As per the normal review of market volatility to ensure adequate collateral coverage, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc., Clearing House Risk Management staff approved the performance bond requirements for the following products listed in the advisory at the link below.

The rates will be effective after the close of business on 04/30/2020.

Click here for the full text of the advisory

20-182

Amendments to the Price Increments of the 3-Year U.S. Treasury Note Futures Contract

Click here for the full text of the advisory

20-188

Antemoro “coastal people” of Amosiala come to faith after learning about Christ through an OM team and volunteers from a neighbouring village.

A village builds their own school - a big first for the area and a step in transforming the community.

Topics in this issue include:

• Support for Non-Consecutive Month CSOs - November 18 ^New
• Price Precision Extension - 2018

New - Support for Non-Consecutive Month CSOs

Effective Sunday, November 18 (trade date Monday, November 19), to simplify the submission of trade entry reports, CME ClearPort will support trade entry for Calendar Spread Options (CSOs) on products, typically Agricultural, that do not list consecutive monthly contracts.

This enhancement will be available in New Release for customer testing on Wednesday, November 7.

Back to Top

Price Precision Extension

CME Group is implementing end-to-end technology changes to support increased price granularity. Currently, CME Group systems support a maximum of 7 decimals. With this initiative, products with up to 9 decimals may be listed and traded. Effective Sunday, January 13 (trade date Monday, January 14), pending regulatory approval, the 2 Year Treasury Note futures and spreads will move from 7 decimals to 8 to support trading at 1/8 of 1/32.

Customers are encouraged to move to support 9 decimals now; but there are no plans to list a product that uses the 9th decimal at this time.

For more on impacted products and CME Globex, iLink messaging, Drop Copy and Market Data impacts, view the CME Globex Client Impact Assessment.

These enhancements are currently available for testing in New Release.

Back to Top

Effective Friday, April 3, 2020, CME Group will implement changes to CME ClearPort Reporting functionality. CME ClearPort Reporting supports the generation of reports based on CME ClearPort trade activity, and CME Account Management information.

These changes include:

• A new look and feel of the user interface
• Improved performance
• Streamlined search features
• New downloadable report format
  • Generated reports will be exportable in Excel (csv) and Adobe (pdf) format.

These changes arecurrently available for customer testing in New Release.

Please Note: User roles and entitlements will remain unchanged.

Access ClearPort Reports from: CME Customer Center>Reports>ClearPort Reporting

Please contact the following support teams for:

• Production Environment Support:
  CME Global Command Center (GCC) in the U.S. +1 800 438 8616, in Europe at +44 20 7623 4747 or in Asia at +65 6532 5010.
• Application Access Support:
  Enterprise Application & Systems Entitlements (EASE) in the US at +1 312 456 1560, in Europe at +44 203 379 3802 or in Asia at +1 65 6593 5536.

Effective Friday, April 3, 2020, CME Group will implement enhancements to CME ClearPort Reporting functionality. CME ClearPort Reporting supports the generation of reports based on CME ClearPort trade activity, and CME Account Management information.

The enhancements will include:

• A new look and feel of the user interface
• Improved performance
• Streamlined search features
• New downloadable report format
  • Generated reports will be exportable in Excel (csv) and Adobe (pdf) format.

On Wednesday, March 18, ClearPort Reporting will be available for customer testing in New Release.

Access ClearPort Reports from: CME Customer Center>Reports>ClearPort Reporting

Please contact the following support teams for:

• Production Environment Support:
  CME Global Command Center (GCC) in the U.S. +1 800 438 8616, in Europe at +44 20 7623 4747 or in Asia at +65 6532 5010.
• Application Access Support:
  Enterprise Application & Systems Entitlements (EASE) in the US at +1 312 456 1560, in Europe at +44 203 379 3802 or in Asia at +1 65 6593 5536.

German translation of Press Release about BIS General Manager Agustín Carstens giving a speech on "Money in the digital age: what role for central banks?" (6 February 2018)

Softball ministry in Hungary shows hospitality, international influence by hosting the 2016 Danube Cup

Latest SOLIDWORKS press releases, news, technical alerts and announcements. These feeds are seen on...

Latest SOLIDWORKS press releases, news, technical alerts and announcements. These feeds are seen on...

The number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits topped 3 million for a seventh straight week, signaling little relief in sight for the economy since the coronavirus began closing restaurants, factories and offices from coast to coast in mid-March.

The Bank of England says the UK faces its worst slump in 300 years, but on Thursday held off from any moves on rates or bond buying.

