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A “second wave” of countries will fall victim to the economic crisis and face being bailed out by the International Monetary Fund, its chief warned at the G7 summit in Rome.
Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s warning comes amid growing concern that at some point in the next year a major economy could have to seek support from the Fund. Mr Strauss-Kahn, who was yesterday attending the Group of Seven leading finance ministers’ meeting in Rome, said: “I expect a second wave of countries to come knocking.”
The IMF managing director also said the rich world was now in the midst of a “deep recession”. It came as the G7 pledged to avoid slipping into protectionism and repeating the same political and economic mistakes as were made in the 1930s. Ministers also pledged to do more to support their banking systems, sparking speculation that a number of countries, including Germany and France, will unveil new bail-outs and possibly set up “bad banks” as they scramble to fight the crisis.
But with some countries’ economies effectively dwarfed by the size of their banking sector and its financial liabilities, there are fears they could fall victim to balance of payments and currency crises, much as Iceland did before receiving emergency assistance from the IMF last year.
Some have speculated that the UK may have to seek IMF support if capital markets become frightened of the size of its foreign financial liabilities, which increasingly appear to have become supported by the state. But there are a swathe of Eastern European countries which appear particularly vulnerable and may need IMF support.
With the Fund’s warchest expected to run dry later this year, the Japanese confirmed in Rome that they would supply an extra $200bn of capital to the Washington-based institution.
Mr Strauss-Kahn, who warned recently that his resources could run dry within six months, said: “This is the largest loan ever made in the history of humanity.
Reading the Bible aloud start to finish takes about 77 hours. Writing by hand the entire holy book? Try six months.
To celebrate the 30th anniversary of the New International Version of the Bible, the publishing house Zondervan is inviting people across the U.S. to copy a verse in their own hand.
“What better way than to let everyone participate?” said Moe Girkins, chief executive of Zondervan, the North American publisher of the NIV Bible, as it’s commonly known. “Anywhere people love the Bible, we want to go.”
The six-month Bible Across America tour is visiting 90 cities and will include contributions from all 50 states. When the tour ends next month in Dallas, more than 31,000 people will have written a verse.
With about 14,000 verses transcribed, the tour visited Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif., recently, offering churchgoers a chance to write verses from Mark, John and 1 and 2 Chronicles.
After attending a Sunday morning service with her husband, Larry, and their 3-year-old son, John, Heidi Fritz chose to write a verse from John. The book appealed to her, she said, because it includes many passages of Jesus speaking in the first person and offers “lots of practical advice.”
Chronological order left her with John 8:3: “The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group.” It wasn’t exactly the kind of passage she had hoped for, but she said she was still glad to participate.
“It’s an opportunity to re-create history,” she said, comparing the project to early Bibles that were copied by hand. Still, the Fritzes said they have no intention of handwriting all 31,173 verses of the Bible. “One verse is enough,” they said.
Inevitably, with limited leeway in choosing a verse, some participants are dealt less memorable or unsavory passages. So far, such verses have not deterred participants, said Tara Powers, a tour spokeswoman.
“People who love the Bible love the whole story,” she said. “The tough stories need to be put in context.”
Angela Fish, whose husband and two daughters joined her in each writing a verse, agreed.
“It’s a terrific opportunity to be part of God’s word,” she said. “Isn’t every word of the Bible important?”
For Fish, transcribing a verse reinforced messages of the Bible. “Whenever you write something down, you take your time, kind of ingest it,” she said.
Lisa Duncan, 46, said writing 2 Chronicles 10:9 inspired her to revisit the Bible. “I want to go home and read this story and know the whole story of it,” she said.
Angela Fish’s 8-year-old daughter, Emma Sandeman, said it was just “cool to write something in the book.”
Participants write each verse twice, producing two originals of the book. When complete, one copy will be donated to the Smithsonian Institution, the other to the International Bible Society, which holds the copyright to the NIV Bible. Zondervan will scan and format the handwritten pages for a textbook-sized Bible, to be published as “America’s NIV.”
Many contributors said they looked forward to reading the completed handwritten Bible.
“It really touches me, being able to read it in other people’s hand,” Larry Fritz said.
That’s assuming, of course, that everyone’s handwriting is legible.
Ron Mitori, 62, said he initially thought his penmanship would be too difficult for others to read. But wanting to contribute, he decided to write a passage in print instead of his usual cursive.
“It makes me feel like I’m part of something that’s bigger than me,” he said after carefully inking each letter in John 7:46.
