“Let
no man deceive you by any means: for [that day shall not come,]
except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be
revealed, the son of perdition;
Who
opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that
is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God,
shewing himself that he is God.”
(2
Thessalonians 2:3-4)
Sitteth In The Temple Of God
***
BREAKINGISRAELNEWS
Trump Must Pray on Temple Mount for God’s Help in Bringing Messiah: Sanhedrin
By Adam Eliyahu Berkowitz
The nascent Sanhedrin sent a letter on Monday to US President Donald Trump, calling on him to ascend to the Temple Mount and pray for world peace when he arrives in Jerusalem next week for his first state visit.
If Trump chooses to answer the call, he will not only be making a powerful political statement but enacting precisely what King Solomon described when he first dedicated the Temple 3,000 years ago.
Rabbi Hillel Weiss, spokesman of the Sanhedrin, emphasized the timeliness of this call to prayer at this specific point in history.
“Trump is standing at a historic cusp, when the world can fall into an abyss of conflict,” Rabbi Weiss told Breaking Israel News. “Whether it begins in North Korea or Syria or Europe, the seeds of war are already sown.”
The prospect of war is truly chilling, but the rabbi explained that the possibility for great global good is equally as strong.
“Alternatively, President Trump can choose to be a part of a process to bring the Messiah and unprecedented blessing to the world, in the same manner that King Cyrus played his part in building the Second Temple.”
Rabbi Dov Stein, the Secretary General of the Sanhedrin, explained that praying at the holy site is essential for President Trump to achieve his lofty goals.
“President Trump says that he wants to do good in the world, and if this is indeed the case, then God will surely help him in this endeavor,” Rabbi Stein told Breaking Israel News. “In order for any endeavor to succeed, you must ask for God’s help. The proper place for a leader to pray is on the Temple Mount. If President Trump does so, he will receive this blessing, enabling him to achieve great success.”
The rabbi explained that the precedent is described explicitly in the Bible. “When King Solomon completed the Temple some 3,000 years ago, he dedicated the building by calling on foreign kings to come and prayer,” Rabbi Stein said, citing the First Book of Kings.
Moreover concerning the stranger that is not of Thy people Yisrael, when he shall come out of a far country for Thy name’s sake…when he shall come and pray toward this house; hear Thou in heaven Thy dwelling-place, and do according to all that the stranger calleth to Thee for; that all the peoples of the earth may know Thy name, to fear Thee, as doth Thy people Yisrael, and that they may know that Thy name is called upon this house which I have built. I Kings 8:41-43
“We also feel that if he sees the place for himself, he will better understand the reality of the situation,” Rabbi Stein added. “This will give him insight that previous presidents lacked and will help him find a proper solution, something no other leader has been able to bring about.”
The Sanhedrin’s letter to the US President:
“We, the judges of the Sanhedrin, the high court according to the Torah of Israel, are pleased that you are visiting Jerusalem, the eternal capital of the Nation of Israel in which the creator of the world chose as the site of the Holy Temple.
We hope that you will decide to go up to the Temple Mount, Mount Moriah, to the proper areas, and by doing so, you will merit the blessings of King Solomon, who founded the Temple with the intention that foreign leaders will come from afar to bring peace to their lands.
If that is indeed your intention, there is but one way to do this: to declare the raising up of the Temple as a universal human goal within the sanctified Biblically defined boundaries.
The attempts to find a common language with the enemy pertaining the dividing of Jerusalem and the Land of Israel are futile and will not bring any blessing.”
The Sanhedrin recently ruled on the precise boundaries of Jerusalem for the purposes of reinstating the Temple service. This ruling involved mapping specific Biblical references as they apply today. These maps were included in the letter sent to President Trump.
President Trump garnered support from Evangelical Christians and Jews during his campaign by promising to move the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. His visit to Israel next week coincides with the 50th celebration of the unification of Jerusalem during the Six-Day War.
