Rhoda

[petra]

RHODA-

Pilgrims arrived in packed trucks, others walked along narrow paths in the Himalayan foothills for as long as five days to hear a man they revere as a living god speak.

"If I can just see him once in my lifetime, then I am not afraid to die," said Dorji Wangdi, 17.

How sad that people are so deceived and China will have no qualms abt killing these people either! Long standing hatred!

[rhodahughes52]

Many wars start over things like this, This is an abomination to God. If they have a war will we stick our nose in where it doesn't belong again. I think in the end China and India will join forces but until then what?

[rhodahughes52]

Big question mark: Fate of health care in Senate
AP
President Barack Obama speaks in the Rose Garden of the White House about health AP – President Barack Obama speaks in the Rose Garden of the White House about health care reform and Iraq's …
By RICARDO ALONSO-ZALDIVAR, Associated Press Writer Ricardo Alonso-zaldivar, Associated Press Writer – 23 mins ago

WASHINGTON – The glow from a health care triumph faded quickly for President Barack Obama on Sunday as Democrats realized the bill they fought so hard to pass in the House has nowhere to go in the Senate.

Speaking from the Rose Garden about 14 hours after the late Saturday vote, Obama urged senators to be like runners on a relay team and "take the baton and bring this effort to the finish line on behalf of the American people."

The problem is that the Senate won't run with it. The government health insurance plan included in the House bill is unacceptable to a few Democratic moderates who hold the balance of power in the Senate.

If a government plan is part of the deal, "as a matter of conscience, I will not allow this bill to come to a final vote," said Sen. Joe Lieberman, the Connecticut independent whose vote Democrats need to overcome GOP filibusters.

"The House bill is dead on arrival in the Senate," Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said dismissively.

Democrats did not line up to challenge him. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., has yet to schedule floor debate and hinted last week that senators may not be able to finish health care this year.

Nonetheless, the House vote provided an important lesson in how to succeed with less-than-perfect party unity, and one that Senate Democrats may be able to adapt. House Democrats overcame their own divisions and broke an impasse that threatened the bill after liberals grudgingly accepted tougher restrictions on abortion funding, as abortion opponents demanded.

In Senate, the stumbling block is the idea of the government competing with private insurers. Liberals may have to swallow hard and accept a deal without a public plan in order to keep the legislation alive. As in the House, the compromise appears to be to the right of the political spectrum.

Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine, who voted for a version of the Senate bill in committee, has given the Democrats a possible way out. She's proposing to allow a government plan as a last resort, if after a few years premiums keep escalating and local health insurance markets remain in the grip of a few big companies. This is the "trigger" option.

That approach appeals to moderates such as Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La. "If the private market fails to reform, there would be a fallback position," Landrieu said last week. "It should be triggered by choice and affordability, not by political whim."

Lieberman said he opposes the public plan because it could become a huge and costly entitlement program. "I believe the debt can break America and send us into a recession that's worse than the one we're fighting our way out of today," he said.

For now, Reid is trying to find the votes for a different approach: a government plan that states could opt out of.

The Senate is not likely to jump ahead this week on health care. Reid will keep meeting with senators to see if he can work out a political formula that will give him not only the 60 votes needed to begin debate, but the 60 needed to shut off discussion and bring the bill to a final vote.

Toward the end of the week, the Congressional Budget Office may report back with a costs and coverage estimate on Reid's bill, which he assembled from legislation passed by the Finance Committee and the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. The Finance Committee version does not include a government plan.

Reid has pledged to Obama that he will get the bill done by the end of the year and remains committed to doing that, according to a Senate leadership aide.

Both the House and Senate bills gradually would extend coverage to nearly all Americans by providing government subsidies to help pay premiums. The measures would bar insurers' practices such as charging more to those in poor health or denying them coverage altogether.

All Americans would be required to carry health insurance, either through an employer, a government plan or by purchasing it on their own.

To keep down costs, the government subsidies and consumer protections don't take effect until 2013. During the three-year transition, both bills would provide $5 billion in federal dollars to help get coverage for people with medical problems who are turned down by private insurers.

Both House and Senate would expand significantly the federal-state Medicaid health program for low-income people.

The majority of people with employer-provided health insurance would not see changes. The main beneficiaries would be some 30 million people who have no coverage at work or have to buy it on their own. The legislation would create a federally regulated marketplace where they could shop for coverage.

The are several major differences between the bills.

_The House would require employers to provide coverage; the Senate does not.

