Laser Triggers Electrical Activity In Thunderstorm For The First Time

ScienceDaily -- A team of European scientists has deliberately triggered electrical activity in thunderclouds for the first time, according to a new paper in the latest issue of Optics Express, the Optical Society's (OSA) open-access journal. They did this by aiming high-power pulses of laser light into a thunderstorm.

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Walking Through Virtual Environments

ScienceDaily -- Imagine being able to take a step back in time and walk through the streets of ancient Pompeii hours before the eruption of Vesuvius.

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Judge Rules Against Atheist Father

LaGRANGE, Ky. -- A judge ruled in the case involving two parents fighting over whether their son should attend a religious school.

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Judge Ponders Fate Of Polygamist Sect Kids

(CBS/AP) The judge and lawyers involved in one of the biggest child-custody cases in U.S. history struggled Monday with the legal and logistical morass of deciding the fate of 416 children seized by Texas authorities in a raid at a polygamist sect.

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Colorado City CPS phone call resembles one made in Texas

Clashes In Darfur

Khartoum - Darfur rebels and Sudanese armed forces clashed in West Darfur in a renewal of fighting in the volatile area near the Sudan-Chad border, with both sides claiming on Sunday they had inflicted heavy casualties.

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Afghan Fighting Poised To Escalate

Kandahar, Afghanistan - For weeks now, the men in black turbans have been coming. They travel in pairs or small groups, on battered motorbikes or in dusty pickups, materializing out of the desert with Kalashnikovs and rocket launchers slung from their shoulders.

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37 Killed Or Found Dead Across Iraq

(AP) At least 37 people were killed or found dead across Iraq - half of them in bombings near the northwestern city of Mosul.

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Israeli Airstrike Kills Palestinian Militant

GAZA CITY (CNN) -- An Israeli airstrike killed a wanted Palestinian militant in Beit Hanoun, Israel Defense Forces and Palestinian sources said Monday.

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Terror Suspect Threatened West With Destruction

LONDON, England (AP) -- Jurors on Monday watched a video of a man accused of plotting to blow up trans-Atlantic aircraft warning Western nations: "The time has come for you to be destroyed."

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British And Kenyan Citizens Killed In Attack On School

MOGADISHU, Somalia (CNN) -- Authorities are investigating reports that at least one British and two Kenyan citizens were killed in an attack on a school in central Somalia on Sunday night.

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The attack on the school was part of a larger assault on the town by Islamic militants, who also burned the house of a regional official, he said.

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Youthful German Skeptics Challenge Religious Convention

A newly released survey by the Heidelberg-based Sinus-Sociovision showed that while young people search for meaning to their lives, they don't equate the answers with religion.

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Turkish Man Sentenced To Death In Saudi Arabia

Both President Abdullah Gul and Foreign Ministry officials are closely following developments related to a Turkish citizen sentenced to death in Saudi Arabia on charges of blasphemy, Turkish officials in Jeddah have said.

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Tens Of Thousands Demonstrate In Turkey In Favour Of Secularism

ANKARA (AFP) -- Tens of thousands demonstrated in the Turkish capital on Saturday to defend the country's secularist tradition amid simmering tensions over an attempt to ban the Islamist-rooted governing party.

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Pope Urged To Act On US Sex Abuse

American Roman Catholics, angered and demoralised by priest sex abuse scandals, say one man can help revitalise the Church: Pope Benedict XVI, who visits the US this week.

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The Lord's Boot Camp

"The Lord's Boot Camp," a collaboration between CBS News and Loki Films, producers of the Academy Award-nominated documentary "Jesus Camp," follows the three teens as they complete their training and go on evangelical missions here in the U.S. and abroad.

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Texas Polygamists May Recant, Officials Say

PHOENIX - Polygamist sect members who were moved to a Texas compound from their longtime homes along the Utah-Arizona line were hand-picked for their fierce loyalty to leader Warren Jeffs, and that allegiance may be a stumbling block for law enforcement, authorities say.

