Greenpeace, Pussy Riot to be Given Amnesty

The members of the Pussy Riot punk band, Greenpeace activists and protesters jailed after the May 2012 Bolotnaya demonstration will be freed in an amnesty dedicated to the 20th anniversary of the Russian Constitution, Russian media report.

A total of 25,000 people will be freed under the amnesty initiated by President Putin, Interfax cited Vladimir Vasilyev, deputy speaker of parliament, as saying.

Two members of Russian punk band Pussy Riot in prison since March 2012

“Around 1,300 people will be released from prison, and 17,500 people will be relieved of non-custodial sentences. In addition, criminal proceedings against nearly 6,000 can be terminated,” Vasilyev said.

Several Russian media including Izvestia and Vedomosti newspapers have obtained a copy of the draft amnesty, which was submitted to the parliament by President Vladimir Putin on Monday.

According to the papers, the participants in such high-profile cases as the Pussy Riot Cathedral protest, Greenpeace’s Arctic Sunrise boarding of an oil rig and the Bolotnaya Square riots will all be granted amnesty.

Putin Takes Control of Russian Media

Russia's President Vladimir Putin has abolished the country's state-owned news agency RIA Novosti.

In a surprise decree published on the Kremlin's website on Monday, Mr Putin announced it would be replaced by a news agency called Russia Today.

The new agency will be headed by journalist and keen Kremlin supporter Dmitry Kiselev.

The state-owned Voice of Russia radio station has also been closed. The decree was effective immediately.

Sergey Ivanov, the head of the Kremlin administration, has told journalists in Moscow that the news agency is being restructured in order to make it more economical while increasing its reach, Interfax reports.

"Russia pursues an independent policy and robustly defends its national interests. It's not easy to explain that to the world, but we can and must do this," he said.

For many Kremlin critics in Russia, that phrase suggests this is a sinister move by President Putin, says the BBC's Daniel Sandford in Moscow.

In the post immediately below, I suggested that Putin longed to rebuild the Russian Federation to its former prominence in the world. It appears he believes that it must also return to the propaganda methods of the former paranoid communist state. Apparently, balanced reporting does not work for Russia, or at least Mr Putin.

In the old days, a communist president of Russia would establish his authority by murdering his political rivals. These days it's done by taking control of the media, which may or may not include murder.

Daniel Sandford, BBC Moscow

Mr Kiselev is known for his ultra-conservative views, including recently saying that gay people should be banned from giving blood, and that their hearts should be burnt rather than used in transplants.

Of all the state-owned media organisations, RIA Novosti has made the greatest attempt to produce balanced coverage in recent years. This was in part because of its international clients in media organisations around the world. It would have lost credibility otherwise.

But now the agency is being taken over by the Russia Today brand, which for opposition-minded Russians is more of a government mouthpiece, giving carefully selected news with a clear pro-Kremlin bias.

The word "propaganda" - never far from the Kremlin's opponents' lips when they are discussing state-controlled Russian television news - is now also being used to describe the new news agency.

Reporting on its own demise, RIA noted in its news report that "the move is the latest in a series of shifts in Russia's news landscape, which appear to point toward a tightening of state control in the already heavily regulated media sector".

Russia Today is the parent of RT.com which I have quoted a few times on this blog. Their pro-Kremlin bias was obvious yesterday in a piece blaming the west for inciting the riots in the Ukraine, but taking no responsibility for any actions by Russia.

Orange Revolution all over Again

"This is the third Sunday in a row that we've seen a giant crowd in the centre of Kiev"

Hundreds of thousands of people have taken to the streets in the Ukrainian capital Kiev seeking the resignation of the government for refusing a deal on closer ties with the European Union.

Protesters, who oppose a customs union with Russia, toppled a statue of Lenin and smashed it with hammers.

This is a kind of replay of the Orange Revolution of 9 years ago. It's all about whether Ukraine forms stronger ties with the EU or with Russia. Most Ukrainians want the relative prosperity that comes with association with the EU, but the President has close ties with Russia and has refused the advances of the EU.

Russian President Putin has long had a desire to rebuild the Russian Federation to it's former CCCP status, and is pulling strings to make sure Ukraine remains closer to them than to the EU. Many Ukrainians simply don't trust Russia or Putin, and with good reason.

But understand this, this is an east vs west power-play that will not easily be resolved.

President Viktor Yanukovych has said he shelved the EU deal after Russian opposition.

Protest leaders have given him 48 hours to dismiss the government.

As darkness fell, protesters were blockading key government buildings with cars, barricades and tents.

