Easter for Christians commemorates Christ's triumph over death with his resurrection following his crucifixion."Life is stronger than death. Good is stronger than evil. Love is stronger than hate. Truth is stronger than lies," Benedict, wearing white robes in a symbol of new life, told the faithful in a packed St Peter's Basilica.

Still, Benedict worried in his homily: "The darkness that poses a real threat to mankind, after all, is the fact that he can see and investigate tangible material things, but cannot see where the world is going or whence it comes, where our own life is going, what is good and what is evil."

"The darkness enshrouding God and obscuring values is the real threat to our existence and to the world in general," the pope said. "If God and moral values, the difference between good and evil, remain in darkness, then all other 'lights,' that put such incredible technical feats within our reach, are not only progress but also dangers that put us and the world at risk," Benedict added.

"We think it’s a little bit strange to hear such voices," Ambassador Gábor Győriványi told Zenit March 27th. "The real founding fathers of the European Union planned to base the Union on Christian values, and expressed the notion that European democracy can only be viable if constructed on the Christian basis." The preamble of the new Constitution, or "Fundamental Law," which came into force January 1, contains references to God, Christianity, and traditional family values. It further stipulates that the life of a fetus be protected from the moment of conception (abortion remains legal, however, in cases where the mother’s health is threatened).

The Constitution states that it recognizes the role of Christianity "in preserving nationhood"; it requires that marriage only be between a man and a woman; it assigns parents, rather than the State, primary responsibility for protecting the rights of the child; and it holds that "the family and the nation constitute the principal framework of our coexistence." In sum, it marks a refreshing change in stark contrast to a Europe suffering from increasing secularism and a European Union that only a few years ago tried to push through its own Constitution, which conspicuously omitted references to God or Christianity. It also points to the positive contribution some former Eastern bloc countries could make to the spiritual well-being of the continent.

"We hope that perhaps some of Europe’s new democracies - Poland, the Baltic states, as well as Hungary - can give an impetus to a Christian renaissance, a coming back to the original vision of the founding fathers," said Ambassador Győriványi. The Hungarian government has welcomed the Holy See’s support which, according to Ambassador Győriványi, is "very happy" with the pro-life and pro-Christian clauses. He also stressed the Vatican has not been involved in any way in the Constitution process. But he would naturally like more backing from both the Catholic Church and other Christian groups.

A front-page commentary in the newspaper left no doubt the party leadership wants to inoculate People’s Liberation Army (PLA) troops against rumours that could corrode the authority of President Hu Jintao. The paper admonished soldiers to 'resolutely resist the incursion of all kinds of erroneous ideas, not be disturbed by noise, not be affected by rumours, and not be drawn by undercurrents, and ensure that at all times and under all circumstances the military absolutely obeys the command of the Party central leadership, the Central Military Commission and Chairman Hu.'

Although the coup rumours were unfounded, their spread and the government’s tightening of Internet controls and warnings to ignore such talk have raised jitters about stability in the superpower. In addition, the military has been shaken by a separate corruption scandal in the run-up to the party leadership change.

The rumours fed on speculation about the ousting of Bo Xilai, who in mid-March was removed as party boss of Chongqing city in southwest China, over a month after his vice mayor, Wang Lijun, fled to a US consulate, triggering a scandal exposing accusations of infighting and abuses of power. Charismatic Bo had wrapped himself in populist rhetoric and egalitarian vows, and his removal has stirred open opposition from leftist supporters who see him as the victim of a plot.

A great poem it is not. Nor is it a brilliant political analysis. But the brief lines that Günter Grass has published under the title "What Must Be Said" will one day be seen as some of his most influential words. They mark a rupture. It is this one sentence that we will not be able to ignore in the future: "The nuclear power Israel is endangering a world peace that is already fragile." It is a sentence that has triggered an outcry. Because it is true. Because it is a German, an author, a Nobel laureate who said it. Because it is Günter Grass who said it. And therein lies the breach. And, for that, one should thank Grass. He has taken it upon himself to utter this sentence for all of us. A much-delayed dialogue has begun.

It is a discussion about Israel and whether Israel is preparing a war against Iran, a country whose leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has threatened Israel, referring to it as a "cancer" that must be "wiped off the map." Israel, a country that has been surrounded by enemies for decades, many of whom believe that Israel has no right to exist - even independent of its policies. It is a war that could plunge the entire world into the abyss. When a German speaks about such things, Germany must be part of the discussion - and Germany's historical responsibility.

