Giant Jesus Now Looms Over Polish Town

| Sunday, November 7, 2010 | 0 comments |
by Scott Baker

SWIEBODZIN, Poland (AP) — Workers have completed a giant statue of Jesus Christ in a small Polish town that its creators say ranks as the biggest in the world.

Hundreds of residents gathered to watch a towering crane lifting the crowned head onto the top of the statue in the town of Swiebodzin on Saturday.

The statue is the creation of a retired local priest, Rev. Sylwester Zawadzki. Many local residents and business people in Swiebodzin (shvee-eh-BOHD’-jeen) say they hope it will put their town of 22,000 on the map for Roman Catholic pilgrims and bring in money to their community.

Organizers say it will be the largest statue of Jesus in the world, rising even higher than Rio de Janeiro’s iconic Christ the Redeemer statue.

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Oregon Couple Drops Condoms in Kids’ Trick-or-Treat Bags

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by Meredith Jessup

Parents in one Oregon town were not amused when their trick-or-treaters came home with a bag full of candy and — courtesy of one local couple — condoms.

As a result, a post-Halloween controversy has brewed up among residents of the town of Silverton.

Kathleen Harris says she and her husband have been handing out condoms to high school-age trick-or-treaters for years, but introduced the practice to Silverton this year after recently moving to the area. Though Harris and her husband view the prophylactic “treats” as a community service that promotes health, local dad Daniel Côté disagrees.

Côté says he was shocked when his 14-year-old daughter received condoms from Harris, calling it an intrusion of family privacy and a violation of his paternal rights to raise his daughter as he wishes. “It is hard for me as a parent to imagine any justification for giving children condoms without parents’ consent,” Côté told the Statesman Journal. “It’s inappropriate. I want to deal in my own house with my own children.”

Harris admits that giving condoms to a 14-year-old was a mistake; the couple’s standard practice is to hand them out to kids who claim to be at least 16. She says she doesn’t believe that handing out the contraceptive encourages sexual behavior. Instead, she insists they are an educational tool to get kids familiar with what they look like should they decide to have sex in the future. She says she also encourages kids to pass them on to other people they might know who need them.

“It’s harm reduction,” Harris says. “Kids are going to do these things anyway, so we want them to have to at least think about it ahead of time.”

But Côté and other parents vehemently disagree with Harris’ reasoning.

“By providing kids with condoms, you’re promoting sexual activity no matter how you look at it,” Côté said, adding that while he respects the Harrises’ opinions, they shouldn’t impose them on other people.

“[Sex is] definitely a subject reserved for family, not some neighbor I hardly know...."

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Obama Calls India Creator, Not Poacher, of US Jobs

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by Scott Baker

MUMBAI, India (AP) — Searching for help half a world away, President Barack Obama on Saturday embraced India as the next jobs-creating giant for hurting Americans, not a cheap-labor rival that outsources opportunity from the United States.

Fresh off a political trouncing at home, Obama was determined to show tangible, economic results on his long Asia trip, and that was apparent from almost the moment he set foot on a steamy afternoon in the world’s largest democracy. By the end of the first of his three days in India, he was promoting $10 billion in trade deals — completed in time for his visit — that the White House says will create about 54,000 jobs at home.

That’s a modest gain compared with the extent of the enduring jobless crisis in the United States. Economists say it would require on the level of 300,000 new jobs a month to put a real dent in an unemployment rate stuck near 10 percent.

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¡Ay, caramba! Even Latinos don’t support illegal immigration

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by Ryan Hagen

A new study shows Latinos have soured considerably on illegal immigration in the last three years.

In 2007, 50percent of Latinos surveyed told the Pew Hispanic Center that the growing number of illegal immigrants was a positive force for the existing Latino population. In a Pew survey released Thursday, that number had plummeted to 29percent.

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Upside Down Gospel Message

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Hopi Tribal Council bans environmental groups

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Actions by environmental groups threaten total
economic collapse of the tribe, council declares

by Navajo-Hopi Observer

KYKOTSMOVI, Ariz. - The Hopi Tribe has a message for the Sierra Club and other environmental groups: Keep out!

That is the response of the Hopi Tribal Council on Monday to what it says has been continuous concerted attacks from local and national environmental groups "bent on advancing their interests and agenda at the expense of the Hopi Tribe and its sovereign interest."

The council wants the Sierra Club and other environmental groups and on-reservation organizations affiliated with these groups to know they are not welcome on the Hopi Reservation, declaring them persona non grata - no longer favored or welcome.

By a resolution approved 12-0, the council said environmentalists have deprived the tribe "of markets for its coal resources" and coal revenues needed to sustain governmental services, provide jobs for tribal members and safeguard Hopi culture and tradition.

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