Celeb

The procession down the aisle of the Denver church would have done any Episcopal congregation proud. The grand hymn Allelujiah! Sing to Jesus! His the scepter, His the throne pealed out, and some 50 clerics approached the altar in white robes and red stoles. A circle of clergy laid hands on the head of Thaddeus Rockwell Barnum, 44, a priest from South Carolina. When Barnum arose, he was a much changed man. [Read More]

“We are a lot alike.” — Brian Boitano “We have a lot of similarities.” — Brian Orser That’s a lot of understatement. Brian Boitano and Brian Orser are linked circles in a perfect figure eight — they mirror each other. It is not just because they have the same name, the same lean look and the same longish hairstyle. The two are both homebodies who enjoy the pampered slot of youngest in a long line of siblings. [Read More]

June 3, 2014 1:31 PM EDT It took less than 30 seconds for a public defender and a judge to take a courtroom dispute “out back” and settle the disagreement mano a mano. Closed-circuit camera footage shows a debate about “docket sounding” escalating into openly stated desires to beat and bludgeon one another. “You know if I had a rock I would throw it at you right now,” Judge John Murphy says to public defender Andrew Weinstock. [Read More]

The Hamas terrorist attack on Oct. 7 killed some 1,200 people in Israel. Since then, a fierce Israeli military campaign has destroyed much of Gaza, with more than 22,000 dead and untold numbers injured, buried under rubble, or wasting away from disease and malnutrition, as Israeli troops continue to blockade much-needed humanitarian assistance. Israel has declared an ever-expanding list of war aims that includes the obliteration of Hamas, the return of all hostages, assurances that Gaza will never again threaten Israel, the banning of the Palestinian Authority from any role in governance of the territory, prevention of any “element” that “educates its children for terrorism, supports terrorism, finances terrorism and calls for the destruction of Israel,” and creation of a wide buffer zone within Gaza separating Israel from the Strip’s population. [Read More]

Australia’s federal government has tweaked the rules of its producer offset system so that soap operas and other drama series can qualify for subsidy. Channel Seven’s “Home and Away” will become newly eligible. [Read More]

During the period of American slavery, how did slaveholders manage to balance their religious beliefs with the cruel facts of the “peculiar institution“? As shown by the following passages — adapted from Noel Rae’s new book The Great Stain, which uses firsthand accounts to tell the story of slavery in America — for some of them that rationalization was right there in the Bible. Out of the more than three quarters of a million words in the Bible, Christian slaveholders—and, if asked, most slaveholders would have defined themselves as Christian—had two favorites texts, one from the beginning of the Old Testament and the other from the end of the New Testament. [Read More]

Jonas Salk was home with his wife, but she could tell his mind was elsewhere—back in his lab, where work was proceeding apace on what would become the first vaccine against polio. “Why Jonas,” said Donna Salk, according to TIME’s March 29, 1954, cover story, “you’re not listening to me at all.” “My dear,” he was said to have joked, “I’m giving you my undevoted attention.” Read more: See How TIME’s Cover Evolved Over 100 Years [Read More]

The Financiers Money makes the Word go round, and this wealthy, conservative Republican couple takes a dizzyingly ecclectic approach to funding evangelism. The projects that savings-and-loan multimillionaires Howard and Roberta Ahmanson have paid for over the years through Fieldstead & Co., a private philanthropy in Irvine, Calif., form a cornucopia of faith-based activism, including an institute linked to the antievolution intelligent-design movement and a study of social endeavors by Third World Pentecostal churches. [Read More]

September 30, 2022 11:23 AM EDT In Cuba, where Hurricane Ian first made landfall on Sept. 27, the storm caused the country’s electricity grid to collapse, leaving 11 million people without power. And on Friday morning, National Hurricane Center’s 8:00 am update indicated the storm was about 105 miles away from Charleston, S.C.—where a flash-flood warning has already been issued, amid wind gusts measured at 74 mph—as the Carolinas braced for Ian’s landfall later in the day. [Read More]