The Oslo Accords and the unilateral withdrawal from Gaza are now widely recognized as tragic errors of immense proportions. Now, we face an even greater danger as the Israeli government, in the wake of the Annapolis summit, is scrambling to give away parts of Israel piece by piece in the pursuit of yet another false peace. We must respond ....   more »

Proposal considers taxes, fees, restrictions on numbers, sizes
By Bob Unruh
A regulatory plan being considered by a Toronto suburb would put churches in the crosshairs of an assault that would include dramatically higher taxes and fees as well as restrictions on the sizes and numbers of worship centers.
A series of reports by the No Apologies website featuring WND columnist Tristan Emmanuel has revealed the stunning proposals in Brampton that one source confirmed would be used in multiple cities should the Brampton effort prove successful.
WND already has reported how many Biblical standards of behavior are under attack by the "bastardized courts" of Canada, where activists who claim they have "hurt feelings" are demanding – and getting – penalties imposed against those who oppose the homosexual lifestyle.
That description of the courts, also known as the provincial and national Human Rights Commissions, comes from the Canada Family Action Coalition, which is warning that the United States is not far from having similar assaults on traditional family values.
Now comes the report from the site launched by Emmanuel, the founder and president of the ECP Centre – Equipping Christians for the Public-Square as well as the host of "No Apologies," ...   more »

Energy-saving devices called so dangerous everyone must leave for at least 15 minutes
Thomas Edison, inventor of mercury-free light bulb
Thomas Edison must be rolling over in his grave.
Less than a month after the U.S. Congress passed an energy bill banning the incandescent light bulb by 2014, the UK Environment Agency issued guidelines calling for evacuation of any room where an energy-saving compact fluorescent light bulb is broken, releasing toxic mercury.
The warning comes a month before the British government begins its phase-out of tungsten bulbs, scheduled to be completed in 2011. The switchover to CFL bulbs will save at least five million tons of carbon dioxide emissions every year, the government said.
Health experts warned this week that people with certain skin ailments will suffer from the new eco-friendly bulbs which cause conditions such as eczema to flare up. Additionally, the bulbs have been linked to migraine headaches in some people.
The Environment Agency's latest advice focuses on the 6 to 8 milligrams of toxic mercury in each bulb.
Users who break a bulb should vacate the room for at least 15 minutes, the new guidelines say. The debris should not be removed with a vacuum cleaner, which ...   more »

by Jonathan Rosenblum
An assault on the concept of the sanctity of life.
A Winnipeg case currently winding its way to its grim conclusion pits the children of Samuel Golubchuk against doctors at the Salvation Army Grace General Hospital. According to the pleadings, Golubchuk's doctors informed his children that their 84-year-old father is "in the process of dying" and that they intended to hasten the process by removing his ventilation, and if that proved insufficient to kill him quickly, to also remove his feeding tube. In the event that the patient showed discomfort during these procedures, the chief of the hospital's ICU unit stated in his affidavit that he would administer morphine.
Golubchuk is an Orthodox Jew, as are his children. The latter have adamantly opposed his removal from the ventilator and feeding tube, on the grounds that Jewish law expressly forbids any action designed to shorten life, and that if their father could express his wishes, he would oppose the doctors acting to deliberately terminate his life.
In response, the director of the ICU informed Golubchuk's children that neither their father's wishes nor their own are relevant, and he would do whatever he decided was appropriate. Bill Olson, counsel ...   more »

by Alan Stang
Recent passage by the District of Criminals of the legislation known colloquially as the Veteran Disarmament bill raises the question of why the conspiracy for world government would want to disarm returning veterans. The conspiracy trusted these men to use the most devastating ordinance abroad; it does not trust them to keep and bear much smaller weapons here at home. The obvious answer is that these are the millions of well trained military men I was talking about in my recent piece about a possible assassination threat to Dr. Ron Paul.
These are the men the psychos at the top are afraid of, the men who can stick the red dot in their eye from a mile away. The psychos know these men are out there, watching, stewing, temperatures rising every day; they are beginning to understand that they are dying now because the psychos have poisoned them with Depleted Uranium in the field.
They are beginning to realize that the buddies and the limbs they left behind in Iraq were lost not in defense of this beloved country but in behalf of the megalomaniacal nightmare of conquest the psychos think is “normal.” Now the veterans understand ...   more »

