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January 9, 2012- January 15, 2012 
 News In Review
 Vol 7, Issue 2
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The News In Review newsletter is a service provided by Understand The Times that is a compilation of the news articles previously posted on our site . Understand The Times does not endorse these events but rather is showing the church the current events.  The purpose of posting these articles is to warn the church of deception from a Biblical perspective.

 January 6 - Welcome to a brave new world: Genetic scientists create freakish man-made monster ants with huge heads and jaws
 Artical: Cloning And Genetic Engineering

Nightmarish 'supersoldier' ants with huge heads and jaws have been created by activating ancient genes. Scientists believe the monster ants may be a genetic throwback to an ancestor that lived millions of years ago.

Scientists say they can create the supersoldiers at will by dabbing normal ant larvae with a special hormone - the larvae then develop into supersoldiers rather than normal soldier or worker ants.

Scientists showed that ordinary ants of the species Pheidole morrisi contain all the genetic 'tools' needed to turn them into supersoldiers - they just need a hormonal push.

Authors Dr Rajendhran Rajakumar, from McGill University, Canada, and colleagues wrote: 'We uncovered an ancestral development potential to produce a novel supersoldier subcaste that has been retained throughout a hyperdiverse ant genus that evolved 35 to 60 million years ago.'

The results suggest that holding on to ancestral development toolkits may play an important role in evolving new physical traits, say the researchers.



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 January 6 - Meet the 'chimeric' monkeys made from the cells of SIX different animals
 Artical: Cloning And Genetic Engineering

They may look like any other baby monkeys, but these two are scientific breakthroughs. Roku and Hex are the world's first chimeric monkeys - created with genetic material from six 'parents'. But their birth has caused an ethical storm, with critics accusing scientists of disregarding the welfare of the animals.

Named after the fire-breathing creature in Greek mythology composed of parts of multiple animals, chimeras are organisms made up of cells from two or more genetically distinct sources.

Twins Roku and Hex, whose respective names come from the Japanese and Greek for 'six', have been created with genetic material from six monkeys.

Researchers from Oregon Health and Science University in the U.S. extracted cells from six macaque embryos and combined them into a single embryo in a laboratory before implanting it into a surrogate mother monkey. However, to reach this stage, dozens more embryos were experimented on, and some surrogate pregnancies were aborted.

While most animals only contain cells in which the genetic material from their two parents has mixed together, the chimeric monkeys' bodies contain six different types of cell - holding distinct DNA from each biological parent. Although many mice and some rabbits, rats and farm animals have been born this way, no one has created chimeric monkeys before.
 

The researchers say that Roku and Hex are healthy and that their birth opens up 'enormous' possibilities for science because of monkeys' intelligence and close biological links to humans. They say the technique could help us learn more about IVF and contraception, and growing human organs from scratch.



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 January 8 - Iran crosses another nuclear red line. Fordo soon on stream
 Article: Wars and Rumors Of Wars

Tehran media trumpeted the news Sunday, Jan. 8 that Iran's deep underground uranium enrichment site at Fordo near Qom goes stream soon, thereby crossing another line in its faceoff with the West on its weapons program. The head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization Fereydoun Abbasi Davani told the Kayhan daily: ... 20 percent, 3.5 percent and four percent enriched uranium can be produced at this site." debkafile's military sources report that 60 percent is equally feasible, just one step before weapons grade.

Israel's Defense Minister Ehud Barak warned in a number of interviews to US media that once the Fordo plant becomes operational, Iran's nuclear bomb program will become immune to military attack and be able to operate out of the sight of Israeli and Western surveillance.

debkafile reported Friday, Jan. 6 on US-Israeli-British deployments in readiness for a strike against Iran.

Thousands of US troops began descending on Israel this week. Senior US military sources told debkafile Friday, Jan. 6 that many would be staying up to the end of the year as part of the US-IDF deployment in readiness for a military engagement with Iran and its possible escalation into a regional conflict. They will be joined by a US aircraft carrier. The warplanes on its decks will fly missions with Israeli Air Force jets. The 9,000 US servicemen gathering in Israel in the coming weeks are mostly airmen, missile interceptor teams, marines, seamen, technicians and intelligence officers.

The incoming American soldiers are officially categorized as participants in Austere Challenge 12, the biggest joint US-Israeli war game ever held.

The maneuver was originally designated Juniper Stallion 2012. However, the altered name plus the comment heard from the exercise's commander, US Third Air Force Lt. Gen. Frank Gorenc, during his visit two weeks ago, that the coming event is more a "deployment" than an "exercise," confirmed that Washington has expanded its mission. The joint force will now be in place ready for a decision to attack Iran's nuclear installations or any war emergency.

Tehran too is walking a taut tightrope. It is staging military's maneuvers every few days to assuring the Iranian people that its leaders are fully prepared to defend the country against an American or Israeli strike on its national nuclear program. By this stratagem, Iran's ground, sea and air forces are maintained constantly at top war readiness to thwart any surprise attack.