_The House would pay for the coverage expansion by raising taxes on upper-income earners; the Senate uses a variety of taxes and fees, including a levy on high-cost insurance plans.

_The House plan costs about $1.2 trillion over 10 years; the Senate version is under $900 billion.

By defusing the abortion issue — at least for now — the House may have helped the long-term prospects for the bill. Catholic bishops also eager to expand society's safety net may yet endorse the final legislation.

Lieberman appeared on "Fox News Sunday," while Graham was CBS' "Face the Nation."

[Theophilous]

I'm afraid I do not share the optimism of those who trust in the Senate to defeat this bill. I do hope I am wrong, but I think this will go thru. It may be changed somewhat, but it will still be a aggregious attack on our freedoms and our Constitution.

[rhodahughes52]

Food summit turns down UN funding appeal
AP

By FRANCES D'EMILIO, Associated Press Writer Frances D'emilio, Associated Press Writer – 1 hr 45 mins ago

ROME – Pope Benedict XVI decried the worsening plight of the world's 1 billion hungry on Monday as a United Nations food summit rallied around a strategy of more help to farmers in poor nations but rebuffed a U.N. appeal to commit billions to the plan.

In a show of broad consensus, some 60 heads of state and dozens of ministers from other nations pledged to substantially increase aid to agriculture in developing nations to help them become more self-sufficient in food production.

The world's wealthiest nations put forward the strategy at the Group of Eight summit this summer in L'Aquila, Italy.

Despite endorsing the strategy in the first hours of Monday's meeting, the 192 participating countries did not commit to the $44 billion a year for agricultural aid that the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization says will be necessary in the coming decades.

Soon after the delegates approved the declaration, Pope Benedict took the floor to decry "opulence and waste" in a world where the "tragedy" of hunger has been steadily worsening. Benedict's speech marked the first time a pontiff attended such a gathering since Pope John Paul II took part in a 1996 food summit.

The pontiff, lending his moral authority as head of the world's 1 billion Catholics, also called for access to international markets for products coming from the poorest countries, which he said are often relegated to the sidelines.

The pope urged delegates to keep the "fundamental rights of the individual" in mind when shaping new agricultural strategy. People are entitled to "sufficient, health and nutritious food" as well as water, he said.

Heads of state in attendance include Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva to Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi. The U.S. delegation is headed by the acting administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development Alonzo Fulgham.

The U.N. agency, which is hosting the three-day summit at its Rome headquarters, had also hoped countries would adopt 2025 as a deadline to eradicate hunger. But the declaration instead focused on a pledge set nine years ago to halve the number of hungry people by 2015.

As the conference opened, the United Nations' chief urged rich and powerful countries to tackle "unacceptable" global hunger.

"The world has more than enough food," U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told delegates. "Yet, today, more than 1 billion people are hungry. This is unacceptable."

So far, helping the world's hungry has largely entailed wealthy nations sending food assistance rather than technology, irrigation help, fertilizer or high-yield seed that could assist local farmers, livestock herders and fishermen. Much of this food assistance is purchased from the wealthy nations' own farmers.

But the Food and Agriculture Organization says the best way to stop hunger is to help the needy help themselves, and the final declaration agreed to do that.

This approach "lies at the core of food security," Ban said. "Our job is not just to feed the hungry, but to empower the hungry to feed themselves."

The summit is being held at a time "when the international community recognizes it has neglected agriculture for many years," the organization said Sunday. "Sustained investment in agriculture — especially small-holder agriculture — is acknowledged as the key to food security."

The gathering hopes to build momentum on a shift toward more aid to agriculture that was first laid out at the G-8 summit in July, during which leaders of the developed nations pledged to spend $20 billion in the next three years to help farmers in poor countries.

[petra]

Opulence and waste is a strange thing for the RCC to put down with all of their riches! But it is true we in America do waste food- that is a privilege we may not have for much longer tho- food shortages will hit us here too!

[rhodahughes52]

Age of cyber warfare is 'dawning'

http://news.bbc.co.uk/

Cyber war has moved from fiction to fact, says a report.

Compiled by security firm McAfee, it bases its conclusion on analysis of recent net-based attacks.

Analysis of the motives of the actors behind many attacks carried out via the internet showed that many were mounted with a explicitly political aim.

It said that many nations were now arming to defend themselves in a cyber war and readying forces to conduct their own attacks.

