Extreme weather events are ever present, and there is no evidence of systematic increases. Sea levels have been rising since the end of the last ice age, most rapidly about 12,000 years ago. In recent centuries, the average rate has been relatively uniform. The rate was higher during the first half of the 20th century than during the second. At around a couple of millimeters per year, it is a residual of much larger positive and negative changes locally. The risk from global warming is less than that from other factors (primarily geological).

The impact on agriculture is equivocal. India warmed during the second half of the 20th century, yet agricultural output increased markedly. The impact on disease is dubious. Infectious diseases, like malaria, are not so much a matter of temperature as of poverty and public health. Malaria remains endemic in Siberia, and was once so in Michigan and Europe. Exposure to cold is generally more dangerous.

Our so-called "crisis" is thus neither a product of current observations nor of projections. But does it matter if global warming is a "crisis" or not? Aren't we threatened by a serious temperature rise? Shouldn't we act anyway, because we are stewards of the environment?

Herein lies the moral danger behind global warming hysteria. Each day, 20,000 people in the world die of waterborne diseases. Half a billion people go hungry. A child is orphaned by AIDS every seven seconds. This does not have to happen. We allow it while fretting about "saving the planet." What is wrong with us that we downplay this human misery before our eyes and focus on events that will probably not happen even a hundred years hence? We know that the greatest cause of environmental degradation is poverty; on this, we can and must act.

The global warming "crisis" is misguided. In hubristically seeking to "control" climate, we foolishly abandon age-old adaptations to inexorable change. There is no way we can predictably manage this most complex of coupled, nonlinear chaotic systems. The inconvenient truth is that "doing something" (emitting gases) at the margins and "not doing something" (not emitting gases) are equally unpredictable.

Climate change is a norm, not an exception. It is both an opportunity and a challenge. The real crises for 4 billion people in the world remain poverty, dirty water and the lack of a modern energy supply. By contrast, global warming represents an ecochondria of the pampered rich.
We can no longer afford to cling to the anti-human doctrines of outdated environmentalist thinking. The "crisis" is the global warming political agenda, not climate change.

The shell companies at times have presented themselves as acting on behalf of the Waqf, the Muslim custodians of the Temple Mount, WND has learned. Sheik Azzam Khateeb, who was installed last month as the new manager of the Waqf, is known to be close to the Jordanian monarchy. The previous Waqf manager, Sheik Adnon Husseini, was loyal to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah party and had relations with Israel and some Jewish groups. "Khateeb answers directly to Jordan," a Fatah official told WND.

The Israeli and Palestinian officials said Jordan recently placed a bid to purchase Jerusalem's Intercontinental Hotel, which is situated on an important road that leads to an ancient cemetery on the Mount of Olives, adjacent to the Temple Mount. Jordan the past few months has boosted its public profile on the Temple Mount. The appointment of Khateeb as the new Waqf manager for the Temple Mount was widely seen as a nod to Jordan.

In January, Israel granted Jordan permission to replace the main podium in the Al Aqsa Mosque from which Islamic preachers deliver their sermons. The podium is considered one of the most important stands in the Muslim world. Muslims believe it marks the "exact spot" their prophet Muhammad went up to heaven to receive revelations from Allah.

The new stand bears the emblem of the Jordanian Kingdom. It replaces a 1,000-year-old podium believed to have been shipped to Jerusalem by the Islamic conqueror Saladin. That stand was destroyed in 1969, when an Australian tourist set fire to the Al Aqsa Mosque.

Last month WND first reported Prime Minister Ehud Olmert granted permission to Jordan to construct a large minaret at a site on the Temple Mount where Jewish groups here had petitioned to build a synagogue.
A top leader of the Waqf told WND Olmert's granting of permission to build the minaret in the synagogue's place "confirms 100 percent the Haram al-Sharif (Temple Mount) belongs to Muslims."

"This proves Jewish conspiracies for a synagogue will never succeed and solidifies our presence here. It will make Muslims worldwide more secure that the Jews will never take over the Haram al-Sharif," the Waqf official said.

"The trouble is this emboldens the state again, only now it's at a higher level, and the courts still are agreeing with them. This could put Melissa back into the psychiatric system where she could disappear from sight entirely," he said. The family's five other children also are endangered now because of potential court rulings that could be based on any evaluation of the parents, he said.

Besides the other children in the family, there are further ramifications, too, with the decision raising questions of larger government attacks on homeschoolers in Germany, where that choice of education is illegal because the government wants to stamp out any "parallel" societies utilizing a worldview different from the state's.
Even those German families who already have fled to other countries because of Germany's homeschool ban are moving into hiding because of the possibility they could be returned to face German fines or jail time for homeschooling, Thornton said.

