Italy's Right-wing Northern League have reacted with fury after it emerged that a Roman Catholic priest added a model mosque to his church's nativity scene. The League, which has campaigned against the building of new mosques, bitterly attacked Father Prospero Bonzani as an "imbecile". The miniature mosque, complete with a minaret, was included in the skyline of Bethlehem in the nativity scene at Father Bonzani's Our Lady of Providence church in the northern port of Genova. The anti-immigration Northern League has called for a referendum to before any more mosques are built. Mario Borghezio, a Northern League MEP, called the priest an "imbecile" and said: "What on earth possessed him to put a mosque in a traditional Christmas nativity scene? I hope that the Church authorities in Genova will investigate this as a matter of urgency.'' He added: "What will this priest do when he says Mass during Ramadan? Ask us to turn towards Mecca? He may as well have included a suicide bomber wearing dynamite."
The League, which has campaigned against the building of new mosques, bitterly attacked Father Prospero Bonzani as an "imbecile".
The miniature mosque, complete with a minaret, was included in the skyline of Bethlehem in the nativity scene at Father Bonzani's Our Lady of Providence church in the northern port of Genova.
The anti-immigration Northern League has called for a referendum to before any more mosques are built. Mario Borghezio, a Northern League MEP, called the priest an "imbecile" and said: "What on earth possessed him to put a mosque in a traditional Christmas nativity scene? I hope that the Church authorities in Genova will investigate this as a matter of urgency.''
He added: "What will this priest do when he says Mass during Ramadan? Ask us to turn towards Mecca? He may as well have included a suicide bomber wearing dynamite."
Orangutans can use their own "currency" which they use to buy favours such as winning bananas, scientists have discovered. The apes can help each other get food by trading tokens, learning the value of each token and handing it over only in exchange for favours or food at the right value. Researchers from the University of St Andrews found orangutans could learn the value of tokens and trade them, helping each other win bananas. The discovery is the first evidence of "calculated reciprocity" in non-human primates, according to an article in Biology Letters. The research found two orangutans - Bim and Dok - who live in Leipzig Zoo, Germany, were especially good at helping each other. Initially, they were given several sets of tokens. One type of token could be exchanged by an orangutan for bananas for itself, another type could be used to gain bananas for a partner, and a third had no value.
The apes can help each other get food by trading tokens, learning the value of each token and handing it over only in exchange for favours or food at the right value.
Researchers from the University of St Andrews found orangutans could learn the value of tokens and trade them, helping each other win bananas.
The discovery is the first evidence of "calculated reciprocity" in non-human primates, according to an article in Biology Letters.
The research found two orangutans - Bim and Dok - who live in Leipzig Zoo, Germany, were especially good at helping each other.
Initially, they were given several sets of tokens. One type of token could be exchanged by an orangutan for bananas for itself, another type could be used to gain bananas for a partner, and a third had no value.
Liquor companies and bartenders are finding inspiration in the financial crisis, devising new recipes and reviving old cocktail standards to keep spirits alive during the holidays. They hope to lure Americans who are drinking more at home or finding that parties are drying up to cut costs. The industry has seen a resurgence of drinks that hark back to the prewar eras of Prohibition and the Great Depression, such as the Sidecar, the Old Fashioned and the Manhattan. Julian Cohen, head of the consumer insights team at Fortune Brands Inc's beverage division, said those "heritage cocktails," traditionally made with heavier-flavoured spirits like bourbon and cognac, mirror a wider preference.
Liquor companies and bartenders are finding inspiration in the financial crisis, devising new recipes and reviving old cocktail standards to keep spirits alive during the holidays.
They hope to lure Americans who are drinking more at home or finding that parties are drying up to cut costs.
The industry has seen a resurgence of drinks that hark back to the prewar eras of Prohibition and the Great Depression, such as the Sidecar, the Old Fashioned and the Manhattan.
Julian Cohen, head of the consumer insights team at Fortune Brands Inc's beverage division, said those "heritage cocktails," traditionally made with heavier-flavoured spirits like bourbon and cognac, mirror a wider preference.
A Dutch biologist has extensively studied the reproductive techniques of deep-ocean squid. During sex, they are brutal and ruthless -- and sometimes clumsy. Sex in the deep sea is a difficult proposition. The problems already begin with the partner search: How do you find someone to mate with in the pitch-black depths of the ocean? And for any creature that does manage to have a rendezvous beneath the waves, failure is simply not an option. "Seize the moment," is how Dutch researcher Hendrik Jan Ties Hoving describes the most basic rule of undersea reproduction. "Chances are low of finding a partner a second time."
A Dutch biologist has extensively studied the reproductive techniques of deep-ocean squid. During sex, they are brutal and ruthless -- and sometimes clumsy.
