Alarming Increase in Natural Disasters with High Death Tolls In a study of world wide death tolls per decade there is an evidenced increase in horrific natural disasters over largely populated areas. The death toll numbers are spread out over a large number of natural catastrophes as opposed to just a few per decade. This is not counting death tolls from disease, war and genocide, just deaths from natural disasters world wide. The following evaluation also does not account for every natural disaster that has occurred, but lists only the those with significantly higher numbers of deaths. The final tolls are higher than listed. 2000-2010 ************************************ 2001 Gujarat, India quake.             20,000 dead. 2003 Bam, Iran quake.                   30,000 dead. 2003 Europe, unusual heat wave     35,000 dead. 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.          290,000 dead. 2004 Haiti and D. Republic flooding  3,363 dead. 2004 Caribbean, Hurricane Ivan          120 dead.       2004 Philippines, storms ("Winnie")      400 dead. 2004 Haiti, hurricane Jeanne              3,037 dead. 2005 USA, hurricane Katrina            1,836 dead. 2005 Kashmir, Pakistan quake        86,000 dead. 2005 Mexico, hurricane Stan             1,620 dead. 2005 Mumbai, India floods                1,000 dead. 2005 USA, hurricane Rita                    113 dead. 2006 Yogyakarta, Indonesia, quake  6,234 dead. 2006 Philippines, typhoon Durian      1,399 dead.        2007 Bangladesh, cyclone                 1,723 dead. 2008 Afghanistan, blizzard                    926 dead. 2008 China, winter storms                    133 dead. 2008 Yangon, Myanmar cyclone   147,000 dead. 2008 Sichuan, China quake             70,000 dead. 2009 Haiti, Poteau floods                  2,400 dead. 2009 Jakarta, Indonesia quake          1,200 dead. 2010 Haiti, earthquake                  233,000 dead. 2010 Chile earthquake                         799 dead.   TOTAL:                                   937,303 DEAD.     1990- 2000 ******************************************** 1990 Manjil Rudbar, Iran earthquake             35,000 dead. 1990, Iran earthquake                                    50,000 dead. 1990 Luzon, Philippines earthquake                  1,084 dead. 1991 Mount Pinatubo, Philippines volcano           700 dead. 1991  Thelma, Philippines typhoon                    6,000 dead. 1991 Bangladesh cyclone                             138,000 dead 1993 Latur, India earthquake                            9,748 dead. 1993 USA, storm complex                                  318 dead. 1994 Haiti, USA, hurricane Gordon,                 1,145 dead. 1995 Kazakh, Kazakhstan blizzard                      112 dead. 1995 Great Hanshin, Japan earthquake              6,433 dead. 1995 USA, Chicago heat wave                            739 dead. 1996 Andhra Pradesh cyclone                           2,500 dead. 1996 Amarnath Yatra, India                                 242 dead. 1996 Bangladesh, Tangail tornado                        440 dead. 1998 India cyclone                                            1,000 dead. 1998 Greater Antilles, hurricane Georges,             602 dead. 1998 The Chakislampur, India tornado                 160 dead. 1998 Central America, hurricane Mitch            18,277 dead. 1998 Texas, Middle East and India heat waves  4,000 dead. 1999 Izmit, Turkey earthquake                         17,118 dead. 1999 Venezuela, rain mudslides                        15,100 dead. 1999 Chi-Chi, Taiwan earthquake                      2,400 dead. 1999 USA, midwest and northeast heat waves       271 dead. 1999 Orissa, India cyclone                                10,000 dead.   TOTAL:                                                      321,389 DEAD.   1980-1989 TOTAL:                                                        78,079 DEAD.

 

 

New Book Promises Scientific Proof of Afterlife

From

featured on msn.com

 

A new book by Dinesh D'Souza, provocatively titled Life After Death: The Evidence. D'Souza's book attempts to build a case on unshakable scientific grounds for the survival of consciousness beyond death. Ghosts, mediums, and miraculous cures by the intercession of saints play no role in his argument, which draws instead on quantum mechanics, neuroscience, and moral philosophy. Life After Death, along with other recent books including mathematician David Berlinski's The Devil’s Delusion: Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions, physicist Frank J. Tripler's The Physics of Christianity, and The Language of God by the director of the National Institutes of Health, the geneticist Francis S. Collins, constitutes an effort by believers to confront

the so-called new atheism on its own intellectual turf, without benefit of scripture or revelation. D'Souza, who likens this to fighting with one hand tied behind his back, is a frequent debating opponent of prominent atheists including Christopher Hitchens (God Is Not Great) and Sam Harris (The End of Faith). He regards the emergence of such enemies as a God-given opportunity to bring Christian apologetics into the new century. "C. S. Lewis addressed issues from his own era, such as the Holocaust," D'Souza notes, "but today we have new questions—about Darwin, brain science, modern physics, and Islamic terrorism. The new atheists have done believers a favor by putting the issue of faith on the agenda. If I'd written this book 10 years ago, people would have asked, 'why?' "

