New York Times's Willy Staley says the show was prescient in a way that sheds light on our specific timeline. "But I think it deals with a theme that never stopped being relevant, namely, salvation. And did I mention death?" says Simcha Fisher Read more

It is a world away from the Eternal City's snarled traffic and the equally snarled theological texts of my day job, St. Isaac Jogues is Rapid City's unofficial Native American parish.

It is a little church in a rough part of town with an almost mystical view of the Black Hills.

Masses at St. Isaac's regularly include the Lakota "smudging" ritual as part of the penitential rite.

In Lakota culture, smudging, which involves burning aromatic sage or sweetgrass and waving this incense over the congregation with an eagle feather, is associated with purification. Accompanied by the "Four Directions Song," a Lakota chant exhorting listeners to turn to the Creator in prayer, the ritual is simple yet powerful.

This summer, at the end of a Mass that included a particularly impressive smudging, I overheard visitors asking the Lakota elder who had performed the rite if they could take pictures.

The former sun dancer cut an imposing figure in his crimson ribbon shirt, but I knew he would categorically refuse to take pictures with his eagle feather and incense bowl.

Lakota rituals are not allowed to be photographed or filmed.

When asked why, he simply said: "It's sacred. It's not a show."

This same summer—Covid summer—I had my first experience with the televised liturgy.

Masses I've presided at have been filmed before, to be played simultaneously in the parish hall, without much ado.

And televised liturgies—from St. Peter's to EWTN—have been a regular part of Catholic life since well before Covid.

During the pandemic, friends and relatives reported that seeing these liturgies on TV helped them spiritually, especially around Easter.

Such broadcasts seemed to meet a need. Liturgical history is rich and varied, and using technology to adjust to present circumstances seemed warranted.

I began to have misgivings about these Masses, however, as soon as I received a detailed set of instructions for fitting the Mass at which I was to preside at St. Isaac Jogues within the parameters of the broadcast.

Timing—hitting the 28-minute length requirement—was everything.

The broadcast window—not the message of the readings or the meaning of the prayers—became the principal determining factor for each of the small decisions a priest has to make when celebrating Mass: everything from which eucharistic prayer to use to when to pause for silent reflection.

Still, I was determined to go through with it.

Circumstances in a pandemic are less than ideal, I told myself; maybe I was just being fussy.

Only on the day of the production did I realize that we were not filming a daily parish Mass.

The Mass was being staged without a congregation, and I would be celebrating the Sunday liturgy on a Wednesday afternoon.

The crew assured me if something didn't fit the broadcast requirements, we could back up and do it again.

We could even film parts of the Mass afterward, they told me, so that a smoother version could be stitched together in post-production.

I did what I was told, but afterwards I felt like I'd done something wrong—wrong in a way that fell somewhere between using someone else's toothbrush and simony.

The folks organizing the filming were lovely, well-intentioned people, and in a crisis a bit of trial and error is inevitable.

But there is something decidedly un-sacramental, even anti-sacramental in e-Eucharist.

The Lakota are right to resist filming their sacred rites, and surely the Eucharist is no less sacred.

Attempting to squeeze Mass into the space between "Hannity," "The Bachelor" and all the weird stuff that shows up on my Facebook feed inevitably reduces it to something less than what it truly is.

The more I reflected on the experience, the less I could escape the conclusion that the Liturgy of the Eucharist should not be filmed.

As Italy eased its coronavirus restrictions last spring, Pope Francis began to express unease with the long-term effects of so many televised liturgies, unease I would now second in spades.

If e-Mass can substitute for the real thing, then the parish community is dispensable.

Moreover, physical participation is what separates a sacrament from a pious wish.

At best, TV Masses are a bit like an IV-drip, able to keep one hydrated in an emergency but not really capable of providing the long-term nourishment necessary to build up the body of Christ.

And there is an even deeper problem with televised Masses that I only came to appreciate through experience.

The camera is not an inert observer.

It changes what we do during the liturgy, altering our perception of what Mass is.

Vatican II's constitution on the sacred liturgy, "Sacrosanctum Concilium," makes clear that our task in the liturgy is not simply to watch but to participate.

When he was still a cardinal, Joseph Ratzinger, in The Spirit of the Liturgy, identified the tendency of contemporary worship to become priestly performance as one of the most damaging distortions of our liturgy.

Even liturgists who do not share all of Ratzinger's theological sensibilities, such as John Baldovin (Reforming the Liturgy: A Response to the Critics), second his fundamental point that the Mass must be prayed and not performed.

