Happy Shavuot, Jewish friends. May the Torah continue to guide and inspire you.
Speaking of inspiration, the man accused of planning the Time Square bomb scare told authorities he was urged to act by two imams, including the Yemeni-American cleric with ties to the accused Undewear Bomber and Fort Hood shooter, according to NPR.
Jewish members of Congress told President Obama to get thyself to Israel to demonstrate his support. Excavators rushing to clear space in Jerusalem for a museum dedicated to tolerance have exhumed 1,000 skeletons from a Muslim cemetery. Disgraced Rep. Mark Souder, who resigned after admitting to an affair with a staffer, taped a video recently with said staffer praising abstinence.
FEMA says an agency photographer was “absolutely wrong” to ask Mississippi church volunteers to change out of their religiously themed shirts. The French government has decided to impose a $185 fine for women who wear the full-face Islamic veil in public. A Pakistani court ordered the government to block Facebook because one page encourages users to post images of Prophet Muhammad.
A judge in Malawi convicted a gay couple of gross indecency, a charge that could send them to jail for more than a decade. A group that split from the Episcopal Church years ago says it has to split from the new, conservative Anglican Church in North America, too, because technically it’s part of the Church of Rwanda. Got that? The Church of England continued its slow walk towards female bishops.
Disgraced evangelical pastor Ted Haggard says a new corporation he founded called “St. James Church” is not a church. The Baptist missionary jailed in Haiti for three months now faces a new heap of problems at home in Idaho. A Michigan judge released four members of the Christianist militia accused of conspiring to overthrow the government.
The IRS is offering a reprieve to some 200,000 small charities that missed a deadline to fill in their latest form. A couple in Japan was married by a robot. Ipods run funerals in Singapore. The machines are coming, people.