The United Nations on Thursday issued a new appeal for $4.7 billion in funding to "protect millions of lives and stem the spread of coronavirus in fragile countries."

Minister of Employment and Labour Thulas Nxesi said on Thursday afternoon that the Unemployment Insurance Fund was going to be under "very serious strain" and that he foresaw a period where there would be heavy dependence on the state.

Almost one million people in Johannesburg, South Africa’s commercial hub, are in need of food aid due to movement restrictions imposed to curb the coronavirus pandemic, according to its mayor.

Madagascar’s ongoing crisis continues to defy definition. Some call Andry Rajoelina’s taking power in March 2009 a popular uprising. Others say this was a military-supported coup, pure and simple. The legitimacy of the new regime remains in question both internally and externally, and peace agreements mediated by the international community lie in tatters.

Madagascar, one of the world’s poorest countries, has been mired in political crisis, since 2009, when 34-year-old former radio disc jockey Andry Rajoelina toppled President Marc Ravalomanana in a military coup d’état.

Slight miscommunication between OM workers in Israel leads to an unplanned chance to share the Gospel with a railway attendant.

A tribute to OM Guatemala leader Pilar Castro, who died this January 2013

Puerto Quetzal, Guatemala :: Guatemala's First Lady visits Logos Hope and thanks the crewmembers for sharing knowledge, help and hope to the nations.

A story of one OM worker’s struggle, triumph and hope.

The Discipleship course in Malawi challenges students to own their faith and apply it in their daily lives.

Read about how a short term missions trip to a Muslim country changed a US pastor's life! Click to read more!

Rome Newsroom, Apr 30, 2020 / 02:01 pm (CNA).- In the central Italian countryside, at the edge of the Umbrian woods just outside Norcia, a group of Benedictine monks prays and works from well before the sun rises until it sets.

This much has not changed in the monks’ lives during Italy’s coronavirus lockdown; but what has is the visitors they receive at the monastery.

“Usually we have some guests coming from all over the world... visitors coming from Italy or the U.S., friends or retreatants,” Fr. Benedict Nivakoff, O.S.B., told CNA by phone.

“And so, the total absence of those people, of that presence, has just focused our prayer all the more and we try to do what we are called to do more seriously,” he said.

“The main thing is a greater intensity of prayer for all those who are suffering.”

Nivakoff is the prior of the monks living at the site of St. Benedict’s birth. After religious life was suppressed in the area in the 1800s, a group led by Fr. Cassian Folsom was given permission to re-establish the monastery and moved there in 2000.

The prior said when the coronavirus was at its height in Italy, the monks did a traditional procession around the property with relics of the true cross.

“And that’s a way of praying for people, invoking the saints and calling down God’s help and his mercy on the country and on the world,” he said.

St. Benedict himself “experienced plagues, famines, sickness, death, not to mention relentless attacks of the devil on him and on his monks. He saw all of those as occasions for the monks themselves and for him to renew his trust and his faith in God,” Nivakoff said.

There is a “sad and persistent temptation,” he explained, to think “the world can solve these problems, but in fact, this world is passing away and God is the only answer to the suffering that we see.”

“So St. Benedict’s message, if you will, would be that all these things that happen can work for the good, and that is for the good of … each man and woman, each monk, in drawing closer to God.”

The monks in Norcia experienced tragedy first-hand four and a half years ago when several earthquakes, including one of 6.6-magnitude, struck central Italy and Norcia in August and October 2016.

The earthquakes destroyed hundreds of homes and the monk’s own buildings, including the Basilica of St. Benedict.

They have been rebuilding, but construction has been on hold during Italy’s lockdown, Nivakoff said, noting that it may, God willing, be able to start back up in a few weeks.

“The earthquake taught us many things and maybe one of the more relevant lessons for today is to resist the temptation that everything should go back exactly as it was,” he said.

“We thought after the earthquake, ‘well the answer is [to rebuild] everything as good if not better than before.’”

“But at the root of that is a fallacy, that this is a world, and we are men touched by original sin, who will only really have happiness and completion and real restoration in heaven,” the prior said.

He noted, “we can and do and need to work to improve things and to bring order where there is chaos and disorder but not at the risk of making this world into the destination and the goal,” because “it isn’t; it’s our temporary place so that we might get to heaven.”

“The earthquake really helped us to see that in a visible form, because the ground was literally shaking beneath our feet,” he said, “and the buildings we had called home to us and to our neighbors, our families, our friends, all the people here in Italy that we know, in central Italy, as all that fell apart.”

