Since 2005, Michael Salman and his wife have been hosting gatherings of about 15 or 20 people where they share food, fellowship and discuss the Bible. Unfortunately, that kind of thing is against the law in Phoenix, Arizona apparently.

At one point, nearly a dozen armed police officers raided their home and "evidence" of their "crimes" was gathered. Michael Salman was found guilty of 67 "code violations", and now he is going to be ripped away from his family and put in prison for two months. In addition, the assistant city prosecutor is asking the court to "revoke his probation and convert it into a 2 1/2 year jail sentence since he continues to hold worship gatherings on his property despite court orders."

This kind of case has the potential to have a huge "chilling effect" on home gatherings of all kinds all over the United States. The implications of this story are staggering. Over the past couple of decades, the number of "house churches" in the United States has absolutely exploded as an increasing number of Americans reject the big, institutional churches for one reason or another. Now we are seeing a backlash against the home church movement.

Europe's leaders said all the right things - even if the details were a little hazy. First, Europe's leaders said that countries wouldn't have to borrow money from the euro bailout fund to bail out their own banks. Instead, the euro bailout fund would bail out banks directly. Second, they said that any bailout loans would not be senior to other loans.

It sounded like Europe's leaders were finally learning from their mistakes. The most obvious such mistake was Europe's wildly unsuccessful bailout of Spain's banks. Just weeks before, Europe had announced that they were piling €100 billion ($123 billion) into Spain's failing banks - and then watched Spain fall apart faster than ever. That wasn't supposed to happen. But investors were wary due to concerns that the deal increased Spain's public debt, and perhaps made that debt riskier for private investors by subordinating it. Now, Europe was admitting they had gotten it wrong.

It sounded too good to be true. It was. After nose-diving immediately after the big summit, they (Spanish bonds) have spiked back into the danger zone above 7 percent. It's one step forward, and two steps back.

Basically, all Monsanto and other biotech companies have to do is ask and the industry gets its way. Issues like crop contamination, damage to farmers or consumers, courts orders or USDA studies all go out the window and the biotech industry cashes in.

Organizations like Food Democracy Now are in a panic, calling all to petition against the bill, which they say “fundamentally undermines the concept of judicial review and would strip judges of their constitutional mandate to protect consumer rights and the environment, while opening up the floodgates for the planting of new untested genetically engineered crops, endangering farmers, consumers and the environment.”

Yes, Barclays employees had behaved reprehensively when they manipulated interest rates for years, Diamond said. But he also insisted that he had known nothing about it, and pointed out that other banks had also fudged their financial records. "I love Barclays. History will judge Barclays as an incredible institution because of its people."

Historians are probably more likely to remember Diamond's appearance and the scandal as a milestone in the demise of investment banks.

Nearly half of the ships were capable of carrying hundreds of marines. The announcement appeared intended to punctuate Russia’s effort to position itself as an increasingly decisive broker in resolving the antigovernment uprising in Syria, Russia’s last ally in the Middle East and home to Tartus, its only foreign military base outside the former Soviet Union. The announcement also came a day after Russia said it was halting new shipments of weapons to the Syrian military until the conflict settled down.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), which along with industry regulators had given a clean bill of health to dozens of brokers following spot checks in January, alleged that the firm's regulated Peregrine Financial Group (PFG) unit and its owner had defrauded customers and lied to regulators in order to hide a shortfall that now exceeds $200 million.

Most recently, Bahrain’s “Sheikh of Sunni Sheikhs” and President of National Unity, Abd al-Latif al-Mahmoud, called on Egypt’s new president, Muhammad Morsi, to “destroy the Pyramids and accomplish what the Sahabi Amr bin al-As could not.”

This is a reference to the Muslim Prophet Muhammad’s companion, Amr bin al-As and his Arabian tribesmen, who invaded and conquered Egypt circa 641. Under al-As and subsequent Muslim rule, many Egyptian antiquities were destroyed as relics of infidelity.

The US Episcopal Church - part of the 77 million-member Anglican Communion - has nearly two million worshippers. On Tuesday nearly 80% of the Episcopal Church's House of Deputies voted to authorise a three-year trial run for a provisional same-sex service.

With “042” as the prefix numbers for his SS#, [Mr] Obama should have been a resident of Connecticut. He never lived in that state, which is the only way he could have gained that number on his Social Security card, but his grandmother worked at a Social Security office and the growing evidence shows that she “borrowed” a dead man’s SS# because her grandson Barack also known as Barry Soetoro could not produce a valid birth certificate from the United States.

Recently Dr Jack Cashill, an Emmy-award winning writer and producer wrote a book: Deconstructing [Mr] Obama. He finds many troubled aspects to the identity of [Mr] Barack Obama.

Government officials have increasingly warned that many buildings in Israel are not built according to standards that would withstand a large earthquake. The most damaging earthquakes in Israel in the past 200 years were in 1837, when the northern city of Tzfat was virtually destroyed, and in 1927, when Tiberias suffered from huge landslides.