Fed’s Hoenig: Rates Need to Rise

The U.S. economy is recovering and the Federal Reserve needs to raise interest rates, lest it leave in place a policy that will only fuel future financial imbalances, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City President Thomas Hoenig said Friday.

“We need to get off of the emergency rate of zero, move rates up slowly and deliberately,” which will bring policy in better alignment “with the economy’s slow, deliberate recovery,” the official said. While the markets may like the current stance of monetary policy, Hoenig said “I wish free money was really free and that there was a painless way to move from severe recession and high leverage to robust and sustainable economic growth, but there is no short cut.”

Hoenig’s remarks — they came from the text of a speech to be delivered Friday before a meeting with the community in Lincoln, Neb. — came on the heels of his latest dissent against the consensus view of the Fed.

On Tuesday, the Fed decided to provide additional support to an economy whose recovery appears to be faltering, by deciding to maintain the size of its balance sheet, rather than letting it slowly shrink. The Fed will do this by reinvesting the proceeds of its vast mortgage holdings back into Treasurys.

The action is controversial. Its economic impact is uncertain and some felt the Fed took the step simply to show to markets they were willing to do something given the economy’s problems.

Hoenig has been a persistent critic of the Fed’s stance throughout his tenure this year as a voter on Federal Open Market Committee. He has fretted that the current stance of policy could give way to fresh financial imbalances. His confidence in the recovery has led him to advocate raising interest rates, as well.

Read the rest here.

H/T Brian (an old friend)

Orthodox Shrines in Kosovo fight for survival

Holy Trinity Church in Kosovo

Moscow fears that NATO's decision to transfer the protection of Serbian Orthodox shrines in Kosovo to the local police maystir up tensions in the region.

Spokesman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, Andrey Nesterenko believes that this may lead to distrust of international peacekeepers. NATO made this decision without approval of the Serbian Orthodox Church and is breaching the1244 UN resolution.

The resolution was adopted in 1999 and states that Kosovo is an integral part of Serbia and its shrines should be protected by Serbia. The document is still valid, thus, it has to be followed.

Monasteries in Gracanica,Visoki Decani and Monastery of the Holy Archangels will be transferred to the police in late August. Many of them areon the UNESCO World Heritage list.

In 2004, 35 Orthodox shrines were vandalized and burnt down by Kosovo Albanians,while they saw no resistance from peacekeepers. Russians expert on Serbia Alexander Kravchenko believes that Kosovo military men are interested in controlling local Orthodox sites to make Serbian enclaves recognize the power of Kosovo government.

The goal of Kosovo Albanians is to make Serbs leave Kosovo. This decision is another way to push them put of the region. Now all Serbian monasteries are controlled by Kosovo-Albanian companies. They provide them with water, electricity, communal utilities. As this needs to be fixed in agreements it means recognizing Kosovo's state institutions.

The Serbian Orthodox Church believes NATO will revoke its decision, especially when many European countries are also concerned with the situation.

Source

Maxine Waters and the bank

As chairman and chief executive of OneUnited Bank, Kevin L. Cohee has sought to build a company that is about more than just money. He promoted the bank, now at the center of a House ethics case against Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), as a uniquely responsible investor in impoverished minority communities and urged prospective clients to live modestly.

Customers ought to focus on "real connections, real relationships," Cohee urges in a recording on the bank's Web site. Avoid "people who want to be with you based on the things that you have."

"Do you really need a Mercedes-Benz?" he asks. "Houses don't make you, cars don't make you."

Cohee, 52, took a somewhat different view in his own life. His bank purchased or leased luxury real estate he used and, until federal regulators complained in 2008, paid for his Porsche. Cohee's East Coast spread was an $880,000 condominium on Miami Beach's Ocean Drive, and out west the bank leased a $26,500-a-month mansion for him on Palisades Beach Road in Santa Monica, Calif., owned by Bruce Springsteen's drummer, Max Weinberg.

A battle of lawsuits over the house -- Cohee complained that he had to ship in "a huge bar, a desk, a chandelier," while Weinberg accused him of installing secret surveillance cameras in the master bedroom -- led Cohee and his wife, through a corporation they formed, to buy the house for $6.4 million in late 2006. OneUnited then provided him a living allowance at the mansion, where, a year later, he was twice arrested, on sexual assault and drug charges.

