c. 2000 Religion News Service
Suit Filed Against Christian Network Over `Omega Code’
(RNS) A West Virginia woman has sued the Christian cable channel Trinity Broadcasting Network, claiming its hit action movie “The Omega Code” stole her idea about a Christian apocalypse.
The lawsuit, filed July 11 in the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, is alleging unfair competition, copyright infringement, and breach of implied contract and seeks damages of $40 million.
Sylvia Fleener, 53, is a longtime supporter of TBN in Monroe County, W.Va., and is suffering from terminal, internal scleroderma. She claims there are numerous similarities between last year’s film and her self-published book “The Omega Syndrome.” TBN officials have been unavailable for comment.
Fleener copyrighted it in 1996. TBN released an “Omega Code” tie-in book along with last year’s film, which starred Michael York. Named in the lawsuit are TBN hosts Paul and Jan Crouch and their son, Matthew, who produced the low-budget, $7.5 million film that earned more than $12 million at the box office last fall.
The lawsuit claims she shared her book manuscripts with the Crouch family “through mutual friends” in the mid-1990s. The lawsuit also claims a main character in Fleener’s book and the TBN movie both are shot in the head, show supernatural abilities and become the anti-Christ, while the hero who defeats him in “The Omega Syndrome” parallels the hero in “The Omega Code.”
Mormon Student Suspended From BYU Young After MTV Appearance
(RNS) A Brigham Young University student who appeared on the MTV reality program “The Real World” has been suspended for allegedly violating the university’s honor code during taping of the show.
Julie Stoffer, of Delafield, Wis., has been suspended for the university’s fall semester, the Associated Press reported. The school said the 21-year-old business major violated its honor code by living with four men and two women in New Orleans during five months of filming. The honor code prohibits coed cohabitation by single students.
But Stoffer said camera footage proves she was not sexually active, and in a statement released Saturday (July 29) said that to “insinuate that I was sleeping with a guy, or having sex, is totally false and slanderous.”
“Under the circumstances, I am happy to no longer be affiliated with BYU,” said Stoffer, whose younger brother will attend the Provo, Utah, university in the fall. Her parents are alumni of the school. “I am actively searching for a new university to attend.”
Stoffer’s father, James, defended his daughter in an interview with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. He said his daughter “is a very moral person” who contacted the honor code office before the show was taped. She was given the impression she would face no disciplinary action from the university if she did not get into trouble, he said, noting that office staff contacted his daughter when episodes began to air.
“They said something like, `We need a written statement from you regarding your conduct during this show,” said James Stoffer. “They wanted to know what boys were in her room at any time of the day or night, what boys kissed her or hugged her … were they under the blankets.”
When Julie Stoffer gave no written statement, an office staff member contacted her at home, he said. James Stoffer said his daughter was not ashamed of anything she had done, and added he believed she “was a moral standard for moral values to millions of young people.”
“She was always on camera. She was always with people. In fact, she didn’t sleep in her pajamas because there were boys around. She slept in her clothes,” said James.
Relief Agency Pledges Flood Recovery Efforts in Mozambique
(RNS) The Adventist Development and Relief Agency has promised to donate medicines worth $250,000 to help Mozambique recover from weeks of heavy rain and flooding in March, the group said as the woman who grabbed headlines for giving birth while trapped in a tree during the floods toured the agency’s international headquarters in Maryland.
“The world will never forget the video showing the helicopter hovering over that tree, picking up this beautiful little baby with her mother,” said agency president Ralph S. Watts Jr. He told Carolina Cecelia Chirindza Chibure, whose daughter Rosita is now 4 months old: “We want to pay tribute to you for your courage. You are a remarkable lady.”
Chibure and her daughter visited the agency’s headquarters in Silver Spring, Md., on Thursday (July 27) before making an appearance on the relief agency’s television program. The two were accompanied by Mozambique’s ambassador to the United States, Marcos G. Namashulua, translator Isabel Francisco and Maria Leonor Joaquim, councilor for the Mozambique Embassy in Washington, D.C.
The agency has already contributed more than $525,000 to relief efforts for those affected by the flooding in Mozambique, including food for nearly 17,000 people.
“ADRA will continue to stay and work with you in the months and years ahead in the rehabilitation of your country, as much of the hard work is still ahead,” Watts told Chibure. “We promise you these funds today in appreciation of your visit and for your determination to provide hope for your people.”
Muslim Makes History at Republican National Convention
(RNS) The Republican National Convention in Philadelphia began Monday (July 31) with an opening prayer delivered by a Muslim, a signal of “the growing recognition of American Muslims,” according to the American Muslim Council.
According to the council, Talat Othman, chairman of the Washington, D.C.-based Islamic Institute, was the first Muslim in history to deliver a benediction at a major political party’s national convention.
“It is clear that the Muslim constituency in America plays a vital role in our country’s political process as the community is being increasingly courted by policy makers,” the council declared in a statement. “The visibility and recognition of our community will rise with its increased involvement.”
Aly Abuzaakok, the council’s director, said he hoped Democrats would follow suit.
“This is an opportunity to congratulate Talat Othman and the leadership of the Republican Party for taking such a major symbolic step,” said Abuzaakok. “We hope that the precedent will be followed by the Democratic National Convention.”