***
RT
Losing my religion? Secular Brits now outnumber Christians, but Islam & Hinduism growing
Published 15 May 2017
Britain has reached new heights of secularization, with almost half of Britons now identifying as non-religious, a new study reveals.According to ‘The “No Religion” Population of Britain’ report by Stephen Bullivant, professor of theology and the sociology of religion at St Mary’s University, Twickenham, non-religious people, known as ‘nones’, account for 48.6 percent of Britain’s population.Although there has been an overall trend towards secularization in Britain, the figures also show record numbers of people from non-Christian faiths, such as Islam and Hinduism.
The number of British people identifying as Christian dropped from 55 percent to 43 percent between 1983 and 2015. By contrast, non-Christian believers such as Muslims and Hindus quadrupled.
“The rise of the non-religious is arguably the story of British religious history over the past half-century or so,” Bullivant said.
“Looking at the long-term pattern, the non-religious share of the population has shown strong growth over our whole period,” the report states.
“The year 2009 was the first in which nones outnumbered all Christians put together.
“With the single exception of 2011, this pattern has held ever after. In two years, 2009 and 2013, nones formed a majority of the adult British population.”
However, the research, carried out with data from the annual British Social Attitudes survey and the biennial European Social Survey, also highlights how the falling number of worshipers with the Church of England seems to have stabilized.
Bullivant said patriotism might be driving this trend, as Christianity and Englishness tend to be conflated.
“People see Christianity as an expression of Englishness. There has been more rhetoric around Britain being a Christian nation,”he said, according to the Times.
“I suspect a larger proportion of people who do say they are Anglican tend to be patriotic.”
In 1983, the number of Anglicans accounted for 40 percent of Britain’s population. This dropped to 16.3 percent in 2009 before it slid back up to 17.1 in 2015.
The research also shows a spike in the number of ‘nonverts’,namely people who have been brought up believing in a certain religion, but who have turned to be non-religious.
Most ‘nonverts’ – more than six in 10 – are Christians, mainly Anglican and Catholic.
According to the report, most ‘nones’ have been brought up in Christian households; overall, a mere 2 percent of ‘nones’ have been raised in non-Christian homes.
The rate of people converting to non-religion was recorded as 14 percent for Jews, 10 percent for Muslims and Sikhs, and 6 percent for Hindus.
Bullivant pointed out how non-religion has stopped being an exclusive middle-class feature.
“It used to be middle-class people, who had gone to university, who were more likely to step out of their parents’ religiosity,” he said, as cited in the Guardian.
“As having no religion has become the norm, vast swaths of working-class people are now also identifying as nones.”
(“Let no man deceive you by any means: for [that day shall not come,] except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition.” 2 Thessalonians 2:3)
***
***
CHRISTIANHEADLINES.com
Franklin Graham Calls Persecution of Christians ‘Genocide’
Lauren Markoe | Religion News Service | Friday, May 12, 2017
Franklin Graham, son of the famed evangelical preacher Billy Graham, urged fellow Christians to struggle against a “Christian genocide” that he says has killed in greater numbers than most believers can fathom.
Graham, who has been criticized by some evangelicals for calling Islam “evil” and for portraying President Trump as aligned with the Christian church, spoke Wednesday (May 10) at a conference aimed at highlighting an issue many feel is ignored by politicians and the media.
“It is safe to say that over 100,000 a year are killed because of their faith in Christ. In the last 10 years that would be close to a million people. It’s the equivalent of a Christian genocide,” Graham told the World Summit in Defense of Christians.
“I am sure the number of Christians who are in prison or martyred each year would stagger our mind if we really knew what the total number really was. And it would send us to our knees in sorrow and in prayer.”
It’s not clear what Graham’s numbers are based on.
The nonprofit Christian organization Open Doors — which tracks Christian persecution globally, and the increasing number of Middle Eastern Christians who seek safety outside their homelands — estimates that every year around 4,000 Christians are killed because of their faith worldwide.
Genocide is both a moral and legal term, used only a handful of times in U.S. history. Former U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry applied the label in 2016 to the killings of Christians, Shiite Muslims and Yazidis by the group known as the Islamic State.