The "evidence," of necessity, is indirect: D'Souza doesn't claim to have communicated with anyone who has died, and he doesn't expect to. Instead, he looks to the human heart, and finds therein a universal moral code underlying acts of self-sacrifice and charity that appear to run counter to the Darwinian imperative to outcompete thy neighbor. This is a time-honored argument for the existence of a God who created human beings in his image and imbued them with a moral sense, as well as the free will to follow, or ignore, it. Berlinski uses the argument in his book, and Collins credits it with turning him from atheism to evangelical Christianity. (D'Souza acknowledges that the prominent atheist Richard Dawkins has offered an evolutionary explanation for human goodness, but he doesn't buy it.) In a Jesuitical display that does credit to his reputation as "an Indian William F. Buckley Jr.," D'Souza turns to his advantage one of the atheists' favorite arguments, God's apparent tolerance for human suffering. Precisely because evil so often goes unpunished in this world, he asserts, the moral code must reflect another reality, in which souls are judged, punished, or rewarded after death. "The postulate of an afterlife enables us to make sense of this life," he writes. It worked for Dante, didn't it?

And if that's not enough to convince you, D'Souza provides a checklist of benefits from believing in life after death: it keeps us honest, gives our lives "a sense of hope and purpose"—and "surveys show" that believers have better sex. It provides "a mechanism to teach our children right from wrong"—a mechanism that those who have been subjected to it tend to describe as a neurotic lifelong fear of going to Hell. And if your smart-alecky kid, full of all that Galileo stuff they get in school nowadays, should ask just where this Judgment business takes place, D'Souza provides you with a response. It happens in the multiverse, the infinitely multiplying complex of worlds predicted by some versions of quantum theory. In the multiverse, physical laws can take on different values, and matter itself may have a different form, so "there is nothing in physics to contradict the idea that we can live beyond death in other realms with bodies that are unlike the bodies we now possess."

Admittedly, the multiverse, although a perfectly respectable concept in theoretical physics, is supported by no more empirical evidence than the soul itself. Afterlife studies, to coin a phrase, has been an empty field, at least until now. The AWARE study ("Awareness During Resuscitation") is looking at "near-death experiences" (NDEs)—the recollections of people who were revived after clinical death, defined as the absence of heartbeat and the cessation of measurable electrical activity in the brain. People with NDEs sometimes report out-of-body experiences, such as looking down on themselves from above and witnessing their own resuscitations. Obviously, if this is actually taking place—and not, say, a composite reconstruction of memories drawn from years of ER episodes—then the threshold requirement for life after death has been met: the separation of consciousness from the physical brain. "Near-death experiences show that clinical death may not be the end," D'Souza writes. Thus they support his larger point, that "neuroscience reveals that the mind cannot be reduced to the brain … consciousness and free will … seem to operate outside the laws of nature, and therefore are not subject to the laws governing the mortality of the body." The latter assertion has been at the crux of Western philosophy since Plato, but it's taken until now to devise an empirical test for it. In the AWARE study, randomly generated images will be projected in the rooms of critically ill patients, in locations where they can be viewed only from above—by someone having an out-of-body experience, for instance. If patients who survive NDEs can identify these images subsequently—well, not to overdramatize, but several centuries of materialism in the natural sciences will have to be rewritten. The director of AWARE is Dr. Sam Parnia, a fellow at Weill Cornell Medical Center. He told NEWSWEEK that researchers at 20 hospitals have identified about 600 subjects for interviews. Parnia expects to publish his results in 2010.

 

Islamists Behead Two Sons of Christian Leader

Islamic extremists have beheaded two young boys in Somalia because their Christian father refused to divulge information about a church leader. The killers are searching Kenya’s refugee camps to do the same to the boys’ father.