Members of the German homeschool community previously have taken their battle for the right to teach their children Christian basics to the Human Rights Court for the European Union, asking for affirmation of the statement in the European Convention on Human Rights that: "In the exercise of any functions which it assumes in relation to education and to teaching, the State shall respect the right of parents to ensure such education and teaching is in conformity with their own religious and philosophical convictions."

However, that court just last year affirmed a German court which had ruled the parental "wish" to have their children grow up without anti-Christian influences "could not take priority over compulsory school attendance."

US State Department spokesman Tom Casey said "they had a useful exchange of views on Iraq refugee issues". The US had previously refused direct high-level diplomatic contact with Syria, which it accuses of seeking to destabilise Lebanon and supporting fighters in Iraq.

Washington withdrew its ambassador to Damascus after Syrian authorities were implicated in the February 2005 assassination of Rafiq al-Hariri, the former Lebanese prime minister, in Beirut. Sauerbrey had been expected to meet Meqdad together with a representative of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), allowing US officials to play down any appearance of bilateral discussions.

Afterwards, Meqdad said he expressed to Sauerbrey his wish to schedule bilateral talks with the US on all Middle East issues. "We said that all concerns in Arab region are linked and it is necessary to engage in a global dialogue on all of them," he told reporters. "It is impossible to find lasting solutions [to these problems] without such a dialogue."

In May 2000 this aim was achieved, thanks largely to the success of the party's military arm, the Islamic Resistance. In return, the movement, which represents Lebanon's Shia Muslims - the country's single largest community - won the respect of most Lebanese.

Hezbollah was formed primarily to offer resistance to the Israeli occupation. It also dreamed of transforming Lebanon's multi-confessional state into an Iranian-style Islamic state, although this idea was later abandoned in favour of a more inclusive approach that has survived to this day.

The party's rhetoric calls for the destruction of the state of Israel. It regards the whole of Palestine as occupied Muslim land and it argues that Israel has no right to exist.

The party was long supported by Iran, which provided it with arms and money. Hezbollah has always sought to further an Islamic way of life. But the party emphasises that its Islamic vision should not be interpreted as an intention to impose an Islamic society on the Lebanese.

"The Chinese military is less transparent than any significant military in Asia outside of North Korea," says Kenneth Lieberthal, a former White House China expert who's now at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. That doesn't serve China's interests, he says, because "when you are not very transparent, people assume you have something to hide."

Says General Tetsuya Nishimoto, Japan's former military chief of staff: "We should consider the build-up as a threat, because their goals and intentions are unclear." The official $45 billion defence-spending level for 2007 is less than 10 percent of the $622 billion the U.S. will spend on its military this year. U.S. officials and analysts say China habitually under-reports its true budget by a factor of two to three; whatever China spends, some of its senior commanders say, it still isn't enough.

China has also been able to alter the balance in the arena that matters most to its policy makers: Taiwan, which the government in Beijing regards as an integral part of China territory. In 1995, the U.S. faced down China by sending two aircraft- carrier groups into the area. Since then, China has steadily increased its military edge over the Taiwanese, while gaining the ability to inflict considerable damage on any U.S. force coming to Taiwan's aid in a crisis, say military experts.

Countries carrying out the most trade with China are among those expressing concern about Chinese military intentions. Last year, the U.S. was mainland China's biggest trading partner, with $262.6 billion in commerce, while Japan was second at $207.3 billion and Taiwan fourth at $107.8 billion, according to data from China's Customs General Administration.

While China is beefing up its military capabilities, Madeiros says, "what you don't see is China buying a long-range bomber force, long-range heavy-lift capabilities, things that would indicate that it's trying to develop global power projection." That hasn't stopped some top U.S. officials from ringing alarm bells. In a Feb. 23 speech in Sydney, Vice President Dick Cheney said China's buildup and the satellite shoot-down "are not consistent with China's stated goal of a peaceful rise."

According to the German Chancellor's Office's internal schedule, the final negotiations should begin April 23 and be terminated around June 1. As a prelude, Berlin will launch a large-scale PR campaign, culminating in a "Europe Festival" at the end of March before it proceeds on an "Information Tour" that will take it to more than 50 German cities. The estimated costs of this undertaking are in the double-digit millions. Among the cooperating partners of this propaganda endeavour, which also targets children and youth, are sectors of the German armed forces (Bundeswehr), including one institution specializing in psychological warfare operations.

Nearly all of the states that had initially rejected the proposed draft of the EU constitution, that had been solicited by Berlin, have, over the past few weeks, given up their resistance to many aspects. At the beginning of February, the governments of Great Britain and the Netherlands made known that they are in agreement with a radically abridged version of the contract. It is supposed to regulate the rationalization of the EU's institutions, in order to prepare for a more hard-hitting foreign policy and possibly introduce majority-rule decisions on central policies.

