=== Falun Gong
1. China says Taiwan leader colluding with falungong
2. Falun Gong members speak out

=== Falun Gong - China's Government-Controlled Media
3. Reports from China's government-controlled media

=== Scientology
4. Scientology guilty of libel and enjoined in Germany
5. Protecting sources
6. Razzies Scorch the ''Earth''

=== Unification Church
7. News And Notes

=== Raelians
8. House Sets the Stage for Debate on the Cloning of Humans

=== Buddhism
9. Sect 'planned mass suicide'
10. Sri Lanka to 'build' Bamiyan Buddhas

=== Catholicism
11. Faith or folly?
12. Former believer turns his efforts toward exposure
13. More Catholics turning to Mary
14. Pope Makes Appeal for Catholic Zeal

=== Mormonism
15. Mormons in charm offensive

=== Paganism / Witchcraft
16. Battle brewing over Nessie hunt
17. Wizard curse? I've had spell of good luck, says Whelan

=== Hate Groups
18. Man Gets Life for Calif. Hate Crime
19. Saudi Arabia bans Pokemon

=== Rebirthing
20. Video a key piece in abuse trial

=== Other News
21. Teen-age monk confesses to killing nun, police say
22. 'This is the place for a village,' decides a rich sect (Bruderhof)
23. Procter & Gamble Suit Over Satan Rumor Resurrected
24. Southern Baptists ending talks with Catholic Church

=== Science
25. Enlisting Science to Find the Fingerprints of a Creator

=== Death Penalty & Other Human Rights Violations
26. Court will hear second mentally retarded case

=== Media
27. Why do we think Christ was white?
28. Purging Flame

=== The Investors Around The Corner
29. Four-year-old beats City expert


=== Raelians

8. House Sets the Stage for Debate on the Cloning of Humans
Los Angeles Times, Mar. 25, 2001
http://www.latimes.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
WASHINGTON--The leader of a religious group devoted to UFOs and an American fertility specialist are scheduled to testify before a congressional panel this week about their efforts to clone people, in what is likely to be a step toward legislation banning the practice.

No federal law bars human cloning, and some legal experts doubt that the Food and Drug Administration has authority to regulate it, even though the agency has claimed jurisdiction. A 1998 attempt by lawmakers to ban the technique failed amid fighting between anti-abortion groups that oppose all human cloning and medical researchers who say the technology could be used to produce lifesaving organs and tissues for patients.

The religious leader--a French former journalist known as Rael--has claimed he has funding and a group of women willing to help him clone a human being. His group, which is based in Canada, believes that mankind was created by an advanced people from another planet and must also become creators of life.

The American scientist, Panos Michael Zavos of Lexington, Ky., says he is working with an Italian fertility doctor to try to clone people who cannot have children by other means.

Cloning experts have questioned whether the two efforts are credible, and they say any attempts at cloning people with current technology would run a high risk of producing stillborn and deformed children. One scientific organization said it opposes the idea of lawmakers giving Rael and Zavos a high-profile platform to publicize their cloning claims.

''I'm very concerned that they are just a huge anomaly, given that the scientific community is not out to clone people,'' said Tim Leshan, director of public policy at the American Society for Cell Biology. ''This will just be a circus atmosphere and make it seem like scientists are all out to do things that are immoral.''

Rep. W. J. ''Billy'' Tauzin (R-La.), chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said he had carefully considered whether to offer a national stage to Rael and Zavos. He concluded that Rael had ''a weird sort of background'' but that ''maybe Americans ought to know that, without laws to govern this, that's the kind of thing that's happening.''
(...)

There was broad support in Congress in 1998 to ban cloning to produce children, but many lawmakers wanted to leave open the option of therapeutic cloning.

Anti-abortion groups, however, could not accept a bill that allowed the creation of human embryos and then required them to be destroyed by researchers.

Richard Doerflinger, a spokesman for the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, said he was not sure how a bill could be written that avoided the dispute that sank the 1998 legislation.

He defended the House panel's invitation to Rael and to his scientific advisor, Brigitte Boisselier, a visiting assistant professor of chemistry at Hamilton College in Clinton, N.Y.

''I did chuckle when I heard they were going to testify, because they are a fringe group. But they've been on '60 Minutes,' so I guess they're part of the debate,'' Doerflinger said.

According to the Raelian Movement Web site, journalist Claude Vorilhon witnessed a UFO landing in central France on Dec. 13, 1973. An almond-eyed, 4-foot-tall alien emerged and said that his people had created mankind. The extraterrestrial gave Vorilhon the name Rael and asked him to build an ''embassy'' so that the two races could meet.

Rael says he is trying to build a $20-million embassy near Jerusalem and has raised $7 million for the project. His group claims 55,000 members.
Rael and Boisselier are among 15 witnesses scheduled for the hearing. Others include biologists who have cloned animals and ethicists who support or oppose cloning to produce children.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


=== Buddhism

9. Sect 'planned mass suicide'
BBC, Mar. 25, 2001
http://news.bbc.co.uk/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
Vietnam's communist authorities have accused the leadership of an outlawed Buddhist sect of having planned a mass suicide at a rally in Ho Chi Minh City last weekend.

In response, they have imposed travel restrictions on the leader of a dissident branch of the Hoa Hao sect, Le Quang Liem, 81, for two years, according to the official People's Army newspaper.

But exiled members of the sect say the rally was merely a peaceful demonstration for religious freedom.

The state order, which bars Mr Liem from travelling outside a set area without permission, was effective from March 17, when he was detained and reportedly beaten by the security forces after the protest.
(...)

Some of the women at the protest are alleged to have said they had been ''asked to go to Ho Chi Minh City'' for a ''mass self-immolation'', and been carrying petrol-soaked cotton.

One sect member, the director of the group's Women's League, Nguyen Thi Thu, did burn herself to death, US-based activists said, but that was two days later in protest at Mr Liem's detention.
(...)

The Hoa Hao are a neo-Buddhist sect combining Buddhism, animism and Confucianism.

They claim about four million adherents in Vietnam and have long complained of persecution stemming from their armed opposition to communism during the Vietnam war.

The mainstream Hoa Hao church organisation is recognised by the state, but radicals from the sect, who have made suicide attempts and threatened immolations in the past, are not tolerated.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


10. Sri Lanka to 'build' Bamiyan Buddhas
BBC, Mar. 25, 2001
http://news.bbc.co.uk/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
Sri Lankan Buddhists say they will build replicas of two ancient Buddha statues destroyed earlier this month by Afghanistan's Taleban rulers.

The private Maha Bodhi Society said it was hoping to receive public donations to create the replicas of the giant statues carved from a cliff face in central Bamiyan.
(...)

After the Taleban dynamited the monuments - claiming they were contrary to their Islamic beliefs - the Sri Lankan government offered to buy the rubble and any remains.

Prime Minister Ratnasiri Wickramanayake said he was also negotiating with other
countries to buy other statues which remained undamaged in Afghanistan.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


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