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Go to Blogger edit html and find these sentences.Now replace these sentences with your own descriptions.This theme is Bloggerized by Lasantha Bandara - Premiumbloggertemplates.com.
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LABOR and the Greens have shown a lack of integrity by moving on voluntary euthanasia straight after the election rather than before it, Melbourne Anglican Bishop Philip Huggins said yesterday.
Bishop Huggins has asked the national parliament of the Australian Anglican Church, now meeting in Melbourne, to affirm the sanctity of life as God's gift. The motion says: ''Our task is to protect, nurture and sustain life to the best of our ability.''
He told The Age he was shocked at the report yesterday that Prime Minister Julia Gillard was backing a conscience vote to restore the power of the territories to allow euthanasia. The Howard government overturned a Northern Territory decision to allow it in 1997.
Bishop Huggins said: ''This was not a matter of pre-election debate. Would people have voted the same way if they knew a Labor government with the Greens would, as a near-first action, promote a conscience vote on euthanasia?
''There would be more integrity in foreshadowing this proposal before an election rather than immediately after. It should have been made plain during the election campaign. There should be a broad-based public debate.''
Greens leader Bob Brown tried to legalise euthanasia in 2007, but both main parties voted against his motion. In 2008 Senator Brown twice introduced a bill to restore territory rights over euthanasia, and the latest move is his third attempt with that bill.
Bishop Huggins said the motion, reaffirming the traditional Christian view, showed the Prime Minister and Parliament that the church would not be silent on this issue.
''We've all been close to people who have had a hard and difficult death,'' he said. ''We have watched and prayed in some anguished places, and can well understand why the idea of euthanasia attracts support.
''However, we also understand what a threshold we cross when our efforts are not focused on protecting life, and providing comfort and pain relief until life ends.''
His motion probably cannot be put to the synod until Thursday, but Bishop Huggins expects a resounding affirmation.
Sydney Archbishop Peter Jensen said he was immensely sympathetic to the motives driving the push for voluntary euthanasia, having watched his mother die. But those pushing for it were out of touch with the reality of human nature.
''It will be a very bad thing for Australian society to break down the key barriers which stand between us and a brutal world,'' Dr Jensen said.
The Victorian Greens said it was ''inevitable'' euthanasia laws would again be debated by State Parliament. Greens MP Colleen Hartland said she would press Attorney-General Rob Hulls to refer the issue to the Law Reform Commission, so the right to die laws could be dealt with by Parliament in the same way as the decriminalisation of abortion.
In 2008, a conscience vote of upper house MPs defeated a euthanasia private member's bill.
SACHIRE, Georgia — Authorities in the former Soviet republic of Georgia claim a woman from a remote mountain village turned 130 on Thursday, making her the oldest person on Earth.
Antisa Khvichava from western Georgia was born on July 8, 1880, said Georgiy Meurnishvili, spokesman for the civil registry at the Justice Ministry.
The woman, who lives with her 40-year-old grandson in an idyllic vine-covered country house in the mountains, retired from her job as a tea and corn picker in 1965, when she was 85, records say.
"I've always been healthy, and I've worked all my life — at home and at the farm," said Khvichava, in a bright dress and headscarf, her withering lips rejuvenated by shiny red lipstick. Sitting in the chair and holding her cane, Khvichava spoke quietly through an interpreter since she never went to school to learn Georgian and speaks only the local language, Mingrelian.
Her age couldn't immediately be independently verified. Her birth certificate was lost — one of the great number to have disappeared in the past century amid revolutions and a civil war which followed the collapse of the Russian Empire.
But Meurnishvili showed two Soviet-era documents that he says attest to her age. Scores of officials, neighbors, friends, and descendants backed up her claim as the world's top senior.
The Gerontology Research Group currently recognizes 114-year-old Eugenie Blanchard of Saint Barthelemy, France, as the world's oldest person. The organization is yet to examine Khvichava's claim.
Khvichava has a son, 10 grandchildren, 12 great grandchildren and six great, great grandchidren.
Khvichava's 70-year-old son Mikhail apparently was born when his mother was 60. She said she also had two children from a previous marriage, but says they died of hunger during World War II.
