In a world where governments are blowing up children with drones and calling them collateral damage in phony terror wars on a daily basis, social engineering has turned average people into walking arguments that the film Idiocracy was actually a documentary, busily wasting their time fretting over how offensive otherwise innocuous words are. Human beings are mammals. A female mammal who has children has traditionally been called a “mother” or “mom,” to separate this mammal linguistically from the male version, who has traditionally been called a “dad” or “father”.

Well, not anymore in one Florida college classroom where a professor has decided that language is offensive because it isn’t “inclusive” enough. In the syllabus for her “Creativity In Context” class — a required course for any student pursuing a minor in Innovation — UF professor Jennifer Lee informs students of her four paragraph long classroom “communications policy” that she says will enforce “ethical conduct” in the classroom.

The syllabus explains that this means replacing the words “boyfriend”/”girlfriend” with the more inclusive “partner” or “significant other.” The rule applies to conversations about married couples too: saying “husband” or “wife” is forbidden. Even the words “mom” and “dad” have a more “inclusive” alternative — students are told to use the word “family” instead.

Pretty soon the only way to be “free of stereotypes” will be to not speak at all. Then they’ll have to move on to weeding out the offensive facial expressions. Take this all the way out and we end up in one of those dystopic futures like in the film The Giver where everyone is medically forced into having no emotions at all because emotions are just too “dangerous” and “offensive”.

The group had been gathering during their lunch hour to sing and pray together since 2001. However, when they attempted to place an announcement in the newsletter that titled the theme of their meeting, which is "Jesus is our life," that's where there was an issue. NASA's legal department explained that including the name 'Jesus' within the club's announcement made that announcement "sectarian" or "denominational."

Under Barack Hussein Obama Soetoro Sobarkah, the space agency has not only promoted a communist agenda, but been ordered to reach out to Muslims. Perhaps this is partly where some of this comes from. NASA is not violating the First Amendment by publishing the name Jesus in its newsletter and it should know better. Thankfully, there are those that do and are holding these NASA attorneys accountable and calling them out.

Its significance for both Churches is immense. Whatever the joint declaration they sign when they meet in Cuba, the simple fact of their meeting is a clear signal the hostility and chill of the past thousand years or so since the Great Schism may finally be edging towards a warmer phase in relations.

That relationship with the Russian Orthodox Church matters because about two-thirds of the world's more than 200 million Orthodox Christians are Russian. Earlier popes tried to pave the way for such a thaw with Moscow, most notably Pope Saint John Paul II, who tried to reach out to the Russian Orthodox Church.

However, those efforts were hindered by post-Cold War suspicion - above all in Moscow - which was only added to by the Pope's own Slavic roots. This "personal conversation" between the two leaders at Jose Marti International Airport in Havana has been made possible by many relatively recent geopolitical shifts.

Grave sins include defiling consecrated bread and wine, violating confessional secrecy, and plotting to kill a pope. Pope Francis has often said the Church needs to be less rigid and judgemental.

He has declared this a Holy Year of Mercy, and is using it to spread a message of forgiveness - particularly among Catholics who have strayed from the faith and are keen to return. At a Vatican ceremony on Tuesday, the Pope addressed some 700 of the chosen priests, saying penitents should be welcomed with open arms, instead of being judged with "a sense of superiority".

The grave sins that the priests can temporarily forgive may usually only be pardoned by senior bishops, Vatican officials or the Pope himself. Abortion falls within the category of serious transgressions, but the Pope last year announced that he would allow all regular priests to grant absolution for this sin to women who wished to repent, for the duration of the Holy Year. The Pope said that he recognised some women felt they had no choice but to take the "agonising" decision to have an abortion.

Such images remain potent but they hinder real engagement with the questions of how Germany will use its current economic and political influence, and how far the EU can or should contain that power. For answers we should look back in time to when Germany was part of the Holy Roman Empire.

The legacy of two world wars has encouraged those outside Germany to fear its leadership as potential hegemony but the history of the Holy Roman Empire reveals a time when Germany was part of a wider pacific order.

And it is here that we see most clearly what the empire can tell us about Europe’s possible future. Its inhabitants generally identified with it positively because it preserved their own autonomy and ways of life. It cannot be a blueprint for today’s EU, because the social order which underpinned that local autonomy was also riddled with inequalities we would find abhorrent.

