Louisiana, the most common way to visualize the state’s existential crisis is through the metaphor of football fields. The formulation, repeated in nearly every local newspaper article about the subject, goes like this: Each hour, Louisiana loses about a football field’s worth of land. Each day, the state loses nearly the accumulated acreage of every football stadium in the N.F.L. Were this rate of land loss applied to New York, Central Park would disappear in a month. MORE

Kim Jong Un may be removed from power or toppled in North Korea as Hwang Pyong So is now the number 2 man in the nation. His god like powers may have failed him and no longer can reconcile with his peers. Hopefully good news. MORE

Diabolical?

Microbially-unsafe water is still a major concern in most developing countries. Although many water-purification methods exist, these are expensive and beyond the reach of many people, especially in rural areas. Ayurveda recommends the use of copper for storing drinking-water MORE

This plant is a common vegetable from Asia called “bitter melon.” It is popular among the long-lived population of Okinawa, Japan.

Bitter melon juice diluted to just 5% in water showed remarkable potency in severely damaging all four pancreatic cancer cell lines researchers tested. The bitter melon reduced the viability of two cancer cell lines by 90%, while it knocked off the other two lines by a staggering 98%. And it did so after just 72 hours of treatment! MORE

The second total lunar lunar eclipse of 2014 and 2015 lunar-eclipse tetrad will occur on Wednesday, October 8, 2014, and will be visible from the Pacific Ocean and regions immediately bordering it. As the Moon passes completely through the Earth’s dark shadow, or umbra, it will gradually get darker and then take on a rusty or blood red color. MORE

A minor earthquake shook the ground just south of Sloan and was felt in parts of the valley early Sunday morning.

The 3.6 magnitude earthquake happened at 3:11 a.m. about 22 miles south of Las Vegas, according to the Las Vegas Fire Department. MORE

This should be good…

Something more is happening as bishops gather for the first major doctrinal and pastoral summit of the Francis papacy; something quieter, deeper, and less immediately obvious: a spiritual renewal that Pope Francis hopes to foster between church leaders and their people. MORE

Vaccine Resistance Movement is investigating the link between this extremely toxic experimental vaccine and the sudden surge in cases of Ebola.

Even the CDC Director admits they are baffled by the unprecedented concentration of cases outside the typical range, MORE

Vol 7 Issue 40 ~ Editor: Rev. Fr. Courtney Edward Krier

October 4, 2014 ~ St. Francis of Assisi, opn!

1. In Defense of the Faith, Chapter 33b
2. Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost—Benedict Baur, O.S.B.
3. Feast of St Placidus and Companions
4. The Christian Family (22)
5. Articles and notices

Continue reading →

The U.S. trade deficit slipped 0.5 percent in August to $40.1 billion, the lowest since January, the Commerce Department reported Friday.

Oil imports fell to their lowest level in four years. MORE

Pope Francis on Sunday issued a strong signal of support for reform of the Catholic Church’s approach to marriage, cohabitation and divorce as bishops began a landmark review of teaching on the family. MORE

Animal control officer Wanda Snell knows what she saw: A veterinarian inserted a needle into the black-and-brown mutt and injected a chemical meant to euthanize the dog no one had adopted. The animal moved a bit and was still and quiet by the time she left the shelter for home.

What Snell can’t explain is how or why a mixed-breed dog that nobody wanted recovered overnight and has since bounced back fully from what should have been a lethal injection. MORE

A new genetic history of HIV shows how the pandemic almost certainly took root in the 1920s in Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of Congo, researchers said Thursday.

Assisted by train transport and the sex trade, the virus that causes AIDS then spread across the continent and eventually the world, infecting some 75 million people and killing 36 million of them. MORE

A magnitude 5.7 earthquake jolted the central Philippines on Friday, sending workers out of their offices and causing cracks on a building’s wall. There were no immediate reports of casualties.  MORE