American Death Row Inmate Appeals for Justice Over Vatican Radio
(RNS) An American death row inmate, scheduled for execution in Virginia in September, has appealed over Vatican Radio for DNA testing he claims will prove his innocence.
Derek Rocco Barnabei, 33, also thanked Pope John Paul II for the two letters the Roman Catholic pontiff wrote to Virginia Gov. Jim Gilmore in December and again last week asking for clemency. John Paul strongly opposes capital punishment in all but rare and exceptional cases.
A number of Italian politicians have been campaigning for two years on behalf of Barnabei, an Italian-American convicted of the rape and murder of his girlfriend. He is scheduled to be executed Sept. 14 after six years on death row.
“There are some 60 items of evidence which need DNA testing. We have asked for 12 and perhaps they’ll agree to five,” Barnabei said Saturday (July 29) in an emotional interview on Vatican Radio. “I am sure that individually or taken together, these tests will prove my innocence.”
Barnabei said the pope’s intervention on his behalf had given him “indescribable joy.”
“I would never have dared hope for such a marvelous thing, but he is obviously a wonderful man. His intervention and his prayers have touched me deeply,” Barnabei said.
More than 200 Italian legislators joined in an appeal for a new trial in the case in 1998, and in December the regional government of Tuscany offered $5,000 to help pay for DNA tests.
Following a visit by Barnabei’s mother, Jane, to Rome July 19 to meet with high Vatican and Italian officials, Justice Minister Piero Fassino and other Italian political leaders also wrote to Gilmore and to U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno seeking a re-examination of the evidence in the case.
So far their efforts have been in vain.
Italy, which outlawed capital punishment in its post-World War II constitution, is a leader in efforts by European Union countries to have the United Nations declare an international moratorium on executions.
In reporting the new intervention the pope made through Vatican diplomats in Washington, Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls said last Tuesday (July 25): “Now, in the spirit of the Jubilee, John Paul II has again urged through the nunciature that Mr. Barnabei be granted clemency.”
John Paul urged in a message issued last month to mark Holy Year celebrations in prisons throughout the world that heads of government make wholesale reductions in prison sentences in keeping with a Jubilee tradition dating to the time of the Old Testament.
Pope Voices `Energetic Condemnation’ of New Basque Killing
(RNS) Pope John Paul II on Sunday (July 30) voiced his “most energetic condemnation” of the assassination in Spain of a former civil governor by ETA Basque separatists.
Speaking in Spanish, the 80-year-old Roman Catholic pontiff said he grieved for the separatists’ latest victim, Juan Maria Jauregui, and he offered his “solidarity” to Jauregui’s family.
John Paul addressed several thousand pilgrims gathered in the courtyard of his summer residence at Castelgandolfo in the Alban Hills south of Rome for the Sunday Angelus prayer. The crowd, singing and chanting greetings to the pope, was so boisterous that he paused twice to try to restore quiet by tapping on his lecturn and his microphone.
“Faced with the wave of terrorism that has hit Spain in recent days and that yesterday (July 29) claimed a new victim, I want to express my deep grief as well as my solidarity with the victim’s family,” he said.
“I renew once more my most energetic condemnation toward these acts against law, liberty and life, reaffirming that no political or social idea or conception can be imposed with violence,” the pope said.
The pontiff said he prays for “peaceful coexistence and social harmony” in Spain.
Church of Scotland Creates a New Rose
(RNS) The Church of Scotland’s Board of Social Responsibility has commissioned the development of a new rose, which is to be unveiled in Aberdeen on Wednesday (Aug. 2).
The pink hybrid tea rose is called “Caring for You” and will be officially dedicated by Sir Stewart Sutherland, principal of Edinburgh University and chairman of the Royal Commission on the long-term care of the elderly.
The development of the new rose was part of the board’s millennium celebrations.
The board has paid the development costs and will over the next 20 or 25 years receive a royalty of $2.40 on each rose sold. It is expected that in two or three years _ when the development costs have been paid off _ the royalties will generate some funds for the board, although a mere drop in the ocean compared with $6.4 million deficit it incurs on its 36 old people’s homes.
The deficit is due to the difference between what it costs to run the homes and the amount actually paid by government to defray those costs.
Conservative Synagogue Attacked Again
(RNS) For the second time in a month, a Conservative synagogue in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Ramot was attacked by arsonists, who reportedly threw a flaming rag at the building’s outer walls. No damage was reported in the incident that occurred Thursday (July 27) at Kehillat Ya’ar synagogue.
Jerusalem police meanwhile have reportedly arrested three suspects in connection with the earlier arson attempt, in which prayer books went up in flames and the synagogue’s interior was badly burned, causing thousands of dollars in damage.
The suspects are being held in detention pending the completion of an extensive police investigation. A group of ultra-Orthodox Jews who oppose the prayer services of the Conservative denomination are suspected of having propagated the attacks.
Quote of the day: The Rev. Tom Simbo of Sierra Leone
(RNS) “The big God who is behind it all is here. So whether Dr. Graham is here in person or absent, God is here and God is going to do his work.”
_ The Rev. Tom Simbo of the Evangelical Fellowship of Sierra Leone, commenting on Billy Graham’s absence due to sickness at the Amsterdam 2000 gathering of evangelists.
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