The Archbishop of Canterbury said yesterday that the Christmas story of the Three Wise Men was nothing but a ‘legend’. Dr Rowan Williams has claimed there was little evidence that the Magi even existed and there was certainly nothing to prove there were three of them or that they were kings. Archbishop says nativity ‘a legend’ Dr Williams argued that the traditional Christmas story was nothing but a ‘legend’ He said the only reference to the wise men from the East was in Matthew’s gospel and the details were very vague. Dr Williams said: ‘Matthew’s gospel says they are astrologers, wise men, priests from somewhere outside the Roman Empire, that’s all we’re really told. It works quite well as legend.’ The Archbishop went on to dispel other details of the Christmas story, adding that there were probably no asses or oxen in the stable. He argued that Christmas cards which showed the Virgin Mary cradling the baby Jesus, flanked by shepherds and wise men, were misleading. As for the scenes that depicted snow falling in Bethlehem, the Archbishop said the chance of this was ‘very unlikely’. In a final blow to […]
NEW YORK — Morgan Stanley posted its first quarterly loss ever Wednesday after taking an additional $5.7 billion write-down related to subprime mortgages. The investment bank also said it would sell a $5 billion stake to China Investment Corp., a sovereign wealth fund, to shore up its capital. The sale, which would give the Chinese government a stake of about 9.9 percent in one of Wall Street’s biggest investment banks, is the latest example of a foreign investor aiding a Western financial firm after the housing meltdown. Morgan Stanley’s fourth-quarter loss of $3.59 billion, or $3.61 a share, was a sharp drop from its year-earlier profit of $1.98 billion, or $1.87 a share. Analysts surveyed by Bloomberg News had expected a loss of 39 cents a share. With the second write-down, Morgan Stanley has lowered the value of its subprime holdings by $9.4 billion, one of the largest devaluations on Wall Street. In a statement, the bank’s chief executive, John Mack, said he took full responsibility and would forgo a bonus for 2007. ‘The write-down Morgan Stanley took this quarter is deeply disappointing – to me, to our colleagues, to our board and to our […]
WASHINGTON — The Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday denied California and 16 other states the right to set their own standards for carbon dioxide emissions from automobiles. The E.P.A. administrator, Stephen L. Johnson, said the proposed California rules were pre-empted by federal authority and made moot by the energy bill signed into law by President Bush on Wednesday. Mr. Johnson said California had failed to make a compelling case that it needed authority to write its own standards for greenhouse gas emissions from cars and trucks to help curb global warming. The decision immediately provoked a heated debate over its scientific basis and whether political pressure was applied by the automobile industry to help it escape the proposed California regulations. Officials from the states and numerous environmental groups vowed to sue to overturn the edict. In an evening conference call with reporters, Mr. Johnson defended his agency’s decision. ‘The Bush administration is moving forward with a clear national solution, not a confusing patchwork of state rules,’ he said. ‘I believe this is a better approach than if individual states were to act alone.’ The 17 states - including New York, New Jersey and Connecticut - […]
A college education doesn’t give you much of an edge over a monkey when it comes to doing some basic arithmetic, according to a study released Monday that underscores the surprising mental agility of our simian relatives. In a rapid fire test of mental addition, monkeys performed almost as well as college students, showing they’re no slouches when it comes to number crunching. The macaques got their sums right 76 percent of the time, while the students got the correct answer 94 percent of the time in a series of increasingly challenging maths tests. ‘We know that animals can recognize quantities, but there is less evidence for their ability to carry out explicit mathematical tasks, such as addition,’ said Jessica Cantlon, a researcher at Duke University Center for Cognitive Neuroscience in Durham, North Carolina. ‘Our study shows that they can.’ The study in the Public Library of Science Biology comes just a couple of weeks after Japanese researchers revealed that young chimps outperformed college students in tests of short-term memory. The young chimps surprised the Japanese investigators by being able to retrace patterns of numbers flashed up on […]
IMMOKALEE, Florida — Three Florida fruit-pickers, held captive and brutalised by their employer for more than a year, finally broke free of their bonds by punching their way through the ventilator hatch of the van in which they were imprisoned. Once outside, they dashed for freedom. When they found sanctuary one recent Sunday morning, all bore the marks of heavy beatings to the head and body. One of the pickers had a nasty, untreated knife wound on his arm. Police would learn later that another man had his hands chained behind his back every night to prevent him escaping, leaving his wrists swollen. The migrants were not only forced to work in sub-human conditions but mistreated and forced into debt. They were locked up at night and had to pay for sub-standard food. If they took a shower with a garden hose or bucket, it cost them $5. Their story of slavery and abuse in the fruit fields of sub-tropical Florida threatens to lift the lid on some appalling human rights abuses in America today. Between December and May, Florida produces virtually the entire US crop of field-grown fresh tomatoes. Fruit picked here in the winter […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
