OLIVIER GUITTA
At a recent security conference in Munich, US Defense Secretary Robert Gates told European nations that they were under direct threat from Islamist extremists and that this phenomenon would not go away. Gates tied European security to NATO success in Afghanistan. In fact, Western intelligence services have recently established operational links between al-Qaida in Afghanistan and al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) whose goals include striking at the heart of Europe.
Al-Qaida has not made any secrets of its eagerness to target Europe. Indeed, al-Qaida's number two, Ayman al-Zawahiri, has repeatedly threatened Europe. In 2007, numerous al-Qaida-linked plots were foiled in Europe and several cells were dismantled in France, Spain, Denmark, Belgium, Germany and the UK. This led Gilles de Kerchove, the EU's anti-terror chief, to say last November that al-Qaida was the biggest threat to Europe.
Thanks to the outstanding job of counter-terrorism services, al-Qaida's only major success in Europe in 2007 was the June 30 attack on Glasgow airport that killed one and injured five. That attack had followed two foiled car bombs in the center of London that could have killed hundreds if successful. The scheme was nicknamed the "doctors' plot," because it was planned ...   more »

Christian Coalition supports expanded carry provision 
WASHINGTON – The Georgia Christian Coalition is getting behind a state bill to expand gun-carry laws into company parking lots and churches.
State Rep. Tim Bearden is sponsoring the bill with the support of the National Rifle Association. It is being opposed by the Georgia Chamber of Commerce as a violation of private property rights.
The bill is currently in a House-Senate conference committee.
Christians began recognizing the threat for mayhem in the pews after an armed rampage in Colorado recently. After killing two people at a Christian training center in Arvada, Colo., 24-year-old Matthew Murray went to Colorado Springs intending more murder and mayhem. 
Murray shot and killed two girls in the New Life Church's parking lot, then headed inside the building where thousands of worshippers were concluding a service.
A volunteer security guard, Jeanne Assam, confronted him almost immediately and fired at him. He fell, and an autopsy later said he had shot himself.
In fact, church shootings have been on the rise in the U.S.
A tabulation of church shootings, or those closely related to a church setting, was done by Gary Cass, chairman of the Christian Anti-Defamation Commission, and included ...   more »

Failure to subscribe can cost residents up to $912 a year
Massachusetts has begun imposing stiff fines on residents who, for whatever reason, fail to purchase health insurance.
The program is the enforcement end of the state's universal health-insurance plan – and the fees reach up to $912 a year.
The state health-insurance initiative, signed into law by former Gov. Mitt Romney, has been compared to Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's national universal health-care plan – especially on the enforcement side.
The penalties apply to anyone deemed able to afford health insurance by the Commonwealth Health Insurance Connector Authority, the state agency that oversees the entire program.
Fines accrue every month to individuals not insured and are due as part of the tax-filing process for the year. The assessments began this year for the first time.
"The hefty fines are an indication of the failure of the program to provide the affordable health insurance that was promised," Arnold King of the Cato Institute told Health Care News.
The highest penalty for lacking insurance last year was the loss of the personal exemption, worth $219, on the individual's state tax return. This year the fine increased to half the total cost ...   more »

By: Ronald Kessler
In a sermon delivered at Howard University, Barack Obama’s longtime minister, friend, and adviser blamed America for starting the AIDS virus, training professional killers, importing drugs, and creating a racist society that would never elect a black man as president.
The Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., pastor of Obama’s Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, gave the sermon at the school’s Andrew Rankin Memorial Chapel in Washington on Jan. 15, 2006. While snippets from the sermon have appeared in a few magazines, no news outlet has previously run the entire text of Wright’s diatribe. An audio recording of the sermon appears on YouTube.
Raising his voice in rage, Wright began his sermon by saying, “Fact No. 1: We’ve got more black men in prison than there are in college. Racism is alive and well. Racism is how this country was founded and how this country is still run. No black man will ever be considered for president, no matter how hard you run Jesse [Jackson] and no black woman can ever be considered for anything outside what she can give with her body.”
Omitting fact No. 2, Wright thundered on: “Fact No. 3: America is still ...   more »

JULIA PRESTON
A lawsuit filed Thursday in a federal court in New York by Latino immigrants seeks to force immigration authorities to complete hundreds of thousands of stalled naturalization petitions in time for the new citizens to vote in November.
The class-action suit was brought by the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund on behalf of legal Hispanic immigrants in the New York City area who are eager to vote and have been waiting for years for the federal Citizenship and Immigration Services agency to finish their applications. The suit demands that the agency meet a nationwide deadline of Sept. 22 to complete any naturalization petitions filed by March 26.
Latino groups hope to summon the clout of the federal courts to compel the Bush administration to reduce a backlog of citizenship applications that swelled last year. According to the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan research group in Washington, more than one million citizenship petitions were backed up in the pipeline by the end of December, the majority from Latino immigrants.
Despite protests over the delays from lawmakers, Latino groups and immigrant advocates, the immigration agency is currently projecting wait times of 16 months to 18 months to process ...   more »

