Petrus Romanus?... Pope may Resign in April

According to Italian daily newspaper "Libero", Pope Benedict XVI is thinking about leaving the papacy next April, when he will turn 85

ANDREA TORNIELLIVATICAN CITY

There is one front page news story that will certainly not go unnoticed: that is, that the Pope is thinking about resigning during the Spring of 2012. Journalist Antonio Socci has confirmed the same in the Italian daily, Libero.

"For now,” Socci writes, “he is saying that this may be true (Joseph Ratzinger’s personal assumption), but I hope the story does not reach the news. But this rumor is circulating high up in the Vatican and therefore deserves close attention. The Pope has not rejected the possibility of his resignation when he turns 85 in April next year.”

Socci recalls that the assumption he will resign, without any hitches, was the same thing Ratzinger talked about in an interview in the book “Luce del mondo” (Light of the World), when, in response to a question by interviewer Peter Seewald, he said: “When a Pope arrives at a clear awareness that he no longer has the physical, mental, or psychological capacity to carry out the task that has been entrusted to him, then he has the right, and in some cases, even the duty to resign.” Furthermore, in another passage, Benedict XVI wondered if he would be able to “withstand it all, just from the physical point of view.”

Socci makes the following observation in today’s edition of Libero: “Today, Pope Benedict seems to be in really good form; just the same, there’s the issue of his age and just how much energy he has left.” But the writer/journalist also recalls another passage from the same book interview, which has to do with the attacks and controversies related to the pedophile priests' scandal: “When there is a great menace, one cannot simply run away from it. That is why, right now, it is definitely not the time to resign.”

“It is actually at moments like these that one needs to resist and overcome difficult situations. One can only resign at a time when things are calm, or simply, when nothing more can be done about it. But one cannot run away right when the threat is alive and say, ‘Let somebody else take care of it.”

The issue of papal resignations has been the subject of debate for many decades. Pope Pius XII had prepared a letter in which he stated he would resign if he were taken away by the Nazis (“In that way, they will have Cardinal Pacelli, but not the Pope.”)

Pope John XXIII, while talking with his confessor, had taken into consideration that he would possibly have to leave when his illness worsened. Even Pope Paul VI, who had established the exclusion of those who were over 80 from the conclave, and renunciation of the episcopal seat at the age of 75, seriously thought about resigning in 1977, when he turned 80, but his entourage dissuaded him from going ahead with this. This issue came up again, in a dramatic fashion, with Pope John Paul Il’s long illness; he had even prepared a letter of resignation.

Anyone who knows Ratzinger would confirm that the answer he gave to Seewald, is what he feels would be best, in the event of him becoming physically, mentally, or psychologically incapacitated. However, such a possibility seems, at the moment, somewhat remote. In fact, one is immediately struck by the contrast between the front page story in Libero and the images coming from Germany, where Benedict XVI is concluding an historic trip, during which he made 18 speeches in four days. Many of these put him under considerable pressure, especially as they were entirely written by him. The German press was astonished at the old Pontiff’s endurance, which he demonstrated by the fact that he was able to manage all the exhaustion from moving around; he did not sleep more than one night in a single bed. And he was successful in carrying out a packed schedule of engagements, meetings, vigils, and celebrations. 

This would show that nothing of what Benedict XVI himself said in answer  to his alleged plans to resign, seems to be materialising.

Finally, a total media “distortion” caused an outburst of fear after explosive gunshots were heard yesterday in Erfurt. They were fired by an unbalanced youth with an air gun, who targeted two security guards, without wounding them, on a street just 500 meters from where the Pope was to celebrate mass, two hours before Ratzinger arrived. False alarms that were blown out of proportion by the media, were also raised when Pope John Paul II visited Mexico City in 2002,and a year ago, when Pope Ratzinger was in England.

1 2 Next >

Scientists CREATE supersoldier Monster ants with 'Ancient' genes

Soldiers and supersoldiers from the ant genus Pheidole. Supersoldiers have a body size as much as twice as large as soldiers' and heads that as much as three times larger than soldiers'. CREDIT: Photo courtesy of Alex Wild/alexanderwild.com]  View full size image

When eight bizarrely big-headed soldier ants turned up in a wild colony collected from Long Island, N.Y., scientists knew they had found something interesting.

