Pope Francis meets Pope Benedict in historic visit

The new pontiff met with his predecessor at the papal retreat of Castel Gandolfo, calling the pope emeritus "his brother."

By Nicole Winfield and Paolo Santalucia,?The Associated Press / March 23, 2013

Pope Francis is greeted by his retired predecessor Pope Benedict XVI after arriving at the papal retreat outside Rome.

Osservatore Romano

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Pope?Francis traveled Saturday to this hill town south of Rome to have lunch with his "brother" and predecessor Benedict XVI, a historic and potentially problematic melding of the papacies that has never before confronted the Catholic Church.

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The two men dressed in white embraced warmly on the helipad in the gardens of Castel Gandolfo, where Benedict has been living since he retired Feb. 28 and became the first?pope?to resign in 600 years.

And in a series of gestures that ensued, Benedict made clear that he considered Francis to be?pope?while Francis made clear he considered his predecessor to be very much a revered brother and equal.

Traveling from the helipad to the palazzo, Francis sat on the right-hand side of the car, the traditional place of the?pope, while Benedict sat on the left. When they entered the chapel inside the palazzo to pray, Benedict tried to direct Francis to the papal kneeler at the front of the chapel, but Francis refused.

"No, we are brothers, we pray together," Francis told Benedict, according to the Vatican spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi. The two used a different kneeler in the pews and prayed together, side-by-side.

Francis brought a gift to Benedict, an icon of the Madonna, and told him that it's known as the "Madonna of Humility."

"I thought of you," Francis told Benedict. "You gave us so many signs of humility and gentleness in your pontificate." Benedict replied: "Grazie, grazie."

Benedict wore the simple white cassock of the papacy, with a quilted white jacket over it to guard against the chill, but minus the sash and cape worn by Francis. Walking with a cane, he looked frail compared to the robust 76-year-old Argentine.

Outside the villa, the main piazza of Castel Gandolfo was packed with well-wishers bearing photos of both?popesand chanting "Francesco! Francesco!" But the Vatican made clear they probably wouldn't see anything.

The Vatican downplayed the remarkable reunion in keeping with Benedict's desire to remain "hidden from the world" and not interfere with his successor's papacy. There was no live coverage by Vatican television, and only a short video and still photos were released after the fact.

The Vatican spokesman said the two spoke privately for 40-45 minutes, followed by lunch with the two papal secretaries, but no details were released.

All of which led to enormous speculation about what these two?popes?might have said to one another after making history together: Benedict's surprise resignation paved the way for the first?pope?from Latin America, the first Jesuit, and the first to call himself Francis after the 13th century friar who devoted himself to the poor, nature and working for peace.

That the former Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio was second only to Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger in the 2005 conclave that elected Ratzinger?pope?has only added to the popular imagination about how these two?popes?of such different style, background and priorities might get along.

Perhaps over their primo, or pasta course during Saturday's lunch, they discussed the big issues facing the church: the rise of secularism in the world, the drop in priestly vocations in Europe, the competition that the Catholic Church faces in Latin America and Africa from evangelical Pentecostal movements.

During their secondo, or second course of meat or fish, they might have gone over more pressing issues about Francis' new job: Benedict left a host of unfinished business on Francis' plate, including the outcome of a top-secret investigation into the leaks of papal documents last year that exposed corruption and mismanagement in the Vatican administration. Francis might have wanted to sound Benedict out on his ideas for management changes in the Holy See administration, a priority given the complete dysfunctional government he has inherited.

Over coffee, they might have discussed future of Monsignor Georg Gaenswein, Benedict's trusted aide who has had the difficult task of escorting his old?pope?into retirement and then returning to the Vatican to serve his successor in the initial rites of the office.

Gaenswein, who wept as he and Benedict made their final goodbyes to staff in the papal apartment on Feb. 28, has appeared visibly upset and withdrawn at times as he has been by Francis' side. The Vatican has said Francis' primary secretary will be Monsignor Alfred Xuereb, who had been the No. 2 secretary under Benedict.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/hJIYxcuV_G0/Pope-Francis-meets-Pope-Benedict-in-historic-visit

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Car bomb defused near Northern Ireland G8 venue

By Ian Graham, Reuters

Northern Irish police defused a bomb in a car on Saturday close to where G8 leaders will meet at a summit in June and said that the device was likely to have been intended for a police station nearby.

