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Luis Miguel Goitizolo

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RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES?
9/2/2015 1:15:37 AM

Dow plunges 470 points as oil sinks 8% in grim September debut

Yahoo Finance



U.S. stocks kicked off September with heavy losses on the heels of the worst month for Wall Street since 2012 amid mounting concerns over the strength of the global economy.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI) dropped 469.7 points, or 2.8%, to 16058.3, the S&P 500 (^GSPC) fell 58.3 points, or 3.8%, to 1913.8 and the Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC) tumbled 140.4 points, or 2.9%, to 4636.1.

The broad S&P 500 tumbled 6.26% in August, its worst month since May 2012. The rout erased some $5 trillion in global equity market value as traders ditched stocks.

On Tuesday, traders cited swelling anxiety over the state of two of the world's biggest economies as reasons for steep losses.

The Institute for Supply Management's manufacturing PMI dropped to 51.1 in August from 52.7 the month prior, compared to expectations of a much shallower drop to 52.6. The reading indicates U.S. factory growth slowed down in August to the lowest level since August 2013.

Michael Montgomery, U.S. economist at IHS Global Insight, reckons the rest of the year could be a "bumpy ride" for American manufacturers. However, Montgomery notes factory activity has "stalled," and probably won't deteriorate or improve much before next year.

Meanwhile, China's official PMI reading suggests the manufacturing sector in the world's second-biggest economy contracted at the swiftest pace since August 2012 last month. Separately, the Caixin PMI gauge for August pointed to the heaviest drop in factory activity in more than six years.

"Another day, another sign of weakness from the Chinese economy," wrote Joshua Mahony, a market analyst at London-based IG, in a note to clients, adding, "the importance of today's announcement is that the slowdown is hitting the larger state-backed firms who typically take longer to feel the pain."

The gloomy data out of China ignited a selloff in Asia, where the Shanghai Composite (000001.SS) dropped 1.2%. The Japanese Nikkei 225 (^N225) tumbled 3.8%, while the MSCI's index of Asia-Pacific performance excluding Japan dipped 1.9%.

The selling ricocheted into Europe, with the Euro Stoxx 50, a measure of large-capitalization European stocks, sinking 3.2%. Benchmark indexes in Germany and France were both down more than 2%, while the UK's FTSE 100 (^FTSE) plummeted more than 3%.

Commodities took a beating as well. U.S. crude oil prices (CLV15.NYM) collapsed 8.3% to $45.12 a barrel, extending 2015 losses to 13.3%. Wholesale New York Harbor gasoline prices tumbled 9 cents, or 5.1%, to $1.41 a gallon.

In metals, copper, seen as an economic bellwether, melted by 1%, to $2.31 a pound. Gold (GCZ15.CMX) drifted slightly higher to $1,138.40 a troy ounce.

Digging into U.S. markets, every major S&P 500 sector was in the red. The worst performers were energy, financials, materials and industrials -- all segments that tend to be linked closely to economic performance. Consumer staples, health-care and utilities, seen as defensive plays, avoided the worst selling.

Traders also took shelter in U.S. Treasury bonds. The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note fell 0.028 percentage point to 2.172% as traders bid-up the asset. Bond yields move in the opposite direction of prices, so as traders buy, the yield falls.

The CBOE's VIX, sometimes called Wall Street's fear gauge, jumped 11.3%, adding to a year-to-date surge of close to 64.7%.

Eyes on the Fed

As the September meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee looms, investors have been paying ever-closer attention to comments by key Federal Reserve officials. On Tuesday, Boston Fed chief Eric Rosengren noted in a speech in New York that while the labor market improved enough to satisfy policymakers, data have not "been as clear-cut" on whether the rate of inflation will move up to the Fed's 2% target in a "reasonable time frame."

Rosengren, who is currently a non-voting alternate on the FOMC, said slowing in foreign economies, stock-market volatility and sliding commodity prices could keep the U.S. economy from growing quickly enough to boost the pace of inflation.

Over the weekend, vice chair Stanley Fischer said there is "good reason to believe" inflation will indeed move higher, and that the Fed needn't wait for inflation to hit 2% in order for the Fed to hike rates for the first time in nearly a decade.

Fed funds futures pointed to an implied probability of about 32% that the Fed will boost rates in September, according to data from the CME Group. Meanwhile, a recent poll by Bloomberg indicated Wall Street economists were essentially evenly split on whether to expect a September liftoff.



