The New Colossus-Emma Lazarus Poem for the Statue of Liberty

The New Colossus

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
' With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

By Emma Lazarus, 1883

European Court Rules Same Sex Marriag NOT A Universal Human Right

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The European Court of Human Rights has ruled that countries are not obliged to allow gay marriage, rejecting a bid by an Austrian couple to force the state to let them wed.

The court said the rights of Horst Michael Schalk and Johann Franz Kopf had not been violated by their inability to get married.

In Austria, same-sex couples can enter into legally recognized partnerships, similar to marriage but different in some ways.

A panel of seven judges ruled unanimously Thursday that the couple was not covered by the guarantee of the right to marry in Europe's human rights convention
.

The judges said there was "an emerging European consensus towards legal recognition of same-sex couples," but left it to individual states to decide what form that should take.

Oil Spill Reaches Florida Shores

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NEW ORLEANS — More dirty evidence of the massive oil spill washed ashore along the Gulf Coast for residents who don't need anymore reminders of their frustration over failed efforts to stop the crude gushing from a blown-out undersea well.

In Florida, officials on Thursday closed a quarter-mile stretch of Pensacola Beach not far from the Alabama line when thick pools of oil washed up, the first time a beach in the state has been shut because of the spill. A large patch of oil oozed into Mississippi Sound, the fertile waters between the barrier islands and mainland of a state that has mostly been spared.

The news came as a cap collecting oil from the well was back in place after a deep-sea robot bumped it and engineers concerned about escaping gas removed it for about 10 hours Wednesday.

Even before that latest setback, the government's worst-case estimates suggested the cap and other equipment were capturing less than half of the oil leaking from the seafloor. And in recent days, the "spillcam" video continued to show gas and oil billowing from the well.

BP's pronouncements that it would soon be able to collect more spewing oil have "absolutely no credibility," Jefferson Parish Councilman John Young said. The latest problem shows "they really are not up to the task and we have more bad news than we have good news."

Flooding In Brazil Leaves Thousands Homeless

China Flooding Claims Hundreds Of Lives

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(CNN) -- Soldiers and rescue workers on Friday pulled stranded people out of deluged swathes of southern China inundated by 11 days of heavy rain, state media said.

The rains have led to the deaths of 211 people in 10 provinces, while 119 others are listed as missing, according to Xinhua news agency.

Two dikes on the eastern Fu River in Jiangxi broke on Wednesday, forcing another 100,000 people to join the 2.3 million already evacuated, state officials estimated.

More than 29 million people have been affected by the flooding, Chinese media reported.

The government sent thousands of soldiers and rescuers to the region to assist in the evacuation effort and help repair the broken dikes.

Officials said the repairs will run through next week, though storms could hamper the effort, Xinhua said.

Eleven days of heavy rains in China caused the flooding, according to Xinhua.

112 year old Shipwreck Found In Lake Michigan

Click to read full story from Yahoo News

MILWAUKEE – A great wooden steamship that sank more than a century ago in a violent Lake Michigan storm has been found off the Milwaukee-area shoreline, and divers say the intact vessel appears to have been perfectly preserved by the cold fresh waters.

Finding the 300-foot-long L.R. Doty was important because it was the largest wooden ship that remained unaccounted for, said Brendon Baillod, the president of the Wisconsin Underwater Archaeology Association.

"It's the biggest one I've been involved with," said Baillod, who has taken part in about a dozen such finds. "It was really exhilarating."

The Doty was carrying a cargo of corn from South Chicago to Ontario, Canada in October 1898 when it sailed into a terrible storm, Baillod said. Along with snow and sleet, there were heavy winds that whipped up waves of up to 30 feet.

The Doty should have been able to handle the weather. The ship was only five years old, and the 300-foot wooden behemoth's hull was reinforced with steel arches.

But it was towing a small schooner, the Olive Jeanette, which began to founder in the storm after the tow line apparently snapped, Baillod said. The Doty probably sank when it came to the schooner's aid. All 17 of its crew members died, along with the ship's cats, Dewey and Watson.

As a maritime historian Baillod spent more than 20 years researching the shipwreck. He knew that swaths of debris had washed up afterward in Kenosha, about 40 miles south of Milwaukee. But he found news accounts that it had last been seen closer to Milwaukee, near Oak Creek.

Meanwhile, a Milwaukee fisherman in 1991 reported snagging his nets on an obstruction about 300 feet under water. The observation was largely forgotten for decades until diving technology improved enough to enable exploration at that depth.

A number of explorers did some preliminary scouting on the lake's surface in recent months, using deep-sea technology to find a massive submerged object. Divers waited until last week to descend, when the weather was just right.

As soon as they got to the lake floor they knew they had found the Doty.

"It felt so good to solve this," said Jitka Hanakova, 33, a diver and captain of the charter boat that led the exploration. "This ship has been missing for so many years and it's one of the biggest out there."

Divers found the ship upright and intact, settled into the clay at the lake's bottom. Even the ship's cargo of corn was still in its hold.

The Doty is so well-preserved because it's in a cold, freshwater lake. It's also far enough below the surface that storms don't affect it.

More Oil Gushing Into Gulf Of Mexico Due To Problems With Cap

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Tens of thousands of gallons more oil gushed into the Gulf of Mexico on Wednesday after an undersea robot bumped a venting system, forcing BP to remove the cap that had been containing some of the crude.

