Church of England Nears Vote on Female Bishops

LONDON (AP) — After decades of debate, the Church of England votes Tuesday on whether it will finally admit women to the ranks of bishops — under a compromise proposal that has angered the faithful on both sides of the argument.

A majority of the church's governing General Synod is ready to say yes, but that doesn't mean it's all wrapped up. The vote needs a two-thirds majority in order to be approved, and an unlikely coalition of advocates and opponents of female bishops may have enough strength to derail the motion. Some voices on both sides argue that the church's compromise asks them to concede too much.



[Mea Culpa: Priest Apologizes for Unholy Facebook Language]

While opening the way for female bishops, the proposal before the General Synod also commits the church, when it assigns priests and bishops, to "respect" the position of parishes that oppose them — without defining what respect means in practical terms.

Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, the church's outgoing leader, has been campaigning for approval with a touch of exasperation: "Enough waiting," he said.

If the vote falls short of the two-thirds majority, the General Synod would have to start all over. Church officials say it could take five years to prepare new legislation and complete all the steps leading to a final vote.

"The tough question for those who are still undecided," said Williams, "is whether delay would produce anything better."

There have even been calls, unusual in a church, to go the way of the world.

Peter Broadbent, bishop of Willesden in London, has called for a "yes" vote so that the church does not "look completely stupid in the eyes of society."

Supporters of the compromise are hopeful.

"Very, very few people are happy with it, but the vast majority now are going to go for it," said Sally Barnes of Women and the Church, which campaigns for female bishops. The vote may turn on how many opponents can be persuaded to abstain, she said Monday.

[Related: Catholic Church Equates Sex Abuse With Female Ordination]

It has been 36 years since the General Synod declared it had no fundamental objection to ordaining women as priests, and 18 years since the first women were ordained. Meanwhile, sister churches of the Anglican Communion in Australia, New Zealand, Southern Africa and the United States already have women serving as bishops.

Tony Baldry, who speaks for the Church of England in the House of Commons, has said he would "find it impossible to explain to Parliamentary colleagues how a measure that commanded the support of 42 out of 44 dioceses in England failed to be approved by General Synod."

Many supporters of female bishops are nonetheless calling for a no vote, saying the latest attempt at compromise is another imperfect effort to bridge fundamental differences of principle.

A determined minority of hardcore opponents wants not merely to be subject exclusively to male bishops, but only those who refuse to ordain women. Jesus called 12 disciples, every one of them a man, the opponents argue.

Resentment of women priests is among the issues which has driven dozen of priests and more than a thousand parishioners to join the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walshingham. It was created last year by Pope Benedict XVI as a sort of halfway house where Anglicans convert to Catholicism, safe from female priests, but may keep traditions including the Book of Common Prayer.
WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT FEMALE BISHOPS ?

What Obama Needs From Business Leaders OR What Can They Do for Obama

It's not exactly an apology tour, but the Business Relations Repair Initiative is fully underway.
Since his re-election, President Barack Obama has hosted at least a dozen CEOs at the White House and
called several others to hear their ideas about reinvigorating the stagnant economy. The purpose seems obvious: After excoriating "fat-cat bankers" and overpaid CEOs during his first term, the president needs to repair relations with business leaders who collectively have far more power to lower unemployment and boost growth than he does.