Such debates follow a pre-established pattern. Grass knew that he would be chided as an anti-Semite - a risk taken by any German critic of Israel. Indeed, Mathias Döpfner - the head of the publishing house Axel Springer, the parent company of the country's largest daily, Bild - accused Grass of "politically correct anti-Semitism" in a Thursday editorial. Döpfner, a man who fancies himself the guardian of German-Israeli relations, also suggested that Grass should be committed to a historical rehabilitation center and inserts a few jabs about Grass' long-secret World War II membership in the Waffen-SS. Yes, Grass has to deal with such charges, as well.

Some of this cash ended up in the sovereign bond markets, helping reduce the rates countries need to pay to raise funds after a year of high tension over whether Italy and Spain - the eurozone's third and fourth largest economies - might also need to be bailed out after Greece, Ireland and Portugal. "The first quarter was exceptional for eurozone state borrowing," said Jean-Francois Robin at France's Natixis bank.

The first three months of the year are important as countries often try to meet a huge chunk of their annual borrowing needs at the outset and they made the most of the early calm. "Paris and Berlin borrowed at historically very favourable rates and Madrid got a long way towards covering its financing needs this year," noted Robin. Spain covered 43 percent of its annual medium and long term financing needs in the first quarter, taking advantage of rates of around 4.0 percent compared to near 7.0 percent at the height of the crisis late last year.

But in the first week of April the calm on European debt markets abruptly ended. Spain barely raised the amount it sought in a bond auction on Wednesday and had to pay investors sharply higher rates just after announcing a tough 2012 budget that aims to make a whopping 27 billion euros in savings. Madrid's warning that its public debt will jump by 10 percentage points this year to nearly 80 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) clearly rattled investors who also faced the prospect of an economy slipping deeper into recession.

The latest economic data present a grim picture, with German industrial output declining by 1.3 percent in February and a survey of purchasing managers suggesting a manufacturing slowdown and that the eurozone has gone into recession. "Not only does that undermine the chances of Germany spending more on other countries' exports but, if the hyper-efficient and competitive German industrial sector cannot stay out of recession, what hope is there that the peripheral economies will achieve the growth they need to get out of their fiscal mess?" asked Capital Economics' Loynes.

The Advertising Standards Authority condemned material handed out by the Healing on the Streets group in Bath as misleading after a complaint was made by an atheist. The authority, chaired by former Labour Culture Secretary Lord Smith, also warned that the leaflets could deter sick people from seeking essential medical attention.

Mr Streeter has now called on Lord Smith to say ‘on what scientific research or empirical evidence’ the ASA based its decision. He also challenged him to say whether his authority would now rebuke the tens of thousands of football fans who have been praying for Fabrice Muamba, the Premiership player who suffered a heart attack in the middle of a game. Mr Streeter said: ‘It’s a pretty remarkable thing that the ASA can make such a statement, especially at the same time as we are all supposed to be praying for Fabrice Muamba.’

The MP, who served as a Minister in John Major’s Government in the Nineties, also launched a stinging attack on secular Britain as well as the commercialisation of Easter. He said: ‘We are living in an age of unbelief. It’s important from time to time for people to actually express what mainstream Christianity is all about. IT’S NOT ABOUT BUNNIES AND PAINTED EGGS – IT’S ABOUT ISSUES OF LIFE AND DEATH.’

This week, the Obama administration quietly released $1.5 billion in foreign aid to the new Egyptian government, now dominated by a Brotherhood-led coalition in parliament — soon to be joined by an Ikhwan (ie, Brotherhood) luminary as president. ...

Obama has overlooked the MB’s intimate ties to Hamas, which self-identifies as the Ikhwan’s Palestinian branch and is formally designated a terrorist organization under American law. Administration officials have absurdly portrayed the Brothers as “secular” and “moderate,” although the organization, from its founding in the 1920s, has never retreated an inch from its professed mission to establish Islam’s global hegemony.

“The development of weaponry based on new physics principles – direct-energy weapons, geophysical weapons, wave-energy weapons, genetic weapons, psychotronic weapons, and so on – is part of the state arms procurement program until 2020,” Minister Anatoliy Serdyukov reported to President-in-waiting Vladimir Putin during their latest meeting.

Some media focused on “psychotronic” weapons – wonder devices that use energy waves to control enemy behavior, effectively turning him into a “zombie.” The paper went on to speculate that these would be used internally against political “dissidents.” While rumors of Soviet, then Russian psychotronic weapons have surfaced repeatedly for decades, not one has been able to produce a working psychotronic gun, or even explain what mystery rays would allow its owner to control other people’s brains.

