TODAY IN GOD:
RELIGION NEWS BITES FOR YOUR SNACKING PLEASURE
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Some 24,000 sun worshippers gather for ancient festival

More than 24,000 people from druids to fans heading for a nearby music festival hailed the sun rising on the longest day of the year Thursday at the ancient Stonehenge monument.

At 4:58 am, following an all-night party on Salisbury Plain, dawn broke on the summer solstice over 5,000-year-old stone circle, one of the most famous prehistoric sites in the world.

Revellers wearing antlers, black cloaks and oak leaves huddled at the Heelstone — a twisted, pockmarked pillar at the edge of the monument — to cheer the rising sun.

English Heritage, which runs the site, said numbers swelled above the 20,000 they expected because extra people joined the party along the way to the Glastonbury music festival.

“There was a very good atmosphere but sunrise was not very spectacular this year because of the cloud,” said a spokeswoman for English Heritage.

There were four arrests overnight for minor public disorder, she added.

A spokeswoman for the Druid Network said: “The Summer Solstice is a way of attuning ourselves back into the cycles of nature, connecting with the land and the turning of the seasonal tides.”

Every June 21, the event draws together druids, revellers, hippies, New Age travellers and others simply wishing to experience the mystical annual event at the prehistoric monument.

When the sun rises over the Heel Stone to the sound of beating drums, some chant, some cheer, others meditate and the odd character has been known to cavort naked.
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Reality TV discovers religion at last

Think of it as Pop Idol meets Songs of Praise – only set in an Indian ashram.

Aastha, the leading religious television network in India, is to introduce a reality TV show, based on the global Idol formula, in an attempt to reach out to a younger audience.

The show, tentatively named Religious Indian Idol, will be an interactive musical talent contest between teenagers from universities and religious colleges. Instead of pop tunes, they will perform devotional songs from the Hindu, Buddhist, Sikh and Jain faiths.

The backdrop for the show will be a typical ashram scene – a group of religious students sitting under a tree by a river – rather than a TV studio manned by a celebrity anchor.

“The basic concept will be similar to Idol, but the entire look will be very traditional,” Kirit Mehta, the 52-year-old founder and chief executive of Aastha, told The Times. “There’s a huge amount of talent out there. We want to create awareness of the soothing effect that devotional songs can have on people.”

The show illustrates the growing appeal of reality television in the country, where Indian Idol, a version of Pop Idol, was screened for the first time in 2004 and is in its third series.

It also shows how religious leaders and activists are trying to use new media to appeal to young Indians, who are increasingly exposed to, and attracted by, Western culture.
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Visa woes delay new temple:
Stonemasons needed to finish suburban Chicago shrine are stuck in India due to red tape
In the parking lot of the new Jain temple in Bartlett, workers are prying open crates of white marble shipped from India: slabs, carved columns, elephants and lions, intricate domes for the interior niches where 24 stone deities sit.

All would seem to be ready for wrapping the cinder-block walls in marble and adding the ornamentation, but there’s a problem. Five masons needed to set the stone in place are stuck in India.

The U.S. government has yet to issue the visas the craftsmen applied for in September, delaying the project by at least a year, temple officials said.

Nationwide, Eastern religions are struggling to import workers they regard as essential to the practice of their faith but who do not fit traditional categories under which religious organizations obtain visas.

In some cases, like the Bartlett Jains, temples try to bring in workers with special skills as well as deep familiarity with their sacred iconography. Masons must know how to fit 441,000 pounds of stone together without any steel binding and be able to accurately rechisel details of carvings damaged in shipping, said Vinod Patel, whose Austin, Texas, construction firm is overseeing the stonework in Bartlett.

Other temples are trying to bring in people who perform a ritual purpose, such as musicians, and priests who cook food for the deities in Hindu temples.

The delay is making the Bartlett congregation restless.

“People who donate, everybody calls every single day,” Patel said. “They say, ‘You take our money, and you don’t provide us anything!’ How can we answer?”