He said this “has called for trust and faith that is hard to muster in these days when the faith is so minimal.”

According to Nivakoff, “there are so many” lessons from monastic life that could help people quarantined in their homes right now, but he emphasized “two principle challenges to solitude.”

The first is for those who are in quarantine with others. As for monks who live with other monks, charity is very important when living in the midst of many people, he said.

“This really calls for lots and lots of patience, [and] to remember that patience with others always begins with patience with ourselves,” he explained. “Accepting our sins, accepting our faults, accepting that God is patient with us, and being patient with ourselves, helps us to be more patient with others.”

He added that silence can be a really useful tool in these circumstances: “Not speaking, not responding to the irritating or difficult or perhaps provocative things … people we live with say.”

“Especially under quarantine, the people we live with are probably going to still be with us in a few hours and maybe our passions will have calmed down by then” to respond in a better way, he said.

The second principle he drew on is for those who are living alone, such as the elderly or the young.

“For them, the quarantine really means an eremitical lifestyle. And for them the hardest temptations are sadness, acedia,” Nivakoff said.

“Sadness, which can be good because it can help us to lament our sins, lament not being with God, but at the same time can be a very inward looking and very self-pitying emotion, that stems from expectations not fulfilled.”

He recommended lots of humility and accepting that you are not in charge, not placing hope in things one does not have any control over.

“We have a lot more control over whether we say our prayers at noon than whether the government stops the lockdown in one week,” he pointed out. “The ways to combat sadness are this: to make goals that depend on me, and to put our trust and hope in God.”

Nivakoff also noted that there is a lot of talk right now about the importance of regaining the liberties men and women have had and avoiding “overreach of the government.”

“And that might be true, but from a Christian perspective, it is that we men and women need to accept the limitations that this disease brings on us,” he said.

“So even this terrible virus we need to see as permitted by [God] for some good purpose and the most traditional understanding of that is for some kind of purification.”

“So, we ask for God’s mercy because we need it.”

So during the coronavirus pandemic, the monks continue their prayer and their work taking care of the animals, gardening, cooking, cleaning, and managing the nearby forest.

To support themselves the monks also brew beer, and because it is sold through the internet, the coronavirus has not negatively impacted sales.

“And thank God, that model has really been blessed at this time because with so many people not being able to leave their home, many have taken it as an occasion to sample some monastic beer,” Nivakoff said.

“We continue to export from Italy to the United States and beer is available and it seems to delight many hearts there and we are very happy.”

An annual outreach attracts not only children but also two women, who listen attentively and respond to the message.

OM attempts to bring Christ’s love to the darkest corners of Sham Shui Po, and to walk with those neglected by society.

Every Friday, OM Hong Kong meets Pakistani women and children in neighbourhood parks, in an effort to demonstrate the love of God.

Moner, a third generation believer from Syria, worked as a Christian worker under the protection of a Muslim ambassador from Syria in communist Poland.

By Dr. Grazie Pozo Christie

When Archbishop Jose Gomez was elected to head the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) earlier this month, he tweeted that it was an honor - and not only for him, but for “every Latino Catholic in the country.” He’s right about that. We Latino Catholics feel it a great honor and a point of pride that a fellow Hispanic should take the lead. Not just because he is Latino, but because he’s a man with a sterling character and gentle manner, a man well known both for his sympathetic attitude toward the plight of immigrants and his traditional approach to social issues. This is a powerful and attractive combination to our growing Hispanic Catholic Church.

Gomez, a native of Monterrey, Mexico and a naturalized U.S. citizen, presides over the Los Angeles diocese, the largest and one of the most diverse dioceses in the country. Its parishes encompass more than thirty ethnicities, celebrating masses in languages from Igbo to Hungarian to Tagalog. The catholicity, that is, the universality--of the Catholic Church is a palpable thing in L.A., not simply a doctrinal concept. It’s the result of a constant and varied immigration. 

As leader of the USCCB, Archbishop Gomez will head an American Catholic Church that is about 58% non-Hispanic white and 34% Latino - a church in which most members under 30 are Hispanic. A significant number of the 2.7 million Hispanics that attend mass in Spanish are undocumented, and an even greater number probably know or love someone whose presence here is precarious. Gomez brings a history of heartfelt public support for the undocumented workers that America relies on to farm our crops, tidy our lawns, man our factories, and look after our children. He has been an especially vocal advocate of “dreamers.” “In a special way, I pray for #Dreamers, the day before #Scotus hears oral arguments on the legality of DACA,” he tweeted just after his election.

