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For Robert Valderzak of Washington, D.C., the recent Virginia earthquake was a miracle. “Ever since he fell and fractured his skull on Father’s Day, 75-year-old Valderzak had suffered severe hearing loss,” reports Katie Moisse of ABC News. “But after the 5.8 quake, he could hear everything.” “It was God’s blessing,” Valderzak told ABC, his voice shaking with…

The national news media yawned over the Baylor Survey’s findings that the number of American atheists has remained steady at 4 percent since 1944, and that church membership has reached an all-time high. “But,” ponder Rodney Stark and Byron Johnson in the Wall Street Journal, “when a study by the Barna Research Group claimed that young…

In an unexpected move, the Turkish government is releasing hundreds of properties seized 75 years ago from Jews as well as Christians in Turkey’s Greek, Armenian and Syriac communities. “The times when citizens in our country were oppressed for their beliefs, their ethnic heritage, or the way they dressed —  is over,” proclaimed Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip…

New York Times executive editor Bill Keller waded into the GOP presidential candidate debate with his column in this week’s Sunday Times Magazine, centering on asking them tough questions about their faith. “But Keller stumbled out of the gate by trying to draw an analogy between believing in space aliens and a candidate’s religious beliefs,” notes…

Four years ago, the BBC decided to capitalize on the immense popularity of the long-running Doctor Who series by creating a spin-off called Torchwood. Whereas Doctor Who is, apart from the intensity of its stories, safe for the whole family, producers said that Torchwood would be “dark, clever, wild, [and] sexy,” reports Christian author Chuck…

The hardline Communist bureaucrat who led China’s roughshod campaign against Tibet’s Buddhist dissidents has been given a new target: to destroy China’s “underground” Catholics. Zhang Qingli, known as the “Tibetan bulldog,” has been appointed as the Communist Party Secretary of Hebei province, according to Clifford Coonan for the British daily newspaper the Independent. Zhang’s assignment is to break Chinese…

A study by State University of New York at Buffalo sociologists has found a rise in “pornified” images of women in popular media. The researchers  called the findings a concern  since research shows such images of women have negative consequences for both men and women. The university’s Department of Sociology assistant professors Erin Hatton and Mary Nell…

Incidents of abduction of Hindus and Sikhs girls, for forced conversion and marriages to Muslims, as well as for ransom have increased, a Pakistani official told the Times of India newspaper. Pakistani parliament member Dr. Haresh Chopra of the Pakistan Muslim League was in India seeking Indian parliamentarians who would take up the issue of plight of…

A court in southwestern China on Monday convicted a Buddhist monk of murder and sentenced him to 11 years in prison following the death of a younger monk who set fire to himself to protest Chinese rule in Tibet. The court in Sichuan province convicted Drongdru, a monk from the Kirti monastery, of “intentional homicide”…

In June, Egyptian telecommunications billionaire Naguib Sawiris tweeted a cartoon of Minnie Mouse in a burqa, and Islamists worldwide threatened him with death. Now, as Egypt wavers between an Islamist and a democratic future, Sawiris wants to be his country’s next leader – and he’s founded a political party – the Free Egyptian Party —…
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