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Sanef said it was perturbed by eNCA's decision to take two anchors off the air after they criticised the government's U-turn on lifting the ban on cigarette sales.

Beachgoing is not just for the summer. Nothing is romantic than walking on the beach with a loved one. What about the beach in the autumn? Walking on the beach on a cool breeze and sitting in a café with an ocean view may be something you don't want to miss.   If you long for a place where you can see the autumn sea and uninhabited islands, all you need to do is take the Airport Train from Seoul station or Gimpo Airport station. Within one hour, it will take you to Yeongjo...

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Chestnut forests in the Kazdağları, surrounded by yellow and red tones and autumn outfits, attract photographers and outdoor sports enthusiasts.

In the lead-up to the Truth Matters conference in October, we will be focusing our attention on the sufficiency, authority, and clarity of Scripture. Of our previous blog series, none better embodies that emphasis than Frequently Abused Verses. The following entry from that series originally appeared on April 12, 2017. -ed.

Almost twenty years ago, during Moody Bible Institute’s Founder’s Week conference, I heard Jim Cymbala make the following plea for unity:

Think of the division right now in the Body of Christ. We have all these names that don’t exist to God: Baptist, Presbyterian, Nazarene, Pentecostal, Charismatic. God doesn’t have any idea what any of them mean, because He only has one Body. . . . He has one Body—the Body of the Lord Jesus Christ. Evangelical—evangelical doesn’t even exist to God. We’re using words that aren’t in the Bible. We’re thumping the Bible and being unbiblical while we’re thumping it. He only has—there’s one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one Body. And He doesn’t like us dividing up His Body. ^[1] Jim Cymbala, “The Victorious Church,” February 5, 2000.

In the moment, it struck me as nonsense. Of course God knows what our denominational titles mean; of course He understands where the doctrinal lines have been drawn in the sand.

But then again, who is going to argue in favor of division?

The church’s current fascination with the soft ecumenism of identifying and celebrating common ground hinges on a false dichotomy—that all division grieves God. They point to a variety of texts—frequently wrenched out of their original context—to make that point.

Cymbala’s text, for example, was Mark 3:20–26—a passage in which Christ answered the allegations that His power came from Satan. The Lord rightly points out it would be illogical to use Satan’s power to cast out demons—that “a house divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand.” Cymbala turned that statement into a rebuke to a divided church.

Today another text is frequently floated as a mandate for unity: “Remind them of these things, and solemnly charge them in the presence of God not to wrangle about words, which is useless and leads to the ruin of the hearers” (2 Timothy 2:14). Often, that’s taken to mean we should not debate our doctrinal differences—that we shouldn’t let doctrine divide us at all. If we say we’re Christians, we ought to focus on what we agree on, and set aside anything on which we don’t.

Under certain circumstances, that posture might be acceptable. But, as John MacArthur explains, in a world overrun with false gospels and false christs, we cannot afford to simply brush away every doctrinal line in the sand.

Through the centuries, the steady stream of falsehood has become a deeper, wider, and increasingly more destructive sea of ungodliness. False teaching about God, about Christ, about the Bible, and about spiritual reality is pandemic. The father of lies is working relentlessly to pervert and corrupt the saving and sanctifying truth of God’s written Word, the Bible, and of the living Word, His Son, Jesus Christ.

“Christian” cults abound today as never before, as does every type of false religion. Many Protestant denominations that once championed God’s inerrant Word and the saving gospel of Jesus Christ have turned to human philosophy and secular wisdom. In doing so, they have abandoned the central truths of biblical Christianity—including the Trinity, the deity of Christ, His substitutionary atonement, and salvation by grace alone. In rejecting God’s truth, they have come to condone and embrace countless evils—universalism, hedonism, psychology, self-salvation, fornication and adultery, homosexuality, abortion, and a host of other sins. The effects of ungodly teaching have been devastating and damning, not only for the members of those churches but for a countless number of the unsaved who have been confirmed in their ungodliness by false religion. ^[2] John MacArthur, The MacArthur New Testament Commentary: 2 Timothy (Chicago: Moody Press, 1995), 68.

As he writes in his book, The Truth War, today we need to be all the more fervent in our defense of the truth.