Archbishop Gomez is the author of the excellent “Immigration and the Next America.” The 2013 book neatly lays out his assessment of our current situation and his vision for a better future. He chronicles the historical background of a nation founded by Puritans searching for freedom but also (and even earlier) colonized by Spanish missionary migrants in a successful quest to evangelize the native population. He assesses a present-day America that lacks moral consensus and is crazed with consumerism, a nation confused about everything from the meaning of sexuality to the value (if any) of human life. He sees a country in which the ties of traditional American values and civic virtues that once bound us to one another are frayed, a country whose uneasy citizenry worries about what the “Next America” will look like. 

Gomez does not downplay the importance of legal norms and the very real toll that the chaos and lawlessness of illegal immigration takes, especially along our southern border. He argues, however, that fear and uncertainty may tempt us to “abandon our commitment to liberty and justice for all, in favor of an insular, racial definition of who can be a true American.” American Catholics, members of an immigrant Church in a country with a long history of anti-Catholic bias have a special responsibility in today’s debates over immigration reform. We bring to the table not only the memory of our ancestor’s experience of discrimination and the Church’s energetic response to the material and spiritual needs of successive waves of migrants, but also its rich tradition of teaching on human dignity and social justice. Catholics are especially suited to envision the face of the “Next America” in a way faithful to the Christian obligation of benevolence to strangers. 

U.S. Hispanics have a lot to be happy about in Archbishop Gomez’s election. He is a man with a tender heart for the vulnerable people in our midst who can also articulate a way forward on immigration that is attractive and optimistic - one based on the highest ideals that are our shared inheritance in this diverse country. He is also a man who bridges the liberal/conservative divide by quietly affirming the traditional mores and values that Hispanics are bent on preserving. But then, I venture to say that his election gives all American Catholics reason to be happy too. 

By Andrea Picciotti-Bayer

Two years ago, I joined a Catholic women’s symposium that discusses the weighty matters affecting our Church and our culture. One member of our group recently told us that her elderly father was in his last days. She asked for prayers and any resources we might have to guide her and her siblings and mother in navigating weighty end-of-life issues she expected they would face. There was a flurry of supportive responses and commitments to pray, but it took a while before anyone could forward along any helpful material. For my part, I knew of nothing to suggest off-hand.

I won’t face this problem again, thanks to Father Jeffrey Kirby’s We are the Lord’s: A Catholic Guide to Difficult End-of-Life Questions. A copy of this excellent, straight-forward end-of-life book arrived in the mail a few weeks ago, though, alas, a few days after my colleague’s father passed away (a “happy death” with family around, she relayed) and the email thread ended. Kirby sets forth basic principles of discernment for answering some of the hardest – and most common – questions surrounding end-of-life medical care and treatment. He also addresses the challenging practical issues that face the dying and their family members at this time.

Father Kirby begins by confronting the great modern misunderstanding of the human condition and dying. “No person is a burden,” he writes. Yes, this may seem obvious to so many us, but it’s no less important a truth, because we live in a culture that is “intoxicated with utilitarianism” – the notion that “any inconvenience for another person, or any service that makes us uncomfortable, is unmerited.” Christian teaching, however, has “always asserted that the only response to a person is love.” Loving the dying – seeking their good, delighting in them – exposes, Kirby argues, the “selfishness that disguises as compassion.” For children of God, Kirby reminds us, “quality of life” is “matured by love and an openness to live with inconvenience, discomfort, imperfection and suffering.”

Kirby outlines three important principles of discernment to guide bioethical and end-of-life decisions. One, we must recognize God as our Creator and accept the existence of an objective order of moral truth that is beyond us. “Our personal will, or desire for autonomy, are not sovereign,” he writes. “These must be placed within our human dignity and the objective order of moral goodness.” Two, we must understand our particular vocation. That is, we have to consider our duties and responsibilities toward others, our talents and capabilities, as well as the state of our souls. Three, we must appreciate the difference between what is morally obligatory (ordinary care, in the medical context) and what is morally optional (extraordinary care).

My own parents recently told me that they have “all of their affairs in order.” One such affair is the advanced directive, a summary of a person’s wishes in various medical situations. Father Kirby notes, however, that while such planning is prudent, it does not completely resolve end-of-life questions. As bioethicists often say, “When you have one situation, you have one situation.” Advanced directives, therefore, must always should be understood as guidelines and, most importantly, never can betray moral truths in light of the unique set of circumstances a person faces.

