Restrain Discipline on Partnered Lutheran Gay Clergy

Until August 11 of this year, gay clergy ordained within regular ecclesiastical channels of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) were expected to remain celibate, even if they were in long-term, committed relationships with their same-sex ...
Lutherans vote not to punish gay ministers Los Angeles Times
Gay Clergy OK'd By Evangelical Lutheran Church In America WBBM780
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (subscription) - Kansas City Star - WQAD - United Press International
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Fear of bloodbath thwarts efforts to rescue hostages

South Korean officials have twice blocked rescue missions to free 21 of their countrymen held by Taleban rebels amid concerns that Afghan military action could spark a bloodbath.
Release of South Korean hostages delayed RTE.ie
Two South Koreans 'to be freed' BBC News
The Australian - Daily News & Analysis - International Herald Tribune - INQ7.net
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MyLiveSearch Misses Launch Date, But The New Logo Is Top Notch

Some of you may remember our ridicule of the unlaunched Australian search engine MyLiveSearch back in May after a glowing but research-free Australian newspaper article about them. Being unlaunched is fine, but suggesting that Google is worried about them is a little over the top to say the least.

Dubbing itself the “world’s first live search engine” it promises to show us the 4/5 of the web that Google doesn’t index - this includes the grey web of dynamically created web pages as well as real time indexing of more traditional pages. Their sub tagline: “Searching the internet will never be the same!”

The company promised to debut the service in June. They missed that deadline and still haven’t launched. And frankly I probably never would have written about them again except that they’ve started emailing us again for coverage. They won’t tell us anything about the service, apart from the hyperbole. No demo’s or screen shots either.

But there is a bit of good news. They’ve ditched the old logo and have come up with something much more webtwoohified. Stay tuned. They promise to announce the (new) launch date shortly.

Happy Birthday, CrunchGear!

In honor of CrunchGear’s first birthday, the CG team is giving away over 30 prizes in the next 10 days, culminating in a get-together in Manhattan and maybe an iPhone or two. Head on over to check it out.

Apple Gets Into Social Music Scene with My iTunes

Apple isn’t just sitting on the sidelines as startups like iLike and MOG and others try to tackle the social music space. Many of these services gather user music preferences via an iTunes plugin. You are then able to tell the world what music you are listening to, get recommendations for new music you might like, etc. People love this stuff, as evidenced by iLike’s ridiculous growth and Last.fm’s $280 million acquisition by CBS.

Apple has launched My ITunes, a set of widgets that may be a first step in taking their fair share of the social music market. Niall Kennedy caught sight of it a couple of days ago.

iTunes is giving you an effortless way to keep your friends up-to-date with your favorite music, TV shows, movies, and more. My iTunes widgets are simple, self-updating add-ons for your web page, social-networking profile, or blog.

Use My iTunes to share your top reviews, favorite artists, and new music, movies, and TV shows from the iTunes Store with anyone who visits your site.

There are currently three embeddable widgets to choose from. One shows recent iTunes purchases. Another shows music you’ve reviewed on iTunes. The last shows a sort of tag cloud of artists you’ve purchased on the iTunes store. The widgets can be customized by size and color.

The first and last widgets only work if you’ve actually bought stuff on iTunes. I’ve bought enough things to create a thinly populated widget below. But what would be far more interesting is a widget that, like iLike, shows your favorite music and plays at least a 30 second snippet of each song.