Humanists Launch First-Ever National Godless Holiday Campaign

Celebrating a new kind of holiday tradition, the American Humanist Association has launched a new advertising campaign similar to the one that ran in the nation's capital last year, which made headlines around the globe. Only this year, instead of the campaign focusing on a single location, ads will be blazoned across transit systems in five cities--including Washington, D.C., New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco--marking the first-ever nation-wide humanist holiday advertising campaign.

"No God?...No Problem!" proclaim the ads, featuring an image of several smiling, Santa hat-clad individuals. The ads will kick off in Washington, D.C. in time for Thanksgiving weekend, running inside 200 buses, fifty rail cars and on the side or tail of twenty buses. The campaign will continue with ads appearing on select buses in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco starting in early December.

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Godless Billboard Near Houston's George Bush Airport

"Don't Believe In God? You are not alone."

These words are part of prominent billboard slated to go up in Houston today. It will be located west of I-45 on Farm-to-Market Rd. 1960 near Ella Blvd. and will be viewable by westbound traffic. Sponsored by the Houston Freethought Alliance with funding from the United Coalition of Reason, the billboard's message is superimposed over an image of blue sky and puffy white clouds.

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Tulsa's Godless Groups Organize With Billboard, Book Tour

"Are you good without God? Millions are."

These words are slated to appear today on a prominent Tulsa billboard, located on I -44 West at Elwood. It will be visible to westbound traffic and is sponsored by Tulsa CoR, the Tulsa Coalition of Reason.

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Group Organizes To Be 'Good Without God'

Teresa Cherry was out running errands when she saw the question floating over Interstate 95.

"Are you good without God?" the electronic billboard asked. "Millions are."

The Baltimore woman does not believe in the existence of a supreme being. And in that moment, she did not feel so alone.

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Baltimore's Nontheistic Groups Organize with Billboard Campaign

Atheist Billboard Stirs God Debate

It was supposed to be a meeting for the Atheists of Florida to recruit more members, but it turned into a debate with Christians about whether or not God exists.

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Humanists Pleased With Inclusion Of Nontheists At Colorado Holiday Event

The American Humanist Association announced today they were pleased that nontheists were included in a government-sponsored holiday event in Colorado this past weekend. The Colorado Coalition of Reason (COCOR) was permitted by Larimer County Sheriff James Alderden to participate in the "Apparently Annual Politically Incorrect Christmas Tree Trimming Party," which was held outside the Larimer County Sheriff's Office Administration on Saturday. COCOR, with legal advice from the American Humanist Association, had asked to be included in the celebration amidst concerns that the event was going to unlawfully promote Christianity.

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Atheist Display at Sheriff Alderden's Nativity Scene

Atheists Need A Different Voice

We all know the names (Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens) of those angry white men who tend to antagonize the world's believers. But the most persuasive voices for the 'new New Atheism' tend to be women.

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We macho atheists need a little woman to calm us down

Social Scientists Build Case For 'Survival Of The Kindest'

Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, are challenging long-held beliefs that human beings are wired to be selfish. In a wide range of studies, social scientists are amassing a growing body of evidence to show we are evolving to become more compassionate and collaborative in our quest to survive and thrive.

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It Seems Biology (Not Religion) Equals Morality

Recent discoveries suggest that all humans, young and old, male and female, conservative and liberal, living in Sydney, San Francisco and Seoul, growing up as atheists, Buddhists, Catholics and Jews, with high school, university or professional degrees, are endowed with a gift from nature, a biological code for living a moral life.

This code, a universal moral grammar, provides us with an unconscious suite of principles for judging what is morally right and wrong. It is an impartial, rational and unemotional capacity. It doesn't dictate who we should help or who we are licensed to harm. Rather, it provides an abstract set of rules for how to intuitively understand when helping another is obligatory and when harming another is forbidden. And it does so dispassionately and impartially. What's the evidence?