Jude’s command “to contend earnestly for the faith” is not merely being neglected in the contemporary church; it is often greeted with outright scorn. These days anyone who calls for biblical discernment or speaks out plainly against a popular perversion of sound doctrine is as likely as the false teachers themselves to incur the disapproval of other Christians. That may even be an understatement. Saboteurs and truth vandals often seem to have an easier time doing their work than the conscientious believer who sincerely tries to exercise biblical discernment.

Practically anyone today can advocate the most outlandish ideas or innovations and still be invited to join the evangelical conversation. But let someone seriously question whether an idea that is gaining currency in the evangelical mainstream is really biblically sound, and the person raising the concern is likely to be shouted down by others as a “heresy hunter” or dismissed out of hand as a pesky whistle-blower. That kind of backlash has occurred with such predictable regularity that clear voices of true biblical discernment have nearly become extinct. Contemporary evangelicals have almost completely abandoned the noble practice of the Bereans, who were commended for carefully scrutinizing even the apostle Paul’s teaching. They “searched the Scriptures daily to find out whether these things were so” (Acts 17:11).

But in our generation it sometimes seems as if the more aggressively something is marketed to Christians as the latest, greatest novelty, the less likely most evangelicals are to examine it critically. After all, who wants to be constantly derided as a gatekeeper for orthodoxy in a postmodern culture? Defending the faith is a role very few seem to want anymore. ^[3] John MacArthur, The Truth War (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2007), 97–98.

Far from the modern twist on 2 Timothy 2:14, much of what Paul wrote to his apprentice had to do with defending the church and holding fast to sound doctrine. In his first letter to Timothy, Paul wrote:

As I urged you upon my departure for Macedonia, remain on at Ephesus, in order that you may instruct certain men not to teach strange doctrines, nor to pay attention to myths and endless genealogies, which give rise to mere speculation rather than furthering the administration of God which is by faith. . . . This command I entrust to you, Timothy, my son, in accordance with the prophecies previously made concerning you, that by them you may fight the good fight, keeping faith and a good conscience, which some have rejected and suffered shipwreck in regard to their faith. (1 Timothy 1:3–4, 18–19)

The same kind of exhortations are littered throughout Paul’s writing. In Acts 20:28–30 he warned the Ephesian church,

Be on guard for yourselves and for all the flock, among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God which He purchased with His own blood. I know that after my departure savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock; and from among your own selves men will arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after them.

He further exhorted the Thessalonians, “Examine everything carefully; hold fast to that which is good; abstain from every form of evil” (1 Thessalonians 5:21-22). Paul was clearly not one to shy away from a doctrinal debate. He was a passionate defender of the gospel, and a tireless guardian of the truth.

So what should we make of his exhortation to Timothy “not to quarrel over words” (2 Timothy 2:14, ESV)? Here’s how John MacArthur explains it.

Paul’s purpose was to motivate and encourage Timothy to keep a firm grasp on that truth himself and to pass it on to others who would do likewise (2 Timothy 2:2). It is only with a thorough knowledge of God’s truth that falsehood and deceit can be recognized, resisted, and opposed. . . .

Logomacheō (wrangle about words) carries the idea of waging a war of words, in this instance with false teachers, who are later described as “always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth” (2 Timothy 3:7). Such deceivers use human wisdom and reason to undermine God’s Word, and believers are not to debate with them, especially within the church. ^[4] The MacArthur New Testament Commentary: 2 Timothy, 70–72.

He goes on to explain why such a warning is particularly timely for the church today.

The barrage of ungodly ideas and verbiage that today is assaulting society in general, and even the evangelical church, is frightening. More frightening than the false ideas themselves, however, is the indifference to them, and often acceptance of them, by those who name the name of Christ and claim to be born again. Abortion, theistic evolution, homosexuality, no fault divorce, feminism, and many other unbiblical concepts and attitudes have invaded the church at an alarming rate and to an alarming degree. One of the most popular and seductive false teachings is the promotion of high self-esteem as a Christian virtue, when, in reality, it is the very foundation of sin. Such destructive notions are inevitable when Christians listen to the world above the Word, and are more persuaded by men’s wisdom than by God’s. Far too few leaders in the church today can say honestly with Paul that their “exhortation does not come from error or impurity or by way of deceit” (1 Thessalonians 2:3).