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Iraq: Mass Grave Found South Of Baghdad

(AP) Iraqi soldiers acting on tips from detained Shiite militiamen found 14 bodies Saturday that had been buried in a field south of Baghdad, officials said.

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Bomb Kills Scores In Iranian Mosque

(AP) A bomb explosion in a mosque in southern Iran has killed scores of people, state television reported Saturday.

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Muslim Depicts 'Violent' Christianity

A Saudi man has created a riposte to films criticising Islam in a video which portrays Christianity as a religion of violence.

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Did Politician Really Apologize For Anti-Atheist Rant?

The American Humanist Association responded today to the claim that Illinois State Representative Monique Davis (D-Chicago) apologized for an April 2 anti-atheist tirade she delivered during a State Government Administration Committee hearing in Springfield, Illinois.

"As far as we know, the only source for this alleged April 9 apology is the Web site of the immediate victim. It hasn't been corroborated or confirmed," declared Mel Lipman, president of the American Humanist Association. "Moreover, even if confirmed, the apology was only private. That just isn't good enough."

On April 2, Davis had interrupted atheist Rob Sherman during his testimony critical of a $1 million grant to a Baptist church. She declared, in part: "I'm trying to understand the philosophy that you want to spread in the state of Illinois. . . . This is the Land of Lincoln where people believe in God, where people believe in protecting their children. . . . it's dangerous for our children to even know that your philosophy exists! . . . I am fed up! Get out of that seat! . . . You have no right to be here! We believe in something. You believe in destroying!" (A transcript and audio of the exchange can be found at http://blogs.chicagotribune.com/news_columnists_ezorn/ .) Sherman remained in his seat and continued his testimony.

"We humanists would be gratified to know for sure that Monique Davis has apologized for her anti-atheist outburst," said American Humanist Association Executive Director Roy Speckhardt. "We are grateful already for the public and media outcry against that outburst."

Speckhardt was referring to commentaries critical of Davis on MSNBC "Countdown" (where host Keith Olbermann designated Davis the Tuesday, April 8, "Worst Person in The World"), various radio stations, prominent blogs like the Daily Kos and the Huffington post, Eric Zorn's Chicago Tribune column and blog "Change of Subject," and elsewhere. A large number of individuals have posted blog comments supportive of respect for atheists, and have phoned and e-mailed Davis' office. "This shows how much America is changing in its willingness to support the right of people like humanists to be God free and be respected for who they are," Speckhardt added.

On his Web site (http://robsherman.com/), Sherman reports that, on April 9, Davis had called him "from the Floor of the Illinois House of Representatives to apologize for what she had said," adding that, "she had been upset, earlier in the day, to learn that a twenty-second and twenty-third Chicago Public School student this school year had been shot to death that morning" and this was why she had taken her anger out on him. Representative Jack Franks, who had chaired the hearing, told Chicago's WBBM Newsradio 780 yesterday that Davis' outburst was uncharacteristic: "she was having a bad day."

"Such a purely private apology, even when publicly reported, misses the point," declared Lipman today. "What Monique Davis said was an offense to all nontheistic people, including humanists like me, not merely an offense to a single atheist. And her words were uttered publicly, so only a public apology will suffice.

"On behalf of humanists everywhere, we will accept such a public apology if it comes," Speckhardt said. "But this won't mean that the godless now enjoy a level playing field. We still have a ways to go. Had Representative Davis' remarks been directed at Jews or Christians instead of atheists, she would have been forced to resign."

Speckhardt went on to note that atheists have been discriminated against throughout history. "In England, when poet Percy Bysshe Shelley published a pamphlet in 1811 entitled 'The Necessity of Atheism,' he was kicked out of Oxford. Closer to home, in Arkansas, atheist activist Charles Lee Smith was twice arrested in 1928, first for selling atheist literature and then for blasphemy. Moreover, since he couldn't as an atheist swear an oath to God on the Bible, he wasn't permitted to testify in his own defense!"

Times have changed since then: "This is modern America. We have a right to be here," Speckhardt concluded.

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