Great Britain still refuses to accept such decisions.

Cahuasquí said that most of the 1,000 foreign military bases on the planet belong to the United States, which has 737 in different countries. Others belong to Russia, China, the United Kingdom and Italy. "And these do not include secret military bases, like the four operated by the U.S. in Iraq," she said.

"But the United States doesn't only have bases in developing countries. It has 81 bases in Germany and 37 in Japan," she added. In Latin America and the Caribbean there are 17 U.S. military bases, located in Colombia, Peru, El Salvador, Aruba, Curaçao, Honduras, Ecuador, and Guantánamo Bay in Cuba, she noted.

Wilbert van der Zeijden, of the Transnational Institute in the Netherlands, said he wanted the meeting to foster "a broad global campaign" against foreign military presence and bases all over the world. "If we can't shut down all the bases, we may at least be able to weaken the U.S. military network which allows them to attack when and where they wish," he said.

Her new "secret" isn't very new at all. In fact, it's the oldest lie in the history of the world. It is that you and you alone are master of your own universe a kind of "god," if you will. Whatever you want in life will be yours if only you visualize it and claim it earnestly in your heart. Oprah is peddling this lie to millions on her TV show.

I was once ambivalent about Oprah Winfrey not really quite sure to what to make of her. Today, I can honestly say that she is leading people into spiritual darkness. The book she is touting, by an Australian talk-show producer named Rhonda Byrne, makes some extraordinary claims.

"Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses and Jesus were not only prosperity teachers, but also millionaires themselves, with more affluent lifestyles than many present-day millionaires could conceive of," she writes.
Now let's put aside the dangling preposition for a moment and deal with the substance of this outrageous claim. Jesus was a millionaire? What did Jesus tell the rich young man who asked him how to inherit eternal life? He told him to sell all his possessions and give the money to the poor.

That's not the gospel Oprah is peddling today. The false and dangerous gospel she is promoting contends: "The energy you put into the world both good and bad is exactly what comes back to you. This means you create the circumstances of your life with the choices you make every day."

Here's another ugly aspect of this prosperity gospel: "The only reason any person does not have enough money is because they are blocking money from coming to them with their thoughts." Why should we ever help the destitute, the orphans, the widows, the victims of tragedy and illness? After all, according to Oprah and Byrne, they've brought these problems on themselves.

If you think I'm exaggerating the dangerous, deceiving claims of "The Secret," here's another, specifically dealing with those who contract diseases: "You cannot 'catch' anything unless you think you can, and thinking you can is inviting it to you with your thought."

I guess it's a sign of the times as we're told in II Timothy. Oprah is just doing what she's always done, I suppose: "Ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth."

Michael Marcavage, director of Repent America and Pike both had alerted their constituencies earlier to H.R. 254, or the David Ray Hate Crimes Prevention Act, which could create "anti-hate" restrictions and penalties.
Marcavage told WND that plan would invert American justice, and instead of requiring evidence it would leave it to someone who claims to be offended to determine whether a "crime" has been committed.

"Truth is not allowed as evidence in hate crimes trials. A homosexual can claim emotional damage from hearing Scripture that describes his lifestyle as an abomination. He can press charges against the pastor or broadcaster who merely reads the Bible in public. The 'hater' can be fined thousands of dollars and even imprisoned!" Marcavage said.

Worse yet, there are some key phrases that open doors wide that many people don't want opened. For example, Pike said, the bill is to "prevent and respond to alleged violations," meaning "the government does not even have to wait until a hate crime has been committed but may act pre-emptively to 'prevent' crime."

Repent America, some of whose members already have served jail time simply for proclaiming the biblical message, is joining in sounding the alarm. "Having been charged under Pennsylvania's hate crimes law for declaring the truth about homosexuality, I can assure you that if this bill is passed and signed into law, it will be used to put Christians behind bars," said Marcavage.

In 2005 data from NASA's Mars Global Surveyor and Odyssey missions revealed that the carbon dioxide "ice caps" near Mars's south pole had been diminishing for three summers in a row. Habibullo Abdussamatov, head of the St. Petersburg's Pulkovo Astronomical Observatory in Russia, says the Mars data is evidence that the current global warming on Earth is being caused by changes in the sun.

"The long-term increase in solar irradiance is heating both Earth and Mars," he said. Abdussamatov believes that changes in the sun's heat output can account for almost all the climate changes we see on both planets. Mars and Earth, for instance, have experienced periodic ice ages throughout their histories. "Man-made greenhouse warming has made a small contribution to the warming seen on Earth in recent years, but it cannot compete with the increase in solar irradiance," Abdussamatov said.

