http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-05-19/%E2%80%9Cconflict-between-china-and-vietnam-imminent-china-piles-troops-tanks-artillery-and-

China Piles Troops, Tanks, Artillery And APCs Near Vietnam Border

A Bradley Attack Vehicle troop transport of the Chinese military, is seen in Kunming, Yunnan, in Southwest China. Chinese netizens have posted several photos showing the Chinese military moving toward the Vietnamese border. (Weibo.com)

Chinese netizens have been posting photographs of the large movement of the People’s Liberation Army, many of them showing Chinese troops in full combat gear heading to the local train station in Chongzuo, along with military vehicles.

One netizen said the Chinese military was taking the train from the Chongzuo station to Pingxiang City, which shares a 60-mile border with Vietnam. The netizen said that the Huu Nghi Border Gate to Vietnam is also now closed.

Why is China doing this? Simple: “One netizen, with the username Zhiyuan0703, echoed a common sentiment on the Chinese social media site, “Conflict between China and Vietnam is imminent.”

And just in case the US gets any ideas to support its one time foe, China has already taken measures:

Fang Fenghui, the Chinese military’s chief of the general staff, spoke with reporters at the Pentagon on May 15, alongside U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey.

 

Fang defended China’s oil drilling in disputed waters with Vietnam. He also warned the United States on taking sides, saying through a Chinese translator “there is possibility that these issues could affect or disturb the relationship between the two countries and two militaries.”

White House press secretary Jay Carney reiterated the U.S. stance on China’s oil rig, however, during a May 15 press briefing.

He said China’s oil rig, which the Chinese regime has accompanied with “numerous government vessels” is a “provocative act and it raises tensions in the region, and by raising tensions makes it more difficult to resolve claims over disputed territory in a manner that supports peace and stability in the region.”

Carney said the United States takes no position on the territorial claims, but, “We do take a position on the conduct of the claimants who must resolve their disputes peacefully, without intimidation, without coercion, and in accordance with international law.”

Regarding China’s oil rig and the tensions that have formed around it, Carney said, “We consider that act provocative and we consider it one that undermines the goal that we share, which is a peaceful resolution of these disputes and general stability in the region.”

Chinese troops carrying anti-tank weapons are seen marching in Guangxi Province, near the border with Vietnam. Local netizens report a strong smell of gunpowder. (Weibo.com)

A convoy of Chinese military vehicles are seen in Fangchenggang City in Guangxi, near the Vietnam border. (Weibo.com)

http://www.themalaymailonline.com/world/article/china-considers-non-peaceful-measures-against-vietnam-and-the-philippines

The South China Sea has been a highly disputed area with many nations staking claims to various islands and atolls. — Reuters pic –

May 16, 2014

BEIJING, May 16 — A state-run Chinese newspaper backed the use of “non-peaceful” measures against Vietnam and the Philippines today, as it considered the possibility of war in the strategically vital South China Sea.

Vietnam is experiencing its worst anti-China unrest in decades following Beijing’s deployment of an oil rig to disputed waters, with at least one Chinese worker killed and more than 100 injured.

“The South China Sea disputes should be settled in a peaceful manner, but that doesn’t mean China can’t resort to non-peaceful measures in the face of provocation from Vietnam and the Philippines,” the Global Times newspaper, which often takes a nationalistic tone, wrote in an editorial.

“Many people believe that a forced war would convince some countries of China’s sincerely peaceful intentions,” the paper added.

Beijing claims almost the whole of the South China Sea, including areas close to the coasts of other littoral states, and the Philippines has provoked its fury by seeking United Nations arbitration in the dispute between the two.

China’s foreign ministry has condemned both Manila and Hanoi, and accused Vietnam’s leaders on yesterday of “indulgence and connivance” with anti-China demonstrators for failing to rein in the protests. — AFP

https://www.devex.com/news/philippines-rebuilds-6-months-after-haiyan-as-typhoon-season-looms-83439

A man tries to rebuild his house that was ruined when Typhoon Haiyan hit Eastern Samar in Novermber 2013.

Photo by: Plan Asia

Six months ago today, Typhoon Haiyan, one of the strong storms ever recorded, slammed into the Philippines. 14.1 million people were affected, another 4.1 million displaced, and the losses and damages reached an estimated $14 billion dollars. Over 6,200 people died, and more than 1,000 are still missing.

