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The
Pope: friend or fiend?
Madrid, October 28th, 2003 (ACPress.net).
A Pope for all seasons?
Well, a hundred at least as John Paul II has just celebrated
his 25th anniversary as Pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church.
'El Periódico', a newspaper printed in north-east Spain,
asked 18 public figures in Spain to evaluate the papal performance
in that time; here are a selection of their opinions.
Juan José Tamayo, progressive Catholic theologian excommunicated
for his heretical views, says: "He is contradictory. He
defends human rights, women's dignity, justice and democracy.
But he does not practise this within the Church."
Amando de Miguel, sociologist, comments: "He has made the
Catholic Church truly catholic. I mean by that, that he has
made it a universal church. He has managed to keep the Vatican
out of all the political blocs."
Pedro Tarquis, spokesman for the Evangelical Alliance: "He
has made gestures regarding dialogue with other confessions,
but without really seeking reconciliation with Protestantism.
He has ratified much of the dogma and many of the doctrines
which separate us, such as compulsory clerical celibacy...as
well as much of the theology of the Council of Trent."
Jesús de las Heras, spokesman for the Catholic Episcopate
in Spain: "One of the greatest Popes in history and leading
figures of the 20th century. He is the travelling Pope, the
family's Pope, the youngster's Pope, the Pope of the poor, of
human rights, peace, a tremendous communicator. He is John Paul
II the great. He is the Pope of our lives."
Fernando Delgado, journalist and writer: periodista y escritos:
"He turned altars into film sets and the church into a
precursor of the media age. Even in a tracksuit he is intolerant.
He is modern in social terms, but on moral issues he has more
of Trent than Vatican II. He is a sombre figure."
Angels Gonyalons, actress, says: "I imagine that he is
a good person who has not known how to adapt to the times. Perhaps,
being Polish, he has been influenced by the Marxist persecution
and this has driven him to the other extreme. He is retrograde."
Source: El Periódico.
Editing: ACPress.net
Leading expert on biblical
archaeology speaks in Barcelona
Barcelona, October 28th, 2003 (ACPress.net).
The Evanglelical Alliance
has just hosted a five-day programme, in conjunction with the
Evangelical Bible Study Centre in Barcelona, with Dr Alan Millard,
a leading international expert on Biblical archaeology and languages.
Millard, Head of Hebrew and Ancient Semitic Languages at Liverpool
University, has been speaking on 'Archaeology and the accuracy
of the Bible' at a Barcelona church, and on 'The biblical Israel
in the light of historical and archaeological research', at
both Barcelona and Gerona Universities. Millard also gave a
series of seminars entitled 'Reading and writing at the time
of Jesus'.
Source: AEE. Editing: ACPress.net
Government party avoids
aggrieved parents in school dispute
Madrid, October 28th, 2003
(ACPress.net).
The recently-formed group
representing the parents of pupils at 'Virgen del Bosque' Primary
School in northern Madrid, which was bought without their prior
knowledge by a radical Catholic group - 'Christ's Legionnaires',
have complained that the only political party unwilling to meet
them is the governing Popular Party (PP).
Whereas the Socialists and United Left parties have both had
meetings with the parents, the PP has not even responded to
their request. At least two Ministers in the current government
are members of 'Christ's Legionnaires' and it seems that the
local Councillor responsible for Education, Carlos Mayor, is
also trying to avoid the parents' representatives.
The aggrieved parents - who discovered 3 days into the new school
year that it had been bought by an ultra-conservative Catholic
group - allege that the constitutional guarantee that their
children receive 'the religious and moral instruction which
is in agreement with their parents' convictions' is under threat.
They want the politicians to ensure legality and protect the
interests of their children. The school is a private institution
with no previous history of being run as a religious school.
The parents' group is preparing a court case against the previous
owners of the school - a teachers' cooperative - for costs involved
and for harm done to the children. They also say that pupils
are continuing to leave the school, and that in some classes
numbers have dropped from 16 to as low as 6. The group has almost
100 members, and is made up both of parents who have removed
their children from the school and those whose offspring remain
there.
Source: El Mundo. Editing: ACPress.net
Murder on wheels
Madrid, October 28th, 2003
(ACPress.net).
Approximately 40 million
people have died in road accidents since the invention of the
car in January 1889, 270,000 of them in Spain. Around 2,000
million have been injured worldwide, including 16 million in
Spain.
This is the terrifying statistic behind the would-be glamorous
world of the motor car. In the last 10 years alone, 58,000 people
have been killed on Spanish roads, and a million and a half
injured. Road accidents account for almost half of all accidents
at work.
Luis Montoro, a government official responsible for investigating
road safety, says "thirty per cent of vehicles in Spain
are more than 10 years old and it is after 8 years that mechanical
failure becomes much more common. What's more, vehicle maintenance
is poor, given that the European Union average is to have cars
serviced every 3 months, in Spain the average is about 6 months,
and some people do not even check their tyres for up to 8 months
at a time."
Montoro added that 35% of drivers who buy more powerful cars
have more accidents, given that new technology unaccompanied
by adequate skill increases the risks.
Source: EFE. Editing: ACPress.net
Christmas
is coming, the West is getting fat
Madrid, October 28th, 2003
(ACPress.net).
Want to know some trivia
about the health of the developed world, country by country...?
Nations which spend highest proportion of GNP on health: USA
13.9%, Switzerland 10.9%, Germany 10.7%, Canada 9.7% and France
9.5%. Spending has gone up across the board, Spain now spending
7.5%, up from 6.7% in 1990. The OECD average is 8.4%.
Who are the biggest chimneys? Prize (?) to the country with
the highest proportion of over-15s who smoke goes to Greece,
35%, followed by Japan, 33%, Luxembourg and Holland, both 32%.
