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1. Mistaken identity at April Taylor crash
Breaking news out of Indiana today: one student declared dead in the April 26 van crash that killed four Taylor University students was misidentified with one of the students injured and in a coma. The family of  Laura VanRyn, who had been declared injured, announced on their weblog today that the girl in the hospital bed is actually Whitney Cerak. "Over the past couple of days, as Whitney had been becoming more aware of her surroundings, she'd been saying and doing some things that made us question whether or not she was Laura," the family explained. The Indianapolis Star has details on what is a situation that will certainly be a continuing focus of prayer for many.

2. Aid agencies send assistance to Indonesia after earthquake
Is it news that aid agencies are aiding, or just business as usual? The question is irrelevant to the agencies and to the folks in Java after Saturday's 6.3 earthquake that has left at least 6,234 dead and more than 30,000 injured. "News" or not, they need help. Among the agencies responding: World Vision, Samaritan's Purse, World Relief, the Salvation Army, and Compassion International. These agencies were also among the responders to the Christmas 2004 tsunami.

3. In East Timor, the only safe place is in church
"Machete-wielding youths battled in East Timor's capital Wednesday amid burning and looting as more foreign troops bolstered a force struggling to stop the unrest that has destabilized the country," says the latest Associated Press report. "More than 100,000 residents of Dili have fled their homes to escape the violence, an aid official said." Where many of them have fled, apparently, is to local churches, where priests have put on their best white robes to show that they are members of the clergy. "We must be identifiable — otherwise they will be hacking and burning them alive," the Rev. Lalo Lebron told The New York Times. "Yesterday we were in a part of the city where people from the east were inside—women and children—and outside people from the west were saying, 'Kill them, burn them.'"

4. NYT op-ed: It's not heroes vs. villains in Darfur
In today's The New York Times op-ed page, University of Texas professor Alan J. Kuperman reminds readers that humanitarianism might seem easy, but it rarely is—even amid Darfur's genocide:

Sudan's government last month agreed to a peace accord pledging to disarm Arab janjaweed militias and resettle displaced civilians. By contrast, Darfur's black rebels, who are touted by the wristband crowd as freedom fighters, rejected the deal because it did not give them full regional control. Put simply, the rebels were willing to let genocide continue against their own people rather than compromise their demand for power. …

Seemingly bizarre, this rejection of peace by factions claiming to seek it is actually revelatory. It helps explain why violence originally broke out in Darfur, how the Save Darfur movement unintentionally poured fuel on the fire, and what can be done to stanch genocidal violence in Sudan and elsewhere.

5. Every seat shall stand, every tongue confess …
The Catholic blog world was obsessing over the "anti-kneeling edict" at St. Mary's by the Sea even before the Los Angeles Times picked the story up on Sunday. Now there have been a few more posts. Weblog is happy to sit this fight out without commentary.

Quote of the day
"There is no way on earth Robertson leg presses 2,000 pounds. That would mean a 76-year-old man broke the all-time Florida State University leg press record by 665 pounds over Dan Kendra."

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May (Web-only) 2006, Vol. 50