The world watched as Haiyan tallied horrifying statistics on the extent of devastation and destruction in one of the world’s most vulnerable nations to natural disasters. In fact, when the typhoon struck, the Philippines was still reeling from the effects of Typhoon Bopha at the end of 2012 and a 7.1 magnitude earthquake that rocked the island of Bohol just a month before Haiyan.

Even now, as we take stock of the incredible work that has been done in a very short time, typhoon season is about to start for a nation that suffers about 20 such violent storms each year. If a major typhoon were to hit the Haiyan-affected areas now, we could be looking at a potentially much worse humanitarian situation.

The experience of Haiyan sealed what many development organizations have been asserting for years: that disaster risk is most real to the poor, marginalized and vulnerable sectors of society, including women and children. These are the people who lack the social safety nets and capacities to protect themselves and recover, and are therefore left to suffer the most during disasters, when they face the higher risk of losing whatever is left of their belongings – if not their own lives. In the case of Haiyan, this translated to losing 2.6 million of the country’s poorest households, and leaving 5.9 million children without a home. [Read more…]

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/04/25/306728420/russia-wants-to-start-world-war-iii-ukrainian-leader-charges

The crisis in Ukraine showed no signs of cooling Friday. Harsh rhetoric was flying:

— “Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseny Yatseniuk accused Russia on Friday of wanting to start World War III by occupying Ukraine ‘militarily and politically,’ ” Reuters reports.

— “The West wants — and this is how it all began — to seize control of Ukraine because of their own political ambitions, not in the interests of the Ukrainian people,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov charged, according to The Associated Press.

Those sharp words followed this allegation Thursday by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, who accused Russia of doing nothing to help implement last week’s plan to calm tensions in Ukraine: “For seven days, Russia has refused to take a single concrete step in the right direction.”

Kerry also renewed the charge that Russia is funding, coordinating and fueling the armed separatist movement in eastern Ukraine, NPR’s Michele Kelemen reports.

Parallels

Does Russia Have The Military To Take Ukraine?

On Friday, Lavrov criticized what he says was Kerry’s “unacceptable, accusatory tone.”

The U.S. may move to increase sanctions on Russia and individuals close to its president, Vladimir Putin. President Obama said this weekthat new economic sanctions are “teed up” if Russia doesn’t begin to cooperate on resolving the crisis.

Meanwhile, the BBC reports that:

“Moscow has tens of thousands of troops along its side of the border, and on Friday the acting Ukrainian Defense Minister Mikhail Koval told the Interfax-Ukraine agency that they had come within a kilometer of the border. … Pro-Russian separatists are occupying key buildings in a dozen eastern Ukrainian towns, defying the central government.”

And in eastern Ukraine, government forces have relaunched an effort to root out those pro-Russian elements, correspondent Jessica Golloher tells our Newscast Desk. That brought more harsh words from Lavrov, who accused Ukraine of waging war on its own people.

For much more on how the crisis in Ukraine has unfolded, see our earlier posts.

Update at 7:13 p.m. ET. More Escalation:

As the day has progressed, there has been more escalation. For example:

— Interfax Ukraine reports that a pro-Russian sniper fired a shot at parked Ukrainian military helicopter, resulting in an explosion. The captain of the helicopter was injured.

— Col. Steven H. Warren, a Pentagon spokesman, said Russian aircraft have entered Ukrainian airspace several times in the past 24 hours.

“We call upon the Russians to take immediate steps to deescalate the situation,” Warren said in a statement.

http://www.news.com.au/world/n-korea-nuclear-reactor-restarted-according-to-us-and-south-korean-intelligence/story-fndir2ev-1226813471963

US intelligence says North Korea has followed through on its threat to advance its nuclear weapons program.

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said that the North has expanded the size of its uranium enrichment facility at its Nyongbyon nuclear complex and restarted a plutonium reactor that was shut down in 2007.

Clapper’s written testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee concurs with the assessments of think tanks that monitor North Korea’s nuclear program using commercial satellite imagery.

South Korean intelligence also says the reactor has restarted.

North Korea announced its intention to “adjust and alter” its existing nuclear facilities after an atomic test explosion last February, backtracking from denuclearisation commitments.

Mr Clapper said the North has taken initial steps toward fielding a road-mobile intercontinental ballistic missile although it remains untested.