Stocks begin September with a plunge


The Dow ends down 470 points — a 2.8 percent drop — as worries about the global economy mount.
Oil plummets


"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)

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Luis Miguel Goitizolo

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RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES?
9/2/2015 1:36:26 AM

Texas Sheriff Slams Release of Video Showing Man With Arms Up Before Shooting


VIDEO: Texas Police Responding to Domestic Dispute Gun Down Man

Watch video
/ ABCNews.com




A Texas sheriff’s office has criticized the release of witness video showing deputies fatally shooting a man who appears to have his hands in the air, which has prompted outrage and an investigation in Texas.

Gilbert Flores died Friday shortly after the shooting, which occurred when deputies responded to a domestic disturbance call.

A college student said he saw the San Antonio incident and started filming with his cellphone.

"He kind of just put his hands in the air. After he put his hands in the air, they shot him," student Michael Thomas told ABC affiliate KSAT-TV in San Antonio.

Thomas sold the footage to KSAT for $100, police say, and the station posted the unedited video on its website and used it on-air.

“As a result, people from outside our community have bombarded us with inappropriate comments, and today, physical threats toward our deputies,” the Bexar County Sheriff's Office said in a Facebook post. “These deputies have not been charged with a crime and a family lost their loved one. This is unethical and sad.”

Meanwhile, Sheriff's Office spokesman James Keith has confirmed to ABC News that there is a second video of the shooting that was filmed by a neighbor. They said that it will not be released publicly because it is being considered as evidence.

In the footage obtained by KSAT, 41-year-old Flores is slightly blocked by a pole in the video but both of his arms appear to be raised when he was shot. The two deputies were identified by the Sheriff's Office in a statement as Greg Vasquez and Robert Sanchez, with the office reporting the deputies saying Flores was armed, but did not specify what kind of weapon he allegedly had, according to the Associated Press.

Vasquez and Sanchez are on paid administrative leave during the investigation, officials said.

Police say Flores injured a woman and an 18-month-old girl inside a home, prompting the domestic dispute call, and the deputies reportedly used non-lethal force weapons before the fatal shooting outside the home.

The Sheriff's Department is now criticizing the release of the video, posting a message on its Facebook profile about how the "sensational behavior" by KSAT has prompted "physical threats toward our deputies."

"Certainly, what's in the video is a cause for concern, but it's important to let the investigation go through its course so that we can assure a thorough and complete review of all that occurred," Sheriff Susan Pamerleau said at a news conference Friday.

The district attorney's office confirmed that it is investigating the case and will consider Thomas' footage.

"That gives us a whole different perspective that we've never had before," a spokesman for the district attorney's office told ABC News.

ABC News' Matt Gutman contributed to this report.



"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)

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Luis Miguel Goitizolo

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RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES?
9/2/2015 1:55:30 AM

Thai prime minister says bombing suspect arrested at border

Associated Press

Wochit
Thailand Nabs Foreigner Who Is Main Shrine Attack Suspect


BANGKOK (AP) — Thai authorities arrested a man they believe is part of a group responsible for a deadly bombing at a shrine in central Bangkok two weeks ago, the prime minister announced Tuesday. He said the suspect resembles a yellow-shirted man in a surveillance video who police say planted the bomb.

"It would be great if he were (the bomber). Then we will know who they are, where they came from, who's behind this," Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha told reporters.

He said the man is a foreigner and was detained in eastern Thailand near the Cambodian border, one of several border crossings where authorities set up checkpoints after the Aug. 17 bombing which killed 20 people, many of them foreign tourists, and injured more than 120.

Prayuth said authorities plan to check fingerprints and conduct DNA tests to establish whether the man is the bomber. Police say they obtained the bomber's DNA from a motorcycle taxi and a three-wheeled tuk-tuk taxi that he used.

Spokesmen for police and the military junta that rules Thailand both later said the arrested man resembles the suspect they have been seeking for planting the bomb.

No one has publicly claimed responsibility for the attack, sparking an array of theories about who might be behind it. Police have suggested that the suspects were part of a people-smuggling group who held a grudge against Thai authorities.

Speculation has grown that the suspect might be part of a group seeking to avenge Thailand's forced repatriation of ethnic Uighurs to China in July. Prayuth on Monday linked the two theories, suggesting the bombers might have been involved in smuggling Uighurs out of China.

Prayuth said officials knew from their investigation that people involved in the bombing were about to flee the country and had traced the man to Aranyaprathet district in Sa Kaeo province, a crossing point to Cambodia. The prime minister described the man as a piece in a jigsaw puzzle that would connect various parts of the case, which included a bomb that exploded harmlessly in a river next to a busy pier in Bangkok the day after the shrine blast.

Prayuth warned against speculating about the arrested man until more information is learned.