But some political leaders and bodies hesitate with the term, because of the specificity of the definition and because its use obligates intervention.
Graham described violence against Christians in the Middle East, Africa and elsewhere as part of a larger, global antagonism toward the faith.
“Far more widespread, however, is the discrimination and open hostility that millions of believers encounter every day because of their loyalty to Jesus,” Graham, 64, told an audience of about 600 Christians from a variety of denominations and countries.
“In the name of tolerance, Christians are often treated with intolerance because they stand for moral purity and they stand for God’s truth. In the name of patriotism, Christians are often treated as unpatriotic because they follow a higher authority, almighty God.”
Ahead of his planned rallies in Vancouver and San Juan in recent months, Baptist and other evangelical pastors in Canada and Puerto Rico have publicly denounced Graham for fanning Islamophobia.
The four-day World Summit in Defense of Christians, being held for the first time, features panels and speakers including Vice President Mike Pence, who will address participants on Thursday. Graham’s own Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, named for his 98-year-old father, is sponsoring the gathering at a historic, downtown Washington hotel.
To get to their seats for Graham’s address, attendees passed between two electronic billboards, each 10 feet tall, scrolling the names of “Martyrs for Christ.” Graham and other speakers noted the diversity of Christians assembled, with contingents of Protestants, Catholics and Orthodox.
Preceding Graham at the podium, Pope Francis’ representative in the U.S. expressed the pontiff’s hopes for the conference. Christians have their differences, said Apostolic Nuncio (ambassador) Christophe Pierre, but they must unite to defend the persecuted among them because “peace triumphs through solidarity.”
Also speaking at the opening of the summit: Metropolitan Tikhon, primate of the Orthodox Church in America, and the Rev. Mouneer Hanna Anis, bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Egypt, who stressed that Christians have shown love to the killers of their relatives.
“The forgiveness that has been expressed by families of martyrs is the most powerful witness in the face of terrorism,” he said.
Forgiveness and Christ’s call to love one’s enemies were invoked during the evening far more than Islamic militants were blamed for the sufferings of Christians. But Graham, at one point in his 25-minute speech, presented Islamists as threats to Christians globally.
He said the Islamic State fighters who beheaded Coptic Christians on a Libyan beach in 2015 had then promised to conquer Rome.
“This threat to Rome was not just a threat to the Roman Catholic Church but to all Christians everywhere,” Graham said.
***
The Jerusalem Post
‘ABBAS HAS DECIDED TO SIGN PEACE DEAL WITH ISRAEL’
BYYAAKOV KATZ
Trump planning to launch new round of talks during his upcoming visit.
MAY 12, 2017 00:00
Donald Trump welcomes Mahmoud Abbas to White House in Washington , May 3, 2017. (photo credit:REUTERS)
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has crossed the Rubicon and voiced “unprecedented” readiness to reach a peace deal with Israel, sources close to the efforts to renew talks between Israel and the Palestinians have told The Jerusalem Post.
Abbas, according to the sources, made this clear to President Donald Trump during their meeting at the White House last week. The president plans to use his trip to Israel later this month to receive assurances from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that he, too, is committed to a peace agreement.
Since his meeting with Trump last week, Abbas has changed his rhetoric, issuing a number of statements meant to reflect flexibility on previous demands. He has, for example, said that he would renew the talks under Trump’s auspices without preconditions. In the past, he had said he would not negotiate with Netanyahu without a freeze to settlement construction.
He has also sent his advisers to the press to declare that the Palestinians are prepared to negotiate land swaps with Israel, a recognition that some West Bank settlements will remain part of Israel in the framework of a future deal.
Netanyahu, on the other hand, has largely remained quiet. The strategy within the Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem seems to be to wait and hope not to be blamed for preventing the success of the peace talks Trump is planning to restart following his visit on May 22.
As reported earlier this week in Maariv and the Post, the person responsible for this change in Abbas is Ronald Lauder, the American billionaire and head of the World Jewish Congress, who is one of the closest people to Trump. Lauder has publicly said that he has known Trump for over 50 years and that he is a “great and true friend” of Israel.
