Associated Press

DENVER —  The archbishop of Denver on Tuesday defended a decision by a Catholic school not to allow two children to continue as students because their parents are a lesbian couple.

Archbishop Charles J. Chaput said it was a “painful situation,” but the decision by Sacred Heart of Jesus parish school in Boulder was in line with church teachings.

Chaput said the school told the parents that one of the children could complete kindergarten and the other could complete preschool, but neither could continue after that.

Previous reports indicated only one child was involved. Neither the parents nor the children have been identified.

Mindy Barton, legal director of the GLBT Community Center in Denver, which supports gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people, said she believes the school was within its legal rights.

Barton has said the center would still investigate to determine whether the school violated any discrimination laws.

About two dozen protesters stood outside Sacred Heart of Jesus church on Sunday with signs, one reading “God loves all people.”

In his written statement Tuesday, Chaput said the parents of Catholic school students are expected to agree with church beliefs, including those forbidding sex between anyone other than married, heterosexual couples.

“The church cannot change these teachings because, in the faith of Catholics, they are the teachings of Jesus Christ,” he said.

Chaput said Catholic schools work as religious partners with parents, but that doesn’t work if the parents don’t respect church beliefs or openly reject them. He said that also puts unfair stress on the children and their teachers.

Chaput acknowledged that many Catholic schools accept students from other faiths and from single-parent families, but he said their parents are expected to support the Catholic mission of the school.

He said the church doesn’t believe God has any less love for the children of gays and lesbians than for other children, or that gays and lesbians are bad people.

Bloomberg

(Updates ruble price in sixth paragraph, adds central bank policy in seventh, investor perceptions in eighth.)

By Maria Levitov and Paul Abelsky

March 5 (Bloomberg) – Russia may scrap the ruble and introduce a common currency with Belarus and Kazakhstan as the nations broaden their alliance and seek to reduce their dependence on the dollar, a first deputy prime minister said.

“I won’t exclude a transition to a common currency union with these countries in the future,” Igor Shuvalov said at a Moscow conference today. The currency alliance will be modeled on the European Union, which created a new unit rather than using an existing one, he said, though no talks have been held.

Russia and two former Soviet neighbors plan to create a single economic market by 2012 after their customs union took effect on Jan. 1. A new currency is “the next logical step” after economic union, Shuvalov said without giving a timeframe.

Russia has sought to promote regional currencies in trade and diversify its reserves, the world’s third-largest stockpile, to reduce risks posed by the dominance of the dollar. President Dmitry Medvedev last year questioned the dollar’s future as a reserve currency and called for a mix of regional currencies to make the world economy more stable. He said a new supranational currency could reduce vulnerability to movements in the dollar.

The world’s biggest energy supplier may eventually begin selling oil in rubles, Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said on Jan. 22.

Ruble Gains

The ruble strengthened 0.2 percent to 34.6142, a 14-month high, against the central bank’s target euro-dollar basket in today’s trading. The Russian currency gained 0.6 percent to 40.4529 per euro,the strongest since Dec. 25, 2008, while slipping 0.3 percent to 29.8394 against the dollar.

The central bank steers the ruble against the basket to limit fluctuations that hurt exporters and used a floating corridor of 35 to 38 against the basket between August and February for its daily foreign-currency moves.

Investors have pared bets that the ruble will weaken, with non-deliverable forwards showing the currency at 30.10 per dollar in three months compared with an NDF of 30.21 on March 4. The contracts are a guide to expectations of currency movements as they allow foreign investors and companies to fix the exchange rate at a particular level in the future.

‘Natural Step’

The three countries will need gradually to increase trade in national currencies before switching to a common exchange unit, Andrei Kostin, head of VTB Group, Russia’s second-largest lender, said at today’s conference to mark Russia assuming the rotating chairmanship of the Commonwealth of Independent States.

“This will be a natural step to take since the three countries don’t need visas and share the same language –capital movement would remain the only factor in the way of economic integration,” Alexei Moisseev, senior economist at Renaissance Capital in Moscow. “Forming a new currency would take at least five years, assuming they go ahead with it.”

