A volcano erupted for the third time in as many months on the western Indonesian island of Sumatra, forcing hundreds of villagers to evacuate, officials said. Mount Sinabung spewed a 7-km (4.3-mile) column of ash into the air Sunday LINK

LINK

Shares of General Motors rose to their highest level in almost three years Wednesday after analysts applauded news that the company could be free of U.S. government ownership by the end of the year. LINK

The Language of Gayspeak: When I first read your response to Scamparini, I must confess that my attention was not drawn immediately to the Ricca scandal, but rather to the fact that you used the term “gay” or “gay person” no less than five times. LINK

“The Virgin is the Mother and loves us all. But it is not the head of the post office, which sends messages every day,” said Francis Pope at Mass on Thursday. LINK

Google is funding a secretive project that will use millions of linked computers to create an Avatar-like virtual reality world in which people could live, interact, and even have sex. LINK

Hawaii is set to become the latest US state to allow gay marriage after it passed a bill legalising same-sex unions. The state’s Senate approved the measure by 19 votes to 4. Hawaii’s Democratic governor indicated he would sign the bill into law without delay. It is expected to come into effect on 2 December. LINK

Coptic Christian cab driver named Aziz was driving down the road when a Muslim noticed that he had a cross hanging from his rear view mirror. This vexed the demonically possessed souls of the heretics, and within moments the devils surrounded his car like the reprobates of Sodom, pulled him out, cut his head off and then stomped and spat on his body. LINK

LINK

“Every year, just for the forced abortion, every day, Glenn, between 15,000 to 25,000 babies were forcefully aborted,” Fu said. “We have received phone calls and reports from China directly and one by one — some women were pregnant with eight months, nine months, pregnancy, baby killed by force. LINK

In a small city in the typhoon-battered Philippines, what’s left of the town hall has been turned into a field hospital where volunteer surgeons operate on survivors by flashlight. LINK

Ultra-traditionalist Roman Catholics have openly challenged Pope Francis by disrupting one of his favorite events, an interfaith ceremony in the Metropolitan Cathedral meant to promote religious harmony on the anniversary of the beginning of the Holocaust. LINK

“A monumental strategic shift is taking place in the Middle East as an Islamist super-bloc is forming. Turkey and the Muslim Brotherhood are making up with Iran and Hezbollah. Egypt and the Gulf states are forming their own alliance. The U.S. outreach to Iran and the Brotherhood has left it missing from the equation. LINK

LINK