This discovery of these oversized versions of soldier ants, whose job is to defend the nest, led researchers to create their own supersoldier ants in the lab with the help of a hormone, and, by doing so, offer an explanation for how ants, and possibly other social insects, take on specific forms with dedicated jobs within their colonies.

It turns out these abnormal soldier ants were throwbacks to an ancestral state, one that no longer shows up within their species except, apparently, by accident. This phenomenon occasionally pops up elsewhere, in the form of whales bearing limbs their ancestors lost,chickens with teeth or humans with tails. [10 Vestigial Limbs & Organs]

"It's been known for a long time that these kinds of slips occur, and they are viewed as the Barnum and Bailey of evolution," said the study's senior researcher Ehab Abouheif, Canada research chair in evolutionary developmental biology at McGill University. "What we are showing for the first time is there is this ancestral potential sitting there, and when poked by the environment it can really unleash this potential that can power evolution."

HSBC Expat Banking Expat.HSBC.com

Open an HSBC Expat Bank Account. Enjoy HSBC Services. Apply Now.

Toughest Trail Race in UK www.spartanrace.com

Spartan Race Beast 20K + 50 Insane obstacles

Local Vets Practice cuffevets.com

Established Over 30 Years. Extended Opening Hours. Call Now.

Ads by Google

Meet the supersoldiers

The species collected in New York, Pheidole morrisi, normally has two types of worker ants, according to Abouheif: minor workers, which are responsible for foraging, nursing, feeding eggs and larvae, and taking care of the queen; and soldier ants, which defend the nest and use their big mandibles to crack seeds harvested by the minor workers.

This species doesn't have supersoldiers, but the big-headed critters resembled the supersoldier ants occurring among eight species of ants found in the American Southwest and northern Mexico. All nine species belong to the genus Pheidole, which contains about 1,100 species.

So it made sense that the out-of-place supersoldiers could reveal something about the origin of supersoldiers among the eight other species.

Making a supersoldier

To find out, the researchers, led by Rajendhran Rajakumar, a doctoral student in Abouheif's lab, watched the development of supersoldier larvae from two of the eight species that normally produce them. (The researchers wanted to study the behavior of theP. morrisi they had collected, but they were killed in the lab by other ants.)

An ant's caste, or role in the colony, is determined by environmental switches, or periods during its larval development when it is receptive to certain environmental cues. Adult ants in the colony can manipulate these switches by, for instance, applying certain hormones called pheromones to the larvae.

In the first period of development, this switch determines whether the egg will become a queen or a worker and then another switch second determines whether the larva will become a soldier or a minor worker.

Just before the second switch, they applied a chemical that acts like juvenile hormone to the larvae of three species that do not produce supersoldiers. Juvenile hormone is involved in translating environmental cues, such as nutrition, into the identity of the larvae. By applying it artificially, the researchers not only pushed the larvae past the threshold at which they would normally become regular soldiers, but past a second threshold, one that is normally hidden, creating supersoldiers.

But these lab-created supersoldiers weren't perfect matches to the natural ones. As adults they retained little vestigial wings buds, something normal supersoldiers lose when they mature.

"The potential [to be supersoldiers] is there, but it is a little raw," Abouheif said.

The researchers also looked at the expression of a gene involved in the control of wing development, and found similarity between the lab-induced supersoldiers and the natural ones. They also found similar changes occurred in two different species of naturally occurring supersoldiers, this indicated both relied on the same developmental mechanism.

So why have supersoldiers?

The naturally occurring supersoldiers appear to have a defense function. These species live in the same areas as army ants, which attack their colonies. During a raid, the supersoldiers use their large heads to block the tunnels to their nests to keep the attackers out.

However, other species of Pheidole ants, those without supersoldiers, also live alongsidearmy ants. One of the species in which the researchers induced the supersoldiers, P. hyatti, grabs its brood and climbs up stalks of grass to escape army ant raids.

Moreau suggests another reason the giant heads of the supersoldiers might come in handy: grinding seeds. Supersoldiers could grind larger seeds than regular soldiers, she said.