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The Chronic Dependence Of Popular Religiosity Upon Dysfunctional Psychosociological Conditions

Abstract: Better understanding the nature, origin and popularity of varying levels of popular religion versus secularism, and their impact upon socioeconomic conditions and vice versa, requires a cross national comparison of the competing factors in populations where opinions are freely chosen. Utilizing 25 indicators, the uniquely extensive Successful Societies Scale reveals that population diversity and immigration correlate weakly with 1st world socioeconomic conditions, and high levels of income disparity, popular religiosity as measured by differing levels of belief and activity, and rejection of evolutionary science correlate strongly negatively with improving conditions. The historically unprecedented socioeconomic security that results from low levels of progressive government policies appear to suppress popular religiosity and creationist opinion, conservative religious ideology apparently contributes to societal dysfunction, and religious prosociality and charity are less effective at improving societal conditions than are secular government programs. The antagonistic relationship between better socioeconomic conditions and intense popular faith may prevent the existence of nations that combine the two factors. The nonuniversality of strong religious devotion, and the ease with large populations abandon serious theism when conditions are sufficiently benign, refute hypotheses that religious belief and practice are the normal, deeply set human mental state, whether they are superficial or natural in nature. Instead popular religion is usually a superficial and flexible psychological mechanism for coping with the high levels of stress and anxiety produced by sufficiently dysfunctional social and especially economic environments. Popular nontheism is a similarly casual response to superior conditions.

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Creating God In One's Own Image

For many religious people, the popular question "What would Jesus do?" is essentially the same as "What would I do?" That's the message from an intriguing and controversial new study by Nicholas Epley from the University of Chicago. Through a combination of surveys, psychological manipulation and brain-scanning, he has found that when religious Americans try to infer the will of God, they mainly draw on their own personal beliefs.

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Dear God, please confirm what I already believe

More U.S. Christians Mix In 'Eastern,' New Age Beliefs

Elements of Eastern faiths and New Age thinking have been widely adopted by 65% of U.S. adults, including many who call themselves Protestants and Catholics, according to a survey by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life released Wednesday.

--snip--

The percentage of people who call themselves Christian has dropped more than 11% in a generation, and so many people declined any religious label that the "Nones," now 15% of the USA, are the third-largest "religious" group after Catholics and Baptists, according to the American Religious Identification Survey last March.

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Entropy Alone Can Create Complex Crystals from Simple Shapes; Tetrahedra Packing Record Broken

Entropy is a measure of the number of ways the components of a system can be arranged. While often linked to disorder, entropy can also cause objects to order. The pyramid shape central to this research is the tetrahedron---a three-dimensional, four-faced, triangular polyhedron that turns up in nanotechnology and biology.

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Large Hadron Collider Makes History With 1.18 TeV Protons

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has made history and become most powerful particle accelerator on the planet.

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Just After the Big Bang: Hubble's Deepest View of Universe Unveils Never-Before-Seen Galaxies

ScienceDaily -- The new Wide Field Camera 3 aboard the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has taken the deepest image yet of the Universe in near-infrared light. The faintest and reddest objects in the image are likely the oldest galaxies ever identified, having formed between only 600-900 million years after the Big Bang.

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The Big Dipper Gains a Star

Hunt for new worlds goes into overdrive

Black Hole Caught Zapping Galaxy Into Existence?

War On Solstice? Celebrate!

'Tis the season for celebrating, and we should all rejoice, according to American Atheists, Inc. As President Ed Buckner notes, "Claims abound that both Thanksgiving and Christmas are Christian in origin, but in fact both are grounded in non-Christian ideas and rituals that the churches have co-opted for their own purposes.

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'Tis The Season For Battles Over Holiday Displays On Public Property

This is the time of year when disputes over holiday displays on public property and be expected. Here is a sampling of the most recent.

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Atheists Take Softer Approach With Capitol Display

A Seattle-based atheists group asked state officials Friday for permission to display a placard outdoors on the Capitol Campus over the holidays.