Before Abbas met with Trump last week, he stopped by Lauder’s house for dinner and got briefed on ways to win over the president. To some, it seems that Lauder has bypassed Sheldon Adelson as the most influential Jew in Trump’s circle.
Lauder has been pushing for an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal for years and was in Cairo two months ago for a meeting with President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi ahead of the Egyptian leader’s visit to the White House. Lauder, sources say, seems to have been tapped by the president as something of a semi-official envoy to the region with an emphasis on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Politicians who spoke to Lauder at Sunday’s Jerusalem Post Conference in New York later told the Post that he told them about his meeting with Abbas. At the same time, Netanyahu told confidants that he was furious over the American Jewish leader’s involvement.
“You don’t understand how much influence he has over Trump,” the prime minister told a confidant in a private conversation this week.
“Out of the people around Trump, he is my biggest challenge to overcome.”
RT
Time to assassinate Syrian President Assad & get to his allies in Iran – Israeli minister
Published 16 May, 2017
An Israeli minister has bluntly called for Syrian leader Bashar Assad to be assassinated after unsourced media reports claimed Damascus was using a “crematorium” to cover-up mass killings. He said the “serpent’s head” in Tehran should be dealt with next.
“The reality whereby Syria executes people, intentionally uses chemical weapons to hurt them and, now, in the most recent move of extremism, is burning their bodies – this has not been seen in the world in 70 years,” said Israeli Housing Minister Yoav Galant, as cited by Haaretz.
“We are crossing a red line and, in my view, the time has come to assassinate Assad,” he continued.
“And when we finish with the tail of the serpent, we will reach the head of the serpent, which can be found in Tehran, and we will deal with it, too,” he said.
What appears to be the first recorded Israeli threat to assassinate Syrian President Bashar Assad came after the US Department of State alleged, without presenting any hard evidence, that the Syrian government is using “a crematorium”outside Damascus to burn the bodies of people killed by the government.
Earlier on Tuesday, Galant told Israeli Army Radio that Assad’s rule has been the worst since Nazi Germany. “What is happening in Syria is defined as genocide, under all its classifications,” he said on Army Radio, according to Jerusalem Post.
Galant, a retired IDF general, added that Israel wants to see Assad and his Alawite government ousted from power and replaced by a “moderate Sunni ruler.”
READ MORE: More Arabs view Israel positively than Jews, poll reveals
Some previous attempts to compare Assad’s government to the Nazi regime have been met with public outcry. White House spokesman Sean Spicer, who claimed that Hitler’s death squads hadn’t used chemical agents during the Holocaust “in the way that Assad used them” sparked outrage in the US and beyond.
Certain journalists have used the Assad-Hitler comparison when covering claims that Syrian forces have used chemical weapons, but those remarks were dismissed by the public.
Assad, a UK-educated doctor, has been in power since the 1999 passing of his father, Syria’s long-time president, Hafez Assad. Syria is one of the few Arab countries where the president is elected through a nationwide vote.
***
PRESSTV
Norway’s largest trade union boycotts Israeli regime
May 13, 2017
Norway’s biggest and most influential trade union has approved a boycott of Israel, as global outrage intensifies at the Tel Aviv regime’s oppression of Palestinians.
The Norwegian Confederation of Trade Unions (LO) voted 197 to 117 in favor of an international economic, cultural, and academic boycott of Israel on Friday.
The Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement, which campaigns for Palestinian rights, hailed the LO’s move as a necessary means to secure fundamental Palestinian rights.
“By courageously heeding the Palestinian BDS call…, LO joins some of the world’s most important trade union federations… in calling for meaningful BDS pressure on the corporations and institutions that have enabled decades of Israeli occupation, settler-colonialism and apartheid,” said the BDS national committee.
It also expressed hope for close cooperation with LO to translate the new policy adopted by the trade union “into effective measures of accountability at the academic, cultural and economic levels to uphold human rights and international law.”