A mystery from the family tree

The findings could help to solve a mystery of the origin of such supersoldier ants. Past work by Corrie Moreau, an evolutionary biologist at the Field Museum in Chicago, who was not involved with this study, revealed that one of the supersoldier species is located near the base of the Pheidole family tree, closely related to the ancestral ant, while other supersoldier species were scattered within the tree.

There are two possible explanations for this arrangement: Either each of the species evolved different ways of creating supersoldiers, or the mechanism evolved with the earliest common ancestor about 35 million to 60 million years ago, according to Moreau.

The work of Abouheif's team points to the latter — that supersoldiers date back to the root of the family tree — and it reveals how supersoldiers are created.

The implications extend beyond ants, according to Moreau.

"The question becomes, 'Do all insects use a similar pathway as was found in the big-headed ants or is this something special to this group,'" she wrote in an email to LiveScience. "Regardless, it suggests that we should look for evolutionary conserved pathways across the tree of life."

You can follow LiveScience senior writer Wynne Parry on Twitter @Wynne_Parry. Follow LiveScience for the latest in science news and discoveries on Twitter @livescience and onFacebook.

Editor's Note: This story was updated on Jan. 6 at 10:25 a.m. to reflect the correct spelling of the Ehab Abouheif's name.

Scientists Concerned as 'Animal-Related' Diseases on the Rise

Health researchers and wildlife biologists say the number of infectious diseases that have jumped the boundary from animals to humans and between animal species is on the rise.  Scientists believe the increase may be a result of more frequent contact between humans and wild animals, as well as the growing trade in wild animals, both legal and illegal.

Towards the end of the 1990s, several Asian countries lived one of their worst health nightmares. A new, highly pathogenic, strain of Avian Influenza known as H5N1 killed hundreds of people. Over the next years, more than 9-million chickens were destroyed in an effort to stem the epidemic.  Scientists believe the H5N1 virus was transmitted from wild birds to domestic poultry and pigs, which then passed it to humans. H5N1 is just the latest of various influenza strains that have killed up to 100 million people over the last century.  

Now scientists are concerned about the appearance of new illnesses.  Jonathan Sleeman is the director of the National Wildlife Health Center at the U.S. Geological Survey. 

"Human health, wildlife health and domestic animal health are all interconnect within the context of the environment," said Sleeman.  "And environmental changes and changes in environmental quality will have negative impacts in all 3 groups."

Experts say there are many causes: the increasingly rapid movement of people and animals around the world, increasing human contact with and consumption of wildlife, and the legal and illegal trade in wild animals.  

"It's no longer a wildlife conservation issue, it's no longer a separate human issue.  It's a combination. It's both a conservation and human health issue," added said Sleeman. 

Scientists from a variety of disciplines met recently in Washington to share their concerns about pathogens spreading from animals to humans.

It's not a new problem.  The AIDS virus, HIV, is now known to have originated from a similar virus in African chimpanzees. An estimated 30-million people have died of AIDS since the early 1980s. Other human diseases with animal origins include SARS, Ebola hemorrhagic fever and West Nile encephalitis.

New animal illnesses generally originate in invasive species.  Zebra mussels that have spread throughout the U.S. Great Lake introduced a type of botulism that has killed some 100,000 birds in the last decade. A fungus spread by the trade in amphibians has led to the extinction of about 120 species of frogs around the world.

Many other imported, exotic animals escape or are released into local ecosystems. They disrupt native ecologies, out-compete native species and potentially spread new diseases.

Jonathan Epstein, with the EcoHealth Alliance, says 13 million animals have been confiscated in the past few decades, as part of the illegal trade in exotic species.

"The global illegal wildlife trade is second only to the trade in narcotics and weapons," said Epstein.  "Just between 2000 and 2006, we had about 1.5 billion animals imported into the U.S."

Experts say more attention must be paid to the human disruption of wildlife and ecosystems to avoid the emergence of other infectious diseases with deeper and even more severe consequences.