On a most practical level, We are the Lord’s includes a chapter that addresses specific medical questions. It’s a quick reference for readers facing urgent decisions. One common medical concern, for instance, is the continued provision of nutrition and hydration. Kirby is unequivocal in explaining that unless a person’s body cannot assimilate them or it becomes harmful, at no point should a sick person be denied food or water.

The overarching lesson of We are the Lord’s is to abide, and encourage our loved ones to abide, in a spirit of abandonment to the will of God. In living. And dying. The book’s title – coming, as it does, from Saint Paul’s letter to the Romans —reminds us how end-of-life decisions for ourselves or others should be faced: “For if we live, we live for the Lord, and if we die, we die for the Lord; so then, whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s.”

I’d not only recommend reading We are the Lord’s, I’d also suggest having a copy or two of Father Jeffrey Kirk’s handy guide available for the next time a friend, family member or colleague faces an end-of-life issue.

By Father Dave Pivonka, TOR

On the afternoon of March 6, I walked around the campus of Franciscan University of Steubenville, saying goodbye to students as they headed off for Spring Break. On that cold afternoon, it was unimaginable that those students wouldn’t come back to campus to finish out the school year. It was even more unimaginable that our University, where the Mass has always been at the center of campus life, would cease the public celebration of the Eucharist.

Tragically, at Franciscan University, like everywhere else, the global spread of the coronavirus quickly made the unimaginable our new reality.

I’ve been living with that new reality for over two weeks now, and I don’t like it. So, last week, I decided to do something about it: I hung a white ribbon on the door of our University chapel.
Let me explain.

It breaks my heart to not celebrate the Mass with students, faculty, staff, and their families. I miss the singing and the filled pews, the cries of babies and the responses of the faithful. Most of all, I miss Holy Communion; I miss giving Jesus to those hungry to receive him.

I understand why our bishops and leaders made the decisions they’ve made. I’m not questioning the necessity of those decisions. Extreme social distancing, for now, is a necessary evil.

Just the same, like my brother priests everywhere, I miss my people. I long for the day we can gather again, to worship, to listen to the Word of God, to preach and to receive Jesus in the Eucharist.

Until that day comes, however, I want the men and women I serve to know that they are always with me in thought and prayer, that I’m not letting a day go by without interceding for them before God, and that I could never forget them.

Even more important, I want them to know that God could never forget them. God didn’t forget his people when they wandered in the desert for 40 years. He didn’t forget them when they worshipped idols, ignored his commands, and found themselves exiled in Babylon. And he hasn’t forgotten us now.
 
Make no mistake: Our Lord does not like being separated from his people in this way. Jesus wants to give himself to us. He wants us to encounter him in the liturgy, in the Church, and in the Eucharist.
And this is where the white ribbons come in.

Ribbons have long been a sign of remembrance. They tell the world that we have not forgotten someone: a prisoner, a soldier, or a sick friend. I’ve tied a white ribbon onto the door of Christ the King Chapel, as well as the Portiuncula Chapel, here at Franciscan University, to remind our community that their priests and their God have not forgotten them. I’ve invited my friends who are priests and bishops to do the same. They, in turn, are inviting more priests and bishops to join us.

My hope is that as Catholics walk or drive past their churches, they will see those white ribbons and know their priests are praying for them and waiting for the day we can fling open those doors to welcome them back inside.

I also hope, when they see those ribbons, they know Jesus is waiting for that day, too. He longs for the day when we can gather together once more, and he can be with all of us, again, in the sacraments.

That day is not yet here. Like the Israelites of old, the Catholic faithful have to wander in exile a little longer. Jesus has not left us orphans, though. He is still with us. He is with us in the Scriptures, which are his Word. He is with us in his people—those we live with, work with, or encounter online. He is with us in prayer and in silence and in the beauty of his creation, which is singing his praises as spring finally comes.

Look for Jesus in all those places. Look for Jesus where you are. And when you see white ribbons hanging from a church door, remember God’s promise in Isaiah 49:15: “I will never forget you.”

In the midst of the chaos and the confusion, and the craziness, let those ribbons be a reminder that your priests are still with you. Let them be a reminder that Jesus is still with you. And let them be a reminder that one day soon, this exile will end, the churches will re-open, and your priests will be standing there, ready and waiting to joyfully welcome you home.