Month: February 2007

A 9 percent slide in Chinese stocks, which came a day after investors sent Shanghai’s benchmark index to a record high close, set the tone for U.S. trading. The Dow began the day falling sharply, and the decline accelerated throughout the course of the session before stocks took a huge plunge in late afternoon as computer-driven sell programs kicked in.

The Dow fell 546.02, or 4.3 percent, to 12,086.06 before recovering some ground in the last hour of trading to close down 415.86, or 3.29 percent, at 12,216.40, according to preliminary calculations.

After years of planning, Witt started printing her own money and spending it around town.

She is not a counterfeiter. She is the founder of Berkshares, a local currency that was introduced last fall in Southern Berkshire, Mass.

The situation involving Melissa Busekros has been in the headlines ever since the beginning of this month, when the officers arrived at her parents’ home with a court order allowing them to take her into custody, “if necessary by force.”

She had fallen behind in math and Latin, and was being tutored at home. When school officials in Germany, where homeschooling has been illegal since Adolph Hitler decided he wanted to control the educating of all children, discovered that fact, she was expelled. School officials then took her to court, obtaining a court order requiring she be committed to a psychiatric ward because of her “school phobia.”

She later was moved to a different hospital without her parents’ knowledge, and then put in foster care. She was permitted to make a telephone call to her parents, although she was not allowed to let them know where she was.

Then the court decided while none of those restrictions would be lifted, she would be allowed to meet for one hour a week with her parents, as long as the meeting took place in a government building.

Instead, Democratic assemblywoman Sally Lieber introduced a bill Thursday that would allow prosecution of parents who used a belt, paddle, switch or a closed fist to hit a child. But spanking with an open hand still would be allowed by parents as long as it did not inflict serious injury on the child.

Parents are coming under increasing pressure to enrol children early to make sure they get a place in the best schools, fuelling anxiety levels and damaging youngsters’ self-esteem, it is claimed.

[…]

The council acted because past statements have become problematic for the ELCA’s present-day relationships with the Mennonite Church USA and other Christians who trace their heritage to the 16th century Anabaptist reformers, according to the council’s background materials.

In the action, the council declared that the ELCA “repudiates the use of governmental authorities to punish individuals or groups with whom it disagrees theologically.” It rejected the arguments of Martin Luther and Philip Melanchthon, two 16th century church reformers, “in which they hold that governmental authorities should punish Anabaptists for their teaching,” the action said.

In return, 100 U.S. trucking companies will be allowed to operate in Mexico but at a later date.