Pakistani authorities on Saturday were searching for an insurgent figure believed to have aided five Northern Virginia men who allegedly tried to join al-Qaeda, saying the case could help unravel a growing network of terrorist recruiters who scour the Internet for radicalized young men.

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With a sputtering economy and widespread budget crises, many states have decided that reducing their prison populations is a good way to save money.

Illinois is one of the latest examples. Under its new early release program, as many as 1,000 nonviolent offenders will be able to finish their sentences at home or at other locations approved by prison officials.

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Mark Ingram dabbed his eyes, took a deep breath and tried to steady himself. All set, he accepted the Heisman that completes Alabama’s trophy case.

The tough-running tailback turned tearful after winning the Heisman Trophy on Saturday night in the closest vote in the award’s 75-year history. Next, he’ll try to lead the most storied program in the South to a national championship.

Ingram finished 28 points ahead of Stanford running back Toby Gerhart.

The sturdy, 212-pound Ingram took a moment to get composed before starting his speech. Dressed in a dark suit with blue pinstripes, his voice wavered throughout.

“I’m a little overwhelmed right now,” he said. “I’m just so excited to bring Alabama their first Heisman winner.”

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A Minnesota rector with Deep South roots was elected Saturday the eighth bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Upper South Carolina.

The Rev. W. Andrew Waldo, pastor of Trinity Episcopal Church in Excelsior, Minn., emerged as the winner on the third ballot, defeating five other candidates. Among the six vying for the post were three South Carolinians, including the dean of Columbia’s Trinity Episcopal Cathedral, the Very Rev. Philip C. Linder.

“I’m so happy to be returning to the South, and coming to South Carolina,” Waldo said by telephone from his Shorewood, Minn., home. He said his first task will be to learn about the diocese in all its joys and struggles.

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The United States has begun talks with Russia and a United Nations arms control committee about strengthening Internet security and limiting military use of cyberspace.

American and Russian officials have different interpretations of the talks so far, but the mere fact that the United States is participating represents a significant policy shift after years of rejecting Russia’s overtures. Officials familiar with the talks said the Obama administration realized that more nations were developing cyberweapons and that a new approach was needed to blunt an international arms race.

In the last two years, Internet-based attacks on government and corporate computer systems have multiplied to thousands a day. Hackers, usually never identified, have compromised Pentagon computers, stolen industrial secrets and temporarily jammed government and corporate Web sites. President Obama ordered a review of the nation’s Internet security in February and is preparing to name an official to coordinate national policy.

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December 12, 2009

The Rev. W. Andrew Waldo elected eighth bishop of Upper South Carolina

The Rev. W. Andrew Waldo was elected eighth bishop of Upper South Carolina by the 87th Diocesan Convention meeting today at Trinity Cathedral, Columbia. Fr. Waldo was elected on the third ballot.

The Rev. W. Andrew Waldo has been rector of Trinity Church, Excelsior, Minnesota, since 1994. He was born in Douglas, Georgia, and raised in Montgomery, Alabama, the second of six children in an Episcopal clergy family. He received his M.Div. from Sewanee, M. Mus. from the New England Conservatory of Music, and B.A. from Whittier College, and is a graduate of Indian Springs Preparatory School, Helena, Alabama.

Previous clergy positions include curate, Grace Church, Manchester, New Hampshire and rector, St. Mark’s, LaGrange, Georgia. He currently serves on the Minnesota Diocesan Council and Constitution and Canons Committee. His previous service includes Standing Committee, Liturgy and Music Commissions (Minnesota, Atlanta, and New Hampshire), and Diocesan Board of Examining Chaplains. He is a member of the Spiritual Faculty of CREDO, a national clergy wellness initiative of the Church Pension Group.

Fr. Waldo is married to a Minnesota native, Mary Halverson Waldo, a musician and teacher. They have three sons: Jonathan (Amber); James; and Benjamin. They reside in Shorewood, Minnesota. His recreational interests include biking, music, history, and model trains.

Bougainvillea shade the pathways at the Cementerio General del Sur, where the mausoleums of statesmen and movie stars stand next to the graves of aristocrats and thousands of commoners. Sculpted lions gaze down from sepulchers. Elegance, not anarchy, once defined this resting place.

No longer.