[ENJOY: Political Cartoons on the Fiscal Cliff]
Wheter the outreach is symbolic or substantive remains to be seen, but Obama seems to realize he needs more help from the business community than he may have thought when he first took office in 2009. Above all, businesses need to do one thing if Obama is to achieve many of his second-term economic goals: Spend more money.Business spending helped end the Great Recession in 2009 and initiate a tepid recovery. In 2011, there wasa spike in business spending, which for a while made it seem like a booming recovery, with robust hiring, might be just around the corner.
[READ: Why A Lot of CEOs Favor Higher Taxes]
But businesses pulled back for much of 2012, and in recent months there's been a worrisome drop in spending on things like computers, vehicles, capital equipment and commercial construction. "We've seen the sort of move down that you normally see when the economy is heading into recession," says Nigel Gault, chief U.S. economist for forecasting firm IHS Global Insight.
Part of that downturn could easily be caused by the approach of the "fiscal cliff," the big set of tax hikes and spending cuts that will go into effect in 2013 if Congress does nothing to prevent a big hit to the economy. If there's no deal to forestall some of those changes, it will turn economic growth negative and promptly cause a recession.Many analysts expect some kind of last-minute compromise that will avert a recession. But CEOs get paid to prepare for worst-case scenarios, and besides, many companies can put off spending for a while, as they wait to see whether Congress will torpedo the economy. That's bad for the economy, but for most individual companies, it's a prudent way to handle a risky policy standoff in Washington.
CEOs are also worried about the chronic debt crisis in Europe, which has officially entered a recession. And China is still struggling with a cooling economy and a possible real-estate bubble of its own.
[RELATED: How Much the Fiscal Cliff Will Cost You]
For Obama, convincing business leaders to spend more money may be the single-biggest thing he can do to jump-start the economy. If anybody's got the wallet to juice growth, it's corporate America. Big companies have nearly $2 trillion cash on hand, and many of them have cut costs so much that they're now poised to invest and hire more—if only they had confidence the economy is truly on the mend.
If the fiscal cliff is the only barrier to a better economy, then making a deal with Congressional Republicans would be the best way for Obama to swing business leaders to his advantage. Many CEOs would be happy to have any deal, as long as it creates a stable business environment with predictable policies. Of course, they wouldn't mind if it included reforms such as a lower corporate tax rate, smaller deficits and even some corresponding tax hikes, if that helped fix the government's finances.
Simply asking business leaders for their support won't cut it, though. Like many ordinary Americans, CEOs are fed up with warring politicians who seem to put their own interests above national priorities. If Washington can't solve the sorts of problems that companies confront all the time, then those businesses might sit on their money indefinitely, or find a better place to spend it than the United States.

How Can Sam Sung Works For Apple? (TWEET)

As the Apple-Samsung court battle rages on, a Twitter user has revealed a rather humorous coincidence with this priceless photograph

The photo, which was tweeted on Saturday, has become quite the viral sensation, with more than 850 retweets. It has also been posted on Reddit so many times that an exasperated user on the social news site called it the "most reposted post ever.As Business Insider notes, however, it is still unclear as to whether the name card is genuine.Nonetheless, the news site confirms that "the Pacific Centre Apple Store is in Vancouver, British Columbia [and] the phone number and address are correct." The site also claims to have found a LinkedIn account for "someone by the same name" who is also located in Vancouver.

Thousands of Chinese protest & smash police cars;after a traffic accident

BEIJING -- Thousands of residents protested in a southeastern Chinese city after a traffic accident, smashing police cars and overturning three police vans, police and residents said.



The reason for the protest in Fuan city in Fujian province was unclear. Police said it was instigated by “a handful of lawless people.” One resident said people became angry because police and paramedics took nearly an hour to arrive to help the injured, while a Hong Kong-based human rights group said it was to do with corruption.



But such protests have become increasingly common in China, and Saturday's violence is another reminder that the country's new leadership has to deal with underlying social discontent that often boils over. People are fed up with corruption and high-handed officialdom, pensions that have not kept pace with inflation and families being forced from their homes to make way for developments.

Residents said police were stopping cars and checking people for driving after drinking on Saturday evening when the accident happened on a main road in Fuan.

Wanting to avoid being tested, a driver in a sedan accelerated away and police started chasing the car, said a resident, who would give only his surname, Lin. About three motorcycles were hit during the chase, said Lin, adding he wasn't sure who hit them.

“About 10,000 to 20,000 onlookers became angry because police officers and paramedics took nearly one hour to arrive,” said Lin.

He estimated that 1,000 to 2,000 people clashed with police and overturned three police vans.

Photos carried by online southeastern news sites showed hundreds of people swarming across a wide street with two vans thrown onto their sides. In one photo, three people stood on top of an overturned van.

