It's very sad to hear and see tragedy like what is happening now in the Philippines. I hope that the victims of this calamity will be given immediate help and assistance by the Philippine government. Please continue reading the news here.

140 die in Philippine storm, toll expected to rise

MANILA, Philippines – Rescuers pulled more bodies from swollen rivers Monday as residents started to dig out their homes from under carpets of mud after flooding left 140 people dead in the Philippine capital and surrounding towns.

Overwhelmed officials called for international help, warning they may not have sufficient resources to withstand another storm that forecasters said was brewing east of the island nation and could hit as early as Friday.

Authorities expected the death toll from Tropical Storm Ketsana, which scythed across the northern Philippines on Saturday, to rise as rescuers penetrate villages blocked off by floating cars and other debris. The storm dumped more than a month's worth of rain in just 12 hours, fueling the worst flooding to hit the country in more than 40 years. At least 140 people died, and 32 are missing.

Troops, police and volunteers have already rescued more than 7,900 people, but unconfirmed reports of more deaths abound, Defense Secretary Gilbert Teodoro said.

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Memorial Day Celebration for Americans

Special greetings to all Americans especially to all American friends from Hohenfels U.S. Base here in Germany in the celebration of Memorial day! I wish you all a safe and enjoyable holiday!

Memorial Day is a United States federal holiday observed on the last Monday of May (May 25 in 2009). Formerly known as Decoration Day, it commemorates U.S. men and women who died while in the military service. First enacted to honor Union soldiers of the American Civil War (it is celebrated near the day of reunification after the civil war), it was expanded after World War I to include American casualties of any war or military action.

HISTORY OF MEMORIAL DAY

Following the end of the Civil War, many communities set aside a day to mark the end of the war or as a memorial to those who had died. Some of the places creating an early memorial day include Sharpsburg, Maryland, located near Antietam Battlefield; Charleston, South Carolina; Boalsburg, Pennsylvania; Petersburg, Virginia; Carbondale, Illinois; Columbus, Mississippi; many communities in Vermont; and some two dozen other cities and towns. These observances coalesced around Decoration Day, honoring the Union dead, and the several Confederate Memorial Days.

According to Professor David Blight of the Yale University History Department, the first memorial day was observed on May 1, 1865 by liberated slaves at the Washington Race Course (today the location of Hampton Park) in Charleston, South Carolina. The site had been used as a temporary Confederate prison camp as well as a mass grave for Union soldiers who died in captivity. The freed slaves disinterred the dead Union soldiers from the mass grave to be inhumed properly reposed with individual graves, built a fence around the graveyard with an entry arch, declaring it a Union graveyard. On May 30, 1868, the freed slaves returned to the graveyard with flowers they had picked from the countryside and decorated the individual gravesites, thereby creating the first Decoration Day. Thousands of freed blacks and Union soldiers paraded from the area, followed by much patriotic singing and a picnic.[4]

The official birthplace of Memorial Day is Waterloo, New York. The village was credited with being the place of origin because it observed the day on May 5, 1866, and each year thereafter. The friendship between General John Murray, a distinguished citizen of Waterloo, and General John A. Logan, who helped bring attention to the event nationwide, likely was a factor in the holiday's growth.

Logan had been the principal speaker in a citywide memorial observation on April 29, 1866, at a cemetery in Carbondale, Illinois, an event that likely gave him the idea to make it a national holiday. On May 5, 1868, in his capacity as commander-in-chief of the Grand Army of the Republic, a veterans' organization, Logan issued a proclamation that "Decoration Day" be observed nationwide[5]. It was observed for the first time on May 30 of the same year; the date was chosen because it was not the anniversary of a battle. The tombs of fallen Union soldiers were decorated in remembrance.

Many of the states of the U.S. South refused to celebrate Decoration Day, due to lingering hostility towards the Union Army and also because there were relatively few veterans of the Union Army who were buried in the South. A notable exception was Columbus, Mississippi, which on April 25, 1866 at its Decoration Day commemorated both the Union and Confederate casualties buried in its cemetery.

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Happy Mother's Day To All Mothers!

I would like to extend this opportunity to greet all Mothers a very happy and meaningful blessed day! Congratulations for being such good Mothers to your children. Sad to say, I am not still a mother. I guess I am still young not to think too much about it. ..wink! I also would like to take this opportunity to greet My Beloved one and only Mother a blessed and fantastic day! I am happy that I called home today and already greeted her. I already told her that my gift will be given when I go home for vacation this year. Do you think a heart pendant necklace is a lovely present to my dear Mama? I believed so!

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY TO ALL MOTHERS

Holy Week from Monday To Wednesday!

I guess most Christians especially the Catholics are aware of what we celebrate this week. To give you some info about, continue reading below. Have a blessed Holy week to all!

Monday to Wednesday

The days between Palm Sunday and Maundy Thursday are known as Holy Monday (or Fig Monday), Holy Tuesday and Holy Wednesday (sometimes called Spy Wednesday). The Gospels of these days recount events not all of which occurred on the corresponding days between Jesus' entry into Jerusalem and his Last Supper. For instance, the Monday Gospel tells of the Anointing of Bethany (John 12:1-9), which occurred before the Palm Sunday event described in John 12:12-19.