The temple, known as the Jain Society of Metropolitan Chicago, has spent $26,000 on attorneys and a consultant in an attempt to get the workers here. Patel has flown to Delhi to plead his case, and the consultant followed on Wednesday. But so far, no luck.

Temple trustees blame security concerns in a post-Sept. 11 world. Yet, Jainism is a faith, which dates to as early as the 7th Century B.C., that teaches a path to enlightenment through a life founded on non-violence to all creatures. Jains comprise less than 1 percent of the Indian population.
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Bush Vetoes Stem Cell Research Legislation
President Bush yesterday vetoed legislation to expand federally funded embryonic stem cell research, saying that scientific advances now allow researchers to pursue the potentially lifesaving work without destroying human embryos.

Bush followed his veto — his third since becoming president — with an executive order aimed at encouraging federal agencies to support research that offers the promise of creating medically useful stem cells without destroying human embryos.

In his veto message to Congress, Bush said the legislation crossed an ethical line. “The Congress has sent me legislation that would compel American taxpayers, for the first time in our history, to support the deliberate destruction of human embryos,” Bush said.

The veto came under attack from those who say the president is withholding critical support for the most promising forms of stem cell research to appease conservative Christians and other supporters who equate human embryos with human lives.

“This is just one example of how the president puts ideology before science, politics before the needs of our families — just one more example of how out of touch with reality he and his party have become,” Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) said during a speech to Democratic activists in Washington.

The legislation rejected by Bush would have allowed federal funding for research to study cells from donated, frozen embryos slated for destruction at fertility clinics. A new survey of 1,020 couples who have frozen embryos in storage found that 60 percent of them would be likely to donate their embryos for stem cell research. The survey, conducted by researchers at Johns Hopkins and Duke universities, was released yesterday by the journal Science.
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Manuscript Shows Isaac Newton Calculated Date of Apocalypse
JERUSALEM — Three-century-old manuscripts by Isaac Newton calculating the exact date of the apocalypse, detailing the precise dimensions of the ancient temple in Jerusalem and interpreting passages of the Bible — exhibited this week for the first time — lay bare the little-known religious intensity of a man many consider history’s greatest scientist.

Newton, who died 280 years ago, is known for laying much of the groundwork for modern physics, astronomy, math and optics. But in a new Jerusalem exhibit, he appears as a scholar of deep faith who also found time to write on Jewish law — even penning a few phrases in careful Hebrew letters — and combing the Old Testament’s Book of Daniel for clues about the world’s end.

The documents, purchased by a Jewish scholar at a Sotheby’s auction in London in 1936, have been kept in safes at Israel’s national library in Jerusalem since 1969. Available for decades only to a small number of scholars, they have never before been shown to the public.

In one manuscript from the early 1700s, Newton used the cryptic Book of Daniel to calculate the date for the apocalypse, reaching the conclusion that the world would end no earlier than 2060.

“It may end later, but I see no reason for its ending sooner,” Newton wrote. However, he added, “This I mention not to assert when the time of the end shall be, but to put a stop to the rash conjectures of fanciful men who are frequently predicting the time of the end, and by doing so bring the sacred prophesies into discredit as often as their predictions fail.”
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Top official dismisses calls for Dalai Lama’s return

BEIJING – Tibet’s top government official defended Chinese rule in the Himalayan region on Wednesday and dismissed calls by a veteran Tibetan Communist to allow the Dalai Lama to return home.

Reuters exclusively obtained letters sent by Phuntso Wangye to President Hu Jintao from 2004 to 2006 in which the 84-year-old former member of parliament called for the Dalai Lama’s return. The letters also condemned hawks for thriving on their opposition to the spiritual leader of the predominantly Buddhist region.

Reuters disclosed the contents of the letters in March, revealing a debate in China’s high political circles on the possible return of the Dalai Lama, who fled into exile in India in 1959 after an abortive uprising.