China downgrades strength of domestic security honcho

BEIJING -- China confirmed on Monday that it had downgraded the position of domestic security chief as part of a move to a new and smaller top elite, an expected move that reflects fears the position had become
too powerful.The official Xinhua News Agency said in a brief announcement that Zhou Yongkang's position as head of the Political and Legal Affairs Committee, a sprawling body that oversees law-and-order policy, had been taken over by Public Security Minister Meng Jianzhu.The hulking, grim-faced 69-year-old Zhou had to retire along with most members of the Politburo Standing Committee, the inner council at the apex of power, at this month's 18th Party Congress, due to his age. He turns 70 in December.
Meng, however, is only a member of the new Politburo, the 25-member body which reports to the down-sized Standing Committee, putting him on a tighter leash and returning to a pattern the party kept to for much of the 1980s.Reducing the party's Standing Committee from nine to seven members came as part of a once-in-a-decade leadership change announced last week, which saw Vice President Xi Jinping raised to head of the ruling Communist Party.Reuters reported in August that Zhou's position was likely to be downgraded and Zhou replaced by Meng.Zhou had been on the Standing Committee since 2007 while also heading the central Political and LegalAffairs Committee.That double status allowed Zhou to dominate a domestic security budget of US$110 billion a year, exceeding the defense budget.Zhou was implicated in rumors that he hesitated in moving against the politician Bo Xilai, a former candidate for top office who fell in a divisive scandal after his wife was accused of murdering a British businessman.Security forces also suffered a humiliating failure earlier in the year when they allowed blind rights advocate Chen Guangcheng to escape from 19 months of house arrest and flee to the U.S. Embassy in Beijing.Since the 1990s, China's efforts to stifle crime, unrest and dissent have allowed the domestic security apparatus — including police, armed militia and state security officers — to accumulate power.In another announcement, Xinhua said that Zhao Leji had replaced Li Yuanchao as head of the party's organization department that oversees the appointment of senior party, government, military and state-owned enterprise officials.Zhao had been party boss of the northern province of Shaanxi and is close to president-in-waiting Xi.There was no announcement on where Li, a reformer who has courted foreign investment and studied in the United States, may go. He missed out on a spot on the Standing Committee despite being tipped to enter it.Standing Committee positions will officially be released in March at the annual meeting of parliament, though there is no doubt Xi will become president and Li Keqiang will take over as premier from Wen Jiabao.Over the next few days and weeks state media should announce the positions of the other members of the Politburo.

China department stores wheel out the big guns in war against e-commerce

Traditional department stores in China are flexing their muscle to regain their place on the retail battlefield, as the breakneck growth of e-commerce takes its toll.The risks faced by brick-and-mortar retailers have
recently been amplified by a string of somber sales figures, especially after online vendors, fueled by the Singles' Day bonanza on Nov. 11, delivered an enviable performance over the past weekend.A department store in Zhengzhou, capital of Henan province, offers a 52-percent discount on Nov. 11, Singles' Day, to compete with e-commerce giants such as Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. that used the occasion to promote their sales with deep price cuts.That day, e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. alone generated 19.1 billion yuan (US$3.06 billion) in sales, triple the combined revenue of around 5,000 retail outlets in Shanghai during the eight-day National Day holidays in early October.
During the holidays, from Sept. 30 to Oct. 7, the nation's 100 major retailers saw their sales increase by 8.49 percent year-on-year, according to China National Commercial Information center.
This was a rare occurrence of growth since the introduction of the Golden Week more than a decade ago.
But problems are likely to loom larger for traditional retailers as online merchants sprint ahead. Driven by an urgent desire to boost their sales, stores are jostling to offer the deepest discounts to drum up consumer interest.Feeling the pinch due to the e-commerce boom, Hong Kong-headquartered New World Department Store China Ltd. has stepped up promoting its annual discount gala in Shanghai more than a month earlier than previous years.Likewise, the three outlets of Pacific Department Store Co. Ltd. in Shanghai plan to knock up to 50 percent off women's sweaters and offer special discounts on jewelry and cosmetics.According to the company, the 17-day promotion aims to expand its consumer base and retain customers by encouraging shoppers to register for a membership card that entitles them to discount coupons.
The move is, put bluntly, to tackle the growing challenges posed by the exploding development of e-commerce, said Yan Chengda, deputy general manager of the company.
Clothes are generally the least immune items to pressure from the thriving online business, so we are offering deep discounts,” Yan added.

American Music Awards in Los Angeles highlights

Jenny McCarthy, Singer Grace Valerie,Nicki Minaj,Christina Aguilera,Heidi Klum,Singer Jordin Sparks,Mark Ballas and girlfriend Tiffany Dunn, Christina Aguilera,Hip hop artist Ke$ha,Actress and singer
Lucy Hale,Singer Grace Valerie,Nicki Minaj,Christina Aguilera,Heidi Klum, Singer Jordin Sparks and other  arrives at the 40th American Music Awards in Los Angeles.
Justin Bieber performs with Nicki Minaj at the 40th American Music Awards in Los Angeles
Pink performs at the 40th American Music Awards in Los Angel.

Pakistan Law and Order Force secret pictures

What are you doing ,when you look beauty full?

I was recently asked by the New York Times what questions I pose when I interview job candidates. A favorite of mine is "What are you doing when you feel most beautiful?" The reporter printed it, and I received
dozens of responses to the question from people around the world. Each of them moved me for their honesty; some, for their audacity. Not surprisingly, most people feel most beautiful when they are involved in an act of service, or are doing something that makes them feel generous, connected, or seen by others.

