Vatican begins extraordinary Synod to discuss family life -

________ A to Z kerala .......... [kvk] [www.atozkerala.in , www.atozkerala.blogspot.com]
Vatican city: Roman Catholic Church leaders from around the world began a two -week extraordinary Synod to discuss some of the most controversial issues affecting the Church. Pope Francis and more than 200 senior bishops in the Church will be joined by lay Catholics to debate abortion, contraception, homosexuality and divorce. The extraordinary Synod lasts two weeks and a follow-up meeting will be held next year. 

The conference agenda was drawn up after an unprecedented opinion survey of the faithful, ordered by Pope Francis last year, to find out why Rome's teachings are increasingly being rejected or ignored.

Addressing tens of thousands of believers in St Peter’s square on the eve of the synod overnight, Francis said the synod could open the door to a “renewal of the Church and society.” Pope Francis said that he wanted bishops to really listen to the Catholic community. He said he hoped they would have a "sincere, open and fraternal" discussion that would respond to the "epochal changes" that families were living through. 

Since becoming pontiff just over 18 months ago, Francis has repeatedly highlighted the “wounds” caused by family breakdown in modern society, while suggesting the Church needs to adapt to this new reality.

“The wounds have to be treated with mercy. The Church is a mother, not a customs office, coldly checking who is within the rules,” he has said, in an allusion to the many divorced people, cohabiting couples and single mothers within the ranks of the Church.

But a reform agenda on social issues could prove much harder to implement because of deep divisions within the Church, Vatican experts say. Conservatives in the Church hierarchy have already made it clear they will fight any dilution of traditional doctrine. 

500 Gazans visit Jerusalem first time in seven years

________ A to Z kerala .......... [kvk] [www.atozkerala.in , www.atozkerala.blogspot.com]

Gaza: About 500 Palestinians from Gaza over 60 years old visited Jerusalem Sunday to pray at al-Aqsa Mosque in the old city for the first time in seven years, officials said.

Hussein al-Sheikh, chief of the Palestinian liaison office with Israel, had earlier said that Israel started a series of steps to ease a blockade which had been imposed on the Gaza Strip for eight years, Xinhua reported.

He said one of the measures is to allow 500 Gazans to pray during Eidul Adha holiday.

The 500 Gazans Sunday morning crossed through Erez crossing point between Israel and the northern tip of the coastal enclave, arrived in Jerusalem, prayed and came back to Gaza in the evening.

Muslims celebrated Saturday their major annual holiday of Eidul Adha, which will end Wednesday.

Four killed, 25 injured in Pakistani firing in Jammu

________ A to Z kerala .......... [kvk] [www.atozkerala.in , www.atozkerala.blogspot.com]

Jammu: Four civilians were killed and 25 injured in shelling from the Pakistani side of the India-Pakistan border in Jammu district Monday, Police sources said.

Monday's major ceasefire violations by Pakistani rangers came on a day when Muslims in both India and Pakistan are celebrating the holy Eid-ul-Azha festival.

The police sources told IANS that Pakistan rangers resorted to indiscriminate firing on Indian positions in Arnia sub-sector of the international border in Jammu district during the night, causing death of four civilians and injuries 25 others.

"In one of their most serious ceasefire violations, Pakistan rangers resorted to indiscriminate firing on Indian positions in Arnia sub-sector of international border during the night," a senior police officer told IANS.

"They resorted to mortar shelling and automatic weapons firing in which four civilians have been killed and 25 others injured," the officer added.

"The injured people, most of them civilians, are being evacuated to hospital for treatment. Emergency relief teams have been rushed to the area."

Reports from the area said shelling from the Pakistani side has been so heavy that mortar shells have fallen inside the Arnia bus stand which is more than four km away from the international border.

Panic gripped the border villages in Arnia and other places close to the international border in the district.

According to a source, residents of many villages in Arnia have started migrating to safer places.

Officials of civil and police administration have rushed to ensure that damage to the civilian life and property is minimised.

- 

Tiny creatures balance ecosystem

________ A to Z kerala .......... [kvk] [www.atozkerala.in , www.atozkerala.blogspot.com]
Washington: Tiny creatures like earthworms and beetles play a vital role in maintaining grasslands and balancing the ecosystem, a study says.

The results reflect long-term ecological impacts of land use changes, such as the conversion of forests to agricultural land, the researchers said.

'We know these soil animals are important controls on processes which cause nutrients and carbon to cycle in ecosystems, but there was little evidence that human-induced loss of these animals has effects at the level of the whole ecosystem, on services such as agricultural yield,' said lead author Mark Bradford, an associate professor at Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies (F&ES).

