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Religious

Elements of Eastern faiths and New Age thinking have been widely adopted by 65% of U.S. adults, including many who call themselves Protestants and Catholics, according to a survey by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. Syncretism—mashing up contradictory beliefs—appears on the rise. Of the 72% of Americans who attend religious services at least once a year, 35% say they attend in multiple places, hop scotching across denominations.

—Pew Research, 12/9/2009

The Church of England is facing the loss of as many as one in ten paid clergy in the next five years. According to figures on the Church of England website there has been a 22.5 per cent decrease since 2000. About one in sixty people worships with the Church of England on an average Sunday. Terry Sanderson, of the National Secular Society, said: “Such numbers remove the last vestige of justification for the Church’s establishment. It is quite clear that the Church of England is, to all intents and purposes, finished.”

—The Times, 11/28/2009

Thomas Nelson Inc., a Nashville-based publisher of Christian books, software and videos, [has released] “The Word of Promise Audio Bible,” all 98 hours and 79 CDs of it. Performing the [New King James] Bible verbatim from Genesis to Revelation was a huge undertaking, involving more than 1,000 actors, technicians and musicians, and 175,000 takes over four years. An Italian film and TV composer wrote the music and conducted a 150-piece orchestra. The first portion of the project, the New Testament, was released in 2007 and honored as the Christian Book of the Year for 2008 by the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association. It was the first audio Bible to receive the award and has sold more than 700,000 copies.

—Los Angeles Times, 11/16/2009

In the last five years, India has seen a sharp increase in violence provoked by religious and ethnic diversity. These are the findings from a report submitted to the the upper house of Parliament in New Delhi. Over the past five years extremist attacks number more than 3,800.

—Asia News, 12/15/2009

The Vatican says it will admit married Anglican priests to the Catholic priesthood case by case. Vatican officials recently announced changes to make it easier for Anglicans to convert, as many conservative Anglicans are disillusioned by their own church’s allowing women priests and gay clergy. As for possibly admitting married Anglican seminarians to the Catholic priesthood, the Vatican says criteria are being developed.

—Detroit News, 10/31/2009

Four hundred years after it locked up Galileo for challenging the view that the Earth was the center of the universe, the Vatican has called in experts to study the possibility of extraterrestrial alien life and its implication for the Catholic Church, according to the Rev. Jose Gabriel Funes, an astronomer and director of the Vatican Observatory.

—Associated Press, 11/10/2009

Followers of an unapproved church in Beijing were again forced by the government to find a new place to worship. Worship in China, governed by the officially atheist Communist Party, is allowed only in state-approved churches, but millions of people belong to unregistered churches that often face official harassment.

—Associated Press, 11/15/2009

Discontented Anglicans who convert must not become a “sect” within the Roman Catholic Church, a senior Catholic clergyman dealing with church unity has warned. He does not foresee legal battles over church buildings if groups of Anglicans do decide to convert to Rome in large numbers. Unlike North America, Anglican congregations do not own their own buildings.

—BBC, 12/11/2009

President Barack Obama’s address to the Muslim world last June was chosen as the top religion story of 2009 in a survey of journalists who cover the beat. Obama extended a hand to the Islamic world in a speech in Cairo while quoting from the Quran, the Gospel of Matthew, and the Talmud, the collection of Jewish law. The survey of more than 100 journalists was conducted by the Religion News­writers Association.

—Associated Press, 12/16/2009

A national referendum, passed on Sunday with 57.5% of the vote, bans the construction of new minarets across Switzerland. At least for the time being, the minaret has replaced the veil as the dominant symbol of the tense relationship between Islam and the West. There are just four minarets in all of Switzerland, which has about 350,000 Muslim residents, most from Turkey and Kosovo.

—Los Angeles Times, 12/1/2009

The first interfaith week is being held in England, to strengthen relations and awareness. The government—which is supporting the event—said it hoped religious communities could help tackle problems such as the environment and parenting. According to the 2001 Census, Britain has more than 41m Christians, about 1.5m Muslims, 558,000 Hindus, 336,000 Sikhs, 267,000 Jews and 149,000 Buddhists.

—BBC, 11/15/2009

Parents have protested against government-funded music classes outside a Kuwait city school, calling the courses “Satanic.” “Music is not part of our tradition and religion, and we totally reject it,” Qatar’s Gulf News quoted parent Salih al-Khalid as saying. The issue of music education has been a hot topic in Kuwait, with Islamist lawmakers pushing for a total ban on such studies in school.

—Haaretz, 11/16/2009

Social

One of the worst-ever natural disasters in the western hemisphere left the Haitian capital in ruins. A day later, the death toll was unknown and—as is always the case with earthquakes, which bury their victims—unknowable. But more than one Haitian official told news organizations that they thought the final count of the dead would be more than 100,000.

—TIME, 1/25/2010

An Italian who lost his left forearm in a car crash was successfully linked to a robotic hand, allowing him to feel sensations in the artificial limb and control it with his thoughts.

—Associated Press, 12/3/2009

Within days of being born, babies cry in a way that reflects the language spoken by their parents. A study published in the journal Current Biology, said babies in the last trimester of development in utero respond to noise and can sense the mother’s voice. “The sense of hearing is the first sensory system that develops.”