"Don't say just yet it's about this and that. It could affect international affairs," he said. "We have to do a lot of tests, fingerprints. If he is the guy, he is the guy."

"Officials are certain he is a main suspect in this case," national police spokesman Prawuth Thavornsiri said later at a news conference, adding that the authorities are waiting for witnesses to confirm whether he is the yellow-shirted man. He said the man is being held by the military under Article 44 of its interim constitution, which gives the prime minister absolute power to issue any order deemed necessary to keep public order or strengthen public unity and harmony.

Prawuth said three new arrest warrants have been issued in connection with the case, bringing the total to seven. Two were named persons — he could not provide spellings for the names of the men, whose nationalities were unknown — while the third was not identified by name but was described as a Turkish national. He displayed pictures of the three on a tablet computer.

The blast at the Erawan Shrine was unprecedented in the Thai capital, where smaller bombs have been employed in domestic political violence over the past decade, but not in an effort to cause large-scale casualties.

Security officials on Saturday arrested a man during a raid on a Bangkok apartment that contained some bomb-making materials, and Thai military authorities have been interrogating him. He has been linked to the shrine bombing, but the authorities have not yet released his name or nationality.

Arrest warrants were issued Monday for two more suspects, a Thai woman and a man of unknown nationality, after a raid Sunday on a second apartment found more bomb-making materials. Relatives of the woman who had rented the second apartment told authorities that she is innocent and is now in Turkey, married to a Turkish man. The three new arrest warrants announced Tuesday were related to the apartment raided Saturday, police spokesman Prawuth said.

Uighurs are related to Turks, and Turkey is home to a large Uighur community. The Erawan Shrine is especially popular with Chinese tourists, feeding the idea that it could be a target for people who believe the Uighurs are oppressed by China's government. Beijing says some Uighurs are Islamist terrorists, and among them is a group that has been smuggled out of China to join Islamic State fighters in Syria.

The suspect arrested Saturday had a Turkish passport, though Thai authorities say it was fake. At his apartment, they seized at least 11 passports that appeared to be Turkish, among more than 200 passports in all.

A Turkish Foreign Ministry official said Monday that reports that the woman wanted by Thai police may be in Turkey and other allegations about a Turkish connection were "speculation" and that the ministry would not comment on speculation.

The official said he had no information about the woman and could not confirm that her husband is Turkish.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity in line with government rules that bar officials from speaking to journalists without prior authorization.



"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)

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Luis Miguel Goitizolo

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RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES?
9/2/2015 2:15:25 AM

Pope to allow all priests to forgive abortion during Holy Year

Reuters

Wochit
Pope to Allow All Priests to Forgive Abortion During Holy Year


By Isla Binnie and Philip Pullella

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Francis will give all priests discretion during the Roman Catholic Church's Holy Year to formally forgive women who have had abortions -- the Argentine pontiff's latest move towards a more open and inclusive church.

In Church teaching, abortion is such a grave sin that those who procure or perform it incur an automatic excommunication, which can only be lifted by designated church officials.

However, from Dec. 8 to Nov. 26, during an extraordinary Holy Year or "Jubilee" on the theme of mercy, all priests will be able to do so if the women repent "with a contrite heart", the pope said in a letter published by the Vatican on Tuesday.

Francis described the "existential and moral ordeal" faced by women who have terminated pregnancies and said he had "met so many women who bear in their heart the scar of this agonizing and painful decision".

The pope's letter did not mention those who perform abortions.

Francis is the first non-European pope in 1,300 years and has marked himself out for tolerance on taboo topics. Although he has shown no intention of retracting the Church's opposition to abortion, he has alarmed conservatives by taking a less forceful tone than his predecessors.

"This is by no means an attempt to minimize the gravity of this sin, but to widen the possibility of showing mercy," Vatican chief spokesman Father Federico Lombardi told reporters.

Deputy Vatican spokesman Father Ciro Benedettini said that "for now" the change would apply only during the Holy Year.

Usually only a bishop, missionary or the chief confessor of a diocese can offer absolution for an abortion, Benedettini said, although bishops in countries such as the United States and Britain have delegated this authority to parish priests.

Boston College theology professor James Bretzke said the pope was "emphasizing mercy and not retribution ... embracing reconciliation and not excommunication".

Liberal group Catholics for Choice welcomed the move as a gesture of engagement with women.

"This is a pope who is not stuck in the pelvic zone, and perhaps his message on how he thinks about abortion is more for his brother bishops than Catholics in the pew," said the group's president, Jon O'Brien.

But anti-abortion campaigners said they feared the pope's letter could be misconstrued.

