Guatemala President Signs Contraception Bill

THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, Oct. 26 — Ignoring the Catholic Church's call to veto the legislation, President Alfonso Antonio Portillo Cabrera of Guatemala signed the Social Development and Population Law, the daily newspaper reported.

The new law will bolster reproductive health programs and require reproductive health education in schools. “Reproductive health services,” as interpreted by many international aid agencies that deliver such programs, includes provision of abortion.

But supporters of the law argue it will protect the right to life of Guatemalan women, who have an average of five children.

Guatemala, a predominantly Catholic country where abortion is illegal, has the highest fertility rate in Latin America. It also has one of the lowest rates of contraceptive use.

Said Nery Rodenas, director of a Catholic human rights office in Guatemala, “Our fear is that this law could be manipulated to promote abortions.”

State Department Tailors List of Religious Oppressors

THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, Oct. 27 — The Bush administration listed Afghanistan's Taliban rulers and six other nations as the world's worst persecutors of religious believers, but rejected calls to include other countries that are seen to be key in the war against terrorism, the daily newspaper reported.

The group of extreme religious oppressors includes China, Iran, Iraq, Myanmar and Sudan, as it did last year, and North Korea, which is new to the list.

Human rights groups said Saudi Arabia, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan should have been on the list of worst oppressors, which the State Department releases every year under the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998. The report was sharply critical of religious practices in those countries, the Times reported, and State Department spokesman Richard Boucher conceded that Saudi Arabia prohibits the open practice of any religion other than Islam.

The U.S. report also listed improvements in religious freedom during the past year, placing Mexico, which elected new president Vicente Fox in July 2000, at the top of the list.

Columbia University Scans French Cathedral

THE NEW YORK TIMES, Oct. 27 — In a high-tech approach to determining what can be done to prevent the eventual collapse of a massive French church, computer scientists and architectural historians from Columbia University have made digital scans of St. Peter's Cathedral in Beauvais, France, the daily newspaper reported.

The 700-year-old Gothic cathedral, which is on the World Monuments Fund's list of 100 most endangered sites, is unstable and is regularly battered by gale-force winds from the English Channel, less than 100 miles away.

Using a 3-D laser scanner, the Columbia team recorded detailed images of the cathedral's façade and interior by bouncing a laser beam off its surfaces. They then created a digital replica of the building, and plan to perform tests and try out strategies for restoration.

Columbia computer scientist Peter Allen told the Times, “Once we create a computer model, we can do all kinds of structural analysis of the building and figure out the best way to shore it up and figure out where it's weak.”