Before taking his Somali family to a Kenyan refugee camp in April, 55-year-old Musa Mohammed Yusuf was the leader of an underground church in Yonday village, 30 kilometres from Kismayo in Somalia. He had received instruction in the Christian faith from Salat Mberwa.

 

Militants from the Islamic extremist group al Shabaab entered the Yonday village on February 20, they went to Yusuf’s house and interrogated him on his relationship with Mberwa, a leader of a fellowship of 66 Somali Christians. Yusuf told them he knew nothing of Mberwa and had no connection with him. The Islamic extremists left but said they would return the next day. Yusuf fled his house for refuge.

 

The following day the militants showed up at his home. Yusuf’s wife said the extremists ordered her to stop what she was doing and took hold of three of her sons – 11, 12 and 7 years old.  "I watched my three boys dragged away helplessly as my youngest boy was crying," the wife said. "I knew they were going to be slaughtered. Just after some few minutes I heard a wailing cry of my youngest running towards the house. I could not hold my breath. I only woke up with all my clothes wet. I knew I had fainted due to the shock."

With the help of neighbors, the wife said, she buried the bodies of her two children the following day.

 

 From Japanese Mob to the Word of God

TOKYO — Standing in the pulpit, the Rev. Hiroyuki Suzuki looks as clean-cut as the collar on his Sunday dress shirt. He sings, he smiles, he pauses for a moment of prayer. When he raises his hands in a gesture of joy, however, it's obvious to all that this pastor has a past.

Suzuki has the mark of the Japanese mob--the tips of both his pinkies have been severed. He's done time, done drugs. But now he is serving a higher boss. And in a country that has never been particularly enamored of Christianity, he is becoming something of a celebrity. Along with seven other former gangsters-turned-preachers, Suzuki has written a popular book, and he has spoken at a White House prayer breakfast and is negotiating for a late-night call-in show on network TV. He also preaches at one of the quirkiest churches in the country. Suzuki and his fellow preachers call themselves Mission Barabbas, after the biblical thief who was spared crucifixion with Jesus. They worship in a small white church hidden among the bars and body shops of a back street in Funabashi, a suburb east of Tokyo. A few dozen other Christians meet with them, attracted, they say, by the preachers' mobster past.

The 43-year-old Suzuki was in the mob for 17 years.

Japan has an estimated 81,000 gangsters, known as yakuza, who engage in such illegal activities as drug trafficking, gun smuggling, pimping and running shady real estate deals. The yakuza are divided into hundreds of gangs, with the members of each bound by fierce ties of loyalty to one another and to the gang boss. Gangsters are easily identified by full-torso tattoos, and sometimes by missing fingertips cut off to atone for disloyalty or foul-ups.

Suzuki went to jail twice for fighting with a rival gang. But then he found God. He thanks his wife, a South Korea-born Christian, for his conversion. At age 30, when years of hard living and a serious illness left him fearing for his life, he decided to try out her faith. Suzuki soon quit the gangster life and, in 1992, founded Mission Barabbas. He says it's a testimony to the power of God that "even yakuza can be reborn." He adds, however, that his underworld training--especially the loyalty part--still comes in handy. "Essentially, we're still yakuza," he says. "The only difference is that we have a new boss." And, of course, a new motto--"Going all the way for God."

Christians in Japan still have a long way to go. Fewer than 1% of Japanese are Christians, and that figure has changed little in decades. Most Japanese adhere at least loosely to Buddhism and the indigenous religion of Shinto, which were already well established by the time the first Protestant missionaries arrived in 1859. Mission Barabbas is undaunted. Rain or shine, its preachers take to the streets to spread the message of Jesus. They use guitars, tambourines and large wooden crosses to get their point across. They're also not averse to relying on shock--taking off their shirts to reveal the elaborate tattoos of dragons, demons and carp on their backs and arms.

Last year, Mission Barabbas published a book, "Tattooed Christians," telling in each man's own words the story of his life and conversion. It has sold a respectable 10,000 copies, and a second printing is scheduled for this spring. Suzuki says he is pondering a sequel. Meanwhile, Mission Barabbas is slowly but steadily growing, its congregation increasing from five to 60 in the three years since Suzuki started it.

Suzuki wants to raise enough money to set up a counseling center in Shinjuku, a rough area of Tokyo where gang members hang out. With that, and with the planned TV show--to be shown in the middle of the night "because that's when the people who most need help will be watching"--Suzuki is convinced he can win more converts, mobsters and law-abiding citizens alike.

