Church Nativity scene with gay figures vandalized (AP)

CLAREMONT, Calif. ? Vandalism of a church's Nativity display that includes depictions of gay and lesbian couples was being investigated as a hate crime, police said.

The damage at Claremont United Methodist Church occurred late Saturday or Sunday morning.

The display's three panels feature silhouettes of three hand-holding couples ? two men, two women and a heterosexual pair. The vandal knocked over the depictions of the gay and lesbian couples but left the straight couple alone.

"It's a hate crime based on it being church property as well as the wooden box knocked over that depicted two males holding hands," Claremont police Sgt. Jason Walters told the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin.

The display created by artist church member John Zachary includes the phrase "Christ is born" and a Star of Bethlehem but no traditional manger figures. For the past six years, Zachary has designed and built a scene on the church's front lawn. The scene has had controversial themes before, but this was the first about gay couples, the Daily Bulletin said.

Zachary said the artwork suffered at least $3,000 worth of damage. The exhibit had three panels that weighed 600 pounds each.

The Rev. Dan Lewis said he was saddened by the incident.

"We have members of our church who are gay and lesbian who it sends a very personal message to," said Lewis, who learned of the vandalism on Christmas Day. "I tried to say in worship on Sunday morning that we will not let it trouble us."

Ed Kania, 60, an openly gay member of the church, called the act of vandalism disappointing, especially because Claremont is a generally seen as a progressive college town.

"It's a reminder that although there are pockets of acceptance, not everybody is accepting," he told the Los Angeles Times. "We're all kind of disappointed, but we're using it as a rallying point."

___

Information from: Inland Valley Daily Bulletin, http://www.dailybulletin.com

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/religion/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111230/ap_on_re_us/us_gay_nativity

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Verizon Wireless to charge $2 for one-time payment (AP)

NEW YORK ? Verizon Wireless, the country's largest cellphone company, said Thursday that it will start charging $2 for every payment subscribers make over the phone or online with their credit cards.

The company said this "convenience fee" will be introduced Jan. 15.

The fee won't apply to electronic check payments or to automatic credit card payments set up through Verizon's AutoPay system. Paying by credit card in a Verizon store will also be free, as will mailing a check.

Other carriers have tried to get subscribers to move to automatic payments through other means. AT&T Inc. offers a $10 gift card for those who set up AutoPay. Sprint Nextel Corp. charges subscribers who have caps on the fees they can rack up each month. Those people are charged $5 monthly unless they set up automatic payments.

It's not uncommon for utilities, universities and even state tax departments to charge convenience fees for online payments. Each credit-card payment comes with fees that the companies can avoid by getting electronic checks instead. Automatic payments mean less trouble for companies in going after late payments.

Verizon Communications Inc., the landline phone company that owns most of Verizon Wireless, tried last year to introduce a $3.50 fee for people who paid their bill for FiOS TV or Internet service month-to-month by credit card. It backed off after complaints.

Verizon Wireless serves 91 million phones and other devices on accounts that pay the company directly, and more who pay indirectly through other companies.

___

Online:

Verizon statement: http://news.verizonwireless.com/news/2011/12/pr2011-12-29b.html

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/internet/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111229/ap_on_hi_te/us_verizon_wireless_monthly_fees

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michaelkwan: 10 Predictions For 2012: From Canucks to Google http://t.co/FYyL9ttV

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Militants attack Iraqi camp housing Iranian exiles (AP)

BAGHDAD ? A security official says militants have fired a Katyusha rocket at a camp housing several thousand Iranian exiles in northeastern Iraq.

The Diyala province official says the attack on Camp Ashraf took place late Tuesday. It was the second rocket attack on the camp this week. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media.

The Iranian group ? known as the People's Mujahedeen Organization of Iran ? was a one-time ally of Saddam Hussein in a common fight against Iran.

The group said Wednesday the rocket fell near housing units inside the camp but that there were no casualties.

Under an agreement with the United Nations and the Iraqi government, the residents are to move to a new location in Baghdad in the coming days.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/iraq/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111228/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_iraq_camp_ashraf

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Website says it's cooperating in trunk-death probe (AP)

DETROIT ? A website that posts sex-related ads says it's cooperating with Detroit police in the investigation of four women found dead in car trunks, including three who promoted their services online.