Sex in the deep sea is a difficult proposition. The problems already begin with the partner search: How do you find someone to mate with in the pitch-black depths of the ocean? And for any creature that does manage to have a rendezvous beneath the waves, failure is simply not an option.
"Seize the moment," is how Dutch researcher Hendrik Jan Ties Hoving describes the most basic rule of undersea reproduction. "Chances are low of finding a partner a second time."
An estimated 1.3 million people visited the West Bank this year, boosting the troubled economy.
At the height of the Palestinian uprising six years ago, the only traffic in this holy city, believed to be Jesus' birthplace, were Israeli military jeeps enforcing curfew. Now, with record bus loads of Christian pilgrims filing through the Church of the Nativity and sleeping at local hotels, Bethlehem is abuzz. The revival of tourism in the West Bank is one of the few bright spots in the Palestinian economy... While tourists must pass through the Israeli security barrier at the main entrance to Bethlehem, West Bank visitors have doubled over the past year. The 1.3 million tourists expected for 2008 surpasses the pre-uprising peak nine years ago. The surge is filling hotels to capacity - an encouraging sign as chains Mövenpick and Days Inn pursue plans to open in Ramallah.
Now, with record bus loads of Christian pilgrims filing through the Church of the Nativity and sleeping at local hotels, Bethlehem is abuzz.
The revival of tourism in the West Bank is one of the few bright spots in the Palestinian economy...
While tourists must pass through the Israeli security barrier at the main entrance to Bethlehem, West Bank visitors have doubled over the past year. The 1.3 million tourists expected for 2008 surpasses the pre-uprising peak nine years ago. The surge is filling hotels to capacity - an encouraging sign as chains Mövenpick and Days Inn pursue plans to open in Ramallah.
FT.com / Columnists / Martin Wolf - Keynes offers us the best way to think about the financial crisis
... This same moralistic debate is with us, once again. Contemporary "liquidationists" insist that a collapse would lead to rebirth of a purified economy. Their leftwing opponents argue that the era of markets is over. And even I wish to see the punishment of financial alchemists who claimed that ever more debt turns economic lead into gold. <...> The shorter-term challenge is to sustain aggregate demand, as Keynes would have recommended. Also important will be direct central-bank finance of borrowers. It is evident that much of the load will fall on the US, largely because the Europeans, Japanese and even the Chinese are too inert, too complacent, or too weak. Given the correction of household spending under way in the deficit countries, this period of high government spending is, alas, likely to last for years. At the same time, a big effort must be made to purge the balance sheets of households and the financial system. A debt-for-equity swap is surely going to be necessary.The longer-term challenge is to force a rebalancing of global demand. Deficit countries cannot be expected to spend their way into bankruptcy, while surplus countries condemn as profligacy the spending from which their exporters benefit so much. In the necessary attempt to reconstruct the global economic order, on which the new administration must focus, this will be a central issue. It is one Keynes himself had in mind when he put forward his ideas for the postwar monetary system at the Bretton Woods conference in 1944.No less pragmatic must be the attempt to construct a new system of global financial regulation and an approach to monetary policy that curbs credit booms and asset bubbles. As Minsky made clear, no permanent answer exists. But recognition of the systemic frailty of a complex financial system would be a good start. ...
... This same moralistic debate is with us, once again. Contemporary "liquidationists" insist that a collapse would lead to rebirth of a purified economy. Their leftwing opponents argue that the era of markets is over. And even I wish to see the punishment of financial alchemists who claimed that ever more debt turns economic lead into gold. <...>
The shorter-term challenge is to sustain aggregate demand, as Keynes would have recommended. Also important will be direct central-bank finance of borrowers. It is evident that much of the load will fall on the US, largely because the Europeans, Japanese and even the Chinese are too inert, too complacent, or too weak. Given the correction of household spending under way in the deficit countries, this period of high government spending is, alas, likely to last for years. At the same time, a big effort must be made to purge the balance sheets of households and the financial system. A debt-for-equity swap is surely going to be necessary.
The longer-term challenge is to force a rebalancing of global demand. Deficit countries cannot be expected to spend their way into bankruptcy, while surplus countries condemn as profligacy the spending from which their exporters benefit so much. In the necessary attempt to reconstruct the global economic order, on which the new administration must focus, this will be a central issue. It is one Keynes himself had in mind when he put forward his ideas for the postwar monetary system at the Bretton Woods conference in 1944.
No less pragmatic must be the attempt to construct a new system of global financial regulation and an approach to monetary policy that curbs credit booms and asset bubbles. As Minsky made clear, no permanent answer exists. But recognition of the systemic frailty of a complex financial system would be a good start. ...