Is there any chance he might revert to a life of crime? "One hundred percent no," Suzuki says. "I've had the drugs, the women, the alcohol and the gambling. I don't need those things anymore. Now I'm happy just telling people about Jesus."

 

 

North Korea Threatens To "Wipe Out" U.S.

On Monday [06/22/09], North Korea's main Rodong Sinmun newspaper called it "nonsense" to say the country is a threat to the U.S., and instead claimed Washington was the one threatening the North. The paper also warned in a commentary that the country is prepared to strike back if attacked. "As long as our country has become a proud nuclear power, the U.S. should take a correct look at whom it is dealing with," the editorial said. "It would be a grave mistake for the U.S. to think it can remain unhurt if it ignites the fuse of war on the Korean peninsula."

The North "will never give up its nuclear deterrent ... and will further strengthen it" as long as Washington remains hostile, Pyongyang's main Rodong Sinmun newspaper said.

In a separate commentary, the Rodong blasted a recent U.S. pledge to defend South Korea with its nuclear weapons, saying that amounted to "asking for the calamitous situation of having a fire shower of nuclear retaliation all over South Korea."

"If the U.S. imperialists start another war, the army and people of Korea will wipe out the aggressors on the globe once and for all," a dispatch from the official Korean Central News Agency said.

In a first test of the new resolution, the North Korean ship Kang Nam suspected of transporting illicit weapons was sailing off China's coast with a U.S. destroyer close behind. The Kang Nam, which left the North Korean port of Nampo a week ago, is believed bound for Myanmar, South Korean and U.S. officials said. A senior U.S. defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was unable to discuss intelligence on the vessel, said Wednesday [06/24] that the ship had already cleared the Taiwan Strait. He said he didn't know how much range the Kang Nam has — that is, whether or when it may need to stop in some port to refuel — but that the Kang Nam has in the past stopped in Hong Kong China's port. North Korea has said it would consider interception of the ship a declaration of war, and on Wednesday accused the U.S. of seeking to start another Korean War.

 

Gun-loving Pastor To His Flock: "Piece Be With You"


(AP)  A Kentucky pastor is inviting his flock to bring guns to church to celebrate the Fourth of

July and the Second Amendment. New Bethel Church is welcoming "responsible handgun owners" to wear their firearms inside the church June 27, a Saturday. An ad says there will be a handgun raffle, patriotic music and information on gun safety.

"We're just going to celebrate the upcoming theme of the birth of our nation," said pastor Ken Pagano. "And we're not ashamed to say that there was a strong belief in God and firearms _ without that this country wouldn't be here." The guns must be unloaded and private security will check visitors at the door, Pagano said. He said recent church shootings, including the killing Sunday of a late-term abortion provider in Kansas, which he condemned, highlight the need to promote safe gun ownership.

 

The New Bethel Church event was planned months before Dr. George Tiller was shot to death in a Wichita church. Kentucky allows residents to openly carry guns in public with some restrictions. Gun owners carrying concealed weapons must have state-issued permits and can't take them to schools, jails or bars, among other exceptions.  Pagano's Protestant church, which attracts up to 150 people to Sunday services, is a member of the Assemblies of God. The former Marine and handgun instructor said he expected some backlash, but has heard only a "little bit" of criticism of the gun event. John Phillips, an Arkansas pastor who was shot twice while leading a service at his former church in 1986, said a house of worship is no place for firearms.

"A church is designated as a safe haven, it's a place of worship," said Phillips, who was shot by a church member's relative for an unknown reason and still has a bullet lodged in his spine. "It is unconscionable to me to think that a church would be a place that you would even want to bring a weapon." Phillips spoke out against a bill before the Arkansas General Assembly that would have permitted the carrying of guns in that state's churches. The bill failed in February.
 

Pagano, 50, said some members of his church were concerned that President Obama's administration could restrict gun ownership, and they supported the plan for the event when Pagano asked their opinion.  Marian McClure Taylor, executive director of the Kentucky Council of Churches, an umbrella organization for 11 Christian denominations in Kentucky, said Christian churches are promoters of peace, but "most allow for arms to be taken up under certain conditions." Taylor said Pagano assured her the event would focus on promoting responsible gun ownership and any proceeds would go to charity.

