Jesus, the Alpha & the Omega
What is the definition of death—and who gets to make the call? For decades, physicians have had the authority to declare a person brain-dead—defined in the U.S. as the irreversible cessation of all brain function, including the brainstem—even if heart and lung activity can be maintained with machines. The medical
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More than 120 pregnant whales were killed during Japan’s annual “research” hunt in the Southern Ocean last summer, a new report has revealed. Of the 333 minke whales caught during the controversial 12-week expedition, 181 were female – including 53 immature ones. Figures show that of the 128 mature female
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We all have a stake in stopping cybercrime, which also enables so many other crimes, from human trafficking and migrant smuggling to trafficking in drugs, illicit firearms and wildlife, and money laundering,” said Yury Fedotov, the director general at the United Nation’s Office on Drugs and Crime, this week. States are
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It was a letter of unity and solidarity. “Our forest, our rivers, our land are sacred to us,” wrote the Ka’apor tribe, from Maranhão in north-eastern Brazil to the Munduruku, who live hundreds of miles away on the Tapajós river deep in the Amazon rainforest. Both tribes are under threat from
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Reactive attachment disorder (RAD) is a condition found in children who may have received grossly negligent care and do not form a healthy emotional attachment with their primary caregivers — usually their mothers — before age 5. Attachment develops when a child is repeatedly soothed, comforted, and cared for, and
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Long attached to visions of clear skies and calm seas, the colour blue historically could not be more welcome, refreshing and natural. Because of the proliferation of blue-emitting LEDs in our artificially lit lives, blue light has come to represent bleary eyes, sleeplessness and the poor health associated with disruption
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The Volga is the longest river in Europe. It is also Europe’s largest river regarding discharge and watershed. The river flows through central Russia and into the Caspian Sea and is widely regarded as the national river of Russia. Eleven of the twenty largest cities of Russia, including the capital, Moscow, are located in the Volga’s watershed. Some of the largest reservoirs in the world can
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Betrayed by her own family, isolated from the outside world and raped daily by her violent husband, one desperate teenager turned to a confidential helpline. The 17-year-old from the north of England first met her abusive partner the day before she was forced to marry the middle-aged man in Britain.
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The Llŷn Peninsula extends 30 miles (50 km) into the Irish Sea from north west Wales, south west of the Isle of Anglesey. It is part of the modern county and historic region of Gwynedd. Much of the eastern part of the peninsula, around Criccieth, may be regarded as part of Eifionydd rather than Llŷn, although the boundary is somewhat
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The FBI warned on Friday that Russian computer hackers had compromised hundreds of thousands of home and office routers and could collect user information or shut down network traffic. The US law enforcement agency urged the owners of many brands of routers to turn them off and on again and download updates
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Billy Graham kept the focus on God at all times. How did he do it? Future historians will find more than enough material from Billy Graham’s life and work to keep them occupied. But one of the main questions they will want to answer is: What was the secret of
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Beijing is slowly shedding its image as the world’s most polluted city. In 2013, it ranked as the 40th worst city for the particulate PM2.5 in the World Health Organisation global database. Four years on, thanks in part to a crackdown on polluters, it stands in 187th place. Air pollution in the 62
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Credits: EPR, The Guardian, National Geographic Society.
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With its red-hot rivers of lava and clouds of ash, Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano has captured the world’s attention. But how dangerous are such eruptions? Every year about 60 volcanoes erupt. Some take us by surprise, but others are regular offenders. Kilauea is one of the world’s most active – its
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Vladimir Putin is often portrayed in the press as a wily manipulator who always gets his way, but lately, the Kremlin’s schemes are backfiring. His meddling in the 2016 U.S. election has created a bipartisan American backlash, and the March attack with a nerve agent in Salisbury, England, is now
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A few years ago, Roland Rösch’s job involved grabbing scalding-hot auto parts from an oven and inspecting them for signs they had failed a safety test. These days he still inspects, but the grabbing is being done by Fritz, a robot that auto-parts manufacturer Robert Bosch GmbH installed three years
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Philippians 4: 10 – 13. Contentment is a highly elusive trait, as our acquisitive propensity in a consumer society militates against it, time and again. It is no different in the days of the Apostle Paul, as his own experience alluded to it in the midst of his diverse missionary
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A film-maker asked by the Indian government to conduct a study of male survivors of child sexual abuse has said there is a culture of indifference in the country about “what happens to men as boys.” Insia Dariwala is investigating links between unresolved male trauma and its impact in later
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It’s the day before National Day, and people across Norway are working hard to make the whole country look clean and tidy ahead of the celebrations on May 17. In a school playground in the small town of Sogndal, lots of parents have turned up to get the area ready. Six
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This year marks a century since some women got the vote; a century since the end of the first world war; 50 years since the 1968 revolts; 70 since the founding of Israel and the NHS. All have been well marked. So it is striking that the centenary of one of the most devastating events in
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In the early 20th Century, Arctic explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson spent a collective five years eating just meat. This meant that his diet consisted of around 80% fat and 20% protein. Twenty years later, he did the same as part of a year-long experiment at the New York City’s Bellevue Hospital in
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An international team of investigators says that detailed analysis of video images has established that the Buk missile that brought down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 nearly four years ago came from a Russia-based military unit. Wilbert Paulissen of the Dutch National Police said Thursday that the missile was from the