Yet it does suggest an alternative to the stark choice between the EU as a single, homogeneous superstate or fatally weakening Europe’s global position by fragmenting it into a mosaic of national states.

While there are those who insist that the Holy Roman Empire can help inspire a different European Union, we can do better than look to the example of Charlemagne. “Power was always multiple and plural. The management of daily life was devolved to more local powers,” writes Oxford historian Professor Peter Wilson, as though the Empire were the epitome of subsidiarity, unforced brotherhood and elective fraternity.

Try selling that notion to the 4,500 Saxons who were massacred in Verden, Lower Saxony, in the year 782. Charlemagne’s Reich was built on bloodshed, ethnic cleansing and horrific war crimes. He was the Hitler of his day, but history is a marvellous eraser of wrongs and redactor of truth.

The bishops of the Roman Catholic Church customarily issue guidance at election time, but one wishes they would respect the democratic intellect of British Roman Catholics. Man-made government is a necessary evil for the ordering of society, and, in the absence of the reigning King of Kings, it is for each Christian to discern the lesser evil. “How we vote is ultimately a matter of personal conscience,” said Bishop Noel Treanor, Bishop of Down & Connor, in his 2014 ‘Pastoral Reflection’ on the run-up to elections to the European Parliament.

The Christian task, he says, is “to influence the values that will shape future public policy”, observing that we are “called to inform our conscience”, which means “weighing up the position of each candidate and political party in the forthcoming elections and deciding how, in exercising our Christian responsibility to vote, we can maximise the common good”.

Of course, in issuing his guidance, Bishop Noel is mindful of Roman Catholic Social Teaching, centred around the right to life; the uniqueness of marriage between a woman and man; the promotion of justice, social inclusion and concern for the poor; and the pursuit of peace and reconciliation. Archbishop Paul Gallagher will have the same ‘goods’ in mind.

And therein lies the tension, for the political entity that is the European Union may promote peace, mutual understanding and reconciliation, and yet, in the pursuit of justice and equality, it negates the right to life and nullifies the God-ordained institution of marriage.

The real estate billionaire was speaking to the French conservative magazine Valeurs Actuelles, saying the German chancellor had made “a tragic mistake with the migrants.” "If you don't treat the situation competently and firmly, yes, it's the end of Europe. You could face real revolutions," Trump was quoted as saying, as cited by Reuters.

Merkel’s approval ratings have taken a nosedive and she has also received criticism from within her ruling coalition for her ‘open-door’ refugee and migrant policy, which saw an estimated 1.1 million asylum seekers arrive in Germany in 2015. Germany’s Economics Minister Gerd Muller stated in January that an estimated 8-10 million refugees could look to enter Europe over the coming years.

"The EU is like the orchestra playing on the Titanic," Renzi told Bloomberg, insisting his revitalized and reformed Italy had earned the right to play a leading role in shaping the bloc's destiny. "Today we have done reforms and we are in a position to say to EU partners: 'friends, we can change this wrong, bureaucratic approach'." Renzi has notably clashed with Brussels over Rome's demands for leeway on the EU's Stability Pact budget rules to allow him to revive the struggling Italian economy with tax cuts and growth-orientated spending.

In a reflection of Italy's more active diplomacy, Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni on Tuesday hosted a dinner for his counterparts from the bloc's six founding member states.

Billed as the start of a reflection on the EU's future, the ministers endorsed a statement reiterating their commitment to "ever closer union" while signalling that not all member states would be expected to pursue the goal.

At the time, he was a virtual unknown in Italian politics, but six months later he won the race to lead the centre-left Democratic Party and by February 2014, he was appointed Prime Minister. Riding high in the popularity sweepstakes at home, Renzi worked hard to earn Italy the respect of its European neighbours, especially after the embarrassments of the Silvio Berlusconi era.

He quickly ushered in reforms to reignite the country’s debt-stricken economy and has reduced the public sector deficit within less than two years in power, earning praise from and inspiring the confidence of Merkel.

The general secretary of the Scandinavian Catholic Bishops’ Conference, Signor Mirijam Kaschner said much of the interest is focused on the Pope himself. “Since he became Pope whatever he undertakes or plans, wherever he goes or whenever he signs a document, it is reported in the media up here in the north. That was never the case up to now,” Signor Mirijam wrote on the Cologne diocesan internet portal.