To ensure the accuracy and legibility of each passage, tour volunteers provide the text of each verse on a small piece of paper and stand ready with white correction tape. A clear, illuminated box with black ruled lines sits underneath the 11-by-17-inch pages as participants write.
After transcribing a passage, participants each receive a card listing the verse they wrote. When the Bible is published, an index will include every writer’s name and corresponding verse.
A feature film about Jesus Christ’s mother, Mary, is scheduled to begin shooting in May and slated for a spring 2010 release through MGM, according to industry insiders.
Cast to play the widely revered figure in “Mary, Mother of Christ,” is Camilla Belle, who stars in the recently released sci-fi action movie “Push.” Jonathan Rhys Meyers, meanwhile, who starred alongside Scarlett Johansson in the dramatic thriller “Matchpoint,” will reportedly take on the double role of Gabriel and Lucifer.
Mary Aloe, one of the film’s producers, told the Hollywood Reporter that the upcoming film would not be a Christmas movie, but a film on a part of Mary’s life that has never been shown on the big screen before.
“It takes us through Mary’s youth, young love, her life as a new mother and the triumph through the absolute terror of Herod the Great’s reign,” she said. “It is truly a story of real female empowerment.”
Though the last big Bible-based flick, “The Nativity Story,” pulled in only $37.6 million after its December 2006 release, “Mary” producers are likely hoping for figures closer to the $370 million that Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ” racked up in 2004.
Alejandro Agresti (“The Lake House”) has been picked to direct the film and Media 8 Entertainment, which is debuting the project in Berlin at the European Film Market, will handle international sales and distribution, according to Hollywood Reporter.
Filmmakers have also reportedly been trying to recruit Al Pacino and Jessica Lange for the respective roles of King Herod and Anna the Prophetess, who prophesied about Jesus Christ at the Temple of Jerusalem. According to Variety magazine, the two Hollywood stars are in talks with Aloe Entertainment, which is putting together the New Testament ensemble for “Mary.”
MGM plans to release the film wide in 2,000-plus theaters April 2, 2010, which coincides with Good Friday.
A budget for the film has not yet been revealed, but it will likely be somewhere around the $30 million spent to produce “The Passion” or the $35 million it took to produce “The Nativity Story.”
Wiley-Blackwell, a major academic publisher, is recalling copies of Encyclopedia of Christian Civilization and scrapping the print run after critics said the entries were “too Christian” and “too anti-Muslim.”
The publisher was set to release the four-volume encyclopedia this month after it was completed last September.
But a small group of critics that included contributors and some members of the editorial board objected to the final version.
“They determined that the Introduction and many of the entries were ‘too Christian, too orthodox, too anti-secular and too anti-Muslim and not politically correct enough for being used in universities,” said the encyclopedia’s editor, George Thomas Kurian, sounding angry in an e-mail sent last week to nearly 400 contributors.
The charge against the book was led by David Morgan, professor of Religion at Duke University, and Bernard McGinn, professor of Historical Theology and of the History of Christianity at The University of Chicago Divinity School, according to Kurian.
Blackwell subsequently decided to suspend the publication, recall copies already distributed, and destroy the existing print run.
Kurian called the move the “first instance of mass book-burning in the 21st century.”
The book was intended to be a comprehensive work on the history and legacy of Christianity, looking not only at the religion but at the aspects of society, such as art, literature, architecture, music, politics, and scholarship, it has shaped.
Now, the book’s publisher and editorial director want to “de-christianize” all 1,450 entries in the encyclopedia to make it politically correct before it can be reprinted, according to Kurian.
He also claimed the press is looking to delete words including, “Antichrist,” “Enemy,” “Beloved Disciple,” “Gates of Hell,” “Witness,” “Virgin Birth,” “Resurrection,” “Evangelism” and any reference with an “evangelical tone.” BC and AD, chronological markers for “Before Christ” and “Anno Domini,” will also likely to dropped.
Kurian also said the press objected to “historical references to the persecution and massacres of Christians by Muslims, but at the same time wanted references favorable to Islam.”
“To make the treatment ‘more balanced,’ they also want the insertion of material denigrating Christianity in some form or fashion. All these I have refused to do,” stated the encyclopedia’s editor.
He added, “This is the most blatant form of censorship in the history of religious publishing.”
Susan Spilka, corporate communications director of Wiley, said Kurian’s allegations were “completely without foundation.”
“It would make no sense for us to sabotage a project to which we have committed long-term investment and resources, and which we think will be valuable addition to Christian scholarship,” she said in a statement.
She contended that Wiley had learned that “few if any” contributions had been reviewed by the board as had been required.