For their study, the researchers assembled 16 bathtub-sized replicas of a Scottish upland grassland and each of the models included the 10 most common plant species.

They introduced earthworms, slugs, and other small creatures to only some of the systems.

There was no change in plant yield or the rate of carbon dioxide loss from the system during the first six months.

'But there were huge changes in the ecosystem processes once the model was continued for 500 days, including productivity of the plants,' said Bradford.

Whereas grass yields were reduced, the quality of the yields was improved after removing the creatures.

'These findings emphasize how interconnected the belowground and aboveground components of ecosystems are, and that different ecosystem processes respond in different ways to the management of grasslands,' noted study co-author Stephen Wood from Columbia University.

'In this case, the loss of soil animal diversity eventually changed the dominant plant species in the meadow ecosystems, and then in turn the productivity of these grasslands and how they responded to agricultural management,' Bradford concluded.

The study appeared in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Scuffles as Hong Kong protests face clear-out

________ A to Z kerala .......... [kvk] [www.atozkerala.in , www.atozkerala.blogspot.com]
Hong Kong: Police armed with pepper spray and batons clashed with demonstrators in Hong Kong, as fears grew today that officials would move in to clear the streets of pro-democracy protesters and end the standoff for good.

Large crowds of protesters scuffled with police overnight in the blue-collar Mong Kok district in Kowloon, a flashpoint
that has seen violent clashes between pro-democracy student protesters and their antagonists over the weekend.

Police said the crowds had provoked officers with verbal abuse, while the students accuse police of failing to protect
them from attacks by mobs intent on driving them away.

The students claim that police had allied with criminal gangs to clear them, but the government has vehemently denied
it

As the protests entered their eighth day today, the atmosphere on the streets was tense amid fears police may use
pepper spray and tear gas to disperse them, as they did last weekend.

The city's top leader, Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying, appeared on television yesterday evening to once again urge
everyone to go home, saying key roads paralysed by protesters need to return to normal by tomorrow.

'The government and the police have the duty and determination to take all necessary actions to restore social
order so the government and the 7 million people of Hong Kong can return to their normal work and life,' Leung said.

Tens of thousands of people, many students, have taken to the streets in the past week to protest China's restrictions
on the election for the city's top leader. The protests are the strongest challenge to the authorities in Hong Kong and in
Beijing since the former British colony returned to Chinese rule in 1997.

Beijing has promised that the city can have universal suffrage by 2017, but it says a committee of mostly pro-Beijing figures must screen candidates for the top job. The protesters are also demanding Leung's resignation, but he has refused.

The next steps are uncertain, after student leaders called off planned talks with the government until officials respond
to claims that police tolerated attacks by alleged mobsters.

Police had earlier arrested 19 people in the brawls in Mong Kok, including eight men believed to have backgrounds linked
to triads, or organized crime. (AP)

Spanish court rejects Messi appeal in tax fraud case

________ A to Z kerala .......... [kvk] [www.atozkerala.in , www.atozkerala.blogspot.com]

Barcelona: A Spanish court has rejected an appeal lodged by Argentina and Barcelona forward Lionel Messi against his prosecution for alleged tax evasion.

Spain's public prosecutor argued in June that Messi's father Jorge was responsible for the family's finances and not the four-times World Player of the Year.

A court in Barcelona decided, however, Lionel Messi could have known about and approved the creation of a web of shell companies that were allegedly used to evade taxes due on income from image rights.

The appeal against that decision has been rejected, according to court documents published on Friday.

Messi and his father have been accused of defrauding the Spanish state of more than 4 million euros (5 million US dollars). They have denied wrongdoing.

