Groundbreaking Held For Sapporo Japan Temple

A groundbreaking ceremony for the Sapporo Japan Temple of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons) was held Saturday amidst wind and rain, marking the beginning of the Church?s third temple in Japan and sixth in Asia.

Elder Gary E. Stevenson of the Church?s First Quorum of the Seventy presided at the groundbreaking. He was joined by Elders Michael T. Ringwood and Koichi Aoyagi of the Seventy. Former Japan prime minister Yukio Hatoyama also attended the ceremony.

?I am thankful for this historic groundbreaking?even in this downpour,? Elder Stevenson said. ?Everything today was wet with rain, but the spirit of the saints was not dampened at all. They came with their hearts open and with complete joy as they saw the image of the temple at the groundbreaking ceremony. You could see that their eyes and hearts were just filled with joy to know that they are going to have a house of the Lord on the island.?

Former prime minister Hatoyama expressed gratitude to the Church for its Japan earthquake and tsunami recovery efforts. Hatoyama also praised the church for its focus on strong families.

The Sapporo Japan Temple was first announced at the October 2009 general conference by President Thomas S. Monson. Dedicated in October 1980, the Tokyo Japan Temple was the first temple in Asia.?The Fukuoka Temple was dedicated in June 2000 and became the eighty-eighth temple worldwide.

The Church, which has been in Japan since 1901, has 125,000 Latter-day Saints spread through 286 congregations.

Site plan for the Japan Sapporo Temple

Caption ? 2011 Intellectual Reserve, Inc. All rights reserved


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Source: http://feeds.lds.org/~r/LDSNewsRoomTop15/~3/Bec103OJiu4/groundbreaking-sapporo-japan-temple

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Defendant in suit over megachurch investments (AP)

ATLANTA ? A North Carolina businessman involved in an investment program at an Atlanta-area megachurch where former members claim they lost their retirement savings says he's taking action to "make things right."

A group of church members is suing New Birth Missionary Baptist Church and its pastor, Bishop Eddie Long, saying they conspired with businessman Ephren Taylor Jr. to defraud the members through "wealth-building" seminars and sermons in 2009.

"Don't assume that I am just another greedy businessman," Taylor said in a statement to The Associated Press. "I am taking action to make things right."

He said the claims in the lawsuit came about because of "some of the negative effects of a situation with very complex economics impacted businesses, individuals and families despite our best intentions."

Attorneys for the church members say in a DeKalb County lawsuit that Taylor urged them to liquidate their retirement accounts, and as a result some lost their life savings. Plaintiff's attorney Jason Doss, who filed the lawsuit, said his legal team has struggled to locate Taylor, who operated a company in Raleigh, N.C.

"We don't know where he is," said Doss. "He's sort of off the map."

The seminars were hosted at the Lithonia-based church, which claims 25,000 members.

The U.S. Secret Service is investigating Taylor's activities, but "there is no investigation of the church itself," agency spokesman Max Milien said Monday.

Taylor is also named as a defendant in a federal lawsuit filed this month in U.S. District Court in North Carolina.

In that case, lawyers say Taylor made a series of investment presentations for the "Prosperity Fund" at churches in Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Tennessee.

In the summer of 2008, he spoke at the Democratic National Convention to a youth leaders' summit on his "socially conscious" corporate investment strategy, according to the federal lawsuit.

"Taylor was fortunate to be riding the wave of popularity of young, black, successful men created by then U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama," the lawsuit claims.

New Birth spokesman Art Franklin previously declined to comment on the church's role in the investments.

___

Associated Press writer Greg Bluestein in Atlanta contributed to this report.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/religion/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111024/ap_on_re_us/us_ga_megachurch_investigation

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Assange: Financial blockade may close WikiLeaks (AP)

LONDON ? WikiLeaks ? whose spectacular publication of classified data shook world capitals and exposed the inner workings of international diplomacy ? may be weeks away from collapse, the organization's leader said Monday.

Although its attention-grabbing leaks spread outrage and embarrassment across military and diplomatic circles, WikiLeaks' inability to overturn the block on donations imposed by American financial companies may prove its undoing.

"If WikiLeaks does not find a way to remove this blockade we will simply not be able to continue by the turn of the new year," founder Julian Assange told journalists at London's Frontline Club. "If we don't knock down the blockade we simply will not be able to continue."

As an emergency measure, Assange said his group would cease what he called "publication operations" to focus its energy on fundraising. He added that WikiLeaks ? which he said had about 20 employees ? needs an additional $3.5 million to keep it going into 2013.

WikiLeaks, launched as an online repository for confidential information, shot to notoriety with the April 2010 disclosure of footage of two Reuters journalists killed by a U.S. military strike in Baghdad.