According to Kurian, however, the work was edited, copy edited, fact checked, proofread and then approved by Blackwell’s editorial team. Printed and bound copies launched at the American Academy of Religion/Society of Biblical Literature conference, where it received high praise, he said.
Kurian has vowed to fight the censorship in court.
In his e-mail, he invited contributors to join him in a class-action lawsuit that seeks restitution for the lost income and charges Wiley-Blackwell of breach of contract. The suit seeks to have Blackwell publish the encyclopedia as originally approved and printed, without change and without censorship of its Christian content, tone and character.
“It will send a strong message to the politically-correct establishment that we will not allow the freedom of Christian expression to be abridged, muzzled, denied or trampled upon,” said Kurian, who will also file a similar suit on his behalf.
An Ontario Superior Court ruling could open the door to police routinely using Internet Protocol addresses to find out the names of people online, without any need for a search warrant.
Justice Lynne Leitch found that there is “no reasonable expectation of privacy” in subscriber information kept by Internet service providers (ISPs), in a decision issued earlier this week.
The decision is binding on lower courts in Ontario and it is the first time a Superior Court-level judge in Canada has ruled on whether there are privacy rights in this information that are protected by the Charter.
The ruling is a significant victory for police investigating crimes such as possession of child pornography, while privacy advocates warn there are broad implications even for law-abiding users of the Internet.
“There is no confidentiality left on the Internet if this ruling stands,” said James Stribopoulos, a professor at Osgoode Hall Law School in Toronto.
The ruling by Judge Leitch was made in a possession of child pornography case in southwestern Ontario.
A police officer in St. Thomas faxed a letter to Bell Canada in 2007 seeking subscriber information for an IP address of an Internet user allegedly accessing child pornography. The court heard that it was a “standard letter” that had been previously drafted by Bell and the officer “filled in the blanks” with a request that stated it was part of a child sexual exploitation investigation.
Bell provided the information without asking for a search warrant. The name of the subscriber was the wife of the man who was eventually charged with “possession of child pornography” and “making available child pornography.”
Most ISPs in the country require search warrants to turn over subscriber information unless it is a child pornography investigation.
Ron Ellis, the lawyer for the defendant, stressed to the judge that there was no allegation of attempted luring or of a child in immediate danger. The “making available” charge stems from peer-to-peer websites that permit the downloading of images from other users.
Mr. Ellis argued that police should have been required to seek a search warrant to obtain the subscriber information.
Judge Leitch accepted the arguments of Crown attorney Elizabeth Maguire that the information is similar to what is in a phone book.
“One’s name and address or the name and address of your spouse are not biographical information one expects would be kept private from the state,” said Judge Leitch.
The reasoning of the judge misses the context of what police are seeking, suggested Mr. Stribopoulos.
“It is not just your name. It is your whole Internet surfing history. Up until now, there was privacy. An IP address is not your name; it is a 10-digit number. A lot more people would be apprehensive if they knew their name was being left everywhere they went,” he said.
This information should require a search warrant by police if there is suspected criminal activity, said Mr. Stribopoulos. Judges are accepting the argument that this is “just your name” because “everyone wants to get at the child abusers,” he said.
The federal Personal Information Protection Electronics Documents Act permits ISPs to provide this information to someone with “lawful authority,” which Judge Leitch interpreted as meaning a police officer and not requiring a court ordered warrant.
There is an irony that exemptions in federal privacy legislation have been used to increase police powers and potentially reduce privacy rights, said Mr. Stribopoulos.
Consumers in the UK should expect a revolution in the way they pay for things in the near future, according to payments association Apacs.
The cheque, which is 350 years old on 16 February, is said to be in irreversible decline as innovation points towards a cashless society.
Banks will increasingly battle for a consumer to use one card exclusively.
But as consumers prepare to pay and access accounts using their mobiles, retailers are worried costs will rise.
By 2015, the number of payments made by cash in the UK will be overtaken for the first time by other ways of paying, according to Apacs.
At the end of this year, three million Barclays customers will be able to press their debit card to a sensor in more than 8,000 UK shops to register a payment.
Meanwhile, the UK could mirror technology already used in East Asia where the chip now found in a plastic card is placed in an everyday item such as a mobile phone or a watch. This is then pushed against a sensor in a shop to pay, and is known as “contactless” technology.
Fingerprint recognition is already being used. Some children press a digit to a sensor to register when they have a school dinner.
And Mastercard plans to allow people to pay their bills through messages on their mobile phones.