Backpage.com says in a statement Tuesday that it reached out to police with "detailed information" about ads that a suspect may have posted on numerous websites. The company says that the investigation is expanding to involve at least 30 different ads on multiple websites.

Detroit police didn't immediately comment.

Since Dec. 19, the bodies of four women have been found in car trunks just blocks apart in Detroit. Police Chief Ralph Godbee is not calling them serial killings, although their online ads on Backpage are a common thread.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/crime/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111228/ap_on_re_us/us_trunk_bodies_escort_ads_backpage

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Death of Jew on Rainier fuels fight over autopsy

The death of a 54-year-old Jewish man on a snowy slope on Mount Rainier set the stage for a Pierce County court fight pitting religious belief against scientific certainty.

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Brian Grobois of New Rochelle, N.Y., died on a solo snowshoe hike, apparently from hypothermia. His body was recovered Dec. 13. Three days later, a judge upheld an appeal barring Pierce County's medical examiner from conducting an autopsy on Grobois' body because of religious objections from the family, The News-Tribune (http://is.gd/v11JlY ) reported in Sunday's newspaper.

The case attracted the interest of Gov. Chris Gregoire and Jewish leaders from around the country. Jewish law requires a fast burial and no autopsy, but the Pierce County medical examiner fought for an autopsy because questions remain about the New York man's death.

"This is not a matter of life and death. This is a matter of death and afterlife," said Rabbi Zalman Heber, director of Chabad Jewish Center of Pierce County, on Friday.

But Pierce County Medical Examiner Dr. Thomas Clark said state law clearly empowers him to investigate unnatural deaths, and an autopsy was needed to answer questions that arose in his mind about how Grobois died.

"Their concerns were very real to them," Clark said in an interview Friday. "But they're in conflict with Washington law and our charge to accurately determine deaths, and I can't make everybody happy."

State law doesn't allow families to stop autopsies on religious grounds. Heber said the Jewish community intends to ask state lawmakers in the upcoming legislative session to change the law to accommodate such requests. He said 11 states have similar exemptions.

"This case is a classic example of why this is needed so there is no confusion in the future," Heber said. "The family (members) shouldn't have had to go through what they went through."

Clark said such a change would have significant implications for medical examiners around Washington and could jeopardize the integrity of death investigations.

Grobois realized a dream on Dec. 11 when he arrived at Paradise at Mount Rainier National Park for a snowshoe excursion, but something went amiss.

The family called the park the next morning to report him overdue. A helicopter crew found him later that afternoon lying in the snow at the top of the Stevens Creek drainage at an elevation of about 5,400 feet.

A park spokeswoman said he likely lost this way, became exhausted, sat down and succumbed to the brutal cold; Paradise reached a low of 14 degrees that Sunday night, and Grobois was not equipped to spend the night outdoors.

Grobois was taken by helicopter to Madigan Army Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead. Attending Madigan doctors wrote on medical records that Grobois died of "hypothermia/cardiac arrest," according to Clark.

Heber said the doctors told him and Grobois' wife, daughter and son, who had flown in the morning of Dec. 13, that there was no need for an autopsy; they were confident about the cause of death.

A chief investigator for the National Park Service told Heber he reached the same conclusion independently, Heber said Friday.

"From all angles, there was no need for an autopsy," Heber said.

But Clark reached a different conclusion.

The circumstances of Grobois' death and the fact that he was in good health and no one witnessed his death made Clark determine he needed to conduct his own investigation.

"They wrote the only thing they knew, which is the body was cold," Clark said. "The body can get cold and cause death, or death can happen for some other reason and then the body can get cold, and they don't have any basis for telling the difference." He also noted the body was covered in bruises, inconsistent with a finding that he wandered lost, fell asleep and died.

Heber said the situation put incredible stress on the Grobois family. Jewish law prevents the family from starting its seven days of mourning until a body is buried.

"It was agony for them," he said.

After a hearing on Dec. 16, a judge signed an order barring the medical examiner's office from conducting an autopsy and ordering the body to be released to the family.

