» Continued from Part 1

=== Islam
13. Muslims still looking for martyrs
14. British Muslims take path to jihad
15. U.S. Freedoms Give American Muslims Influence Beyond Their Numbers
16. Canada assails Nigeria on flogging
17. Gambia to introduce Sharia law
18. Iran Now a Hotbed of Islamic Reforms
19. Religious pressures rising in Indonesia

=== Mungiki
20. Mombasa Muslim leaders disown Mungiki
21. Sect Leader Scoffs At Expulsion Threat

=== Mormonism
22. In a Push for Unity, Mormons Stand Apart
23. Polygamy Facts
24. Federal regulators clear way for sale of Salt Lake Tribune
25. Regulators Clear Sale Of Tribune

=== Jehovah's Witnesses
26. Fugitive mom turns self in She's charged with child abduction

» Part 3

=== Hate Groups
27. Hate in state
28. Web restrictions unlikely to muzzle neo-Nazi speech
29. Cross-burning case appeal fails
30. McVeigh Execution Could Be in May
31. Devil Dogs left scars on Gilbert

=== Other News
32. Nun Killed, 13 Hurt in Church Attack
33. 2nd bust in Caribbean church horror
34. Millennium renews concerns about cult (Concerned Christians)
35. Dutch Faith Healers Make Inroads (Jomanda)
36. Sects and Religions in Russia Face Day of Reckoning
37. National Anthem Calls Russia 'Holy'
38. Cult attempts to regenerate deceased girl (Raelians)
39. True to the Temple (Indianapolis Baptist Temple)
40. Would-be messiahs back in action
41. Sects, power and miracles in the Bible belt of Essex (Peniel)
42. Iglesia ni Cristo's Executive Minister Era&#ntilde;o G. Manalo marks his 76th birth anniversary
43. Prayer urged to stop presidential `curse'

» Part 4

=== Noted
44. The Beauty And Perils Of The Irrational (False Memory Syndrome)
45. Miracles don't happen (Premanand, Indian skeptic)
46. Back to Ruby Ridge: Why Idaho Shouldn't Be Prosecuting FBI Agent Lon Horiuchi

=== Islam

13. Muslims still looking for martyrs
The Telegraph (England), Dec. 29, 2000
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
Muslim splinter groups operating in Britain will continue to recruit young men for military training abroad despite the introduction of tough new anti-terrorist legislation, an extremist Muslim cleric said yesterday.

Sheikh Omar Bakri Mohammed, the leader of the London-based Al-Muhajiroun group, said young men who joined Islamic conflicts in Chechnya, Afghanistan or Kashmir were fulfilling their ''religious obligations''.

He pledged to continue to recruit young Muslims on a voluntary basis from universities and mosques for ''military service'' in the pursuit of a world Islamic state. He said: ''This is what you in the West call National Service. It is part of a young Muslim's religious obligations to go for three months' military training. This is a voluntary thing.''

His comments came after a 24-year-old British Muslim was named as the suicide car-bomber who killed 10 people outside an Indian Army barracks in Kashmir on Christmas Day. Mohammed Bilal, a member of Jaish Mohammed, an Islamic splinter group, was said to have grown up in Birmingham but underwent military training in Pakistan five years ago.
(...)

The British Government is coming under increasing pressure to curb the activities of extremist groups who conspire to commit terrorist offences abroad after growing fears that Britain was becoming a centre for the funding and recruitment of Islamic terrorist organisations.

Under the Terrorism Act 2000, scheduled to come into force on February 19, police are to be given new powers to tackle organisations who, while not breaking UK laws, help terrorists abroad. The new provisions will make it illegal to raise funds for known terrorist groups and, crucially, to invite someone to receive terrorist training even though that training may take place abroad.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


14. British Muslims take path to jihad
The Guardian (England), Dec. 29, 2000
http://www.guardianunlimited.co.uk/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
Hundreds of young British Muslims have fought for religious causes around the world, an Islamic leader claimed yesterday, following reports naming a student from Birmingham as the suicide bomber who killed eight people in Kashmir on Christmas Day.