On the day of my TV Mass, one of the crew said to me, "You'll be famous!"

She was joking, of course, but the circumstances made the joke inevitable.

And even if the circumstances had not been so artificial as that particular way of staging Mass—if there had been a real congregation, for example—the camera would have had its effect in the little things like where one directs one's attention or moves one's eyes.

That particular staging had the added fault of introducing an element of falsehood into the celebration: The fact that I was pretending it was Sunday on a Wednesday meant that what I was doing did not quite correspond to reality.

While I'm not dogmatic on the specifics, I have more and more come to believe that a key to celebrating the liturgy as "Sacrosanctum Concilium" and the fathers of the liturgical movement intended, is that it be real.

I'd rather have real flowers than plastic, wax candles than oil-filled tubes; when I say the words of the Mass I try to speak directly to the intended party—looking at the people when I say "The Lord be with you" but not letting my eyes wander through the congregation when addressing God the Father.

We are inundated with entertainment—Netflix, no doubt, is one of the pandemic's winners—so I think if we are to keep the liturgy sacred, now is the time to exercise a bit of what St. Ignatius called agere contra: to act against those tendencies that may come naturally but lead away from the truth.

Perhaps this means reconsidering certain practices, including TV Masses, that seemed normal even before the pandemic.

Generic exhortations like "be more reverent" are too squishy to be of much help; we need a concrete action to reassert the sacredness, the irreducibility of the Eucharist.

Many have found some good in broadcast liturgies—the homebound and the hospitalized, for example—and the liturgy itself suggests where we might make the right distinction to preserve what is worthwhile in such practices.

We should continue to allow the transmission of the Liturgy of the Word, but filming the Liturgy of the Eucharist should be prohibited.

Drawing such a line actually has a strong historic precedent.

In the early church, the Liturgy of the Word and the Liturgy of the Eucharist were sometimes celebrated in different rooms.

This was done to facilitate a broader hearing of the Scriptures among those interested in but not yet fully committed to Christianity while reserving participation in the Eucharist to those fully initiated.

This distinction exists today (if somewhat obscurely) in the dismissal of the catechumens in the Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults.

In the Byzantine rite, it is marked by the exclamation "The doors! The doors!" before the creed and then the anaphora (the Eucharistic prayer).

Making such a distinction respects the particular nature of each of the two principal parts of the Mass.

The Liturgy of the Word is a time of teaching and instruction, something that can be done, if imperfectly, via TV (or Wi-Fi).

You can tell someone what you learned in the homily (in some cases, even improve upon it), but that simply doesn't work when it comes to Holy Communion.

Sacraments are not principles to be learned but tangible realities that cannot be reduced to the sum of their parts; they are concrete because they are given.

The theorist of television and communication Marshall McLuhan was right to observe that "the medium is the message."

When the medium is bread and wine, it can't go digital without becoming something less than bread and wine.

Pictures of food and drink do not nourish. And love means remaining unsatiated with anything less than the Beloved—even when he is absent. Continue reading

"Our celebrations during the Easter period, which for us begins with a Mass on Holy Thursday evening, April 9, a special service on Good Friday afternoon and a Mass on Easter Sunday morning," said Lyndsay Freer spokeswoman for the Catholic Diocese of Auckland.

"Because our churches are in lockdown, we are attempting to provide recorded daily Masses to our Catholic people via our diocesan website and the Bishop's Facebook."

Besides screening through these channels, Freer said they were in talks to have the services aired on TV.

"We are negotiating to have some television time during this period, and are very grateful that this is likely to be a possibility," Freer said.

She said the Church remained committed to keep connected to Catholics and provide for their spiritual needs "as best as we can in these troubled times".

Many thousands usually crammed St Peter's Square, and a few lucky ones will get to attend Easter Sunday mass conducted by the Pope.

However, there will be no such celebrations this year after the Vatican confirmed one resident who lived with the Pope tested positive for coronavirus, resulting in testing being done for 170 people in the complex.

Six of those tested came back positive but Pope Francis tested negative for COVID-19, according to a Vatican statement.

"Pope Francis celebrates a daily Mass which is live-streamed from the Vatican, and the Easter liturgies will also be coming to us from there via the Vatican website," Freer added.

The Church is posting online Mass links on its National Liturgy Office website.

The page has regular updates of links in New Zealand and overseas, including to the Pope's daily Mass, held at 7 pm New Zealand time.