"Those two commitments are consistent with the high value the Assemblies of God churches place on human life," she said in an e-mail message. Pagano is encouraging church members to bring a canned good and a friend to the event. He said guns must be unloaded for insurance purposes and safety reasons. He said the point was not to mix worship with guns, though he may reference some passages from the Bible. "Firearms can be evil and they can be useful," he said. "We're just trying to promote responsible gun ownership and gun safety."

 

 

Pope Strikes harmony between the world's two largest religions

REUTERS

Pope Benedict visited a mosque on Saturday in another attempt to mend fences with Islam after a 2006 speech caused offence, and urged Christians and Muslims to jointly defend religion from political manipulation.

Speaking at the modern King Hussein bin Talal Mosque in Amman, he struck a note of harmony and shared purpose between the world's two largest religions, continuing a main theme of his trip to the Middle East. "I firmly believe Christians and Muslims can embrace (the task of cooperation) particularly through our respective contributions to learning and scholarship, and public service," he told Islamic leaders and diplomats at the mosque.

In one section of his address at the mosque, Benedict referred to God as "merciful and compassionate," using the formula Muslims use when speaking of God. Benedict said while no-one could deny a history of tensions and divisions, Christians and Muslims should prevent "the manipulation of religion, sometimes used for political ends."

"That is the real catalyst for tension and division, and at times even violence in society."

Common Word spokesman Ibrahim Kalin said the pope's speech would not erase the Regensburg speech from popular memory in the Muslim world but noted with approval that Benedict stressed in his speech that Muslims and Christians worshipped the same God. A thought that both religions traditionally reject.

 

Barack Obama's New World Order

 

The United States is still the same country it was a year ago, give or take about 6 million jobs. But its international branding campaign, as led by the new President, Barack Obama, is so different that the rest of the world might be forgiven if it has to do a double take.

Most of the hallmarks of the foreign policy of George W. Bush are gone. The old conservative idea of "American exceptionalism," which placed the U.S. on a plane above the rest of the world as a unique beacon of democracy and financial might, has been rejected. At almost every stop, Obama has made clear that the U.S. is but one actor in a global community. Talk of American economic supremacy has been replaced by a call from Obama for more growth in developing countries. Claims of American military supremacy have been replaced with heavy emphasis on cooperation and diplomatic hard labor.

Only four years ago, George W. Bush, in his second Inaugural Address, described what he called America's "considerable" influence, saying, "We will use it confidently in freedom's cause." Bush's vision of American power was combative and aggressive. He said the U.S. would "seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture." He continued, "We go forward with complete confidence in the eventual triumph of freedom."

Obama, by contrast, is looking for collaboration. He is looking to build a collective vision, not to impose an American one. And the response has been notable, from the endless flashbulbs that fired off at his town hall to the cheers of spectators who lined his motorcade routes and gathered outside his events in London. Mr. Obama said the nations coming together is the only way to solve the economic crisis and defeat global threats like al-Qaida and the spread of nuclear weapons.

 

BRITAIN: Minister beaten after clashing with Muslims on his TV show

A Christian minister who has had heated arguments with Muslims on his TV Gospel show has been brutally attacked by three men who ripped off his cross and warned: "If you go back to the studio, we'll break your legs."

The Reverend Noble Samuel was driving to the studio when a car pulled over in front of him. A man got out and came over to ask him directions in Urdu. Mr Samuel, based at Heston United Reformed Church, West London, said: "He put his hand into my window, which was half open and grabbed my hair and opened the door. He started slapping my face and punching my neck. He was trying to smash my head on the steering wheel. Then he grabbed my cross and pulled it off and it fell on the floor. He was swearing. The other two men came from the car and took my laptop and Bible." The Metropolitan Police are treating it as a 'faith hate' assault and are hunting three Asian men. In spite of the attack, Mr Samuel went ahead with his hour-long live Asian Gospel Show on the Venus satellite channel from studios in Wembley, North London. During the show the Muslim station owner Tahir Ali came on air to condemn the attack. Pakistan-born Mr Samuel, 48, who was educated by Christian missionaries and moved to Britain 15 years ago, said that over the past few weeks he has received phone-in calls from people identifying themselves as Muslims who challenged his views. "They were having an argument with me," he said. "They were very aggressive in saying they did not agree with me. I said those are your views and these are my views." He said that he, his wife Louisa, 48, and his son Naveed, 19, now fear for their safety, and police have given them panic alarms. "I am frightened and depressed," he said. "My show is not confrontational."