Army bomb disposal experts defused the device after a security operation that lasted almost 36 hours in the county Fermanagh town of Enniskillen. The Group of Eight leaders meet just outside the town in three months' time.

A senior Northern Irish officer said police believed the bomb was en route to a police station in a town nearby and would have killed or injured people if it had not been intercepted.

"Once again our community has been disrupted and the lives of residents put at risk by an element intent on causing loss of life and disruption," District Commander Pauline Shields said in a statement.

"The people responsible for this have no regard for the lives of anyone in our community. It is fortunate that no-one was killed or seriously injured as a result of this reckless act."

A 1998 peace deal largely ended more than three decades of violence in the British-controlled province between mainly Catholic Irish nationalists seeking union with Ireland and predominantly Protestant unionists who want to remain part of the United Kingdom.

However militant nationalists, who include former operatives who split from the Irish Republican Army (IRA) after it declared a ceasefire, still stage sporadic gun and bomb attacks and have targeted security forces in particular.

An attempt to fire mortar bombs at a police station was foiled earlier this month in what would have been the first attack of its kind in the United Kingdom since the peace deal ended the IRA's campaign of violence.

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Minn. charges tossed against right-to-die ex-head

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) ? A Minnesota judge on Friday dismissed charges against the former head of a national right-to-die group accused in the death of an Apple Valley woman, saying Minnesota's law against advising suicide is unconstitutionally overbroad.

In a late-afternoon ruling, Dakota County Judge Karen Asphaug dismissed charges against Thomas Goodwin, former president of Final Exit Network. Goodwin was charged with aiding and abetting assistance of a suicide, a felony, and aiding and abetting in the interference with a death scene, a gross misdemeanor.

Goodwin and three other members of Final Exit Network were charged last year in the 2007 death of Doreen Dunn, who killed herself in her home. Prosecutors said the defendants not only supported Dunn's decision to kill herself, but provided Dunn with information and support to follow through.

Final Exit members claim they do not encourage suicide, but that the act of giving information and emotional support could be interpreted as "encouraging" under a Minnesota law that makes it a felony for someone to intentionally assist, advise or encourage suicide.

Defense attorneys for the Final Exit members say Minnesota's law is unconstitutional. In court documents, Final Exit Network general counsel Robert Rivas wrote that while the state may bar someone from "assisting" a suicide, it is unconstitutional for the state to ban "advising" or "encouraging" a suicide ? pure speech.

Prosecutors contend the statute is narrowly worded so advocates of suicide may freely speak their minds but that those who "intentionally" assist, encourage or advise suicide are breaking the law.

In Goodwin's case, Asphaug ruled that the "advising" portion of the state law was overbroad and therefore unconstitutional, while "encouraging" can be narrowly construed and passes constitutional muster.

Defendants asked that if Asphaug refused to dismiss the charges, that she give them permission to appeal.

The 17-count indictment charges Final Exit Network, its former medical director Lawrence Egbert, 85, of Baltimore, and three other officials with felony counts of assisting suicide and interference with a death scene, a gross misdemeanor. The others named in the indictment are Jerry Dincin, 82, of Highland Park, Ill., Roberta Massey, 67, of Bear, Del., and Goodwin, 66, of Punta Gorda, Fla.

The judge dismissed two charges against Massey ? assisting in a suicide and aiding and abetting in the interfering of a death scene ? but allowed a charge of aiding and abetting others to assist in a suicide to stand. All other remaining charges against the other defendants stand.

Rivas said the group was celebrating Goodwin's court victory.

"It's a clean sweep for (Goodwin). I'm sure he's overjoyed," Rivas said in a telephone interview Friday night. "Everybody in Final Exit Network is jumping for joy because he's the former president."

Prosecutor James Backstrom said in a statement that his office was pleased the judge found probable cause for most of the counts in the indictment against Final Exit Network and several of its members. Backstrom said his office is reviewing the judge's ruling on the law's constitutionality to determine how to proceed.