Witnesses said a group of protesters toppled the statue of Soviet leader Lenin at the top of Shevchenko's Boulevard using metal bars and ropes. Then they began smashing it up with hammers.

Others stood by chanting "glory to Ukraine".

Correspondents say the statue has symbolic importance as it underlines Ukraine's shared history with Russia.

One opposition MP, Andriy Shevchenko, tweeted: "Goodbye, Communist legacy!"

Prime Minister Mykola Azarov compared the toppling of the statue to the Taliban's destruction of the giant Buddhas of Bamiyan in Afghanistan in 2001, Interfax-Ukraine news agency reported.

"War on monuments is always barbarity," he said.

The BBC's David Stern says the attack on the statue has heightened tension in Kiev.

In another development on Sunday, the Ukrainian Security Service said it was investigating some politicians on suspicion of what it called "actions aimed at seizing state power". It did not name the politicians.

The European Commission has said EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton will travel to Ukraine this week "to support a way out of the political crisis".

Waving EU and Ukrainian flags, protesters on Sunday congregated on Kiev's Independence Square - the scene of previous clashes with police.

Ukraine's special police force, Berkut, has been widely condemned for beating protesters in the square - known as Maidan.

The opposition party of jailed former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko has urged people to "chase" the president "until he falls".

Yulia Tymoshenko

"We are on a razor's edge between a final plunge into cruel dictatorship and a return home to the European community," Mrs Tymoshenko said in a message to the crowd read out by her daughter.

"Don't give in, not a step back, don't give up, the future of Ukraine is in your hands," the message read.

Another opposition leader, Oleh Tyahnybok, said: "It's not just a simple revolution. It's a revolution of dignity."

Opposition MP Serhiy Pashynskyy said that "starting from today and until our demands are met, the government quarter will be blocked with protest rallies".

Analysts say that although the protests were sparked by President Yanukovych's U-turn on the EU deal, many on the streets want rid of what they believe is a corrupt system.

The protests are the largest since the pro-democracy Orange Revolution in 2004.

A smaller pro-government rally was held close to the opposition march with police separating the two.

Both Russia and Ukraine denied that the issue of Kiev joining the customs union along with Belarus and Kazakhstan came up during the Putin-Yanukovych meeting in Sochi, in southern Russia, on Friday.

Correspondents had earlier speculated that an agreement on Ukraine joining the customs union might be reached in return for reduced energy prices. The two neighbours have also been trying to resolve a long-running dispute over energy supplies.

Ukraine depends on imports of Russian gas, but the supplier, Gazprom, has recently complained that Kiev had fallen behind in payments.

Disputes over supplies to Ukraine before 2009 saw Gazprom temporarily cutting off supplies.

Pipelines passing through Ukraine also pump Russian gas to many EU member states.

"Any signature to a deal on forming a new Soviet Union means the breakup of the country," said Arseniy Yatsenyuk, a prominent opposition member.

Atheist Ad Campaign Refused by Pattison Group

Poster ad campaign by atheist group refused by Pattison Outdoors

An atheist group is considering a human rights complaint after it says a billboard company refused to run its advertisements in Vancouver.

The Centre for Inquiry Canada created a billboard design depicting a smiling woman alongside a few phrases written in a biblical style.

“Jenn 13:1,” it reads. "Praying won’t help. Doing will.

Below the group's name, the ad says: "Without God. We're all good."

Atheist ads also vanished from some Kelowna buses.

Pat O’Brien, board member for The Centre for Inquiry Canada, said the organization submitted the ads to Pattison Outdoor but was told they were unacceptable.

God bless you Jim Pattison and your staff for not running this offensive ad. I'm sure they will find someone more greedy and less discerning to hang up their posters, but I'm proud that it wasn't you. 

Computer savvy Christians with some time on their hands can find a ministry in the "comments" section of news stories like this one on CBC.CA/news/. A calm mind, a gentle spirit, and a lot of patience may make a great deal of difference in someone's life. And perhaps, God will give you a specific word for someone who will read your comment.

God bless.

New DNA Discovery is Outlier to Archaeological Theories, Big Surprise

Scientists have reached farther back than ever into the ancestry of humans to recover and analyze DNA, using a bone found in Spain that's estimated to be 400,000 years old. So far, the achievement has provided more questions than answers about our ancient forerunners.

Isn't this often the case, new discoveries rarely fit into archaeological understanding without the application of a great deal of imagination. This, of course, means that much archaeological theory on the origins of man is imagination based.

The feat surpasses the previous age record of about 100,000 years for genetic material recovered from members of the human evolutionary line. Older DNA has been mapped from animals.

