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"Vatican City, Jan 11 (AP) Pope Benedict XVI denounced the failure of world leaders to agree to a new climate change treaty in Copenhagen last month, saying today that world peace depends on safeguarding God's creation. He issued the admonition in a speech to ambassadors accredited to the Vatican, an annual appointment during which the pontiff reflects on issues the Vatican wants to highlight to the diplomatic corps. Benedict has been dubbed the "green pope" for his increasingly vocal concern about the need to protect the environment. Under his watch, the Vatican has installed photovoltaic cells on its main auditorium to convert sunlight into electricity and has joined a reforestation project aimed at offsetting its CO2 emissions. For the pontiff, it's a moral issue: Church teaching holds that man must respect creation because it's destined for the benefit of humanity's future."

Federal regulators seized Charter Bank in New Mexico this week as its capitalization fell below requirements, making it the latest of scores of banks to have failed in the economic crisis. However, the Albuquerque Journal reports that Charter faced a very low default rate on residential loans and no commercial failures, either - until the Office of Thrift Supervision, its regulator, demanded that Charter increase its declared risk fivefold (hat tip HA reader Super5): Federal authorities on Friday closed Charter Bank, a closely held, family-run financial institution known for its financing of low-income housing in New Mexico and for the philanthropy of its owners. … Last fall, Office of Thrift Supervision examiners, responding to the national collapse of real estate development, ordered Charter to increase its allowance for loan losses from $10.8 million to $55.4 million, even though Charter had no delinquent commercial construction loans and only [0].34 percent of the loans in its commercial real estate portfolio were behind on their payments. That order reduced the level of capital Charter had on its books. Last Wednesday, OTS ordered Charter to find new capital as a buffer against insolvency or face closure. Charter had hoped to find a buyer, but none appeared. The owners' stake in the company was wiped out by the forced closure. How involved were they in low-income lending? The head of New Mexico's MFA makes it clear: Charter became a major real estate lender and was especially active in underwriting and servicing mortgages for low-income housing. It worked closely with the Mortgage Finance Authority, which was established by the State Legislature to help finance low-income housing construction. According to MFA executive director Jay Czar, Charter services about 95 percent of the mortgages issued through the agency. "They are just class bankers," Czar said. "These are guys who quite frankly really look out for the s

A recent report says the visit by Israeli National Security Council Head Yaakov Amidror to Turkey is aimed at securing an airbase in Iran's neighbor to pave the way for a military attack against the Islamic Republic. PressTV In an article, the Sunday Times said that during his visit on Sunday, Amidror is expected to solicit Turkey's agreement with regard to the deployment of Israeli fighter jets in Akinci airbase, northwest of Ankara, in exchange for advanced military equipments and technology, the Times of Israel reported. "Until the recent crisis, Turkey was our biggest aircraft carrier. Using the Turkish airbases could make the difference between success and failure once a showdown with Iran gets underway," Sunday Times quoted an unnamed Israeli military source as saying. Ankara agreed to restore relations with Tel Aviv on March 22 after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu apologized to Turkey for the deaths of nine Turkish activists in a 2010 Israeli attack on a Gaza-bound international flotilla. Israel also agreed to pay compensation to the families of those who were killed by Israeli commandos. The apology was brokered by US President Barack Obama during his recent visit to Israel. The Israeli source added that the regime's military has been "lobbying hard for the politicians to find a form of apology, in order to restore the Israeli-Turkish alliance against Syria and Iran."

"In a study released by the International Journal of Biological Sciences, analyzing the effects of genetically modified foods on mammalian health, researchers found that agricultural giant Monsanto's GM corn is linked to organ damage in rats. According to the study, which was summarized by Adam Shake at Twilight Earth, "Three varieties of Monsanto's GM corn - Mon 863, insecticide-producing Mon 810, and Roundup® herbicide-absorbing NK 603 - were approved for consumption by US, European and several other national food safety authorities." Monsanto gathered its own crude statistical data after conducting a 90-day study, even though chronic problems can rarely be found after 90 days, and concluded that the corn was safe for consumption. The stamp of approval may have been premature, however. In the conclusion of the IJBS study, researchers wrote: "Effects were mostly concentrated in kidney and liver function, the two major diet detoxification organs, but in detail differed with each GM type. In addition, some effects on heart, adrenal, spleen and blood cells were also frequently noted. As there normally exists sex differences in liver and kidney metabolism, the highly statistically significant disturbances in the function of these organs, seen between male and female rats, cannot be dismissed as biologically insignificant as has been proposed by others. We therefore conclude that our data strongly suggests that these GM maize varieties induce a state of hepatorenal toxicity....These substances have never before been an integral part of the human or animal diet and therefore their health consequences for those who consume them, especially over long time periods are currently unknown.""

