| Multimedia Index
Each week, the panel will discuss hot topics in the world of sports and react to e-mail questions from readers and viewers. The columnists also will offer closing thoughts on an issue of their choice. Video by Melissa Tkach • • • Jan. 17, 2008 Video: PG 'NewsNOW,' 1/17/2008 .
Villains aplenty but few heroes in sad tale of debt tragedy
Behind every statistic on debt lies a very personal tragedy. An estimated 45,000 homes will be repossessed next year. In January the Consumer Credit Counselling Service will receive a predicted 34,000 calls from the desperate and the indebted. Such indicators are seized upon by those attempting to read the runes of our increasingly fragile economy. But the patterns they find mask individual stories of homes lost and furtive calls to faceless debt counsellors. The banks are the easy villains of the story, doling out cheap credit to anyone who asked nicely, regardless of their circumstances. But this is a subtler story than a pantomime of riches-to-rags consumers and the big bad bank manager. For every blameless victim ringing the helpline, there are countless more who knew their plastic cards had lost all elasticity and their mortgage was an albatross, but kept on spending.
ORU faculty vote 'no confidence' in president Richard Roberts
A quorum of tenured Oral Roberts University faculty voted “no confidence" in President Richard Roberts and voted in favor of “greater faculty governance and transparency of university finances" in a 3 1/2-hour meeting Monday night. Donald R. Vance, professor of biblical languages and literature and one of three authors of a summary of the meeting, said tenured professors want to help ORU's board of regents do what is right. The professorsµ motions let regents know the voice of the faculty, Vance said. The vote of no confidence in Roberts as president and CEO of the university was made “without regard to the outcome of the current lawsuit against the university" and “is not to be construed as a judgment of guilt or innocence with regard to the present lawsuit against the president and the university," according to the list of motions and summary of the meeting faxed to media by an attorney ' Gary Richardson ' for the three former professors who are suing ORU, Roberts and other ORU leadership.
A new stage in the world class struggle: November-December 1995
A new stage in the world class struggle: November-December 1995 French workers in revolt By David Walsh [Print version available] In December 1995, David Walsh travelled to Europe as part of an international team of reporters to provide on-the-spot coverage of the massive strike wave in France. They studied the strike movement and the political crisis it produced and interviewed strikers, union officials and representatives of various "left" organisations, as well as non-strikers from various layers of the population. This pamphlet was first published as a series or articles. It presents a detailed analysis of the strike movement and the role played by the various unions, political parties and tendencies. It addresses a number of questions: Why did this movement erupt in France? Why has there been no comparable movement to this point in the US, although the attacks on social programmes carried out there go far beyond those proposed by the French government? What do these events portend for the future development of the class struggle in France, Europe and internationally? What have these events revealed about the revolutionary capacity of the working class, as well as the critical political problems which must be overcome? French workers in revolt: Contents What sparked the strike movement? A mass movement of social solidarity Political problems of the strike movement How the labour bureaucracy stifled the strike movement The culture of opportunism The spectre of a European-wide movement The significance of the strike movement Apendix: Two footnotes on the radicals Chronology Political parties and trade unions in France What sparked the strike movement? For three and a half weeks in November and December, masses of French workers did battle with the right wing government of President Jacques Chirac and Prime Minister Alain Juppé.
The Free Market: A False Idol After All?
FOR more than a quarter-century, the dominant idea guiding economic policy in the United States and much of the globe has been that the market is unfailingly wise. So wise that the proper role for government is to steer clear and not mess with the gusher of wealth that will flow, trickling down to the every level of society, if only the market is left to do its magic. That notion has carried the day as industries have been unshackled from regulation, and as taxes have been rolled back, along with the oversight powers of government. Faith in markets has held sway as insurance companies have fended off calls for more government-financed health care, and as banks have engineered webs of finance that have turned houses from mere abodes into assets traded like dot-com stocks. But lately, a striking unease with market forces has entered the conversation.
Rudd in talks with RBA chiefs
Inflation is tipped to be the main topic of discussion when Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and Treasurer Wayne Swan meet Reserve Bank officials today. Mr Rudd and his Government have put tackling inflation as one of the key priorities of the new year. Federal efforts to cut spending are likely to be one of the main topics of today's talks. The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) is slashing its budget by $57 million, with a number of overseas diplomats to be recalled and programs to promote Australian culture overseas being cut to fund the savings. The Federal Government says it does not believe the changes will affect its foreign policy priorities. Mr Rudd says the talks will look at the challenges posed by higher inflation and will help shape the Federal Government's future economic policy.
England's medieval cathedrals: The magnificent 7
The architectural historian Bernard Scheutz describes the west front as among the most famous works of world architecture.
What not to miss: The beautiful Lady Chapel, largest in Britain, and the magnificent painted Victorian wooden ceiling, telling the story of salvation from the Creation to the Ascension of Christ.
Canterbury Cathedral
In terms of English and church history, no cathedral is more important than Canterbury, mother church of the worldwide Anglican communion. Pope Gregory the Great sent the Benedictine monk Augustine to England in 597 to convert its pagan population, and Augustine's church later became a cathedral with him as its first archbishop; he has had 103 successors. For 350 years it was Europe's greatest pilgrimage site, the travels of the devout chronicled by Geoffrey Chaucer in "The Canterbury Tales."
Canterbury is perhaps best known worldwide as the site of the murder of Archbishop Thomas a Becket on Dec.
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