As Christians become less and less familiar with Scripture and sound doctrine on a firsthand, regular basis, they become easy prey for jargon that sounds Christian but strongly mitigates against God’s truth. Such unbiblical and arbitrary ideas as being “slain in the Spirit” and “binding Satan” frequently replace or are valued above the clear teaching of and submission to Scripture. ^[5] The MacArthur New Testament Commentary: 2 Timothy, 73.

God’s people should not be combative; we must not walk around with doctrinal chips on our shoulders, looking for a fight. But we must also have a high enough view of God’s Word that we’re willing to stand up in its defense. We should not condemn doctrinal debate or disagreement; we should use them for God’s glory and the good of His church.

Why do bad things happen to good people? The fundamental problem with that common question is that it’s back to front. The right approach is to ask why good things happen to bad people. That question reflects an accurate reading of Scripture and an honest evaluation of ourselves.

José Ramón Machado Ventura, second secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC) Central Committee, received on the morning of December 4, the general secretary of El Salvador’s Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional (FMLN), Medardo González Trejo, who is leading a delegation visiting Cuba on the invitation of the PCC.

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ISLAMABAD: The National Assembly Secretariat has advised all the members to go for COVID-19 tests prior to attending the session commencing from Monday, May 11.According to an announcement, the...

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ISLAMABAD: The National Assembly Secretariat has advised all the members to go for COVID-19 tests prior to attending the session commencing from Monday, May 11. According to an announcement, the...

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"Shrinking democratic space through the militarizing of the pandemic response as well as not closing the largest media network’s airwaves is a direct affront to civil liberties.”

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Bangalore/Mumbai: HDFC Property Fund, the private equity arm of Housing Development Finance Corp. Ltd, has raised $250 million (around `1,500 crore today) through an offshore fund. It hopes to raise another $150 million by the end of the year, said a person directly familiar with the development who did not want to be named. On Friday, HDFC Property Fund informed the BSE that it had raised the capital through its second international fund, saying “the recently closed fund will focus on investing primarily in residential property developments in major cities across India”. The cumulative assets under management now exceed $1 billion, the statement added. The new fund, which started raising […]

MUMBAI/BANGALORE: Multinational companies are increasingly buying properties to set up their offices instead of leasing offices as they preferred for years, marking a strategic shift that signals the growing importance of the Indian market and the long-term commitment of the global firms. Foreign firms including GlaxoSmithKline Pharma, Sanofi Aventis, Adobe, Honeywell, SanDisk and Amazon have recently bought office space in India. MNCs accounted for 35% of total commercial asset sales in the country in the first three months of 2014, according to a report by real estate services firm Cushman & Wakefield. In 2012, MNCs contributed as much as 60% to the total commercial asset sales, backed by two deals […]

Gymnasts all around the world are making the best of things as they try to keep fit while gyms are closed due to the coronavirus and Italy is no exception.

Olympic medallist Marco Lodadio of Italy transforms his garden swing into the rings gymnastic apparatus.

In what now seems like a galaxy far, far away, Republican lawmakers routinely talked up the idea of raising the Medicare eligibility age from 65 to 67. In fact, we were in that galaxy just three...

Gymnasts around the world have been trying to stay fit amid tough restrictions during the COVID-19 crisis, and Italy is no exception.      With the country's gym clubs and training facilities closed for more than two months as part of government measures to contain the spread of the coronavirus, gymnast Marco Lodadio, a silver medallist in the rings event at the 2019 world championships, turned his garden into a fitness studio.      Without the sophisticated faci

ABSTRACT

All enterococci produce a complex polysaccharide called the enterococcal polysaccharide antigen (EPA). This polymer is required for normal cell growth and division and for resistance to cephalosporins and plays a critical role in host-pathogen interaction. The EPA contributes to host colonization and is essential for virulence, conferring resistance to phagocytosis during the infection. Recent studies revealed that the "decorations" of the EPA polymer, encoded by genetic loci that are variable between isolates, underpin the biological activity of this surface polysaccharide. In this work, we investigated the structure of the EPA polymer produced by the high-risk enterococcal clonal complex Enterococcus faecalis V583. We analyzed purified EPA from the wild-type strain and a mutant lacking decorations and elucidated the structure of the EPA backbone and decorations. We showed that the rhamnan backbone of EPA is composed of a hexasaccharide repeat unit of C2- and C3-linked rhamnan chains, partially substituted in the C3 position by α-glucose (α-Glc) and in the C2 position by β-N-acetylglucosamine (β-GlcNAc). The so-called "EPA decorations" consist of phosphopolysaccharide chains corresponding to teichoic acids covalently bound to the rhamnan backbone. The elucidation of the complete EPA structure allowed us to propose a biosynthetic pathway, a first essential step toward the design of antimicrobials targeting the synthesis of this virulence factor.