It further urged LO to exert pressure on the Norwegian government to cut its military ties with Israel and to divest funds from all companies complicit in the regime’s occupation and settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territories.
However, Norwegian Foreign Minister Borge Brende criticized the boycott, writing on Twitter that the “government strongly opposes Norw Labour Union's decision: #boycott of #Israel. We need more cooperation and dialogue, not boycott.”
Additionally, Israel’s Ambassador to Oslo Raphael Schutz denounced the boycott as “immoral,” saying he “condemns [the measure] in the strongest terms.”
The BDS movement was initiated in 2005 by over 170 Palestinian organizations pushing for “various forms of boycott against Israel until it meets its obligations under international law.”
Thousands of volunteers, trade unions, NGOs, academic and business societies, as well as cultural figures worldwide have joined the boycott campaign to help promote the Palestinian cause.
Back in March, the Israeli parliament passed a piece of legislation barring the entry of BDS supporters to the occupied territories.
Last month, the municipal council of Sint-Jans-Molenbeek in Belgium approved a bill that prohibited all forms of political, economic and cultural dealings with Israeli institutions and companies promoting the regime’s occupation.
Over the past few months, Israel has given the go-ahead for the construction of many settler units that are considered illegal by much of the international community.
The construction activities are in defiance of United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334, which regards Israeli settlements in the occupied lands as “a flagrant violation under international law.”
***
ANCIENT ORIGINS
Enormous Underwater Structure in the Sea of Galilee is a Mystery to Archaeologists
13 MAY, 2017 – 22:56 SAM BOSTROM
A gigantic monument at the bottom of the Sea of Galilee, as well as several mysterious structures, including a gigantic stone wheel and a moon-shaped monument, were recently found in northern Israel. The mysterious structures have left archaeologists around the world bewildered. Who built them and what were they used for?
They may be some of Israel’s most mysterious structures. They are easy to miss from the roadside but can clearly be seen from the skies or beneath the sea.
The prehistoric stone monuments of Gilgal Refaim, Jethro Cairn and the circular structure found in the sea of the Galilee went unnoticed for centuries in the disputed regions of the Golan and the Galilee but still archaeologists don't know who built them, or why.
Theories have gone wild and include ancient calendars, ceremonial structures, or 'sky burial' sites in which dead bodies were placed on top of stone mounds to be picked apart by vultures. Even more eluding is that that are no archeological evidence of a city near them, and some have therefore posited that the structures is in fact a huge monument carrying symbolic significance.
The possible age of the structures is even more enigmatic and many put the estimate anywhere between 3,000 and 12,000 years old, making them older than the pyramid of Giza and Stonehenge in Great Britain.
The only thing we can say with certainty is that they are there and they are huge.
The Massive Moon Structure of Jethro Cairn
In 2014 Israeli archaeologist reported of a crescent shaped stone monument larger than a football field in northern Israel. At about 150 meters in length and 7 meters in height, the monument, dubbed ‘Jethro Cairn,’ can be seen on satellite images.
Bronze Age pottery excavated at the monument indicates it was built between 3050 and 2650 BCE, but it may be much older.
The monument’s shape, a crescent, may have been chosen to symbolize the ancient Mesopotamian moon god Sin.
The Moon-god Sin or Naama was the special guardian deity of the Chaldeans who lived in the ancient city of Ur. Once a center of worship of the moon-god, the site’s most prominent feature is still a temple tower, or ziggurat, some 61 m long, 46 m wide, and 21 m high.
Only a day's walk from the monument sits late bronze age city called Bet Yerah, meaning "house of the moon god" in Hebrew. Another 13 kilometers southeast of the monument another enigmatic monument was discovered, this time below the sea level.
About 8 miles (13 kilometres) northwest of the Sea of Galilee, a recently identified crescent-shaped monument was built about 5,000 years ago
Cone Structure at Bottom of the Sea of Galilee
Not far from where the monumental crescent was found, another enigmatic structure has eluded archaeologists ever since its discovery was announced in 2013.
The mysterious structure with a diameter greater than the length of a Boeing 747, was discovered by divers about 9 meters underneath the Sea of Galilee in 2003.
