General News

Protests Over Football Game Prayer Start in Southern U.S. At the urging of christian radio talk-show host Paul Ott, students in Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina and Arkansas are holding "spontaneous" prayers at high school football games, in defiance of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling last June that prohibits school sponsored prayers. The court ruling came in a case brought by a Mormon family and a Catholic family, who objected to the support of the majority Baptist religion.

Local News

Boston Globe Looks At LDS Church, History of Boston Temple In a set of articles starting on the front page of the Boston Globe, the newspaper looks at the LDS Church and the history of the Church's Boston Temple, which will open next month for public tours ahead of its dedication on October 1st. The Globe looks at the LDS Church's growth and the more dramatic growth of its temples in the two years since President Hinckley started the small temple program.

LDS Stake Center Victim of Bomb Hoax An LDS Stake Center in Sandy, Utah was the target of a bomb hoax on Tuesday, leading local police to call in the bomb squad and angest of the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. Someone left the purported bomb at the door of the stake center, along with a note claiming that it was a bomb.

Sports

BYU Loses, SportsLine Gets It Right, and Wrong BYU's football team lost their season opener against #2 ranked Florida State in a 29-3 drubbing Saturday night that nearly cost the Cougars their NCAA-record streak of 313 games without a shut-out. Widely expected to lose, the Cougars complied, by a margin just slightly larger than the 23 1/2 points given them by Las Vegas odds-makers.

Politics

Two Mormons Battle For Arizona State Senate Seat Jeff Groscost, Speaker of the Arizona State House of Representatives is facing a stiff Republican Primary challenge from fellow LDS Church member Ron Bellus. A profile of the race in the Arizona Republic says this race for the 30th district State Senate seat sticks out among all the state legislature races since it pitts Groscost, one of the most powerful politicians in the state against a former press aid to impeached Gov. Evan Mecham (also Mormon).

Bill Would Help Religious Groups Win Zoning Cases A bill sponsored by LDS senator Orrin Hatch would ease local land-use restrictions for religious groups. The bill, which now awaits approval by President Clinton, would have significant implications for churches and other religious groups.

People

LDS Bishop, Sheriff's Deputy Remembered LDS Bishop David Alan Fletcher Sr. was remembered in funeral services on Thursday, August 24th for his service to others both through the LDS Church and through his work as a sheriff's deputy in Los Angeles county. Fletcher was bishop of the Quartz Hill Ward of the LDS Church and worked with the North County Family Crimes Bureau assisting abused children when he died Saturday, August 19th at his home. He was 44.

Arts & Entertainment

God's Army Prompts Mixed Reviews in East As the LDS-oriented movie God's Army opened in New York City and elsewhere in the Eastern U.S., reviews have been mixed, with New York newspapers panning the show, while elsewhere reviews were much more favorable. Predictably, the nearly-impossible-to-please New York Times disliked the movie, but, surprisingly the more-plebeian New York Post and the Christian Science Monitor were also disappointed. But the Dallas Morning News and the Kansas City Star liked the movie, and, even more surprisingly, the intellectually-oriented public radio talk-show host Leonard Lopate practically bubbled over the movie in an interview with its director Richard Dutcher.

Business

LDS Businessman's Firm Rides Wave of Interest in Fiber Optics In 1997 LDS Church member, David R. Huber left Ciena Corporation, which he had co-founded, and formed Corvis Corp. taking $300 million worth of Ciena stock with him. With a personal history of war between Ciena and Corvis, Huber, famous for being tight-lipped about the technology behind the company's all-optical networks, raised more than $1.1 billion on July 28, when as an IPO Corvis made many of its 900 employees wealthy, at least on paper.

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