Lead Stories
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At the Vatican’s request, Brazil’s leading religious artist, Claudio Pastro, is giving the image of Jesus Christ a makeover for the third millennium. According to an October report from Knight-Ridder, the new look will be one of serenity and victory, rather than suffering, and Jesus will have traces of Asian, black, and Indian features.
The Litigious Society
Edward Caudill, 32, filed a lawsuit in September in Greenup, Kentucky, against Our Lady of Bellefonte Hospital, claiming his father’s death was hastened when medical personnel did not give him blood after a car accident in 1996, allegedly because his father’s wife objected on religious grounds. The wife herself died from her injuries about four hours after her husband. Because Caudill’s father died first, his estate was inherited by the wife (and after her death, by her family) and not by Caudill. Caudill pointed out that his father had never signed any document declining life-saving procedures; thus, the hospital was legally required to try to save him.
Texas and cheerleaders, again: In September a federal grand jury in Tyler, Texas, indicted the wife of a high school principal for writing and mailing a death threat. According to the indictment, the wife, Tamela Ellis, sent school trustee Ginger Motley a note warning her to stop criticizing the school administration or Motley’s daughter, who is a cheerleader, would “never [live long enough to] cheer at her first football game.”