Authorities say Egbert and Dincin went to Minnesota to be with Dunn when she took her life, and likely dumped the equipment she used to kill herself on their way back to the airport. Dunn had suffered through a decade of intense, chronic pain after a medical procedure went wrong.

Prosecutors said it's not against the law to commit suicide, but the assisted-suicide statute is designed to preserve human life, especially the lives of vulnerable people such as Dunn.

Rivas wrote that the statute could be interpreted to make it a crime for "exit guides" to advise people on how to die peacefully and with certainty if they decide to take their lives.

Minnesota's assisted-suicide law is also being challenged in the state Supreme Court. An attorney for a man convicted of going online and encouraging two people to kill themselves is arguing that his client's actions were also protected speech. Attorney Terry Watkins argued in his appeal that William Melchert-Dinkel did not participate in any suicides.

Final Exit Network is run by volunteers who believe that mentally competent adults have a basic human right to end their lives if they suffer from "fatal or irreversible illness or intractable pain" and meet other criteria, according to the group's website.

"We do not encourage anyone to end their life, are opposed to anyone's encouraging another to end his life, do not provide the means to do so, and do not assist in a person's death," the website says.

___

Associated Press writer Amy Forliti contributed to this report.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/minn-charges-tossed-against-die-ex-head-022955248.html

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Recycle Your Old Water Bottles Into Flaming DIY Rockets

Those of use who know from experience can safely say there's nothing quite as much fun as a homemade rocket. But part of that fun is not getting your hands blown off. Nighthawkinlight has a fun, easy way you can get the best of both worlds, and "recycle" your old water bottles in a literal blaze of glory. More »

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/7zybw2AITUQ/recycle-your-old-water-bottles-into-flaming-diy-rockets

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The People of the Cookbook: Jews, Food and Engagement

by Rabbi Cara Weinstein Rosenthal

What is it about Jews and food? Why are we always eating? As I write this, I am aware that Jews worldwide currently inhabit that strange calendrical trough between two peak food-consumption holidays, Purim and Pesach. For many of us, the last crumbs from the leftover hamantaschen were wiped away not long ago, and now the free corners of the kitchen and pantry are steadily being colonized by shopping bags of Pesach food.

Ask Jews to encapsulate the back story of nearly all of our holidays, and those well-versed in Jewish jokes will roll their eyes and intone, ?They tried to kill us; we won; let?s eat!? Having a preschooler has brought home to me how much our experience of Judaism truly revolves around food. My daughter and her classmates taste apples and honey for Rosh Hashanah, they fry latkes for Chanukah, they bake hamantaschen for Purim, and they roll out matzah dough and chop nut-free charoset for Pesach.

We Jews are certainly not the only people to have distinctive food-based folkways that tie into our religious and cultural traditions, but we do have a curiously strong relationship with food. Food communicates our spiritual and emotional states, it mediates our experiences of family and tradition, it becomes a vehicle for the creation of memory and meaning. It?s significant that our religious calendar includes six yearly fast days through which we express our desire for repentance and cleansing and/or our grief over historical tragedies like the destruction of the ancient Temple. Even when we?re not eating, we?re using food (in this case, the deliberate absence of food) to express ourselves.

All of which provides an interesting backdrop for the recent release of a community study by the Jewish Education Project?s Early Childhood and Family Engagement Department (Engaging Today?s Families: Parent Research Findings, January 2013) focusing on first-time mothers of young children. For the study, researchers conducted focus groups with mothers in the New York metro area who had children under the age of two and who did not have formal connections to organized Judaism. Not surprisingly, the study found that most of the mothers interviewed were ambivalent about participating in Jewish life. They yearned for connection and community, but were wary of settings in which their lack of Jewish knowledge might become apparent.

What was significant for me was the researchers? finding that these women?s ?interest in a new Jewish opportunity mainly revolves around connection, community and cooking.? Some of the mothers interviewed longed for communities in which young mothers would pool cooking resources in order to help each other at busy or stressful times, like at the birth of a child. In her eJewish Philanthropy article on the research findings (?Let?s get Serious about Relationship Weaving and Increase the Potential for Communal Change in Family Engagement,? January 28, 2013), the Jewish Education Project?s Shellie Dickstein quoted one Upper West Side mom who quipped, ?I have friends that live in Englewood, NJ. When they had their babies, they had a calendar of who is going to cook for [the mom] who just gave birth and all their meals are taken care of for a while. In the city I asked my friends, where is my dinner??

