In Brief
In Brief
Saturday, February 3, 2007; Page B09
MIDEAST VIOLENCE
Religious Leaders Meet With Rice
Christian, Jewish and Muslim leaders met with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Monday to press for a greater U.S. role in ending Mideast violence.
Meeting with Rice were Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick, retired archbishop of Washington; Presiding Bishop Mark S. Hanson of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America; Episcopal Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori; Sayyid M. Syeed, national director of the Islamic Society of North America; Rabbi Paul Menitoff, a leader in Reform Judaism; and Rabbi Amy Small, a leader of the Reconstructionist branch of Judaism.
The leaders are part of the National Interreligious Leadership Initiative for Peace in the Middle East, which represents more than 35 religious groups and supports a two-state solution for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
-- Associated Press
RURAL FIRES
Arsonist's Parents Visit Burned Church
The parents of a former Birmingham-Southern College student who pleaded guilty in a series of rural church arsons visited with the congregation of one burned church Sunday, asking for forgiveness and expressing remorse.
"My son wants you to know how sorry he is," Mike Cloyd told members of Galilee Baptist Church in Panola, Ala.
Mike and Kim Cloyd of Pelham, Ala., are the parents of Matthew Cloyd, one of three former college students who pleaded guilty to federal charges in the church arsons.
Matthew Cloyd, 21, Benjamin Moseley, 20, and Russell DeBusk, 20, await sentencing in federal court and also face state charges in the arson case.