The massive structure was built out of basalt rocks, arranged in the shape of a cone. It measures 70 meters at the base of the structure, is 10 meters tall, and weighs an estimated 60,000 tons. It is twice the size of the ancient stone circle at Stonehenge in England.
The archeologists think it was built on dry land and later submerged by the lake but the exact age of the structure has been difficult to pinpoint.
However, one thing the archeologists are certain of is that the monument was likely of great importance to the people who built it. The nearest basalt outcrop was a few hundred meters from the site, and the stones, which were one to two meters in width, would have weighed over 90 kilograms at times.
The cone-shaped structure beneath the Sea of Galilee. Credit: Diagram courtesy Shmuel Marco
The Wheel of Giants
The prehistoric monument known as Gilgal Refaim was another Herculean task to build. Its Hebrew name of Gilgal Refaim means 'wheel of giants' and refers to an ancient race of giants, the nephilim, a superhuman race mentioned in the Bible.
The gigantic monument deserves its name since it is made up of more than 42,000 basalt rocks arranged in five concentric circles that together weigh over 40,000 tons.
The complex has a 4.5 metre burial chamber at the centre of five circles, the largest of which measures more than 152 metres wide.
Standing on the ground inside the complex, it looks like a labyrinth of crumbling stone walls. Only from the air does the impressive shape of a massive bull's-eye clearly emerge.
Some of the circles are complete and others are not, suggesting it may have been laid out in accordance with astronomical patterns. On the shortest and longest days of the year - the June and December solstices - the sunrise lines up with openings in the rocks
Livestock grazing nearby reveals scale of enormous stone rings on the plains of the Golan Heights. (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Colossal Monuments but for Whom?
The possible purpose for these structures remains an enigma but the monuments were evidently of great importance to the people who built them.
It's unique to transport these stones and unique to arrange them. You need to plan and to mobilize people, because they're too heavy to be carried by a single person. Not to mention that that people were obligated most of the year to agriculture. It is a significant task for a people who had to devote most of their time to cultivating crops to survive, to build such grand monuments.
Only an advanced prehistoric society capable of organizing the construction of such large structures could have accomplished these monumental works but who they were remains one of the greatest mysteries of our days. What is certain is that these people were building something that was a lot more durable than their brush huts.
Top image: The circular structure was first detected in a sonar survey of part of the sea in the summer of 2003. Credit: Shmuel Marco
***
theguardian
Luxury Airport Terminal in Los Angeles Features Screen That Lets the Rich Watch Everyone Else Suffer at the Main Terminal
LAX’s mega-exclusive terminal has beds, massages, and an iPad to watch people slog through the main airport. But the manager denies it’s about inequality.
By Rory Carroll
May 12, 2017
The guiltiest pleasure at Los Angeles international airport’s (LAX) new private terminal for the mega-rich is not the plush, hushed privacy, or the beds with comforters, or the massages, or the coriander-scented soap, or the Willie Wonka-style array of chocolates and jelly beans, or the Napa Valley cabernet.
It is the iPad that sits on a counter at the entrance, with a typed little note: “Here is a glimpse of what you’re missing over at the main terminal right now.”
The screen shows travellers hauling bags through packed terminals, queuing in long lines, looking harassed and being swallowed into pushing, shoving paparazzi scrums – routine hazards for the 80 million people who pass through LAX each year.
“There they process thousands of people at a time, they’re barking. It’s loud. Here it’s very, very lovely,” said Gavin de Becker, who runs the new terminal, called Private Suite.
He wasn’t wrong. The $22m facility, the first of its kind in the US, opens on Monday, giving the 1% a whole new way to separate themselves from everyone else’s reality.
Luxury, de Becker said while giving the Guardian a tour, is secondary to convenience – to escaping the hassle of modern air travel. “The real purpose here is logistics.” He reckons about a tenth of his clients will be celebrities who are fed up with the paparazzi staking out LAX. The rest will be corporate – CEOs and other members of capitalism’s top brass.