It was the bank's assistance with his expenses that helped provoke a cease-and-desist order from the federal government, accusing the bank and its officers of misspending and lax lending, and putting its operating license at risk.

That order landed in the fall of 2008, in the same period that Cohee and his colleagues at the bank were in contact with Waters and House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank (D-Mass.) to secure tens of millions of dollars in taxpayer money to keep it afloat. About $51 million of the bank's stock in federally chartered lending agencies had become virtually worthless, leaving it with a shortage of capital.

OneUnited's loss was also a loss for Waters's husband, Sidney Williams, a former board member of the bank whose stock in it had plummeted in value from about $350,000 to $170,000. In 2005, 2006 and 2007, the couple had earned a total of more than $35,000 in dividends from Williams's OneUnited stock. Cohee and other bank officers had also contributed at least $11,000 to her campaign and organized a fundraiser for her at one of his homes.

In December 2008, after Frank inserted language in legislation he said was meant to benefit OneUnited and similar banks, the bank received a $12 million grant from the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP), created to encourage lending by healthy, viable banks. A report released this week by a congressional ethics committee said that without that grant and some new private investment, Waters's husband's financial interest in OneUnited "would have been worthless" -- a contention that Waters's attorneys dispute.

Waters's decision to arrange a September meeting, requested by Cohee, with Treasury Department officials at which the bank appealed for federal money is at the heart of allegations that she violated House rules, a charge she vehemently denies. Waters acknowledges setting up the meeting with Cohee, who is African American, but says it was on behalf of minority-owned banks in general.

Read the rest here.

An interesting post on a really boring topic

OK. Let's be honest. In the grand scheme of Orthoblogdom the topic of church administration, (unless we are talking about a scandal) is about as exciting as watching a championship chess match on payperview. And if we are talking about the much discussed Episcopal Assembly and a potential future American Orthodox Church (AOC) we would all much rather expound on why America is not mature and ready for it's own church. And why it's better that we remain under ethnic churches until we get a better grasp of real Orthodoxy and purge all of the Protestant baggage from recent converts. Never mind that as long as we are taking converts that will be a never ending battle (presuming the problem is in fact as bad as some claim). And of course totally ignoring the fact that our current ecclesiological structure here is absolutely non-canonical and that the state of the Orthodox Church in N. America is and will perpetually be one of open scandal until we put an end to the multiplicity of jurisdictions here.

But I digress.

A really important but deathly boring topic relevant to any future AOC is church administration. I am talking about the nuts and bolts of making it work. Yea yea yea, I know. Can't we just get on with a fun debate about how Catholics are really heretics and just how far the Anglicans have fallen? But this is actually an important topic. So bear with me please.

There is a new website (blog?) up called Suggestions For the Episcopal Assembly. (Hat Tip: Byzantine Texas) It's not really clear who is running it other than that it is not an official site. But I like the concept. It is a venue for constructive suggestions on how to get a future AOC up and running. The EA hopes to present some sort of viable plan to sort out our jurisdictional chaos for the consideration of the Great and Holy Synod that has been on the drawing boards for about a century now.

Which brings me to the very first post. And it is an impressive one at that. The author presents a fairly detailed suggestion for how we can carve up the United States (sans Canada) into Eparchs with each one containing multiple dioceses. He suggests that the Eparchs roughly correspond to the ten Administrative Regions used by the Federal Government. You can read the details of his (or her) suggestion here.

Are there some issues? Yes of course. But after reading the suggestion several times, I think the author has actually come up with a plan that could serve as the basis or framework if you will, for organizing the AOC into viable dioceses and lay the groundwork for a national Holy Synod.

Please leave your comments on the original post.

Going out in a blaze of glory

Yesterday I posted a little news item from the NY Times about an airline attendant who had a run in with a really obnoxious jerk on his plane and had what I referred to as an "I've had enough and I'm not taking it anymore!" moment. After the short excerpt with the obligatory link to the rest of the story, I admitted to feeling some sympathy for the man and guessed that I might not be the only one who smiled a little while reading it. I was wrong.

