http://www.cuttingthroughthematrix.com
As the Word of God declares the time of the Son of man coming would be as the days of Noah were.We are living in those days today.Perilous and exciting times.I want to encourage you in your daily walk with the Lord and help you wake up as you see the signs of His Coming all around us,because as it is written,our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed!
Jerusalem |
Lower Mexico death toll heartens nervous world...
Travellers quarantined in a Hong Kong hotel for a week after a Mexican guest tested positive for the H1N1 flu expressed dismay on Saturday at the tough steps, while an infectious disease expert said the authorities had over-reacted. Police wearing surgical masks sealed off the Metropark hotel on Friday night after test results on the 25-year-old Mexican man were confirmed, ordering approximately 200 guests and 100 staff to stay in the hotel for the next seven days...
Iranian authorities on Friday morning executed a woman convicted of a crime she was alleged to have committed while still under 18, Amnesty International revealed.Delara Darabi was put to death in Rasht Central Prison, becoming the second woman to be executed in the Islamic republic this year....
Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who has compared himself to Jesus Christ and Napoleon, boasted on Friday that he was the world's most popular leader.The conservative premier, in his third term in office, said opinion poll findings in his possession showed his popularity at just over 75 percent, making him far more popular than U.S. President Barack Obama-or any other head of government...
France has confirmed its first two cases of infection by a new strain of influenza A virus, French Health Minister Roselyne Bachelot-Narquin said Friday.The infections by the H1N1 flu virus were detected in a 49-year-old man and a 24-year-old woman, both of whom had been to Mexico, Bachelot-Narquin told a private TV broadcaster, TF1.
Australia ordered an investigation into a nursing home where elderly and bed-ridden residents were gnawed by a swarming plague of mice.An 89-year-old war veteran was found bleeding from bites to his ears, neck, head and hands after being attacked by the mice as he lay in bed at the facility in the northeastern state of Queensland.The old man was so distressed that doctors had to sedate him with morphine, said Ray Hopper, the local member of parliament....
May Day protesters clashed with riot police in Germany, Turkey and Greece on Friday while thousands angry at the government's responses to the global financial crisis took to the streets in France.Rising unemployment across Europe and beyond has added intensity to May Day marches as last year's market crash and banking meltdown rolls into the real economy. There were early morning clashes in Germany and protests in Istanbul swiftly turned violent. Greek police clashed with self-styled anarchists....
Barack Obama's nominee for "regulatory czar" has advocated a "Fairness Doctrine" for the Internet that would require opposing opinions be linked and also has suggested angry e-mails should be prevented from being sent by technology that would require a 24-hour cooling off period.The revelations about Cass Sunstein(picture left),Obama's friend from the University of Chicago Law School and nominee to head the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, come in a new book by Brad O'Leary, "Shut Up, America! The End of Free Speech." OIRA will oversee regulation throughout the U.S. government. Sunstein also has argued in his prolific literary works that the Internet is anti-democratic because of the way users can filter out information of their own choosing...
The Obama administration is preparing to swap U.S. sovereignty for a higher level of U.S. presence at the United Nations, a plan that has alarmed officials working to protect the rights of Americans, specifically the parental rights that traditionally have been recognized across the nation's history. Michael Farris, founder of the Home School Legal Defense Association and chancellor of Patrick Henry College, said, "The move is little more than another attempt at political correctness by an administration frantic for acceptance by the international community."Farris also is a dedicated leader behind the effort to change the U.S. Constitution through the amendment process to restore and protect parental rights....
First it was use of the term "war on terror" that was banned by the government.Then it was "terrorist attacks" that became "man-caused disasters."Now it's "swine flu" that is verboten.Despite the history of "swine flu" in the United States and the current alarm being raised over what has been estimated so far as a few hundred possible cases, the real danger appears to be what the problem is called, according to a federal report.
Nine months ago, The New Yorker lampooned the political frenzy over Michelle Obama by portraying her as a camouflage-clad, fist-bumping radical. Now, 100 days into her tenure as first lady, she has emerged as the most popular figure in her husband’s administration.