The Pentagon had claimed that the journalists were likely "intermixed among the insurgents," but the helicopter footage, which captured U.S. airmen firing on prone figures and joking about "dead bastards," unsettled many across the world.

The video was just a foretaste. In the following months, WikiLeaks published nearly half a million secret military documents from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. As a whole the documents provided an unprecedented level of detail into the grueling, bloody conflicts. Individually, many raised concerns about the actions of the U.S. and its local allies ? for example by detailing evidence of abuse, torture and worse by Iraqi security forces.

Although U.S. officials railed against the disclosures, claiming that they were putting lives at risk, it wasn't until WikiLeaks began publishing a massive trove of 250,000 U.S. State Department cables late last year that the financial screws began to tighten.

One after the other, MasterCard Inc., Visa Europe Ltd., Bank of America Corp. Western Union Co. and Ebay Inc.'s PayPal stopped processing donations to WikiLeaks, starving the organization of cash as it was coming under intense political, financial and legal pressure.

Assange said Monday that the restrictions ? imposed in early December ? had cut off some 95 percent of the money he believes his organization could have received.

WikiLeaks spokesman Kristinn Hrafnsson defended the estimate as "conservative," noting that in 2010 the average monthly donation to WikiLeaks had been more than 100,000 euros ($140,000), while in 2011 the amount had fallen to between 6,000 and 7,000 euros.

Each company has given its own explanation for the blockade, expressing some level of concern over the nature of the secret-spilling site. But WikiLeaks supporters often point out that MasterCard and Visa still process payments for fringe groups such as the American KKK or the far-right British National Party and that neither WikiLeaks nor any of its staff have been charged with any crime.

Assange said his group was being subjected to corporate censorship, a sentiment backed by Dave Winer, a visiting scholar at New York University's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute.

"This was done without due process, without any charges, and has been in place since December last year," he said in a blog post about the blockade. "If I want to give $100 to WikiLeaks, and if I want to use my credit card to do so, who are they to say I can't?"

WikiLeaks has recently taken steps to work around the blockade, including a series of auctions and moves toward cell phone-enabled donations. Assange said Monday that his group was switching its focus from soliciting small-time donations, which typically net about $25, to getting money from a "constellation of wealthy individuals."

He didn't elaborate, but Assange has several wealthy backers, including Frontline Club founder Vaughan Smith, whose manor house in eastern England has been put at Assange's disposal while he fights extradition to Sweden on sex crime allegations.

A decision on whether to extradite him is expected in the next few weeks. Speaking to journalists after Monday's appearance, Assange put his chances of being extradited without the possibility of appeal at "30 percent."

Also looming in the background is a U.S. grand jury investigation into WikiLeaks' disclosures. Earlier this month a small California-based Internet provider became the second company to confirm it was fighting a court order demanding customer account information as part of the American WikiLeaks inquiry.

WikiLeaks' suspected source, U.S. Army intelligence analyst Bradley Manning, remains in custody at Fort Leavenworth prison in Kansas.

___

Online:

WikiLeaks: http://wikileaks.ch/

Frontline Club: http://www.frontlineclub.com/

___

Raphael G. Satter can be reached at: http://twitter.com/razhael

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/topstories/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111024/ap_on_hi_te/eu_britain_wikileaks

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Hot-grease death: Wife charged after 40 years on run

Four decades after fleeing Texas authorities, an elderly woman accused of dousing her husband with hot grease is facing a murder charge in his death.

Mary Ann Rivera, wearing an orange prison uniform and wheeling around an oxygen tank, made her first court appearance Friday in Houston. She had her case reset to Nov. 15.

The ailing 76-year-old is accused of killing her husband, Cruz Rivera, in October 1970.

Prosecutors said Rivera threw hot grease on her husband after getting angry at him. He died days later from liver problems caused by his burns.

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Court records don't give a motive, and authorities say police were never called to the couple's Houston home for domestic violence.

Rivera was brought back to Texas this week after cold case detectives tracked her down in the small Georgia town of Lake Park.

'We understand'
Rivera had been a fugitive since 1970, when she posted a $10,000 bond and disappeared with her three children.

Authorities say she worked as a waitress, raised her children and made friends in Georgia.

One of her grandsons, who wanted to remain anonymous, told WCTV that he felt "no ill feelings toward her."

"We understand what she did, and she told us her side of the story," he reportedly said. "My grandmother was always there for me. She was always there for all of us."

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44985845/ns/us_news-crime_and_courts/

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NATO tries to remove Kosovo Serb roadblocks

NATO-led peacekeepers tried to remove roadblocks in northern Kosovo on Saturday, but were prevented by Serbs guarding the blockade that has paralyzed travel in the tense region.