This artist's rendering provided by Madrid Scientific Films shows hominins whose remains were found at a site in Spain called Sima de los Huesos. The fossils have anatomical features reminiscent of Neanderthals. (The Associated Press)
Note that archaeological artists have great imagination, example - Nebraska Man the "missing link" built up from a single tooth, which turned out to belong to a pig. 

Experts said the work shows that new techniques for working with ancient DNA may lead to more discoveries about human origins.

Results were presented online Wednesday in the journal Nature by Matthias Meyer and colleagues at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, with co-authors in Spain and China.

They retrieved the DNA from a thighbone found in a cave in northern Spain. It is among thousands of fossils from at least 28 individuals to be recovered from a chamber called the "Pit of the Bones." The remains are typically classified as Homo Heidelbergensis, but not everybody agrees.

DNA was recovered and analyzed from the thigh bone of a Sima de los Huesos hominin estimated to have lived about 400,000 years ago. Previously, the oldest hominin DNA ever analyzed was around 100,000 years old. 

The age of the bones has been hard to determine. A rough estimate from analyzing the DNA is around 400,000 years, which supports what Meyer said is the current view of the anthropologists excavating the site. Todd Disotell, an anthropology professor at New York University, said geological techniques suggest the remains are older than 300,000 years but it's not clear by how much. By comparison, modern humans arose only about 200,000 years ago.

The researchers mapped almost the complete collection of so-called mitochondrial DNA. While the DNA most people know about is found in the nucleus of a cell, mitochondrial DNA lies outside the nucleus. It is passed only from mother to child.

Researchers used the DNA to construct possible evolutionary family trees that include the Spanish individuals and two groups that showed up much later: Neanderthals and an evolutionary cousin of Neanderthals called Denisovans. They assumed the DNA would show similarities to Neanderthal DNA, since the Spanish fossils have anatomical features reminiscent of Neanderthals.

But surprisingly, the DNA instead showed a closer relationship to Denisovans, who lived in Siberia and apparently elsewhere in Asia, far from the Spanish cave. Scientists are uncertain of how to explain that, Meyer said.

The picture should get clearer if scientists can recover the other kind of DNA, found in the nucleus, from the Spanish bones, he said. Nucleus DNA would give more comprehensive information about evolutionary relationships between species, perhaps telling a story much different from the mitochondrial DNA evidence, Meyer said. Nucleus DNA is harder to recover, but Meyer said he's optimistic that some small fraction might be retrievable.

A chamber at Sima de los Huesos called the 'Pit of Bones' contains thousands of fossils from at least 28 individuals, who are thought by many scientists to belong to the species Homo heidelbergensis. (The Associated Press)

He also noted that the cave has acted as "the perfect fridge" to preserve the DNA for eons, and said it will be hard to find comparable situations elsewhere.

Experts in ancient DNA called the new paper exciting because it showed scientists can recover older DNA than many had thought outside the deep freeze of permafrost areas. Much of human evolution happened in warmer places.

"We had been operating for a while under the assumption that the oldest DNA we're going to get is about 100,000 years," said Disotell. Now, "we might take a shot at some older samples that we just never would have bothered with in the past."

In warm places like Africa, where DNA does not preserve well, even getting genetic material that is just tens of thousands of years old would be an advance, said David Reich of Harvard Medical School.

There is No Limit to Man's Cruelty to Man, or Woman, or Child

Up to 30,000 Eritreans have been abducted since 2007 and taken to Egypt's Sinai to suffer torture and ransom demands, new research says.

The study, presented to the European parliament, says Eritrean and Sudanese security officers are colluding with the kidnap gangs.

At least $600m (£366m) has been extorted from families in ransom payments, it says.

Victims are kidnapped in Ethiopia, Sudan and Eritrea and taken to Sinai.

Eritrea has denied its officials are involved in the kidnappings.

Most of those targeted are Eritrean refugees fleeing the country, says the report - The Human Trafficking

Almost every Eritrean knows somebody who has been held hostage”, says Meron Estefanos, rights activist.

Meron Estefanos Rights activist

 "Their captors are opportunistic criminals looking to profit from their vulnerability," the report says.

"[The victims] are then taken to the Sinai and sold, sometimes more than once, to Bedouin groups living in the Sinai."

The report was authored by Meron Estefanos, an Eritrean human rights activist in Sweden, and Prof Mirjam van Reisen and Dr Conny Rijken of Tilburg University in the Netherlands.

The report says Eritrea's Border Surveillance Unit (BSU) and Sudanese security officials are among the "actors" colluding with the gangs that hold people hostage in the the largely lawless Sinai.

"[The hostages] are chained together without toilets or washing facilities and dehydrated, starved and deprived of sleep," the report says.