IDF rabbinate 'Edits Out' Dome of the Rock from Jerusalem’s Temple Mount

Photo appears in army packet on Hanukkah describing the Jewish revolt against Hellenistic rule; IDF spokesman: Image meant to illustrate a period in which holy Muslim site did not exist.

By Gili CohenTags: IDF Jerusalem

Get Haaretz on iPhone

Get Haaretz on Android

Israel’s military rabbinate released an educational document ahead of the holiday of Hanukkah last month, featuring a photo of Jerusalem’s Temple Mount without the Dome of the Rock, Haaretz learned on Thursday.

The photo was featured in a packet prepared by the Military Rabbinate issued to Israel Defense Forces bases ahead of Hanukkah, under the section titled “The Festival of Jewish Heroism,” which included an article and a quiz on the Jewish struggle against Hellenistic rule.

	Photo released by Military Rabbinate showing the Temple Mount without Dome of the Rock.

One reserves officer talking with Haaretz said that when he “received the materials from the battalion rabbi something seemed strange about that picture.”

“We get material from the rabbinate every week and it’s mostly positive things,” the IDF officer said, adding that the edited picture was part of an “official release, which is why it’s problematic the army is distributing it.”

The IDF Spokesman’s Office said in the response that Haaretz’s description was “absurd and biased, a fact which we can only regret,” adding that the educational packet included a photo meant to illustrate Jerusalem during the period of the Second Temple.

	The Temple Mount in Jerusalem's Old City.
	Photo by: Gora Berger

“As was explained to the reporter, the Dome of the Rock did not exist at that time, so there was no need for it to appear in the picture,” the IDF said.

Speaking with Haaretz, the reserves officer said he expected “the Military Rabbinate to be more alert about the educational messages it passes on, especially considering the Temple Mount’s history,” adding: “A world war could break if someone would try to do something about that place, and I think they should be more cautious when approaching the subject.”

“It’s infuriating that the rabbinate isn’t more being more responsible about this,” the officer added.

Read this article in Hebrew

1st Day of 2012, and it begins..."Sign of Apocalypse"... Prepare for alot more of this rubbish

Ancient Mayan legend says that 2012 will bring the end of the world.

A small Arkansas town might have shown the first example of that as approximately 5,000 blackbirds dropped dead from the sky last night in the early hours of the new year.

As if the incident was not strange enough, it is the second time in two years that the birds have fallen as the calendar year changes. 

SCROLL DOWN FOR VIDEO

On the streets: Estimates put the dead bird count well into the thousands

Clean up crew: Town workers were not expecting this job when they went to bed last night, but were awoken early in the morning with the task

'I thought the Mayor was messing with me when he called me,' said Milton McCullar, the street department supervisor in Beebe, Arkansas.

'He got me up at 4:00 in the morning and told me we had birds falling out of he sky.' Mr McCullar told ABC News. 

 

Given the amount of birds and the condensed time and location of their deaths, there has to be some commonality behind the bizarre event, but scientists remain baffled. 

The fact that the birds were even flying in the middle of the night makes no sense because that is not something that they are trained to do.

Bizarre: Scientists haven't come up with any solid explanations

'Most of these birds don’t see any better at night than you or I do. They aren’t adapted to see at night like owls so if they went off from their perches at night they're blind at night just like you would be' said Dr Kevin McGowan, an ornithologist from Cornell University.

Initially, last year's deaths were blamed on celebratory fireworks, with people thinking that the birds were startled to death.

Assistant State Veterinarian Dr. Brandon Doss examines dead red-winged blackbirds from last year's mass deaths

One of thousands of birds that died after last year's New Year's Eve celebration in Bee,e Arkansas

A flash hail storm or massive lightning strikes were all discussed as possibilities as well.

All three theories have been debunked, however, as the weather was calm in Arkansas last night and police even imposed an impromptu firework ban in an effort to prevent it from happening again.

'I called the police department and told them "I'm not drunk, I'm not on drugs" and she immediately said "Oh you're calling about the birds?" and I was like "Uh yeah!"' resident Jeff Drennan told ABC.

WATCH VIDEO HERE

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2080859/Dead-blackbirds-Beebe-Sign-apocalypse-thousands-die-New-Years-Eve.html#ixzz1jNgCXjgy