It doesn?t take much analysis to figure out that what Jews like this young mother are looking for goes much deeper than the stress of figuring out what they are going to serve their families for dinner on a particular Tuesday night. These kinds of statements reveal a longing for connection and community, a desire to have someone help you and take care of you when you?re feeling vulnerable. I think it?s telling, though, that this desire is expressed through the lens of food. It?s not a support group or a carpool that these young mothers want, it?s the kind of nurturing that?s served with a ladle and shared around a table.

Of course, Passover is the quintessential holiday for making connections through food. The theme of hachnassat orchim ? welcoming guests ? underpins the Pesach seder, as we recite, ?Kol dichfin yetei veyeichul? ? ?Let all who are hungry come and eat.? But Pesach magnifies and complicates the Jewish relationship with food, especially for those who are not sure whether or not they really have a seat at the Jewish table ? those who are unaffiliated or loosely affiliated, those who are members of interfaith families, those whose lack of Jewish background or education leaves them feeling lost at seders or services.

On Pesach, food has an amplified ability to invite and to terrify. Many Jews, even those who have little other connection with the Jewish community, look forward to enjoying family favorites on Pesach, the smells and tastes of brisket and matzah ball soup (or baghali polo) evoking feelings of connection and tradition. At the same time, many view Pesach preparations with fear and trembling, trying to keep track of the multitudinous rules and regulations: What foods are okay to eat? What dishes and utensils am I supposed to use? Can I eat rice? What if I can?t have gluten, or eggs, or nuts? Kashrut is complicated enough during the rest of the year, then Pesach comes along and cranks the difficulty dial up to 11.

For all of these reasons, Pesach presents a unique opportunity for Jewish organizations to reach out to Jews at all levels of affiliation (and to use food as a valuable means of connection). Many synagogues and schools host communal seders or invite families to matzah-factory events, but how many organizations truly put into practice the Haggadah?s inclusive call and reach out beyond their mailing lists to involve those Jews in the wider community who are hungry for friendship and for a sense of belonging? How many synagogues really strive to guide the perplexed in making sense of Pesach?s tricky kashrut rules, and how many just announce that the rabbi is willing to sell your chametz for you? How many organizations confuse being ?welcoming? with having an overly child-centered educational approach, losing the opportunity to introduce loosely engaged Jews to the richness and depth of Jewish tradition? Inviting families to bake matzah or make charoset is a great place to start, but Jewish organizations shouldn?t lose sight of the fact that adults can go beyond the basic mechanics and facts to engage with the deeper meanings of Pesach food traditions, the ways in which the foods we eat on Pesach challenge us to grapple with the themes of slavery and redemption that run throughout Jewish history and reverberate within our own lives.

Love Pesach food or loathe it, matzah will soon be here to stay for eight long, tiring, glorious days. Let?s make sure that our institutions reach out on this holiday ? and on all days ? to help Jews nourish each other, body and soul.

Rabbi Cara Weinstein Rosenthal is an educator, congregational consultant, and writer focusing on outreach and engagement. As PJ Library Coordinator for the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, she works with synagogues to help them increase their potential to include young families in Jewish life and community.

Source: http://ejewishphilanthropy.com/the-people-of-the-cookbook-jews-food-and-engagement/

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Blockbuster's ailing UK stores sold to investment firm

LONDON (Reuters) - Blockbuster's chain of film and computer game rental shops in Britain has been sold to an investment firm, two months after the struggling retailer went into a form of bankruptcy protection, administrators said on Saturday.

Deloitte, which took control of Blockbuster's British operations after it entered administration on January 16, said the company had been sold to Gordon Brothers Europe for an undisclosed sum.

Under the terms of the deal, the global restructuring specialist will keep 264 of Blockbuster's 528 stores, safeguarding the jobs of nearly half its 4,190 staff.