De Becker, who runs a security consulting firm, borrowed the concept from Heathrow’s Windsor Suite, a marbled sanctuary for popes, presidents and other VIPs tucked in a corner of Terminal 5.
Instead of battling the traffic jams that clog LAX you reach Private Suite via the Imperial Highway, leading to a discreet turn-off where an armed guard checks your identity and pushes a button. Tall grey gates open and you enter the haven.
It is pricey. In addition to annual membership of $7,500, you pay $2,700 per domestic flight and $3,000 per international flight. The cost covers a group of up to four people. If you aren’t a member, you pay $3,500 for a domestic flight and $4,000 for international flight for a group of up to three people.
There are 13 suites, each with bathrooms, televisions, drinks, organic snacks, wifi, gadgets and views of planes trundling across runways. There are menus of toys for children and prayer mats for Muslims.
If you spill some cabernet, no worries: pick up the phone and within minutes a man in a blazer will wheel in a cart with Calvin Klein socks, Banana Republic dress shirts, Anne Klein blouses and Steve Madden shoes. If the weather at your destination looks a bit damp help yourself to a water-resistant jacket.
If in need of some Hunger Games-style schadenfreude check out the iPad showing the hoi polloi running gauntlets over at the main terminal.
Another man in a blazer will check in your luggage and let you know when it is time to leave your suite and enter the “gallery”, a mini-terminal disguised as a hotel lounge. It is decorated with rotating art installations – currently it is a series of humming bird portraits by the photographer Gary Yost – which you can buy, with proceeds going to charity.
When it is time to leave a TSA agent from the main terminal will pop over to screen you and any companions. A BMW will then whisk you to your plane. Arrivals receive the same treatment, with leather armchairs and platters of chocolates flanking the customs and immigration desk.
De Becker rebuffed any suggestion that his terminal symbolised inequality.
It cost taxpayers nothing and would generate $34m for LAX over the next nine years, he said. Plus it would make his clients likelier to use commercial flights rather than charter private jets. “It’s all about the airport, about predictability. When you charter you can buy your way out of the line.”
So Private Suite was an egalitarian advance? De Becker nodded. “It’s a voluntary tax on the wealthy.”
America’s most famous socialist, he suggested, would approve. “I love Bernie Sanders.”
***
MailOnline
I would drive 500 miles! Scotland's stunning answer to Route 66 is named one of the top coastal road trips in the world - just two months after it was launched
The 500-mile road, North Coast 500, nicknamed NC500, was launched only two months ago
The initiative, backed by Prince Charles, aims to showcase local Scottish food, drink, accommodation and activities
Key photographic points include the mountain ranges, Ben Hope and Suilven, and Dunrobin Castle
By Becky Pemberton For Mailonline
PUBLISHED: 19:33, 4 August 2015 | UPDATED: 10:58, 11 August 2015
Scotland's answer to America's Route 66 has been named among the top six road coastal road trips in the world - after only being officially launched two months ago.
North Coast 500 - to be known as NC500 - aims to open up a fresh tourist market in the far north in a journey along the region's coastlines.
The venture is the brainchild of the North Highland Initiative (NHI), set up by Prince Charles to showcase the area, and is targeting car and motorbike enthusiasts, as well as cyclists and walkers wanting to take in some of the most scenic parts of the country.
New to the scene: Scotland's NC500 has been named among the top six road coastal road trips in the world - after only being officially launched two months ago
Travel Now magazine has placed the North Coast 500 route in fifth place in a list of 'six of the best' coast road trips on the planet.
Top was Cape Overberg in South Africa, followed by the Amalfi Coast in Italy and The Atlantic Road in Norway. The Pacific Coast Highway in America and the Coral Coast in Australia made up the list.
The 500-mile Scottish route - whose website only went live in June - links natural heritage and scenery, celebrates local food and drink and highlights accommodation, retail, arts, crafts and attractions of the region.
The stunning route runs from Inverness, to the Kyle of Lochalsh on the West Coast, via the rugged north coast to John O'Groats, before heading down the east coast, completing the loop in Inverness.