Kashmiri guerrilla fighters Jaish-e-Mohammed named the bomber as Bilal Ahmed, 24, and said that he had packed a stolen car with explosives before blowing himself up outside an Indian army barracks in Srinagar.
(...)

The Foreign Office has not confirmed the bomber's identity and doubt even surrounds his name, which has also been given as Mohammed Bilal or Abdullah Bai, the latter thought to be a nom de guerre.
(...)

Jaish claims that Bilal was born into a Pakistani family in Birmingham and was a ''nightclub-going lad'' until he became a born-again Muslim at 18 after seeing the Prophet Mohammed in a dream.

Birmingham is a focal point for such recruitment; it was home to three of the eight Britons jailed in Yemen in 1998 over a terrorist bomb plot, while a 24-year-old Muslim convert from Birmingham was reportedly killed in a US missile attack on Osama Bin Laden's Afghanistan base.

A striking illustration of the potency of this issue in Britain's second city came during last summer's local elections, when a party called Justice for Kashmir increased its representation to five council seats, making it the fourth largest party group on an extraordinary single-issue platform.

Mohammed Ghalib, president of Birmingham-based lobby group Tehreek-e-Kashmir UK said of the suicide bomber: ''The story will encourage the youth that this is a good thing and may encourage them to become more militant. If you call them terrorists then they'll become terrorists. If Indian army soldiers died in a bomb attack then most people here wouldn't mind.''

Sheikh Omar Bakri-Mohammed, founder of London-based Islamic group Al-Muhajiroun, claimed yesterday that around 1,800 British Muslims take part in ''military service'' each year, recruited at mosques and university campuses across the country.

The Syrian-born cleric said the recruits were often undergraduates suffering from an identity crisis who were persuaded to rediscover their parents' faith and encouraged to fight against infidel ''occupying forces'' in Kashmir, Palestine and Chechnya.
(...)

The British authorities admit they do not know how many British Muslims go abroad to fight with terrorist groups.

A Home Office spokesman pointed out: ''When someone is leaving the country they do not say at customs they are going to be a terrorist, they say they are going on holiday.''

However, changes to anti-terrorism laws could be used by the courts to prosecute British-based extremists.

At the moment, if extremist groups do not break any British laws, they are left free to continue fundraising, recruiting and training.

But when the Terrorism Act 2000 comes into force in February, groups can be banned, their assets confiscated and their members jailed if it can be proved they conspired to commit a terrorist offence abroad.

Labour MP David Winnick, a member of the home affairs select committee, said he understood the passions that issues such as Kashmir could provoke, but urged that the legislation be used to crack down on terrorists.

''I take the view that Britain should not under any circumstances be a safe haven for any sort of terrorist activities.

''While I believe a person has a right to put forward a point of view, I draw the line at actively promoting activities that could be described as terrorism.''
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


15. U.S. Freedoms Give American Muslims Influence Beyond Their Numbers
Los Angeles Times, Dec. 29, 2000
http://www.latimes.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
(...) Far from the fatwas--the religious decrees--of hierarchies abroad, American Muslims are slowly but steadily carving their mark on the Islamic world.

Their relatively small numbers, young history and still fledgling organization would seem daunting barriers to wider influence. Of the roughly 1 billion Muslims worldwide, those in the United States are only a tiny fraction, numbering somewhere between 3 million and 10 million.

But a confluence of forces that has made those Americans among the freest, most educated, affluent and diverse Muslims in the world has given them an impact greater than their numbers. Helped by the growing use of English as a language of Islamic discourse and by the ever-spreading world of the Internet, they are self-consciously seeking to influence their religious brethren worldwide.