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Investigations into the 1Malaysia Development Bhd.scandal have thus far focused on the alleged involvement of former Prime Minister Najib Razak. But Malaysia’s new government faces an awkward problem: How far should it pursue the companies that played a supporting role in one of the world’s largest-ever financial swindles? Since Mr Najib was forced out
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It’s no secret that visitor overcrowding and the effects of mass tourism have led to an outcry that popular destinations are losing their authenticity and the much-needed support of locals. Longstanding grievances at ‘invasions’ of visitors escalated this summer across popular European cities into angry protests, searing public graffiti, and
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Equuleus is one of the 48 constellations listed by the 2nd-century astronomer Ptolemy and remains one of the 88 modern constellations. Its name is Latin for ‘little horse,’ a foal. It was It is the second smallest of the modern constellations (after Crux), spanning only 72 square degrees. It is also very faint, having no
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Plastic bags have been blamed for the deaths of sperm whales in the Mediterranean. The Athens-based Pelagos Cetacean Research Institute found that more than a third of the sperm whales found dead in Greek waters had stomachs blocked by plastic waste. But this comes as no surprise to whale watchers. In
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Walmart may reign as the number one on the Fortune 500, but it’s iPhones and social media that are atop investors’ minds. In a sign a how much investors believe tech giants will supplant traditional sectors in consumers’ lives in coming years, the five most valuable Fortune 500 companies have become tech firms. iPhone-maker Apple dominates once
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Psychological manipulation is any action that’s designed to help someone accomplish their agenda through deceptive or otherwise shady tactics. It usually involves creating a power imbalance within the relationship or interaction – and isn’t all that uncommon. “Most of us have to deal with it on a regular basis, from untrustworthy relationships
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Learning the local language might seem an obvious goal for anyone moving abroad. But in an increasingly globalised world, whether this is an effective use of time is increasingly up for debate. Growing numbers of multinationals and start-ups are adopting English as their official company language, even if they’re not based
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An enormous planet containing ten times the mass of the Earth could explain the unusual orbit of a newly discovered asteroid. If found, the giant world would represent the first discovery of a planet in our solar system since Pluto in 1930, and before that Neptune in 1846. (Pluto was
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Kilauea is one of the world’s most active volcanoes. It is a shield-type volcano that makes up the southeastern side of the Big Island of Hawaii. The volcano rises 4,190 feet (1,227 meters) above sea level and is about 14 percent of the land area of the Big Island. The
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Basilicata, also known as Lucania, is a region in Southern Italy, bordering on Campania to the west, Apulia (Puglia) to the north and east, and Calabria to the south. It also has two coastlines, one on the Tyrrhenian Sea between Campania and Calabria, and a longer coastline along the Gulf of Taranto between Calabria and Apulia. The region can be thought
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Schizotypal personality disorder, like other personality disorders, is a long-standing pattern of behaviour and experience. As part of that pattern, an individual either has difficulty functioning or experiences a great deal of distress. People with schizotypal personality disorder are loners who prefer to keep their distance from others and are
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From 22 to 26 May 2018, the RHS Chelsea Flower Show, sponsored by M&G Investments, is the place to see a cutting-edge garden design, new plants and find ideas to take home. The Chelsea Flower Show has been held in the grounds of the Royal Hospital Chelsea, London every year since 1913, apart
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A census of the biomass on Earth is key for understanding the structure and dynamics of the biosphere. However, a global, quantitative view of how the biomass of different taxa compares with one another is still lacking. In The Biomass Distribution on Earth by Yinon M. Bar-On, Rob Phillips, and Ron Milo,
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Our modern germ-free life is the cause of the most common type of cancer in children, according to one of Britain’s most eminent scientists. Acute lymphoblastic leukaemia affects one in 2,000 children. Prof Mel Greaves, from the Institute of Cancer Research, has amassed 30 years of evidence to show the
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Bible Verse for Today
Planck Maps the Microwave Background.
Image Credit: European Space Agency, Planck Collaboration. What is our universe made of? To help find out, ESA launched the Planck satellite from 2009 to 2013 to map, in unprecedented detail, slight temperature differences on the oldest optical surface has known - the background sky when our universe first became transparent to light. Visible in all directions, this cosmic microwave background is a complex tapestry that could only show the hot and cold patterns observed were the universe to be composed of specific types of energy that evolved in specific ways. The final results, reported last week, confirm again that most of our universe is mostly composed of mysterious and unfamiliar dark energy, and that even most of the remaining matter-energy is strangely dark. Additionally, the "final" 2018 Planck data impressively peg the age of the universe at about 13.8 billion years and the local expansion rate called the Hubble constant - at 67.4 (+/- 0.5) km/sec/Mpc.
NASA Mars Exploration Programme 
If you starve your brain for oxygen for five minutes, the brain may get damaged.
American Psychological Association
Conservation International 
The Rikbaktsa are an indigenous ethnic group from the Mato Grosso region of Brazil. Their traditional territory spanned 50,000 km² of Juruena River basin, stretching from the Papagaio River in the south to the Augusto Falls on the upper Tapajós River in the north. Their territory was bounded on the west by the Aripuanã River and on the east by the Arinos River, near the Peixes River.
Global Disaster Alert & Coordination System CDC Travellers’ Health Notices 
The flag of Malta is a basic bi-colour, with white in the hoist and red in the fly. A representation of the George Cross, awarded to Malta by George VI of the United Kingdom in 1942, is carried, edged with red, in the canton of the white stripe. It was first flown on 1 September 1964 with Malta's independence.
The U.S. Department of State Travel Warnings
The UK Foreign Service Travel Advice 
This flared Paris porcelain vase mounted on a gilt bronze stand (museum number 463-1844) is painted with a profusion of brightly-coloured flowers dramatically set off against a completely gilded background. It is most probably bought from the Escalier de Cristal retailer Lahoche, Boin & Cie at the 1844 French Industrial Exhibition. The acquisition of this vase actually pre-dated the building of the South Kensington Museum, which is where it is presently.
Idiom of the Day 
AMERICAN PASTOR IMPRISONED FOR WORK IN MYANMAR. Click on image for more information.