As by now probably everyone in the country has heard, Mr. Steven Slater, (formerly?) of Jet Blue Airlines, was cursed and struck (accidentally?) by a passenger as yet unnamed who felt he was special so he could stand up and get his carry on luggage while everyone else had to sit and wait until the plane finished taxiing. The long and the short of it is that Mr. Slater decided after being cursed and struck that just maybe the customer is not always right, and that it was time for a career change. So he got on the PA system and announced his resignation to his co-workers and passengers with a very personal message thrown in for the benefit of the special gentlemen already alluded to. After which he then grabbed his own carry on bag, helped himself to a couple of beers from the beverage cart (probably the only severance package he could expect), popped the hatch, activated the emergency evacuation slide and executed one of the most glorious acts of professional seppuku in recent memory.

As I said above; I was wrong. Reaction to this, at the time rather small story in the Times, was not limited to a few sympathetic grins. Mr. Slater has overnight become a national folk hero. He has become the embodiment of that great American song from the early 80's "Take this job and shove it!" Online blogs and bulletin boards on major news services and papers have been flooded with "Atta boy!" comments. People from Maine to Hawaii are posting their own stories of on the job frustration and in some cases, of that moment when they too snapped and told their boss exactly where, with anatomical precision, they could stick their job.

At this rate Mr. Slater's could be the next face on Mt. Rushmore, except for a few small details.

First, he has been arrested and charged with a couple of felonies. In theory he could spend up to seven years in the clink. In reality I suspect the Queens County DA is already pondering where in a county of several millions of people he is going to find twelve who would convict Steven Slater of jaywalking. My guess is this will be plea bargained as fast as it can be arranged while saving face.

Another problem, and one that kinda bothers me a bit, is the manner of his exit. No, I'm not talking about his decision to very publicly quit without notice or even his telling off the south end of a north bound mule for whom rules are optional. If it stopped there I'd probably buy him a beer were we ever to meet. I am talking about his decision to deploy a one time use only piece of emergency equipment that costs about $100k as the instrument for his grand exit. I don't care how bad your day was, or how mistreated you feel by your employer. You don't get to destroy or expropriate company property on your way out the door. (I'm inclined to overlook the beers.) So yea, that is probably the number one issue that keeps me from enshrining Mr. Slater in the pantheon of truly great Americans.

All of which said, as I noted yesterday I am still sympathetic. I won't bore you with my own "I've had enough and I'm not taking it anymore!" story. Suffice to say I actually do have one. But it's no wheres near in the same league as Mr. Slater's (I didn't even get canned). My guess is we have all had moments where we either snapped or only held back by a truly supreme effort from throttling someone in desperate need of a little oxygen deprivation.

So here's to you Steven Slater, a hearty 2 and a half cheers! Just next time, don't take or damage anything that doesn't belong to you on your way out.

Federal Salaries Soaring Above Private Sector

For those fortunate enough to have a job in this tough economy, there's a growing gap in salary between government employees and those who work for private companies.

While many Americans have suffered pay cuts or job losses, one group is bucking the trend: federal workers, CBS News Investigative Correspondent Sharyl Attkisson reports. A USA Today analysis finds that federal employees have gotten bigger pay and benefit increases than private employees for nine years straight.

"It made me think, man, I should be a federal employee," one woman said on the streets of the capital.

Federal salaries have grown 33 percent faster than inflation. Their pay and benefits averaged $123,049 in 2009, up 36.9 percent since 2000. Private workers averaged $61,051, up just 8.8 percent during the same time.

Read the rest here.

Fearing an economic slowdown and deflation the FED will print (more) money

WASHINGTON — Acknowledging that the recovery has slowed, the Federal Reserve on Tuesday announced that it would use the proceeds from its huge mortgage-bond portfolio to buy long-term Treasury securities.

By buying government debt, the Fed is taking an unmistakable step to maintain the large amount of money that it pumped into the economy, starting in 2007, to prop up the financial and housing markets.

The Fed bought $1.25 trillion in mortgage-backed securities, and another $200 billion in debts owed by government-sponsored enterprises, primarily Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and completed the purchases in March. The Fed had planned to allow the size of that portfolio to shrink gradually over time as the debts matured or were prepaid. Instead, the Fed will reinvest the principal payments in longer-term Treasury securities.

The central bank said it would continue to roll over its holdings of other Treasury securities as they mature.

In its announcement, the Fed also left unchanged its benchmark short-term interest rate — the federal funds rate, the rate at which banks borrow from each other overnight — at zero to 0.25 percent, the level it has been at since December 2008.