Moreover, the spirit of the times may be on their side. ''The guy with a turban and rifle is out,'' says Marcia Hermansen, a theology professor at Loyola University Chicago. ''The guy drinking a latte with a laptop computer reading Internet fatwas is in.''

Provocative Islamic thinkers are flourishing in the climate of America's unparalleled intellectual freedom. They are tackling taboo subjects such as spousal abuse and highlighting the aspects of their nearly 1,400-year tradition that embrace women's rights, human rights and democratic practices.

The sheer diversity of the community here is prompting efforts to promote Islamic models of pluralism. U.S. Muslims include American natives, mainly of African descent, as well as immigrants from more than 50 nations.

American Muslims also are expanding their influence by bringing modern education, business practices and economic development to their homelands through a mushrooming number of nonprofit organizations. More than 300 such groups now raise about $50 million a year for such causes as education and health care, according to Aslam Abdullah, editor of the Los Angeles-based Minaret magazine and president of the American Federation of Muslims From India.
(...)

Working against that hope are the community's weaknesses. American Muslims are divided and sometimes fractious. They struggle with discrimination and comparatively weak political clout at home. They are seen by Muslims elsewhere as generally lacking in the classical Islamic education that would undergird their authority.

Some leaders worry that the powerful forces of assimilation, which homogenize most immigrant groups in the U.S. by the third generation, could weaken the American Muslim identity before it fully consolidates.
(...)

Until now, the main model in the Islamic world for modernization had been Turkey, which excised Islam from public life in the name of progress. America gives Muslims an alternative--an example of a society in which the faithful are free to be both modern and religious.
(...)

Nyang argues that the potent combination of modernity and piety demonstrated by Muslims in the U.S. could catch on in the Islamic world, offering a compelling alternative to extremism.

The American faces of Islam belong to people like Dany Doueiri and Shamshad Hussain.

Doueiri is a co-founder of one of the world's most popular Web sites on Islam, http://www.islam.org. Every day, the Los Angeles-based site receives 140,000 hits. More than half the visitors are from outside the United States. They are shown an expanse of Islam that bypasses the divides of cultures, religious sects and schools of Islamic law that often separate Muslims from one another.

For instance, when numerous Bosnian Muslim women were raped by Serbian soldiers during the Balkans conflict, the site was flooded with queries on the Islamic position on abortion. Doueiri says his team presented without judgment two opinions from different schools: one holding that any abortion is forbidden, the other saying that the procedure is allowed for up to 120 days into the pregnancy, after which, adherents believe, the soul enters the body.

The neutral presentation of differing views within the vast Islamic tradition, though rare, is equipping Muslims worldwide to think through their own Islamic practices rather than simply accepting the rulings of the local scholar, Doueiri says.
(...)

The rise of the electronic fatwa, sometimes by self-styled experts, dismays some classically trained scholars. But experts say the trend is irreversible.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


16. Canada assails Nigeria on flogging
The Globe and Mail (Canada), Dec. 29, 2000
http://www.globeandmail.ca/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
OTTAWA -- The Canadian government issued a diplomatic rebuke to Nigeria yesterday for allowing a 17-year-old girl who had premarital sex to be sentenced to 180 lashes with a cane, calling the punishment a violation of international human-rights conventions.

The Globe and Mail learned this week that Bariya Ibrahim Magazu apparently gave birth recently and is to receive her punishment -- handed down in September by an Islamic court in the northern Nigerian state of Zamfara -- within a month. It's believed half that many lashes would be enough to kill the girl.

Information from a Canadian official in Abuja and Nigerian news reports indicate that Ms. Magazu gave birth in detention and is still being held.

She was impregnated by one of three middle-aged men with whom she is reported to have been pressured into having sex.

Canada is believed to be the first country to speak out about Ms. Magazu's sentence.

Marie-Christine Lilkoff, a spokeswoman with the Foreign Affairs Department in Ottawa, said yesterday the rebuke had been delivered to the Nigerian government through ''diplomatic channels'' from the Canadian High Commission in the country's capital, Abuja.

