Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Wednesday’s roundup
Muslim leaders are upset over plans to host a "International
Burn a Koran Day" at a church in Gainesville, Fla.; this is the same church,
you might recall, that got in trouble for posting a "No Homo Mayor" sign against an
openly gay mayoral candidate.
The lesbian high school student in
Mississippi who was told she couldn't attend prom with her girlfriend has settled her suit against the
school district for $35,000.
The American Jewish Congress, which lost $21
million of its $24 million endowment to Ponzi schemer Bernard Madoff,
has apparently suspended
operations
after 92 years. Some folks in Hyrum, Utah, are threatening
payback
at the polls after a pastor was allowed to close a July 4 celebration
with a prayer -- in Spanish.
President Obama and new British PM David
Cameron say the release of the Pan Am 103 bomber had nothing to do with BP oil
contracts. Indian audiences are flocking to a Bollywood parody
about Osama bin Laden. Three Americans were expelled from Indonesia on
charges of (illegal) proselytizing, while Indonesian Muslims got the OK to drink coffee
brewed from the dung droppings of civet cats.
NPR looks at efforts to reconcile China's
"official" and "underground" Catholic churches, and the Chronicle of
Higher Ed looks at Germany's efforts to
train imams. Spain rejected a total ban on
burqas, but it could live to see another day in a narrower form.
Fire eaters in Saudi
Arabia are growing tired of harassment from
the country's religious police. Austrian church leaders say a confessional that's
for sale on eBay can't be turned into a one-man sauna.
A Welsh politician is facing a possible
inquiry
after posting on his Twitter feed: "I didn't know the Scientologists had
a church on Tottenham Court Road. Just hurried past in case the stupid
rubs off." Hard-line Islamic groups are rushing to
the aid
of a Nigerian politician who's under fire for marrying a 13-year-old
girl; he says a 2003 law the prohibits marriage to anyone under age 18
"must have been enacted in error."
CNN's Eatocracy blog delves into the dietary
restrictions of 12 major world religious traditions, and Politics Daily compares the
parenting models of Sarah and Todd Palin, and Bill and Hillary Clinton, as
their daughters get ready to step down the aisle this summer.
Posted by Kevin Eckstrom at 12:22 pm
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