Although Khvichava has difficulty walking and has stayed largely in bed during the past seven years, she makes a point of hobbling unaided to the outhouse on the other side of the yard, loathe to be a nuisance, Mikhail said.
Though her body has all but quit on her — her fingers cramped and deformed by age mean she can no longer maintain her love of knitting — relatives say her mind remains sharp.
"Grandma has a very clear mind and she hasn't lost an ability to think rationally," said Khvichava's granddaughter Shorena, who lives in a nearby village.
To mark the centurion's birthday, a string ensemble played folk music out on the lawn, while grandchildren offered traditional Mingrelian dishes like corn porridge and spiced chicken with herbs to all guests as the party.
In 1981, I asked him to take charge of the Monetary Authority of Singapore where our CPF and other reserves were managed. He set up the Government of Singapore Investment Corporation, and built up the organisation to invest and manage our growing reserves worldwide. I became the Chairman.
Commercial activities may expose charities to governance risks
By Hoe Yeen Nie | Posted: 02 June 2010 2118 hrs
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SINGAPORE : The commercial activities of City Harvest have generated interest recently. And experts said religious charities that go into business expose themselves to governance risks, including the lack of proper checks and balances.
With the world now aware of his dual life as Iron Man, billionaire inventor Tony Stark faces pressure from the government, the press, and the public to share his technology with the military
Cast
Robert Downey Jr., Scarlett Johansson, Gwyneth Paltrow, Mickey Rourke, Samuel L. Jackson, Sam Rockwell, Paul Bettany and Don Cheadle.
WHEN Kevin Rudd journeyed to Perth to meet half a dozen West Australian businessmen, he had no idea it would turn into a confrontation with 30 of the nation's most powerful executives, starting with boxing gloves and ending with a bare-knuckle brawl.
As the Prime Minister prepared to attend a pre-arranged dinner at the Perth headquarters of law firm Lavan Legal, mining industry executives scrambled for a chance to discuss the new 40 per cent resources super-profits tax. They included Fortescue Metals Group's Andrew Forrest, Rio Tinto Iron Ore's Sam Walsh, BHP Billiton Iron Ore's Ian Ashby, Atlas Iron's David Flanagan and Woodside Petroleum's Don Voelte.
To start the evening, Mr Forrest, a friend of the Prime Minister, presented him with a pair of boxing gloves labelled "Fair suck of the sauce bottle mate" but that's where the humour ended.
Mining executive after mining executive lined up to tell Mr Rudd they believed he had done "irretrievable harm" to Australia and would force them to invest overseas.
After the Prime Minister cited Norway's example of higher taxes on resources, mining chiefs were left sputtering about "a virtually socialist system" and challenging Mr Rudd as to whether this was the system he wanted.
Rio Tinto's Sam Walsh said that, as an Australian, it "irked" him to have to advise his company to look for investment overseas and at projects in Canada where it wouldn't face such high tax.
Given Canadian Finance Minister Jim Flaherty yesterday was urging his colleagues in parliament in Ottawa to promote Canada in the face of Australia's new tax, Mr Walsh was prescient.
Mr Walsh even warned Mr Rudd that Rio couldn't guarantee current production levels under the new tax, let alone expansion to new projects.
In response to Mr Rudd's arguments about the pressures of a high dollar and the impact it was having on attracting foreign students to Australia, Atlas iron chief David Flanagan said 25,000 Australian shareholders - "mum and dad punters" - had had their investment in the iron ore industry halved and "could no longer afford to retire".
When Mr Rudd pointed out that the Australian goldmining industry had "survived" the introduction of a gold tax, executives responded by saying they would survive but not expand.
"We will survive but Brazil and our other sovereign competitors will be cheering because they will expand and we will not," one executive said.
An impassioned Mr Forrest told the Prime Minister that if this proposed tax had been in place in 2006, what is now a $15 billion Australian icon, Fortescue Metals Group, "would not exist".
Mr Rudd's use of the term "super tax" was also attacked. It was described as a fib since it was just another tax on profits and not one on super profits.
After what Mr Rudd described as a "robust" meeting, the next round was adjourned to Canberra next week where Queensland resources executives hope to get their chance to be heard.