Blockbuster's UK shops fell victim to increased competition from supermarkets, the shift towards people watching films over the internet and a harsh economic backdrop in Britain.

"This transaction provides Blockbuster a future in the UK," said Deloitte's Lee Manning, joint administrator.

The new owners said the surviving shops would reopen under the Blockbuster brand, licensed from U.S. satellite TV company Dish Network , which owns the American operation.

Gordon Brothers Europe said it would make a "substantial" investment in the stores, offering new products to try to return the company to profitability.

"We acknowledge the industry is in transition; we know that we have a challenge ahead but there is still a market to be served," Frank Morton, chief executive officer of Gordon Brothers Europe, said in a statement.

Blockbuster opened its first shop in Britain in 1989 and its blue and yellow branding soon became a familiar site in most high streets across the country. It had nearly three million members before it closed its doors.

It was one of a string of household names in British retailing hit by the internet, increased competition and years of weak economic growth.

(Reporting by Peter Griffiths; editing by James Jukwey)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/blockbusters-ailing-uk-stores-sold-investment-firm-162917646--finance.html

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Analysis: Thrifty truckers wary of pricey natural gas vehicles

By Nichola Groom

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Truckers considering natural gas as an alternative to high-priced diesel say the cost of vehicles that run on the cheap and cleaner-burning fuel is still too high for them to see a timely payback on their investment.

A push to run more of the nation's truck fleet on cleaner, domestically produced natural gas is rapidly gaining momentum.

Suppliers like T. Boone Pickens' Clean Energy Fuels, Royal Dutch Shell and China's private ENN Group are scrambling to build natural gas fueling stations along U.S. highways, while Cummins-Westport Inc will begin later this year selling a 12-liter natural gas engine able to power the biggest trucks on the road.

Truck companies too, are enthusiastic - up to a point.

The trucks that will sport the new engine, made by a joint venture of Cummins Inc and Westport Innovations Inc, will have expensive tanks for storing compressed or liquefied natural gas. With the industry still reeling from an economic slump that pushed margins below 5 percent, truckers have little ability to make big bets on new equipment.

Customers like household products giant Procter & Gamble and building materials maker Owens Corning, however, are increasingly demanding that their products be hauled on cleaner trucks using cheaper fuel.

Natural gas trucks' greenhouse gas emissions are about 20 percent lower than those of diesel trucks. But truck companies must fork over an extra $40,000 to $80,000 per natural gas truck - a big markup considering a heavy-duty diesel truck starts at about $100,000.

President Barack Obama wants to begin a federal incentive program that would help pay for the new trucks, but budget woes make that unlikely.

Big natural gas-producing states such as Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Texas, as well as environmentally conscious California, offer programs to get heavy-duty, natural gas trucks up and rolling. But none foots the bill entirely, and in an era of fiscal tightening, truckers fear the subsidies may not last.

Replacing diesel with natural gas can save truckers about $1.50 per gallon, and experts say a truck that runs at least 80,000 miles a year could see a payback in two years. But factor in the cost of modifying maintenance facilities and the still unknown value for second-hand natural gas trucks and the math isn't so clear cut.

"We can't make the economics work," said Randy Mullett, a vice president at Con-way Inc, one of the country's largest trucking companies. "The upfront cost is too high."

Con-way is testing two compressed natural gas trucks in the Chicago area and plans to add three or four liquefied natural gas (LNG) trucks in Texas, where state incentives will help offset the added costs. But Mullett said fueling big rigs with natural gas is "not the slam dunk that it's presented to be."

MOVING BEYOND TRASH

Heavy-duty trucks are big fuel consumers, running more than 130 billion miles a year in the United States and averaging about 6.5 miles per gallon, according to the American Trucking Associations. With about 200,000 such trucks sold each year, and turnover of fleet vehicles about every five years, the opportunity to reduce diesel fuel consumption and tailpipe emissions by switching to natural gas is huge.

New techniques unlocking vast reserves of natural gas from shale have produced a boom in U.S. supplies and driven prices down sharply, increasing the transportation industry's interest in using natural gas as its primary fuel.

Earlier this month, BNSF Railway Co said it would run some locomotives on liquefied natural gas to save fuel costs, and Lockheed Martin said it was developing new fuel tanks for ships, trains and trucks powered with LNG.