Now, I'm sitting with a group of women in a small house in a Mumbai slum. The house owner is proud of her shiny plates and pots on the wall, the double bed, the sparkling clean floor on which we are all seated. There is a portrait of Sangeeta, an Indian woman who helped pioneer education for the poor in India. The woman in the picture has the devout eyes and modest veil of the Virgin Mary.
We talk about the hardships of slum-living: a lack of clean drinking water, no good schools for their children and the feeling of shame that they themselves aren't educated. They speak of sexual and physical violence, as well, sometimes through tears. In most areas of their lives, they lack choice. "I would like to wear jeans and not cover my head," one laments.I change the topic after reassuring them that I've heard the hard parts about their lives. I tell them that I imagine there must also be times of real joy, times when they can feel their own light shining through.I ask them, "What are you doing when you feel most beautiful?"The women look at me with scorn, frustration. They had started to feel that I might understand something bout them, but not now. "We can never feel beautiful," one says. "Our lives are too miserable. They are too difficult. We fight just to make it to the end of each day.I don't buy it. There must be some times when you feel beautiful, I say, even in the midst of difficult times, difficult days.No, no, no. Absolutely no beautiful here.
We sit in silence. The women look at one another. Finally, Mushaq-Bi, the one with a chestnut-colored chiffon dupatta draped over her head and smiling eyes that defy her lined face, leans forward.
I will tell you when,she says, almost in a whisperYou see, I am a gardener for HP. I have a small patch that is my responsibility, and each season I slog and slog. And then, one day, the flowers there begin to bloom. They come right out of the ground and open up their beauty. And seeing it makes me feel beautiful.Aaah, the women nod and smile.She has not finished. Her face becomes more animated. "Last year, there was a competition at the company. The best gardener was given a prize. I worked even harder on my small patch of ground. I was so surprised when I found out that I was the one selected. I was given a certificate. Now, whenever I think of that certificate and the flowers I have grown, I feel beautiful."
The women applaud and laugh. Mushaq-Bi tears up and shakes her head, her hands clasping the sides of her face, her bangles clinking along with the congratulatory merriment. I love the image of her cultivating the earth, this urban gardener with the certificate on her wall. I love the idea of her smiling with satisfaction and anticipation as she watches marigolds and jasmine push through the dark soil and make their presence known. She, too, is blossoming, pushing through cracked earth, finding a new voice
Now, the others jump in. One woman describes how she was a whistleblower, telling her boss about someone who stole from the company. The process of raising her voice and then waiting until the man was found guilty was horrendously difficult for her. She feared she would be ostracized and would never work again. "I was a woman raising questions about a man," she acknowledges. But the man was discovered to be a crook. "Now," she says, "my boss trusts me. He looks to me for good answers, and when he does, I work hard to make him proud. And this makes me feel beautiful."The conversation continues. Gardeners, cleaners, community leaders; every woman here knows what beautiful feels like. Every story is about wanting to be seen, to be known, to matter, to be a somebody, not a nobody. Everyone wants to count. The number of rupees or shillings or dollars in the bank account doesn't add up to beautiful. That isn't what gives you hope or a belief that you personally are part of the future. This is the part we miss when we plan our development strategies, our companies, and our solutions to poverty. At the end of the day, each one of us is fumbling around, looking to be loved and to be seen. Even just a little bit.We can do things differently. I so rarely meet anyone wanting a hand-out. Instead, women like Mushaq-Bi simply want the chance to change their own lives, to make their own decisions. It shouldn't be that difficult. What is needed is to understand development not simply through an economic lens, but rather one based on ideas of freedom for all people, regardless of gender, of religion, of caste, or of class. It is to this end -- freedom -- that the march of human progress will move forth, and it is in this progress that the true seeds of optimism thrive.
Freedom is what beauty feels like when it can most express itself. It has to do with the ability to express yourself in both big and small ways. What would our world look like if we asked ourselves the following more often: are our actions helping others find a way to feel freer, more dignified and more beautiful?

Latest Baby Names 2013: The Top Trends For Baby Name

Baby names are changing faster than ever, influenced by celebrities and pop culture, ancient cultures and modern catastrophes. The major trends for 2013 draw from the names of Roman gods and the wilder side
of nature, tap new international name sources and include a surprising taste for secrecy.
Here are Nameberry’s predictions for baby names in 2013.Nameberry is the baby name website created by Pamela Redmond Satran and Linda Rosenkrantz, authors of ten bestselling books on names including "Cool Names for Babies" and "The Baby Name Bible."