Briefly noted

Christian Century, Feb 23, 2000

* Police in India have arrested a suspect in the murders of Australian Baptist missionary Graham Staines and his two sons a year after the crime. The suspect, Dara Singh, is described as an extremist Hindu fundamentalist. He evaded a police dragnet for more than a year in the dense forests of northern Orissa, assisted by tribal people, before being caught February 1. Singh, who also goes by the alias Rabindra Pal Singh, was charged in absentia with being the main culprit in the attack January 23, 1999, that killed Staines, 58, and his sons, Philip, ten, and Timothy, eight. The three burned to death after extremists set fire to the jeep in which they slept--the most vicious attack in a recent wave of anti-Christian violence in India.

Singh reportedly confessed to the crime, as well as to other major crimes, including an incident last year in which a Muslim's hands were chopped off and a Catholic priest was shot dead with arrows. Staines's widow, Gladys, who has continued her husband's work with lepers, told reporters she welcomed the arrest.

* Indiana legislators overwhelmingly approved a bill February 7 permitting schools and other government entities to post the Ten Commandments in their buildings. The House passed the bill by a vote of 92-7 and sent it to the Senate, which already has approved a similar measure. One of the bills is expected to end up before Governor Frank O'Bannon for final approval. O'Bannon has said he would sign such a bill if it is constitutional. The bill permits the commandments to be posted in schools, courthouses and other government property if they are on display with other documents of historical significance that have helped create or influenced the U.S. legal system. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1980 that putting the commandments in schools violates First Amendment protections against government promotion of religion.

* The U.S. Supreme Court has again ruled that a state may help pay for students to attend private schools while denying the same aid to those who attend religious schools. Without comment, the court December 13 turned down an appeal from Vermont in which parents of religious-school students argued that their children's freedom of religion was violated by denying them the same financial aid given to children who attend secular private schools. The Vermont Supreme Court had ruled that state tuition payments for children attending religious schools would violate the constitutionally required separation of church and state. In early November the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a similar appeal from parents of religious-school pupils in Maine. As in the Maine case, the justices' action set no legal precedent. Politically charged battles over vouchers, or public funding of private and parochial schools, still are being fought in several lower courts.

* Christian music sales in 1999 reached almost 50 million units, an increase of 11.5 percent over 1998's sales. Christian retailers accounted for 57.5 percent of the 1999 sales, while mainstream retail stores accounted for 42.5 percent. Contemporary Christian and gospel music are the music industry's fifth-largest-selling genre, selling more than twice as many albums as the Latin genre and also selling more than classical, jazz and New Age genres combined.

* With nearly 70 percent of the funds now recovered, the National Council of Churches has agreed to forego any further legal action in pursuit of the $8 million it had invested in what proved to be fraudulent securities issued in the name of the Prague-based Banka Bohemia. Total recovery stands at $5,405,000 with the receipt in December of an additional $405,000 from various parties who have now reached a settlement with the NCC. The NCC's legal counsel in the matter, Whitman Breed Abbott & Morgan, advised the NCC of the final settlement in a letter dated December 10. This final settlement marks the conclusion of a nearly six-year aggressive effort that included legal proceedings in England and the U.S., an NCC delegation's visit to the Czech Republic and appeals to the Czech National Bank and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

* The Church of England has appointed its first woman to take charge of a cathedral. Canon Vivienne Faull has been appointed provost of Leicester. A provost is the head of the cathedral chapter in a number of the Church of England's more recently created dioceses in which the cathedral is also a parish church and the provost is the incumbent. The Scottish Episcopal Church has had a woman provost since September 1998, when Miriam Byrne was appointed provost of Dundee.