Asked by Reuters to comment on Phuntso’s letters, Qiangba Puncog, chairman of Tibet’s regional government, told a Beijing news conference on Wednesday: “I feel his views do not represent that of the Tibetan people … but represent the thinking of very few people.”

Already a committed Communist, Phuntso led Chinese advance troops into his homeland in 1951, and acted as interpreter at a 1954 meeting between the Dalai Lama and Mao Zedong in Beijing. Later purged, he spent 18 years in solitary confinement before his political rehabilitation.

Qiangba Puncog rejected the Dalai Lama’s call for a Greater Tibet — parts of western Chinese provinces populated by Tibetans as well as Tibet proper — under a single administration, saying such an entity had not existed for more than a thousand years.

“I feel it (the call) has ulterior motives. In reality, it would be covert independence,” he said. The Buddhist leader insists he does not advocate Tibetan independence.

“He travels around the world not for religious issues but to internationalize the Tibet issue and serve his political motives,” the official said. “He’s very good at winning the hearts of Westerners.”
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When the anti-terrorism cop is Muslim
PARIS — Like the other detectives in his anti-terrorism unit, Mustafa wears a mask during raids.

He calls it “the Spiderman thing.” The mask protects his identity and adds to the intimidating effect as he bursts through doors behind SWAT officers aiming laser-sighted weapons at suspects.

During interrogations, the mask comes off. The suspects stare at a young man much like themselves: a son of North African immigrants, an Arabic-speaker, a practicing Muslim. They react with surprise or hate — never indifference.

“I am the worst enemy for them,” Mustafa says. “I speak their language. I know how they think. I have gotten a lot of threats. They say: ‘You are worse than the Americans. The Americans are Christians. They are fighting their crusade. But you are a Muslim traitor.’ … One guy told me: ‘If I could get hold of one of your guns and it only had one bullet, it would be for you.’ “

But occasionally, encounters with fellow officers leave Mustafa feeling caught in the middle.

“When I am on the street working plainclothes, police have stopped me,” he says. “I take out my badge. I tell them I am working anti-terrorism. But they lock the door of their car and call headquarters to check me out. They don’t have an image of someone like me as a policeman.”

Mustafa — not his real name — is one of a rare breed of police officers who represent the future of European law enforcement. Despite Europe’s large immigrant population, predominantly Muslim, police forces are struggling to integrate and to improve relations with minority communities.

“Diversity in the police is a factor of social justice,” says French police Capt. Mohamed Douhane, 42, an official of the Synergie Officers union, which represents mid-level police commanders. “It gives greater credibility to institutions. It reduces tensions. Vis-a-vis young people, we are ambassadors.”
FOR THE FULL STORY (LA TIMES VIA CHICAGO TRIBUNE) CLICK HERE

Latvian town to mark summer solstice with naked run
RIGA, Latvia – Revellers will be able to streak with impunity in a Latvian town this weekend, as the community holds a naked run to mark the midsummer festival, organisers said Wednesday.

“The nude run is for everybody, no matter their gender, age or race,” Ilze Dambite-Damberga, of the city council in the western town of Kuldiga, told AFP. “One can wear shoes or sneakers, as long as they don’t go up to the armpits,” she said.

The June 24 run across the town’s 150-metre (500-foot) 19th century brick bridge marks “Jani”, the most popular holiday in Latvia.

Taking one’s clothes off, however, is not a typical feature of Jani celebrations — the most common traditions are gatherings with family and friends in the countryside, singing, drinking beer and eating cheese, as well as leaping across bonfires.

Kuldiga has been holding the run for the past seven years, however, drawing dozens of participants who are ready to streak in the wee hours — the event is held at 03:00 am (000GMT).

Police will be on hand in case “puritans” show up in protest, and the hardy runners will be rewarded with beer.

“Usually there are more watchers than runners,” Dambite-Damberga added.
SOURCE: AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE VIA YAHOO NEWS