VEB, Russia’s state development bank, has begun settling accounts with Ukrainian companies in Russian rubles, Chief Executive Officer Vladimir Dmitriev said at the conference.

Cross-Border

Russia has agreements that allow the use of the ruble and yuan in cross-border trade, First Deputy Central Bank Chairman Alexei Ulyukayev said in October. It is also in talks with India and Brazil to use their currencies in trade, he said.

Belarus and China agreed in March 2009 to a $2.9 billion currency swap to facilitate trade between the two countries. The three-year accord is worth 20 billion yuan, or 8 trillion Belarusian rubles, and may be prolonged by mutual consent.

Russia’s central bank isn’t considering similar currency swaps because the yuan is too “insular” for swaps, Sergei Shvetsov, head of financial operations at Bank Rossii, said in an interview on Dec. 10.

The world will probably have “five or six currency unions” similar to the euro region over the next decade to challenge the dollar and help facilitate trade and reduce exchange-rate volatility, Arkady Dvorkovich, President Dmitry Medvedev’s senior economic adviser, said in a speech last year.

Four Gulf states are working toward a single currency which may see them step away from a dollar peg. The board of the monetary council that will determine the new system is made up of the central bank governors of Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Qatar. Oman and the United Arab Emirates have opted out.

More Debt

For the ruble to gain wider acceptance, Russia will have to sell more sovereign domestic debt and more of its main exports, oil and natural gas, in its own currency, Dvorkovich said.

The central bank has started buying Canadian dollars and securities, Ulyukayev said in January. Russia’s reserves were previously made up of 47 percent U.S. dollars, 41 percent euros, 10 percent pounds and 2 percent yen. Bank Rossii is also discussing the possibility of buying Australian dollars, Chairman Sergei Ignatiev said

Energy, including oil and natural gas, last month accounted for 64 percent of Russia’s exports to the CIS, a grouping of post-Soviet nations, the Federal Customs Service said in a report today. Machinery and other manufactured equipment made up 21.5 percent of CIS imports into Russia, while metals accounted for 19.8 percent, according to the report.

–With assistance from Denis Maternovsky in Moscow. Editors: Tasneem Brogger, Chris Kirkham

TEHRAN, IRAN (Worthy News)– The detained Assyrian pastor of an evangelical church in Iran has been tortured and told he may be executed for converting Muslims to Christianity and related charges, his wife and Christians with close knowledge about his situation said.

State Security agents detained Reverend Wilson Issavi, 65, of the Evangelical Church of Karmanshah on February 2 in a friend’s home in the city of Isfahan, some 340 kilometers (212 miles) south of the capital Tehran, reported the Farsi Christian News Network (FCNN) which has close contacts with Iranian Christians.

The pastors’ wife, Medline Nazanin, said in published remarks seen by Worthy News and its news partner BosNewsLife? that that he had “visible marks of torture” when she visited him in prison.

Her claims could not immediately be verified, but several rights groups and former Iranian prisoners have complained about abuses in detention centers.

Iranian officials are not known to have commented on the case.

“DEATH SENTENCE”

Nazanin was reportedly told by prison authorities that her husband is accused of “performing baptism” and “converting Muslims to Christianity” and is “awaiting his trial and his death sentence".

His detention came as news emerged that on February 28, security forces also raided the house of Hamid Shafiee and his wife, Reyhaneh Aghajari, two of Isfahan’s known house-church leaders.

The couple was arrested and taken to an unknown location and a number of their personal belongings including books and compact disks were seized by the agents, Christians said.

In recent months, under government’s pressure, the Assemblies of God Church had to stop Friday evening meetings and the Assyrian Pentecostal church of ‘Shahre-Ara’ in Tehran was forced to close its doors, according to church groups familiar with these cases.

EVANGELICAL CHRISTIANS

Other evangelical oriented Christians have also been detained in the past weeks in the Isfahan area and other towns and cities, reported International Christian Concern Concern, one of several rights groups investigating the plight of Christians in Iran.

Under Iran’s strict interpretation of Islam, “apostasy” can carry a death penalty and at least a long prison term.

Church organizations say authorities are cracking down on Christians in Iran, especially targeting those converting from Islam to Christianity.

