Scrolling around...March 25, 2013

The Cyprus Deal ...The agreement avoids a controversial tax on bank deposits, a measure the country’s parliament rejected last week. But it’s likely to devastate the country’s financial-services sector—the source, according to the Cyprus Employers & Industrialists Federation, of 80 percent of the country’s GDP and 72 percent of its employment. In exchange for a 10 billion-euro bailout from the European Union and the International Monetary Fund, President Nicos Anastasiades agreed to shutter the nation’s second-largest bank, Cyprus Popular Bank, largely wiping out deposits above the insured limit of 100,000 euros. Depositors in the country’s biggest bank, Bank of Cyprus (BOC), could lose as much as 40 percent of their uninsured savings. “We don’t have any numbers or real data on how this will affect our lives,” says Kattou’s husband, Pambos Kattos, 52, a civil engineer who will likely lose his job at the bank that’s being folded. “But there will be great destruction.”...

Potentially harmful virus missing from a lab at U-Texas Medical Branch
...During a routine internal inspection last week, UTMB officials realized one vial of a virus called Guanarito was not accounted for at the facility....

U.S. Border Patrol Uniforms Manufactured in Mexico
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has granted uniform contracts to VF Imagewear, Inc., an apparel company that relies on manufacturing sites in Mexico for a “significant percentage” of its occupational garments...

Scam Cell: California’s embryonic stem-cell research institute fails to deliver ...In fact, CIRM directed a full 91 percent of its research funding to institutions with representatives on its governing board. Similarly, the CIRM board overruled the Institute’s own scientific reviewers, who twice rejected a proposal to fund a for-profit company on whose behalf CIRM founder Robert Klein had lobbied, and the board went ahead and gave the money to the company anyway. According to a Sacramento Bee report, “it was the first time in the board’s eight-year history that it approved an application twice rejected by reviewers.”...

Holy Land Catholics and Orthodox to celebrate Easter simultaneously Most of the Catholic communities in Israel, the Palestinian territories, Jordan and Cyprus are preparing to celebrate the liturgies of Holy Week. However, they will be joining their Orthodox brethren in celebrating Holy Week during the first week of May, according to the Julian Calendar followed by the Orthodox communities. This bucks the practice of most Christians elsewhere who follow the Gregorian calendar, which celebrates Holy Week March 24-29, with Easter falling on March 30...

Obamacare Red Tape Tower will make you cower
A tower of 20,000 pages of Obamacare regulations, wrapped in a neat red ribbon and first unveiled publicly by Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell at last weekend’s Conservative Political Action Conference, made its way to the Senate floor today as the upper chamber debated the continuing resolution to fund the government. It took several GOP aides to haul the paper tower through the Capitol to make its appearance...(picture)

Clinic escort: woman who had 10 abortions is “empowered”
...Elsewhere in her blog, the clinic escort talks about sidewalk counselors offering to help the women with adoption or other alternatives. Pro-lifers often offer free help to pregnant women outside abortion clinics. To the escort, this is “shaming.”...