COLUMBIA, S.C. --Faith in the public square would have a high profile in South Carolina as three bills move closer to becoming law.
One creates license tags with "I Believe" in front of a cross; a second makes clear prayers can be offered before public meetings and a third allows set public displays of key historical legal foundation documents that would include the Ten Commandments.

They're all beginning to raise questions about whether the state is taking a role in promoting faith.

"The South Carolina Legislature should not be in the business of telling people how or when to pray, whether to pray or to whom to pray," said Jeremy Gunn, director of the American Civil Liberty Union's Program on Freedom of Religion and Belief in Washington.

Wikimedia Foundation has received a copyright infringement claim from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, widely known as the Mormon Church or LDS Church. The infringement claim is in reference to a URL used as a source in a Wikinews article about Mormon Church documents leaked to the website Wikileaks, titled "Copy of handbook for leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints obtained by Wikinews". The URL was originally cited as a link in the sources subsection of the article. The Wikimedia Foundation is a donor-supported non-profit organization which runs Wikipedia and Wikinews. This is the first time that the Wikimedia Foundation has received a copyright infringement claim regarding an article published by Wikinews.

The Wikinews article, originally published on April 19, described material in the Church Handbook of Instructions. The work is a two-volume book of policies and is a guide for leaders of the Mormon Church. Wikinews obtained the Church Handbook of Instructions from Wikileaks, a whistleblower website which publishes anonymous submissions of sensitive documents while preserving the anonymity of its contributors. Wikileaks describes the material as significant because "...the book is strictly confidential among the Mormon (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, aka LDS in short form) bishops and stake presidents and it reveals the procedure of handling confidential matters related to tithing payment, excommunication, baptism and doctrine teaching (indoctrination)."

The material was released on the Wikileaks website on April 16, and according to the site was first made available on the document sharing website Scribd. A message at Scribd now states: "This content was removed at the request of copyright agent B. S. Broadbent of the Intellectual Property Division of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints."

On May 5, the Wikimedia Foundation received a copyright infringement claim from Intellectual Reserve, Inc., the legal entity that owns the intellectual property of the Mormon Church. The infringement claim is addressed to Jimmy Wales, the designated agent of the Wikimedia Foundation, and requests that access to the link to Wikileaks be removed. The link was removed from the article on May 5 by a Wikinews administrator, and the article remains available without the link. The infringement claim was sent by Berne S. Broadbent, president of Intellectual Reserve, Inc. and director of the Intellectual Property Division of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. According to Mike Godwin, general counsel for the Wikimedia Foundation, the Mormon Church has not filed a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) notice with the foundation.

"Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind." So said Albert Einstein, and his famous aphorism has been the source of endless debate between believers and non-believers wanting to claim the greatest scientist of the 20th century as their own.

A little known letter written by him, however, may help to settle the argument - or at least provoke further controversy about his views.

Due to be auctioned this week in London after being in a private collection for more than 50 years, the document leaves no doubt that the theoretical physicist was no supporter of religious beliefs, which he regarded as "childish superstitions".

A campaign to repeal the offences of blasphemy and blasphemous libel, which made it illegal to insult Christianity, was proposed in January by the Liberal Democrat Evan Harris.
It was supported by public figures including the author Philip Pullman and the academic Richard Dawkins.
They claimed the little-used laws served no useful purpose, while allowing religious groups to try to censor artists.
Evangelists had tried to prosecute the director-general of the BBC over the controversial musical Jerry Springer – The Opera.

MPs voted to support the abolition of blasphemy in an amendment to the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill.
This has now received Royal Assent, condemning the laws to history.
Maria Eagle, the junior justice minister, said in the debate: "These offences have now largely fallen into disuse and therefore run the risk of bringing the law into disrepute.
"Given that these laws protect only the tenets of the Christian Churches, they would appear to be plainly discriminatory."
But Edward Leigh, a Conservative MP, claimed their abolition would encourage more people to make fun of Christianity.
"Getting rid of the blasphemy law sends a message that that is OK, but it is insulting to many Christians," he said.

The last successful prosecution for blasphemy was in 1977, when the publisher of Gay News, Denis Lemon, was given a suspended sentence for printing a poem about a Roman centurion's love for Jesus.

PITTSBURGH - A religious group is planning to distribute 250,000 Pittsburgh-themed New Testament Bibles in advertising pouches to be delivered with editions of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette newspaper.