Now, crypts for once-feared military rulers have been ransacked. Coffins, twisted open with crowbars, lie strewn under samán trees. Cages with padlocked gates surround the burial sites of some families, as if that might protect them from a disturbing reality: not even Caracas’s city of the dead is safe.

Accompanying Venezuela’s soaring levels of murders and kidnappings, its cemeteries are the setting for a new kind of crime wave. Grave robbers are looting them for human bones, answering demand from some practitioners of a fast-growing transplanted Cuban religion called Palo that uses the bones in its ceremonies.

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Democrats plan to allow the government’s debt to swell by nearly $2 trillion as part of a bill next week to pay for wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The amount pretty much equals the total of a year-end spending spree by lawmakers and is big enough to ensure that Congress doesn’t have to vote again on going further into debt until after the 2010 elections.

The move has anxious moderate Democrats maneuvering to win new deficit-cutting tools as the price for their votes, igniting battles between the House and the Senate and with powerful interest groups on both the right and the left.

The record increase in the so-called debt limit – the legal cap on the amount of money the government can borrow – is likely to be in the neighborhood of $1.8 trillion to $1.9 trillion, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., said Friday.

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Tim Fountain has a comment also:

Episcopalians are embracing stasis – which in a declining denomination means decline. Folks who mouth revisionist slogans and whose congregations have declined keep being elevated to diocesan leadership, while people like them take their place at the congregational level. This means death by attrition given every current membership and participation marker of the denomination: Episcopalians are older than the U.S. church average, and there is no growth by birth, evangelism or transmission from parents to kids.

This comment from Deacon Tim is of interest as well:

The problem with this entire process has been our (the people of this Diocese) inability to get our minds wrapped around who these candidates are. As a result, opinions are being formed based on what people have written in the past or upon what they said in two minute responses to questions from delegates and interested members. We have had virtually no real interaction with these candidates in the form of thoughtful, nuanced and well-articulated dialogue. Which is a pity, really, since we are going to live with one of them for a very long time.

To that end, Pope Benedict XVI is setting up Personal Ordinariates across the world. Fr. Phillips says an ordinariate resembles a diocese, and will provide a system where incoming Anglican priests can retain their priestly duties and their families, for those who have one.

And the pope has indicated he’ll use San Antonio’s Anglican-rite parish as the model for the rest of the English-speaking ordinariates to follow.

“The pope’s simply saying, ”˜Look, this place is good, I’m going to give a place in the Church where it can thrive,’” Fr. Phillips said.

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“I would guess that the papal announcement had some impact on the way some people thought and voted on the committee,” concedes Dr Williams. “But actually I don’t think it is a solution. A great many Anglo-Catholics have good reason for not being Roman Catholics. They don’t believe the Pope is infallible. And that’s why they’re still pressing for a solution in Anglican terms, rather than what many of them see as a theologically rather eccentric option on the Roman side.”

Significantly, he still wants formal protection in the Anglican Church for those who can’t accept women priests. I put it to him that ordained women believe that idea has been thrown out. “Well, we’ll see,” he responds. “We’re still halfway through our process.” But whatever the differences with Rome, Dr Williams was anxious to stress that a third round of ecumenical talks, the “Arcic” initiative, for next year was nailed down in Rome. He calls that a “small miracle”.

“I think reports of the death of Arcic have been much exaggerated,” says Dr Williams with a rare laugh. “There are a lot of Roman Catholics who want a chance to talk. They need an ecumenical forum to do that.”

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Discontented Anglicans who convert must not become a “sect” within the Roman Catholic Church, a senior Catholic clergyman dealing with church unity has warned.

Anglicans who object to plans for women bishops are considering the Vatican’s invitation to become part of a special section – an “ordinariate” – within the church in England and Wales.

Monsignor Andrew Faley, Assistant General Secretary of the English and Welsh Catholic bishops’ conference, told the BBC News website that ordinariate members would be expected to co-operate with their local bishop and the life of their local Catholic parish.

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Towering eight stories over wheat fields, the Golden Lamp Church was built to serve nearly 50,000 worshippers in the gritty heart of China’s coal country.

But that was before hundreds of police and hired thugs descended on the mega-church, smashing doors and windows, seizing Bibles and sending dozens of worshippers to hospitals with serious injuries, members and activists say

Today, the church’s co-pastors are in jail. The gates to the church complex in the northern province of Shanxi are locked and a police armored personnel vehicle sits outside.

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