Tsunami is God’s retribution, says Rabbi

Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu, former chief rabbi… Tsunami is God’s retribution, says Rabbi

Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu, former chief rabbi of Israel, said last week that the tsunami that rocked the coastlines bordering the Indian oceans and killed more than 280,000 people was God’s retribution for supporting Israel’s disengagement plan from the Gaza Strip.

Eliyahu, who is a leading authority in the religious Zionist community, made the comments in “Mayanei Hayeshua,” a weekly Torah pamphlet distributed to thousands of synagogues throughout Israel.

When Eliyahu was questioned on the meaning of the tsunami, he said “The [Babylonian] Talmud says that when God is angry at the nations of the world for not aiding Israel — they want to evacuate, to disengage, to interfere in our affairs — he claps his hands, causing an earthquake.”

Rabbi Yehudah Gilad of the Religious Kibbutz Movement said Eliyahu’s comment was “terrible and incomprehensible,” according to The Jerusalem Post.

“I am not worthy of contradicting Rabbi Eliyahu,” he added. “I’d like to think that he was misunderstood.”

Iraqis vote for the unknown

Because of dire security conditions during Iraq’s elections last week, many Iraqis went to the polls completely unaware of the identities, let alone policies, of the candidates, according to The Guardian.

Hardly any of the names of the more than 7,700 candidates vying for seats in the new National Assembly were made public, though U.N. officials promised that the names would appear in Iraqi newspapers sometime before last Sunday.

The Guardian reported that some political parties used photographs on their posters of people who were not even running. One such advertisement found around Baghdad displayed the face of Abdul Karim Qasim, who became prime minister after the 1958 revolt against the monarchy, and was executed five years later.

Another poster showed the face of Shaba’ad, one of the ancient Sumerian queens of the city of Ur.

Connecticut official accidentally evacuates state

Television viewers across Connecticut believed the state was being evacuated last week after a message was communicated from the Office of Emergency Management, reported the Associated Press.

“Civil authorities have issued an immediate evacuation order for all of Connecticut, beginning at 2:10 p.m. and ending at 3:10 p.m.,” read the message that scrolled across television screens.

State emergency management officials said a worker entered the wrong code during the weekly test of the emergency alert system, the AP reported.

Governor M. Jodi Rell has asked Emergency Management and Homeland Security Commissioner James Thomas for a complete investigation.

“It is imperative that the citizens of Connecticut have faith in the integrity of the emergency message system and are not lulled into complacency by repeated false messages,” she said.

Woman investigated for Internet gaming sabotage

Local police in the Toyama district in Japan have said a woman who logged onto the online role-playing game Lineage using her ex-boyfriend’s username and password could face criminal charges.

Japan’s leading newspaper Mainichi Shimbun reported officers are investigating the woman for “violating a law banning illegal access” by using his log-on details.

She told police, “I did it as revenge for breaking up with me.”

According to Mainichi Shimbun, the man “did not suffer financially because of the woman’s actions, but she deleted items such as weapons and clothes that he had spent time collecting in the game.”

Bank apologizes for involvement with slavery

The second largest bank in the United States., J.P. Morgan Chase, has made a rare admission of guilt for the involvement of its subsidiaries Citizens’ Bank and Canal Bank in Louisiana in the slave trade two centuries ago.

The bank admitted that it accepted slaves as loan collateral, and ended up owning several hundred.

J.P. Morgan Chase sent a letter to employees expressing remorse for its involvement in a “brutal and unjust institution.” The disclosure was made, according to the Associated Press, to comply with a rule requiring companies to detail past dealings with the slave trade when they do business with the city of Chicago.

The company estimated that, between 1831 and 1865, the two banks accepted around 13,000 slaves as collateral, and owned approximately 1,250 slaves.

In the letter, signed by the company’s chief executive, William Harrison, the bank said, “We apologize to the African-American community, particularly those who are descendants of slaves, and to the rest of the American public for the role that Citizens’ Bank and Canal Bank played. The slavery era was a tragic time in U.S. history and in our company’s history.”

The bank’s full apology, and documents on the plantations and the slaves it took into ownership, can be found online at www.bankone.com/ourapology.

J.P. Morgan Chase is also establishing a $5 million college scholarship program for black students in Louisiana for five years in order to “both acknowledge the past and improve the future”.

Man lost, found

A man was found two weeks ago after surviving 35 days lost in a labyrinth of underground caves in southwestern France.

Jean-Luc Josuat-Verges, 48, told his rescuers he had survived in the pitch darkness by eating rotten wood and clay.

The Agence-France Presse news agency reported Josuat-Vergas left his home on Dec. 18 suffering from depression. He told his wife he wanted to spend time alone.

Carrying a bottle of whiskey, he drove to the vast complex of underground galleries at an abandoned mushroom farm at Madiran.

He got lost in the dark, and could not find his way to the entrance.

“I kept looking for a week,” Josuat-Vergas told the Journal du Dinanche newspaper.

“It was truly terrible fumbling around with nothing to eat. Luckily the walls were dripping with water so I could drink.”

“There was no food so I sucked bits of limestone for the minerals, as well as decomposing wood and lumps of clay. Hunger was never a problem, unlike the cold and the damp,” said Josuat-Vergas, who lost 40 pounds during his time underground.

Josuat-Vergas was found when a group of exploring teen-agers saw his Jeep at the entrance of the cave and called the police.

20 officers entered the complex, and found him about 200 yards from the entrance.

“I went there after a little bout of depression, but, when I found myself suddenly trapped and in a survival situation, everything changed,” he said.

Priest jumps on Olympic marathon runner, is defrocked, complains

The Catholic Church has defrocked a priest who upset the men’s Olympic marathon in Athens last summer by springing onto the front-runner, Brazilian Vanderli de Lima, ruining de Lima’s chances of winning a gold medal.

The priest, Irish-born Neil Horan, 57, explained his actions at the time by saying he was “highlighting the second coming of Jesus Christ.”

Horan was informed of the ruling last week at a meeting with the archbishop of Southwark in London, reported the Associated Press.

“I completely reject this decision,” Horan said. “I now cannot preach, I cannot give out communion. I am little more than a pagan.”

Before the ruling, Horan arrived at the archbishop’s with a tape recorder, and proceeded to perform an Irish jig and preach from the Bible.