More alarming is Serdyukov’s mention of genetic weapons. These are commonly understood as biological weapons modified in such a way that they would target, say one race, but not another. So far, it has been difficult to engineer viruses precisely enough that they would attack only the enemy but none of your own side. Furthermore, these weapons are banned by the international Biological Weapons Convention – to which Russia is a signatory – and developing them would earn Russia severe censure from the international community.

Perhaps the most terrifying category of potential weapons is geophysical – those that use the environment. For example, a charge detonated in a correct place could set off an earthquake or a tsunami, while chemicals released in the air can ground an enemy air fleet with a severe storm. It is unclear how far these technologies have advanced, but by their very nature, they are likely to unleash unbridled destruction. So even without turning them into zombies, there are plenty enough new ways to disable or kill potential enemies. But bearing in mind their cost and impracticality, more likely than not, it is conventional rockets and bullets that will dominate the military conflicts in the next decade at least.

"This reality in which the Temple Mount is in Arab hands must end," he said in an interview with Arutz Sheva Wednesday. "They must open the gates for us. There is no argument that there is a duty to make the Pesach sacrifice even if the Temple is not built." Rav Ariel calls upon the Chief Rabbis to demand the opening of the gates of the Temple Mount on Friday, the day of the Pesach Seder. "They should make a formal request to the government of Israel, to open the gates of the Temple Mount so we can sacrifice."

"Everything is ready – there are clothes for the Priests, an altar and vessels – all they need to do is open. We have asked the Chief Rabbis several times but have received no answer until now," he said. The avoidance of making the sacrifice is a grave matter, he said. "We are afraid of our own shadow. What will happen if the gates of the Mount are opened? They are afraid of what others will say, but they do not fear as regards keeping the Torah and Mitzvot."

A person who does not make the sacrifice is punished by "din karet," [literally 'cut off', meaning that a person is cut off from the Nation of Israel], he explained. "It is written: 'that person shall be cut off from his people.'" The importance of the Pesach holiday can be understood from the fact that there is only one other commandment whose omission carries "din karet" and that is circumcision. Both commandments have to do with being part of the Jewish people.

In Temple times, every family in Israel came to Jerusalem for the Pesach sacrifice on the eve of the fourteenth of the month of Nisan. Each family offered a lamb or kid as a sacrifice to G-d and then roasted it and partook of the meat along with matzah and bitter herbs at a festive meal to remember the Exodus from slavery in Egypt.

The Smithsonian Magazine writes that Australian physicist Graham Turner says "the world is on track for disaster" and that current research from Turner coincides with a famous, and in some quarters, infamous, academic report from 1972 entitled, "The Limits to Growth." Turner's research is not affiliated with MIT or The Club for Rome.

Produced for a group called The Club of Rome, the study's researchers created a computing model to forecast different scenarios based on the current models of population growth and global resource consumption. The study also took into account different levels of agricultural productivity, birth control and environmental protection efforts. Twelve million copies of the report were produced and distributed in 37 different languages.

Most of the computer scenarios found population and economic growth continuing at a steady rate until about 2030. But without "drastic measures for environmental protection," the scenarios predict the likelihood of a population and economic crash.

Correction: This post has been edited to reflect that MIT has not updated its research from the original 1972 study.

Several dozen youths smashed paving stones with hammers in order to throw them at riot police in Syntagma Square in central Athens on Thursday. The protesters chanted “Killer! Killers!” as police used tear-gas and flash grenades against the crowd. Earlier the same day some 1,000 protesters had gathered to lay flowers, candles and messages at the place where 77-year-old Dimitris Christoulas shot himself in the head. Teachers, students, members of leftist groups and the "indignants", who held daily sit-ins for months last year, attended the demonstration near the improvised shrine. A peaceful demonstration also took place in the city of Thessaloniki.

On Wednesday evening, following the pensioner’s suicide, hundreds of protesters rallied in central Athens chanting: "This was not a suicide, it was a state-perpetrated murder" and "Blood flows and seeks revenge.” A couple of scuffles broke out between the protesters and riot police, who used pepper-spray to repel youths throwing bottles of water at them.

The retired pharmacist, who committed suicide just outside the parliament building, said in his suicide note that he refused “to search garbage for food” and become “a burden” on his child. He has been described as a martyr as his death symbolizes the painful effect of over two years of the harsh austerity measures imposed on debt-stricken Greece to secure bailouts from international lenders.

