Priests Threatened with Arrest if they Minister to Military During Shutdown

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Photo Credit: U.S. Navy/Johnny Bivera/Getty

Photo Credit: U.S. Navy/Johnny Bivera/Getty

In a stunning development, some military priests are facing arrest if they celebrate mass or practice their faith on military bases during the federal government shutdown.

“With the government shutdown, many [government service] and contract priests who minister to Catholics on military bases worldwide are not permitted to work – not even to volunteer,” wrote John Schlageter, the general counsel for the Archdiocese for the Military Services USA, in an op-ed this week. “During the shutdown, it is illegal for them to minister on base and they risk being arrested if they attempt to do so.”

According to its website, the Archdiocese for the Military Services “provides the Catholic Church’s full range of pastoral ministries and spiritual services to those in the United States Armed Forces.”

In his piece, Schlageter worries about this restriction as Sunday nears. “If the government shutdown continues through the weekend, there will be no Catholic priest to celebrate Mass this Sunday in the chapels at some U.S. military installations where non-active-duty priests serve as government contractors,” he wrote.

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Sebelius Fails in Her Own State, No One From Kansas Signs Up for Obamacare (+video)

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Photo Credit: Life News

Photo Credit: Life News

HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has been President Barack Obama’s main organizer and cheerleader for Obamacare since its inception. But you know the government-run health care plan is bad when the Secretary of the Health and Human Services Department can’t get anyone from her own state to sign up for it.

Today, the office of Congressman Tim Huelskamp revealed that according to one of the insurance providers in Kansas, none of the 356,000 uninsured Kansans successfully signed up for insurance on the much-hyped ObamaCare exchanges the first day. Huelskamp has had his own troubles signing up in the exchanges. The Congressman has been on “hold” for over 60 hours, and is still waiting to sign up as required under ObamaCare.

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Christians Under Threat in Syria as Islamist Extremists Gain Influence

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Photo Credit: Youssef Badawi/EPA

Photo Credit: Youssef Badawi/EPA

When radical Islamists tore down a cross and hoisted a black flag above a church in the northern Syrian city of Raqqah last week, their action underscored the increasingly hostile environment for the country’s Christians.

Although Syria is majority Sunni Muslim, it is one of the most religiously and ethnically diverse countries in the Middle East, home to Christians, Druze, and Shiite-offshoot Alawites and Ismailis. But the country’s conflict, now in its third year, is threatening that tapestry.

While the primary front in the war has pitted Sunni against Shiite, Christians are increasingly caught in the line of fire. The perception that they support the government — which is in many cases true — has long made them a target of rebel groups. Now, Christians say radical Islamist groups such as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), an affiliate of al-Qaeda, are determined to drive them from their homes.

“The Christian community in Syria is stuck between two fires,” said Nadim Nassar, a Syrian from Latakia who is director of the Awareness Foundation, an interfaith charity based in Britain. “One fire is a corrupt regime, and everybody agrees there needs to be a change. And on the other hand, there’s a fragmented and diverse opposition on the ground who can’t control jihadist forces coming from outside the country.”

Syria is not the only place in the wider region where Christians are being targeted. Coptic churches in Egypt have been attacked, and Pakistan last week experienced the deadliest church bombing in the country’s history. The militants who attacked a mall in Nairobi last month singled out non-Muslims.

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Jenna Bush: Hillary Clinton and I are ‘Related’ Through ‘Uncle’ Bill – George W Bush’s ‘Brother from Another Mother’

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Photo Credit: Neil Rasmus

Photo Credit: Neil Rasmus

Here’s some family ties you may just be learning about: apparently Jenna Bush-Hager is related to Hillary Clinton.

At least, that’s what the former first-daughter said at a benefit for the Save the Children organization in New York earlier this week.

Jenna was the emcee of the gala and spoke about the family ties she had with one of the evening’s honorees – former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

‘I’m not sure if you know this, but Secretary Clinton and I are actually related,’ Jenna announced.

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US Scientists Boycott Nasa Conference Over China Ban

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Photo Credit: Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP

Photo Credit: Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP

Nasa is facing an extraordinary backlash from US researchers after it emerged that the space agency has banned Chinese scientists, including those working at US institutions, from a conference on grounds of national security.

Nasa officials rejected applications from Chinese nationals who hoped to attend the meeting at the agency’s Ames research centre in California next month citing a law, passed in March, which prohibits anyone from China setting foot in a Nasa building.

The law is part of a broad and aggressive move initiated by congressman Frank Wolf, chair of the House appropriations committee, which has jurisdiction over Nasa. It aims to restrict the foreign nationals’ access to Nasa facilities, ostensibly to counter espionage.

But the ban has angered many US scientists who say Chinese students and researchers in their labs are being discriminated against. A growing number of US scientists have now decided to boycott the meeting in protest, with senior academics withdrawing individually, or pulling out their entire research groups.