Jerry Schiffelbein, the treasurer for Seattle Atheists and an activist in other "free-thought" groups that advocate for separation between church and state, said the sign's message is less provocative than those that the Wisconsin-based Freedom From Religion Foundation put up last year.

The proposed 18-by-30-inch sign says, "In this holiday season let us remember that kindness, charity and goodwill transcend belief, creed or religion."

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Tenn. City Drops Bible Text Reading At Tree-Lighting Ceremony

MARYVILLE, TENN. -- Acknowledging it is "terrifying to stand and go against the courts," Samuel David Duck, a Maryville resident and father of two, did what city officials had decided not to do.

He read an account of the birth of Jesus Christ from the Bible at the city's tree-lighting celebration Monday night at the Greenbelt.

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How The Religious Right Stole Christmas

Every year during the holiday season, right-wing pundits and Religious Right groups rally their followers by claiming there is a "war on Christmas." These groups are outraged annually by holiday displays, parades, music and anything else that has to do with the December holiday -- unless a large dollop of Christianity is included.

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Uphill Political Battles In Washington Have Religious Right Leaders Foaming At The Mouth

Americans United Praises Senate Vote Against Nelson-Hatch Amendment

Americans United for Separation of Church and State today commended the U.S. Senate for rejecting a religion-based amendment to the health-care reform bill that would have limited women's access to abortion.

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Soledad Cross Back On Court's Agenda

A federal appeals court today takes up an issue it is very familiar with -- whether the Latin cross at a veterans memorial atop Mount Soledad violates the U.S. Constitution.

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Redding Woman's Christmas Carol Initiative Picks Up Allies

Merry Hyatt has found allies in her quest to put an initiative on the ballot next year requiring public schools to play Christmas carols.

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Six FFRF "Yes Virginia..." Signs Censored In Las Vegas

Apparently there's no room at the inn for an irreverent billboard saying "there is no God." ClearChannel Outdoor company in Las Vegas has taken down six Freedom From Religion Foundation billboards that had a jolly Santa stating, "Yes, Virginia... There is no God," just one to two days after placing them around the city.

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FFRF Creates Solstice Mini-Blitz in Las Vegas

"No Gods" Solstice Sign Returns To Illinois Capitol

The Freedom From Religion Foundation's Winter Solstice display is going up during December in the Illinois State Capitol in Springfield. The Madison, Wis.-based Foundation is the largest national association of freethinkers (atheists and agnostics), with about 14,000 members nationwide and more than 500 in Illinois. The Foundation works to protect the constitutional separation between religion and government.

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Freethinkers' Winter Solstice Sign Up in Madison

Rights And Religion Clash In Court

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to hear an appeal from a Christian student group that had been denied recognition by a public law school in California for excluding homosexuals and nonbelievers. The case pits anti-discrimination principles against religious freedom.

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Judge Denies Pastor Intervention Status In FFRF Case

U.S. District Judge William B. Shubb, Eastern District of California in Sacramento, denied a local pastor the right to intervene in the Freedom From Religion Foundation's challenge of tax benefits for "ministers of the gospel," commonly known as "the parsonage exemption."

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Bakersfield Council Prayers Too Christian?

Bakersfield is the second city in Kern County to have prayers at city council meetings challenged by the Freedom From Religion Foundation Inc., a Wisconsin nonprofit with a membership of mostly atheists and agnostics.

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FFRF Challenges Prayers at City Council Meetings in Bakersfield, Calif.

Magistrate Says Sectarian Invocations At N.C. County Commission Meetings Are Unconstitutional

For many years, members of the Forsyth County Board of Commissioners in North Carolina have opened their meetings with invocations offered by guest clergy. Most of the time, the preachers would pray "in Jesus' name" or include other overtly Christian content.

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Board may press case

Federal Judge Says South Carolina Legislature Crashed Into The Church-State Wall When It Mandated A 'Christian' License Plate

When the Rev. Dr. Neal Jones heard that the South Carolina legislature had voted to create a special license plate bearing Christian symbols and the words "I Believe," he took alarm.