The message read that ''cruel and unusual punishments involving mutilation and excessive pain violate international standards of human treatment,'' Ms. Lilkoff said.

''We've reminded the government of Nigeria of its obligations under international law to promote and protect the human rights of all its citizens.''

What Canada thinks carries more weight in Nigeria than in many other countries. Prime Minister Jean Chrétien was the only world leader to call for action against former president Sani Abacha before the dictator had poet and minority-rights activist Ken Saro-Wiwa executed in 1995.

Mr. Chrétien's government cut off development assistance, discouraged Canadian companies from investing in the country and led the push to get Nigeria suspended from the Commonwealth. Three years later, when General Olusegun Obasanjo became Nigeria's first elected president in 20 years, Mr. Chrétien was the first foreign leader invited to address the country's national assembly.
(...)

According to Amnesty International, Ms. Magazu had no representation at her trial.

Zamfara is one of several states in the northern part of Nigeria that has imposed full Islamic law, known as sharia, during the past year. Strictly interpreted, the penal code also includes flogging for those who drink alcohol and death (in some cases by stoning or beheading) for those who commit worse offences, such as adultery.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]

* Amnesty International's web site includes dozens of examples of human rights abuses committed under the guise of islamic ''justice.''

17. Gambia to introduce Sharia law
News24 (South Africa), Dec. 29, 2000
http://www.news24.co.za/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
Nairobi, Kenya - Gambia is to introduce Islamic Sharia law from next year, President Yahya Jammeh has told Muslim leaders in the capital Banjul, reports said on Friday.

Religious freedoms would be respected, Jammeh said without giving any further details. The Gambian constitution provides for the separation of religion and state.
(...)

Jammeh who seized power in a military coup in 1994 was born into a Roman Catholic family but converted to Islam.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


18. Iran Now a Hotbed of Islamic Reforms
Los Angeles Times, Dec. 29, 2000
http://www.latimes.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
Religion: In once-militant theocracy, even some clerics cite the Koran as a bulwark of civil rights.
(...)

Yet Saanei, at 73, has turned out to be a thoroughly modern mullah.

''It's my interpretation from the Koran that all people have equal rights. That means men and women, Muslims and non-Muslims too,'' he explained with gentle certainty, stroking a wispy white beard that hangs like fringe under his chin. ''And in a society where all people have equal rights, that means all people should make decisions equally.''

To help enshrine those rights, Saanei has issued a series of stunning religious edicts, or fatwas: He banned discrimination based on gender, race or ethnicity. He declared that women could hold any job, including his own. Although Islam has historically outlawed abortion, he even issued a fatwa allowing it in the first trimester--and not only due to a mother's health or fetal abnormalities.

Two decades after its stunning revolution expanded the modern political spectrum by creating a theocracy, Iran is once again shaking up the Muslim world. Its role, however, has reversed. Once widely feared as the hub of Islamic militancy and the training center for martyrs to the cause, Iran has increasingly become the intellectual breeding ground for the religion's most innovative reforms.

For Islam, which literally means ''submission,'' the change is so profound that Iran is now credited with spearheading a full-fledged Islamic Reformation--an event comparable in many ways to the Christian Reformation of the 16th century, which paved the way for the Age of Enlightenment and the birth of modern democracy in the West.

Iran's reform movement still has a long way to go and faces enormous obstacles from conservatives willing to engage in sabotage, subterfuge and assassination. [...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


19. Religious pressures rising in Indonesia
The Boston Globe/AP, Dec. 29, 2000
http://www.boston.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
BANDA ACEH, Indonesia - Tired of daily jeers and insults, Natalia Dewi has done what she never thought she would - she has started wearing a head scarf.

Although Roman Catholic, the college student is among hundreds of thousands of women covering up in accordance with Islamic law in Aceh Province.

