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Catholic Church No Longer Swears by Truth of Bible
Ruth Gledhill, London Times
The hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church has published a teaching document instructing the faithful that some parts of the Bible are not actually true.
The Catholic bishops of England, Wales and Scotland are warning their five million worshippers, as well as any others drawn to the study of scripture, that they should not expect “total accuracy” from the Bible.
“We should not expect to find in Scripture full scientific accuracy or complete historical precision,” they say in The Gift of Scripture.
Forty-Three Percent of U.S. Workers Called in Sick With Fake Excuses in the Last 12 Months
An annual survey of absenteeism at the office revealed an increase in the number of workers who have called in sick with bogus excuses. Forty-three percent of workers said they called in sick when they felt well at least once during the last year, up from 35 percent in the 2004 survey. The survey also revealed that some hiring managers were less tolerant of workers playing hooky with 23 percent stating they had fired an employee for missing work without a legitimate reason. The CareerBuilder.com survey, "Out of the Office 2005," was conducted from August 10 to August 22, 2005 of more than 2,450 workers, including 875 hiring managers.
Japan Sending Radioactive Toxins to Utah
Material Ruled 'Ore' Instead of Waste
Judy Fahys, Salt Lake Tribune
Five-hundred tons of uranium-contaminated soil from Japan is headed to Utah's southeastern desert.
That's good news for International Uranium Corp.'s White Mesa mill, which has not processed ore for six years.
But, for environmental activists, the shipment signals that the state has opened a Pandora's box, making Utah not just a national destination for radioactive discards but now a global one.
"It's the precedent," said Claire Geddes, pointing out that the state already has the nation's largest privately owned and operated low-level radioactive waste site and that a high-level storage facility also is planned. "This [Japanese waste] is a scenario for a nightmare to me."
Anonyous Comrade writes: "Tunisians Conduct Online Protest"
Andy Carvin
Right now there's an extraordinary online protest coming out of Tunisia. The website, www.Yezzi.org, is a collection of photos of Tunisians holding up signs in various languages, each with a message directed to Tunisian President Ben Ali.
Though the phrase they use, "Yezzi, Fock!," may appear to be a misguided attempt to curse out a certain swear word in the English language, it roughly translates to "General Ben Ali, enough is enough!" in Tunisian Arabic. In the words of the protest's organizers:
"This expression in Tunisian dialect intends to transmit a clear message to the dictator in order to give up power, because we consider it is enough. For us Tunisians, who are always banned from freely reaching independent information and who are violently forbidden from any peaceful demonstration; this kind of demonstration is a new form of peaceful protest."
The site, launched yesterday, contains dozens of photos of Tunisians venting their frustration at President Ben Ali. They note that free expression is technically protected under Tunisian law, though not in practice, so they're using the website to exercise that right:
"[T]here's no Tunisian legislative provision prohibiting the right to express our opinions. Absolutely not, this demonstration is covered by the fundamental guarantees provided as well by the Tunisian Constitution as by the International Conventions ratified by Tunisia. All the demonstrators on Yezzi.org make use of their right to express an opinion in saying to the General Ben Ali 'It is enough!'"
The Tunisian authorities, not surprisingly, see the matter differently. They've already started blocking the site, so only those of us outside of Tunisia can see it. One can only imagine what might happen to these cyber dissidents if they were caught by the Tunisian police. No matter the response, though, it serves as another reminder of the ackwardness of having the World Summit on the Information Society hosted in Tunisia.
The video is of a solidarity action at the London headquarters of shell. The Rossport 5 have spent 3 months in jail in Dublin for resisting Shell running a pipeline from an offshore gasfield through their lands. The 5 were released on Friday before a national action day on Saturday. The release followed moves from the Norwegian government who are involved through the public part ownership of Norwegian oil company Statoil. Statoil are co owners with Shell of the Rossport project in Mayo, Ireland.