The conference is being held for US and international teams who work on Nasa’s Kepler space telescope programme, which has been searching the cosmos for signs of planets beyond our solar system. The meeting is the most important event in the academic calendar for scientists who specialise in the field.

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Joel Osteen: God Accepts Everyone Including Homosexuals (+video)

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Photo Credit: WND

Photo Credit: WND

God “absolutely” approves of everyone — including homosexuals — declared one of America’s most well-known evangelical pastors.

The Houston megapastor and best-selling author Joel Osteen, whose followers include the likes of Cher and Oprah Winfrey, is hitting the talk-show circuit to promote his new book, “Break Out! 5 Keys to Go Beyond Your Barriers and Live an Extraordinary Life.”

Osteen, the very visible face of Lakewood Church in Houston since 1999, talked to the Huffington Post about his thoughts on prayer, the pope and the homosexual lifestyle.

HuffPo Live host Josh Zepps quoted from Osteen’s new book: “It doesn’t matter who likes you or who doesn’t like you, all that matters is God likes you. He accepts you, he approves of you.”

Zepps followed up by asking if that included homosexuals

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Leon Panetta to Congress: ‘Put Politics Aside,’ End Shutdown (+video)

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Photo Credit: Cliff Owen

Photo Credit: Cliff Owen

Former Secretary of State and CIA director Leon Panetta urged a bitterly divided Congress to fund the government until mid-December — and then hold a summit on contentious issues – like entitlements and tax reform — that are holding up an agreement to end a four-day-old shutdown.

“The first thing is to … put politics aside and take the steps necessary to solve this crisis,” Panetta told CNN’s “The Situation Room.”

“The Speaker [of the House John Boehner] has to allow the House to vote” on funding the government and “on lifting the debt,” he said, adding that a later summitlike conference could “negotiate issues involving entitlements … [and] tax reform” toward a “deal that would restore some confidence.”

“I suspect the majority of Republicans and Democrats would support a clean [continuing resolution,” he added, scolding lawmakers: “You can’t let the extremes control the party … work needs to be done.”

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NSA and GCHQ Target Tor Network that Protects Anonymity of Web Users

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Photo Credit: Felix Clay

Photo Credit: Felix Clay

The National Security Agency has made repeated attempts to develop attacks against people using Tor, a popular tool designed to protect online anonymity, despite the fact the software is primarily funded and promoted by the US government itself.

Top-secret NSA documents, disclosed by whistleblower Edward Snowden, reveal that the agency’s current successes against Tor rely on identifying users and then attacking vulnerable software on their computers. One technique developed by the agency targeted the Firefox web browser used with Tor, giving the agency full control over targets’ computers, including access to files, all keystrokes and all online activity.

But the documents suggest that the fundamental security of the Tor service remains intact. One top-secret presentation, titled ‘Tor Stinks’, states: “We will never be able to de-anonymize all Tor users all the time.” It continues: “With manual analysis we can de-anonymize a very small fraction of Tor users,” and says the agency has had “no success de-anonymizing a user in response” to a specific request.

Another top-secret presentation calls Tor “the king of high-secure, low-latency internet anonymity”.

Tor – which stands for The Onion Router – is an open-source public project that bounces its users’ internet traffic through several other computers, which it calls “relays” or “nodes”, to keep it anonymous and avoid online censorship tools.

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IVF Babies ‘Are a Third More Likely to Develop Childhood Cancer’

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Photo Credit: Alamy

Photo Credit: Alamy

Children born as a result of IVF are a third more likely to get cancer, a major study found.

Scientists said those born after fertility treatments were 33 per cent more likely to have childhood cancer.

They were 65 per cent more likely to develop leukaemia and 88 per cent more likely to develop cancers of the brain and central nervous system.

The study suggests fertility treatment may change the way certain genes function when they are passed from parent to child in a process known as ‘genomic imprinting’.

These faults in genes are linked to childhood cancers, the Danish researchers said.

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‘We’re Winning’: Ted Cruz on the Latest in Washington Amid the ‘Government Shutdown’

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Photo Credit: Getty Images

Photo Credit: Getty Images

Texas Senator Ted Cruz (R) told Glenn Beck during a radio interview Thursday that conservatives are “winning” the battle in Washington over Obamacare and the “government shutdown.”

“We’re winning the debate,” the senator remarked. “That’s why they are scared and they are attacking us. The more shrill it gets, the more scared they are.”

Cruz — one of the lawmakers who led the effort to defund Obamacare, and brought the issue to the forefront during a 21-hour speech on the Senate floor last week — referenced a Shakespeare quote that the lady “doth protest too much.”

“Why are they screaming so loudly? Why are they so personal? Why are they so filled with hate and fear? It’s because the American people are mobilized, are passionate and energized,” he said. “And even worse, [they] understand that Obamacare is hurting millions of Americans, and that has the left terrified out of their minds.”

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