Here, on the northern tip of the island of Sumatra, demands for stricter Islamic observance are intertwined with growing support for pro-independence guerrillas fighting secular Indonesian rule.

Thousands have died during 25 years of violence. Now the renewed bloodshed here and in other restive provinces has raised fears that religious tensions could be what breaks Indonesia apart.

On Christmas Eve, at least 15 people were killed in bombings outside churches in Indonesia. In the eastern Moluccas, where thousands more have died in sectarian violence, Christians accuse Muslim gangs of forcing them to convert to Islam at gunpoint.

In Aceh, the new enforced fashion for women is the most overt sign of change. Tight clothes, short skirts and see-through fabrics are out. Arms and legs must be covered.

Shopkeepers in Banda Aceh, the provincial capital, say scarf sales have almost doubled.
(...)

Indonesia is the world's most populous Islamic nation. About 90 percent of its 210 million people are Muslim, with Christians making up a tiny minority of Aceh's 4 million people.

In most places, Islam mixes easily with local culture and traditions.
(...)

But in Aceh, Islamic observance has always been strict.
(...)

Many fear that if Aceh breaks away, other provinces could follow and the country of 17,000 islands could disintegrate.

Desperate to keep Indonesia intact, President Abdurrahman Wahid has bowed to Acehnese demands for the Islamic code, called sharia, even though it runs counter to the secular principles followed since independence from the Dutch half a century ago. He hopes it will blunt demands for full independence, which he flatly opposes. The concession wasn't easy. Wahid, a Muslim scholar himself, advocates tolerance and has warned against extremism.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


=== Mungiki

20. Mombasa Muslim leaders disown Mungiki
East African Standard (Kenya), Dec. 29, 2000
http://www.eastandard.net/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
Mombasa Muslim leaders have declared that Mungiki adherents are not Muslims.

They also told Mungiki chairperson, Khadija Wangari, to shun the Mungiki sect or she would be forced to leave Mombasa.

The leaders said no Mungiki official is supposed to speak on behalf of Muslims and told Wangari to stop issuing statements on behalf of the sect.

''Muslim women are not supposed to speak in front of men and Wangari is no exception,'' said Islamic scholar Sheikh Mohammed Sheikh. The leaders were reacting to Press reports quoting Wangari defending Mungiki as being religious and serving one God.

The leaders supported Sheikh Ali Shee and Sheikh Juma Ngao of Council of Imams and Preachers of Kenya (CIPK) and Supreme Council of Kenya Muslims (Supkem) who had called on the group to shun Mungiki and embrace Islam in total or face rejection.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


21. Sect Leader Scoffs At Expulsion Threat
Panafrican News Agency, Dec. 30, 2000
http://allafrica.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
The leadership of a Kenyan renegade Islamic ''Mungiki'' group has dismissed threats by Muslim clerics to expel the group from the faith.

''This (Islam) is a religion and not a political party where one is asked to quit. No one can send a person packing in a religion of God. Let all of us be judged by our deeds and not individuals who have mistaken religion as a private property,'' Ibrahim Ndura Waruinge, the sect leader told PANA.

Speaking in Nairobi Saturday, two days after his release from police custody, he lashed out at those asking the sect members to quit the Islamic faith.

He said they did not join the faith to be monitored or dictated to.

Waruinge was arrested two weeks ago by the Kenyan police and he faces criminal charges, including alleged incitement of his sect members to strip naked two women in Nairobi's Kayole estate in October 1999.

In September, the sect members proclaimed themselves Muslims after authorities got hot on their heels, pronouncing the group illegal and unregistered.

Also, the Supreme Council of Kenya Muslims (SUPKEM), Wednesday warned the sect members to stop their ''ungodly activities'' or risk being shunted from the Islamic faith.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


=== Mormonism

22. In a Push for Unity, Mormons Stand Apart
The Salt Lake Tribune, Dec. 30, 2000
http://www.sltrib.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
[Note: this item incorrectly identifies Mormons as Christians. That LDS claim is false, for reasons stated here.]
Call it an ecumenical conundrum: No matter how zealously the LDS Church proclaims its Christian bona fides, its exclusive claim to a ''restored gospel'' leaves the American-born faith uniquely alone in Christendom.