Michelle Obama has taken casual to a haute new level.While volunteering Wednesday at a D.C. food bank, the First Lady sported her usual J.Crew cardigan, a pair of utilitarian capri pants and, on her feet, a sneaky splurge: trainers that go for $540. That's right: These sneakers - suede, with grosgrain ribbon laces and metallic pink toe caps - are made by French design house Lanvin, one of fashion's hottest labels. They come in denim and satin versions, and have been a brisk seller all spring...
In a PR move designed to target American readers, Al Qaeda launches what's been called its 'Vanity Fair,' a new Web magazine that focuses on how to commit jihad.It's been called Al Qaeda's "Vanity Fair," a new English-language Internet magazine called "Jihad Recollections" that focuses on the terrorist group, its founder, Usama Bin Laden, and how to commit jihad. It also predicts the demise of the United States. “This is designed for Americans,” says noted terrorism expert Steven Emerson, founder of the Investigative Project on Terrorism in Washington, D.C., and author of the book "American Jihad: The Terrorists Living Among Us."
Deadlier Flu Strain Would Overwhelm Systems...
The Department of Homeland Security on Thursday refuted reports that it had told agents at U.S. airports and border checkpoints that they could not wear masks to protect from exposure to swine flu.
An 8-year-old Saudi girl has divorced her middle-aged husband after her father forced her to marry him last year in exchange for about $13,000, her lawyer said Thursday.Saudi Arabia has come under increasing criticism at home and abroad for permitting child marriages. The United States, a close ally of the conservative Muslim kingdom, has called child marriage a "clear and unacceptable" violation of human rights.
A new Chinese spy museum exhibits guns disguised as lipstick, hollowed-out coins used to conceal documents and maps hidden as a deck of cards.What you won't find there, however, are foreigners.A sign outside the Jiangsu National Security Education Museum in a park in the eastern city of Nanjing states that only Chinese citizens are allowed inside, a policy designed to keep the communist regime's cloak and dagger methods secret — no matter how timeworn they may be...
Seventeen people were arrested in Curacao for alleged involvement in a drug trafficking ring with connections to Hezbollah, police on the Dutch Caribbean island said Wednesday.
A Zimbabwean government plan to rescue the shattered economy hasn't made life any easier for many people who are losing patience with no Western aid in sight.The credibility of the unity government between President Robert Mugabe and Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai depends largely on its ability to persuade Western donors and foreign investors to pour billions of dollars into the country...
Hillary Clinton said on arrival in Baghdad Saturday, April 25, for her first visit as US secretary of State that the wave of suicide killings which accounted for more than 250 lives this month were "a tragic signal that Iraq was on the right path." She made it clear that the pullout of US troops from Iraq's main cities in nine weeks was still on track...
A year after Cyclone Nargis battered army-ruled Myanmar, killing nearly 140,000 people, paddy fields remain bare and tens of thousands of survivors live in makeshift shelters. "Everybody lives on food handouts and most of us don't have decent shelter or a job," Ba Thin, 72, said, pointing to the bamboo, thatch and tarpaulin huts lining the road through his village near Bogalay,an area devastated by the May 2-3 storm.
A nuclear power station at Chinon in central France was evacuated on Thursday after a phone call warning of a bomb, power supplier EDF said.
U.S. and British forces handed over to the Iraqi navy Thursday responsibility for protecting one of the country's crucial floating oil export terminals.In a ceremony on the rusting Khor al-Amaya platform, which handles 10 percent of oil exports from the southern oil hub of Basra, the commander of Task Force Iraqi Maritime, Admiral Tom Cropper, lauded a "breakthrough" in Iraqi military independence.The Khor al-Amaya floating oil terminal is by far the smaller of the two platforms serving Basra, and Cropper acknowledged that the decision to hand its security over first meant Thursday's ceremony marked a small, initial step...
None of a $4.5 billion package of reconstruction aid recently pledged for the Gaza Strip has got through because of border restrictions, a top U.N. official said on Thursday.International donors pledged the aid money in March to help the Palestinian economy and rebuild Gaza after a three-week Israeli military offensive.But John Ging, head of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency in Gaza, said Gaza had still not benefited from any of the aid because of restrictions on the flow of goods into the territory...
