Poor Mojo's Newswire

A "ghoulish" proposal to use heat from cremations at a Cardiff crematorium to help warm its chapels is backed by many bereaved families, says the council. Cardiff council is looking into using emissions produced during cremations at Thornhill Crematorium to heat the building. The idea has been criticised as "disrespectful" to families who have lost loved ones. A similar proposal is being considered in Worcestershire. Cardiff council said a large majority of families who responded to questionnaires sent to them following funerals supported the idea. However, a 62-year-old woman from Rhiwbina in Cardiff, who did not want to be named, said she went "utterly ballistic" when she received a questionnaire following the death of a cousin. "I thought it was inappropriate to be asked this in the bereavement period. The actual concept is quite despicable. I'm really against this," she said. Continue reading the main story “Start Quote If they speak to the wider community they will realise that people think it's just unacceptable” End Quote Jayne Cowan Cardiff councillor "You go into the church and the thought that somebody's loved one was being burned and [generating] the heating you're experiencing is really, really ghoulish."

There is...a very obvious and almost facile connection between the war in Vietnam and the struggle I and others have been waging in America. A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed that there was a real promise of hope for the poor, both black and white, through the Poverty Program. There were experiments, hopes, and new beginnings. Then came the build-up in Vietnam. And I watched the program broken as if it was some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war. And I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money, like some demonic, destructive suction tube.

Egypt’s majority Muslim population stuck to its word Thursday night. What had been a promise of solidarity to the weary Coptic community, was honoured, when thousands of Muslims showed up at Coptic Christmas eve mass services in churches around the country and at candle light vigils held outside. From the well-known to the unknown, Muslims had offered their bodies as “human shields” for last night’s mass, making a pledge to collectively fight the threat of Islamic militants and towards an Egypt free from sectarian strife. “We either live together, or we die together,” was the sloganeering genius of Mohamed El-Sawy, a Muslim arts tycoon whose cultural centre distributed flyers at churches in Cairo Thursday night, and who has been credited with first floating the “human shield” idea.

A Dallas pastor accused of stealing more than $10,000 worth of fur coats, designer purses and electronics from a church member's home on Christmas Eve says that she's really innocent. McGriff told officers that a friend had sent her to pick up her coats and that her arm was injured because she could not find a key under the doormat and had to break in through the window. Police called the resident, Serita Agnew, who told them she had not given anyone permission to go into her house or take her property. But McGriff, who has been a pastor for eight years, told a different story to reporters who she invited to her home on Monday. In a taped interview (video below), McGriff admits to speaking with Agnew on Christmas Eve, but says she was simply in the neighborhood later when "something" told her to drive by Agnew's house. There, she saw two men coming out from the side of the house. She pulled into the driveway to investigate. After not finding the spare key, she went around the building, and "saw that the window was broke." . . .