While definitions of what constitutes cyber war are not shared, it was clear that many nations were preparing for a future in which conflict was partly conducted via the net.

"There are at least five countries known to be arming themselves for this kind of conflict," said Greg Day, primary analyst for security at McAfee Europe.

The UK, Germany, France, China and North Korea are known to be developing their own capabilities.

If it is someone stealing information or planting logic bombs, it's far more difficult to find them

The US is known to have an operating manual governing the rules and procedures of how it can use cyber warfare tactics. It is known to have used hack attacks alongside ground operations during the Iraq war and has continued to use this cyber capability while policing the nation.

Mr Day said there was evidence of a growing number of attacks that could be classed as "reconaissance" in advance of a future conflict. The ease with which the tools of such attacks can be gathered and used was worrying, said Mr Day.

"To go to physical war requires billions of dollars," he said. "To go to cyber war most people can easily find the resources that could be used in these kind of attacks."

The targets of such future conflicts were likely to be a nation's infrastructure, said Mr Day, because networks of all kinds were now so embedded in peoples' lives.

In response, he said, many nations now have an agency overseeing critical national infrastructure and ensuring that it is adequately hardened against net-borne attacks.

Chris Wysopal, chief technology officer at Veracode which advises many governments on security, said cyber war presented its own problems when it came to deciding motive and finding the perpetrators.

"In physical warfare it's pretty clear who has which weapon and how they are using them," he said. "In the networked world that attribution is incredibly difficult."

The same is true for cyber crime, he said, where following a trail of money can lead investigators back to a band of thieves.

"If it is someone stealing information or planting logic bombs, it's far more difficult to find them," he said.

Mr Wysopal said many governments had woken up to the threat and were starting to put in place systems and agencies that could help protect them.

However, he said, they still had some weaknesses.

"The thing about governments doing this is that they have a time horizon of many years," he said. "But the criminals are doing it in a matter of months."

[petra]

We had better be protected against this cyber warfare or we are in for big trouble- that could pretty effectively shut this country down!

[rhodahughes52]

Fertility treatment may produce fewer baby boys
Reuters

Wed Nov 25, 10:43 am ET

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – The number of baby boys conceived by a fertility treatment known as ICSI may be lower than what is produced by Mother Nature, a new study suggests.

On average, there are 105 baby boys born for every 100 girls -- a natural advantage that helps balance out the higher number of deaths among male fetuses and infants. But in the new study, researchers found that this male-to-female birth ratio seems to be reversed when infants are conceived through intracytoplasmic sperm injection, or ICSI.

Among more than 15,000 U.S. babies born in 2005 via assisted reproduction, the investigators found that a particular ICSI approach appeared to result in a smaller-than-average number of boys.

The effect was seen when ICSI was performed using blastocyst-stage embryos -- where embryos are allowed to mature a couple days longer than the traditional norm before they are transferred to the mother. This allows doctors to transfer fewer embryos, reducing the odds of couples having triplets or higher-order births.

Among couples undergoing this procedure, just under 50 percent of births were boys. That compared with a U.S. norm of 52.5 percent for 2005, according to findings published in the journal Fertility & Sterility.

ICSI involves injecting sperm from the father directly into eggs taken from the mother; if one or more embryos develop over the next few days, they are transferred to the mother's uterus.

ICSI is typically used to treat male fertility problems, such as a low sperm count or poor-quality sperm. However, it is also sometimes used when the cause of a couple's infertility is unclear, and some fertility clinics opt to use ICSI for all patients.

The full implications of the current findings are not clear, according to the researchers, led by Dr. Barbara Luke of Michigan State University in East Lansing.

About 1 percent of U.S. births result from all assisted reproductive techniques combined, meaning ICSI accounts for only a small number of births. So it is unlikely that the small effects on male-to-female birth ratio seen in this study would have "any major implications for public health," Luke and her colleagues write.

Still, they conclude, "because our findings suggest that ICSI may reduce the sex ratio, we recommend that ICSI only be done if medically necessary, in an effort to prevent this potential side effect."

It is not clear why ICSI might reduce the proportion of male births. However, Luke and her colleagues point out, the study found no evidence that male infertility itself was related to a lower sex ratio -- supporting the idea that something about the ICSI process is to blame.

SOURCE: Fertility & Sterility, November 2009.

COULD THIS BE PART OF THE REASON WE HAVE 7 WOMEN TO EVERY MAN AT THE END TIMES

[petra]

RHODA-

Well that's odd! Np telling what is the cause either-