Source

• nzherald.co.nz
• catholic.org.nz
• Image: twitter.com

Islands are normally surrounded by bodies of deep water, however, every single person on this show is so shallow, it might as well be called Love Puddle.

Every single part of this show is shallow, people talk about being in relationships and don't mention anything about what kind of personality, or values they share. Read more

Surgeons, nurses, physiotherapists and radiographers providing surgeries to thousands of patients from the world's poorest countries.

Tumour removal, facial reconstruction, cataract removal/lens implants, cleft lip and palate reconstruction and orthopaedics surgeries (club feet and bowed legs).

The SUNDAY current affairs programme travelled to Guinea, West Africa, to profile them and their incredible work.

The story is on SUNDAY - TVONE - 7.30pm on 10 March.

Further information in advance of the story is at the links below.

https://www.facebook.com/SundayTVNZ/

https://mercyships.org.nz/

Supplied: Amanda Gregan Communications Advisor - NZ Catholic Bishops Te Huinga o nga Pihopa Katorika o Aotearoa

A plot to negotiate the release of a kidnapped American aid worker fails, and the young woman — together with others who have been trafficked — is found dead from asphyxiation in the back of a truck in Kyrgyzstan.

In the final scene of the episode of the CBS drama, as Secretary of State Elizabeth McCord (played by Téa Leoni, pictured,) tries to console distraught staff members in the wake of this unspeakable evil, the senior policy adviser shares part of a poem by Maggie Smith:

Life is short and the world

is at least half terrible, and for

every kind

stranger, there is one who would

break you,

though I keep this from my

children. I am trying

to sell them the world. Any

decent realtor,

walking you through a real

hellhole, chirps on

about good bones: This place

could be beautiful,

right? You could make this place

beautiful.

It's a moment of grace, created by Catholic screenwriter and co-executive producer Joy Gregory, who believes the divine speaks through poetry and who has made it her mission to bring stories about "tangling with the big questions" to television.

"I like to 'sneak the vegetables in' without people knowing about it," Gregory told NCR, referring to how she works in storylines of redemption, spiritual struggle and even overt references to faith as a television writer and producer.

That has been easier in her last two jobs on "Madam Secretary" and the teen fantasy drama "Joan of Arcadia" — both created by executive producer Barbara Hall, known for addressing faith on TV.

Before that, Gregory often faced resistance in writers' rooms full of "secular progressives," most of whom are not religious.

"It's a shocking blind spot in people who preach and practice tolerance in many areas of their lives," she told a group of religion journalists in January.

But television writers can't hit audiences over the head with proselytizing either, Gregory said.

"Religion too often doesn't work well on TV because it's either preaching to a choir, or it's trying to reach people who have already decided, 'That's not me,' " she said.

"People don't want to go deep. It's not cool; they might 'catch it.' "

Instead of the overt approach, Hall and Gregory try to "throw a bigger party" to attract audiences with compelling spiritual, or even religious, stories. Continue reading

• Madam Secretary is available on Netflix. In New Zealand, it airs on Prime at 9:35pm
• Image: Christian Today

In the week February 26 to March 5, the TV show which reconstructs a cold case, then invites psychics to solve said case was the ninth most-watched show on New Zealand television screens for all viewers over five; third best in the advertiser-friendly 25-54 demographic. Read more

Hope Channel New Zealand, as it is known, had been broadcasting via satellite on Freeview Satellite since September 2015.

As of April 30, its broadcast was extended to the free-to-air platform.

"This means every home in New Zealand with a television can now watch the channel for free," said Paul Hopson, coordinator of Hope Channel NZ. Continue reading

It is presently going to air on the National Geographic Channel on Sky on Wednesdays at 8:30pm.

In Wednesday's episode, in which he explored the concept of evil, Freeman comes to New Zealand, where a researcher shows us that children, when convinced that there is an invisible princess watching them, act significantly more ethically (in this case not cheating in a game) than children who believe they are alone.

"It's good enough research, I think."

"And it shows that children around the age of 5 can benefit from being lied to in the short run," says reviewer Justin Whitaker.

"I'm not so sure how it relates to the rest of us."

"Getting beyond the superficial, we find that religions around the world - people around the world - faced similar problems and often came up with similar solutions in terms of myths or ideas about the nature of the person and the world," says Whitaker.

"This isn't to overlook the differences."

"In fact it was the differences and the unique insights of both Kant and early Buddhism that drew me to my line of study."