The Chrism Mass, whose texts the Roman Missal now gives under Holy Thursday, may be brought forward to one of these days, to facilitate participation by as many as possible of the clergy of the diocese together with the bishop. This Mass was not included in editions of the Roman Missal before the time of Pope Pius XII. In this Mass the bishop blesses separate oils for the sick (used in Anointing of the Sick) for catechumens (used in Baptism) and chrism (used in Baptism, but especially in Confirmation and Holy Orders, as well as in rites such as the blessing of an altar and a church). please read more here

History of St. Patrick's Day!

I just posted in my other blog some information about St. Patrick's Day. For those who are celebrating this memorable day especially for Irish people and other people around the world, enjoy the celebration. I am just sharing a bit history about St. Patrick.

HISTORY OF ST. PATRICK'S DAY

In the past, Saint Patrick's Day was celebrated as a religious holiday. It became a public holiday in 1903, by the Money Bank. (Ireland) Act 1903, an Act of the United Kingdom Parliament introduced by the Irish MP James O'Mara. O'Mara later introduced the law which required that pubs be closed on 17 March, a provision which was repealed only in the 1970s. The first St. Patrick's Day parade held in the Irish Free State was held in Dublin in 1931 and was reviewed by the then Minister of Defence Desmond Fitzgerald. Although secular celebrations now exist, the holiday remains a religious observance in Ireland, for both the Church of Ireland and Roman Catholic Church.

It was only in the mid-1990s that the Irish government began a campaign to use Saint Patrick's Day to showcase Ireland and its culture. The government set up a group called St. Patrick's Festival, with the aim to:

—Offer a national festival that ranks amongst all of the greatest celebrations in the world and promote excitement throughout Ireland via innovation, creativity, grassroots involvement, and marketing activity.
—Provide the opportunity and motivation for people of Irish descent, (and those who sometimes wish they were Irish) to attend and join in the imaginative and expressive celebrations.
—Project, internationally, an accurate image of Ireland as a creative, professional and sophisticated country with wide appeal, as we approach the new millennium.

Olympic Games

I just want to share today about the topic Olympic Games..Since Olympic games is currently happening in China, I guess it is worthwhile knowing about it....This is coming from my beloved Wikipedia!!! Happy reading!! I have to sign-off early today...not feeling so good, it's my migraine again!!

Thanks for all your visit here!! have fun!!

The Olympic Games is an international multi-sport event. The original Olympic Games (Greek: Ολυμπιακοί Αγώνες; [Olympiakoi Agones] (help·info)) were first recorded in 776 BC in Olympia, Greece, and were celebrated until AD 393. Interest in reviving the Olympic Games proper was first shown by the Greek poet and newspaper editor Panagiotis Soutsos in his poem "Dialogue of the Dead" in 1833.[3] Evangelos Zappas sponsored the first modern international Olympic Games in 1859. He paid for the refurbishment of the Panathenian Stadium for Olympic Games held there in 1870 and 1875. This was noted in newspapers and publications around the world including the London Review, which stated that "the Olympian Games, discontinued for centuries, have recently been revived! Here is strange news indeed ... the classical games of antiquity were revived near Athens."

The International Olympic Committee was founded in 1894 on the initiative of a French nobleman, Pierre Frédy, Baron de Coubertin. The IOC has become the heart of the "Olympic Movement," a conglomeration of sporting federations that are involved in the organization of the Games. As the Olympic Movement has grown so have the profile and complexity of the Games. Participation in the Games has increased to the point that nearly every nation on earth is represented. With the proliferation of satellite communications, the internet, and the continuing trend towards globalization, the Olympics are consistently gaining supporters.[5] This growth has created numerous challenges, including political boycotts, the use of performance enhancing medications, bribery of officials, and terrorism.

Despite these challenges the Olympics have continued to thrive and flourish. Each successive Games attempts to add more events in order to keep up with the ever-evolving advance of athletic expression around the world. The current games in Beijing comprise of 302 events in 28 sports.[6] The most recent Winter Olympics in 2006 featured 84 events in 7 sports.[7] While the Olympic Games do continue to evolve, they also encompass many rituals that were established during their infancy in the late 19th and early 20th century. Most of these traditions are on display during the Opening and Closing ceremonies, and the medal presentations. For its part, the Olympic Movement has made considerable progress in fostering participation among as many nations as wish to compete, as well as focusing on the Olympic motto: Citius Altius Fortius - Faster, Higher, Stronger.

Genetic variants linked with hypertension

NEW HAVEN, Conn. (UPI) -- Yale University scientists in Connecticut said rare genetic variants can be associated with a dramatically lower risk of high blood pressure.

The researchers say their finding that rare mutations might collectively play a large part in the development of common, yet complex, diseases such as hypertension also has implications for the diagnosis and treatment of such diseases as diabetes and schizophrenia.

"Collectively, common variants have explained a small fraction of the risk of most diseases in the population, as we would expect from the effects of natural selection,'' said Yale Professor Richard Lifton, who led the study with Daniel Levy, director of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institutes's Framingham Heart Study. "The question this leaves open is whether many rare variations in genes will collectively account for a large influence on common disease.''

Lifton said the new study underscores the importance of sequencing the genome of many individuals in order to discover disease-causing mutations.

The research is reported in the journal Nature Genetics.


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