 

CYBERATTACKS COULD MEAN CATASTROPHE

The Middle East Times reports: “With increased dependence on the Internet and information technology infrastructure, a cyberattack could devastate society, London-based Chatham House said. The non-governmental current-affairs analysis organization released a report Thursday that said the more reliant Europe, the United States and other modern industrial societies are on the information and communications technology infrastructure, the greater damage a cyberattack could have on the global economy.

The report cites the ease of use and low cost of the Internet and IT infrastructure, which makes the growing use by terrorist organizations and transnational criminal groups more likely. According to the report, in 2007 the United Kingdom suffered losses of approximately $772.8 million from cybercrimes…”

 

BANGLADESH: Pastor Threatened for Rape Accusations

Christian and human rights advocates said doctors likely fabricated a medical report that falsely concluded there were no signs of rape in the wife of a Bangladeshi pastor whom village Muslims have now threatened for pressing charges. The Rev Shankar Hazra of Chaksing Baptist church in Gopalganj district, 100 kilometres south of Dhaka, said influential area Muslims have used threats to try to force him and his wife to withdraw charges of robbery and rape; he declined to name them out of fear of reprisals. “If I do not withdraw the case, they said they will make a ‘Ganges (river) of blood’ here,” Rev Hazra said. 

 

BANGLADESH: Pastor’s Wife Gang-Raped, Home Robbed

The pastor of a Baptist church in an Bangladesh village about a 100 kilometres south of Dhaka said that earlier this month local Muslims tied him and his wife up, robbed his living quarters on the church property and gang-raped his wife. The Rev. Shankar Hazra, 55, of Chaksing Baptist church in Gopalganj district, said that before leaving, the assailants desecrated the church building.

 

CHINA REPORTS SEVENTH CASE OF BIRD FLU THIS YEAR

YnetNews.com reports: “A 21-year-old woman has been diagnosed with bird flu and is recovering in a central Chinese hospital. Chinese health authorities say the woman fell ill January 23 and was hospitalized three days later. China's official Xinhua news agency quotes the Center for Disease Control and Prevention as confirming that the woman contracted the H5N1 strain of bird flu, which can be fatal to humans.

She becomes the seventh person to have contracted the disease in China this year - five of them have died.

A string of deaths that began earlier this month, as China prepared to mark the Lunar New Year holiday, has sparked concerns about a possible epidemic. The holiday is a time when many Chinese return to their home towns and consume poultry in vast quantities…”

 

Death toll well over 800,000 since 1994, Rwanda genocide leader gets life imprisonment

NIGERIA: Six Pastors Killed, 40 Churches Destroyed in Jos, Violence.

The murderous rioting sparked by Muslim attacks on Christians and their property on 28 - 29 November left six pastors dead, at least 500 other people killed and 40 churches destroyed, according to church leaders. More than 25,000 persons have been displaced in the two days of violence, according to the National Emergency Management Agency.

What began as outrage over suspected vote fraud in local elections quickly hit the religious fault line that quakes from time to time in this city located between the Islamic north and Christian south, as angry Muslims took aim at Christian sites rather than at political targets. Police and troops reportedly killed about 400 rampaging Muslims in an effort to quell the unrest, and Islamists shot, slashed or stabbed to death most of more than 100 Christians.

Among Christians killed was Joseph Yari of the Evangelical Church of West Africa. The Rev. Emmanuel Kyari, pastor of Christ Baptist Church, Tudun-Wada, told Compass that Yari died helping other Christians who repelled Muslim fanatics bent on burning down his church building. "Yari was standing beside my wife when he was shot by Muslims," Rev. Kyari said. "In addition to Yari who was killed, there were also three other Christians who were shot, and two died instantly."

IBM TO BUILD BRAIN-LIKE COMPUTERS

November 23, 2008

BBC News reports: “IBM has announced it will lead a US government-funded collaboration to make electronic circuits that mimic brains. Part of a field called ‘cognitive computing’, the research will bring together neurobiologists, computer and materials scientists and psychologists.

As a first step in its research the project has been granted $4.9m (£3.27m) from US defense agency Darpa. The resulting technology could be used for large-scale data analysis, decision making or even image recognition.

‘The mind has an amazing ability to integrate ambiguous information across the senses, and it can effortlessly create the categories of time, space, object, and interrelationship from the sensory data,’ says Dharmendra Modha, the IBM scientist who is heading the collaboration.