Holy See faces its most intense public grilling to date over allegations that it protected pedophile priests at expense of victims

GENEVA — The Vatican came under blistering criticism from a U.N. committee Thursday for its handling of the global priest sex abuse scandal, facing its most intense public grilling to date over allegations that it protected pedophile priests at the expense of victims.The Vatican insisted it had little jurisdiction to sanction pedophile priests around the globe, saying it was for local law enforcement to do so. But officials conceded that more needs to be done and promised to build on progress already made to become a model for others, given the scale of the problem and the role the Holy See plays in the international community.

“The Holy See gets it,” Monsignor Charles Scicluna, the Vatican’s former sex crimes prosecutor, told the committee. “Let’s not say too late or not. But there are certain things that need to be done differently.”

He was responding to a grilling by the U.N. committee over the Holy See’s failure to abide by terms of the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child which, among other things, calls for signatories to take all appropriate measures to keep children from harm. Critics allege the church enabled the rape of thousands of children by encouraging a culture of cover-up to defend its reputation.

Groups representing victims of clerical abuse, who have been active in civil litigation against the church, gave the U.N. committee hundreds of pages of documents that informed the questioning. The groups have welcomed the hearing as the first time the Vatican has had to publicly defend its record in what amounted to a courtroom cross-examination where no limits were placed on the questioning.

But Barbara Blaine, president of the Survivors’ Network of those Abused by Priests, or SNAP, said Thursday that the Vatican’s responses seem like “more of the same.”

The scene inside the conference room at U.N. headquarters in Geneva was remarkable by U.N. standards, with committee members themselves marveling at how such a powerful institution as the Holy See could be hauled before a relatively obscure U.N. human rights committee to answer uncomfortable questions before a packed audience.

It also was remarkable by Vatican standards.  Traditionally the Holy See has insisted that the Vatican as an institution bore little or no responsibility for the problem, blaming scandals and cases on individual priests or their bishops over whom the Vatican has no real control.

While insisting on that legal separation, though, the Vatican did respond to questions about cases even where it had no jurisdiction or involvement, and on many occasions welcomed recommendations on ways to make children safer.

“I’m with you when you say, ‘All these nice words will not mean anything … if there is not more transparency and accountability on the local level,'” Scicluna told committee member Benyam Mezmur, an Ethiopian academic who asked what it would take for the Holy See to sanction bishops who fail to report pedophiles to police.

Scicluna has been credited even by victims with helping bring the Vatican around over the past decade, overhauling its internal norms to make it easier to defrock abusers and calling for greater accountability by bishops who allowed priests to roam free.

He said local criminal prosecutors must go after anyone – “whoever these people are” – who obstructs justice.

The committee’s main human rights investigator, Sara de Jesus Oviedo Fierro, was particularly tough on the Vatican delegation, asking repeated and informed follow-up questions and refusing to let the Vatican duck the answers. Oveido, a sociologist from Ecuador who was elected in June to serve as the committee’s vice president, pressed the Vatican delegation on the frequent ways abusive priests were transferred rather than turned in to police.

Given the church’s “zero tolerance” policy, she asked, why were there “efforts to cover up and obscure these types of cases?”

Committee members repeatedly asked the Holy See to provide data about the scale of the problem, but the Vatican deferred, saying it would consider the request. They also asked what Pope Francis intends to do with a new commission announced last month to find best practices to protect children from abuse and help victims heal. In addition, the members sought information about accusations that the Vatican’s own ambassador to the Dominican Republic had sexually abused teenage boys.

The U.N. committee is made up of independent experts – not other U.N. member states – and it will deliver final observations and nonbinding recommendations on Feb. 5 . The committee has no ability to sanction the Vatican for any shortcomings, but the process is aimed at encouraging, and sometimes shaming, treaty signatories into honoring their international commitments.

The Holy See ratified the U.N. convention in 1990, and submitted a first implementation report in 1994. But it didn’t provide progress reports for nearly two decades. It only submitted one in 2012 after coming under criticism following the 2010 explosion of child sex abuse cases in Europe and beyond.

Victims groups and human rights organizations teamed up to press the U.N. committee to challenge the Holy See on its abuse record, providing it with reports of written testimony from victims and evidence outlining the global scale of the problem.

Their reports cite case studies in Mexico and Britain, grand jury investigations in the U.S., and government fact-finding inquiries from Canada to Ireland to Australia that detail how the Vatican’s policies, its culture of secrecy and fear of scandal contributed to the problem.