IMPORTANCE Enterococci are opportunistic pathogens responsible for hospital- and community-acquired infections. All enterococci produce a surface polysaccharide called EPA (enterococcal polysaccharide antigen) required for biofilm formation, antibiotic resistance, and pathogenesis. Despite the critical role of EPA in cell growth and division and as a major virulence factor, no information is available on its structure. Here, we report the complete structure of the EPA polymer produced by the model strain E. faecalis V583. We describe the structure of the EPA backbone, made of a rhamnan hexasaccharide substituted by Glc and GlcNAc residues, and show that teichoic acids are covalently bound to this rhamnan chain, forming the so-called "EPA decorations" essential for host colonization and pathogenesis. This report represents a key step in efforts to identify the structural properties of EPA that are essential for its biological activity and to identify novel targets to develop preventive and therapeutic approaches against enterococci.

Laterites preserved on both sides of the Western Ghats Escarpment of Peninsular India have formed by long-term lateritic weathering essentially after India–Seychelles continental break-up following Deccan Traps emplacement (c. 63 myr ago). Supergene manganese ores of the Western Ghats were formed on Late Archean manganese protores. Among Mn oxides composing the ores, cryptomelane (K-rich Mn oxide) was characterized and dated by ⁴⁰Ar/³⁹Ar geochronology. Measured ages complement those previously obtained in other South Indian manganese ores from the hinterland plateau and further document three major weathering periods, c. 53–44, c. 39–22 and c. 14–10 Ma, the last being documented for the first time in India. These periods coincide with global palaeoclimatic proxies and date the lateritic weathering of three successive palaeolandscapes of the Western Ghats that evolved under slow denudation (c. 8 m Ma^–1) over the last 44 myr and were mostly incised during the Neogene (<22 Ma). This indicates that the Western Ghats are a relict of a South Indian plateau preserved at the headwaters of very long east-flowing river systems and above the Western Ghats Escarpment. Topography and denudation history of this landscape do not require Neogene tilt of the Peninsula as recently proposed.

Supplementary material: Full details of field and sample description, methods and analytical data including electron probe microanalyses of cryptomelane, and isotopic analyses and degassing spectra of irradiated cryptomelane grains are available at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.c.4726661

We investigated whether cycloheximide (CHX) would induce amnesia for the stress-induced impairment of extinction retrieval. First, a single restraint stress session was demonstrated to impair extinction retrieval, but not fear conditioning. A second experiment showed that when CHX was administered immediately after restraint, rats exhibited significant extinction retrieval at test (i.e., retrograde amnesia for the stress). In a third experiment, the stress session impaired various amounts of extinction durations, suggesting that the stress inhibited extinction retrieval rather than enhancing the original fear learning. These results suggest memories for acute stress are susceptible to disruption, which could have clinical implications.

An exceptionally well-preserved specimen of the articulated rhodophyte Permocalculus, compared with P. tenellus sensu Elliott, 1955, is described from fine-grained Upper Permian limestones of the Khuff Formation of Saudi Arabia. Longitudinal medullary and sheaf-like cortical filaments extend through the uniserial series of elongate-globular, concave- and convex-terminating, interlocking segments for which they are interpreted to have functioned in articulation. The filaments tend to splay and branch laterally into the cortex where they terminate at the pores. At the terminal aperture, the filaments extend as bifurcating and possibly trifurcating branches and may serve as the origin of a new segment. Numerous elongate-globular chambers, up to five in each row and intimately involved with the filaments, are developed in the outer medulla and are considered to represent reproductive sporangia. The specimen is considered to have occupied predominantly low-energy, normal to slightly elevated salinity, shallow conditions within the subtidal regime of a lagoon.

