April 17 - Ingestible, Implantable, or Intimate contact; How Will You Take Your Micro-scale Body Sensors
 Article: Miscellaneous

Computer chips and silicon micromachines are ready for your body. It's time to decide how you'll take them: implantable, ingestible, or intimate contact. Every flavor now exists. Some have FDA approval and some are seeking it. Others are moving quickly out of the research lab stage. With the round one Qualcomm Tricorder X-Prize entries due in one year, we're soon to see a heavy dose of sensors tied to the mobile wireless health revolution. With these sensors comes a heavy dose of information about your health, data about what medication you are taking and when you took it. The sensors are available to protect your health, but choosing how to use them and how to protect the privacy of your data will be a matter of personal responsibility.

Implantable sensors exist for a number of applications, having been used in animals for pet identification for many years. Other examples under development or seeking FDA approval are glucose detection for control of diabetes, blood pressure monitoring in people with recent cardiac arrest or risk of heart disease, and blood health. The most recently announced is implanted into animal brains with the long-term goal of enabling humans with paralysis to control machines with their minds. These implantable sensors have this in common: they self-contain what is needed to transmit information from inside your body without batteries and without wires. These are already shown to work; several are now seeking FDA approval. From the perspective of a patient, this is a Tricorder device, albeit one centered on an implantable micromachine sensor. If you or your doctor feel your health is at risk, I suspect you'd accept these inside your body. If your health feels not at risk however, this could be too invasive for your liking, and we'll offer you something one level easier to accept.

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 April 17 - Stephen Hawking lays out case for Big Bang without God
 Article: Creation/Evolution

Our universe didn't need any divine help to burst into being, famed cosmologist Stephen Hawking told a packed house here at the California Institute of Technology Tuesday night.

Many people had begun queuing up for free tickets to Hawking's 8:00 p.m lecture, titled "The Origin of the Universe," 12 hours earlier. By 6:00 p.m. local time, the line was about a quarter-mile long. Stephen Hawking began the event by reciting an African creation myth, and rapidly moved on to big questions such as, Why are we here?

He noted that many people still seek a divine solution to counter the theories of curious physicists, and at one point, he quipped, "What was God doing before the divine creation? Was he preparing hell for people who asked such questions?"

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 April 9 - UN chief hails Pope Francis as a global spiritual leader
 Article: One World Religion

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Tuesday hailed Pope Francis as "a spiritual leader of the world" and emphasized goals of social justice shared between the Vatican and the United Nations.

"It is very important to meet a spiritual leader of the world," Ban said at the start of his meeting with the Argentine pope, who last month became the first non-European leader of the world's Catholics in nearly 1,300 years. "The Holy See and the UN share common goals and ideas," said Ban-one of the first world leaders to be received at an audience by the new pontiff.

Francis has called for the Roman Catholic Church to be closer to ordinary people and help the needy, as well as to reach out to people of different religions and non-believers.

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 April 23 - Newly translated book shows Pope, rabbi in dialogue
 Article: Ecumenical Movement - Roman Catholics Uniting With Other Religions

The first book by Pope Francis to be translated into English was co-authored by an Argentine rabbi and illustrates the Pope's commitment to inter-religious dialogue, according to the book's translator.

"It shows his understanding that inter-religious dialogue is based on two cornerstones: a very strong sense of each person's religious identity and genuine personal respect and charity," said translator Alejandro Bermudez.

In the book's introduction, Pope Francis writes that dialogue "is born from a respectful attitude toward the other person, from a conviction that the other person has something good to say. It supposes that we can make room in our heart for their point of view, their opinion and their proposals."

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 April 24 -Time for an Evangelical and Catholic Alliance for the Common Good
 Article: One World Religion

Throughout my life I have tried to bring Christians together to engage and transform the culture - with varying degrees of success and failure. My identity as a Catholic Christian grounds me in a vision of the human person, marriage and family, the Natural Law, human freedom, and an understanding of a truly just social order which flows from the Social teaching of my Church. This teaching is called social because it speaks to human society and to the formation of social institutions. The truths and principles it offers are certainly taught in both the Bible and the Christian tradition. They derive from a Jewish and Christian worldview. However, they can be known by all men and women because they are revealed in the Natural Moral Law and can be discerned through the exercise of reason. These truths and principles form the foundation of a truly free and human society.

Catholics are not alone in this claim. Increasingly, our evangelical protestant Christian friends are standing with us as together we recognize that the urgency of the hour demands such a response. I am convinced that this growing alliance is the key to securing a future of

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 April 22 - WCC general secretary and Egypt's Grand Mufti promote dialogue for peaceful relations
 Article: Ecumenical Movement - Misc.

The World Council of Churches (WCC) general secretary Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit met with Egypt's Grand Mufti Shawki Ibrahim Abdel-Karim in Cairo. In their meeting the religious leaders engaged in in-depth dialogue to promote peaceful relations among diverse communities and values for equal citizenship.

Speaking with the WCC general secretary, Abdel-Karim pointed out the common roots and experiences of both Muslims and Christians living together for centuries in Egypt, which he said should be the basis of a constructive engagement for promoting peaceful relations. He went on to say that "alliances between Christians and Muslims are not only possible but already exist on the ground among ordinary people in their everyday lives. The values of honesty, trust and respect are shared among people of both Christian and Muslim faiths."

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 April 23 - Jesus not found outside the Church, Pope preaches
 Article: Roman Catholic Church And The Last Days

Pope Francis said that people cannot be fully united to Jesus outside of the Church during a Mass to commemorate Saint George, the saint he is named after.

"You cannot find Jesus outside the Church," he said April 23 in the Apostolic Palace's Pauline Chapel. "It is the Mother Church who gives us Jesus, who gives us the identity that is not only a seal, it is a belonging," he declared in his homily.

The pontiff also repeated a line from his April 17 homily in St. Martha's residence, when he emphasized that being a Christian is not like having "an identity card." "Christian identity is belonging to the Church, because all of these (the apostles) belonged to the Church, the Mother Church, because finding Jesus outside the Church is impossible," he said.

"The great Paul VI said it is an absurd dichotomy to want to live with Jesus but without the Church, following Jesus out of the Church, loving Jesus without the Church," he added.

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 April 23 - France legalizes gay marriage despite angry protests
 Article: Perilous Times

France became the 14th country in the world to allow same-sex couples to wed Tuesday, when its parliament approved a law that has sparked often violent street protests and a rise in homophobic attacks.

Lawmakers in the lower house National Assembly, where President Francois Hollande's Socialists have an absolute majority, passed the bill by 331 votes for and 225 against.

The law also allows same-sex couples to adopt children.

"I hope people across the country will celebrate this moment," Martin Gaillard, a 31-year-old advocate of gay marriage, told English-language news site France24.com.

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 April 25 - China, France vow to promote 'multipolar' world
 Article: One World Government

China's President Xi Jinping and France's President Francois Hollande pledged to push for a world free of domination by any superpower Thursday as the French leader visited the Chinese capital on a mission to boost trade amid his country's worsening economic woes.

Both leaders stressed their desire for a "multipolar" world that would dilute Washington's influence - though they did not mention the U.S. in their comments.

"China and France are both great countries with a strong sense of independence," Xi said at a news conference, adding that the two countries would "actively promote a multipolar world and the democratization of international relations."

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