CityReachers Pittsburgh, a program of the Colorado Springs, Colo.-based International Bible Society, hopes to send the New Testaments to the paper's subscribers in Allegheny County and some border communities on Sept. 7.

The group has delivered custom-designed Bibles to newspaper subscribers in several other cities across the country in an effort to find innovative ways of spreading a Christian message.

Last month, the group distributed 140,000 New Testaments in Philadelphia and Chester counties. It plans to send out another 260,000 in Montgomery, Bucks and Delaware counties in November.

SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australia's unique duck-billed platypus -- an egg-laying, furry animal with web feet that spends most of its time underwater -- is in fact part bird, part reptile and part mammal according to its gene map.

A team of international scientists released the platypus genome on Thursday, saying its complex sequence would aid the study of human evolution -- particularly the development of the immune, nervous and reproductive systems.

"Its probably the most eagerly awaited genome since the chimp genome because platypuses are so weird," said Jenny Graves, head the Comparative Genomics Group at the Australian National University.

"Comparing us with the platypus means that we can say something about our common ancestor, which was one of the earliest mammals, so that means that we can ask questions about what happened to make us mammals," said Graves, after a briefing on the platypus genome, published in the journal Nature.

The platypus represents the earliest offshoot of the mammalian lineage, some 166 million years ago, from primitive ancestors that had features of both mammals and reptiles.

WASHINGTON - Former presidential candidate Mitt Romney, once criticized for leaving out atheists and non-believers when he delivered a much-touted speech on faith in America, now says he missed a chance to discuss their role in society.
    Romney, who addressed his Mormon faith on Dec. 6 to allay concerns by hesitant voters, was criticized for asserting in that pre-primary speech that, "freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom."
    This week, Romney said he is still convinced of that, but that he regrets omitting atheists and agnostics from his initial address.
    "Upon reflection," Romney said at the Metropolitan Club in New York City, "I realized that while I could defend their absence from my address, I had missed an opportunity - an opportunity to clearly assert the following: non-believers have just as great a stake as believers in defending religious liberty."
    If a society decides to outlaw a faith or ordain a state faith, it may be the non-believers who are first likely to be condemned, Romney said. And such an action, in the end, should scare everyone, he added, because an attack on someone because of what they believe - or don't believe - hits at the very idea of religious liberty.

MIAMI --The instructions are simple: Read the Prayer ... Drink the Water ... Believe in God! Believe in Yourself!
Spiritual Water, the faith-inspired venture of two Sunrise, Fla., businessmen, offers its drinkers clearer focus, positive thinking and connection to a higher power.

The 11 bottles in the company's collection bear prayers and impressively detailed images of Jesus Christ, St. Michael and the Virgin Mary. Spiritual Water joins a broad slice of feel-good products -- Testamint, Bible Gum and other bottled waters -- emerging at the intersection of religion and commerce, entrepreneurship and pop culture.

"There is a great history of people using religious images to sell products," says Daniel Sack, an administrator at the University of Chicago Divinity School and author of "Whitebread Protestants: Food and Religion in American Culture." "You are talking about combining the great American traditions of religion and consumption."

Last fall, Elicko Taieb launched Spiritual Water as a way to inspire Protestants and Catholics. The water, purified from a municipal source in Santa Ana, Calif., is not available in stores, but Taieb says independent distributors sell about 2,000 to 3,000 cases a month.

Church attendance in Britain is declining so fast that the number of regular churchgoers will be fewer than those attending mosques within a generation, research published today suggests.

The fall - from the four million people who attend church at least once a month today - means that the Church of England, Catholicism and other denominations will become financially unviable. A lack of funds from the collection plate to support the Christian infrastructure, including church upkeep and ministers’ pay and pensions, will force church closures as ageing congregations die.

In contrast, the number of actively religious Muslims will have increased from about one million today to 1.96 million in 2035.

THE Church of Scientology has lost its grip on James Packer.

The billionaire's closest friends have revealed that he has quietly distanced himself from Scientology, labelled a cult by some former members, as it faces international controversy about its anti-psychiatry stance.

Members of Mr Packer's inner circle have confirmed that the billionaire, who had ranked as Scientology's wealthiest member in the world, was no longer undertaking Scientology courses and had slowly moved away from the religion, telling his closest friends he no longer "needs it".

His office did not respond to the Herald's calls yesterday.