In a new qualification to its previous statements, the committee said it still expected a “gradual return” to normal economic conditions, “although the pace of economic recovery is likely to be more modest in the near term than had been anticipated.”

On Wall Street, shares regained some lost ground after the announcement.

Read the rest here.

EU presses for power of direct taxation

The EU hopes that the plan, to be unveiled next month, which could see new taxes on air travel and financial transactions, will give it more independence and fund controversial expansion proposals.

The direct taxes would reduce each country's annual payment to the EU.

The proposal has sparked fierce reaction from Britain the Treasury has said it would veto any proposal, which would lead to the loss of the budget rebate negotiated by Margaret Thatcher.

Lord Sassoon, the Commercial Secretary, said the Treasury would block any plans. “The Government is opposed to direct taxes financing the EU budget,” he said. “The UK believes that taxation is a matter for Member States to determine at a national level and would have a veto over any plans for such taxes."

Read the rest here.

Quote of the day...

It is my heart-warm and world-embracing Christmas hope and aspiration that all of us, the high, the low, the rich, the poor, the admired, the despised, the loved, the hated, the civilized, the savage (every man and brother of us all throughout the whole earth), may eventually be gathered together in a heaven of everlasting rest and peace and bliss... except the inventor of the telephone.

-Mark Twain

Tough day on the job (and probably last)

A JetBlue flight attendant apparently upset with an uncooperative passenger on a just-landed flight unleashed a profanity-laden tirade on the public-address system, pulled the emergency-exit chute, slid off the plane and fled Kennedy International Airport, a law enforcement official said.

The dramatic getaway was short-lived. The attendant, Steven Slater, 39, was arrested at his home not far away in Belle Harbor, Queens. He was charged with reckless endangerment and criminal mischief.

The contretemps unfolded as JetBlue flight 1052 from Pittsburgh landed at Kennedy around noon — on time — with a full load of 100 passengers and pulled up to the gate, said the law enforcement official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation was continuing but offered the following account:

One passenger got out of his seat to fetch his belongings from the overhead compartment before the crew had given permission. Mr. Slater instructed the man to remain seated. The passenger defied him. Mr. Slater approached and reached the passenger just as he pulled down his luggage, which struck Mr. Slater in the head.

Mr. Slater asked for an apology. The passenger instead cursed at him. Mr. Slater got on the plane’s public address system and cursed out all aboard. Then he activated the inflatable evacuation slide at service exit R1, launched himself off the plane, ran to the employee parking lot and left the airport in a car he had parked there.

Read the rest here.

Ever had an "I've had enough and I'm not taking it any more!" moment? I have. Now I'm not gonna pretend that what he did was right. It wasn't. But I am pretty sure I'm not the only one who smiled just a little while reading this. Here's hoping someone offers the poor guy a new job.

100 Years Ago Today: A famous photo...

Taken moments after New York City Mayor William Jay Gaynor was shot by a recently fired civil servant. The Mayor was on the deck of the ocean liner Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse preparing to depart on a European vacation when the unhinged former city employee tried to return the favor to the mayor. The mayor survived, though he never fully recovered.

In one of those eerie but fascinating coincidences of history the man directly behind the mayor was Robert Lincoln, the only son of the assassinated President to live to adulthood. Robert Lincoln declined his father's invitation to join him at Ford's Theater on the fateful night. He would later be in the immediate proximity when President Garfield was shot by an assassin in 1881 (he died some months later) and again when President William McKinley was fatally wounded in Buffalo NY in 1901.

Not the sort of man I would want standing near me in a lightning storm.

You can read the background on Mayor Gaynor and his brush with death here. He was a rather remarkable figure in New York politics for that era.

Britain Begins to Feel Austerity Cuts

LONDON — Last month, the British government abolished the U.K. Film Council, the Health Protection Agency and dozens of other groups that regulate, advise and distribute money in the arts, health care, industry and other areas.

It seemed shockingly abrupt, a mass execution without appeal. But it was just a tiny taste of what was to come.

Like a shipwrecked sailor on a starvation diet, the new British coalition government is preparing to shrink down to its bare bones as it cuts expenditures by $130 billion over the next five years and drastically scales back its responsibilities. The result, said the Institute for Fiscal Studies, a research group, will be “the longest, deepest sustained period of cuts to public services spending” since World War II.