—Washington Post, 12/1/2009

Antidepressant medications taken by roughly 7% of American adults cause profound personality changes in many patients with depression, far beyond simply lifting the veil of sadness. Researchers saw strong drops in neuroticism and increases in extroversion in patients taking antidepressants, two of five traits thought to define personality and shape a person’s day-to-day thoughts and behavior. Psychologists have long thought that such fundamental traits … shift very little over a lifetime.

—Los Angeles Times, 12/8/2009

Beijing experienced its heaviest snowfall in at least 54 years. Tens of thousands of vehicles and people were stranded on highways linking the city with the surrounding provinces of Shanxi, Hebei, Liaoning and Inner Mongolia, according to state news agen­cy Xinhua. The government induced snowfall in the capital on Nov. 10 by seeding clouds with silver iodide, the China Daily newspaper reported. The seeding brought an additional 16 million tons of snow, according to the report. Beijing takes every opportunity to induce precipitation as the city is suffering from drought. China suffered an estimated 151.65 billion yuan ($22 billion) in direct economic losses almost 20 months ago when the country’s south was covered by the most severe snowstorms in five decades.

—Bloomberg, 11/12/2009

Supermarkets in the UK have been accused of ­encouraging binge drinking by continuing to sell alcohol more cheaply than bottled water.

—The Times, 12/20/2009

A hundred years ago, West Africa’s last giraffes numbered in the thousands and their habitat stretched from Senegal’s Atlantic Ocean coast to Chad, in the heart of the continent. By the dawn of the 21st century, their world had shrunk to a tiny zone southeast of the capital, Niamey, stretching barely 150 miles (240 kilometers) long. Their numbers dwindled so low that in 1996, they numbered a mere 50. Instead of disappearing as many feared, though, the giraffes have bounced miraculously back from the brink of extinction, swelling to more than 200 today. Giraffe hunting is prohibited in many countries. And some, like Kenya, have taken giraffe meat off the menu of tourist restaurants that once served them up on huge skewers.

—Associated Press, 11/8/2009

The Pentagon recently found that 75% of Americans ages 17 to 24 are ineligible to enlist in the military-largely because of a lack of education, a criminal record, poor fitness, or all of the above.

—TIME, 11/5/2009

Amazon’s Kindle e-book reader is now the most-gifted item in Amazon’s history, the company announced recently. On Christmas Day, users bought more books via the Kindle than they did physical books—for the first time ever, the company said in a release. On the company’s peak day (Dec. 14) customers bought 9.5 million items throughout the globe, or 110 items per second.

—PCMag.com, 12/27/2009

The United States soon may see its prison population drop for the first time in almost four decades, a milestone in a nation that locks up more people than any other. The inmate population has risen steadily since the early 1970s as states adopted get-tough policies that sent more people to prison and kept them there longer. Sentencing reforms coincide with a dip in the crime rate, setting the nation up for the first decline in the prison population in almost 40 years. Overall, there were 1.6 million prisoners in state and federal prisons at the end of 2008.

—Los Angeles Times, 12/20/2009

Political

Starting Jan. 1, 2010, the estate tax in the U.S.—which can erase nearly half of a wealthy person’s estate—goes away for a year. For families facing end-of-life decisions in the immediate future, the change is making one of life’s most trying episodes only more complex. Currently, the tax applies to about 5,500 taxpayers a year. Estate-tax experts didn’t expect Congress to allow the tax to lapse, and are flabbergasted that it is actually happening. “I’ve been practicing for more than 30 years, and never has the timing of death made such a financial difference,” says Dennis Belcher, president of the American College of Trust and Estate Counsel. “People have a hard enough time talking about death and addressing estate planning without this.”

—Wall Street Journal, 12/30/2009

Asheville City Councilman Cecil Bothwell believes in ending the death penalty, conserving water and reforming government—but he doesn’t believe in God. His political opponents say that’s a sin that makes him unworthy of serving in office, and they’ve got the North Carolina Constitution on their side. Bothwell can’t be forced out of office over his atheist views because the North Carolina provision is unenforceable, according to the supremacy clause of the U.S. Constitution. In 1961, the U.S. Supreme Court reaffirmed that federal law prohibits states from requiring any kind of religious test to serve in office.

—Associated Press, 12/12/2009

Gunmen have killed a top Somali judge who had sentenced many pirates and human traffickers to long jail terms, the security minister for northern Somalia said. Targeted killings are rarer in Punt­land than in south central Somalia, where the embattled government is fighting an Islamic insurgency. Pirate gangs have exploited the lawlessness to launch attacks from many towns along Somalia’s coastline, including several in Puntland. Somalia has not had an effective central government for 18 years, although Puntland has set up a semi­auton­omous government and the northern region of So­maliland has declared its independence. Warlords overthrew longtime dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991. They then turned on each other, plunging Somalia into chaos and anarchy.

