Pointers Ministries
Pointers Ministries is a Christian organisation based in Folkestone in Kent (United Kingdom) that concerns itself with Christian teaching and a Christian viewpoint relating to world events
Boffins create zombie dogs
By Nick Buchan
SCIENTISTS have created eerie zombie dogs, reanimating the canines after several hours of clinical death in attempts to develop suspended animation for humans.
US scientists have succeeded in reviving the dogs after three hours of clinical death, paving the way for trials on humans within years.
Pittsburgh's Safar Centre for Resuscitation Research has developed a technique in which subject's veins are drained of blood and filled with an ice-cold salt solution.
The animals are considered scientifically dead, as they stop breathing and have no heartbeat or brain activity.
But three hours later, their blood is replaced and the zombie dogs are brought back to life with an electric shock.
Plans to test the technique on humans should be realised within a year, according to the Safar Centre.
However rather than sending people to sleep for years, then bringing them back to life to benefit from medical advances, the boffins would be happy to keep people in this state for just a few hours.
But even this should be enough to save lives such as battlefield casualties and victims of stabbings or gunshot wounds, who have suffered huge blood loss.
During the procedure blood is replaced with saline solution at a few degrees above zero. The dogs' body temperature drops to only 7C, compared with the usual 37C, inducing a state of hypothermia before death.
Although the animals are clinically dead, their tissues and organs are perfectly preserved.
Damaged blood vessels and tissues can then be repaired via surgery. The dogs are brought back to life by returning the blood to their bodies, giving them 100 per cent oxygen and applying electric shocks to restart their hearts.
Tests show they are perfectly normal, with no brain damage.
"The results are stunning. I think in 10 years we will be able to prevent death in a certain segment of those using this technology," said one US battlefield doctor.
Co-op bank bars Christian group
The Co-operative Bank has asked an evangelical Christian group to close its account because of its anti-homosexual views.
The bank said the opinions of Christian Voice were incompatible with its support for diversity.
Christian Voice said the bank, based in Manchester, was discriminating against it on religious grounds.
It is now waiting for other religious groups with similar opinions to be asked to close accounts, it added.
Christian Voice has held an account with the Co-operative Bank for about three years.
But now the bank has decided the group's stance on homosexuality is so extreme, it has asked members to look for a new bank.
"It has come to the bank's attention that Christian Voice is engaged in discriminatory pronouncements based on the grounds of sexual orientation," a spokesman for the bank said. "This public stance is incompatible with the position of the Co-operative Bank, which publicly supports diversity and dignity in all its forms for our staff, customers and other stakeholders."
The Co-op bank, for all its fine words, is discriminating against us on the grounds of conscience and religion – Christian Voice
The decision was based "purely on the issue of diversity" and not "on the grounds of religion", the spokesman added.
The evangelical organisation says it now expects the bank to inform other Christian, Muslim and Jewish groups that they will not be able to bank there on the grounds that they all share the same view on homosexuality.
National director Stephen Green said: "The Co-op bank, for all its fine words, is discriminating against us on the grounds of conscience and religion."
Christian Voice first came under the spotlight earlier this year when it took on the BBC over its the decision to screen controversial musical Jerry Springer - The Opera.
Christian Voice complained the show was blasphemous and portrayed Jesus as a "sexual deviant".
Jesus joins Beckham as youth 'superhero'
Young people are more interested in tackling poverty and climate control than getting extra pocket money, living without rules or having their football team win, a survey says.
They also identify Jesus as the figure who most represents what it means to be a "superhero", followed closely by Florence Nightingale and David Beckham.
Asked what makes a superhero, 92 per cent say he or she would "stop bad things happening", 91 per cent say a superhero "is generally a good guy", and 90 per cent say they would "tell the truth".
The findings come from a poll of 2,000 eight- to 14-year-olds, of whom 52 per cent were girls, by 4Children, the children's charity.
More than six in 10 of those polled said being rich was a good thing, but eight in 10 chose "being me" and 74 per cent said "the internet".
Villains were described as those who "tell lies" (88 per cent), "only look after themselves" (87 per cent), "let you down" (85 per cent), are "generally bad guys" (85 per cent), "kill people" (85 per cent) and "cannot be trusted" (82 per cent).
Only 42 per cent said that villains took drugs. The charity found that 90 per cent of young people wanted an end to hunger as their "change for an ideal world", while only 25 per cent saw having no restrictions or rules as the path to a better life.
Many showed a respect for the environment, with 86 per cent wanting to get rid of litter, 83 per cent wanting to stop people smoking, 72 per cent wanting graffiti cleared up and 69 per cent wanting a ban on alcohol and drugs.
The survey is to be launched today by Margaret Hodge, the employment minister. She said: "These 'voices of the future' are telling us that they have a strong sense of responsibility to others."
Anne Longfield, the chief executive of 4Children, said: "With the mass popularity of cause-related wristbands, and campaigns against war and poverty, children and young people are leading the way in social conscience."
Number of children taught at home soars
The number of children taught at home has almost doubled in the past five years, a trend that experts say reflects a crisis of confidence in the state school system.
Government figures show the number of five to 16-year-olds educated at home jumped from 12,000 in 1999 to 21,000 last year.
