Houston civil jury says Victoria Osteen did not assault flight attendant 2:29 PM CT
02:31 PM CDT on Thursday, August 14, 2008

Associated Press
HOUSTON — Jurors say the wife of renowned pastor Joel Osteen did not assault a flight attendant who had claimed she was abused in an angry tirade.

The civil jury reached the unanimous verdict after brief deliberations Thursday afternoon.

Continental Airlines flight attendant Sharon Brown had been seeking at least $405,000 for actual damages — physical and mental pain — as a result of the alleged attack before the start of a December 2005 flight from Houston to Vail, Colo.

Brown claims Victoria Osteen got so upset when a spill on her first-class seat’s armrest was not quickly cleaned up that she threw the flight attendant against a bathroom door and elbowed her in the left breast while attempting to rush the cockpit.

Both Victoria and Joel Osteen, and other passengers, say the assault never happened. Victoria Osteen’s lawyer dismissed Brown’s lawsuit as a made-up story concocted to land a courtroom payday.

Jury quickly rejects airline attendant’s claims that Victoria Osteen hurt her on board a Continental Airlines plane. I’ll post more as it comes in.

URGENT
Police: Ark. Dem. Party chair dies after shooting
Eds: APNewsNow. UPDATES with police saying Democratic Party chairman is dead.
By ANDREW DeMILLO
Associated Press Writer
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — Police say the 49-year-old chairman of the Arkansas Democratic Party has died hours after being shot by a gunman who burst into the state party headquarters in Little Rock.
Police say Chairman Bill Gwatney died four hours after the shooting near the state Capitol.
The suspect was shot dead after shooting at police officers following a 30-mile police chase.
Police say they don’t have a motive for Gwatney’s killing.

A gunman opened fire at Arkansas state Democratic Party headquarters today. A gun-wielding man also roamed through the headquarters of the Arkansas Baptist State Convention building. ABSC’s executive director has sent the following e-mail to Baptists and others this afternoon:
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Agunman walked into the headquarters of the Arkansas State Baptist Convention and pulled a gun, but left without firing a shot. Moments later, gunfire erupted down the street at the Democratic state party headquarters.

URGENT
Gunman wounds Arkansas Dems party chairman
By Andrew DeMillo
Associated Press Writer
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — A gunman barged into Arkansas’ Democratic Party headquarters Wednesday and fired three shots at the party chairman, who was hospitalized in critical condition, authorities said.
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There’s a new biopic coming out about the Rev. Billy Graham. Some of the filming took place in Lebanon, Tenn. in April. Women were told to go light on the makeup. Men were asked to wear overalls or dull-colored suits.
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James Dobson’s non-profit, “non-partisan” ministry wants bad weather to disrupt Barack Obama’s acceptance speech later this month in Denver.

Ms. Osteen is being sued by an airline attendant over an incident that occurred on a Continental flight, but the throngs at Lakewood Church apparently haven’t lost a bit of confidence in their pastor or his wife.

H/T: Greg at faithbasedblog.com

To read an AP account of the trial, click below.
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Charles Wiggins, a United Methodist missionary based in Bunda, Tanzania, has a fantastic new blog. It’s called maishanamaji.blogspot.com/ and it offers photos and fascinating insights from Africa. I have cut and pasted, below, a great post by Mr. Wiggins about African cable television and his search for televised Olympic coverage… You’ll want to visit his site to see it all.
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By Frank Lockwood
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

The simple wood chapel 110 miles southeast of Memphis is no Crystal Cathedral. But the East Tupelo (Miss.) First Assembly of God building had a greater impact on 20th-century music than any of America’s gilded megachurches.

Inside its walls, Elvis Aron Presley discovered God and gospel music, learning to strum a guitar and sing.

Closed to the public for more than a half-century, the building was restored this year by the Elvis Presley Memorial Foundation. On Aug. 9, after a brief ceremony and prayer, the historic Pentecostal church will again open its doors to the world.

Foundation director Dick Guyton says the church will open in time for Elvis Week 2008, which marks the 31st anniversary of Presley’s death.

The chapel seats roughly 48 people and has no frills, Guyton said.

“It’s very plain and simple,” Guyton says. “Country churches back in the 1920s and 1930s were not real fancy.”