Heavy-duty truck maker Kenworth, a unit of Paccar Inc, has a "very large backlog" of orders for natural gas vehicles, according to national sales manager Andy Douglas. Cummins-Westport, meanwhile, has been growing about 30 percent a year, and the addition of the 12-liter engine should give it "a pretty good growth spurt for the next few years," said Jim Arthurs, the joint venture's president.

The waste industry has already made a big push into natural gas, with about half of the garbage trucks sold in the United States last year running on it. Natural gas works well for garbage trucks because they are able to refuel overnight at dedicated stations at their home bases. Trucking companies say they could lose precious time and fuel going out of their way to find a natural gas fueling station near their routes.

Clean Energy, ENN and Shell have committed to building a network of natural gas stations along U.S. highways, but they need to know that there will be a sufficient number of trucks using those stations to justify their investment.

Waste Management Inc began converting its fleet to compressed natural gas (CNG) about three years ago. It is adding 700 to 1,000 natural gas trucks each year, saving roughly $30,000 a year per truck on fuel and maintenance, according to spokeswoman Jennifer Andrews.

The company has "not seen the costs of natural gas trucks come down at all," Andrews said, but added that it had received significant revenue from government grant programs.

STATE INCENTIVES HELP

Some trucking companies said incentives are the only way they can add natural gas trucks to their fleet.

C.R. England, a family-owned truck company based in Salt Lake City, Utah, has been running five LNG trucks between Ontario, California and Las Vegas since late 2011 but has yet to make back the close to $80,000 premium it spent per vehicle.

The company is hoping it will win a grant from Pennsylvania to help it add five CNG trucks to serve Hershey Co. The state is awarding grants of up to $25,000 per vehicle to cover up to half of the added cost of a natural gas truck.

C.R. England would probably not seek to buy any more natural gas trucks without such an incentive, said Allen Nielsen, director of fuel for the company.

Even United Parcel Service Inc, which has 93 LNG-fueled big rigs, said it has taken advantage of state incentives to buy most of them. Though the lack of a fueling infrastructure is a key impediment to adoption of natural gas trucks, the director of UPS' global energy group, Mike Whitlatch, said "the cost of the vehicle is probably the largest challenge."

CUSTOMERS PUSHING HARD

Truckers can't rely on their customers for help, either.

"We're trying to push pretty hard," said Sean Turner, purchasing group manager at Procter & Gamble Co, which is running 22 CNG trucks at a Pennsylvania factory that makes Pampers diapers and Bounty paper towels. The company's truck partner, which it would not name, made the investment, Turner said.

Owens-Corning is talking to nearly all its trucking partners about switching to natural gas, according to Dave Uncapher, sourcing and operations leader for the Toledo, Ohio company. Some who balked at the proposal have lost "a piece" of the building material maker's business, he said.

Not only do customers want to see more predictable, and hopefully lower, fuel costs, many also have internal goals to reduce the carbon and tailpipe emissions of their supply chains.

Dillon Transport Inc, a privately held company based in Burr Ridge, Illinois, agreed to Owens Corning's request, adding 25 LNG trucks in Texas about a year ago.

To help offset the additional costs, Dillon is aiming to run its natural gas trucks 300,000 miles a year. The average for big trucks is about 68,000 miles a year, according to federal data. But the company's marketing director, Phil Crofts, said the question of recovering the extra cost of a natural gas truck is murky, because there is no market for used LNG trucks and the conversion of maintenance facilities adds to the costs.

The natural gas trucks are more about distinguishing itself in the market, Crofts said. The deal with Owens Corning has helped Dillon land a contract with fertilizer producer Mosaic Co to run 50 CNG trucks at the Port of Tampa. That, plus the Owens Corning business, has helped boost volumes 35 percent.

"This business is not like the cell phone business or the iPad business where there are great new markets going out there," Crofts said. "For us to grow we've got to be taking somebody else's business."

(Reporting by Nichola Groom; Editing by Patricia Kranz and Leslie Gevirtz)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/analysis-thrifty-truckers-wary-pricey-natural-gas-vehicles-081631453--sector.html

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