Associated Press

STOCKHOLM —  A dozen centuries-old shipwrecks — some of them unusually well-preserved — have been found in the Baltic Sea by a gas company building an underwater pipeline between Russia and Germany.

The oldest wreck probably dates back to medieval times and could be up to 800 years old, while the others are likely from the 17th to 19th centuries, Peter Norman of Sweden’s National Heritage Board said Tuesday.

“They could be interesting, but we have only seen pictures of their exterior. Many of them are considered to be fully intact. They look very well-preserved,” Norman told The Associated Press.

Thousands of wrecks — from medieval ships to warships sunk during the world wars of the 20th century — have been found in the Baltic Sea, which doesn’t have the ship worm that destroys wooden wrecks in saltier oceans.

The latest discovery was made during a search of the seabed east of the Swedish island of Gotland by the Nord Stream consortium, which is building a 750-mile pipeline in the Baltic Sea.

The 12 wrecks were found in a 30-mile-long and 1.2-mile-wide corridor, Nord Stream spokeswoman Tora Leifland Holmstrom said.

The heritage board said three of the wrecks have intact hulls and are lying upside-down at a depth of 430 feet.

Swedish marine archaeology experts analyzed pictures of the wrecks and determined that they could be of a high historic value.

“The content can tell us a lot about everyday life during that time,” Norman said.

It’s unclear whether any of them will be salvaged but the board said it hopes they will be explored by divers — though Norman added many of them are at a depth that would require very advanced and costly diving operations.

The Nord Stream consortium, which plans to start construction in April, has promised to make sure its activities don’t damage the wrecks. The area where they were found is in Sweden’s economic zone, but not in the planned route of the pipeline, Leifland Holmstrom said.

The Nord Stream project, in which Russia’s OAO Gazprom holds a 51 percent stake, has uncovered scores of other objects during seabed searches of the route, including about 80 sea mines and a washing machine, she said.

Last year, parts of a 300-year-old ship were salvaged from Germany’s Bay of Greifswald to clear a path for the pipeline, which expects to carry some 1.9 trillion cubic feet of natural gas a year.

Sweden’s most famous maritime discovery, the royal warship Vasa, is housed in a popular museum in Stockholm where visitors can admire the ship’s details, down to the flashing teeth of the carved lions that adorn its elaborate exterior. The Vasa was raised from the Stockholm harbor in 1961, 333 years after it sank on its maiden voyage.

Fox News

Seven useful Google services you may not have tried yet, from a free phone number to a cool new way to peruse the news.

For a company that’s synonymous with one product–the world’s most popular search engine–Google is far from a one-product company. Actually, it’s a veritable idea factory, in part because it lets employees spend twenty percent of their time on pet projects. When it comes to new services, the Google philosophy is simple: When in doubt, try it out.

Some Google side projects, such as Gmail and Google Maps, are blockbusters in their own right. The jury is still out on others, such as the Twitter-like Google Buzz. And then there are the hits-of-the-future, low-profile winners, and interesting works in progress, such as the seven services below. 

With them, you can use Google to…

Tame your telephone. For busy people with multiple phones, Google Voice may be Google’s second most indispensable service after its namesake search engine. It gives you a new phone number in an area code of your choice that can ring all your phones at once, so you’re never out of touch. 

Unless you want to be out of touch, that it is: Voice also screens calls for you, so you know who’s on the line before you say “hello.” It converts spoken voicemail into text e-mails and lets you send and receive text messages without paying your wireless carrier. And here’s another remarkable feature: It’s free. (There are two for-pay options: cheap international dialing and conference calls.)

Google Voice is currently in a period of private beta testing, so you can’t stroll in and sign up immediately–you need to request an invitation to join. But you shouldn’t need to wait long before Google lets you in on the fun.

Find stuff to buy. Google Product Search has been around for eons–it used to be called Froogle–without ever becoming a household name. It deserves more glory: It’s a handy tool for searching for products for sale online and at local stores, particularly stuff that’s a little offbeat. 