2 million Muslims stone 'devil' at Haj, feast begins

________ A to Z kerala .......... [kvk] [www.atozkerala.in , www.atozkerala.blogspot.com]

MINA(SAUDI ARABIA): Two million Muslims, including Indians, ritually stoned the devil today in the last major ritual of this year's Haj in Saudi Arabia, while fellow believers around the world celebrated Eid al-Adha. The stoning took place in Mina, about five kilometres east of the Grand Mosque in the holy city of Mecca. Pilgrims had moved to Mina overnight on foot, motorbikes, and buses from Mount Arafat after the Haj reached its zenith with a day of prayer, as well as tears by pilgrims moved by the sanctity of the spot where Prophet Mohammed is believed to have given his final sermon 14 centuries ago. In the stoning ritual, pilgrims throw pebbles, which they collected at Muzdalifah on the way to Mina, at walls to emulate Abraham who is said to have stoned the devil at three locations when he tried to dissuade Abraham from God's order to sacrifice his son. In conjunction with the stoning, pilgrims offer sacrifices by slaughtering a sheep, whose meat goes to the needy. Nowadays pilgrims do not carry out this rite themselves, but pay agencies which distribute the meat to Muslims in many countries. A total of about 1.5 billion Muslims around the world were celebrating Eid al-Adha with sacrifices of sheep, goats and other animals. This year's Haj attracted just over two million believers including almost 1.4 million from abroad, according to statistics published by the official Saudi Press Agency. The balance of almost 700,000 came from within the kingdom. These numbers are roughly the same as last year. The Haj has drawn a cross-section of humanity, everyone from presidents - Sudanese leader Omar al-Bashir was among them - to commoners including a wounded Syrian rebel war veteran, as well as rich and poor pilgrims alike. The Haj, which officially ends on Tuesday, is the world's largest Muslim gathering. It is one of the five pillars of Islam that every capable Muslim must perform at least once, the high-point of his or her spiritual life.

New lab at MIT to analyse Twitter messages

________ A to Z kerala .......... [kvk] [www.atozkerala.in , www.atozkerala.blogspot.com]

San Francisco: Twitter will provide the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) with $10 million over the next five years to analyse every tweet that has gone out since the network was launched in 2006.

The MIT Media Lab will use the money to establish and operate a Laboratory for Social Machines.

'As part of the new programme, Twitter will also provide full access to its real-time, public stream of tweets, as well as the archive of every tweet dating back to the first, the MIT Media Lab said in a statement announcing the initiative.

'With this investment, Twitter is seizing the opportunity to go deeper into research to understand the role Twitter and other platforms play in the way people communicate, the effect that rapid and fluid communication can have and apply those findings to complex societal issues,' Twitter CEO Dick Costolo said.

The new lab's work will extend across many social media and mass media platforms, the MIT Media Lab said.

The LSM is to be directed by MIT Media Lab associate professor Deb Roy, who is also chief media scientist at Twitter.

'The Laboratory for Social Machines will experiment in areas of public communication and social organisation where humans and machines collaborate on problems that can't be solved manually or through automation alone,' Roy said.

IANS

Spread of AIDS traced to Kinshasa in the 1920s

London: The HIV pandemic began its global spread from Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), says a study.

Between the 1920s and 1950s, a 'perfect storm' of factors, including urban growth, strong railway links during Belgian colonial rule, and changes to the sex trade, combined to see HIV emerge from Kinshasa and spread across the globe.

'It seems a combination of factors in Kinshasa in the early 20th Century created a 'perfect storm' for the emergence of HIV, leading to a generalised epidemic with unstoppable momentum that unrolled across sub-Saharan Africa,' said senior study author Oliver Pybus, a professor at Oxford University in Britain.

For the study, the researchers reconstructed the genetic history of the HIV-1 group M pandemic, the event that saw HIV spread across the African continent and around the world.

'For the first time we have analysed all the available evidence using the latest phylogeographic techniques, which enable us to statistically estimate where a virus comes from,' Pybus said.

'This means we can say with a high degree of certainty where and when the HIV pandemic originated,' Pybus added.

HIV is known to have been transmitted from primates and apes to humans at least 13 times but only one of these transmission events has led to a human pandemic.

It was only with the event that led to HIV-1 group M that a pandemic occurred, resulting in almost 75 million infections to date.

'We think it is likely that the social changes around the independence in 1960s saw the virus 'break out' from small groups of infected people to infect the wider population and eventually the world,' first author of the study, Nuno Faria from Oxford University said.

The study appeared in the journal Science.

IANS

Seventeen fall ill after eating snake bitten goat's meat

________ A to Z kerala .......... [kvk] [www.atozkerala.in , www.atozkerala.blogspot.com]

TIRUVALLUR (TN): Seventeen people complained of nausea and giddiness after consuming meat of a goat which was reportedly bitten by a snake, a local health official said Wednesday.

They were discharged after treatment at a hospital, the official said.

Villagers of Periyakadambur in Tiruttani Panchayat Union fell ill after consuming mutton late last night. The affected persons "found" that the meat they ate was of a goat owned by a farmer that was reportedly bitten by a snake.

"Nausea is among the common symptoms of food poisoning. We do not know if the goat was bitten by a snake.

If at all that was true, we do not know if that was a poisonous reptile," a Tiruttani health official said, requesting anonymity.

"The villagers say that the goat was bitten by snake. It may be true or may not be true. All the seventeen were treated and later sent home.

"Non-venomous rat snakes are common in Tiruttani region as farm lands are plenty here," he added.

Tiruttani police said they were aware of the incident and declined to comment as there was no complaint