It is not clear why Freeman had to come to New Zealand for this segment of the programme. The experiment has been carried out frequently in places closer to home.

The Story of God produced by Freeman, Lori McCreary and James Younger, takes viewers on a trip around the world to explore different cultures and religions on the ultimate quest to uncover the meaning of life, God and all these big questions in between.

Freeman seeks to understand how religion has evolved throughout the course of civilisation, and in turn how religion has shaped the evolution of society.

Although in our current geopolitical landscape, religion is often seen as something that divides, the series illuminates the remarkable similarities among different faiths, even those that seem to be in staunch contrast.

Source

• pathos.com
• Image:natgeotv.com.au

We were joined by our larger church community, people we're connected to in varying degrees, some of whom we embrace upon greeting, others whose hands we clasp briefly with a single word-peace-only once a week.

Even my husband's parents, unable to make the trip, were present.

My son's uncle, the baby's godfather, set up a video call and tucked his phone in his pocket so they were able to witness the splashing of holy water and joyful singing even 1,700 miles away.

We laid hands on my son and prayed.

We passed him around, parent to godparent to grandparent, and so on.

One by one, the entire community traced the sign of the cross with their thumbs on his forehead and heart, welcoming him into the fold, naming him one of us.

It was more than I could have hoped for.

And yet, it was everything I've imagined: a community for my son to grow up in, extended and close, near and far.

After church-shopping for a decade, his birth made it more urgent than ever to just pick a place.

Once we did, in order to strengthen our bonds with the parish, we set plans in motion for baptism.

Children are a wonderful and rewarding way to hold yourself accountable to good intentions.

As we planned his baptism, I thought about how rare it is to see the experience of community reflected back at us in pop culture, at least in any meaningful way.

More often than not, religion and communities of faith are misrepresented, or worse, caricatured, to be passed over as jokes or annoying obligations with which protagonists must contend.

Religion is almost never shown for one of the most profound experiences it offers its adherents: community.

In one of my favorite shows, Gilmore Girls (WB/CW), which ran for seven seasons and is earning scores of new fans on Netflix, Rory Gilmore's best friend, Lane Kim, is a Seventh Day Adventist with an ultra-strict mother who won't allow her to listen to rock music or eat junk food.

Lane, of course, loves both.

The friends spend much of their time plotting how to get around Mrs. Kim's rules.

While Mrs. Kim's faith demands might seem arcane and even laughable, it's not hard to imagine that for her, a single parent and immigrant, her faith community provides a support system.

In Netflix drama Orange Is the New Black, Tiffany Doggett, aka "Pennsatucky," is a character whose faith is portrayed negatively.

AsReligion & Politics writer Xarissa Holdaway says, "Incarcerated Pennsatucky spouts scripture, tries faith-healing on her fellow inmates, and collapses the chapel ceiling by hanging an enormous, against-the-rules handmade cross from a flimsy beam. She's emotionally unstable, she threatens and punishes other inmates, and she's ignorant, racist, and homophobic." Continue reading

Sources:

• Meghan Murphy-Gill is a writer living in Chicago.
• Image: Twitter

In a long and personal interview in Argentinean newspaper La Voz del Pueblo, the Pope said that he made this promise on the night of July 15, 1990.

"I told myself: 'It's not for me'," Francis was reported as saying.

He doesn't use the Internet either.

Instead, the Pope keeps up with the news by reading Italy's La Repubblica newspaper for up to 10 minutes each day.

Members of the Swiss Guard keep the Pope updated with soccer scores.

But Francis did mention the peril of being taken out of context himself by the media.

Elsewhere in the interview, Pope Francis said he misses walking on city streets as he used to in Buenos Aires and going out for a pizza.

"Ordering one in the Vatican is not the same thing."

Pope Francis said that "being with people does me good".

He said that people understand him and comprehend what he wants to say.

"Psychologically I can't be far from people."

He also revealed that while he doesn't cry in public, he has struggled to hold back tears at times.

One recent example of this came when he was talking about "the persecutions of Christians in Iraq and the fate of the children there".

He also stated that he is not a fan of protocol, but on official occasions he "keeps to it totally".

Francis also admitted his high workload and said "I am under pressure".

He had previously stated that he has not had a holiday since 1994.

The Pope usually goes to bed at 9pm, reads for an hour and sleeps until 4am.

"It's my biological clock," he said.

Asked how he would like to be remembered, Francis said: "As a person who has done his best to do good. I have no other claim."