Most freshwater bacterial communities are characterized by a few dominant taxa that are often ubiquitous across freshwater biomes worldwide. Our understanding of the genomic diversity within these taxonomic groups is limited to a subset of taxa. Here, we investigated the genomic diversity that enables Limnohabitans, a freshwater genus key in funneling carbon from primary producers to higher trophic levels, to achieve abundance and ubiquity. We reconstructed eight putative Limnohabitans metagenome-assembled genomes (MAGs) from stations located along broad environmental gradients existing in Lake Michigan, part of Earth’s largest surface freshwater system. De novo strain inference analysis resolved a total of 23 strains from these MAGs, which strongly partitioned into two habitat-specific clusters with cooccurring strains from different lineages. The largest number of strains belonged to the abundant LimB lineage, for which robust in situ strain delineation had not previously been achieved. Our data show that temperature and nutrient levels may be important environmental parameters associated with microdiversification within the Limnohabitans genus. In addition, strains predominant in low- and high-phosphorus conditions had larger genomic divergence than strains abundant under different temperatures. Comparative genomics and gene expression analysis yielded evidence for the ability of LimB populations to exhibit cellular motility and chemotaxis, a phenotype not yet associated with available Limnohabitans isolates. Our findings broaden historical marker gene-based surveys of Limnohabitans microdiversification and provide in situ evidence of genome diversity and its functional implications across freshwater gradients.

IMPORTANCE Limnohabitans is an important bacterial taxonomic group for cycling carbon in freshwater ecosystems worldwide. Here, we examined the genomic diversity of different Limnohabitans lineages. We focused on the LimB lineage of this genus, which is globally distributed and often abundant, and its abundance has shown to be largely invariant to environmental change. Our data show that the LimB lineage is actually comprised of multiple cooccurring populations for which the composition and genomic characteristics are associated with variations in temperature and nutrient levels. The gene expression profiles of this lineage suggest the importance of chemotaxis and motility, traits that had not yet been associated with the Limnohabitans genus, in adapting to environmental conditions.

This protocol describes a simple single-step column purification (SSCP) of rAAV2 by gravity flow based on its affinity to heparin, without ultracentrifugation.

Little swarm robots that can't do much on their own can use their random behavior to accomplish tasks like locomotion

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The United States international, who is now on the books at Chelsea, was given his break at Borussia Dortmund by the current Liverpool manager

With Italy's gym clubs and training facilities having fallen silent because of the coronavirus pandemic, 28-year-old Italian gymnast Marco Lodadio, silver medallist in the 2019 men's world artistic gymnastics championships, turned his garden into a fitness studio.

Without the sophisticated facilities that high-performance athletes normally count on, Lodadio modified a structure for a swing to train on rings.

Lodadio, whose parents had a gym where he began training when he was nine, has been stuck in lockdown for almost two months and this week has finally gotten back to his usual rigourous training regime as Italy begins gradually lifting its strict restrictions.

Arsenal and England midfielder Jordan Nobbs will be a columnist for 90min & BBC Sport pundit at the Women's World Cup in France this summer, as Phil Neville's Lionesses' look to secure a maiden World Cup triumph. Two wins from our first two games is obviously what we were all hoping for. The first game of a World Cup, or any other major tournament, is never going to be one where you're playing at your absolute best. But the 2-1 win over was Scotland was great given the pre-match hype, the..

A recent study has described new states that can be found in super-cold atom experiments, which could have applications for quantum technology.

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Nearly half of NHS doctors have been forced to buy their own personal protective equipment (PPE) for coronavirus treatment or rely on donations, a new survey has found.

A police officer accused of murdering former Aston Villa star Dalian Atkinson is set to go ahead in September, despite the current uncertainty about court timetables due to coronavirus.

Exclusive: report criticising government lockdown proposals heavily redacted before release

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Government scientific advisers are furious at what they see as an attempt to censor their advice on government proposals during the Covid-19 lockdown by heavily redacting an official report before it was released to the public, the Guardian can reveal.

The report was one of a series of documents published by the Scientific Advisory Group on Emergencies (Sage) this week to mollify growing criticism about the lack of transparency over the advice given to ministers responding to the coronavirus.

A video interview with Canada’s AI secretary general on crisis and opportunity. 

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