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A new survey indicates that 21 percent of Americans consider themselves holy.

The survey, conducted by the Barna Research Group, also found that 73 percent of Americans believe that a person can become holy, regardless of his past, while half of those surveyed said they knew someone whom they considered holy.

Look at this great offer on eBay.

Could somebody please tell him the virus is called “H5N1″?

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An appeal from the Catholic Church for New Zealanders to boycott an episode of South Park has resulted in a record audience there for the controversial cartoon.

The “Bloody Mary” episode of South Park drew more than six times the normal audience, New Zealand broadcaster TV Works announced Thursday.

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Schoolboy Daniel Artingsall has been banned from class after getting spirals shaved in his hair.

Teachers decided it broke rules on extreme styles and said Daniel, 13, would have to be taught alone so he did not start a trend.

But his father Dean, 38, was astonished by the decision and withdrew his son from school.

Dean fell out with teachers last year when Daniel broke his leg — and was told he could only bring in one crutch.

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Enkele tientallen pluimveehouders die vertrouwen op Gods voorzienigheid zullen niet inenten, zegt secretaris Alex Spieker van de Nederlandse Organisatie van Pluimveehouders (NOP). „Het is niet zwart-wit, maar veel pluimveehouders die principieel weigeren zichzelf of familieleden te laten vaccineren, hebben ook gewetensbezwaren tegen het inenten van dieren’’, zegt Spieker.

Prima. Weten we precies wat we moeten zeggen als deze mensen bijvoorbeeld een brand komen melden: bid maar voor regen.

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U.S. Treasury debt prices extended losses on Thursday after an auction of five-year notes garnered surprisingly weak demand, including from indirect bidders.

That category includes customers of primary dealers but also foreign central banks, and it is therefore used as a proxy for offshore interest in U.S. government debt.

Already unnerved by a drop in jobless claims that reinforced the likelihood of further interest rate hikes from the Federal Reserve, traders kept bond prices well into negative territory.

“It was a terrible auction,” summed up one trader at a U.S. primary dealer. “The bid-to-cover stank, the indirect bid was bad — I would be surprised if the market manages to rally from here.”

The long-term yield on these notes remains lower than the short-term yield on 5-year notes, known as the inverted yield curve:

Historically, inversions of the yield curve have preceded many of the U.S. recessions. Due to this historical correlation, the yield curve is often seen as an accurate forecast of the turning points of the business cycle. A recent example is when the U.S. Treasury yield curve inverted in 2000 just before the U.S. equity markets collapsed. An inverse yield curve predicts lower interest rates in the future as longer-term bonds are being demanded, sending the yields down.

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The bottom line on the bourse is this; the dollar is underwritten by a national debt that now exceeds $8 trillion dollars and trade deficits that surpass $600 billion per year. That means that the greenback is the greatest swindle in the history of mankind. It’s utterly worthless. The only thing that keeps the dollar afloat is that oil is traded exclusively in greenbacks rather than some other currency. If Iran is able to smash that monopoly by trading in petro-euros then the world’s central banks will dump the greenback overnight, sending markets crashing and the US economy into a downward spiral. The Bush administration has no intention of allowing that to take place. In fact, as the tax-cuts and the budget deficits indicate, the Bush cabal fully intends to perpetuate the system that trades worthless dollars for valuable commodities, labor, and resources. As long as the oil market is married to the dollar, this system of global indentured servitude will continue.

Battle Plans

The Bush administration’s attention has shifted to a small province in southwestern Iran that is unknown to most Americans. Never the less, Khuzestan will become the next front in the war on terror and the lynchpin for prevailing in the global resource war. If the Bush administration can sweep into the region (under the pretext disarming Iran’s nuclear weapons programs) and put Iran’s prodigious oil wealth under US control, the dream of monopolizing Middle East oil will have been achieved. Not surprisingly, this was Saddam Hussein’s strategy in 1980 when he initiated hostilities against Iran in a war that would last for eight years. Saddam was an American client at the time, so it is likely that he got the green-light for the invasion from the Reagan White House. Many of Reagan’s high-ranking officials currently serve in the Bush administration; notably Rumsfeld and Cheney. Khuzestan represents 90% of Iran’s oil production. The control over these massive fields will force the oil-dependent nations of China, Japan and India to continue to stockpile greenbacks despite the currency’s dubious value. The annexing of Khuzestan will prevent Iran’s bourse from opening, thereby guaranteeing that the dollar will maintain its dominant position as the world’s reserve currency. As long as the dollar reigns supreme and western elites have their hands on the Middle East oil-spigot, the current system of exploitation through debt will continue into perpetuity. The administration can confidently prolong its colossal deficits without fear of a plummeting dollar. (In fact, the American war-machine and all its various appendages, from Guantanamo to Abrams Tanks, are paid for by the myriad nations who willingly hold reserves of American currency)

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If an Ohio lawmaker’s proposal becomes state law, Republicans would be barred from being adoptive parents.

State Sen. Robert Hagan sent out e-mails to fellow lawmakers late Wednesday night, stating that he intends to “introduce legislation in the near future that would ban households with one or more Republican voters from adopting children or acting as foster parents.” The e-mail ended with a request for co-sponsorship.

[..]

Hagan said his legislation was written in response to a bill introduced in the Ohio House this month by state Rep. Ron Hood, R-Ashville, that is aimed at prohibiting gay adoption.

“We need to see what we are doing,” said Hagan, who called Hood’s proposed bill blatantly discriminatory and extremely divisive. Hagan called Hood and the eight other conservative House Republicans who backed the anti-gay adoption bill “homophobic.”

Hood’s bill, which does not have support of House leadership, seeks to ban children from being placed for adoption or foster care in homes where the prospective parent or a roommate is homosexual, bisexual or transgender.

To further lampoon Hood’s bill, Hagan wrote in his mock proposal that “credible research” shows that adopted children raised in Republican households are more at risk for developing “emotional problems, social stigmas, inflated egos, and alarming lack of tolerance for others they deem different than themselves and an air of overconfidence to mask their insecurities.”

However, Hagan admitted that he has no scientific evidence to support the above claims.

Just as “Hood had no scientific evidence” to back his assertion that having gay parents was detrimental to children, Hagan said.

I have one word for Senator Hagan: rider.

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Five European countries have failed to deliver answers to the Council of Europe, the human rights watchdog, on questions about secret CIA prisons and rendition flights on their territories.

By not replying, Belgium, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Italy, San Marino and Georgia are all in breach of European human rights law, the secretary-general of the Council of Europe (CoE) Terry Davis said on Wednesday (22 February).

[..]

Last month, Mr Marty concluded in a first assessment that EU governments had silently condoned the practice of abducting and transporting prisoners from European airports to countries in which torture is used.

Mr Marty is expected to meet with a European Parliament temporary committee of inquiry into the claims that CIA espionage, abduction of prisoners and other CIA business in Europe was known to EU member state or candidate state governments.

The only conclusion anybody sensible can get from all this is that the European governments are just as dirty as the USA. Condoning and supporting rendition and torture puts them on the same level as the most corrupt and evil totalitarian states on the world. Bah.