But Andrew Bailey, chief cashier at the Bank of England, told the BBC that notes and pennies would still survive the test of time.
“I do not see the banknote dying out in the next ten years. It is not just me saying that because I sign them; there is a demand that I can’t see going away,” said Mr Bailey, whose signature is on every banknote.
Moribund cheques
The future of the chequebook is far less secure, with numerous retailers refusing to accept them and consumers increasingly turning to electronic payments instead.
“Those aged in their 20s don’t know what a chequebook is, and those in their 30s don’t know where their chequebook is,” said Sandra Quinn of Apacs.
The earliest cheque in the UK was thought to have been written 350 years ago, dated 16 February. It was made out for £400, signed by Nicholas Vanacker, made payable to a Mr Delboe, and drawn on Messrs Morris and Clayton – scriveners and bankers of the City of London.
The cheque’s predecessor was the bill of exchange – a way for traders to buy and sell goods without the need to carry cumbersome and valuable quantities of gold and silver.
In the early days, cheques were used relatively infrequently, mainly by merchants and traders for high-value transactions. They had to be confident that these handwritten pieces of paper could be guaranteed.
So they were often issued by goldsmiths within a local network of traders who knew and trusted each other.
Printing processes meant they started to be used by customers of commercial banks, peaking a generation ago in 1990.
However now they are used for things like paying tradespeople, or by parents paying for children’s school meals or trips.
Cheque volumes fell at their fastest rate ever in 2007, down by 10%, with personal cheques accounting for only 6% of all personal non-cash transactions.
The payments industry discussed the possibility of phasing out cheques in the UK by 2018, but concluded that the alternatives had not developed sufficiently.
As well as electronic transfer of funds on the internet, the most likely replacement for the cheque is mobile payments. A phone number acts as a proxy for a bank account number.
So instead of paying, for example, the plumber by cheque – he or she could be paid by an exchange of text messages.
In the Netherlands, the cheque is no longer used at all. Its use is also rare in Belgium, Germany, Switzerland and Sweden. But it is used much more commonly in the US than in the UK.
Security fears
When new technology affects banking services, consumers are naturally concerned about security.
Cash is coming back because it is easier to control in tough times
Contactless cards will have a limit of £10 for each transaction. Occasionally, cardholders will be asked to enter their Pin, as they will for purchases above £10. No cash-back will be available.
The card provider covers any losses if a card is stolen and the customer reports the loss at the earliest opportunity and does not act negligently.
The providers also say it is impossible to clone and any intercepted data would not work if an attempt was made to use it.
The decline of the cheque has slowed owing to security measures, with some companies ensuring a dual signature on cheques to maintain internal security.
A closer look at Apacs forecast for the decline of non-cash payments suggests that the move away from cheques, notes and coins has not been as speedy as they expected.
Previous reports by the payments association suggested that non-cash payments would overtake cash transactions as early as 2011. Now, the prediction is 2015.
Digital money has also been talked about for years and has never quite taken off, according to many experts.
A spokeswoman for Apacs said that it would take time for consumers and retailers to migrate to new technology, but the move away from cash was already happening.
A gang of British Islamists plotted to cause deaths on an “almost unprecedented scale” by blowing up transatlantic airliners using bombs disguised in soft drink bottles, a London court heard on Tuesday.
The eight men were almost ready to execute their plan to simultaneously bring down seven aircraft in mid-air as they flew from London to the United States and Canada when they were arrested, Woolwich Crown Court was told.
“What these men intended to bring about was a violent and deadly statement of intent that would have truly global impact,” prosecutor Peter Wright told jurors in the high security court.
“It’s the crown’s case that these men were actively engaged in a most deadly plan designed to bring about what would have been, if they had been successful, a civilian death toll from an act of terrorism on an almost unprecedented scale.”
The suspects were arrested in August 2006, just over a year after four young British Islamists killed 52 commuters in suicide bomb attacks on London’s transport system. The arrests led to a massive increase in security and brought chaos to global airports, airlines and passengers.
More than a thousand flights were canceled in the aftermath and many countries imposed tight restrictions on carry-on baggage for several days. Limits on the carrying of liquids on planes still stand as a result of the plot.
The men intended to smuggle on board components for their improvised bombs disguised as soft drink bottles, batteries, and other the innocuous items, the court was told.
They had targeted seven flights, operated by American Airlines, United Airlines and Air Canada, to Chicago, New York, Washington, Montreal, Toronto, and San Francisco, the jury was told.
The planes were either 777s, 767s or 763s, capable of carrying between 241 and 285 passengers and crew.
