By Amy Fagan - About 300,000 elementary and high school students have been displaced by the closure of more than 1,300 Catholic schools since 1990, mostly in cities, and this "crisis" should be reversed by church leaders, the public, philanthropists and lawmakers, according to a report made public yesterday.
The report by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute comes on the eve of next week's U.S. visit by Pope Benedict XVI, who will speak to hundreds of Catholic educators at the Catholic University of America on Thursday.
"With Pope Benedict about to arrive in Washington and New York, the nation's attention will focus briefly on the church and its key institutions," said Chester E. Finn Jr., president of Fordham Institute. "Now is a terrific time to recognize that a national treasure — and one of the greatest accomplishments of the Catholic Church in America — is perishing and to consider what, if anything, can be done about it."
The Rev. David O'Connell, CUA president, said earlier this week that the pope's speech may touch on Catholic urban schools having been forced to close due to financial pressures. And the issue will be the subject of a White House summit on inner-city ...   more »

Why Ahmadinejad smiles

By Caroline B. Glick      
 The regime affiliated Iranian Fars news agency published a sensational story this week. According to the Fars report, Saudi Arabia and Israel collaborated in killing Iranian terror-master Imad Mughniyeh.
The story is important regardless of whether it is true. It is important because it says something important about the nature of Iran's relationship with Syria. Specifically, it says that Iran views Syria as a vassal state.
If Teheran were not convinced of its control of the Syrian regime, it would never have dared to publish a story that places the Assad regime in an open confrontation with Saudi Arabia. An even partially independent Syria would never go along with such an open challenge to Saudi Arabia.
Syria of course is not Iran's only proxy in the Arab world. There is the Hamas regime in Gaza as well. Thursday the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center released an in-depth report on Hamas's military build-up since Israel's withdrawal from Gaza in September 2005. The report notes that Hamas receives arms and funding from Iran and Syria and sends its fighters for extending training at camps in Iran and Syria.
By directly supporting Hamas and by ...   more »

New satellite imagery exposed a site where Iran was developing long-range ballistic missiles, the Times of London reported Friday.
According to the report, on February 4, Iran announced it had launched a "research rocket" as part of its space program. Experts have estimated since then, however, that the rocket launch was in fact a field test of Shihab-type ballistic missile.
But four days after the launch another intriguing feature of the test became apparent: analysis of photographs taken by the Digital Globe QuickBird satellite indicated that the launch site of Kavoshgar 1, as the Shihab missile was dubbed by the Iranians, is also the site where Iran is busy developing ballistic missiles with a range of about 6,000 km.
The site, about 230 km southeast of Teheran, was previously unknown and its link with the Iranian weapons program was revealed by Jane's Intelligence Review after the images were studied by a former Iraq weapons inspector.
Using a space program as a façade for a weapons program was the path chosen by Korea until it declared it had passed the nuclear weapon threshold.
Geoffrey Forden, a research associate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said that there was a recently constructed ...   more »

By Jamie Glazov
Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Bill Warner, the director of the Center for the Study of Political Islam (CSPI). CSPI’s goal is to teach the doctrine of political Islam through its books and it has produced a series on its focus. Mr. Warner did not write the CSPI series, but he acts as the agent for a group of scholars who are the authors.
FP: Bill Warner, welcome to Frontpage Interview.
Warner: Thank you Jamie for this opportunity.
FP: Tell us a bit about the Center for the Study of Political Islam.
Warner: The Center for the Study of Political Islam is a group of scholars who are devoted to the scientific study of the foundational texts of Islam—Koran, Sira (life of Mohammed) and Hadith (traditions of Mohammed). There are two areas to study in Islam, its doctrine and history, or as CSPI sees it—the theory and its results. We study the history to see the practical or experimental results of the doctrine.
CSPI seems to be the first group to use statistics to study the doctrine. Previous scientific studies of the Koran are primarily devoted to Arabic language studies.
Our first principle is that Koran, Sira ...   more »

By William Selway and Martin Z. Braun
April 10 (Bloomberg) -- Financial advisers for Jefferson County, Alabama, met yesterday with Bush administration and Federal Reserve officials as the county contends with rising borrowing costs that have pushed it close to bankruptcy.
The advisers for Alabama's most-populous county were in Washington to keep federal officials informed of its negotiations with creditors, U.S. Representative Spencer Bachus said. He said the meetings weren't an attempt to arrange a federal bailout.
``It appears Jefferson County is working diligently to negotiate a settlement and avoid bankruptcy,'' Bachus said in a statement. ``Activities in these markets can move very rapidly, so it is prudent that appropriate federal officials be informed of the Jefferson County situation.''
Jefferson County, home to Birmingham, is reeling from interest rates on variable-rate bonds that jumped as high as 10 percent when the auction-rate securities market collapsed and the county's bonds, backed by ailing insurers FGIC Corp. and XL Capital Assurance, were shunned by investors. Without restructuring its bonds, interest costs on its sewer debt may reach $250 million, nearly twice the $138 million the system produces in revenue, according to county Commissioner Bettye Fine Collins.
The county's financial problems have been ...   more »

By Mayank Bhardwaj
Food riots which have struck several impoverished countries could spread with shortages and high prices set to continue for some time, the head of the United Nation's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said.
A combination of high oil and fuel prices, rising demand for food in a wealthier Asia, the use of farmland and crops for biofuels, bad weather and speculation on futures markets have pushed up food prices, prompting violent protests in a handful of poor states.
Jacques Diouf, director general of the Rome-based FAO, said on Wednesday during a trip to India that there was a growing risk of social instability in countries where families spent more than half their income on food.
"The problem is very serious around the world due to severe price rises and we have seen riots in Egypt, Cameroon, Haiti and Burkina Faso," he told reporters in New Delhi.
Five people have been killed in a week of demonstrations in Haiti over high food prices in the poorest country in the Americas, while unions in the West African nation of Burkina Faso called a general strike over soaring food and fuel costs.
"There is a risk that this unrest will ...   more »

Is he America's political messiah – or a Manchurian candidate?
In a few short months, the young and relatively unknown politician Barack Hussein Obama may very well be elevated to the presidency of the United States and command the mightiest military in world history.
Would the eloquent and charismatic Obama unite, inspire and renew a troubled nation, as tens of millions of voters passionately believe? Or is it possible he's a Manchurian candidate – harboring an ominous secret agenda few understand, a man destined to wreak havoc on America should he become president?
That's the question that is explored definitively in the April issue of WND's acclaimed monthly Whistleblower magazine, titled "THE SECRET LIFE OF BARACK OBAMA."
Many consider him nothing less than a savior. They're entranced by Obama and his messianic campaign, which regularly has seen swooning women fainting in his presence. But in addition to the public, the cultural elite and even much of the news media have been likewise captivated. New Age luminary and mega-bestselling author Deepak Chopra says Obama's presidency would "represent a quantum leap in American consciousness," superstar Oprah Winfrey says Obama's "tongue [is] dipped in the unvarnished truth," and MSNBC's "Hardball" anchor Chris Matthews ...   more »