Thank the robosettlement, where in exchange for a few wrist slaps, contract law was thoroughly trampled by America's attorneys general, but far more importantly to the country's crony capitalist system, the foreclosure pipeline was once again unclogged, and whether one does or does not have a legal title on a given house, the banks are now fully in their right to foreclose on it.

What this means also is that America's record shadow housing inventory, which is far greater than any fabricated number the NAR reports on a monthly basis, is about to get unleashed on buyers, shifting the supply curve much further to the right, as up to 9 million new properties slowly but surely appear on the market. And while many will no longer be able to live mortgage free, forcing them to go out and rent (and no longer be able to afford incremental iGizmos), it also means that the prevalent price of homes is about to take another major tumble, making buffoons out of all those who, once again, called for a housing bottom in early 2012.

Here's the simply math: there will be no housing bottom until the 9 million excess homes clear. Period. Until then it is a buyer's market, even if said buyer is unable to obtain bank financing, as ultimately it will be the seller who is forced to monetize (or vacate if underwater) their home in a world of ever diminishing cashflows. The fear of the supply onslaught will only make the dumpage that much faster.

Some male participants wore tallit and tefillin. Others had small, colorful signs that read "love" and "one world". Group organizer Pesach Stadlin said they purposely tried to not be disruptive and kept to the back of the plaza to maintain the peacefulness of the location. Stadlin represents a group called Spiritual Judaism - One People World United, which, according to its Facebook page "promotes experiencing 'ALL is ONE' in the Jewish tradition."

"Before Moses came to lead the Jewish people out of slavery and into freedom the people let out a cry," Stadlin stated. "We are trying to revive this anicent universal prayer technique."

Lahore’s “The Nation” newspaper on Sunday published an editorial entitled, “War with India inevitable: Nizami,” the newspaper’s Editor-in-Chief and Nazaria-i-Pakistan Trust Chairman, Majid Nizami, asked his fellow citizens to prepare for a war with India over water issues. Nizami told those attending the “Pakistan-India relations; Our rulers' new wishes” session at Aiwan-e-Karkunan Tehrik-e-Pakistan, which he chaired, “Indian hostilities and conspiracies against the country will never end until she is taught a lesson…”

At issue are Pakistan’s concerns over India’s ongoing construction of two hydroelectric dams on the upper reaches of the Indus River. Islamabad is concerned that the 45 megawatt, 190-foot tall Nimoo-Bazgo concrete dam 44 megawatt Chutak hydroelectric power project will reduce the Indus River’s flow towards Pakistan, as they are capable of storing up to 4.23 billion cubic feet of water, violating the terms of the bilateral 1960 Indus Water Treaty. The Indus, which begins in Indian-controlled Kashmir, is crucial to both India and Pakistan, but is currently experiencing water flows down 30 percent from its normal levels.

The Indus is Pakistan’s primary freshwater source, on which 90 percent of its agriculture depends. According to a number of Pakistani agriculture and water experts, the nation is heading towards a massive water shortage in the next couple of years due to insufficient water management practices and storage capacity, which will be exacerbated by the twin Indian hydroelectric projects, as they will further diminish the Indus’ flow.

"What Must Be Said" is the title that Günter Grass chose for his poem. It begins with the words: "Why have I been silent, kept quiet for too long, about what is obvious." The poem, which was published in Germany's Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper on Wednesday and which has already provoked considerable outrage, deals with Grass's silence on Israel and the threat of military conflict between Israel and Iran. It's also about Germany supplying weapons to Israel, and about the relationship between Germans and Israelis. It's about a subject, where the title alone, "What Must Be Said", implies an unpleasant flippancy: the flippancy of breaking taboos.

"What must be said" is a thinly veiled version of another phrase that Germans who don't hold a Nobel Prize for Literature like to use when they're sitting around in the pub, setting the world to rights. It can be loosely translated as: "There's no law against saying that…" Yes, there's no law against saying these things - except that there is an unwritten law in Germany against saying certain things, particularly given the country's difficult history. And so Grass, a few lines after he has posed the rhetorical question about why he has kept quiet, gives an explanation for his previous reticence. He felt under a "constraint," he writes - a constraint that "promises punishment if it is flouted."

It is in poor taste when the Germans, of all people, start telling the Israelis what to do. Never in the history of postwar Germany has an intellectual as prominent as Grass presented such hollow clichés about Israel in such a vain manner. It completely overshadows his reasonable call for both the Israeli and Iranian nuclear capabilities to be monitored by "an international entity."