Dispel the Illusion

For some people, miracles serve as evidence of God's existence. For Einstein it was the absence of miracles that reflected divine providence. The fact that the world was comprehensible, that it followed laws, was worthy of awe.

NDP MP Olivia Chow launched a minute-long amateur video Friday on the popular website aimed at getting the message out that Canada needs to start regulating the pet food industry. The video asks, "Do you know what your cat ate for breakfast?"

Staffing was so inadequate at a California senior centre that a rat crawled into an Alzheimer's patient's mouth and died there before staff noticed, a lawsuit claims ... Paramedics called to the scene noted "possible ingestion of rat poison" in their report and an emergency room file says that Bock was "found in room in care facility with dead rat in mouth."

Interrogations of Saddam Hussein and seized documents confirmed the former Iraqi regime had no links with al-Qaeda, a Pentagon report said today, contradicting the US case for the 2003 invasion ... According to the inspector general of the US Defence Department, information obtained after Saddam's fall confirmed the pre-war position of the Central Intelligence Agency and Pentagon intelligence that the Iraqi government had had no substantial contacts with al-Qaeda.

The sailors were seized by the Iranian navy after an earlier botched attempt by American forces to kidnap two high-ranking Iranian security personnel. The pair were on an official diplomatic mission to Iraq to discuss co-operation in bilateral security. Everyone knows about the U.S. raid in Arbil last Jan. 11, in which five Iranian officials were kidnapped from an Iranian liaison office in Kurdistan and taken into American custody as suspected spies.

Easter. The traditional time in North America for those who hate Christianity to parade their usual questions. Let me lend a helping hand. More people have died in the name of religion than anything else. Not true ... And hundreds of millions were slaughtered by atheist regimes led by Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, Mao and their friends. It is the absence of belief rather than its presence that has led to the most suffering.

Senator Hillary Clinton (D-New York) has announced she has raised $26 million in first-quarter campaign fundraising this year (her reported total of $36 million includes $10 million transferred from her 2006 Senate campaign account). Rival presidential hopeful Senator Barack Obama (D-Illinois) nearly matched Clinton with a reported $25 million raised during the first three months of the year, while Democrat John Edwards has raked in $14 million. On the Republican side, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney has raised nearly $21 million, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani has accumulated $15 million, and Senator John McCain (R-Arizona) $12.5 million.

Music legend and TV/Radio personality Rick Wakeman’s name is synonymous with the music which shaped a generation ... Now, Wakeman will release a new DVD and CD called 'Rick Wakeman – Amazing Grace' set for North American distribution on June 5 ... The project is "a timeless collection of beautiful, inspiring, instrumental arrangements of traditional hymns, with variations on some of the most popular melodies and themes ever produced," according to a media release.

I am a scientist and a believer, and I find no conflict between those world views. As the director of the Human Genome Project, I have led a consortium of scientists to read out the 3.1 billion letters of the human genome, our own DNA instruction book. As a believer, I see DNA, the information molecule of all living things, as God's language, and the elegance and complexity of our own bodies and the rest of nature as a reflection of God's plan.

A U.S. study says people with HIV who have strong religious ties are less likely to spread the virus that causes AIDS. The RAND Corp. study says HIV-positive people who say religion is an important part of their lives are likely to have fewer sexual partners and engage in less high-risk sexual behavior.

The city's new official condom is a "sensation," according to Mayor Michael Bloomberg's administration, which announced Wednesday that City Hall gave away a record 5 million in the first month of a distribution program. The free condom initiative is part of the city's effort to reduce rates of sexually transmitted diseases and unplanned pregnancies. More than 100,000 of New York's 8.2 million residents have HIV or AIDS, and there are many new diagnoses each year.

These days, ever more brave souls are staring down the Communist Party. Eight prominent Chinese writers whose books were recently yanked from bookstores on the orders of propaganda officials staged a public protest and sent open letters to National People's Congress deputies appealing to them to end suppression of free speech.

Pope Benedict appeared to reach out to the anti-globalisation movement yesterday, attacking rich nations for having "plundered and sacked" Africa and other poor regions of the world. An extract published from his first book since being elected pope highlighted the passionately anti-materialistic and anti-capitalist aspects of his thinking. Unexpectedly, the Pope also approvingly cited Karl Marx and his analysis of contemporary man as a victim of alienation.