No steeple crowns its rooftop. No stained-glass windows line its walls.

Typical church
In many ways, it was a typical Assembly of God church from that era, says Darrin Rodgers, director of the Flower Pentecostal Heritage Center in Springfield, Mo.

“Early Pentecostals were concerned with spreading the gospel and sending missionaries out and telling people about Jesus. … They were practical rather than concerned about leaving an architectural legacy,” Rodgers said.

When the church opens Saturday, it will look a lot like it did on Jan. 8, 1935, the day Elvis Presley entered the world.

The church, which Elvis attended for 13 years, was within walking distance of Presley’s home, said gospel music historian Jim Goff.

Elvis’ parents, Vernon and Gladys, were members.

“I don’t think they were Christmas and Easter attenders. They would’ve attended fairly regularly and they knew the preacher fairly well,” said Goff, a professor at Appalachian State University in Boone, N.C.

Taught Elvis to play
Indeed, Pastor Frank Smith, who died last year at the age of 80, is credited with teaching Presley to play a few basic chords on a guitar.

Records indicate that Vernon Presley even served, briefly, as the church secretary, according to Pastor David Lann of East Heights Assembly of God in Tupelo — the church that replaced First Assembly.

Lann says there aren’t many traces of Elvis in the congregation’s files. “Unfortunately, we don’t have a photo of him” attending the church, he said. The memories have also faded.

“The people that used to be around, most of them have passed on.”

The congregation had a lifelong impact on young Elvis. “In many ways, I think his musical tastes and his understanding of religion and worship, those things had already been formed at the Assembly of God Church in Tupelo” before he set off for Memphis and worldwide fame, Goff said.
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CINCINNATI — A 71-year-old Cincinnati preacher was on his way to church when he allegedly waved a gun at another motorist and cursed at her.
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By ANNA JOHNSON
Associated Press Writer
SULTAN ZAWYIT, Egypt (AP) — In this small Nile River farming village, Maha Mohammed has started to doubt whether she should circumcise her two daughters.

A year ago, she had few qualms about female genital mutilation, the practice of cutting a girl’s clitoris and sometimes other genitalia. She herself was cut two decades ago, and she fears her daughters will not find husbands otherwise.
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By The Associated Press
SHELBYVILLE, Tenn. – Workers at the Tyson Foods poultry processing plant in Shelbyville will no longer have a paid day off on Labor Day but will instead be given the Muslim holiday Eid al-Fitr as a holiday.

According to a news release from the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, a new five-year contract at the plant included the change to accommodate the hundreds of Somali Muslims who work at the plant .

Eid al-Fitr — which falls on Oct. 1 this year — marks the end of Ramadan, the Muslim holy month of fasting.

Union leaders say implementing the holiday was important for the nearly 700 Muslims, many of them Somalis, who work at the plant that employs a total of 1,200 people.

The Shelbyville Times-Gazette newspaper quotes union spokesman Randy Hadley as saying the negotiating team felt this change was “extremely crucial, since this holiday is as important to Muslims as Christmas is to Christians.”

The newspaper also quotes the union as saying two prayer rooms have been created at the Shelbyville Tyson Foods’ plant ” to allow Muslim workers to pray twice a day and return to work without leaving the plant.”

A fire broke out in a garage located at the Westboro Baptist Church compound early Saturday morning, the Topeka Capital-Journal is reporting. Damage estimates range from $10,000 to $30,000. Nobody was injured and at least some “God Hates America”-style signs were apparently salvaged.

For more on the fire, go to:

http://cjonline.com/stories/080208/bre_fire.shtml .

The church offers its own analysis at:

http://www.signmovies.net/videos/news/2008/20080802thankgodforwbcfire.html 

This is not a joke. This company actually exists. It’s based in Lexington, Kentucky. And it actually sells fans.

God Bless Big Ass Fans
July 30, 2008
By Big Ass Fans
Our Lady of Refuge Church in Brooklyn, NY needed some relief from the hellish heat of summer. They found the relief they were praying for in their PowerfoilPlus® by Big Ass Fans®. With no central air, temperatures during Sunday service often reach in the 90s during the summer. Restoration of the stained glass has worsened the issue due to the windows being boarded up during the construction. This sent members fleeing to other services to escape the heat.
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