Despite the unprecedented public scrutiny, Blaine of SNAP said, “When they say that these crimes should be prosecuted by states, it seems so disingenuous because we know that the church officials at the state level obstruct those efforts to bring justice.”

In an interview with The Associated Press midway through the hearing, she said the Vatican seemed to be telling the committee only “lofty words” and what it wanted to hear.

The Holy See has long insisted that it isn’t responsible for abusive priests, saying they aren’t employees of the Vatican but rather members of the broader 1.2-billion-strong Catholic Church over which the Vatican exercises limited control. It has maintained that bishops are responsible for the priests in their care, not the pope.

“Priests are not functionaries of the Vatican,” Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, the Vatican’s U.N. ambassador in Geneva, told the committee. “Priests are citizens of their own states, and they fall under the jurisdiction of their own country.”

But victims groups and human rights organizations provided the U.N. committee with the Vatican’s own documentation showing how it discouraged bishops from reporting abusers to police. In one famous case, a Vatican cardinal sent a directive to Irish bishops warning them to strike any mandatory reporting of abusers to police from their internal policies.

Tomasi also was asked about the case of the Vatican’s ambassador to the Dominican Republic, who is under investigation by Dominican prosecutors for alleged abuse. The Vatican recalled Archbishop Josef Wesolowski in August, before Dominican prosecutors announced their investigation, and he hasn’t been seen since.

Tomasi dodged the committee’s question about whether Wesolowski would be turned over to secular authorities for prosecution. The Vatican has said it doesn’t extradite its own citizens. Rather, Tomasi said Wesolowski is being tried by the Vatican’s own prosecutors.

“It will be judged with the severity that the crimes might demand,” Tomasi assured the committee.

Victims groups and human rights organizations were closely monitoring the hearing.

“I think it’s time for the church to stop this secrecy,” Teodoro Pulvirenti, who said he was abused by a priest, told The Associated Press in New York. “I believe the church puts too much of its reputation before the victims and you know the pain of this abuse that we carry. That’s why I was so excited when I heard about this final meeting between the Vatican representatives and the U.N.”

Last March, Cardinal Timothy Dolan told CBS News that the U.S. Catholic Church of the United States was on “the right track” in the wake of the scandal surrounding decades of child sexual abuse by priests and senior clergy’s moves to hide it from public view.

Dolan said the Church in the U.S. had learned from its mistakes in handling the abusive priests and tackled the problem during the last decade. “We didn’t do it right back then, but now I think we are.”

 

Jakarta: More than 25,000 people have fled their homes following a series of eruptions and lava flows from a volcano in Indonesia.

Mount Sinabung, on the western island of Sumatra, sent hot rocks and ash up to 5000 metres in the air several times on Saturday, National Disaster Mitigation Agency emergency response director Tri Budiarto said.

“So far, 25,516 people have been evacuated. There’s nobody now within a five-kilometre radius of the crater. We are urging those living within seven kilometres south-east of the crater to move, too,” he added.

Hot lava, which has been spewing from the volcano for the past two weeks, has flowed into a river and filled up valleys with volcanic fragments, he said.

“There were small secondary explosions when lava flows came into contact with the water, but there are no casualties so far. We are urging people not to carry out any activity in the rivers,” he added.

Mount Sinabung is one of 129 active volcanoes in Indonesia that straddle major tectonic fault lines, known as the Pacific Ring of Fire.

It had been quiet for about 400 years but rumbled back to life in 2010, and again in September 2013.

In August, five people were killed and hundreds were evacuated when a volcano erupted on a small island in East Nusa Tenggara province.

The country’s most active volcano, Mount Merapi in central Java, killed more than 350 people in a series of eruptions in 2010.

Sinabung spews ash into the air during an eruption. Photo: AFP
http://www.smh.com.au/world/more-than-25000-flee-indonesian-volcano-20140112-hv839.html
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/more-than-25000-flee-indonesian-volcano-20140112-hv839.html#ixzz2qDXC1LQo

