Pakistan to Try Murderer of Polish Hostage

WARSAW: Pakistani authorities have arrested a man wanted in connection with the murder of a Polish hostage decapitated by militants in February, Poland's foreign minister announced Thursday.

‘The Pakistani authorities yesterday captured a man who is probably one of the murderers, seen on a film of this terrible execution,’ Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski told the private television station Polsat News.

‘This man, called Attaullah, was captured in Islamabad...I am happy for him to be tried in Pakistan where the death penalty exists,’ he said, adding that there is no extradition agreement between Poland and Pakistan.

Geologist Piotr Stanczak, 42, who worked for a Polish geophysical exploration company, was seized by suspected Taliban militants in Pakistan's northwest in September 2008. His kidnappers killed his driver and bodyguard.

The minister expressed the hope that the arrest would help bring about the capture of the man's accomplices.

Polish authorities reacted strongly to the filmed beheading of Stanczak, with Justice Minister Andrzej Czuma accusing the Pakistani government of aiding terrorist activities of the Taliban through its ‘inertia.’

Source: Pakistan Dawn

Unborn Babies Form Memories

Dutch researchers have discovered that unborn babies are able to form and retain memories in the womb, ABC News reports:

In a study of 100 of pregnant women in the Netherlands, researchers say they found evidence that fetuses have short-term memory of sounds by the 30th week of pregnancy, and develop a long-term memory of sound after that.

The researchers documented the memory by watching fetal movements with ultrasound while they played “vibroacoustic” sound to the growing baby. Five of the fetuses in the study did not move in reaction to the sound and were eliminated from the study.

But among the fetuses who did move, researchers repeated the sound until the fetus “habituated” to it and no longer reacted. Doctors let some time pass and then tested the memory of the fetus by playing the sound in intervals to see if the fetus “remembered” or recognized the sound and did not react.

The study found that by 30 weeks of age, a fetus could “remember” a sound for 10 minutes. By the 34th week a fetus may be able to “remember” the sound for four weeks.
The Dutch research is powerful new evidence contradicting the legal fiction that human personhood begins only after birth.

And at the conclusion of the ABC News article, in a segment subtitled “Keeping the Peace in the Womb,” Rahil Briggs, a pediatric psychologist at the Montefiore Medical Center in New York City, argues, “Beyond ensuring healthy nutrition, research of this type, along with the work of others regarding infant memory should help us understand the importance of a safe, relatively low stress environment during this very sensitive period of development.”

Read it all here.

What Can Hillary Accomplish in Asia?

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is scheduled to travel to Asia again in July to meet foreign ministers at the ASEAN Regional Forum, and to visit India. On her first Asian trip in February, she provided a welcome contrast to the past with her openness to others' views, her willingness to cooperate, and her star power. She made Asians look at America anew.

But this trip will be trickier. One challenge is that part of the plot for the US and Clinton is being written by others. North Korea will be on the agenda after its missile tests, as will Myanmar, since its generals persist in prosecuting Aung San Suu Kyi, the world's most famous political detainee, on trivial charges.

After all that has happened in recent weeks, the definition of "success" must be set low. Nothing positive will come from the US condemning these two difficult regimes unilaterally. So a key goal of Clinton's visit must be to pull together with the Asian leaders present at the ASEAN Regional Forum.

Read it all here.

Quote of the Week - Fr. Theotimos Tsalas

"There are almost fifty million non-Orthodox Christians in the Congo, who believe in Christ. They speak about repentance, about the Second Coming, but they don’t teach the fullness of Christianity. Yesterday, I was saying to myself, 'If God would illumine these people who already believe in repentance, in the Crucifixion and Resurrection, to believe in the Mother of God and the saints, it would be like a spark to a match.' The Mother of God has great power and I believe that Africa, particularly the Congo, is the future of Christianity. People may have no food to eat, but they have the word of God." -- Fr. Theotimos Tsalas, a Congolese Orthodox priest and spiritual son of Fr. Cosmas Aslanidis of Grigoriou Monastery, the “Apostle to Zaire.”

From here.

TEC: The Final Straw?

The 76th General Convention of the (Pagan) Episcopal Church has removed the final canonical obstacles to the "full inclusion" of non-celibate homosexuals. They may now be ordained as deacons and priests, they may be consecrated as bishops and their "unions" may be blessed in the churches. Of course, this has been going on for a good while in TEC so this isn't really news.

