Leaders of the U.S. Congress say they will okay $435 million to forgive the debts of the world's poorest countries. Congress appropriated $123 million for debt relief earlier this year. "The debt relief issue is now a speeding train," Rep. Sonny Callahan (R-Ala.) told The New York Times. "We've got the pope and every missionary in the world involved in this thing, and they persuaded just about everyone here that this is the noble thing to do." President Clinton agrees. "It's not often we have a chance to do something that economists tell us is a financial imperative and religious leaders say is a moral imperative," he said after a meeting with congressional leaders and Jubilee 2000 supporters—including Pat Robertson and Bono.

"Around 100 villages in Orissa's Kandhamal district are in the grip of communal tension after miscreants torched four churches and assaulted a Christian priest over the past week," reports The Times of India.

In renaming itself De Sales University, Allentown College of St. Francis de Sales will also be changing its mascot. Its current symbol is the centaur, which Britannica.com characterizes as "wild, lawless, and inhospitable beings, the slaves of their animal passions." "It is, in fact, offensive to many of the women students," college spokeswoman Lina Barbieri tells Allentown newspaper The Morning Call. The Associated Press picked up the story.

Hans Christian Knuth, presiding bishop of the Union of Evangelical Lutheran Churches in Germany, says Lutherans could accept the pope as "spokesman for all Christianity worldwide"—but not under ...