Posted a couple of hours ago with different excerpt. Not used to this time zone yet. Truth unfolds in time through a communal process.
... For Felt to have been able to guide and control the young reporters' investigation, he needed to know a great deal of what the White House had done, going back quite far. He could not possibly have known all this simply through his personal investigations. His knowledge covered too many people, too many operations, and too much money in too many places simply to have been the product of one of his side hobbies. The only way Felt could have the knowledge he did was if the FBI had been systematically spying on the White House, on the Committee to Re-elect the President and on all of the other elements involved in Watergate. Felt was not simply feeding information to Woodward and Bernstein; he was using the intelligence product emanating from a section of the FBI to shape The Washington Post's coverage. Instead of passing what he knew to professional prosecutors at the Justice Department -- or if he did not trust them, to the House Judiciary Committee charged with investigating presidential wrongdoing -- Felt chose to leak the information to The Washington Post. He bet, or knew, that Post editor Ben Bradlee would allow Woodward and Bernstein to play the role Felt had selected for them. Woodward, Bernstein and Bradlee all knew who Deep Throat was. They worked with the operational head of the FBI to destroy Nixon, and then protected Felt and the FBI until Felt came forward. In our view, Nixon was as guilty as sin of more things than were ever proven. Nevertheless, there is another side to this story. The FBI was carrying out espionage against the president of the United States, not for any later prosecution of Nixon for a specific crime (the spying had to have been going on well before the break-in), but to increase the FBI's control over Nixon. Woodward, Bernstein and above all, Bradlee, knew what was going on. Woodward and Bernstein might have been young and naive, but Bradlee was an old Washington hand who knew exactly who Felt was, knew the FBI playbook and understood that Felt could not have played the role he did without a focused FBI operation against the president. Bradlee knew perfectly well that Woodward and Bernstein were not breaking the story, but were having it spoon-fed to them by a master. He knew that the president of the United States, guilty or not, was being destroyed by Hoover's jilted heir.This was enormously important news. The Washington Post decided not to report it. The story of Deep Throat was well-known, but what lurked behind the identity of Deep Throat was not. This was not a lone whistle-blower being protected by a courageous news organization; rather, it was a news organization being used by the FBI against the president, and a news organization that knew perfectly well that it was being used against the president. Protecting Deep Throat concealed not only an individual, but also the story of the FBI's role in destroying Nixon. ...
... For Felt to have been able to guide and control the young reporters' investigation, he needed to know a great deal of what the White House had done, going back quite far. He could not possibly have known all this simply through his personal investigations. His knowledge covered too many people, too many operations, and too much money in too many places simply to have been the product of one of his side hobbies. The only way Felt could have the knowledge he did was if the FBI had been systematically spying on the White House, on the Committee to Re-elect the President and on all of the other elements involved in Watergate. Felt was not simply feeding information to Woodward and Bernstein; he was using the intelligence product emanating from a section of the FBI to shape The Washington Post's coverage.
Instead of passing what he knew to professional prosecutors at the Justice Department -- or if he did not trust them, to the House Judiciary Committee charged with investigating presidential wrongdoing -- Felt chose to leak the information to The Washington Post. He bet, or knew, that Post editor Ben Bradlee would allow Woodward and Bernstein to play the role Felt had selected for them. Woodward, Bernstein and Bradlee all knew who Deep Throat was. They worked with the operational head of the FBI to destroy Nixon, and then protected Felt and the FBI until Felt came forward.
In our view, Nixon was as guilty as sin of more things than were ever proven. Nevertheless, there is another side to this story. The FBI was carrying out espionage against the president of the United States, not for any later prosecution of Nixon for a specific crime (the spying had to have been going on well before the break-in), but to increase the FBI's control over Nixon. Woodward, Bernstein and above all, Bradlee, knew what was going on. Woodward and Bernstein might have been young and naive, but Bradlee was an old Washington hand who knew exactly who Felt was, knew the FBI playbook and understood that Felt could not have played the role he did without a focused FBI operation against the president. Bradlee knew perfectly well that Woodward and Bernstein were not breaking the story, but were having it spoon-fed to them by a master. He knew that the president of the United States, guilty or not, was being destroyed by Hoover's jilted heir.
This was enormously important news. The Washington Post decided not to report it. The story of Deep Throat was well-known, but what lurked behind the identity of Deep Throat was not. This was not a lone whistle-blower being protected by a courageous news organization; rather, it was a news organization being used by the FBI against the president, and a news organization that knew perfectly well that it was being used against the president. Protecting Deep Throat concealed not only an individual, but also the story of the FBI's role in destroying Nixon. ...