"On Christmas Day, a Nigerian-born terrorist named Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab attempted to blow up a Detroit-bound passenger airplane. Only the bravery of a fellow passenger prevented the catastrophe. President Obama called the terror attempt a "systemic failure" on the part of American national security agencies. In particular, he blamed the CIA for the foul-up. There is no doubt that the CIA should have done something more to prevent this attack. But, then again, President Obama has been keeping them busy-with global warming. Seriously. According to the New York Times on Jan. 5, just a few days after Obama excoriated the CIA publicly, "The nation's top scientists and spies are collaborating on an effort to use the federal government's intelligence assets-including spy satellites and other classified sensors-to assess the hidden complexities of environmental change." This project, the Times reported, "has the strong backing of the director of the Central Intelligence Agency. In the last year, as part of the effort, the collaborators have scrutinized images of Arctic sea ice from reconnaissance satellites in an effort to distinguish things like summer melts from climate trends …" While missing a potentially catastrophic terror attack is problematic, it's good to know that we've got the inside dossier on the mating habits of polar bears. This isn't a shock coming from the "watermelon" Obama White House-green on the outside, red on the inside. The simple truth is that the Obama administration believes that the solution to global warming is the same as the solution to terrorism: Marxist-style global redistributionism."

"A WARNING that climate change will melt most of the Himalayan glaciers by 2035 is likely to be retracted after a series of scientific blunders by the United Nations body that issued it. Two years ago the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a benchmark report that was claimed to incorporate the latest and most detailed research into the impact of global warming. A central claim was the world's glaciers were melting so fast that those in the Himalayas could vanish by 2035. In the past few days the scientists behind the warning have admitted that it was based on a news story in the New Scientist, a popular science journal, published eight years before the IPCC's 2007 report. It has also emerged that the New Scientist report was itself based on a short telephone interview with Syed Hasnain, a little-known Indian scientist then based at Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi. Related Internet Links * Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report on Himalayan glaciers * How New Scientist reported the row Related Links * Global warming blamed for rise in malaria * Experts clash over sea-rise 'apocalypse' Hasnain has since admitted that the claim was "speculation" and was not supported by any formal research. If confirmed it would be one of the most serious failures yet seen in climate research. The IPCC was set up precisely to ensure that world leaders had the best possible scientific advice on climate change. "

"Taking advantage of the ado surrounding the failed airliner bombing and the new prominence of the al Qaeda peril, the Obama administration has finally given up its sanctions strategy for averting the rise of a nuclear-armed Iran. US secretary of state Hillary Clinton was tasked with the public announcement: "The Obama administration wants to keep the door to dialogue open with Iran," she said Jan. 4, then added a remark which let Iran off completely of the American hook: "…although the United States has avoided using the term deadline, it cannot wait indefinitely to hear form Iran." Her words explicitly backtracked on statements by other senior administration officials, including National Security Adviser James Jones, in recent interviews that Tehran's deadline for responding to international proposals expired on Dec. 31. DEBKAfile's Iranian sources report that Tehran sees Washington as so eager to reach the negotiating table that it is falling back from effective penalties step by step, including an embargo on refined oils and benzene, and even willing to forgive Iran's failure to meet a highly publicized international deadline. "Our goal is to pressure the Iranian government, particularly the Revolutionary Guards elements without contributing to the suffering of Iranians," Clinton explained. Threatening Iran's Revolutionary Guards instead of its regime is nothing but a feeble face-saver, our Iranian sources maintain, since the IRGC, whose financial operations and its management of Iran's nuclear program subsist on alternative "black market" economic mechanisms is hardly vulnerable to international sanctions."