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 January 8 - 5 Things You Should Know About the FBI's Massive New Biometric Database
 Article:Technology For Global Monetary System

The FBI claims that their fingerprint database (IAFIS) is the "largest biometric database in the world" containing records for over a hundred million people. But that's nothing compared to the agency's plans for Next Generation Identification (NGI), a massive, billion-dollar upgrade that will hold iris scans, photos searchable with face recognition technology, palm prints, and measures of gait and voice recordings alongside records of fingerprints, scars, and tattoos.
Ambitions for the final product are candidly spelled out in an agency report: "The FBI recognizes a need to collect as much biometric data as possible within information technology systems, and to make this information accessible to all levels of law enforcement, including International agencies." (A stack of documents related to NGI was obtained by the Center for Constitutional Rights and others after a FOIA lawsuit.)

It'll be "Bigger -- Better -- Faster," the FBI brags on their Web site. Unsurprisingly, civil libertarians have concerns about the privacy ramifications of a bigger, better, faster way to track Americans using their body parts.

Here are 5 things you should probably know about NGI:

1. Face Recognition

The face recognition pilot program is supposed to expand to police departments across the country by 2014. When it's fully operational, the FBI expects its database to contain as many records of faces as there are fingerprints in the current database -- about 70 million, reports Nextgov.com.

"Anybody walking around could potentially be entered," Jennifer Lynch, a staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, tells AlterNet. "Just the fact that those images can be taken surreptitiously raises concerns. If someone takes your fingerprints, you know. But in the face recognition context, it's possible for law enforcement to collect that data without knowledge." The millions of private and public security cameras all over the country would certainly provide a fruitful source for images, Lynch points out.

2. Iris Scans

Iris-scanning technology is the centerpiece of the second-to-last stage in the roll-out of NGI (scheduled for sometime before 2014). Iris scans offer up several advantages to law enforcement, both in terms of identifying people and fattening up databases. In fact, being in the same place as a police officer equipped with a mobile iris-scanning device is all it takes. Last fall, police departments across the country got access to the MORIS device, a contraption attached to an iPhone that lets police collect digital fingerprints, run face recognition and take iris scans. (Over the summer, the FBI also starting passing out mobile devices to local law enforcement that lets them collect fingerprints digitally at the scene, according to Government Computer News.)

3. Rap-Back System

A lot of the action in the FBI's fingerprint database is in background checks for job applicants applying to industries that vet for criminal history, like taking care of the elderly or children, hospital work, and strangely, being a horse jockey in Michigan. As Cari Athens, writing for the Michigan Telecommunications and Law Review points out, if a job applicant checks out, the FBI either destroys the prints or returns them to the employer. But that's no fun if the goal is to collect vast amounts of biometric data! Through the "Rap-Back" system, the FBI will offer employers another option: the agency is willing to keep the fingerprints in order to alert the employer if their new hire has run-ins with the law at any point in the future.

4. Data Sharing Between Agencies

The roll-out of NGI advances another goal: breaking down barriers between databases operated by different agencies. One of the directives of the billion-dollar project is to grease information swapping between the Department of Homeland Security, the State Department, the Department of Justice, and the Department of Defense. The DOJ and DHS have worked toward "interoperatibility" between their databases for years. In 2009, the Department of Defense and DOJ also signed on to an agreement to share biometric information.

5. NGI and Secure Communities (S-Comm)

One recent test run in interagency data-sharing has not gone particularly well: Secure Communities, a DHS program that lets local law enforcement officials run the fingerprints of people booked in jails against the IDENT database to check their immigration status and tip off ICE to undocumented immigrants.

An CJIS/FBI guide instructing officials how to pitch S-Comm to local law enforcement explains that, "Ultimately, LEA participation is inevitable because SC is simply the first of a number of biometric interoperatability systems being brought online by the FBI/CJIS 'Next Generation Identification' initiative." The document lays out strategies for dealing with resistant police departments, including, "Deploy to as many places in the surrounding locale, creating a 'ring of interoperatability' around the resistant site."



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 January 9 - Poll: Pastors oppose evolution, split on earth's age
 Article: Creation Evolution Misc

Pastors overwhelmingly believe that God did not use evolution to create humans and think Adam and Eve were literal people, according to a recent survey by LifeWay Research. When asked to respond to the statement, "I believe God used evolution to create people," 73 percent of pastors disagree, with 64 percent strongly disagreeing and 8 percent somewhat disagreeing. Twelve percent each somewhat agree and strongly agree. Four percent are not sure.

In response to the statement, "I believe Adam and Eve were literal people," 74 percent strongly agree and 8 percent somewhat agree. Six percent somewhat disagree, 11 percent strongly disagree and 1 percent are not sure. "Recently discussions have pointed to doubts about a literal Adam and Eve, the age of the earth and other origin issues," said Ed Stetzer, president of LifeWay Research. "But Protestant pastors are overwhelmingly Creationists and believe in a literal Adam and Eve."

Forty percent of Americans believe God created humans in their present form, 38 percent say God used evolution to develop humans and 16 percent think man evolved with God playing no part in the process, according to Gallup.

In response to the statement, "I believe the earth is approximately 6,000 years old," 34 percent of pastors strongly disagree. However, 30 percent strongly agree. Nine percent somewhat disagree, and 16 percent somewhat agree.

The only statistically significant difference was that younger pastors are the least likely age bracket to strongly disagree that the earth is 6,000 years old. While 24 percent age 18-44 strongly disagree, 33 percent age 45-54, 38 percent age 55-64 and 38 percent 65 and older feel the same.



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We hope the Weekly News In Review has been a blessing to you.

Sincerely,
Roger Oakland


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