Clark, in consultation with the prosecuting attorney's office, decided against another appeal.

"We were afraid that if we lost the second level of appeal that would set a precedent that would be dangerous not just for us, but for every other medical examiner system in the state," he said.

He said he wasn't influenced by calls that the Grobois family and its supporters made to his office and to other officials.

Grobois was buried in Jerusalem on Monday.

Heber said the family is confident that Grobois died of hypothermia doing what he loved. The case ended with no such certainty for Clark and his office. On Grobois' death certificate, it listed his cause and manner of death as "undetermined." Another line gives the reason: "Examination prohibited by court order."

___

Information from: The News Tribune, http://www.thenewstribune.com

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45788265/ns/health/

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Clashes between sect, police kill 61 in Nigeria (AP)

MAIDUGURI, Nigeria ? Fighting between a radical Muslim sect and paramilitary forces in Nigeria has killed at least 61 people over several days of violence in the nation's northeast that has left churches bombed and people hiding in fear, authorities said.

In hard-hit Yobe state, where at least 50 people died, the government on Saturday ordered a dusk-till-dawn curfew following attacks by the sect known as Boko Haram. In Maiduguri, the capital of neighboring Borno state, bombs reduced at least three churches to rubble and raised fears of further attacks by a group that claimed Christmas Eve bombings last year that killed dozens.

The fighting began Thursday in the two states, with gunfire and explosions heard into the night and the following day in an arid region that borders Cameroon, Chad and Niger. Damaturu, the capital of Yobe state, and the town of Potiskum bore the brunt of the violence.

In Damaturu, residents fled their homes near the city's central mosque ahead of a combined attack by soldiers and the federal police's feared Mobile Police, known as "kill-and-go" for their propensity for violence. The paramilitary forces raided the area in armored personnel carriers and tanks, with heavy gunfire marking their arrival.

"We were able to kill 12 of the Boko Haram armed sect and bombers," local police commissioner Lawan Tanko said. The police commissioner said officers also recovered Kalashnikov rifles, ammunition and explosives.

In Maiduguri, the capital of Borno state, a mortuary official who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter told The Associated Press at least 11 bodies had been brought in from the violence. Authorities blamed Boko Haram for firebombing at least three churches around the capital, attacks that killed one pastor and his young child.

This is just the latest in a series of bombings over the last year by Boko Haram. The group, whose name means "Western education is sacrilege" in the local Hausa language, wants to implement strict Shariah law across a nation of more than 160 million people that is home to both Christians and Muslims.

Boko Haram claimed responsibility for a Nov. 4 attack on Damaturu, Yobe state's capital, that killed more than 100 people. The group also claimed the Aug. 24 suicide car bombing of the U.N. headquarters in Nigeria's capital that killed 24 people and wounded 116 others.

While initially targeting enemies via hit-and-run assassinations from the back of motorbikes, violence by Boko Haram now has a new sophistication and apparent planning that includes high-profile attacks with greater casualties. The sect is responsible for at least 465 killings in Nigeria this year alone, according to an AP count.

Boko Haram has splintered into three factions, with one wing increasingly willing to kill as it maintains contact with terror groups in North Africa and Somalia, diplomats and security sources say. That, as well as its increasingly violent attacks, have some worried the group will carry out further attacks around Christmas and New Year's.

Last year, a series of Christmas Eve bombings in the central Nigerian city of Jos claimed by Boko Haram killed at least 32 people and wounded at least 74 others.

With those attacks in mind, the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria's capital of Abuja issued a warning Friday to citizens to be "particularly vigilant" around churches, large crowds and areas where foreigners congregate.

Analysts say the government's response remains strained as President Goodluck Jonathan, a Christian from the country's south, remains worried about alienating the country's predominantly Muslim north with heavy-handed tactics. In 2009, a military and police crackdown following rioting by Boko Haram members in and around Maiduguri left 700 people dead.

Yet since Thursday, authorities have been using paramilitary police and soldiers more freely. Tanko, the Yobe state police commissioner, said joint patrols by the military and police would continue.

"When you are fighting people you don't know, you cannot say that's the end of the exercise," Tanko said. "We are trying to ensure that will be the end, but we are monitoring what is going on. But we know we cannot specifically say that will be the end."

