Christian entertainment developers Cloud 9 Games Inc announced Wednesday the planned release of their first-ever Christian karaoke PC Game.
The “Heavenly Harmony Karaoke and Vocal Performance Game” will be released this August and will help serious singers to increase their vocal abilities through real-time feedback from the game. Through an intricate system that checks for tone and timing, participants will be able to receive serious critiques on what to improve.
"As a singer with Phillips, Craig and Dean for 16 years, I have often wondered, 'How would I do on American Idol?'” asked Dove Award-winning singer Randy Phillips in a statement. “Well, I don't have to wonder anymore. ‘Heavenly Harmony’ cued up a song for me and analysed my pitch as I sang. Amazing!"
The new creation features 25 of Christian music’s most recognisable songs – such as “Shout to the Lord", "I Can Only Imagine", “Praise the Lord" and "Amazing Grace" – of which vocalists can try their own renditions. The CD comes with a microphone that plugs directly into the computer, making it easy for players to jump right into the songs.
The game is meant for everyone, whether professional or simply a member of the local church ...   more »

Scientists have spotted a thick layer of melted rock beneath the Earth’s crust that could be part of a fluid band of hot magma circling the globe. The magma ring has until now remained a theory.
The molten-rock layer is 10 miles thick and can’t be seen, felt or smelt from the surface. Researchers Daniel Toffelmier and James Tyburczy of Arizona State University found the layer using a relatively new technique that measures changes in weak electrical currents flowing through the Earth’s mantle rock.
The current is created when the solar wind, a continuous flow of charged atomic particles emitted by the sun, interact with Earth’s magnetic field, called the magnetosphere.
The chemical make-up of the rocks affects their conductivity. By measuring changes in the current at different depths, the scientists were able to detect distinct rock layers, including the "invisible" magma layer.
“Rocks are semiconductors,” Tyburczy said. “And rocks with more hydrogen embedded in their structure conduct better, as do rocks that are partially molten.”
The discovery, detailed in the June 21 issue of the journal Nature, partially confirms a recent hypothesis by two Yale University geoscientists, which states that a band of molten magma circles the Earth about ...   more »

Diana West - A reader recently e-mailed me about casualties sustained by his nephew's Stryker unit in Iraq after an attack by an Iranian-manufactured IFD. "Why," he wrote, "are we not leveling the plants in Iran that manufacture these weapons?"
Well, that would make too much sense. It's obvious Iran is at war with us—and not just in Iraq, where its agents and proxies kill and maim Americans by arming and organizing some of our many foes there. Throughout the region, from Hamastan (Gaza) to Hezbollah-land (Lebanon) to Taliban strongholds in Afghanistan, the Islamic Republic of Iran, along with Syria, is fighting against us, against our interests. But we pretend, as a matter of policy, not to notice.
Why?
I don't claim to know the whole answer, but fear must surely figure into it — fear of wider war, which I guess is natural, but also fear of a deeper truth, which is more difficult to overcome. That deeper truth starts with the realization that our strategic interests do not lie within the borders of Iraq. After all, what do we get even if the "surge" succeeds in establishing security in Baghdad and even if — and this is the ...   more »

Baghdad believers being terrorized for crime of Christianity
By Hannah Allam and Leila Fadel    
Is Islam incompatible with democracy, decency?
AGHDAD, Iraq — An al-Qaida-affiliated insurgent group is giving Christians in Baghdad a stark set of options: Convert to Islam, marry your daughters to our fighters, pay an Islamic tax or leave with only the clothes on your back.
A U.S. military official said American forces became aware of the threats only last month and now have erected barriers around the largest Christian enclave in Baghdad's Dora neighborhood in an effort to protect its residents.
Christians in Baghdad refuse to discuss the threats for fear of retribution. But in Syria, where thousands of Iraqi Christians have fled, tales abound of families that were killed or driven from their homes because they either refused or couldn't afford to pay the jizya, a tax usually levied on non-Muslim men of military age that's been part of Islam for more than 1,000 years.
"Two or three months ago, we heard we were going to be forcibly removed from Dora," said Rafah Elia Daoud, 53, who fled to Damascus, Syria's capital, on May 24. "Not everyone got a paper with the threat, but ...   more »

The 411-2 vote by the US House of Representatives to implore the UN Security Council to charge Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad with violating the 1948 Genocide Convention represents a significant milestone in the campaign to use the instruments of international law against Teheran.
The legislation is nonbinding, but it clearly makes a legal determination that Ahmadinejad has engaged in "incitement to commit genocide" through his call that Israel be "wiped off the map."
The initiative to see the Iranian president indicted under the Genocide Convention began in New York on December 14, when former Canadian justice minister Irwin Cotler and Harvard Law Prof. Alan Dershowitz joined outgoing US ambassador to the UN John Bolton and an Israeli legal team at an event sponsored by the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations and the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs at the New York Bar Association's offices.
Cotler's involvement was critical because, as Canada's attorney-general, he actually prosecuted Rwandan Hutus in Canada under the Genocide Convention for their involvement in broadcasting repeated calls over the radio for the massacres that led to the deaths of over 800,000 Rwandans, chiefly from the Tutsi tribe.
For Cotler, who still serves in the ...   more »