Bill cuts off funds, but Bush insists program can continue
By Jerome R. Corsi
A constitutional crisis is developing between Congress and the Department of Transportation over the federal government's decision to continue its project allowing Mexican trucks on U.S. roads, in defiance of new legislation.
"The DOT response is both arrogant and wrong!" Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., wrote in a letter yesterday to Secretary of Transportation Mary Peters.
Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration officials told the San Diego Union Tribune the cross-border Mexican truck demonstration project would continue because the program was established in September and the amendment allows programs that have already begun to continue.
But Dorgan insisted a provision in the 2008 omnibus spending bill was "clearly written and designed to put the brakes on the current pilot program."
"Failure to end the pilot program, I believe, will put the Department of Transportation in direct violation of federal law," the senator charged.  
As WND reported in September, the amendment championed by Dorgan to remove funding for the project from the 2008 DOT appropriations bill passed the Senate by a bipartisan majority of 74-24.
The amendment survived into the Consolidated Appropriations Act which President Bush signed Dec. ...   more »

France has called for the euro to pack a diplomatic punch to rival the power of the dollar internationally.
The French European Affairs Secretary, Jean-Pierre Jouyet, said the 15-nation eurozone needed better governance and better international representation.
"Just as there is a diplomacy of the dollar, we should have a diplomacy of the euro," he wrote in France's Le Monde newspaper.
France takes over the EU's rotating presidency in July, after Slovenia.
A senior European Commission official said that for Mr Jouyet's wish to be fulfilled the eurozone would need to speak with one voice - but that was not yet the case.
EU stability Mr Jouyet hailed the eurozone as a centre of stability amid financial turbulence.
In recent months, France has complained that the European Central Bank (ECB) has kept interest rates too high and Mr Jouyet himself has said the strong euro is causing problems for French exporters.
 What we do say for there to be better governance is for the eurozone to speak with one voice
Amelia Torres
European Commission official 
But in the article he said the currency had significantly protected the purchasing power of Europeans in the face of an increase in prices of ...   more »

BMO strategist Donald Coxe warns credit crunch and soaring oil prices will pale in comparison to looming catastrophe
Scott Olson
A new crisis is emerging, a global food catastrophe that will reach further and be more crippling than anything the world has ever seen. The credit crunch and the reverberations of soaring oil prices around the world will pale in comparison to what is about to transpire, Donald Coxe, global portfolio strategist at BMO Financial Group said at the Empire Club's 14th annual investment outlook in Toronto on Thursday.
"It's not a matter of if, but when," he warned investors. "It's going to hit this year hard."
Mr. Coxe said the sharp rise in raw food prices in the past year will intensify in the next few years amid increased demand for meat and dairy products from the growing middle classes of countries such as China and India as well as heavy demand from the biofuels industry.
"The greatest challenge to the world is not US$100 oil; it's getting enough food so that the new middle class can eat the way our middle class does, and that means we've got to expand food output dramatically," he said.
The impact of ...   more »

Butterflies Trick Ants Into Adopting and Raising Butterfly Larvae
Call it the cuckoo of butterflies. Like the well-known birds, the Alcon blue butterfly has found a way to get others to raise its offspring.
Researchers in Denmark report that the large blue butterfly has managed to produce larvae with a chemical coating similar to that of the local Myrmica rubra ants.
The butterflies deposit their larvae on marsh gentian plants where exploring ants find them, identify the chemical coating, and take the butterfly larvae back to the ant colony and feed them until they grow up and leave, the researchers report in Thursday's edition of the journal Science.
The researchers, led by David R. Nash of the University of Copenhagen, added that elsewhere in Europe the Alcon butterfly uses a different ant species to raise its young.
Original Source


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The U.S. Treasury Department is set to offer a prepaid debit card for Social Security recipients, and has chosen Dallas-based Comerica Bank as the card issuer, The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday.
The report said the card is targeted at Social Security and Supplemental Security Income recipients who don't have bank accounts, and is also aimed at providing cheaper and more secure payments by shifting away from paper checks.
Comerica Bank is a subsidiary of Comerica Inc.
Original Source
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By DAVID KOENIG
DALLAS (AP) - Up to three American Airlines jets will be outfitted this spring with laser technology being developed to protect planes from missiles fired by terrorists.
Officials said Friday the anti-missile systems won't be tested on passenger flights. But the tests, which could involve more than 1,000 flights, will determine how well the technology holds up under the rigors of flight, they said.
The first Boeing 767-200 will be equipped in April or later, American spokesman Tim Wagner said. American operates that Boeing model mostly between New York and San Francisco and Los Angeles.
American said it is "not in favor" of putting anti-missile systems on commercial planes but agreed to take part in the tests to understand technologies that might be available in the future.
The anti-missile technology was developed for military planes, and U.K.-based BAE Systems PLC said Friday it won a $29 million contract from the Department of Homeland Security to test it on passenger planes.
The technology is intended to stop a missile attack by detecting heat from the rocket, then responding in a fraction of a second by firing a laser beam that jams the missile's guidance system.
The device on ...   more »