The Mormon Church is hitting back against the idea that followers are taught they will get their own planet in the afterlife – a misconception popularised most recently by the musical The Book of Mormon.

The Boy Scouts of America (BSA) has thrown open its ranks to gay youngsters — but not gay adult leaders — in a compromise some warned could fracture the organisation and lead to defections.

The Boy Scouts of America has thrown open its ranks to gay youngsters, but not adult leaders, in a compromise that some warned could fracture the organisation and lead to mass defections.

The country’s leading technology trade association, which represents major multinationals including IBM, Boeing and Microsoft, has written a brief in support of the Boy Scouts of America in a lawsuit that seeks to make public the organisation’s so-called “perversion files”.

A firing squad executed a convicted killer today, US prison officials said.

The US Boy Scouts organisation has been ordered to pay $1.4m (€1m) to a man who claimed he was sexually abused by a leader as a child.

Burma’s military rulers have released the personal doctor of jailed opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who goes on trial tomorrow for allegedly violating terms of her house arrest.

An elder of a polygamist sect and two other church members surrendered to Texas authorities to face charges over the marriage of underage girls to older men.

Thousands of protesters took to the streets to protest passage of a measure banning gay marriage in California, authorities said.

Texas child welfare chiefs have asked a judge to put eight children from a polygamist sect’s ranch back into foster care because their mothers refuse to limit their contact with men accused of being involved in underage marriages.

More than half the teenage girls taken from a polygamist compound in west Texas have children or are pregnant, state authorities said today.

FEMALE abuse victims as young as 13 may have given birth at the Texas headquarters of a religious sect, a court has heard.

Funeral services for Mormon church president Gordon B. Hinckley this week could draw tens of thousands of mourners with the church estimating that between 50,000 and 160,000 will attend two days of public viewing and Saturday’s funeral.

An American polygamous-sect leader was sentenced to 10 years to life in prison for his role in the arranged marriage of teenage cousins.

The leader of a polygamous Mormon splinter group has been convicted in the US of being an accomplice to rape for forcing a 14-year-old girl to marry her 19-year-old cousin.

Ground-breaking talks between the Government and religious bodies began in Dublin today.

A polygamist Mormon sect leader who was on the FBI’s Most Wanted List has been arrested and faces sexual misconduct charges for allegedly arranging marriages between underage girls and older men, authorities in Las Vegas said today.

BREAKAWAY Mormon leader Warren Jeffs has been added to the FBI’s list of “Ten Most Wanted Fugitives,” a move that caps law enforcement’s dramatic change of approach toward the polygamous group in recent years.

NEW statistics on religious diversity show the US’s historic Protestant majority has plummeted to 52%, and by the end of 2004 it may no longer be the nation’s dominant religious group.

Polygamist Tom Green broke down on the witness stand as he described the hardships his family underwent as they pursued their unconventional lifestyle.