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China "Kidnaps" Bishops to Stage Catholic Ordination

Malcolm Moore
The Telegraph, UK
Thu, 14 Jul 2011 08:37 UTC
Image
© Reuters
There are thought to be millions of "underground" Catholics in China who remain loyal to Rome.
China has ordained another bishop without the Pope's approval and allegedly kidnapped four bishops to witness the ceremony, in its fiercest act of defiance against the Vatican yet.

In a three hour-long morning ceremony, China's government-run Catholic church ordained the Reverend Joseph Huang Bingzhang as the new bishop of the southern city of Shantou.

It is the third time in eight months that the Communist party - which insists that it, rather than the Pope, controls China's church - has appointed a bishop without a Papal mandate.

Thursday's ceremony was particularly controversial after four bishops loyal to the Vatican were taken away by Chinese police and allegedly forced to participate.

The Rt Revs Liang Jiansen, Liao Hongqing, Paul Su Yongda disappeared from their dioceses in Guangdong province on Sunday, while the Bishop of Guangzhou, the Rt Rev Joseph Junqi, has been missing for even longer.
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Eagle

US: Appeals Court Upholds TSA's Use of Full-Body Scanners


MSNBC
Fri, 15 Jul 2011 03:20 UTC
TSA
© Cynthia Boll/Associated Press
A U.S. appeals court Friday upheld the use of full-body scanners to screen air travelers, but said the Transportation Security Administration should have sought public comment before deploying them.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled that the machines, known as Advanced Imaging Technology (AIT), were not an unconstitutional search and declined to halt their use despite TSA's failure to follow proper procedure.

Privacy advocates, who have strongly opposed the use of the machines, had argued their use constituted an illegal search under the U.S. Constitution's Fourth Amendment. They also said TSA failed to provide public notice that it was deploying them and to seek public comment.

"Any passenger may opt-out of AIT screening in favor of a pat-down, which allows him to decide which of the two options for detecting a concealed, nonmetallic weapon or explosive is least invasive," the three-judge panel ruled.
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Evil Rays

Belly-Bomb Baloney: the TSA Lies Yet Again

Becky Akers
New American
Fri, 15 Jul 2011 10:02 UTC
tsa,nazi
© Unknown
Ah, belly-bombs -- the Transportation Security Administration's (TSA) newest scare-story for frightening us into its porno-scanners and sexual assaults at airports.

Belly-bombs play right into the TSA's hands even if passengers won't. They kill, which makes them petrifying. And they're invisible but pervasive: since terrorists "surgically implant" them inside the body, almost any passenger could conceal one. Worse, "regular scanning equipment, including full-body scanners, is not designed to penetrate the skin, so it would not be able to detect implanted devices."

Ergo, the possibility that we could explode from causes other than rage at the TSA justifies "additional security measures at U.S. airports and overseas airports serving U.S. destinations, the [TSA] said in a statement. The new measures could include increased use of behavior-detection techniques such as agents studying passengers for nervous behavior and conducting airport interviews, pat-down searches, and efforts to detect traces of explosive materials by swabbing skin and clothing and using explosives-sniffing dogs and machines, the TSA said."

It's all a tad too convenient, isn't it? As the TSA abuses dying grandmothers and molests children, as legislation at both the local and national levels threatens to trim its power, as calls for its abolition reverberate, along comes a diabolical threat right out of Marvel Comics. The lesson from the TSA and its collaborators in the corporate press who ballyhoo belly-bombs is clear: not only do we "need" the agency with its groping and ogling, we must cede it authority for "additional security measures at U.S. airports" - - and everywhere else.
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Attention

Palestinian-Israeli leader granted bail in UK


Aljazeera
Fri, 15 Jul 2011 11:56 UTC
Sheikh Raed Salah, who heads the Islamic Movement in Israel, was detained two weeks ago during a speaking tour.
Image
© EPA
Salah was detained by UK authorities on June 28 during a speaking tour of the country

Sheikh Raed Salah, the detained leader of the Islamic Movement in Israel, has been granted bail by a court in London.

He was detained on June 28 in the UK during a speaking tour, allegedly for entering the country illegally.

Ismail Patel, chair of the activist organisation Friends of Al-Aqsa, who was at Friday's bail hearing, said: "It is a tremendous relief that Sheikh Raed's bail application was successful."

Earlier, as the hearing got under way at the Royal Courts of Justice, a group of 50 people protested peacefully outside, calling on the British authorities to grant bail.

A previous demand last week had been refused.

"We are shocked and horrified that a Palestinian leader can be held like this," Sarah Colborne, director of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, told Al Jazeera.
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Calculator

Europe steps back from the abyss, for a day

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
The Telegraph
Tue, 12 Jul 2011 03:06 UTC
The European Union has reached "crunch time" in the words of George Papandreou, Greece's despondent premier. Its leaders can longer allow themselves the luxury of "indecisiveness, errors and tactical politics" as the debt crisis engulfs 40pc of the eurozone's economy and almost half its population.

Image
© unknown
George Papandreou claims the European Union has reached "crunch time".
"Let us be clear: if there is no relief we are going straight into the abyss," said Romano Prodi, Italy's ex-premier and former head of the European Commission.