Catholics, Protestants and Episcopalians may talk of a day when the fractured Body of Christ is reintegrated under one big doctrinal tent, but the 11 million members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are unlikely to ever lift the entry flap.

While Mormons join other Christians in aiding the homeless and hungry here and through interfaith disaster relief across the globe, there can be no compromise with unique LDS tenets, said Cecil O. Samuelson, president of the LDS Church's Utah North Area.

''[We] have a doctrinal framework that we believe is not only solid, but is not one we're in any position to negotiate,'' he said. ''[But] any other effort that would contribute to doing good, which is what we believe Jesus wants us all to do, to cooperate and be good friends and neighbors, is not only acceptable, but is mandatory.''
(...)

It is the church's unique doctrines -- among them that the faithful can aspire to godhood, be wed for eternity and be baptized for the dead, and non-trinitarian views of the Godhead -- that put it at odds with traditional Christianity.
(...)

In the Pearl of Great Price, Smith wrote of a vision in which God the Father and Jesus appeared to him at age 14. Smith asked them which of the existing sects to join. None of them, he said he was told, since ''all their creeds were an abomination in his sight.''

Today, while still embracing Smith's teachings of spiritual exclusivity, the LDS Church is far more likely to talk about how it cooperates with those other creeds on shared Christian principles and for the public welfare.
(...)

But it is at the individual level, not institutionally, that the LDS Church has its most promising opportunities to reach out to non-Mormons, Samuelson said.
(...)

Mormon leaders, especially under current LDS Church President Gordon B. Hinckley, have countered charges by some other Christian denominations that the Utah-based church is not truly Christian.

''Central to our belief in the restoration [of the gospel] is not only a belief in Jesus Christ, but a belief in a living Jesus Christ,'' he said. ''Joseph Smith said the savior and his atonement are the central doctrine of our religion and everything else is just an appendage to that.''

Sniping over the nature of the Godhead, or whether additional LDS scriptures supplement or detract from the gospel, is just ''an example of people talking past each other rather than with each other,'' Samuelson said.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]

* Theologically, Mormomism is a cult of Christianity. It does not represent
historical, biblical Christianity in any way. Though Mormons talk about
''Jesus,'' the ''Jesus'' created by the Mormon Church is far different from - and
incompatible with - the biblical Jesus Christ:

By hijacking and misusing Christian terminology, the Mormon Church is
false representing itself and its followers as ''Christian'':
The semantic divide: An evaluation of Mormon semantics

23. Polygamy Facts
Salt Lake Tribune, Dec. 29, 2000 (Letters to the Editor)
http://www.sltrib.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
I wanted to compliment you on your well-researched and even-handed treatment of polygamy in Utah and in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Tribune, Dec. 11). As a former LDS missionary (Argentina, 1966-68), I've seen far too much denial and distortion on the subject.

The article is correct that Mormon families, like mine, are proud of our heritage and the courage of our ancestors. But it's not absolutely correct that ''the [Mormon] church in 1890 disavowed polygamy.'' Transformed might be a better word, since polygamy in some form has continued to be officially endorsed by the church to this day.

LDS Church records reflect that church leaders authorized new polygamous weddings (often performed secretly in Mexico or Canada) for trusted members from 1890 up until 1904. After that, new marriages were forbidden but existing polygamous marriages continued to receive strong church support.

Today the church teaches that those worthy elders of a century ago live with their polygamous families in the highest level of heaven. And polygamous weddings (or sealings, as we call them) are still performed in Mormon temples around the world today.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


24. Federal regulators clear way for sale of Salt Lake Tribune
The Associated Press, Dec. 29, 2000
http://beta.yellowbrix.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) -- Federal regulators have cleared the way for AT&T Corp. to sell The Salt Lake Tribune to Denver-based MediaNews Group in a $200 million deal.