In this shocking new documentary featuring EU insiders and commentators, independent author Phillip Day covers the history and goals of the European Union, as well as the disturbing, irrevocable implications this new government has for every citizen.

Yesterday, the second part of the province's VLT reduction strategy kicked in, with reduced operating hours, a slower rate of play, and 105 fewer machines. By the end of the five-year plan, the number of VLTs is to be reduced by 15 per cent. "What we're trying to do is protect people who are problem gamblers," said provincial Finance Minister Tom Marshall. "If accessibility is part of the problem, then maybe reducing the accessibility will be part of the solution."

This conference is designed to bring issues of social justice, particularly as they apply to sexuality and gender, right into our foreground. As you look through this program, you will see that our concern for human rights and sexual rights bridge from the everyday exchanges of family and work-life, all the way to concerns of global dimensions and impacts.

"Compassion fatigue" isn't a new phenomenon. It can be tiring trying to make the world a better place. This is the first time, though, that we've had to try to save at the same time both the planet itself and the people on it. At the moment, we seem to care more about the planet than the people.

Keith Richards has acknowledged consuming a raft of illegal substances in his time, but this may top them all. In comments published Tuesday, the 63-year-old Rolling Stones guitarist said he had snorted his father's ashes mixed with cocaine. "The strangest thing I've tried to snort? My father. I snorted my father," Richards was quoted as saying by British music magazine NME.

Stupid in America" is a nasty title for a program about public education, but some nasty things are going on in America's public schools and it's about time we face up to it. Kids at New York's Abraham Lincoln High School told me their teachers are so dull students fall asleep in class. One student said, "You see kids all the time walking in the school smoking weed, you know. It's a normal thing here."

It may surprise many, but 75 percent of the Americans who say they are not born-again Christians still believe the biblical account of Jesus literally coming back to life in his physical body, according to recent research by the North American Mission Board's Center for Missional Research.

Haskell, having described these brutal details, shows his audience a video of himself doing one of these procedures. And at the end of the video, after the sound of the suction machine taking the brains out of the baby's head, the audience applauds. That, my friends, is applause from hell.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who is also the current president of the EU, said this week she understands Pope Benedict XVI’s criticisms of the European Union for not mentioning God or its Christian roots in the Declaration of Berlin — which commemorates the 50th anniversary of the founding of the European Union — and she said Europe should recognize in some way its Judeo-Christian heritage even if through a document separate from the European Constitution.

Workers trying to fix a broken sewer line today found a 4-month-old fetus inside an underground pipe, authorities said. The body was either flushed down a toilet and traveled through underground sewer lines, or someone lifted a manhole cover, climbed down 9 feet and placed it there, police said.

The "God I Hate America Award" went to New York Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr., who apologized to students at the State University of New York for all of the wrongs of America. The "Dan Rather Memorial Award for the Stupidest Analysis" went to Katie Couric for a "60 Minutes" interview with Secretary of State Rice, in which Couric quoted her daughter commenting on U.S. foreign relations by saying, "who made us the boss of them?" The "I'm Not a Political Genius but I Play One on TV" award went to Rosie O'Donnell for saying that 9/11 caused America to invade two countries and kill innocent people, and for comparing radical Christianity to radical Islam.

Canada's and Quebec's political institutions have shown maturity, subtlety, and have endured without recourse to repression. Why is there not unconfined rejoicing at The Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star, and the CBC? Cabin fever, I guess, after decades of overachieving appeasement, but they will get over it.

The Conservatives made substantially fewer patronage appointments to federal boards during their first year in government, compared with the previous 12 months under the Liberals. Appointments of directors, tribunal members and jobs of a similar type slowed by 40 per cent under Prime Minister Stephen Harper's government, a Citizen review of cabinet orders shows.

Jim Ferry, bullied as a boy and forced from the pulpit of his Unionville church because he is gay, says it's time for the Anglican Church to bring gays and lesbians into the fold – even if it means splitting the church apart. After all, he says, Christians have long embraced different interpretations of the scriptures, leading to historic splits within the faith.

A top aide to Pope Benedict has blasted the media for highlighting the Vatican's views on sex while maintaining a "deafening silence" about charity work done by thousands of Catholic organisations around the world. Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, who as secretary of state is effectively the Vatican's prime minister, also accused the media of deliberately misinterpreting the Pope's speeches, especially his Regensburg address last September which angered Muslims.