FOR THE FIRST TIME IN 1,938 years the linen garments of the lay priests are being produced in preparation for the rebuilding of the Holy Temple and the renewal of the Divine service. The last priestly garments to have been worn were those worn by the priests who were martyred by the Roman legions who brutally invaded and destroyed the Holy Temple on the ninth day of the month of Av, in the year 70 CE.
THE TEMPLE INSTITUTE HAS SPARED NO EFFORT in procuring the necessary materials for the performing of this Torah commandment, and once again has enlisted 21st century technology in order to do so in a manner befitting the Torah injunction that these priestly garments be "both dignified and beautiful". (Exodus 28:40)
SPECIALLY PREPARED FLAXEN THREAD, wound into six-ply strands, according to the Torah prescribed requirement, ("twined linen - shesh mushzar"), has been imported from India. These individual spools of thread are presently being spun into larger 1.7 meter long spindles in order to accomodate the next step: the weaving of bolts of fabric 1.7 meters wide. Before commencing this process, (known in Hebrew as hashtayah), of creating the 1.7 meter spindles, Rabbi Yisrael Ariel, founder ...   more »

Thursday's terrorist attack in Jerusalem in which eight seminary students were killed by a Palestinian gunman, and the latest fighting between between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, are more than new chapters in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: They are part of a much larger struggle underway between Iran and Israel. As crowds took to the streets of Gaza celebrating the carnage in Jerusalem, Hamas issued a statement declaring that it "blesses" the operation. The Iranian-backed Hezbollah's al-Manar television station called the massacre at the yeshiva a "heroic" operation against an "extremist" school.
Iran and Syria have long been the major arms suppliers for Hamas. A senior Israeli military intelligence official said Monday that all of the 20 long-range rockets that had been fired from Gaza into Israel since Feb. 28 were Iranian-made Grads, which have a range of approximately 12.5 miles. Hamas and another Iranian-backed group called the Popular Resistance Committees have said they have upwards of 300 of the missiles in Gaza.
Iran has spent, conservatively speaking, tens of millions of dollars in helping to turn Gaza into an armed camp since Israel unilaterally withdrew its civilians and soldiers from Gaza in 2005. Dozens if not hundreds of Gazans have ...   more »

In interview with French newspaper, Israeli president says ' in the past sanctions have proved effective' in pushing countries to reounounce nuclear ambitions; defends IDF activities in Gaza
Israel will not consider unilateral action to stop Iran getting a nuclear bomb, President Shimon Peres was quoted as saying on Saturday.  
In an interview with France's Le Figaro newspaper ahead of a trip to Paris next week, Peres said, however, if economic sanctions failed to persuade Iran to stop its contested nuclear program then "non-military options would be used up."
The United Nations has imposed sanctions on Iran to pressure it to suspend uranium enrichment. The United States and other major powers suspect Iran is enriching uranium as part of a covert effort to develop a nuclear bomb. Iran says it is only interested in civilian nuclear energy.  
"I would prefer to stop the development of the bomb without recourse to war. Sanctions have proved their efficacy in the past," Peres said, citing decisions by Libya, South Africa and North Korea to renounce nuclear plans.  
Asked if Israel would act alone to stop Iran getting the bomb, Peres, a former prime minister who currently holds no executive power, ...   more »

How the Islamist death cult is destroying a generation of youth
Almost everyone agrees that there's nothing more beautiful than a young child – the brightness of spirit, the innocence, the natural intelligence are breathtaking.
What, then, possesses an angelic little girl to chant confidently in front of television cameras: "When I wander into Jerusalem, I will become a suicide bomber"? Or a little boy to exclaim: "We will destroy the chair of the despots, so they will taste the flame of death"?
What has happened to these children in their earliest, most vulnerable and tender years to poison their souls and set many on the path ultimately to madness and murder?
What goes on in their homes, schools and mosques that induces them to strap on explosive belts and kill themselves and countless unsuspecting innocents in a pizza parlor?
How, after growing up in a home with a mother and father and brothers and sisters, can a young man suddenly stab his own sister to death – knifing her not just once or twice, but dozens and dozens of times, like a maniacal serial murderer – just because she supposedly held hands or was seen in public with a ...   more »

Israel decides to take advantage of Thursday's bloody terror attack in Jerusalem in order to launch aggressive campaign against Hamas
Israel has decided to take advantage of Thursday's bloody terror attack in Jerusalem in order to launch an aggressive campaign against Hamas.  
Yedioth Ahronoth has learned that the political echelon instructed the Government Press Office to distribute the shocking images from the yeshiva shooting worldwide, including pictures of holy books perforated with bullets, a blood-stained praying shawl and the terrorist's body inside the yeshiva.  
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni decided that the Foreign Ministry would work to convey the Israeli messages to the international community.  
Livni spoke to a large number of foreign ministers and expressed the State of Israel's abhorrence over the deadly attack.
A sources in the Prime Minister's Office said Thursday, "There is a direct link between this terror attack and the ongoing rocket fire and attacks against IDF soldiers in the south. It's the same motivation and the same organizations."The Palestinians will stop at nothing in their attempts to target innocent people. This time they intentionally hurt young students studying Torah at a rabbinical seminary."   Israeli officials harshly condemned ...   more »

'Kill them and then Allah will torture them in your hands and bring joy to believers'
By Aaron Klein
JERUSALEM – The military wing of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah organization today labeled this week's Jerusalem yeshiva shooting massacre an "heroic act," called for more terror attacks against Israelis and urged Fatah to forge a unity government with the Hamas terror group.
The official statement came hours before Abbas told an international group today peace talks with Israel should continue despite the bloody attack, in which eight yeshiva students were gunned to death while studying in their school's main library.
"Despite all the circumstances we're living through and all the attacks we're experiencing, we insist on peace. There is no other path," Abbas said today in a speech marking International Women's Day.
The Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, Abbas' military wing, meanwhile released an official pamphlet obtained by WND declaring their appreciation of "the heroic operation in Jerusalem."
"We bless the martyr [who carried out the shootings] with all the blood of the heroes of the resistance and with the soil of our land," continued the Fatah statement.
"Kill them and then Allah will torture them in your hands and ...   more »

By Philip Johnston, Home Affairs Editor
All British citizens will be signed up to a national ID scheme within 10 years under plans outlined by the Government today.
Your View: Will ID cards and biometric passports make you feel safer?
In full: Jacqui Smith's Identity Scheme speech
Millions of people in sensitive jobs, including teachers, carers and health workers will be among the first to be entered onto the identity register.    
Gordon Brown is thought to be less enthusiastic about ID cards than his predecessor Tony Blair
Up to 100,000 airport staff will be issued with unique personal identity number starting later this year in a bid to kick-start the multi-billion pound project.
Foreign nationals working in Britain will be issued with cards over the next two years. From 2010 young people will be able to get an identity card if they choose.
Later that year the scheme will be opened to voluntary applicants of any age. From 2011 - after the next general election - anyone applying for a new passport will automatically be fingerprinted and their personal details logged on the database.
In one change from original plans, Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, said it will ...   more »

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 »