Until recently, the cuts were just election talking points, early warnings of a new age of austerity. But now the pain has begun. And as the government begins its abrupt retrenchment, the implications, complications and confusions in the process are beginning to emerge.

“It feels like they’re just sticking a finger in the air and guessing,” John Mutton, leader of the City Council in Coventry, said of the government’s methods for deciding which programs to cancel and which to cut.

In June, the government announced its first round of cuts, removing about $10 billion from the current year’s budget.

While that is a drop in the bucket compared to the final goal, the reduction measures have already had severe consequences. Public sector workers across the country, except for the lowest paid, will have their salaries frozen for the next two years. Oxfordshire, facing a nearly $1 million trim in its road safety budget, has been forced to shut down all its 161 traffic speed cameras.

The cuts mean that Nottinghamshire plans to close three recycling facilities and some of its day care centers. And that the city of Coventry, which already cut spending in January, is trying to find $5.6 million more to cut from its current child services budget.

But none of this is much compared to what the country will face when the government issues its long-term budget plans in October. Mr. Mutton, the Coventry official, predicted that the next round of cuts would cost the city at least 10,000 jobs in the public and private sectors. Analysts have estimated that some 600,000 public-sector jobs could be lost nationwide.

Read the rest here.

The Papacy - The Patriarchy of the West- and Orthodox Ecclesiology

I draw the reader's attention to a fascinating com-box discussion going on over at Fr. Z's blog (see this post) on the Papal decision to drop the title Patriarch of the West and its implications in ecumenical relations. It also moves into an interesting discussion of Catholic and Orthodox ecclesiology and approaches to Primacy.

Long time readers of this blog will recall that while I staunchly reject the ultra-montanist (and IMO heretical) claims of the First Vatican Council, I have also repeatedly opined that Orthodoxy has a somewhat underdeveloped concept of primacy. It is a subject that too many Orthodox get nervous about because anytime someone suggests that there is more to it (primacy) than sitting at the head of the table or being the first bishop in the procession, one is instantly accused of being a crypto-papist. Such knee jerk fears aside however, clearly primacy does indeed amount to more than the eccelsiological equivalent to the status of the Queen of Denmark. The Patriarch of Constantinople should be, and IMO is, more than just the head we would put on Orthodox postage stamps. (And I say this as someone who has occasionally been sharply critical of H.A.H.)

I particularly commend this comment by PaterAugustinus as one worth serious attention. It contains a host of interesting points, some of which I am not altogether comfortable with. But that comment alone could be the subject of a really fascinating debate. In any event a serious discussion about primacy and its role in Orthodox ecclesiology is long overdue. I wonder if perhaps that is not something that should be added to the agenda of a certain Great and Holy Synod that has been much rumored and imminently forthcoming for nigh on a century.

British couple murdered in "honor killing"

Gul Wazir, a taxi driver from Birmingham’s Alum Rock and wife Begum were shot dead Salehana, a village known as "Little England" for its high number of migrants to Britain, on Monday last week.

The news of their murders was not reported because of disruption caused by floods in the area

Their son was also wounded in the incident but survived.

The couple had travelled to the village from Britain after their daughter told them she wanted to call off the wedding plans because she didn’t want to marry a man from Pakistan.

"The husband and wife had already promised their daughter to a man. When that arrangement ended he was not happy," a friend of the family said.

“Gul and his wife went to Pakistan to try to sort it out, but this man went crazy and shot them for breaking off the engagement. This is a tragedy. They were honest, decent people."

Read the rest here.

When less is more

A two-bedroom apartment. Two cars. Enough wedding china to serve two dozen people.

Yet Tammy Strobel wasn’t happy. Working as a project manager with an investment management firm in Davis, Calif., and making about $40,000 a year, she was, as she put it, caught in the “work-spend treadmill.”

So one day she stepped off.

Inspired by books and blog entries about living simply, Ms. Strobel and her husband, Logan Smith, both 31, began donating some of their belongings to charity. As the months passed, out went stacks of sweaters, shoes, books, pots and pans, even the television after a trial separation during which it was relegated to a closet. Eventually, they got rid of their cars, too. Emboldened by a Web site that challenges consumers to live with just 100 personal items, Ms. Strobel winnowed down her wardrobe and toiletries to precisely that number.