Unmissable sights along the road include mountain ranges, Ben Hope and Suilven, the fairytale grand castle, Dunrobin, the Ardvreck castle ruins and the breathtaking Achmelvich and Dornoch beaches.
The route can be completed in a long weekend, or over several weeks on a more leisurely schedule and can be explored as a loop or in part.
Enjoy Achmelvich Beach, Assynt along the way. The unspoiled beach is an ideal place for a pit stop along the road trip for a picnic
While launching the route, NHI chairman David Whiteford said: 'Across the globe, touring routes have become famous and are often the very reason for visitors making the journey to that country.
'We have, in the north Highlands, an opportunity to create a globally significant route that captures the essence of the wonderful landscapes and seascapes, people, stories, culture, history, adventures, food and drink and much more.
'This is about bringing together for the first time the west, north and east coasts of the Highlands into an experience of 500 miles, with more than 500 things to do and secret places you could find on foot, on wheel or on the water.'
He added: 'While it may be a coastal route, it is also about the wonderful diversions from it where you will experience the places, the personalities and the craic that make up this extraordinary journey.'
Of NC500, Travel said it had 'rugged romance.'
The title said that Achmelvich's 'crescent of talc-white sand, sloping gently into the mineral-green waters of a sheltered bay, would give any Med beach a run for its money.'
Dunrobin Castle has 189 rooms, making it the largest in the northern Highlands. Its origins lie in the Middle Ages, but most of the present building and the gardens was added by Sir Charles Barry between 1835 and 1850. It is located on the NC500 1 mile north of Golspie
It also waxed lyrical about the scenery describing Applecross in Wester Ross in spring sunshine as a place where 'fields of acid-yellow gorse clash dazzlingly against the cherry blossom, while fishing boats bob like toys in the bay.'
VisitScotland chairman Mike Cantlay said famous routes around the world attract tourists and generate millions for the economy.
He believes NC500 could have a similar impact in the Highlands, adding: 'From our enchanting wildlife and countless historic attractions to magnificent mountains, dramatic lochs and sandy beaches, the Highlands is a true touring paradise.
'There really is nothing quite like the open road. People travel from all over the world for Route 66, and with our scenery, there's no reason NC500 can't prove to be just as popular.'
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WND
WARNING! DON'T WATCH CELL PHONE IN DARK WITH 1 EYE
Epidemic reported of temporary blindness, other vision problems
Published: 05.15.2017
WASHINGTON – Why are young people, especially women, reporting cases of temporary blindness and other vision problems in record numbers?
Doctors see a correlation with cell-phone use – especially watching the device in the dark with one eye closed or obscured.
It’s no joke, says the New England Journal of Medicine, which published a study calling the syndrome “transient smartphone blindness.”
The good news is the condition normally only lasts for two minutes, but the long-term effects are unknown and have doctors and hospital officials concerned. Some fear there may be permanent damage to the eye.
Some victims of the syndrome believed they were suffering strokes. Since the syndrome is still largely unknown by many doctors, they have been known to order all manner of tests, including MRIs and heart scans.
Here’s what doctors believe is the culprit.
Young people often use smartphones in their bedrooms at night with no lights on. The intense light of the LED screen is absorbed into eyes, or, in many cases, one eye with another obscured by a blanket or pillow. But using any smartphone in the dark puts severe strain on the eyes, the doctors say.
“Although most people view screens binocularly, people frequently use smartphones while lying down, when one eye can be inadvertently covered,” explained the New England Journal of Medicine study. “Smartphones are now used nearly around the clock, and manufacturers are producing screens with increased brightness to offset background ambient luminance and thereby allow easy reading. Hence, presentations such as we describe are likely to become more frequent. Our cases show that detailed history taking and an understanding of retinal physiology can reassure both patient and doctor and can avoid unnecessary anxiety and costly investigations.”
In addition, using your cell phone in the dark can also potentially cause another serious problem – retinal detachment, which can also cause partial blindness and requires surgery to correct.
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