FaithWorld

(A newborn baby in Brooklyn, New York on  October 31, 2011, the day the world’s population reached seven billion according to projections by the United Nations.  REUTERS/Lucas Jackson )

Sophia tops the list of names for American baby girls for the second year in a row, while King and Messiah are becoming increasingly popular names for boys, the U.S. Social Security Administration said on Thursday.

Jacob has become a standby for boys’ names, topping that category for the 14th straight year. Liam and Elizabeth broke into the Top 10 at No. 6 and No. 10 respectively, the SSA said in a statement.

But rising on the list are a couple of less traditional, but more attention-grabbing names. Messiah was the fourth fastest-growing name for boys, rising to 387th in 2012 from the 633th spot in 2011, according to the federal agency.

King became the seventh fastest-growing boy’s name, reaching the 256th most popular spot in 2012, compared with 389th the year before, the agency said.

(A crescent moon is seen with the planet Jupiter in the sky over Amman December 1, 2008. REUTERS/Ali Jarekji)

France’s Muslim leaders have agreed to end almost 1,400 years of Islamic tradition and use modern astronomy to determine the start of the holy month of Ramadan and other Islamic holidays.

The French Muslim Council (CFCM) voted on Thursday to start using astronomical calculations to set the date rather than relying on the naked eye to sight the new crescent moon.

(An 1859 U.S. family Bible, December 2006/David Ball)

A Texas judge on Wednesday ruled that the “Bible banners” waved by cheerleaders during football games in a small school district are constitutionally protected free speech and that the tradition will be allowed to continue.

No law “prohibits the cheerleaders from using religious-themed banners at school sporting events,” State District Judge Steven Thomas wrote in a two-page final ruling. He had temporarily ruled in favor of the cheerleaders in October.

For generations it has been a tradition in Kountze, a town of 2,100 in the Piney Woods of east Texas, for cheerleaders to write Bible verses and religious messages – such as, “If God is with us, who can be against us?” – on large sheets of paper. The football players run through the banners when they take the field for home games.

Damascus, 19 June 2007/Samosyr

Iran has condemned what it called a Syrian rebel attack on a shrine where remains of a 7th-century figure revered by Shi’ite Muslims were dug up and taken away, highlighting how Syria’s civil war is inflaming sectarian anger.

A report of the desecration of the Hojr Ibn Oday shrine near Damascus, posted with photographs on Facebook in late April, could not be verified but it prompted the Shi’ite leadership in Tehran to urge respect for holy sites in a conflict where the rebels include Sunni Islamists hostile to Iran.

Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi was quoted by Iranian Press TV saying: “Such acts could ignite the fire of religious rifts among followers of the divine religions”. He urged international organizations to safeguard sacred Islamic and Christian places in Syria, an ancient crossroads for religions.

(Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama speaks at the Anwar Sadat Lecture for Peace at the University of Maryland in College Park, Maryland May 7, 2013. REUTERS/Gary Cameron)

Exiled Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama has decried Buddhist monks’ attacks on Muslims in Myanmar, saying killing in the name of religion was “unthinkable.”

The Dalai Lama, a foremost Buddhist leader, told an audience at the University of Maryland at the start of a U.S. tour that the root of seemingly sectarian conflict was political, not spiritual.

(An Orthodox Jewish man sits outside the building where the 14th Plenary Assembly of the World Jewish Congress is taking place, in Budapest May 5, 2013.  REUTERS/Laszlo Balogh)

The World Jewish Congress urged Hungary on Tuesday to crack down on the far-right Jobbik party and called on governments in Europe to consider banning neo-Nazi parties threatening democracy and minority rights.

The WJC plenary assembly, held in the Hungarian capital rather than Jerusalem to highlight rising anti-Semitism in Hungary, passed a resolution saying Budapest must recognise that Jobbik poses “a fundamental threat to Hungary’s democracy.

(Eniko Kovacs Hegedus, parliamentary member of Hungary’s far-right Jobbik party, delivers a speech to hundreds of far-right supporters during a rally against the World Jewish Congress Plenary Assembly in Budapest May 4, 2013. REUTERS/Laszlo Balogh)

German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle told Jewish leaders on Monday that the European Union needed better legal means to fight racism in member states.

Speaking amid growing racism against Jews and Roma in Hungary, he told the World Jewish Congress (WJC) assembly that the EU’s legal options to curb violations of democratic norms were either as weak as toothpicks or as strong as bazookas.

(Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban delivers a speech during the 14th Plenary Assembly of the World Jewish Congress in Budapest May 5, 2013.  REUTERS/Laszlo Balogh )

Prime Minister Viktor Orban strongly denounced growing anti-Semitism in Hungary on Sunday but stopped short of censuring the far-right Jobbik party his audience of world Jewish leaders most wanted him to scold.

Orban told the World Jewish Congress (WJC), which is holding its four-yearly assembly in Hungary to highlight its concern about rising hostility to Jews here and elsewhere in Europe, that anti-Semitism was “unacceptable and intolerable”.

(Supporters of Hungary’s far-right Jobbik party attend a rally against the World Jewish Congress Plenary Assembly in Budapest May 4, 2013. REUTERS/Laszlo Balogh )

Leaders of a far-right Hungarian party accused Israelis of plotting to buy up the country as several hundred nationalists protested on Saturday on the eve of a meeting of the World Jewish Congress in Budapest.

Senior figures from the opposition Jobbik party, the third biggest with 43 seats in the 386-member parliament, harangued the crowd with charges that Israeli President Shimon Peres had praised Jews for buying property in Hungary.

(A man prays outside a mosque in Banda Aceh December 5, 2012. REUTERS/Damir Sagolj )

Large majorities in the Muslim world want the Islamic legal and moral code of sharia as the official law in their countries, but they disagree on what it includes and who should be subject to it, an extensive new survey says.

Over three-quarters of Muslims in the Middle East and North Africa, South Asia and Southeast Asia want sharia courts to decide family law issues such as divorce and property disputes, the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life said on Tuesday.