—Associated Press, 11/12/2009

Financial

CIT Group Inc, a lender to hundreds of thousands of small and medium-sized businesses, filed for bankruptcy as the global financial crisis left it unable to fund itself and the recession clobbered its loans. The bankruptcy, one of the largest in U.S. corporate history, has been widely expected for months and is unlikely to provide a massive near-term shock to the financial system. But CIT’s trouble could further weigh on the fragile U.S. economy. The bankruptcy is also a blow for the U.S. government, which invested $2.33 billion in CIT in December through the Troubled Asset Relief Program and will likely lose most of it.

—Associated Press, 11/2/2009

Treasury officials now face a trifecta of headaches: a mountain of new debt, a balloon of short-term borrowings that come due in the months ahead, and interest rates that are sure to climb back to normal as soon as the Federal Reserve decides that the emergency has passed. With the national debt now topping $12 trillion, the White House estimates that the government’s tab for servicing the debt will exceed $700 billion a year in 2019, up from $202 billion this year. In concrete terms, an additional $500 billion a year in interest expense would total more than the combined federal budgets this year for education, energy, homeland security and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

—New York Times, 11/22/2009

Q: What percentage of American homeowners owe more on their mortgages than their properties are worth?
A: 23% (10.7 million homeowners).

—Newsweek, 12/28/2009

The steep drop in travel demand and unpredictable fuel prices have put the airline industry into a tailspin. By the end of this year, airlines worldwide are expected to lose $11 billion in revenue, according to industry officials. [Thus Airlines have embraced] “ancillary fees” and “a la carte pricing” for products and services that passengers used to be given free. In 2008, airlines worldwide collected $10.25 billion in ancillary fees—a 346% increase from 2006.

—Los Angeles Times, 10/31/2009

The tiny Nano cars made by India’s Tata Motors are starting to hit the road in that country after a land dispute forced the relocation of the car’s manufacturing plant and delayed its launch. Analysts say the Nano could rock the international auto industry and put millions of new Indian drivers on the road. The $2,200 basic model is billed as the world’s cheapest car.

—Washington Post, 11/12/2009

As the 2000s come to a close, investors are struck with the depressing realization that putting their money anywhere besides the stock market would have given better returns. Since the end of 1999, stocks on the New York Stock Exchange have lost an average of 0.5% a year thanks to the twin bear markets this decade. And when the impact of inflation is considered, the decade looks even more depressing. In fact, there is no calendar decade in almost 200 years of American stock-market history that has been as bad for investors.

—Wall Street Journal, 12/21/2009

Israel

Israel displayed for the first time a collection of rare coins charred and burned from the Roman destruction of the Jewish Temple nearly 2,000 years ago. About 70 coins were found in an excavation at the foot of a key Jerusalem holy site. They give a rare glimpse into the period of the Jewish revolt that eventually led to the destruction of the Second Jewish Temple in A.D. 70. The coins were excavated from an ancient street below the Temple Mount.

—Associated Press, 11/11/2009

Scientists at the Technicon in Haifa have created a device called the “breathalyzer” that has detected lung cancer with 86 percent accuracy. The test can detect cancers that are not yet large enough to show up on X-rays or CT scans. It works by testing for chemicals that tend to be in cancerous lungs but not in healthy lungs.

—Arutz 7, 11/10/2009

Ultra-Orthodox Jews in Jerusalem have protested outside the offices of the US firm, Intel, against the plant operating on the Jewish day of rest. Intel, the world’s biggest maker of computer chips, ringed its offices with barbed wire before the protest. Israel’s ultra-Orthodox Jews have become increasingly militant in recent months in their attempts to enforce a Saturday work ban. They have held regular protests against the opening of a Jerusalem car park on the Jewish Sabbath.

—BBC, 11/14/2009

Israel has set a new record for incoming tourism for the month of October, with 330,000 tourists for the month in 2009, according to an Israel Tourism Ministry press release. The figure is 9% higher than October of last year, which overall was a record year for tourism. The record October of 2009 comes despite the global economic problems, as well as negative publicity regarding Israel after last winter’s Gaza war. From January to October of this year, 2.3 million tourists have visited Israel, already reaching the total number of tourists for all of 2007, although it is 12% lower than the same 10 months in 2008’s record year. October was the first month in 2009 to have more tourists than in 2008.

—BFP Israel Mosaic Radio, 11/16/2009

Immigration into Israel and the Palestinian West Bank is surging after the financial crisis and economic downturn evaporated jobs elsewhere. After years of a brain drain from the region, and despite the lack of a peace settlement, by the end of this month about 4,000 North American Jews will have immigrated to Israel this year, an increase of 33% over 2008 and the most in one year since 1973.

—Wall Street Journal, 12/3/2009

Professor Meital Zilberman of Tel Aviv University has developed a new biologically active “scaffold” made from soluble fibers, which could be used to help humans replace lost or missing bone or tissue. The artificial and flexible scaffolding releases growth-stimulating drugs to the place where new bone or tissue is needed. It connects tissues together in much the same way as scaffolding is used to surround an existing building when additions to that building are made.

—Israel 21c.org, 11/30/2009

Jews comprise about 65 percent of Jerusalem’s population, but almost half of those are non-Zionist Orthodox Jews.

—JTA, 12/10/2009