Sources

• Vatican Radio
• Daily Mail
• New York News
• Image: Inquisitr

Lord Patten, head of a Vatican Media Committee formed to recommend reforms, said the Holy See needs better capability to respond to a constant news cycle and in different languages.

"What is needed now is more visual, multi-media content, especially if one wishes to reach younger people," he said.

About 85 per cent of the net cost of the Vatican's media outlay goes on newspapers and radio, Lord Patten noted.

Television and social media resources are professionally run, but under-resourced.

But Lord Patten warned that reforming Vatican media could see individuals who had long enjoyed effective autonomy very likely finding it hard to adapt to being accountable to others.

Continue reading

Wilson says a mutual distrust exists between the churches and the media. He says prayer as the way forward.

"I find that prayer connects me with God, but also connects me with my colleagues," Wilson said.

"I see them in a different way if I'm more prayerful through the day."

"So I think that if people pray for the media they might start to see us in a different way as well."

Another media personality Si Barnett says he is sad to say that some of the most vicious criticism he has received came from people who call themselves Christian.

Watch video prepared for Media Prayer Day in which media personalities talk about prayer and the media

Media Prayer day, is a biennial event when Christians are encouraged to take a few minutes at their Sunday services to pray for the spread of the Jesus-message through New Zealand's mass media.

It took place this year on 10 August. Did you notice?

Source

• Christianity Today
• mediaprayerday.com
• Image: mediaprayerday.com

This was announced by American Atheists president David at Stanford University in California on May 6.

He said the channel will run atheist content 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

The Religion News Service reported that Mr Silverman estimated the venture would reach 7 million households and be free, at least initially.

It will be available via Roku, an Internet streaming player that attaches to television sets.

"Why are we going to television?" Mr Silverman asked his Stanford audience.

"It's part of our strategy of going where we are not," he said.

There are more than 100 Christian and four Jewish television stations broadcasting in the United States.

The channel will show video of previous atheist events, such as footage from past American Atheist conventions and speakers at 2012‘s Reason Rally in Washington, D.C.

It will also air content provided by atheist video bloggers and other atheist groups.

In addition, the channel will air segments of "The Atheist Viewpoint", a show produced two decades ago by the late Madalyn Murray O'Hair.

Ms O'Hair was the American Atheists' founder.

She was the plaintiff in the 1963 landmark Supreme Court case that removed Bible readings from public schools.

"We are envisioning a lot of different content from many different atheist content creators," said Dave Muscato, American Atheists' director of communications, to RNS.

"We are hoping to sign on many other atheists who create videos currently on YouTube and other places."

Reaction from the Stanford crowd was enthusiastic.

A few began to applaud and a ripple of discussion buzzed through the room after Mr Silverman's announcement.

In answer to a question, he said a future atheist radio station is also a possibility.

There are individual atheist cable television and YouTube shows in the US.

Sources

• Religion News Service
• Image: the405media

The original G. K. Chesterton's Father Brown mysteries, were about a mild-mannered priest who solves crimes because he understands man's sinful nature.

Chesterton used the stories as a vehicle to comment on society.

The first of present series uses mostly newly written material, but Mark Williams, as Brown, takes no liberties with the character, who is understatedly quizzical and likeable.

Of course, there are some difficulties in transitioning Chesterton's famous priest-detective from the page to the small screen. As Michael Newton noted a day after the series began on the BBC, Chesterton's protagonist is so humble a character, so unconcerned about his own self, that it's hard to make a show that focuses directly on him

The present series has had to make certain changes in order to "work" for television. Father Brown makes a more direct transition to the centre of the stories. Moreover, the tales are reconfigured to take place in one small English village in the 1950′s. As a result, the great French detective Valentine (Chesterton's initial foil) becomes an English detective, rather than a world-renowned investigator. But then, such changes are to be expected: all translation is by necessity interpretation and re-creation.

After all, as starring actor (and self-described "pantheistic humanist") Mark Williams himself explains, Father Brown is not simply another television detective:

[Father Brown] has a huge appetite for the detail of life and for humanity, and he cares very much about people's souls. That's the most interesting thing about him as a sleuth: it's not him solving a conundrum or a crossword, he's dealing with what he sees as people's eternal damnation. And when he works it out, the sky turns black and is full of harpies; he's desperately committed to his morality.

Fr Brown screens on UKTV on Sunday nightys at 10:oopm

Source

• Gene Veith Pathos.com
• Dom Post
• Image: UKTV

Another display of just how little some people who comment on the church actually know about the Catholic Church. Continue reading

Watch video of show

EFKS media opened with 80 percent coverage of the country.