The Federal Trade Commission saw no antitrust conflict during its review of the sale and granted its go-ahead on Dec. 22, FTC spokesman Howard Shapiro said Friday.
(...)

As a result of the sale, the Deseret News expects to switch to morning publication by September, if not sooner, editor John Hughes said Friday. The News and Tribune have a joint operating agreement.
(...)

The Tribune's circulation is 134,500. The Deseret News has a circulation of about 65,000, and Hughes said he expects that number to increase slightly when the paper switched to morning publication.

The paper owned by the Mormon church has been trying to switch from afternoon publication for several years, but had been unable to work out details with the Tribune.

The two newspapers' reporters and editors compete, but they share advertising, printing and circulation functions. The Tribune has fought the News' switch to mornings, saying another press would be needed and that it would unfairly erode the Tribune's share of profits from joint operations.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


25. Regulators Clear Sale Of Tribune
The Salt Lake Tribune, Dec. 29, 2000
http://beta.yellowbrix.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
Federal regulators have cleared the way for AT&T Broadband's $200 million sale of The Salt Lake Tribune to MediaANews Group of Denver.

AT&T spokesman Steve Lang said Thursday he did not know when the sale would be consummated, but reiterated the two companies' intent, when they announced the deal on Dec. 1, to close the sale by the end of 2000. Today is the last business day of the year.
(...)

Tribune managers likely will not appeal the judge's decision, and instead plan to see what actions MediaNews President Dean Singleton takes as the new owner, said R.C. Frisch, chief operating officer of the publishing company.

''The judge said that when and if Mr. Singleton violates the management or option agreement, she would welcome us back in her court,'' Frisch said. ''That's a good position to be in . . . a better position than with an appeal.''

The managers' lawsuit against AT&T and MediaNews is very much alive, Frisch said.

Among the allegations are that MediaNews will damage The Tribune by rewriting the joint operating agreement the newspaper has with the Mormon church-owned Deseret News to jointly sell advertising, print and distribute the two newspapers.

A letter of understanding between MediaNews and the News spells out changes the Tribune managers contend would hurt the dominant morning paper and violate their management and option agreements.

''The things Mr. Singleton has promised the News and the things he told the court he would do are diametrically opposed,'' Frisch said.

Singleton told the judge he would not violate those agreements, and would do nothing to hurt The Tribune.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


=== Jehovah's Witnesses

26. Fugitive mom turns self in She's charged with child abduction
Chicago Sun-Times, Dec. 29, 2000
http://beta.yellowbrix.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
Joli Taylor returned to Midlothian on Wednesday, almost a decade after she fled the south suburb with her young daughter for a life on the lam.

Taylor turned herself in to the Midlothian police and was charged with one count of child abduction, said Patty Simone, spokeswoman for Cook County State's Attorney Richard Devine.

Taylor was held on $160,000 bail, an amount set at the time the original warrant was issued for her arrest in 1993. She faces a preliminary hearing this morning at the Markham courthouse, Simone said.

She was arrested earlier this month in Tucson, Ariz., where she was found living with her daughter after nine years on the run from the law and her husband, Michael Reichart of Arlington Heights. Taylor waived extradition and was given until today to turn herself in to Midlothian authorities.

Her daughter, now 14, was brought back to Cook County on Dec. 11 by members of Public Guardian Patrick Murphy's staff. She is in a suburban treatment facility.

Murphy, the girl's court-appointed attorney, had declined earlier to tell attorneys for Taylor where the girl was staying out of fear Taylor would abduct her. But Murphy said Wednesday he expects to reveal the girl's whereabouts at a custody hearing Friday.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]

* Related:
http://www.apologeticsindex.org/news/an201216b.html#25
[Story no longer online? Read this]

» Part 3