"They are subject to threats of death and organ harvesting... Those who attempt to escape are severely tortured." 

This is hardly believable, and yet, there is no limit to man's cruelty to man, or woman, or child.

Ms Meron told the BBC's Focus on Africa radio programme that one of her cousins was freed after a ransom of $37,000 was paid.

The cousin was abducted in Sudan, before being taken to Sinai where her captors tortured and raped her, Ms Meron said.

"Almost every Eritrean knows somebody who has been held hostage. It's a very common thing," she told the BBC.

The report said the trafficking would have been impossible without the direct involvement of Eritrean security officials, given the "restrictions on movement within the country, the requirement of exit visas at the border and the shoot-to-kill policy for illegal border crossings".

However, Eritrea's UK ambassador, Tesfamichael Gerahtu, said Eritrea was a "victim of human trafficking".

The government was "working hard" to arrest and bring to justice criminal gangs operating along its border, he told Focus on Africa.

The UN estimates that 3,000 Eritreans fled their repressive and impoverished country each month last year.

Many headed for the swollen refugee camps of neighbouring eastern Sudan, now home to more than 90,000 people.

Amazing Testimonies of Heaven and God's Miraculous Healing

Below is an exchange on Facebook where my wife, Patricia, has a lot of PH friends. My wife was instantly healed of PH when a group of friends and I prayed for her. The story is on the link just below. 

I post it to give glory to God Who still heals today, and to give hope to those who are dealing with chronic problems. Don't give up hope. Whether your healing comes in this world or the next, it will come if you believe in Jesus Christ as Saviour and Lord.

Meanwhile, please pray phor a cure for PH. There are way too many people suffering and dying from this horrible disease.

Patricia McFarland-Myers -Yesterday as I stood in line at the Post Office I was overwhelmed by God's Grace. 2 yrs ago I could not stand in line. I was in a Wheelchair. 1 yr. ago I had the incurable disease PH (Pulmonary Hypertension).

We moved back to B.C. to be closer to more family...after Gary & friends prayed Drs. are saying they can't find it. See full story.

2 days ago either our son Bob or Hubby & I had no place to live after Christmas. (We are using his small cute apt.) I stood in line at the Post office to send a very modest rent to a young man in England. We will be house sitting his beautiful furnished high-rise apt. for possibly the next 6 yrs. Humbled by Gods Grace. I feel like Tye Pennington had just yelled "Move that Bus!"

For those of you who don't know, my PHriend who posted above Alice Jaehne has a great experience too. She was all but dead 3 months ago. She was on life support...She saw Heaven. 4/5days later she was back at home. God is listening. If you don't think so. .just ask Him.
about an hour ago via mobile · Edited · Like


Alice Marie Jaehne - Hello, I am the ph friend Patricia is referring to.

On Sept 30 my husband called 911 and my last memory was him running down the hall for the phone, next memory I was in a place so bright it was absolutely stunning! I knew I was in heaven, my brother died in 2012, he was with me, he had become a quadriplegic 10 yrs ago when he rolled his big rig to avoid what he thought was a card load of kids! His voice was barely a whisper with all the tubes, but in heaven when he talked to me it was his voice before the accident, I was just stunned, then I heard another voice telling me it was not my time!

Then I woke up and it was 4 days later, I was still on the life support and failed the first breathing test, 24 hours later I passed on day 5 and got off the breathing machine and went home on day 6. I had gone into renal failure and had full blown sepsis shock and the dr. told my husband if they could bring me back I would be on dialysis the remainder of my life. 

We know the Lord was working with those dr's because they were in shock that when I woke they tested my kidneys and today I do not have even 1 percent of kidney damage. PRAISE GOD! I looked up full blown sepsis shock and its not pretty but for me to have full working kidneys and come off life supports also is truly a miracle, not to mention getting to see a glimpse if heaven. 

So for any that are not sure if there is a God or heaven Patricia McFarland and I can tell you there is and the Lord was with us both, Patricia's miracle just touches my heart so deeply, it shows how powerful prayer is and that God listens to us all no matter how big or small! I know that people on here were praying for me, and my husband by my side praying, I want to thank you all because your prayers worked and I am very grateful!


Velma Jean Ettlin God is so great and I do love when we get yes but some times he says no with the same love.
I experienced a miracle healing of a blown disk in my lower back in 1975 and a no when the disk in my neck blew. Later God did heal me thru a dr and surgery. He taught me to praise with a yes and to praise louder with a no. We dont always get a yes but God is in control.
about a minute ago via mobile · Like

Velma Jean Ettlin I write this for those that have prayed and didn't get a yes. Just know God always hears and answers for your best.