The increasing number of parents opting out of the school system reflects a similar trend in the United States, where one in 20 children is now taught at home.
Though children have to be educated, there is no legal requirement in Britain for them to attend school. The progress of children at home may be monitored at intervals by the local education authority.
Home teaching groups claim the number taught at home could soar to 150,000 by 2015, equivalent to one child in 30.
Mike Fortune-Wood, of Home Education UK, a website that provides advice on home schooling, said there was a “quiet revolution” going on. “People find that at home they can provide their children with an education far better suited to their individual needs,” he said.
Janey Lee Grace, a Radio 2 presenter and mother of three, teaches her two older sons, aged five and six, at her Hertfordshire home. She relies on a network of like-minded parents, informal tutoring groups and an organisation called Naturekids, which stresses the link between learning and nutrition.
“I think the school system fails most kids,” she said. “It’s fine if you want to be in the army, but not for most people who are more individual.
“I know a home-taught 11-year-old who is taking her maths GCSE. She will take the rest of her GCSEs at the normal age, but because she is good at maths she is going at her own faster speed.”
In the next academic year parents teaching at home will have the further support of the country’s first internet secondary school. The £165-a-month online school is being pioneered by Paul Daniell, 42, a senior physics teacher in south Wales.
It will use the internet and conference-call technology to offer GCSEs in seven core subjects. Teachers will give morning classes online to small groups and set them work for the afternoon under parental supervision.
To date, more than 40 children have been signed up to the “Inter High School”, which has three teachers. Numbers are expected to grow, with interest from families abroad and even teachers in conventional schools who wish to use the lessons.
Kenyan grandfather, 73, kills leopard with hands
Nairobi – A 73-year-old Kenyan grandfather reached into the mouth of an attacking leopard and tore out its tongue to kill it, authorities said on Wednesday.
Peasant farmer Daniel M’Mburugu was tending to his potato and bean crops in a rural area near Mount Kenya when the leopard charged out of the long grass and leapt on him.
M’Mburugu had a machete in one hand but dropped that to thrust his fist down the leopard’s mouth. He gradually managed to pull out the animal’s tongue, leaving it in its death-throes.
"It let out a blood-curdling snarl that made the birds stop chirping," he told the daily Standard newspaper of how the leopard came at him and knocked him over.
The leopard sank its teeth into the farmer’s wrist and mauled him with its claws. "A voice, which must have come from God, whispered to me to drop the panga (machete) and thrust my hand in its wide open mouth. I obeyed," M’Mburugu said.
As the leopard was dying, a neighbour heard the screams and arrived to finish it off with a machete.
M’Mburugu was toasted as a hero in his village Kihato after the incident earlier this month. He was also given free hospital treatment by astonished local authorities.
"This guy is very lucky to be alive," Kenya Wildlife Service official Connie Maina said, confirming details of the incident.
‘Make Abortion History’ challenges UN
Group combats 'Make Poverty History' effort pushing population control
A British pro-life group has begun a "Make Abortion History" to combat a "Make Poverty History" campaign the organization says promotes abortion around the world.
"Christians are signing up and supporting the [Make Poverty History] campaign without seeing the hidden agendas behind it," Grace Mason of United for Life said, "so they are actually supporting the killing of children in poor countries by abortion while at the same time saying they want to help children of those same nations."
The Make Poverty History campaign hopes to push the reform of trade policies, the lessening of debt owed by poor countries and a greater level of aid to the developing world. It blames poverty on "man-made factors like a glaringly unjust global trade system, a debt burden so great that it suffocates any chance of recovery and insufficient and ineffective aid."
One of the organization's plans is to rally in Edinburgh, Scotland, during the coming meeting of the G-8 nations.
"Make Poverty History" is part of the effort to implement the U.N.'s Millennium Development Goals, eight goals that proponents hope will be met by 2015. They include promoting "gender equality and empowerment of women" and improving "maternal health" – encompassing veiled references to legal abortion.
States United for Life's website: "We need to remind ourselves that the 'right to life' is the fundamental right upon which all other rights are based. The right to food, education, health care, clean water or housing, for instance, are meaningless if there is no 'right to life.'"
The group's Make Abortion History campaign includes the opposition of "any method of contraception which works by preventing a tiny human life from implanting in the mother's womb – i.e., the Pill, IUD, Norplant, morning-after pill and Depo Provera."
Pointing out global population-control programs sometimes include bribing residents of poor villages to get sterilized or take birth control, United for Life contends those same UN-linked programs provide little support for women giving birth.
While the Making Poverty History campaign has received the support of scores of charitable organizations, those behind Making Abortion History are challenging some of those same groups to sign onto their effort instead. United for Life is asking that organizations commit to 10 specific actions, including lobbying governments to withhold funding from U.N.-related population-control agencies.
States United for Life's website: "We call upon all charities, organizations and government bodies to protect men, women and children from all forms of abortion."
Mason notes some of the organizations signed onto the anti-poverty effort are notorious abortion promoters, including International Planned Parenthood Federation and Marie Stopes International.
Asks Mason: "Why would Christians want to support something that these organizations support?"