Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is in trouble with powerful Shiite clerics in his country who think he’s not working hard enough at enforcing the rules on women’s head scarves.
Talk show host Glenn Beck is changing the site of his Aug. 24 rally originally planned for the southern wall of Jerusalem’s Old City. That plan, which he said was divinely inspired, will have to change because of security concerns at the wall, a site of much conflict over the centuries. Farther away, may at the Mount of Olives, would be safer, Beck said.
Richard Falk, the United Nations special rapporteur to the Palestinian territories, is once again in trouble for alleged anti-Semitism and anti Americanism. Falk said he originally thought the dog in the cartoon he posted was wearing a helmet, not a yarmulke.
The public and the media will be barred from the site when antiquities experts unearth those troves of treasure found in a 16th century Hindu temple in southern India, India’s Supreme Court has ruled. The loot is estimated to be worth about $22 billion.
On the verge of a break-up? One of the largest social service networks in the nation is cracking because the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, which run it together, can’t agree on some thorny theological issues, the Associated Press reports.
The evolution debate resumes again in Texas, but it’s not looking good for those who want creationism and intelligent design to be included in the online science materials the state school board will recommend to teachers. Hearings on the new materials begin today with a board that is down one creationism advocate.
The American Civil Liberties Union wants to know if any public money will be spent on Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s prayer event at Houston’s Reliant Stadium on Aug. 6. Perry and thousands are expected to pray for “a nation in crisis.”
The state of Louisiana released an audit Wednesday claiming that the the pastor of a Central City church misspent or wasted at least $160,000 in relief grants after Hurricane Katrina, according the the New Orleans Times-Picayune.
Bristol Palin said it was never a problem that Nancy French, the woman who co-wrote the 20-year-old’s new memoir, co-founded Evangelicals for Mitt, as in presidential candidate Mitt Romney. Sarah Palin’s daughter said French was going to work out fine even if she voted for someone other than her mother – who is still officially undecided about running for president.
— Lauren Markoe
