desires of same-sex couples to bear and raise children," Dobson said last December. He said his position was not intended to "harm or insult women such as Cheney and Poe."

At a New York forum last winter, Mary Cheney said: "This is a baby. This is a blessing from God. It is not a political statement. It is not a prop to be used in a debate by people on either side of an issue. It is my child." But she added that "every piece of remotely responsible research" had shown "no difference between children who are raised by same-sex parents and children raised by opposite-sex parents."

Cheney has been with Poe for 15 years, and the couple has not disclosed how Mary became pregnant.

The politicians who created the illegal immigration problem have determined the only course to correction is to repeat the mistakes of the past. Far from being even a modest step in the right direction, the Senate, along with President Bush, have embarked on a path that will have dire consequences for the future survival of our nation.

Bush and the senators involved in this travesty of a compromise may as well have sent out engraved invitations to the 90 million or so Mexicans who have not yet chosen to cross the border. Millions more will be determined to get in on the action, they have nothing to worry about because the compromise actually weakens plans to secure the border.

Few actions in Washington over the last 200 years have plunged a dagger as close to the very heart of American sovereignty, the rule of law, the will of the people and the very concept of self-government as this move to legalize somewhere between 15 million and 20 million people who broke the law to get here.

Is it possible we're so fat, lazy, immoral and ignorant that we will just accept what has been handed to us by out-of-touch elites?

Where did it all go? How did that America become the sleazy, decadent place we live in today ? so different that those who grew up prior to the '60s feel like it's a foreign country? Did it just "happen"?

It didn't just "happen." In fact, A DELIBERATE AGENDA WAS FOLLOWED TO STEAL OUR CULTURE and leave a new and very different one in its place. The story of how and why is one of the most important parts of our nation's history and it is a story almost no one knows. The people behind it wanted it that way.

What happened, in short, is that America's traditional culture, which had grown up over generations from our Western, Judeo-Christian roots, was swept aside by an ideology. WE KNOW THAT IDEOLOGY BEST AS "POLITICAL CORRECTNESS" OR "MULTI-CULTURALISM." It really is cultural Marxism, Marxism translated from economic into cultural terms in an effort that goes back not to the 1960s, but to World War I. Incredible as it may seem, just as the old economic Marxism of the Soviet Union has faded away, a new cultural Marxism has become the ruling ideology of America's elites. THE NO. 1 GOAL OF THAT CULTURAL MARXISM, SINCE ITS CREATION, HAS BEEN THE DESTRUCTION OF WESTERN CULTURE AND THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.

Read full article from worldnetdaily.com

AT LEAST THREE DEATHS AND MORE THAN 1,600 ADVERSE REACTIONS INCLUDING SPONTANEOUS ABORTION AND PARALYSIS have been connected to Merck & Co.'s new vaccine for the human papillomavirus, a treatment the company has lobbied state lawmakers to make mandatory for young girls across the nation.

"The FDA adverse event reports on the HPV vaccine read like a catalog of horrors," said Tom Fitton, Judicial Watch president. "Any state or local government now beset by Merck's lobbying campaigns to mandate this HPV vaccine for young girls ought to take a look at these adverse health reports. IT LOOKS AS IF AN UNPROVEN VACCINE WITH DANGEROUS SIDE EFFECTS IS BEING PUSHED AS A MIRACLE DRUG."

WND earlier reported how the company's campaign to promote its $400-per person vaccine was sweeping the nation. IT WAS BEING FACILITATED BY DONATIONS FROM MERCK TO WOMEN IN GOVERNMENT, whose members are women state lawmakers across the country, WHO IN TURN OFTEN WERE INTRODUCING LEGISLATION that would require young girls to be given the brand new vaccine in order to be enrolled in school.

Judicial Watch said documents it obtained from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration under the provisions of the Freedom of Information provided information on 1,637 reports of adverse reactions. The reports of the deaths cited myocarditis, coronary artery thrombosis and pulmonary embolism as causes for the deaths. Jill Farrell, a spokeswoman with Judicial Watch, said its own tabulation uncovered 371 SERIOUS REACTIONS AMONG THE 1,637 TOTAL REPORTED. She said JW found more cases of serious situations than did the official government report, because of the way reactions were classified.

"Stopped breathing later revived. 13-year-old developed pain, sought physical therapy, later could not tolerate therapy due to pain...Hives, sent home, found unresponsive by mother, who called 911, revived at ER" Farrell noted. "You decide. If these were your children, would you consider these non-serious?"

OF THE 42 WOMEN WHO GOT THE VACCINE WHILE PREGNANT, 18 EXPERIENCED SIDE EFFECTS RANGING FROM SPONTANEOUS ABORTION TO FETAL ABNORMITIES, THE REPORT SAID.

A powerful think tank chaired by former Sen. Sam Nunn and guided by trustees including Richard Armitage, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Harold Brown, William Cohen and Henry Kissinger, is in the final stages of preparing a report to the White House and U.S. Congress on the benefits of integrating the U.S., Mexico and Canada into one political, economic and security bloc.

The final report, published in English, Spanish and French, is scheduled for submission to all three governments by Sept. 30, according to the Center for Strategic & International Studies. CSIS boasts of playing a large role in the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1994 - a treaty that set in motion a political movement many believe resembles the early stages of the European Community on its way to becoming the European Union.

"The results of the study will enable policymakers to make sound, strategic, long-range policy decisions about North America, with an emphasis on regional integration," explains Armand B. Peschard-Sverdrup, director of CSIS' Mexico Project. "Specifically, the project will focus on a detailed examination of future scenarios, which are based on current trends, and involve six areas of critical importance to the trilateral relationship: labor mobility, energy, the environment, security, competitiveness and border infrastructure and logistics."

Peter F. Drucker, in one of his dozens of best-selling books, "Post Capitalist Society," published in 1993, wrote that the European Community, the progenitor of the European Union, "triggered the attempt to create a North American economic community, built around the United States but integrating both Canada and Mexico into a common market."

"So far this attempt is purely economic in its goal," wrote the Presidential Medal of Freedom honoree. "But it can hardly remain so in the long run." Drucker describes in his book the worldwide trends toward globalization that were evident back then - the creation and empowerment of transnational organizations and institutions, international environmental goals regarding carbon dioxide and agreements to fight terrorism long before 9/11.

U.S. Navy officials said Iran was not notified of plans to sail nine ships, including two aircraft carriers, through the Straits of Hormuz, a narrow channel in international waters off Iran's coast and a major artery for global oil shipments. The maneuver raises pressure on the Islamic Republic, coinciding with a report by the U.N. atomic watchdog on Iran's nuclear program, which could lead to tougher sanctions.

Oil climbed towards $70 as the U.S. ships sailed into the straits, through which 40 percent of globally traded oil passes. Most U.S. ships pass through the straits at night so as not to attract attention, and rarely move in such large numbers. Navy officials said the decision to send a second aircraft carrier was made at the last minute, without giving a reason. The group of ships, carrying about 17,000 personnel and 140 aircraft scheduled to participate in the exercises that will take place over the next few weeks.

Following the military welcoming ceremony for Major Gen. Al-Attiyah, the two generals signed a framework agreement on military education, technical and scientific cooperation in the field of the military. Both generals mentioned their hope to develop military relations.

Then Gen. Büyükanit met with Lt. Gen. Abdullah Al-Khalifa to sign a framework agreement on military cooperation with Bahrain. "I prepared a speech which would last more than an hour," the Turkish general joked during his speech, as he stressed his hope to develop relations.

Lt. Gen. Al-Khalifa replied that Turkey is a model for them in the area with its democracy and economy.