It doesn't happen quickly. It's been a half-century since the European Common Market was created to enhance cross-border trade in coal and steel among six European countries. The next 40 years saw the idea of cross-border "harmonization" expand into the European Community, with the 1992 Maastricht Treaty. With the signing of the Lisbon Treaty in December 2007, 27 European nations are on the verge of becoming one consolidated state.
The North American Free Trade Agreement, which went into force in 1994, is supposed to function much the same as the European Common Market, by removing tariffs on goods traded among the member nations. The Security and Prosperity Partnership, launched in 2005, is building a North American Community. This process is designed to "harmonize" and "integrate" cross-border rules and regulations. Following the European blueprint, the next step is the creation of a North American Union.
In Europe, what started as a simple agreement to enhance trade among six nations has grown into a full-blown treaty that will bring 27 former nations under the rule of a single, appointed government. In Europe, the process has been littered with objections and resistance. The one-government idea was first put to the people in the ...   more »

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Wall Street banks are facing a "systemic margin call" that may deplete banks of $325 billion of capital due to deteriorating subprime U.S. mortgages, JPMorgan Chase & Co (JPM.N: Quote, Profile, Research), said in a report late on Friday.
JPMorgan, which sent a default notice to Thornburg Mortgage Inc. (TMA.N: Quote, Profile, Research) after the lender missed a $28 million margin call, said more default notices and margin calls were likely. The Carlyle Group's mortgage fund also failed to meet $37 million in margin calls this week.
"A systemic credit crunch is underway, driven primarily by bank writedowns for subprime mortgages," according to the report co-authored by analyst Christopher Flanagan. "We would characterize this situation as a systemic margin call."
The credit crisis that began about a year ago will likely intensify after Friday's weak February U.S. employment report "that most definitely signals recession," JPMorgan said.
Indeed, corporate bond spreads widened to a new record on Friday, surpassing levels seen in October 2002 during a boom in bankruptcies following the dot-com crash. U.S. employers cut payrolls in February for a second consecutive month, slashing 63,000 jobs, the biggest monthly job decline in nearly five years, the ...   more »

 By Hielema, Bert
And you thought that I had a gloomy outlook on the economy. Now the bad news pops up everywhere.
Harry Koza in the Globe and Mail quotes Bernard Connelly, the global strategist at Banque AIG in London, who claims that the likelihood of a Great Depression is growing by the day.
Martin Wolf, celebrated columnist of the U.K.-based Financial Times, cites Dr. Nouriel Roubini of the New York University's Stern School of Business, who, in 12 steps, outlines how the losses of the American financial system will grow to more than $1 trillion - that's one million times $1 million. That amount is equal to all the assets of all American banks.
Every day now, thousands of people all over the U.S. and Great Britain are walking away from their homes - simply mailing their house keys to the banks - as housing bailout plans fail.
With unemployment growing, the next phase will hit commercial real estate making the financial institutions the unwilling owners not only of quickly depreciating houses, but also of empty strip malls and even larger shopping centres.
The next domino to fall will be credit card defaults, and after that... who knows? There ...   more »

Siobhan Kennedy
The global credit crisis plunged to new depths yesterday as persistent
fears over the collapse of a large financial institution caused funding
markets to dry up and forced the US Federal Reserve to make available up to $200 billion (£99.3 billion) of emergency financing.
The Fed said that a "rapid deterioration" in the credit markets in recent days had prompted it to begin a series of fresh cash injections in an effort to shore up the balance sheets of America's stricken banks. Unemployment also shot up in the US last month, adding to the gloom. US stocks tumbled, dragging the Dow Jones industrial average down 138.40 points to 11.902.00.
Treasury prices jumped and the dollar fell to record lows.
Bankers said that the moves underscored the deepening severity of the crisis, which was triggered last June by the collapse of the American
sub-prime mortgage market and has got progressively worse since. One senior banker in London said: "This is the beginning of the real credit crisis and it's not going to end without a major casualty."
Sources said that the present crisis was triggered by cash-strapped banks starting to get tough with their hedge fund clients by making ...   more »

A pandemic illness has forced area health departments to order all public gatherings halted to slow the spread of the illness.

A church pastor has officiated at 30 funerals of his friends and parishioners. How does a church survive and operate in such a disastrous scenario?

One group thinks preparedness will go a long way to supporting faith in God in helping churches, parishes and synagogues operate in any kind of emergency.
The Jasper County Pandemic Planning Committee is sending out booklets and digital video discs to more than 250 area churches with advice, information, and phone numbers geared to helping churches deal with a pandemic disease event on the magnitude of the 1918 Spanish Flu outbreak, when 250,000 Americans were killed.
Tom Simpson, with the Regional Economic Development Center at Missouri Southern State University, said the booklet is meant as a guide for church leaders to deal with a pandemic illness or any kind of disaster.
"What we've produced here is a fairly extensive, fairly complete guide for churches, parishes and synagogues to plan for these unexpected events," Simpson said. "The idea is to make this available, free of charge, to every faith-based organization in our county. That material ...   more »