The setback, yet another in the nine-week effort to stop the gusher, came as thick pools of oil washed up on Pensacola Beach in Florida and the Obama administration tried to figure out how to resurrect a six-month moratorium on deepwater drilling.

When the robot bumped the system just before 10 a.m. Wednesday, gas rose through the vent that carries warm water down to prevent ice-like crystals from forming, Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen said.

Crews were checking to see if crystals had formed before putting it back on. BP spokesman Bill Salvin could not say how long that might take.

"We're doing it as quickly as possible," he said.

Before the problem with the containment cap, it had collected about 700,000 gallons of oil in 24 hours and sucked it up to a ship on the surface. That's oil that's now pouring into the Gulf.

Another 438,000 gallons was burned on the surface by a different system that was not affected by the issue with the cap.

A similar problem doomed the effort to put a bigger containment device over the blown-out well in May. BP had to abandon the four-story box after the crystals called hydrates clogged it, threatening to make it float away.

The smaller cap, which had worked fine until now, had been in place since early June. To get it there, though, crews had to slice away a section of the leaking pipe, meaning the flow of oil could be stronger now than before.

The current worst-case estimate of what's spewing into the Gulf is about 2.5 million gallons a day. Anywhere from 67 million to 127 million gallons have spilled since the April 20 explosion on the Deepwater Horizon rig that killed 11 workers and blew out the well 5,000 feet underwater. BP PLC was leasing the rig from owner Transocean Ltd.

General McChrystal Resigns Over Comments About President Obama

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President Obama announced Wednesday that he has accepted Gen. Stanley McChrystal's resignation as the commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan following a scathing article in which McChrystal and his aides were quoted criticizing the administration for its handling of the war.

In doing so, Obama nominated Gen. David Petraeus, the head of U.S. Central Command and the former commanding general in Iraq, to replace him. The president stressed that while the decision was a difficult one, it does not represent a change in the course of the war.

"This is a change in personnel, but it is not a change in policy," Obama said in the Rose Garden, Petraeus by his side and McChrystal nowhere to be seen.

The president praised McChrystal, saying he always showed "great courtesy" and carried out his orders "faithfully," and that they were on the same page in terms of war strategy. He said the decision to accept the general's resignation was not based on "personal insult," but a desire to ensure there is no "diversion" to the mission. Obama said the conduct described in the article "does not meet the standard that should be set by a commanding general," which led him to his decision.

"I did so with considerable regret, but also with certainty that it is the right thing for our mission in Afghanistan, for our military and for our country," Obama said. "War is bigger than any one man or woman, whether a private, a general or a president."

Obama said the commentary in the article "undermines" civilian control over the military chain of command. "It erodes the trust that is necessary for our team to work together to achieve our objectives in Afghanistan," he said, adding: "Now is the time for all of us to come together."

McChrystal got his marching orders in Washington, where he met face-to-face with the president after meeting with Defense Secretary Robert Gates at the Pentagon.

The Wednesday meeting preceded a regular session of the administration's strategy team for Afghanistan, held in the White House Situation Room. Normally, McChrystal would have joined via teleconference, but he was summoned to Washington as he faced a private flogging over the article that appeared in Rolling Stone.

NEW Religious Freedom Ambassador

Rev. Suzan Johnson Cook

Big Christian Movement Happening In Asia's 10/40 Window

Click To Read Full Story From ChristianPost.com

Western churches either do not know or know very little about the large Christian movement occurring in Asia’s 10/40 Window, said hip hop artist and pastor Jaseon Ma.

Ma wants to change that.

His new documentary film, “1040,” takes viewers on a journey through Asian countries located in the 10/40 Window – the regions between 10 degrees and 40 degrees North Latitude where the core of the world’s unreached people live.

Within these perimeters lie the world’s largest church, a surprisingly sizeable Christian population in the world’s most populous Muslim country, and more than 100 million believers living under China’s communist rule.

“I’ve been traveling back and forth between Asia and the U.S. for the last ten years as a pastor and as a motivational speaker and evangelist,” said Ma to The Christian Post. “I saw God move in such a dramatic way in Asia. … I truly believe that the greatest movement of God is happening in Asia today.”

Christianity’s Growth in Asia

A hundred years ago, Christians made up less than one percent of the population in South Korea, Ma pointed out. Today, the largest church in the world, Yoido Full Gospel Church with nearly a million members, is located in South Korea.

In Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim country, local church leaders say more than 20 percent of the population is Christian. U.S. statistics usually say only 10 percent of Indonesia is Christian, he noted.

And in China, the Christian population grew from about a million to more than 100 million within about 50 years.

“These are stories, these are statistics that most people who are followers of Jesus and lovers of God have no idea that these things are happening,” Ma emphasized. “I want to tell that story.”

The fast-talking and passionate, young pastor from Northern California stated that the 10/40 Window has changed. No longer can Asian countries be seen only as a mission field because some have turned into a “mission force.”

The tiny nation of South Korea, slightly larger than the state of Indiana, he pointed out, is on track to send more missionaries than North America within about 15 years.

“I truly believe it is not just a political or economic shift from the West to the East,” Ma said. “But it is also a spiritual shift. …The Eastern church that is rising up with radical faith is going to mobilize and inspire the rest of the body of Christ around the world to get the Great Commission done.”