President Hugo Chavez's government has agreed to strengthen military ties with Iran.Iranian Defense Minister Mostafa Mohammad Najjar met with Chavez for an hour late Wednesday and said they discussed defense cooperation to "protect peace and tranquility in the region," Venezuela's Information Ministry said in a statement.
NATO has expelled two Russian diplomats over a spy scandal, a move Moscow's ambassador said was intended to set back efforts by Russia and the United States to repair relations. Tensions between the former Cold War foes also rose on Thursday over agreements which Moscow said gave it control over the borders of two rebel regions in Georgia.
Hundreds of families fled Pakistan's Buner valley on Thursday as security forces battled through mountain passes to evict Taliban fighters, whose advance toward Islamabad had sown alarm.The military mounted an offensive on Tuesday after the Taliban had crept from their stronghold in the adjoining Swat valley into Buner, 100 km (60 miles) northwest of the capital.The Taliban's proximity to Islamabad had heightened fears among Western allies that nuclear-armed Pakistan was becoming more unstable.People had initially resisted the Taliban intruders, until a local political administrator persuaded them to submit.The administrator has since been removed...
A top al Qaeda commander has called on Pakistanis to rise up against the government of the nuclear-armed power where Taliban militants are fighting the army, according to a message on Islamist websites on Thursday.The 29-page article by Abu Yahya al-Libi, who is thought to be in Afghanistan and Pakistan, was dated mid-March.Pakistan's army has been trying to fight back al Qaeda's Taliban allies who have taken control of areas close to the capital Islamabad in north Pakistan....
The Pakistan army battled through mountain passes on Thursday in a third day of fighting to evict Taliban fighters from a strategic valley, after U.S. President Barack Obama welcomed its newfound resolve.The militants were still controlling parts of Buner valley, just 100 km (60 miles) northwest of the capital, Islamabad, though troops had secured the main town of Daggar on Wednesday after helicopters dropped them behind enemy lines.....
An international Islamic body has appointed a committee of six religious scholars to study one of the most contentious issues in Islam today – whether “apostates” should face the death penalty. The decision was taken Wednesday at a conference in the United Arab Emirates hosted by the International Islamic Fiqh Academy, an organ of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) that is responsible for interpreting shari’a, or Islamic law....
Gen. David Petraeus said he is looking for concrete action by the Pakistani government to destroy the Taliban in the next two weeks before determining the United States' next course of action."The Pakistanis have run out of excuses" and are "finally getting serious" about combating the threat from Taliban and Al Qaeda extremists operating out of Northwest Pakistan, the general added.
A man who was locked up without charges for years pleaded guilty Thursday to training in Al Qaeda camps and coming to the United States on a mission for the terrorist group the day before the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.
ABC News reports that former military officers Bruce Jessen and Jim Mitchell were paid by the CIA to oversee the waterboarding techniques used against high-profile detainees to extract information in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York City and the Pentagon. Jessen and Mitchell were previously involved in the U.S. military program to train pilots how to resist brutal tactics if captured-but Col. Steven Kleinman, an Air Force interrogator, told ABC News that the two never had experience conducting actual interrogations before the CIA hired them....
Drug-addicted veterans are being injected with cocaine by researchers at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs in taxpayer-funded studies, The Examiner has learned.The study subjects are being given the injections as part of a search for medicines that researchers hope will block cocaine absorption in the body, said Timothy O’Leary, the VA’s acting director of research and development.All the subjects were recruited because they were addicted to cocaine, O’Leary said. About 40 volunteers-most of them veterans-are being given injections at VA labs in Kansas City and San Antonio, he added.Hundreds of veterans have apparently been used as human subjects in the past decade, according to records and interviews with officials...
The Iraq war formally ended for British forces on Thursday as America's main battlefield ally handed control of the oil-rich Basra area to U.S. commanders and prepared to ship out most of its remaining 4,000 troops.A U.S. flag was raised over the British base outside the southern city of Basra in a ceremony held after a memorial for the 179 British military personnel who died in more than six years of warfare."Today marks the closing chapter of the combat mission in Iraq," British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said in London after meeting with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.