When will mankind turn to His Creator God for healing? God revealed to Israel His chosen people after their captivity in Egypt for awful sins of idolatry and Sabbath breaking as key reasons, that IF they hearkened to all His commands and statutes He would put none of the diseases upon you, that He brought upon the Egyptians: for I am the LORD that heals you. (Exodus.15:26) That’s the 1st clue, God brought diseases upon the inhabitants of Egypt, and if you know how God teaches by types and parables, you will understand that Egypt is a type of sin and our current world system!  The LORD also promised he would take sickness away from them for obedience, and that He would be an enemy to their enemies! (Exodus.23:22-25.) God also promised that if Israel would hearken to and keep all His judgments, commandments and statutes, that they would blessed above all people, and again, He would take away from them ALL SICKNESS, and put none of the evil diseases of Egypt which they knew, but would lay them upon all those who hated them. (Deuteronomy.7:11-15.) Taking this through to a faithful man of God, king David said…forget not all His benefits, who forgives all your iniquities, (sins) who heals all your diseases..(Psalms.103:2-3.)

The above is but a small section of Old Testament scriptures, there are many, many more. In the New Testament we see the exact same teachings, where the apostle to the new Gentile churches taught what Christianity does not know today, saying; “Is any sick among you? Let him call for the elders of the church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord: And the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up; and if he have committed sins, they shall be forgiven him.” James.5:14-15. Who in so-called “christianity” observes these simple yet powerful commands of God today? Few if any, and those that do, do so while ignoring many other instructions given by inspiration of Almighty God. (II Tim.3:15-16.)

This may seem to be strange to many today as some new doctrine, we go to doctors today for healing, don’t we? The writer believes the word of The Living God, and hopefully, some reading this do too. But the simple fact is that there is A cause for every effect we see in this present evil and adulterous world. From sickness, disease & famine, to horrific weather & “natural” events occurring more and more regularly as we near the time of the end, called in scripture, the day of the LORD! Unfortunately for the west, and western powers, there will first come a time so awful, so grotesque and fearsome, that as Jesus Christ Himself said, there has never been, nor will there ever again be the like!! Matthew.24:20-21.

In fact, the scripture continues to reveal that if it were not for God’s elect, there would no flesh be saved alive! Matthew.24:22. But for their sakes… whose? the elects sakes, that time will  be cut short by Almighty God.

If we as a people who say we worship God, who “believe God, who supposedly honor Him, let us acknowledge that it is only through God’s own word that we can know His will, and God’s instructions tell us that IF we are of Him we will listen, obey & then DO His words, His commandments, and carry out His everlasting Laws, statutes and judgments. They have never been done away as so-called modern “Christianity” supposes in their willingly deceived minds, not knowing they are under the inspiration of a powerful being called in scripture, Satan and the Devil, who has deceived the whole world! (Rev.12:9.) The Bible actually tells us that the world’s people are the children of disobedience in whom the spirit of the prince of the power of the air works! (Eph.2:2.)

What this and many other aspects of human rebellion and disobedience boils down to is continual sickness and ever more frightening diseases falling upon the heads of humanity, and in what may seem so indiscriminately, are just some of the effects for causes they, humankind will not acknowledge, or accept, that they are in rebellion to the God of the universe, and their own Creator.

If you want to know more, write in for our booklet on WHY WERE YOU BORN? And for many other teachings that will cause you to realise that you have been wrong all your life. Your life, and your families lives are in your hands, and you can turn everything around today!

SIGNS of HIV have returned in two American men who appeared to have briefly eradicated the virus after bone marrow transplants for cancer, US doctors say.

Experts said the discovery is a disappointment to efforts to find a cure for the human immunodeficiency virus behind AIDS, but offers important new clues in the hunt for the disease’s elusive hiding places.

Only one person is believed to have been cured of HIV. American Timothy Brown, who suffered from leukemia, received a bone marrow transplant from a rare donor resistant to HIV and has shown no sign of the virus for six years.

“The return of detectible levels of HIV in our patients is disappointing, but scientifically significant,” said Timothy Heinrich, a physician-researcher in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.

“Through this research we have discovered the HIV reservoir is deeper and more persistent than previously known,” he said in a statement sent to AFP.

Dr Heinrich first shared the news with fellow researchers at an international AIDS conference in Miami, Florida on Thursday.

Both HIV-positive men received bone marrow transplants as treatment for a kind of blood cancer known as Hodgkin’s lymphoma, one in 2008 and the other in 2010.

About eight months after their operations, HIV was no longer detectable.

The patients stayed on antiretroviral therapy for while, but decided to cease taking the drugs earlier this year.

http://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/health/hiv-returns-in-two-us-men-after-bone-marrow-transplants/story-fneuz9ev-1226777584088