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Weekly News In Review

March 5 - 11, 2006

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The following articles were posted at www.understandthetimes.org this past week:

Bird Flu Virus May Infect One Third of World's Population - Russian Expert
She's the homecoming king
Pope Backs Perpetual Eucharistic Adoration Particularly in Rome Diocese
Conservative Jews to Consider Ending a Ban on Same-Sex Unions and Gay Rabbis
Flesh-eating germ kills woman in three days

Article: Signs of the Last Times

March 7, 2006 - Bird Flu Virus May Infect One Third of World's Population - Russian Expert
One-third of the world's population might become infected with bird flu in a short period of time, Director of the Russian Academy of Science's Virology Research Institute Dmitry Lvov said, according to Interfax.

"Any pandemic (flu) virus appears as a result of crossing between a human virus and a bird virus. A highly pathogenic monster emerges and it can affect up to one-third of the world's population in a short period of time," he said.

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Article: Perilous Times

March 7, 2006 - She's the homecoming king

FREDERICK, Maryland (AP) -- Hood College is reviewing its homecoming rules after a lesbian was crowned king, a college official said.

Jennifer Jones, the 21-year-old senior who beat out three men for the honor, said the crowning was a positive step for the private liberal arts college.

"It is cool that Hood allows people to be themselves," Jones told The Frederick News-Post. "If people didn't want me to be king, they wouldn't have nominated me and voted for me."

..."She is not a man," said Singleton Newman, a 22-year-old senior who was nominated for queen. "It is a gender issue, and she is a woman."
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Article: Roman Catholic Church and the Last Days

March 10, 2006 - Pope Backs Perpetual Eucharistic Adoration Particularly in Rome Diocese
VATICAN CITY, MARCH 9, 2006 (Zenit.org) - Benedict XVI has supported an initiative to offer the possibility of perpetual Eucharistic adoration in churches of the Rome Diocese.

The Pope expressed his enthusiasm for this initiative during his meeting March 2 with Roman parish priests, as reflected in his conversation with them. A text of the conversation was subsequently published in Italian by the Vatican.

Father Alberto Pacini, rector of the Church of St. Anastasia on the Pallatine Hill -- which has had perpetual Eucharistic adoration for the past five years -- made this proposal to the Pope.

The experience of this parish has led other churches to follow its example. St. Anastasia's has also become the headquarters of a movement of Eucharistic evangelization.

"My proposal, my suggestion, my desire, my aspiration would be that each of the five sectors of Rome have perpetual Eucharistic adoration," said Father Pacini.

The Holy Father thanked the priest for the information and for his efforts in promoting this initiative, describing "perpetual adoration" as "a neurological point of the life of faith in Rome."
"I only wish to thank God, that following the [Second Vatican] Council, after a period in which something of the meaning of Eucharistic adoration was lacking, this adoration has been reborn everywhere in the Church, as we saw and heard in the Synod on the Eucharist," Benedict XVI said.

He continued: "Certainly with the conciliar constitution on the liturgy, all the wealth of the Eucharistic was particularly rediscovered, the celebration where the Lord's will is fulfilled: He gives himself to us and we respond giving ourselves to him."

But now "we have rediscovered" that "the ability to celebrate his sacrifice and in this way enter into sacramental, almost corporal communion with him, loses its profundity and human richness if adoration is lacking, adoration as the act that follows receiving Communion," the Holy Father said.

"Adoration," he added, "is to enter into profound heartfelt communion with the Lord, who makes himself bodily present in the Eucharist."

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Article: Perilous Times

March 6, 2006 - Conservative Jews to Consider Ending a Ban on Same-Sex Unions and Gay Rabbis

In a closed-door meeting this week in an undisclosed site near Baltimore, a committee of Jewish legal experts who set policy for Conservative Judaism will consider whether to lift their movement's ban on gay rabbis and same-sex unions...Students at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York City, the movement's flagship, began wearing buttons saying "Ordination Regardless of Orientation."
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Article: Signs of the Last Times

March 9, 2006 - Flesh-eating germ kills woman in three days - North Carolina nursing assistant cut her finger on a wheelchair
The Associated Press

Updated: 9:09 p.m. ET March 9, 2006

DUNN, N.C. - North Carolina health officials are investigating the death of a woman who died last week of a flesh-eating bacteria three days after accidentally jamming her hand in a wheelchair while working at a nursing home.

Nursing assistant Sharron Bishop, 44, died Feb. 27. A doctor said a rare flesh-eating bacteria may have entered her body through a thumb injury and she turned from healthy to fatally ill.

The culprit was a rare invasive form of group A streptococcal bacteria, said Debbie Crane, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Health and Human Services. The noninvasive form is widespread and is commonly known for causing strep throat, she said.

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