Product Search feels a lot like regular Google search, but with shopping-centric features such as price comparisons and the ability to find free shipping deals and identify nearby retailers. Rivals such as Milo are also worth investigating, but if you’re searching for something you want to buy, it’s almost always better to start at Google Product Search than at plain old Google.

Visit the world’s biggest newsstand. Google Books is the company’s wildly ambitious, controversial attempt to digitize millions of tomes so they can be searched and read online. As far as I’m concerned, though, it’s misnamed: My favorite thing about it is the treasure trove of magazines it offers. You can rummage through a vast repository of everything from Popular Mechanics to the World Weekly News. And the complete collection of LIFE is as good a record of what happened in America in the 20th century as you’ll find anywhere.

Explore history through photos. Speaking of LIFE, another dazzling Google feature–the LIFE photo archive–lets you burrow through the legendary photo magazine’s collection of images, including ones from masters such as Alfred Eisenstaedt. And you won’t just find the photographic gems that reached LIFE’s pages: The archive includes millions of wonderful images that have never been available anywhere until now. You can use photos from the collection for personal, noncommercial projects such as homework assignments, and they’re at high enough resolutions that they look good as printouts.

Zip through the news. For all the power of the Web as a source of news, it’s not as skimmable as a well-designed newspaper, and you can’t surf between multiple providers of information anywhere near as quick as a TV remote control lets you channel-surf. 

Enter Google Fast Flip, a Google News feature that allows you to effortlessly and instantly scroll between news stories from an array of major magazines, newspapers, and other providers without ever leaving Google News. Stories retain the photos, layout, and other design elements of the originating source, and you can browse by source, news subject, or categories such as Politics and Entertainment.

Call for local info. Calling your phone company’s 411 service can be pricey. Google’s GOOG-411 (that’s 1-800-466-4411) is free and fully automated. It lets you speak to find businesses by name or by category–such as Chinese food in Boston–and then get connected directly. It’s particularly useful if you don’t have a fancy-schmancy smartphone with a Web browser, but if you do, you can get a link to a map delivered via text message. Downside: It only helps with business information, not residential addresses.

Organize a research project. Google Squared is an experimental service that looks a lot like standard Google search. But instead of returning a list of links, it gives you “Squares"–spreadsheet-like grids that organize information and images into rows and columns. You can create Squares for subjects ranging from purebred dogs to subcompact cars, then customize them, save them for future reference, and share them with your pals. 

I’m not sure if this is the future of search engines–some Squares make more sense then others, and Squared is sometimes just plain confused, like when it says that Nightline originates in New Zealand. But it’s still a fascinating glimpse at one direction Web research may go. 

Want to track down more of Google’s lesser-known services? For a company whose mission is to help people find things, it does a surprisingly shaky job of helping us locate its own offerings. Here’s one extensive-but-incomplete list of Google services; here’s a separate list of Google Labs experiments (some of which aren’t that experimental). Both include additional not-so-famous items–if you try any of them out, let us know what you think.

Fox News

Police confirm the body pulled from the Mississippi River Tuesday is missing Houston oil executive Douglas Schantz.

Bob Young of the New Orleans police department says police believe Douglas Schantz drowned accidentally. The 54-year-old president of Houston-based Sequent Energy Management had been missing since early Friday.

Searching through videos from businesses in the French Quarter, police were able to trace Schantz from a Bourbon Street bar to the dock for the Riverboat Natchez.

He was in town to give Tulane University a $25,000 gift during a reception Thursday. A colleague who was with him says that after the dinner they went to Bourbon Street around midnight.

Police Superintendent Warren Riley said that Schantz, who left the Razzoo Bar and Patio about 2 a.m. Friday, was seen walking on a 2-foot walkway by the river.

Riley says the man had been drinking and seemed disoriented.

Schantz’s son, Michael Schantz, and John W. Somerhalder II, chairman, president and chief executive officer of AGL Resources Inc., spoke about Schantz in downtown Houston on Monday. AGL Resources Inc. is the parent company of Sequent Energy Management, L.P.

“He’s such a good dad. My mom dearly misses him,” said Michael Schantz.

Young says Schantz had all of his credit cards and jewelry and foul play is not suspected.

Fox News Blog

by Cheryl Casone

The Gazette