I am writing today to announce the closure of the Michigan Messenger. After four years of operation in Michigan, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news into a single site, The American Independent at Americanindependent.com. This is part of a shift in strategy, towards new forms [...]
An abstinence-only presentation provided to numerous school districts in Calhoun and Eaton Counties in October of this year provided false and misleading information to students about HIV, experts allege.
Two county registers of deeds filed a class action lawsuit Monday on behalf of Michigan’s 83 counties alleging that the Mortgage Electronic Registration Services owes millions of dollars in property title transfer taxes.
Despite evidence of the impact of mercury on children and public health, Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette last month joined with 24 other state attorneys general in filing a lawsuit to scuttle new EPA regulations that would reduce mercury emissions from power plants.
The Archdiocese of New York and a national Christian retailer are questioning some of the findings in a report that they sold crucifixes manufactured under sweatshop conditions in a Chinese factory.
St. Patrick’s Cathedral, the seat of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese, pulled the crucifixes off its shelves last week after the National Labor Committee (NLC), a human rights group, held a news conference on its report in front of the church. The Archdiocese offered this comment, according to the Catholic News Service:
“There is no ‘conclusive evidence’ to back up allegations that crucifixes sold in the gift shop at St. Patrick’s Cathedral and other religious goods stores were made in Chinese sweatshops, the Archdiocese of New York said in a Nov. 21 statement.
“The gift shop still does not know that these claims are true, the statement said.”
The statement apparently did not address any of the evidence presented in the report, which included pictures of the products at the Junxingye Factory in Dongguan, China; copies of production orders and invoices tracking them to the company that supplies the church; testimony from workers at the factory, and pictures of the conditions at the factory.
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The Archdiocese proposed it may be the real victim and criticized the author of the report, Charles Kernaghan. The Catholic News Service reported:
“The Archdiocese statement said the press coverage of Kernaghan’s claims was another example of ‘what can only be deemed hostility and bigotry toward religion’ by the news media.
“In an age when it sometimes seems that virtually everything sold in this country is made in China, it is difficult not to wonder what Mr. Kernaghan’s motivation was in focusing on crucifixes and releasing his allegations to the media without addressing his concerns to those in a position to investigate them and make whatever adjustments or changes that might be necessary once they arrived at the truth of the matter, the statement added.”
Earlier, the Archdiocese had suggested that by holding the news conference in front of St. Patrick’s, the NLC was “exploiting” the church. Kernaghan responded on the NLC website:
“I beg to differ. It was the young women at the Junxingye factory in China, forced to work 15
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