South Carolina needs to build a stronger network of services and support to prepare for a “new onslaught of homeless” created by a crushing recession and the horrors of war, state Rep. Wendell Gilliard told a group Monday.

The Charleston Democrat called together outreach counselors, government representatives and others at North Charleston City Hall to discuss how best to meet the needs of the Palmetto State’s homeless. After visiting shelters and makeshift encampments, Gilliard said he is troubled by reports that some of the needy are being refused help and that homeless veterans aren’t getting services they deserve.

Gilliard said the state doesn’t even know for sure how many homeless veterans are living in South Carolina. Nationally, it is estimated some 300,000 veterans are homeless. That is shameful in the most prosperous nation in the world, Gilliard said.

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The Episcopal Church has bought a block in downtown Austin where it plans to build a facility to house its national archives and provide space for meetings, exhibits, research and other purposes.

The church purchased the block, now a parking lot bounded by Seventh, Eighth, Trinity and Neches streets, from Jimmy Nassour, an Austin real estate attorney. The purchase price was $9.5 million, said Mark Duffy, director of the Archives of the Episcopal Church.

The church, which borrowed against its endowment to buy the land, plans to launch a capital campaign next year to raise money to repay that loan and pay for the new facility. The cost of the project, which is in the “very preliminary” planning stages, will be almost $40 million, Duffy said.

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But when Cutié’s new bishop, the Rt. Rev. Leo Frade, stood inside Miami’s Trinity Cathedral to announce the news to dozens of international reporters, he created his own waves.

The ”Inquisition is over,” Frade said in widely broadcast remarks after Catholic Archbishop John C. Favalora admonished him for a disrespectful “public display.”

The style is typical of Frade’s nine-year tenure, say those who know him well: casual, off-the-cuff and, to some, a bit too in-your-face.

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The national leader of 2.4 million Episcopalians — including 20,600 in Oregon — hung out Sunday at a Northeast Portland church, participating in what she defines as old-school conversation.

The Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori, who’s been at the center of an often-tense conversation about the ordination of gay clergy, told a full house on Sunday at Grace Memorial Episcopal Church that the word “conversation” slipped into English usage in the 1300s.

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The hookup ”” that meeting and mating ritual that started among high school and college students ”” is becoming a trend among young people who have entered the workaday world. For the many who are delaying the responsibilities of marriage and child-rearing, hooking up has virtually replaced dating.

It is a major shift in the culture over the past few decades, says Kathleen Bogle, a professor of sociology and criminal justice at La Salle University.

Young people during one of the most sexually active periods of their lives aren’t necessarily looking for a mate. What used to be a mate-seeking ritual has shifted to hookups: sexual encounters with no strings attached.

“The idea used to be you are going to date someone that is going to lead to something sexual happening,” Bogle says. “In the hookup era, something sexual happens, even though it may be less than sexual intercourse, that may or may not ever lead to dating.”

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(Note: the headline above is the one used in today’s print edition–KSH).

The European Union is an extraordinary experiment in shared sovereignty, creating a zone of peace that now stretches from Britain to the Balkans. The union of 27 countries is the world’s most formidable economic bloc, incorporating 491 million people in an integrated market that produces nearly a third more than the United States.

But the global economic crisis has made it clear that Europe remains less than the sum of its parts.

The crisis has presented the European Union with its greatest challenge, but even many committed Europeanists believe that the alliance is failing the test. European leaders, their focus on domestic politics, disagree sharply about what to do to combat the slump. They have feuded over how much to stimulate the economy. They argue about whether the European Central Bank should worry more about the deep recession or future inflation. And they have rushed to protect jobs in their home markets at the expense of those in other member countries.

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Unwed young women who attend or have attended religious schools are more likely to have abortions than their public school peers, according to a new study.

The study also found “no significant link” between abortion and personal religiosity””defined by perception of religion’s importance, frequency of prayer and other religious activities.

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Teens whose parents let them stay up after midnight on weeknights have a much higher chance of being depressed or suicidal than teens whose parents enforce an earlier bedtime, says research being presented today at a national sleep conference.

The findings are the first to examine bedtimes’ effects on kids’ mental health ”” and the results are noteworthy. Middle- and high-schoolers whose parents don’t require them to be in bed before midnight on school nights are 42% more likely to be depressed than teens whose parents require a 10 p.m. or earlier bedtime. And teens who are allowed to stay up late are 30% more likely to have had suicidal thoughts in the past year.

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Anglicans who left the Episcopal Church in California’s San Joaquin Valley to reject [partnered] homosexual clergy are waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Will they lose the churches where they worship as a result of their split with the national church and Episcopal Diocese of San Joaquin? The answer could come any day over the next two months.

The stakes are high after more than 40 churches from Lodi to Bakersfield and from the coast to the Nevada border left the Fresno, Calif.-based diocese. They joined the Anglicans because of differences with the national Episcopal body over same-sex blessings, the ordination of a gay bishop and the authority of Scripture.

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North Korea today said it would use nuclear weapons in a “merciless offensive” if provoked ”” its latest bellicose rhetoric apparently aimed at deterring any international punishment for its recent atomic test blast.

The tensions emanating from Pyongyang are beginning to hit nascent business ties with the South: a Seoul-based fur manufacturer became the first South Korean company to announce Monday it was pulling out of an industrial complex in the North’s border town of Kaesong.

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Mainstream political parties rounded on the BNP today after its breakthrough in the European elections.

Andy Burnham, the Health Secretary, condemned the election of two MEPs for the far-right party as a sad day for British politics, while David Cameron described the result as desperately depressing.

“The BNP are completely beyond the pale. They do not even let black and Asian people into their party, they are an appalling bunch of people,” the Tory leader said.

I happened to catch a BBC interview on the Today programme this morning with a BNP leader via podcast–it was very difficult to listen to. Read it all–KSH.

The Prime Minister was cheered as he entered the room before showing what was said to be a rare degree of emotion in a meeting which was designed to allow a show of strength from those loyal to him.

Labour peer Lord Foulkes told journalists as he left the meeting that there had been “great support for Gordon”

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Christian leaders outside the Episcopal Church said the church’s handling of Thew Forrester has implications beyond the denomination.

“If a so-called bishop does not agree with the central elements of the Christian faith, then he should not call himself a Christian, let alone a bishop””nor should a church ordain him. He is an apostate from the Faith; and a church that ordains such a one is also apostate,” said George O. Wood, general superintendent of the Assemblies of God.

Southern Baptist Theological Seminary President Albert Mohler agrees.

“The difference between orthodoxy and heresy is of vital importance to every evangelical believer,” he said. “We should feel grief and pain whenever we see a church that is involved in this kind of basic theological turmoil and where we hear the truth of the gospel denied, because it compromises the gospel witness of Christians around the world.”

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In the city of Greensboro, N.C., there’s a program designed for teenage mothers. To prevent these teens from having another child, the city offers each of them $1 a day for every day they are not pregnant. It turns out that the psychological power of that small daily payment is huge. A single dollar a day is enough to push the rate of teen pregnancy down, saving all the incredible costs ”” human and financial ”” that go with teen parenting.

Cass Sunstein, President Obama’s pick to head the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, is a vocal supporter of the program, because it’s an economic policy that shapes itself around human psychology. Sunstein is just one of a number of high-level appointees now working in the Obama administration who favors this kind of approach.

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