The one-day visit, on 31 October, will feature a joint ecumenical commemoration to mark the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation. Pope Francis will lead the ecumenical commemoration in Lund alongside Bishop Munib Younan, president of the Lutheran World Federation, and the Reverend Martin Junge, federation general secretary, said a joint press release by the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, and the LWF.

With the Western World and China in danger of going into deflation, major banks have already started to charge negative interest rates. Denmark’s central bank was a pioneer when it first cut its deposit rate below zero in 2012, and the trend has now spread to the eurozone and Japan. The Danish deposit rate now stands at minus 0.65 per cent. - Financial Times

Sweden has followed suit. The USA is set to follow. Major Bankers are calling for an abolition of money. It may be the only fix left, now that quantitative easing is failing. But no one is going to put their money in banks! Not if it means negative interest rates. Don't worry. Governments will rise to the occasion and soon will be making cash illegal. People will be forced to put their money in banks or the market, thus rescuing the central governments and the central banks that are incestuously intertwined with them.

Beyond that, cash is probably the last arena of personal autonomy left. It can be spent anyway one pleases, with no one watching. It can be hidden from the government to avoid taxes. It can be used to engage in transactions of a semi-legal nature. It has power that the government cannot control; and that is why it has to go.

The end result will be the loss of all autonomy. This will be the darkest of all tyrannies. From cradle to grave one will not only be tracked in location, but on purchases. Liberty will be non-existent.

However, it will be sold to us as an expedient and simplicity itself, freeing us from crime: Fascism with a friendly face. The real purpose of a cashless society will be total control: Absolute Total Control.

Perhaps the scariest consequence of all is that an individual can be "terminated" by a bureaucrat erasing his identity. Do not kid yourself, it will happen. Real "Mark of the Beast" stuff.

Rev 13:16-17 ‘And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark ...’ (Rev 13:16-17). I do not know if we are there yet; but if recent headlines are a clue, we may be very close.

"Major central banks have run out of ammo," says Ed Yardeni, chief investment strategist at Yardeni Research. Central bankers are trying to stabilize their economies and currencies as they navigate through the volatility of the global slowdown, market meltdowns and investors pulling cash out.

But many admit they don't know what to do next. "The world is an uncertain place, and all monetary policymakers can really be sure of is that what will happen is often different from what we currently expect," Stanley Fischer, the Number 2 at the US Federal Reserve, said in a recent speech. Fischer and other central bank leaders are arguably running out of new tools to turn things around.

President Obama’s statements on global warming are “dead wrong,” said Nobel laureate Ivar Giaever, who rejected the president’s claims that man-made global warming is causing climate change. “I think Obama is a clever person, but he gets bad advice. Global warming is all wet,” Giaever said in a speech entitled Global Warming Revisited he gave on July 1 to scientists from 90 countries attending the 65th annual Nobel Laureate Meeting in Lindau, Germany.

Giaever, who was born in Norway and became a naturalized US citizen in 1964, was one of three recipients of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1973. Although he endorsed Obama in 2008 along with more than 70 other Nobel-winning scientists, Giaever is now criticizing the president’s statements on climate change — particularly his 2015 State of the Union remark that “no challenge poses a greater threat to future generations than climate change.”

“The biggest problem Obama faces is climate change? How can he say that?” Giaever asked. “I say this to Obama: ‘Excuse me, Mr President, but you’re wrong.’ He is dead wrong… the facts are that in the last 100 years we have measured the temperature, it has gone up 0.8 degrees and everything in the world has gotten better... We live better, we have better work, better health, better everything - but if we go [up] another 0.8 degrees, we’re gonna die, I guess,” he said sarcastically.

The Siddur Lev Shalem is “both more traditional and contemporary” in several ways, senior editor Rabbi Ed Feld told The Jerusalem Post on Tuesday. He explained how it contains both the traditional Hebrew texts of prayers, as well as an updated translation in the modern vernacular and prayers tailored to fit life cycle events experienced by contemporary Jews.

Alongside a transliteration for those who do not speak Hebrew and a detailed commentary citing the meanings and origins of the various parts of the prayer service, Feld said that he and his collaborators sought to introduce an English translation that is both “more contemporary in its language and gender neutral.” The traditional siddur text is written in the masculine form.

In a statement announcing the siddur, Feld explained, “You can’t describe God as ‘awesome’ anymore; language and the way we use language changes, so each generation needs its own translation. This is the siddur for today’s prayers.”