___

Jon Gambrell reported from Lagos, Nigeria and can be reached at http://www.twitter.com/jongambrellAP.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/africa/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111225/ap_on_re_af/af_nigeria_violence

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Top 20 Concert Tours from Pollstar (AP)

The Top 20 Concert Tours ranks artists by average box office gross per city and includes the average ticket price for shows in North America. The previous week's ranking is in parentheses. The list is based on data provided to the trade publication Pollstar by concert promoters and venue managers.

TOP 20 CONCERT TOURS

1. (New) Kanye West / Jay-Z; $2,243,684; $120.57.

2. (1) Cirque du Soleil ? "Michael Jackson: The Immortal"; $1,924,258; $116.04.

3. (2) Taylor Swift; $1,302,209; $68.69.

4. (3) Enrique Iglesias; $806,680; $69.00.

5. (4) Journey; $687,843; $58.05.

6. (New) Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet Band; $671,909; $67.88.

7. (5) Foo Fighters; $668,629; $48.76.

8. (6) Keith Urban; $581,289; $62.47.

9. (8) Caifanes; $500,310; $48.01.

10. (9) Jason Aldean; $481,111; $38.00.

11. (New) Sting; $475,037; $92.43.

12. (10) Furthur; $457,480; $51.73.

13. (New) Guns N' Roses; $416,872; $52.63.

14. (11) Andr? Rieu; $335,203; $75.34.

15. (13) Deadmau5; $328,370; $45.81.

16. (12) Tiesto; $298,721; $49.48.

17. (14) Duran Duran; $288,046; $73.98.

18. (15) Paul Simon; $252,673; $77.14.

19. (16) Jeff Dunham; $251,471; $46.79.

20. (17) Roger Daltrey; $240,036; $78.37.

For free upcoming tour information, go to http://www.pollstar.com

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/music/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111222/ap_en_mu/us_top20_concert_tours

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Jaguar Photo Reveals Conservation Success Story (LiveScience.com)

A photo released by a conservation group today (Dec. 21) shows a female jaguar and her two cubs in Bolivia's best-conserved national forest.

The jaguars were photographed near the Isoso Station of the Santa Cruz-Puerto Suarez Gas Pipeline in Kaa Iya National Park in Bolivia. The adult jaguar, nicknamed Kaaiyana, has been seen with her cubs in the area for over a month and has lived near the park for at least six years, according to conservationists with the Wildlife Conservation Society, which releases camera-trap photos on an ongoing basis.

"Kaaiyana's tolerance of observers is a testimony to the absence of hunters in this area, and her success as a mother means there is plenty of food for her and her cubs to eat," said John Polisar, coordinator of the Wildlife Conservation Society's jaguar conservation program.

?

The Wildlife Conservation Society has conducted extensive research in the area and estimates that at least 1,000 jaguars live in the Gran Chaco Jaguar Conservation Unit, a 47,000-square-mile (124,000-square-km) area spanning southern Bolivia and northern Paraguay.At more than 13,200 square miles (34,400 square kilometers), Kaa Iya National Park is the largest protected area in Bolivia. The park guards the biggest and best-conserved dry forest in the world. The creation of Kaa Iya in 1995 marked the first time in South America that a protected area was established through the initiative of an indigenous people, the Guaran?-Isoce?o.

The Kaa Iya Foundation, supported by the Wildlife Conservation society and private energy companies, surveyed the jaguars in the area. Kaayiana was first seen at the Isoso site in 2005 with male jaguars, and again in 2006 with a cub. The Kaa Iya park guards work to prevent illegal hunting and settlements along the right-of-way to the gas pipeline and ensure the protection of wildlife, including jaguar prey, in the park.

"The photographic histories of jaguars in the area by WCS and the reproductive success of this female are testimony that conservation efforts have been effective," said Julie Kunen, director of the Wildlife Conservation Society's Latin America and Caribbean Programs.

Follow OurAmazingPlanet for the latest in Earth science and exploration news on Twitter?@OAPlanet?and on?Facebook.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/science/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20111221/sc_livescience/jaguarphotorevealsconservationsuccessstory

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