If you want smoke-free air, then the countries with the lowest
proportion of smokers are USA and Sweden, 19%, followed by Australia
and Canada, 20%.
The bottle culture: most drinkers - where else? - are found
in Ireland (13.7 litres per adult per year), followed by Portugal
(13.0), Hungary (12.3), Czech Republic (11.8) and Spain (11.7).
The driest nations are Turkey (1.5), Mexico (4.6), Norway (5.7),
Iceland (6.1) and Sweden (6.2).
The West is getting fatter. Obesity now costs governments more
than smoking-related health problems. Life expectancy has gone
up by an average of 8.7 years in the 30 richest countries in
the world over the last 40 years. Yet obesity can wipe off up
to 20 years of life and its effects, according to doctors, are
far worse than those of tobacco or alcohol. And the trend is
getting worse.
Life expectancy in the developed world stands at 77.2 (80.1
for women, 74.2 for men), whilst it was only 68.5 in 1960. It
has shot up by 23.1 years in South Korea, 20 years in Turkey
and 16.6 in Mexico. The advance in Spain has been by 9.3 years
over the same period. In the longevity stakes, Spanish women
come third in the world (82.7 years), behind the Japanese and
the French. Spanish men sit mid-table (75.5), behind such countries
as Iceland, Japan and Switzerland.
Infant mortality rates in Spain are one of the lowest, at 3.9
deaths under the age of one, per 1,000 births. However, Spain
has the third highest Aids count, 6.6 per 100,000 inhabitants,
only behind the USA and Portugal.
Source: El Mundo. Editing: ACPress.net
Hunger
still the biggest killer in the world
Madrid, October 28th, 2003
(ACPress.net).
The United Nations' World
Food Programme (WFP) faces the biggest crisis of its 40-year
existence - the task of feeding 110 million people in 2003.
James Morris, Executive Director of WFP says they will need
over 4,000 million euros, of which 15% has not yet been covered
by donations. Nations among the neediest at present include
Haiti, North Korea, Liberia, Eritrea and Uganda. Southern Africa
has also been badly hit by drought this year. Morris says "It
is simply unacceptable that in our day hunger and malnutrition
continue to be the single biggest cause of mortality in the
world. " He added that one organisation does not have the
resources to resolve the problem of hunger "whose causes
are complex and whose solution requires more than just help
with food."
Source: 20M. Editing: ACPress.net
Who gets the frozen embryo
in divorce cases?
Madrid, October 28th, 2003 (ACPress.net).
Two women and their respective
partners decide to freeze some embryos. Years later, no longer
together, the women decide to reclaim their long-frozen embryos
so as to have babies, despite the fact that their ex-partners
do not agree. A court has found in favour of the male partners
as the law says that frozen embryos can only be given with the
consent of both partners.
Sadly, this is not a film script but real life. A struggle by
two women, united by their cause, to have children without the
father's consent. Natalie Evans, 30, and her boyfriend created
six embryos before she had treatment for cancer of the ovaries
which left her sterile. After separating from her boyfriend,
Evans claims she has the right to use her embryos.
Lorraine Hadley, 37, has a daughter of 17 but later became sterile
through a medical problem. She and her husband (now divorced)
created two embryos, which she now wants back.
The European Act of Embriology and Human Fertilisation, 1990,
says embryos can only be implanted with the consent of both
partners. Which seems reasonable, considering they both participated
in its creation. Yet of course there are lawyers who are arguing
that the law infringes the women's 'right' and that they are
being discriminated against because they are no longer fertile.
Antonio Gosálvez, of the 'Spanish Fertility Society',
says "in the case of embryos, women do not have more rights
than men in deciding whether to finalise the process or not"
(ie. have the pregnancy).
The women say the initial consent that both partners gave at
the outset should be enough, but as Dr. Michael Wilks, President
of the British Medical Association, points out, the couples
also agreed that the embryos could only be used if they both
gave their consent. Ian Mackay, from the organisation 'Families
Need Fathers', believes the court's decision is the right one.
"Children would be born knowing that their fathers opposed
their birth, which would be an enormous emotional burden for
them to bear."
As Gosálvez points out, "If a child is born when
the couple have separated, his biological parents do not change."
What's more, the birth of a child means its parents have rights
and responsibilities. An unwilling father could be called upon
to do his duty by a child he did not want. Mackay highlights
a different scenario: "One might wonder what would have
happened if it had been the fathers who had asked for the embryos,
to implant them in their new partners."
The law does not allow the embryos to be destroyed either, without
both partners' consent. Gosálvez suggests they could
be donated anonymously to another couple, thereby anulling any
biological right, as happens in current adoption laws.
If only people took Genesis 2:24 seriously.
Source: El Mundo. Editing: ACPress.net
Sleep is a memory aid
Madrid, October 29th, 2003 (ACPress.net).
The best cramming for
exams is done on the pillow, according to scientists, who have
concluded that sleep helps memory recovery and language-learning.
Investigators at Chicago University in the USA have found that
the brain stimulates more complex learning processes while the
body sleeps. "Sleeping well consolidates memory and protects
them against later interference and deterioration", says
the report in Nature magazine.
In an experiment with three groups of university students, researchers
measured their ability to understand and recognise words generated
by a complex voice synthesiser, as well as teaching them how
to do so. After an hour, 54% of them could do so, more than
twice the number who could before they had been taught.
The second group were trained one morning and tested 12 hours
later. Only 10% did it better after the instruction, but those
who had been instructed in the evening and tested the following
morning, after a night's sleep, improved by 19%. When the students
who had been taught in the morning were also tested after a
night's sleep, their performance improved as well.
Source: IBL News. Editing: ACPress.net
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