The troops in full riot gear tried overnight to push through three of the 16 roadblocks formed from vehicles, rocks, mud and logs. But they were met by hundreds of Serbs who sat on the roads to stop the advance.

No force was used and no injuries were reported during the tense six-hour standoff.

Kosovo Serbs have been blocking roads to stop the country's ethnic Albanian leadership from extending its control over the part of the country populated mostly by ethnic Serbs.

Serbs reject Kosovo's 2008 declaration of independence and consider the region a part of neighboring Serbia. They say the peacekeepers are biased against them.

The NATO-led troops say they want to establish freedom of movement for all citizens and ensure supply of their troops stationed in Kosovo.

In July, ethnic Albanian authorities deployed their security forces to two border posts in northern Kosovo to enforce a trade ban with Serbia. Serbs reacted by blocking roads and triggering clashes with Kosovo police that left one police officer dead.

Kosovo Serb leaders say they are willing to negotiate free passage for the 5,500-strong peacekeeping force ? known as KFOR ? but only if it doesn't transport Kosovo officials.

"As long as KFOR tries to deploy Kosovo authorities in the north of Kosovo by force, freedom of movement is impossible," said Kosovo Serb official Slavisa Ristic.

The Serb officials later met Kosovo's NATO commander and the head of the 3,000-strong European Union rule of law mission ? known as EULEX ? but failed to resolve the deadlock.

"We expect freedom of movement to be re-established for everyone so that people can go about their normal daily lives without restrictions," the head of EULEX, Xavier bout de Marnhac, said after the meeting.

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"People want freedom of movement and the rule of law," he said. "Those who put up the roadblocks should bring them down."

On Friday, the commander of NATO-led peacekeepers in Kosovo Maj. Gen. Erhard Drews again told Serbs to remove their roadblocks, warning that otherwise force would have to be used.

___

Dusan Stojanovic contributed to this report from Belgrade.

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44997104/ns/world_news-europe/

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First Americans hunted mastodons 13,800 years ago

Humans were hunting mastodons in what is now Washington state 13,800 years ago. The finding adds to the evidence that humans entered North America at least 800 years before the rise of the Clovis culture, long thought to have been the first Americans.

Back in 1977, archaeologist Carl Gustafson ? then at Washington State University in Pullman ? excavated a male mastodon near Sequim, Washington. Buried in one of the ribs he found a bone fragment that didn't belong to the elephant-like animal, which he suggested was from the tip of a weapon used to kill the beast. Carbon dating of the remains revealed a surprise: they appeared to be around 14,000 years old ? predating humans' first arrival in North America, according to the theories of the time.

Other archaeologists were unconvinced. "The dating was tenuous," says Michael Waters of Texas A&M University in College Station. Since then, however, evidence has grown that humans were in the Americas before the rise of the Clovis culture, prompting Waters and Gustafson to reanalyse the remains with the latest carbon-dating technology.

They have confirmed that both the skeleton and the bone fragment are 13,800 years old. Detailed CT scans reveal that the bone had been sharpened to a point and driven into one of the mastodon's ribs. Waters thinks the sharpened bone came from the tip of a weapon that was thrust into the animal by a hunter who was aiming for the lungs, but missed.

Pictures: The mastodon rib with the embedded weapon point fragment

DNA and protein from the sharpened bone show that it came from another mastodon. To get it, the humans must have either killed one or scavenged a fresh carcass.

Munching on mastodon

Waters thinks the first American colonists came over the Bering land bridge from Asia, and may have reached Alaska as early as 20,000 years ago. From there they headed south 16,000 years ago, eventually giving rise to the more advanced Clovis culture, which used distinctive stone tools, in what is now the south-east US. A second, seafaring society may have arisen on the California coast.

"The vast majority of archaeologists now accept the pre-Clovis colonisation of the Americas," says Dennis Jenkins of the University of Oregon in Eugene.

The first colonists probably contributed to the mass extinction of large animals like mastodons, which died out as the ice age ended 12,000 years ago. "Changing weather and ecology contributed substantially to the extinction of the megafauna," says Jenkins. "However, there is no doubt that hunting by humans hastened their demise."

Journal reference: Science, DOI: 10.1126/science.1207663

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AT&T activates 1 million iPhone 4S units, best iPhone launch for carrier ever (Appolicious)

AT&T?s quarterly earnings call for the last quarter of fiscal 2011 revealed that the iPhone 4S isn?t just setting records with Apple.