Israel warned the European Union on Thursday to tone down its criticism of the new Israeli government or risk forfeiting the bloc's role as broker in Mideast peace efforts. The warning came after EU's commissioner for external relations, Benita Ferrero-Waldner, this week criticized Israel's refusal to endorse a Palestinian state. She said an upgrade in Israeli-EU relations would depend on Israel's commitment to the "two-state solution."
The United States and its allies must make sacrifices to close the Guantanamo Bay detention center, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said Wednesday in a high-profile appeal for Europe's help.Holder spoke to the American Academy in Berlin, not long after telling reporters that the United States had approved the release of about 30 Guantanamo detainees. "We must all make sacrifices and we must all be willing to make unpopular choices," said Holder."The United States is ready to do its part, and we hope that Europe will join us — not out of a sense of responsibility, but from a commitment to work with one of its oldest allies to confront one of the world's most pressing challenges," he said.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov insisted Wednesday Moscow had no plans to boost its military presence in the Arctic, saying existing laws could resolve disputes in the much-courted region."We are not planning to increase our armed forces presence in the Arctic," Lavrov told reporters at the close of an Arctic Council meeting in the northern Norwegian town of Tromsoe."The decisions taken provide for strengthening the potential of the coast guard," a move needed because the melting ice cap is leading to more human activity in the region, he said.
North Korea threatened Wednesday to conduct nuclear and missile tests and start an uranium-enrichment program in addition to its existing plutonium-based one, unless the U.N. apologizes for criticizing its recent rocket launch, dramatically raising its stake in the worsening standoff over its atomic programs.Pyongyang's Foreign Ministry said in a statement the country "will be compelled to take additional self-defensive measures" unless the U.N. Security Council apologizes immediately. "The measures will include nuclear tests and test-firings of intercontinental ballistic missiles."
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano is asserting that the description she initially gave of the border swine-flu monitoring effort no longer applies.Appearing Wednesday before a Senate panel, Napolitano said that "passive surveillance" is "not an accurate picture of what is going on" at U.S. entry points. She had used that term Tuesday morning to describe the nature of the monitoring for illness...
Tacos filled with pork, sizzling gorditas, juicy carnitas covered with salsa and gobbled down at sidewalk carts while pedestrians brush past—this is Mexico's version of a fast-food joint, but it is now in peril because of the swine flu epidemic.With Mexico City authorities urging residents to dine at home to prevent the spread of the deadly virus, vendors at the tens of thousands of taco carts that line the streets of this overcrowded capital have seen business plunge. It hasn't helped that many people mistakenly believe you can contract the flu by eating pork. Another blow came late Tuesday when the city government ordered the streetside stalls to close for at least a week.
Swine flu's no laughing matter but here's proof that no matter how tough it gets some people will always put a brave face on a crisis.
Alarmed by the spread of a new swine flu virus, airports around the world have rushed to install temperature scanners to pick out the sick, but the microbe is proving too clever for modern technology.Experts say an infected person can easily pass through these heat sensors without detection as the incubation period for influenza ranges anywhere between one and three days."The scanners won't pick up everyone (with flu), especially if they are too early in the infection...People who have been infected very, very recently wouldn't show up on the scanner," Mark von Itzstein, director of the Institute for Glycomics at Griffith University in Queensland, Australia, told Reuters...
More than 30 Marines at a Southern California base are being confined to quarters after one tested positive for swine flu Wednesday.
Federal officials on Wednesday confirmed the first swine flu case in Arizona: an unidentified person in Maricopa County.
Sheriff's deputies working on the streets and in the jails are being told to put on protective gear if they fear they've come in contact with someone infected with the swine flu, the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office announced Tuesday.The sheriff's office will make masks, gloves and other measures available to 750 deputies working the streets and will add extra deputies trained to identify suspected illegal immigrants based on the theory that some of those inmates might have come from areas in Mexico where the infection was rampant, said Lt. Brian Lee, a sheriff's spokesman.
Egyptian leaders ordered the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of pigs today to help protect against swine flu, prompting angry protests from the poor Christan farmers who feed their animals with a country's food scraps. The decision was also criticised as a "real mistake" by a senior UN food expert. The Arab world's most populous nation has been been badly hit by the H5N1 bird flu virus in recent years and the move to cull up to 400,000 pigs-seen by Muslims as unclean animals-was designed to calm fears of an impending pandemic.