By studying fluctuations in the warmth of the sun, Abdussamatov believes he can see a pattern that fits with the ups and downs in climate we see on Earth and Mars. Most scientists now fear that the massive amount of carbon dioxide humans are pumping into the air will lead to a catastrophic rise in Earth's temperatures, dramatically raising sea levels as glaciers melt and leading to extreme weather worldwide.

Abdussamatov remains contrarian, however, suggesting that the sun holds something quite different in store.
"The solar irradiance began to drop in the 1990s, and a minimum will be reached by approximately 2040," Abdussamatov said. "It will cause a steep cooling of the climate on Earth in 15 to 20 years."

French and German markets also slipped in early trading - with the Cac and Dax indexes losing close to 2% each. In Taiwan shares closed down 3.7% while the main Indian market was 3.6% lower in mid-afternoon trading.

The Nikkei tumbled 575.68 points to 16,642.25 on Monday, its lowest level since December and the largest single day plunge since June 2006. The fall was largely a result of the continued rise of the yen - which hit its highest rate against the dollar in three months on Monday.

By close of trading on Friday, indexes had tumbled across the US, Europe and Asia. The Dow Jones fell 4.2% during the week and the FTSE 100 lost £80bn, or 5%, in value. Investors had blamed factors as varied as a new tax in China and the US mortgage market for the decision to dump stocks.

The size of last week's sell-off may have caught investors by surprise, but observers had been warning that a market correction was on the cards. Many of the world's top indexes and shares had climbed back to levels not seen since the dotcom bubble was burst in 2000, fanning fears that they had become overvalued.
China's Shanghai market - which sparked the sell-off by falling almost 9% on Tuesday, its biggest decline for a decade - has more than doubled in value since the end of 2005.

Former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan did little to calm markets when he said last week that there was a possibility that the US economy would go into recession by the end of the year.

"Taiwan is a country whose sovereignty lies outside the People's Republic of China," he added, referring to China by its formal name.He spoke of a "four wants" policy - namely independence, a new constitution, further development and a change to the country's officially designated name. Since taking office, President Chen has sought to emphasise the island's separate identity, the BBC's Caroline Gluck in Taipei says.

But his latest comments are his strongest since taking office and raise new worries of increased tensions with China as well as Taiwan's main ally, the US, our correspondent adds. Those fears contributed to falls on Taiwan's stock market on Monday and a weakening of the Taiwan dollar against the US dollar. Opposition leaders accused him of being irresponsible and putting Taiwan at risk of a possible war with China.

China sees Taiwan as part of its territory and has threatened to use force if the island ever moved to declare formal independence. The United States is committed to supplying Taiwan with defensive weapons, but opposes any Taiwanese provocation of China. In response to Mr Chen's comments, China's Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing told Taiwanese reporters in Beijing: "Don't listen to local leaders".

"Whoever wants to split away will become a criminal in history". Amid increasing international concern at the country's expanding military, China on Sunday announced a 17% increase in the defence budget for 2007. Taiwan's defence ministry warned that the move not only upset the military balance across the Taiwan Strait, but also increases "the potential for a disruption to peace and stability in Asia".

The two sides have made considerable progress, and Vietnam's prime minister met Pope Benedict in Rome in January. But the Vatican - whose delegation is being led by the Holy See's Undersecretary of State for Relations with States, Monsignor Pietro Parolin - remains concerned about a number of issues.

Last month, Father Nguyen Van Ly, a Catholic priest and democracy activist, was taken from his home in the Bishop's Palace in the central city of Hue by police and placed under house arrest 20kms (12 miles) outside the city. A Vatican news agency has also alleged mistreatment of Catholics by, among others, local authorities in the north west of Vietnam.

The Vatican wants the government to return church property confiscated decades ago, and also to be allowed to provide more education and welfare services. This is something the government is considering as it tries to manage some of the problems caused by Vietnam's rapid economic development. The government keeps the Catholic Church under tight control - for example, it must approve the appointment of every priest. This is a legacy of a time when the communist authorities saw the church as an agent of colonialism.

But times have changed and now it sees the church as a potential ally against social problems and even as a force for national unity.

China's state-run Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association welcomed the meeting and especially Pope Benedict XVI's decision to write a letter to China's 10m Catholics. Association vice-chairman Liu Bainian said: "This is beneficial for China-Vatican relations. It is a step forward but we still have to see the concrete actions."

The two main causes of disagreement between the sides are the Vatican's recognition of Taiwan and China's ordination of bishops without the Holy See's consent. Three such bishops were appointed last year. While the Vatican has indicated it is willing to downgrade relations with Taiwan, the Episcopal appointments remain a sticking point.

The BBC's David Willey in Rome says both sides seem to want to improve ties, keeping open the possibility of a papal visit around the time of the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.