See the video
"Armed and Dangerous:
Flipper the Firing Dolphin Let Loose by Katrina"
Mark Townsend Houston, The London Observer
It may be the oddest tale to emerge from the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Armed dolphins, trained by the US military to shoot terrorists and pinpoint spies underwater, may be missing in the Gulf of Mexico.
Experts who have studied the US navy's cetacean training exercises claim the 36 mammals could be carrying 'toxic dart' guns. Divers and surfers risk attack, they claim, from a species considered to be among the planet's smartest. The US navy admits it has been training dolphins for military purposes, but has refused to confirm that any are missing.
"Anti-Bush, and Mincing No Words:
Q & A with Venezuela's Hugo Chavez"
Lally Weymouth, Washington Post
Controversy and intrigue have swirled around Venezuela's Hugo Chavez
ever since he was elected president seven years ago and established himself
as a leftist force. Chavez's rising influence in Latin American politics,
his country's role as a major supplier of crude oil for U.S. refiners and
his close ties to Cuba's Fidel Castro have alarmed policymakers in the Bush
administration. Last month, on his television show, the Rev. Pat Robertson
actually went so far as to suggest the United States should assassinate the
51-year-old Chavez. (Robertson later apologized.)
While Chavez was in New York last week for the gathering of world
leaders at the United Nations, he sat down with Newsweek–Washington Post's
Lally Weymouth. He spelled his dislike for the Bush administration and
described himself as a revolutionary. Dressed in a bright red shirt, he
noted that he was planning to stop in Havana on his way home so that he
could spend several hours talking with Castro.
Excerpts:
Q: The opposition in Venezuela feels that it has no space. The leaders of
Sumate [a group that supported a referendum vote on Chavez two years ago]
say you indicted them for receiving money from the U.S. National Endowment
for Democracy. Why?
Chavez: You cannot forget that this very opposition governed Venezuela between
1958 and 1998. If they feel like they have no space, it is because they have
been cooked in their own sauce. Between 1958 and 1998, Venezuela fell apart.
We ended the 20th century with poverty as we have never seen it. The economy
was totally destroyed. . . . Millions of Venezuelans were without education,
health care, jobs, housing. So if they feel they do not have any room to
act, it's their own fault.
But they have many rights: the right to demonstrate, the right to
participate in elections. The opposition is utterly divided. The
revolutionary forces are totally united. Recently, we had elections. We won
90 percent.
5,400 Executions Worldwide in 2004
Agence France-Press
There were more than 5,400 executions were carried out in the world in 2004, slightly down on the previous year, with almost 90% of them in China, an organisation that campaigns for the abolition of the death penalty said in a report which was released on Friday.
Of the 5,476 executions that took place in 2004, at least 5,000 were in China, the organisation Hands Off Cain said.
Google to Put Copyright Laws to the Test
Tony Sanfilippo is of two minds when it comes to Google Inc.'s
ambitious program to scan millions of books and make their text fully
searchable on the Internet.
On the one hand, Sanfilippo credits the program for boosting sales of
obscure titles at Penn State University Press, where he works. On the other,
he's worried that Google's plans to create digital copies of books obtained
directly from libraries could hurt his industry's long-term revenues.
With Google's book-scanning program set to resume in earnest this fall,
copyright laws that long preceded the Internet look to be headed for a
digital-age test.
The outcome could determine how easy it will be for people with Internet
access to benefit from knowledge that's now mostly locked up — in books
sitting on dusty library shelves, many of them out of print.
"U.S. Congressman Says Atta Papers Destroyed on Orders"
Donna De La Cruz, Associated Press
A Pentagon employee was ordered to destroy documents that identified Mohamed Atta as a terrorist two years before the 2001 attacks, a congressman said Thursday.
The employee is prepared to testify next week before the Senate Judiciary Committee and was expected to name the person who ordered him to destroy the large volume of documents, said Rep. Curt Weldon, a Republican from Pennsylvania.
Weldon declined to name the employee, citing confidentiality matters. Weldon described the documents as "2.5 terabytes" — as much as one-fourth of all the printed materials in the Library of Congress, he added.
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