The security guard who proudly confessed to killing a Pakistani governor over his opposition to anti-blasphemy laws received a hero’s welcome when he arrived in court yesterday (photo, left).
His supervisor says he had asked for the man, Malik Mumtaz Hussain Qadri, to be removed from security details because of his extremist views. A human rights lawyer in Lahore says the anti-blasphemy laws and their hardline supporters threaten to send the region into further instability.
Coptic ex-pats living in the U.S. watch the attacks on Egyptian Christians with worry, and the NYT says Egypt and Iraq need to protect their endangered Christian minorities. Officials tightened security at Coptic churches ahead of Christmas Eve services tonight, and Coptic churches in Europe and elsewhere remain on high alert.
Iran, meanwhile, has arrested a number of Christian missionaries, and hard-line Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who caused countless headaches for the U.S., has returned to Iraq after three years of studies in Iran.
Witches in Romania plan to threaten the government with spells and spirits — including the use of cat poop and dead dogs, apparently — over a new plan to tax their fortune-teller earnings. Israel‘s highest court OK’d continued use of so-called “modesty buses” that segregate men from women.
Here at home, the GOP assumed control of the House, with new Speaker John Boehner starting things off with a kind of obscure reference to Ash Wednesday, Lent and repentence. “As the ashes are delivered, we hear those humbling words: ‘Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return.’ The American people have humbled us,” he said.
A Pew Forum analysis of the new religious makeup of the 112th Congress finds rough similarities between lawmakers and the general population, with overrepresentation among Jews and mainline Protestants and under-representation for “unaffiliated” i.e., Starbucks-on-a-Sunday-morning nonbelievers.
WaPo says the folks behind the new Noah’s Ark theme park in Kentucky are planning to build green.
A Maryland man has settled his abuse lawsuit against the Diocese of Wilmington (Del.) for $1.7 million days before the case was set to go to trial. Catholic News Service tallies the U.S. bishops and cardinals who turn 75 this year (hence facing possible mandatory retirement), including some big names.
George Weigel says Phoenix Bishop Thomas Olmsted did the right thing is booting a Catholic hospital for allowing an abortion to be performed, while USA Today’s Cathy Grossman wonders why Olmsted is keeping mum on the state cutting off organ donation funding for Medicaid patients.
Controversial pastor Carlton Pearson is stepping down from his Chicago pulpit; he was once a rising star among black Pentecostals until he embraced a theology that said pretty much anyone can get into heaven.
New Mexico’s attorney general says same-sex marriages performed out of state should be recognized in the state; the state’s new Republican governor disagrees. Death penalty opponents are racing to beat the clock in Illinois in a bid to end the state’s troubled capital punishment system.