‘There are no computers that can even remotely approach the remarkable feats the mind performs,’ he said. ‘The key idea of cognitive computing is to engineer mind-like intelligent machines by reverse engineering the structure, dynamics, function and behavior of the brain.’ IBM will join five US universities in an ambitious effort to integrate what is known from real biological systems with the results of supercomputer simulations of neurons. The team will then aim to produce for the first time an electronic system that behaves as the simulations do.

The longer-term goal is to create a system with the level of complexity of a cat's brain. Prof Modha says that the time is right for such a cross-disciplinary project because three disparate pursuits are coming together in what he calls a ‘perfect storm’.

Neuroscientists working with simple animals have learned much about the inner workings of neurons and the synapses that connect them, resulting in ‘wiring diagrams’ for simple brains. Supercomputing, in turn, can simulate brains up to the complexity of small mammals, using the knowledge from the biological research. Modha led a team that last year used the BlueGene supercomputer to simulate a mouse's brain, comprising 55m neurons and some half a trillion synapses.

‘But the real challenge is then to manifest what will be learned from future simulations into real electronic devices - nanotechnology,’ Prof Modha said. Technology has only recently reached a stage in which structures can be produced that match the density of neurons and synapses from real brains - around 10 billion in each square centimeter…”

NORTH KOREA ENRAGED BY LAUNCH OF GOSPEL GAS BALLOONS

November 21, 2008

WorldNetDaily.com reports: “North Korean officials are infuriated by leaflets that have been floated over the communist nation's secured borders and dropped from plastic bags attached to gas-filled balloons, and one organization behind the effort says there's good reason the atheists in power are upset – the pamphlets are carrying a Gospel message directly to the people.

Hundreds of thousands of leaflets have reportedly been distributed in just the past few months, and may have been the reason the North recently announced it would shut its border with the South. The North also has threatened to cut other communications, such as telephone lines, over the issue.

The leaflets have been attributed to ‘political’ groups, but a spokesman for one organization sponsoring the effort said there's nothing political about it, and the tracts carry a message of hope directly to the North Korean people.

The spokesman and his organization, which spreads the Gospel around the world, couldn't be identified because of the potential for danger to affiliated activists who are dispatching the balloons.

But he told WND those who have fled government crackdowns on their faith inside North Korea are desperate to get the message of hope to their family, friends and communities behind the wall of communist information censorship.

‘Each balloon carried 10,000 Gospel tracts, in three separate bags at the bottom that have a time release mechanism so that they drop at different times to spread the leaflets over a wider area,’ he described…”

INDIA: Christians Forced to Convert

Hindu extremist violence against the Christian community in Orissa State, India, which started on 24 August, has been continuing unabated for two months now. There have been numerous cases of forced conversions to Hinduism as Hindu extremists try to turn Orissa into a Hindu state. Christians who want to return to their homes are told by the Hindu extremists: "Come back as Hindu or don't come back at all." In some cases the Hindu extremists poured petrol over the Christians and then asked them to convert; if they refused they were burnt. Ashish Digal, a Christian leader, was told by the extremists that if he did not convert to Hinduism, they would burn his house and kill him. A young Hindu woman was gang-raped by her grandparents' neighbours because her uncle refused to renounce his Christian faith. Jaspina, a 32-year-old Christian woman, was warned by her neighbours, "If you go on being Christians, we will burn your houses and your children in front of you, so make up your minds quickly." She was forced to attend a conversion ceremony together with her husband and three children, during which they had to eat cow dung to "purify" themselves. Jaspina says: "I'm totally broken. I've always been a Christian. Inside I'm still praying for Jesus to give me peace and to take me out of this situation."

INDIA: Christians Attacked at Vacation Bible School

On 25 April, Pastor Mohan Babu and two other believers were severely beaten by 35 Hindu extremists for holding a Vacation Bible School (VBS) near Bangalore City, in Karnataka State. According to contacts in India, the three-day VBS was organised by Ragigudda Baptist Church. sources said, "Around 60 children from different backgrounds were attending the VBS. As they were worshiping, about 35 people belonging to a Hindu extremist group forcefully entered the hut chanting slogans and demolished the hut. The extremists mercilessly beat Mohan, Samuel and Krishna, alleging forceful conversion. The perpetrators chased the children and tore the Bibles. Mohan was severely injured on his lips and was profusely bleeding. The believers are living in fear and did not lodge complaint with the police."