According to a story from ZDNet, AT&T reports it has activated more than 1 million iPhone 4S units since the phone?s launch last Friday, Oct. 14. It?s the best launch of an iPhone AT&T has ever seen. That?s saying something, considering that AT&T is the only provider that has carried every single iPhone and, for a long time, was the only provider carrying the iPhone at all. The iPhone 4S is doing so well that even with the options of two other carriers in Verizon and Sprint, and now with C Spire joining the march, AT&T still had a record-breaking iPhone launch.

It seems the success of the iPhone 4S is pretty much massive and universal. Apple reported last week that it had sold 4 million of the devices since it began taking pre-orders (the first million were sold within the first 24 hours of pre-order availability).

But those sales didn?t fall within AT&T?s fiscal third quarter of 2011. In fact, AT&T saw a decline in iPhone sales during the third quarter, dropping to 2.7 million iPhones from 3.6 million during the same period last year, Mashable reports. Apple reported a similar drop in iPhone sales during its last quarter (before the iPhone 4S went on sale), which it blamed on customers waiting for the 4S, rather than purchasing the aging iPhone 4 during that quarter. For Apple?s part, it moved some 17.1 million iPhones, but that was down from 20.1 million during the same time last year. It caused Apple?s stock to drop about 6 percent, despite the success of its new phone model.

For AT&T, there are a few things at work, it seems. One is very likely the rumor mill that Apple blamed for driving down iPhone 4 sales during the quarter, as well as anticipation of the launch of a new device. Increased competition might be another, with Verizon for the first time selling iPhones alongside AT&T during 2011. And finally, there?s AT&T?s own push to grow its business beyond just reliance on the iPhone, something with which it has struggled. AT&T said during its earnings report that it has activated 2.1 million Android phones and other smartphones as well as the 2.7 million iPhones, which puts its total sales at an almost even split between the two operating systems.

Overall, AT&T?s profits for the just-closed quarter were down quite a bit from the same time last year, down to $3.6 billion from $12.3 billion last year. AT&T says part of the reason was a big one-time tax settlement that significantly boosted its profits in 2010, according to Engadget. But another part is surely the loss of its iPhone exclusivity to other carriers.

It seems AT&T is doing well to diversify its business so it doesn?t suffer too greatly at the loss of the iPhone, but it also seems as if the company needs to do more. With Sprint now entering the game, as well as at least one smaller regional carrier, all bets are off as far as the iPhone is concerned, and AT&T can no longer lean on the crutch of just having the phone. Now it has to offer customers some good reasons to choose its iPhone (or Android devices) over its competitors. Sprint has the right idea in maintaining its offer of unlimited data service, but AT&T already cut that offer, in part because of the big strain on its network from so many iPhones. The company will need to come up with some other cool offers to help keep its numbers up in the future, but certainly the iPhone 4S is going to help.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/applecomputer/*http%3A//us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/external/appolicious_rss/rss_appolicious_tc/http___www_appolicious_com_articles9967_at_t_activates_1_million_iphone_4s_units_best_iphone_launch_for_carrier_ever/43329233/SIG=13v4samma/*http%3A//www.appolicious.com/finance/articles/9967-at-t-activates-1-million-iphone-4s-units-best-iphone-launch-for-carrier-ever

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Archaeologists find Viking burial site in Scotland (AP)

LONDON ? Archaeologists said Tuesday they have discovered the remains of a Viking chief buried with his boat, ax, sword and spear on a remote Scottish peninsula ? one of the most significant Norse finds ever uncovered in Britain.

The 16-foot-long (5-meter-long) grave is the first intact site of its kind to have been discovered on mainland Britain and is believed to be more than 1,000 years old. Much of the wooden boat and the Viking bones have rotted away, but scraps of wood and hundreds of metal rivets that held the vessel together remain.

The archeologists also unearthed a shield boss ? a circular piece of metal attached to the middle of a shield ? and a bronze ring-pin buried with the Viking. They also found a knife, a whetstone to sharpen tools, and Viking pottery on the site on the Ardnamurchan peninsula on Scotland's west coast.

The boat and its contents were discovered by a team of archeologists from Manchester and Leicester universities working with the cultural heritage organization Archaeology Scotland and consultants CFA Archaeology.

Hannah Cobb, co-director of the project, said the discovery had exceeded expectations.

"A Viking boat burial is an incredible discovery, but in addition to that the artifacts and preservation make this one of the most important Norse graves ever excavated in Britain," she said.

The team of archeologists had been digging on the Ardnamurchan peninsula to learn more about social change in the area.

Vikings from Scandinavia made frequent raids on Scotland and what is now northeast England in the 8th and 9th centuries, and many Vikings set up settlements in the area.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/britain/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111019/ap_on_re_eu/eu_britain_viking_ship

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