The plot was directed from Pakistan while Abdullah Ahmed Ali was the ringleader in Britain, Wright said. Some of those on trial were foot soldiers, with the “cold-eyed certainty of a fanatic,” who would have carried out the suicide attacks.
Wright said the men were indifferent to the carnage they would have caused and the identities of their victims was an “irrelevance.” The plot was “all in the name of Islam,” he said.
British citizens Ali, 28, Assad Sarwar, 28, Tanvir Hussain, 27, Donald Douglas Stewart-Whyte, 22, Ibrahim Savant, 28, Arafat Khan, 27, Waheed Zaman, 24, and Umar Islam, 30, are the men on trial.
They are accused of conspiracy to murder “by the detonation of improvised explosive devices on board transatlantic passenger aircraft.” Savant, Khan, Zaman, Islam and Stewart-Whyte are also charged with conspiracy to murder.
The men — one from north London, two from High Wycombe, west of London, and the rest from east London — deny the charges. They sat in the dock, all dressed smartly and flanked by security guards. The trial continues.
On the anniversary of the interview in which Dr Rowan Williams said it “seems inevitable” that some parts of sharia would be enshrined in this country’s legal code, he claimed “a number of fairly senior people” now take the same view.
He added that there is a “drift of understanding” towards what he was saying, and that the public sees the difference between letting Muslim courts decide divorces and wills, and allowing them to rule on criminal cases and impose harsh punishments.
However critics insist that family disputes must be dealt with by civil law rather than according to religious principles, and claim the Archbishop’s comments have only helped the case of extremists while making Muslim women worse off, because they do not have equal rights under Islamic law.
The Archbishop, the most senior cleric in the Church of England, faced calls to resign last February when he said it was likely that elements of the religious principles based on the Koran, concerning marriage, finance and conflict resolution, would be enshrined in British legislation one day.
But in July he was supported by Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers, who was then the Lord Chief Justice, while it later emerged that five sharia courts are already operating mediation systems under the Arbitration Act, and that the Government allows Islamic tribunals to settle the custody and financial affairs of divorcing couples and send their judgements to civil courts for approval.
When asked at a recent conference of Anglican leaders in Egypt whether he feels he has been vindicated, Dr Williams replied: “It’s been quite interesting to see how a number of fairly senior people have observed that certain kinds of limited aspects of Muslim law are imaginable within a British legal framework, without upsetting the apple cart of undermining human rights.
“People are maybe beginning to distinguish the general question of Muslim law, and the extremes of appalling practice which disfigure it in so many parts of the world or the extremes of trying to push Sharia law upon an entire society.
“So I think there is a drift of understanding of what I was trying to say, perhaps I like to think so.”
But Douglas Murray, the director of the Centre for Social Cohesion, said: “He has started a process which is deeply dangerous, damaging to Britain and to Muslim women in Britain.
“It was a wicked move because it undermines the progressives and gives succour to the extremists.
“How does the Archbishop of Canterbury know, sitting in Lambeth Palace, that a woman in Bolton has volunteered to give up half her inheritance to her brother?”
Neil Addison, a barrister who specialises in religious discrimination cases, said: “I think the Archbishop has failed to give a justification for sharia law. What’s the advantage it would bring to British Muslims and to British law?
“I believe his speech was deeply harmful to British Muslims because it helps the separation of them from the rest of society.
Relations between Israel and Turkey worsened Saturday with Ankara’s official warnings that Israel’s election results “painted a very dark picture” for the Middle East. Turkey also summoned Israel’s ambassador following a critical statement by an IDF officer.
Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan said in an interview with Turkish media, “Unfortunately we have seen that the (Israeli) people have voted for these (rightist) parties and that makes me a bit sad. Unfortunately the election has painted a very dark picture.”
Israel has had friendly relations with Turkey, and comments on a general election are considered unusual.
However, the country’s relations with Israel have been problematic since last month’s dramatic confrontation at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, when Erodgan scolded Israeli President Shimon Peres over Israel’s war against terror in Gaza and called for the United Nations to expel Israel from the international body. Erodgan walked out during a response by President Peres.
In an apparent response to the criticism, IDF ground force commander Major-General Avi Mizrachi commented that the Turkish Prime Minister should “look in the mirror” before criticizing Israel. His references, some of them veiled, to genocide of Armenians, Turkish oppression of Kurds and its occupation in northern Cyprus prompted Ankara to summon Israeli ambassador Gabi Levy.
In an effort to calm the storm, the IDF issued a rare repudiation of Mizrachi’s comments, stating that they did not represent the IDF position.
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