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ACLU Decries Conn. Graduation Venue

The ACLU is demanding that school officials in Enfield, Connecticut, stop holding high school graduation ceremonies at a Christian church, arguing that the public school system should not "be in the business of embracing particular faiths or religious viewpoints." The graduation location is also disputed as the ACLU feels that public schools should respect religious diversity "when making decisions about where to hold important events such as graduation."

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Group Complains That Too Many Christian Clergy Open City Council Meetings In Cleveland

CLEVELAND (AP) -- The Americans United for Separation of Church and State organization complains that opening prayers for the Cleveland City Council are too often said by Christian clergy.

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Calif. College Sued Over Prayer At Group Events

SANTA ANA, Calif. -- A community college is Southern California faces a federal lawsuit for opening its public ceremonies with an official prayer.

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Federal Appeals Court Blows Whistle On Wisconsin Sheriff's Religious Proselytism

A federal appeals court made the right call today by striking down religious presentations given at mandatory meetings at the Milwaukee County Sheriff's office, says Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

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FFRF Pursues National Day Of Prayer Case

The Freedom From Religion is vigorously defending its groundbreaking federal challenge of the National Day of Prayer.

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Critics Of Cecil Bothwell Cite N.C. Bar To Atheists

ASHEVILLE -- North Carolina's constitution is clear: politicians who deny the existence of God are barred from holding office.

Opponents of Cecil Bothwell are seizing on that law to argue he should not be seated as a City Council member today, even though federal courts have ruled religious tests for public office are unlawful under the U.S. Constitution.

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Asheville, NC Atheist Runs for City Council Seat; Opponents Use His Beliefs Against Him

Fewer Americans Give Clergy High Honesty, Ethics Ratings

Only half of Americans rate the honesty and ethics of clergy as very high or high, a new Gallup poll reveals.

A fall from 56 percent of Americans last year, the percentage is the lowest it has been in the last three decades.

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Rift Flares After US Episcopal Church Elects Gay Bishop

Conservatives insist the Bible unequivocally outlaws homosexuality whereas liberals believe the Bible should be reinterpreted in the light of contemporary wisdom.

The row led to the formation of a conservative breakaway Episcopal movement in the US - the Anglican Church in North America.

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Holy Cow? Farmer Sees Divine Sign In Bovine

A calf with a white marking on its forehead in the approximate shape of a cross was born last week at a dairy farm in Sterling, a small rustic town on the Rhode Island border.

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10 strangest Jesus sightings of 2009

Man Dies After Sitting In Recliner For Eight Months

COLUMBIA, South Carolina (NBC) -- Believing his faith would heal him, a Greenwood County, South Carolina man sat down in his recliner after an injury in March and never got up.

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Atlanta Minister Accused Of 'Modern Day Slavery'

ATLANTA -- An Ellenwood minister and his wife were arrested and charged after authorities said they made a woman work for them and their friends for little or no money.

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Trenton Roman Catholic Diocese Pays $325K Settlement In Sexual Assault Case

JAMESBURG -- The Roman Catholic Diocese of Trenton has paid $325,000 to a 32-year-old woman who says she was sexually assaulted by a former diocesan priest, the late Rev. Ron Becker, who died in January.

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Bishop To Defrock Priest Who Filmed Abuse Of Boy

A SENIOR Catholic bishop is preparing to hold a secret ecclesiastical trial in his diocese to defrock a priest who filmed himself sexually abusing a school boy on his mobile phone.

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Parish Shocked By Priest Probe

Many parishioners of Kirkinriola, which includes All Saints, Crebilly and Harryville, left Mass looking visibly shocked and some were in tears after hearing that Fr Paul Symonds was the subject of a police investigation.

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Former East Lancashire Teacher In Abuse Probe

A ROMAN Catholic priest who used to teach at an East Lancashire college has been arrested on suspicion of child abuse.

