A Korean investment banker friend of mine died recently, but only for ten minutes.
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Death is not the last thing on their minds
We’re in the village of Baluchan, about 570 miles from Kabul at a shurah in the heart of an area until recently under Taleban control. Over the past 48 hours British and Afghan troops have been engaged in firefights with the Taleban to clear the surrounding countryside. Hajibullah, the charismatic district governor, has just made his way up from Nad-e Ali in a nervous but cheerful convoy of well-protected vehicles
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Good news from Afghanistan: democracy is taking root
One of my favourite films is Mars Attacks!, the 1996 science-fiction comedy from Tim Burton, in which Martians with Blairite grins swoop to Earth and pick off the suited earthlings that have assembled to welcome them. “Nice planet.
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What if the aliens decide they don’t like us?
The defense in the faith-healing trial in the June 2008 death of 16-year-old Neil Beagley began its case Monday with a medical expert witness who said the teen’s symptoms weren’t necessarily so bad that a reasonable person would think he could have died.
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Faith-healing defense introduces ‘silent killer’ concept
If the word “psychedelic” conjures up images of San Francisco or Woodstock, there’s much more to learn from journalist Don Lattin’s mind-blowing guided tour of the colorful people who gave birth to America’s psychedelic era in an unlikely place: Harvard University. Says Religion News Service: In his new book, ” The Harvard Psychedelic Club ,” which has received enthusiastic reviews and generated interest in Hollywood, Lattin expertly shows how Timothy Leary, Richard Alpert, Huston Smith and Andrew Weil crossed paths at Harvard in the fall of 1960 before going their own separate ways. Lattin, a veteran religion reporter who walked on the wild side more than a few times himself, traces how the four men forever changed the way people — both straight and stoned — think about spirituality
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Book traces the long strange trip of drug-induced spirituality
In Britain yesterday, the House of Lords defeated a a government attempt in the pending Equality Bill to narrow the employment discrimination exemptions currently available to religious institutions under the Employment Equality (Sexual Orientation) Regulations 2003 . Under that law, religious organizations can discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation in order to comply with religious doctrine or to avoid conflicting with the strongly held religious convictions of a substantial number of the religion’s followers. (Sec.
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House of Lords Votes To Keep Broader Discrimination Exemptions For Religious Organizations
Christians at Christian institutions love to pontificate over how Christian the Christian institution should remain. That appears to be the case over at Northwestern College in Minnesota where a debate over its identity persists. I tend to agree with Alex Chediak that the Minneapolis Star-Tribune ’s article over its identity crisis was pretty fair
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Identity crisis in the midwest
Filmmaker Lixin Fan may very well be one of modern-day China’s great non-fiction storytellers. His Sundance World Cinema Documentary competition film, “Last Train Home” is a documentary masterpiece that depicts China’s meteoric rise to economic powerhouse through the story of a couple who move away from their rural village to earn money in a big city factory that produces goods for export …
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Discovery | “Last Train Home” Director Lixin Fan (indieWIRE)
Motivational speaker James Arthur Ray who led a sweat lodge ceremony in Arizona that turned deadly said he feels horrible about what happened but declined to comment on whether he was responsible for the deaths. He refers instead to letters drafted by his attorneys that state he was not criminally negligent.
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Leader of fatal Arizona sweat lodge speaks out
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — John Travolta has flown a jetliner carrying relief supplies into the Haitian capital, along with doctors and ministers from the Church of Scientology. The 55-year-old actor piloted his own Boeing 707 from Florida with six tons of ready-to-eat military rations and medical supplies for survivors of Haiti’s devastating Jan
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Travolta flies jetload of relief supplies to Haiti