News Briefs

The Christian village of Korian in the Punjab province of Pakistan was destroyed July 30 in a violent raid by thousands of Muslims. Korian was the home of about 100 Christian families, most of them laborers, the Asian church news agency UCA News reported. • The president of the Canadian bishops' conference is urging a fight against legislative efforts to ease laws governing euthanasia and assisted suicide. Archbishop V. James Weisgerber of Winnipeg has asked Catholics to contact their members of Parliament to make known their views. • Catholics United, a progressive grassroots organizing group, has strongly condemned a new television ad campaign commissioned by the conservative Family Research Council. The campaign focuses on health care reform and Catholics United claims it “misinforms the U.S. public” by using “scare tactics to turn pro-life voters against health reform.” • A new report from the Corporation for National and Community Service has found that more than one third of America’s 61.8 million volunteers (35.9%) served with or through a religious organization in 2008, more than any other type of organization. • Retired Bishop Domingos Lam Ka Tseung of Macau, the first Chinese bishop of that 433-year-old diocese, died July 27. He was 81.