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ST. LOUIS (AP) - Two prayer services will be held at St. Louis gas stations to thank God for lower fuel prices and to ask that they continue to drop. Darrell Alexander, Midwest co-chair of the Pray at the Pump movement, says prayer gatherings will be held Monday afternoon and evening at a Mobil station west of downtown St. Louis.
Participants say they plan to buy gas, pray and then sing "We Shall Overcome" with a new verse, "We'll have lower gas prices."
An activist from the Washington D.C. area, Rocky Twyman, started the effort, saying if politicians couldn't lower gas prices, it was time to ask God to intervene.
The group thinks the prayer is helping, saying prices are starting to fall below $4 a gallon.
Posted on: 2008-07-29 00:53:41
SYDNEY (AFP) — As Sydney prepares for a visit by Pope Benedict XVI and hundreds of thousands of Catholics, the city's brothels are readying themselves for an expected surge in demand for sex.
Any time Australia's biggest city hosts a major event -- from the 2003 Rugby World Cup to the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit last year -- it is boomtime for the sex industry, insiders say.
And with 225,000 foreign and Australian pilgrims expected in Sydney for six-days of events celebrating the Catholic faith from July 15-20, they expect World Youth Day to be no different.
Sydney brothel Xclusive is putting on extra workers to provide sexual favours to lonely tourists and Sydneysiders during event.
"We will get a lot of tourists, pilgrims and we will still get the curious," a spokeswoman for the Bondi Junction bordello told AFP.
"The World Council of Churches, when they had their congress in Canberra back in the 1990s, that was the best business period ever.
"Obviously we're not promoting it at your traditional Catholic community and it's unlikely we will get priests through. But there'll be lots of tourists in town and there'll be lots of people in town."
Posted on: 2008-07-29 00:52:40
This story here is an "oldie but goodie."
This guide to overcoming masturbation was attributed to Mark E. Petersen,
Council of the 12 Apostles
(of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints). It has been passed around the World Wide Web many times, and I thought I would bring it to attention again, mostly for its hilarious value.
In this list, many remedies are suggested, such as breaking off friendships with offenders, tying one's arm to the bed during sleep, and leaving the bathroom door open during showering.
I personally find this entertaining, but am also slightly shocked to find that they actually took this approach seriously.
Posted on: 2008-01-20 00:08:38
Hindu priests and religious groups had slammed the website, cafepress.com, for selling undergarments embellished with faces of several gods and goddesses, including the presiding deities of Jagannath temple, considered among the most sacred Hindu temples in India.
Besides writing to the US embassy in New Delhi, the state authorities also wrote to the federal Home Minister Shivraj Patil urging him to take up the issue with the US government, the Times of India daily reported.
"I, on the behalf of the government of Orissa, request you to take up the issue with the American governemnt for taking action against the website owner to refrain the company from such unholy activities," Orissa's law minister BB Harichandan said in his letter.
Posted on: 2007-12-22 14:31:36
The girl's friends, meanwhile, told local media she was having trouble at home because she did not conform to the family's religious beliefs and refused to wear a traditional Islamic head scarf, or hijab.
"She wanted to go different ways than her family wanted to go, and she wanted to make her own path, but he (her father) wouldn't let her," one of her classmates told public broadcaster CBC.
"She loved clothes," another of her friends, Dominiquia Holmes-Thompson, told the daily Toronto Star. "She just wanted to show her beauty ... She just wanted to dress like us, just like a normal person."
Posted on: 2007-12-11 15:52:39
When some of the world's leading religious scholars gather in San Diego this weekend, pasta will be on the intellectual menu. They'll be talking about a satirical pseudo-deity called the Flying Spaghetti Monster, whose growing pop culture fame gets laughs but also raises serious questions about the essence of religion.
The appearance of the Flying Spaghetti Monster on the agenda of the American Academy of Religion's annual meeting gives a kind of scholarly imprimatur to a phenomenon that first emerged in 2005, during the debate in Kansas over whether intelligent design should be taught in public school sciences classes.
"We have evidence that a Flying Spaghetti Monster created the universe. None of us, of course, were around to see it, but we have written accounts of it," Henderson wrote. As for scientific evidence to the contrary, "what our scientist does not realize is that every time he makes a measurement, the Flying Spaghetti Monster is there changing the results with His Noodly Appendage."
Posted on: 2007-11-17 03:25:02
