by FOXNews.com
Evangelical leader James Dobson took issue Tuesday with a recent speech by Barack Obama, saying the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee has distorted the Bible and pushed a “fruitcake interpretation” of the Constitution.
The criticism, aired Tuesday on Dobson’s Focus on the Family radio program, comes shortly after an Obama aide suggested a meeting at the organization’s headquarters here, said Tom Minnery, senior vice president for government and public policy at Focus on the Family.
In his remarks, which ran 18 minutes, Dobson pulled quotes from a speech given by Obama in June 2006 to the liberal Christian group Call to Renewal. Obama mentions Dobson and civil rights leader Al Sharpton in the speech.
Click here to hear James Dobson’s commentary on Barack Obama.
“Even if we did have only Christians in our midst, if we expelled every non-Christian from the United States of America, whose Christianity would we teach in the schools?” Obama said. “Would we go with James Dobson’s or Al Sharpton’s?”
Dobson said Obama condemned pastors for their “diatribes” but “sat for 20 years under the tutelage” of Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and suggested Obama couldn’t recognize the controversial pastor’s anti-Americanism.
Dobson took aim at examples Obama ...   more »

Amy soberano
The Spertus Institute of Jewish Studies in Chicago recently removed a controversial exhibit from its gallery in response to accusations of housing an anti-Israel display.
"Imaginary Coordinates," a collaboration of artwork and cartography, has been a point of contention since its inauguration in May of 2008.
The collection was designed to portray the Middle Eastern struggle through artifacts, videos, historical Holy Land maps and contemporary artwork. The display also included postcards depicting everyday Palestinian life in an effort to humanize territorial disputes.
As the city's lone Jewish museum, Spertus exhibitions are central to Chicago Jewry and many expressed great outrage in response to this one's depiction of the Arab-Israeli conflict. The critics charged the presentation portrayed Israel in a negative light, and were especially disturbed by pieces that challenged Israeli borders.
Championed by the Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago, patrons have applied intense pressure on the Spertus Institute and "Imaginary Coordinates" has since been shut down.
However, critics of the move maintain that withdrawing the exhibit is a reflection of a desire to repress meaningful discourse about the Middle East.
In an interview with the Chicago Tribune, Spertus President Howard Sulkin explained his rationale in launching the presentation. ...   more »

    BEIJING, June 23 (Xinhuanet) -- Several monstrous volcanoes, spreading ridges and rift zones have been found on the seafloor northeast of Fiji by a team of American and Australian scientists.
    On the hunt for subsea volcanic and hot-spring activity, the team of geologists located the volcanoes while mapping previously uncharted areas aboard the Marine National Facility Research Vessel Southern Surveyor. Using high-tech multi-beam sonar mapping equipment, digital images of the seafloor revealed the formerly unknown features.
    The summits of two of the volcanoes, named 'Dugong,' and 'Lobster,' are dominated by large calderas at depths of 1,100 meters (3,600 feet) and 1,500 meters (4,900 feet).
    During the six-week research expedition in the Pacific Ocean, scientists from The Australian National University (ANU), CSIRO Exploration & Mining and the United States, collaborated to survey the topography of the seafloor, analyzing rock types and formation, and monitoring deep-sea hot spring activity around an area known as the North Lau Basin, 400 km (250 miles) northeast of Fiji.
    Chief Scientist, ANU Professor Richard Arculus describes the terrain as spectacular.
    "Some of the features look like the volcanic blisters seen on the surface of Venus," he said. "These active volcanoes ...   more »

Windsor Genova
College Station, PA (AHN) - Baseball-size hail has damaged tens of thousands of acres of cotton and corn fields in Texas this week.
In Lubbock Country, 60,000 acres of crops, mostly cotton, were damaged or destroyed, according to a report of the Texas AgriLife Extension Service, a community-based education provider.
The report also puts corn field damage in Bailey County at about 50,000 acres.
Parmer, Gaines, Cochran, Yoakum, Dickens, Garza, Hall, Hardeman, Mitchell, Nolan, Scurry, Hudspeth, Pecos, and Floyd also reported damaged crops from the hail.
The devastation came when cotton plants in Fisher, Jones, Mitchell, Nolan, and Scurry Counties in the Southern Rolling Plains of Texas are reeling from severe heat and dry weather.
High temperature and lack of rain also stressed corn fields in Hale and Swisher Counties.
Original Source
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Crude oil prices could rise to as high as $170 per barrel in the coming months but are unlikely to hit $200 and should ease towards the end of the year, OPEC President Chakib Khelil said in an interview on Thursday.
"I forecast prices probably between $150-170 during this summer. That will perhaps ease towards the end of the year," he told France 24 television, according to a text of the interview released by the station.
The comments came as crude prices neared $135 per barrel, after rising about 40 percent this year.
Khelil said he doubted prices would climb as high as $200.
"I think that the devaluation of the dollar against the euro, if everything goes as I think it will, will be of the order of perhaps 1-2 percent and this will probably generate an $8 rise in the price of oil," he said.
The head of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, said it had been clearly established that speculation was affecting markets.
"It's not a question, but a certainty. The problem is the extent of that speculation on the market," he said, adding that the effect of the subprime crisis in the United States ...   more »