The story behind this story is the Anglican Church of Nigeria, which was blasted by a leading gay-rights activist who believes that divorce contradicts sexual ethics and because it is permitted in the Church, so should homosexuality be permitted (even 'celebrated', as Gene Robinson insists).

This leading activist is my former bishop and the man who has to sign my retirement papers in 2 weeks. He said: "It is time for the church be liberated from hypocrisy under which it has been operating about our gay brothers and sisters. Divorce contradicted sexual ethics. Our gay and lesbian members don't think much about what other Anglicans around the world think. The Nigerians are our most ardent critic. The Scribes and the Pharisees tied people up in burdens..." (Read the full report here.)

Bishop Sauls stated, "The Nigerians are our most ardent critic." Humm... Perhaps we should ask why that is?

The Nigerians know the Bible and Holy Tradition because they live in the crucible where Abraham's faith was formed. Kain and Seth married daughters of the chief of Nok (Nok is in the Jos Plateau of Nigeria.) The Jebu (Jebusites) intermarried with the descendents of Kain. The largest group of Jebusites today lives in Nigeria. Noah's homeland is Bor'nu near Lake Chad in northern Nigeria. The priestly lines, from which Joseph and Mary come, originated among the ancestors of the people (who in modern times) came to be called Yoruba. All of this has been documented and verified through linguistics, biblical studies and cultural anthropology.

So the weight of Holy Tradition is on the side of the Anglican Church of Nigeria and its Primate, Archbishop Peter Jasper Akinola, who is vehemently hated and constantly vilified by TEC pagans.

So it appears that the mask is off. The hoax is exposed. The final straw has landed on the camel's back. Here are the facts about the state of The Episcopal Church:

Last year TEC lost 19,000 members, by a conservative estimate.

According to David Virtue, "Only twenty-eight of The Episcopal Church's one hundred and ten dioceses have committed themselves to paying the full assessment, or "giving", asked by the Church. This, along with high infrastructure and mission demands, has caused a budgetary shortfall of approximately $14 million dollars.35% of domestic congregations have no full time clergy (2526 congregations)."

A third of TEC's 7,000 parishes are being served by retired or non-stipendiary priests. The fiscal crisis is taking a toll on parishes and whole dioceses, a crisis fed by on-going litigation against parishes and dioceses that aren't willing to exchange the Truth for a lie.

Gene Robinson wants everyone to 'celebrate' that TEC is now known as the 'gay church'.

TEC's Presiding Bishop rejects the biblical definition of salvation in which the individual must believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God who came into the world to save sinners. I guess she hasn't read these key verses:

"For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten SON, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." John 3:16

"He that believeth on the SON hath everlasting Life…" John 3:36

"These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the SON of GOD; that ye may know that ye hath everlasting life. . ." 1 John 5:13

"For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ.” 1 Corinthians 3:11

From reports I've read coming out of Anaheim, many GenCon 2009 participants are seething about the formation of the Anglican Church of North America. David Virtue reports an undercurrent of resentment. There's another group now and it might steal some of the limelight from Gene (all about me) Robinson.

Egyptian Poet Gets Stiff Sentence

CAIRO, July 14: An Egyptian civil servant who wrote a satirical poem about veteran President Hosni Mubarak has been jailed for three years after a colleague turned the villainous verses over to the authorities.

Mounir Said Hanna Marzuq was given the maximum sentence for insulting the head of state, a judicial source said on Tuesday, in one of the poems he wrote for friends in the hope that one day they would be turned into song.

Marzuq was jailed in Maghagha, southern Egypt, in May after a colleague lodged a formal complaint about the poem deemed insulting to Mubarak, in power since 1981.

The case came to light after the penalised poet’s brother appealed to the 81-year-old Mubarak for clemency, the independent Al-Masri Al-Youm reported.

The newspaper did not publish the offending verses.

Egyptian law says that anyone insulting the president can be jailed for between 24 hours and three years.

Read it here.

Dr. Regina Benjamin Supports Access to Abortion

Catholics still don’t know definitively that Dr. Regina Benjamin, President Barack Obama’s nominee for surgeon general, is pro-abortion. But it appears increasingly likely that she is.

McClatchy Newspapers posted an article yesterday entitled “Obama’s surgeon general pick: a Catholic who backs abortion rights.” It quotes an Obama spokesman who said she “supports the president’s position on reproductive health issues.”

Abortion is a “reproductive health” issue to the Obama White House, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told Congress in April that his administration explicitly interprets “reproductive health” to include access to abortion services.

Read it all here.