Detectives from the Metropolitan Police Force's Child Abuse Investigation Team investigating the alleged sexual abuse of a boy in the 1970s, have arrested former Stonyhurst College teacher Father Paul Symonds.

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Irish Church Accused Of Abuse Cover-Up

A damning report into child abuse in the Dublin archdiocese has criticised the Catholic Church hierarchy for covering up the abuse.

The report investigated how Church and state authorities handled allegations of child abuse against 46 priests.

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Report Reveals 'Reprehensible' Role Of Diocese

Irish Church accused of abuse cover-up

Four archbishops colluded to cover up child sex attacks

The Brothers grim

Weakland shredded copies of sex abuse reports, documents say

Why Ireland Is Running Out of Priests

'Family Values' Bishop Michael Reid Had Two Secret Affairs

A BISHOP who preached strict family values secretly had two affairs, an employment tribunal heard yesterday.

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Pope Benedict Replaces Antigonish Bishop Facing Child Porn Charges

Vatican City (AHN) - The Vatican has replaced the Canadian bishop facing child pornography charges. Pope Benedict XVI named on Saturday Sault Ste. Marie Auxiliary Bishop Brian Joseph Dunn as the replacement for Antigonish Diocese Bishop Raymond Lahey.

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Catholic Counsellor 'Sexually Abused Boy'

A SYDNEY Catholic boys' school teacher who allegedly sexually assaulted a student in the 80s has been allowed to continue teaching for more than 20 years because the incident was deliberately covered up, a court has been told.

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Indian Nun Claims Sex Is Rife Within Catholic Church

Bookshops throughout India's Christian communities in Kerala have already sold out of Amen, the autobiography of Sister Jesme, who has alleged that priests and nuns not only broke their vows of celibacy with each other but regularly forced novices to have sex with them.

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Italy: Vatican Bank 'Accused Of Money Laundering'

Rome -- The Vatican bank is under investigation for suspected money laundering via accounts held at one of Italy's largest banks, the UniCredit Group, according to the Italian investigative weekly Panorama.

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Atheists Feel Cold Shoulder

ATHEISTS have accused the Brumby Government of discriminating against them by refusing to fund the movement's global conference in Melbourne but giving $2 million to a religious conference.

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Atheists cross as religious forum secures taxpayer funding

Untying the knot of church and state

Faith Leaders Call For Calm As Murdered Priest Is Buried

A murdered Russian Orthodox priest was laid to rest in Moscow yesterday, amid fears of rising religious tensions between Christians and Muslims in the country. Father Daniil Sysoyev was shot dead inside his own church last week, in a killing that many suspect was by Islamic radicals.

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Islamists Claim Russian Train Bombing

MOSCOW -- A militant Islamist group claimed responsibility Wednesday for last weekend's deadly Russian train bombing, as investigators said the well-planned attack resembled tactics used by Chechen rebels.

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It's No Miracle, I Could See But Now I Am Blind

FIVE people who stared at the sun in the hope they might be witnessing religious apparitions are being treated for serious eye damage, a top eye surgeon has revealed.

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Swiss Ban Building Of Minarets On Mosques

GENEVA -- In a vote that displayed a widespread anxiety about Islam and undermined the country's reputation for religious tolerance, the Swiss on Sunday overwhelmingly imposed a national ban on the construction of minarets, the prayer towers of mosques, in a referendum drawn up by the far right and opposed by the government.

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'Men Sought To Kill Woman For Adultery In Spain'

SPANISH police have arrested nine men suspected of seeking to have a woman killed after they accused her of adultery, claiming they were following Islamic law, authorities said.

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Islamic law in Socialist Spain

Muslim Numbers Soar In Latin America's Islamic Resurgence

"ALLAH Akbar" blares from the loudspeakers as hundreds of Muslims file into the mosque for prayers. Outside, halal meat stores line the street as in Damascus, Cairo or Baghdad, but this is the working-class neighbourhood of Bras in Sao Paulo, Brazil -- the heart of Islam's Latin American rebirth.