Her mother called her crazy.

Today, three years after Ms. Strobel and Mr. Smith began downsizing, they live in Portland, Ore., in a spare, 400-square-foot studio with a nice-sized kitchen. Mr. Smith is completing a doctorate in physiology; Ms. Strobel happily works from home as a Web designer and freelance writer. She owns four plates, three pairs of shoes and two pots. With Mr. Smith in his final weeks of school, Ms. Strobel’s income of about $24,000 a year covers their bills. They are still car-free but have bikes. One other thing they no longer have: $30,000 of debt.

Read the rest here.

Draught Fire and Pollution hammer Russia

MOSCOW — Planes were diverted from Moscow airports on Friday after huge peat and forest fires blanketed the capital in acrid smoke, forcing some businesses to close and office workers to wear surgical masks at their desks.

Pollution surged to five times normal levels in the city of 10.5 million, the highest sustained contamination since Russia's worst heat wave in more than a century began a month ago. Officials urged Muscovites to not venture outdoors.

"Looking at the overall duration (of the pollution), today's smoke level is the worst yet," said Alexei Popikov, an expert on air quality at Moscow's state-run pollution monitoring agency.

Read the rest here.

Feast of the Transfiguration and slow posting (again)

(OK. So I can't read a calendar.) Sorry for the slow posting this week. I just moved and it's been a busy week. Also I will be out of town for the next couple of days. Although I will be bringing my computer I don't expect much posting before Monday. I wish everyone a blessed feast of the Transfiguration and a pleasant weekend.

Heroic Missionaries strive to evangelize... Greece

The bravery and courage of ancient Spartans is legendary. The name conjures up visions of fearless soldiers charging into battle without thought of life or limb. The word spartan has even crept into the English language to describe the conditions that are at the opposite extreme from comfortable and luxurious.

For the past week Sparta has been the epicentre of a missionary outreach that has reached and touched thousands of homes as a team of 180 from countries as diverse as Canada, Romania, Italy, South Africa, Germany, Holland, the USA and Albania.

In all 60,000 households received a copy of the New Testament in contemporary Greek as part of a project called Operation Joshua. One participant described it as a "Tsunami of blessing" as energetic teams using some 50 cars, criss-crossing the sparse and mountainous region. They have gone to over 800 villages in some of the remotest areas of Greece bringing the message of life.

How does this project compare with other evangelistic efforts? In a word, "historic". In a country where there are less than 20,000 people are recognised as evangelical believers this was truly a significant event. This is a country that has never had a reformation or a revival. It has never held any mass evangelistic campaigns.

Read the rest here.

RIP: Mitch Miller

A class act all the way, Mitch Miller died on Saturday at 99. I honestly did not know he was still alive all these years.

Mitch Miller was the guy who showed everybody how to be a producer," said Tony Bennett—probably the greatest of the late musician-producer-conductor's "discoveries"—in 1989. Speaking metaphorically, Mr. Bennett elaborated: "When Mitch had a cigar and a beard, everybody else had to have a cigar and a beard."

The roles played by Miller, who died Saturday at age 99, were many: As a woodwind player and conductor, he collaborated with George Gershwin, Charlie Parker, Igor Stravinsky, Leopold Stokowski and Frank Sinatra. As a pop star in his own right, he became the face of the sing-along craze of the early '60s through a series of bestselling albums and a long-running TV series.

Read the rest here.

Relics of St. John the Baptist are claimed found

The remains – small fragments of a skull, bones from a jaw and an arm, and a tooth – were discovered embedded in an altar in the ruins of the ancient monastery, on the island in the Black Sea.

A Greek inscription on the stone casque contains a reference to June 24 – the date on which John the Baptist is believed to have been born.

"We found the relics of St John the Baptist - exactly what the archaeologists had expected," said Bozhidar Dimitrov, Bulgaria's minister without portfolio and a former director of the country's National History Museum, who was present when the stone urn was opened.

"It has been confirmed that these are parts of his skeleton."

Exactly how the relics ended up on the island is a mystery, but Mr Dimitrov said they may have been donated by the Christian Church in Constantinople when Bulgaria was part of the Byzantine Empire.

But other experts cast doubt on the claim, saying carbon dating tests were needed before the bones could be identified as belonging to Christ's baptiser.

Read the rest here.