"We would be concerned that a too widespread permission could be misinterpreted as the Church softening its teaching on abortion that it is the taking of the life of an innocent human being," said John Smeaton, chief executive of Britain's Society for the Protection of Unborn Children.

Smeaton said it was very important that a meeting of bishops at the Vatican next month on the family should leave "no ambiguity about the Church's teaching on the sanctity of human life and the evil of abortion."

INDULGENCES

The pope is due this month to visit the United States, where his gesture to women who have terminated pregnancies took on a political dimension given the fierce opposition to abortion within the Republican Party.

Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush, who is Catholic, told Fox News the pope's decision was "extraordinary".

"I hope that we also focus on mercy for the unborn, the hundreds of thousands of babies that will die," the former Florida governor said.

The Roman Catholic Holy Year is one of the 1.2 billion-member church's most important events, and sees the faithful make pilgrimages to Rome and other religious sites. It takes place every 25 years unless a pope decrees an extraordinary one to bring attention to a particular topic or need.

Catholics performing pilgrimages or good works during the Holy Year can traditionally gain indulgences, or the remission of punishment for sins, under certain conditions.

Unlike in previous holy years, when pilgrims had to come to Rome, cathedrals and other religious venues around the world are expected to be designated national pilgrimage sites.

In his letter, the pope also said indulgences would be available to prisoners, who, because they are incarcerated, cannot pass through the Holy Doors of the papal basilicas in Rome. The Holy Doors, which symbolize the doorway of salvation for Catholics, are only opened during Jubilee Years and pilgrims passing through them secure the remission of their sins.

Of prisoners, Francis said: "May the gesture of directing their thought and prayer to the Father each time they cross the threshold of their cell signify for them their passage through the Holy Door."

Holy Year activities will also be open to adherents of the ultra-traditionalist Roman Catholic splinter group known as the Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX).

The Swiss-based SSPX, which rejects some of the reforms made at the historic 1962-1965 Second Vatican Council, defied Rome in 1988 by illegally consecrating four bishops, triggering their excommunication by the late Pope John Paul.

Pope Benedict lifted the excommunications in 2009 and made some concessions to the group. But one of the bishops, British-born Bishop Richard Williamson, caused an uproar by denying the Holocaust.

(Additional reporting by Mohammad Zargham in Washington; Editing by Crispian Balmer and Alison Williams)



In the upcoming Holy Year, all priests will have discretion to formally forgive women who seek absolution.
'Existential and moral ordeal'


"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)

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Luis Miguel Goitizolo

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RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES?
9/2/2015 10:17:33 AM
Defying Supreme Court, U.S. clerk again refuses to wed gays

September 1, 2015

Washington (AFP) - A county clerk in Kentucky refused to provide marriage licenses to gay couples Tuesday despite a Supreme Court injunction, saying that she was operating “under the authority of God.”

Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis had stopped issuing all marriage certificates in mid-August following the high court’s landmark June 26 ruling legalizing gay marriage in the United States.

Davis had filed suit in federal court, arguing that her Christian religious beliefs should exempt her from the ruling. A federal judge however disagreed.

Davis appealed the ruling to the Supreme Court and sought an emergency stay, but the court rejected her motion.

On Tuesday, at least two gay couples entered the small county courthouse in Morehead, Kentucky demanding that Davis issue them marriage licenses. They were trailed by television cameras, reporters and gay rights activists.

“We are not issuing marriage licences today,” Davis said, according to footage recorded by a reporter for the local Courier-Journal newspaper.

“Under whose authority?” demanded one of the men seeking to get married. He accused Davis of discrimination.

“Under God’s authority,” she replied.

“My beliefs cannot be separated from me,” Davis added. “I’m willing to face my consequences, as you all will face your consequences when it comes time for judgment.”

When the couples said they would not leave until they were issued a license, Davis said: “Then you’re going to have a long day.”


(Molly Riley/AFP)


Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear in July ordered all county clerks to obey the Supreme Court’s ruling and allow same-sex marriages to
take place, or resign.

On Tuesday the American Civil Liberties Union filed a motion to find Davis in contempt of court for refusing to issue the licenses. ACLU said the court set a contempt hearing for Thursday.

“This is overwhelming. It feels ridiculous,” said David Moore, who with his partner David Ermold was turned away by Davis, according to the daily.

“Who has to go through this to get married? This is 2015. This is America,” Moore added. “This is what we pay taxes for – to be treated like this.”

Until the US Supreme Court’s historic June ruling, the country’s 50 states formed a legal patchwork: some states had already legalized gay marriage, while others were forced to do so by federal courts, and others had continued to ban it.

"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)

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