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Hindu Sacrifice Of 250,000 Animals Begins

The world's biggest animal sacrifice began in Nepal today with the killing of the first of more than 250,000 animals as part of a Hindu festival in the village of Bariyapur, near the border with India.

The event, which happens every five years, began with the decapitation of thousands of buffalo, killed in honour of Gadhimai, a Hindu goddess of power.

--snip--

Chandan Dev Chaudhary, a Hindu priest, said he was pleased with the festival's high turnout and insisted tradition had to be kept. "The goddess needs blood," he said. "Then that person can make his wishes come true."

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Hindu Leaders Are Blamed For Mosque Plot That Led To Carnage

The destruction of a mosque by Hindu radicals that led to some of the bloodiest religious riots in India since Partition was "meticulously planned" by politicians including a former Prime Minister, according to a leaked report of the official investigation.

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Call to protect secular India

Buddhist Extremists Shatter Peace Of Catholic Church

A Catholic Church in Sri Lanka has been attacked, with suspicions falling on Buddhist extremists.

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Uganda Proposes Death Penalty For HIV Positive Gays

Britain and Canada protested yesterday over a proposed law that would result in gays in Uganda being imprisoned for life or even executed.

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Have your tax dollars helped Evangelicals set stage for gay execution bill in Uganda through Bush's ''AIDS Relief'' program? [video]

An Unholy Alliance Of Church And State

When Fiji's regime brought the Methodist Church under its thumb, a fundamentalist rival joined forces with the police.

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TV Presenter On Death Row For Witchcraft

Ali Sibat is not even a Saudi national. The Lebanese citizen was only visiting Saudi Arabia on pilgrimage when he was arrested in Medina last year.

A court in the city condemned him as a witch on November 9.

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Baghdad Car Bombs Cause Carnage

A series of car bombings has killed at least 127 people and wounded 448 in the centre of the Iraqi capital, Baghdad.

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Al-Qaida claims deadly Baghdad blasts

Scores dead as car bombs rock Baghdad

Bombs shake Iraq before Muslim holiday

Pakistan Militants Launch Deadly Attack On Rawalpindi Mosque

Suicide attackers have swarmed through a Pakistani mosque frequented by senior army officers, shooting randomly, killing worshippers at close range and exploding bombs in a frenzied attack that killed at least 40 people.

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Dozens dead in Pakistan mosque attack

Deadly blast hits near Pakistan's ISI

Dozens killed in Pakistan market blasts

Suicide blast near Pakistan naval headquarters

Bus Explosion Kills, Wounds Dozens In Syria

(CNN) -- An explosion killed or wounded dozens of passengers in a bus in the Syrian capital, Damascus, Thursday morning, an official in the president's office said.

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Blast Kills 2 In Southern Thailand, Police Say

Bangkok, Thailand (CNN) -- An explosion killed at least two people Monday in a city in southern Thailand, a police official who is familiar with the investigation said.

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Report: Scores Of Albinos In Hiding After Attacks

(CNN) -- As many as 10,000 albinos are in hiding in east Africa over fears that they will be dismembered and their body parts sold to witchdoctors, the Red Cross said in a recent report.

The killings of albinos in Burundi and Tanzania, who are targeted because their body parts are believed to have special powers, have sparked fears among the population in the two countries, the report said.

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Somalia Graduation Ceremony Blast Kills 23

(CNN) -- The death toll rose to 23 on Friday in a suicide bombing attack at a Somali graduation ceremony, which killed three members of Somalia's U.N.-backed interim government, according to an independent media report.

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Arrest Highlights Clergy's Role In Rwanda Genocide

So far, four Catholic priests have been indicted by the U.N. International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. Human rights activists say the small number of indictments do not accurately represent the church's role in the genocide.

By failing to issue swift condemnation, the church opened the door for slaughter in the name of God, according to the global group Human Rights Watch.

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