Relief came just in the nick of time at 9.15 on Tuesday morning when somebody - most likely the European Central Bank (ECB) - intervened in the Spanish and Italian debt markets. Systemic contagion has been halted. A global crash has been averted. At least for a day.
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Cell Phone

US: Millions hit by $2billion in mystery phone charges hidden on their cell bills

Paul Bentley
The Daily Mail, UK
Thu, 14 Jul 2011 01:45 UTC
Image
© Tomas Rodriguez/Corbis
Unaware: Millions of customers are not informed they are being hit by extra charges
Millions of people have been hit with a total of more than $2billion in hidden costs on their cell phone bills, a government investigation has found.

The practice, known as 'cramming', allows third party companies to attach costs onto people's phone bills, often without authorisation, meaning customers are automatically charged for services they have never requested unless they actively opt out.

The charges are often hidden in the final few pages of customers' bills, meaning they often go unnoticed by millions of people who are far too busy, and perhaps too trusting, to inspect their bills with a fine tooth comb.

The investigation, by the Senate Commerce Committee, began in May last year after 'consumers had complained for years that they were finding mysterious charges on their telephone bills for services they had not purchased," the report stated.

The investigation found there is a loophole in the law which allows for third party billing on cell phone bills from companies which provide services such as voicemail and paid for 800 numbers.

Often customers do not know these services have been set up for them and mobile providers are reluctant to clarify the process because they make money from the extra charges, the report found.

The practice of cramming began in the 1990s when phone companies started allowing accounts to be used as credit cards.
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Che Guevara

Tibetans Protest China's 60 Years of Occupation


The Tibet Post International
Thu, 14 Jul 2011 03:41 UTC
Image
© unknown

Tibetans and supporters rallied from the main temple Tsuglakhang and gathered at TCV Day School in McLeod Ganj despite the intermittent rains to protest the Chinese government's planned propaganda celebration this week in Lhasa, Tibet. The celebration marks 60 years of Beijing's rule over Tibet. The commemoration comes as tensions remain high in eastern Tibet where daily protests continue to take place since mid-March and Chinese security forces are engaged in an intense security clampdown.

Students for a Free Tibet (SFT), India led the action with 60 people carrying black flags representing China's 60 year of oppression & occupation of Tibet. A group of 6 people wrapped in black cloth were followed by files of people holding black flags and later young Tibetan children, dressed in Tibetan traditional clothings, unwrapped to reveal the Tibetan flags underneath at the TCV Day School, as a symbol of new generation unveiling the 'Truth' and ultimately 'freeing Tibet.' There were also distribution of black arm bands throughout the day to signify Tibetan people's oppression & resistance.

A flash-mob action was also staged at the India Gate by SFT 's Delhi-based Chapter.

"China's propaganda celebration of the so-called '60 years of peaceful liberation' is a futile attempt to legitimize their illegal occupation of Tibet. China's recent white paper on Tibet is but another of its many propaganda attempts," said Dorjee Tsetan, National Director of Students for a Free Tibet- India." Tibetans have repeatedly rejected Chinese rule and it has only been ever growing since the widespread protests across the plateau in 2008."
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Star of David

Occupied Territories: Israeli forces prevent ambulance from rescuing injured man


Arab Monitor
Wed, 13 Jul 2011 00:00 UTC
Israeli soldiers
© Unknown
Israeli soldiers are seen during an army operation in the West Bank city of Nablus
As the Egyptian authorities continue to bar commercial traffic from using the Rafah crossing into the Gaza Strip, imports from Egypt continue to be brought inside via tunnels dug underneath the border. Israeli F-16 fighter jets carried out two raids against the tunnels near Rafah.

Elsewhere in the Occupied Palestinian territories Israeli occupation forces carried out a raid in the al-Fara refugee camp, on the outskirts of Nablus, in the West Bank. The soldiers shot a 19-year old student in the thigh, severing a main artery, then prevented an ambulance crew to reach the profusely bleeding young man, who subsequently bled to death. Cracking down on the upset neighbours, who had been forced to stay away from the bleeding victim, occupation forces broke into a series of private residence destroying property and arresting a number of citizens.
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Stormtrooper

Israeli occupation authority arrests 11 Palestinian minors in Silwan


Ahlul Bayt News Agency
Thu, 14 Jul 2011 00:00 UTC
palestinian child, israeli soldiers
© NA
Israeli policemen arrested 12 Palestinians in Silwan town in occupied Jerusalem on Wednesday including 11 minors on charges they threw stones, firecrackers, and firebombs at Beit Yonatan settlement outpost.

The Hebrew daily Yediot Ahronot website said that the policemen stormed a number of suburbs in Silwan town and arrested the 11 minors who did not exceed 17 years of age.

It said that the police force also arrested a shop owner at the pretext he was selling the children material that they used in making the firebombs, which they threw at Beit Yonatan in Wadi Hilwa suburb.

Local sources said that a big number of policemen stormed the homes of those minors, adding that they range in age from 14 to 17 years old.
      Read More...
Bad Guys

Israel aircraft raid Gaza for fourth day in a row


Agence France Presse
Sat, 16 Jul 2011 02:27 UTC
An Israeli military spokeswoman confirmed that an air strike had targeted a Palestinian Gaza City, Palestinian Territories: Israeli aircraft struck Gaza overnight for the fourth time in as many days, wounding a militant who was about to fire a rocket, Palestinian security sources said on Saturday.

The Palestinian was admitted to hospital but his injuries were not life-threatening, the sources said.

An Israeli military spokeswoman confirmed that an air strike had targeted a Palestinian. The raid was followed by the firing of two rockets from Gaza into Israel, neither of which caused casualties or damage, she added.
      Read More...
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