"We hope to have complete coverage in three months," says Chairman of the General Assembly, Rev. Elder Tautiaga Senara.

Both the radio and TV outlets will be under the operational leadership of Tuiasau Uelese Petaia, a former CEO of TV One, who also ran his own television station and has wide experience in the print media.

When Tuiasau was named manager of the stations, the appropriateness of the appointment was questioned because Tuiasau has been convicted of 67 counts of theft and given an 18 month jail sentence which he completed last year.

Asked about the concerns raised by the appointment, General Secretary of CCCS, Rev. Dr. Iutisone Salevao responded with a question of his own.

"Who was crucified together with Jesus, was it an angel?" he asked.

"However, he has the experience needed to realise the church's dream of operating a radio and television service for her members and the community," he said.

Initially the focus will be on youth; all programmes are to be broadcast in English and Samoan.

Salevao has previously revealed the need to address the problems faced by youth and hopes the programmes will help them choose a better road in life.

Both media are co-funded by the Council for World Mission in Singapore and London, but the church hopes for financial self-sufficiency in the future.

Source

• Talamua
• Talamua
• Talamua
• Image: Bebo

The conference will be called conference "The Figure of the Father in Television Series", and it will feature speakers comparing how British and American series portray the role of the father.

"We chose to speak about the role of the father because the role of the family is very vague and the father is a sort of window that represents it," explained Professor Enrique Fuster, one of the organizers.

The conference is scheduled for April 22-23, 2013, at the university in Rome.

Talks will include an analysis of parental models found in the British dramas Luther and The Hour, as well as the American shows Mad Men, Breaking Bad, In Treatment, Shameless and Dexter.

"The father in Downton Abbey is very comprehensive and accepts mistakes, but he doesn't accept what he sees as whims of his daughters," said Professor Juan José García-Noblejas, who teaches film and TV script at the university,

He found it interesting that "the eldest daughter has a clear opposition to her father's wish to marry her with the heir and the youngest marries the chauffeur, also against the father's wishes".

Television series, he said, "are a way of knowing our society's current problems and mirror society in small weekly doses".

At the conference, he added, "We simply want to gather people who have had time to analyse and watch these series, which have a huge number of viewers around the world, in order to discuss them without losing our Christian perspective."

The conference, as well as being aimed at an academic audience and lovers of television drama, is also directed at creators "in the world of television drama, offering a unique opportunity to reflect on their craft", according to the university's website.

Sources:

Catholic News Agency

Pontifical University of the Holy Cross

Image: Unreality Primetime

The research was conducted among 600 residents over the age of 65 in the Arab community of Wadi Ara in northern Israel. It could not determine whether prayer cuts the risk of developing Alzheimers disease among men — because 90 per cent of the male subjects prayed daily.

"But among the women, only 60 per cent of the women prayed five times a day, as per Islamic custom, but 40 per cent didn't pray regularly, so we were able to compare the data," explained lead researcher Professor Rivka Inzelberg of Tel Aviv University.

"Prayer is a custom in which thought is invested, and the intellectual activity involved in prayer, beyond the content of the prayers, may constitute a protective factor against Alzheimers," she said.

The research showing that prayer cuts the risk of developing Alzheimers disease in women was carried out by the Technion Israel's Institute of Science and Technology, in co-operation with researchers from Boston University and Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. It was funded by the United States National Institutes of Health.

Inzelberg said similar research carried out by American colleagues discovered that watching television and other passive activity is likely to increase the risk of contracting Alzheimers disease.

"The brain is an organ like any other organ which ages in regard to how it's used. So learning is important for the brain . . . . "The brain has been honed by evolutionary forces to be active, and learning is an important part of life. When you watch TV, you can be in a semi-conscious state where you really are not doing any learning."

Sources: Haaretz

The Media Line

Image: Redeemed Christian Church of God

The general secretary of the Church, Rev. Dr Iutisone Salevao, said the idea has been in the pipeline for about five years but after its General Meeting in May, the church finally decided to go through with it.

Talks have been held already with those whom the church think should carry out the transmission work. The only cable TV company in Samoa, Pro-Com, have been contacted to assist in ensuring that full national coverage is established by May next year.

A committee handling programmes and other aspects of television work has also met and will continue to meet and establish staff, equipment and sales and marketing strategies within the next ten months.

Source

• Island Business
• Image Arthur Henrique