SALT LAKE CITY — Here’s a look at the news for May 23.
MUST-READ NEWS THIS MORNING:
LDS Church leaders offer insight into church finances
The LDS Church provided a glimpse into the church’s finances on Tuesday, according to the Deseret News.
The church said it spent "billions of dollars over the past few years" to help solve global welfare and humanitarian needs, the Deseret News reported.
The documents offered a glimpse into how leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints manage finances around the world.
“One release included answers to 14 questions about how the church uses tithing and other funds, when and how it pays taxes, how and why it invests in stocks, bonds, businesses, real estate and agriculture and why it maintains financial reserves,” the Deseret News reported.
FanX co-founder apologizes to local author
A number of fans and Utah authors don’t plan on attending the FanX Salt Lake Comic Convention in September after the convention co-founder told author Shannon Hale to “sit this one out,” according to the Deseret News.
Hale sent a private email to Bryan Brandenburg in which she criticized the way the convention’s other co-founder Dan Farr responded to sexual harassment allegations against author Richard Paul Evans.
“Brandenburg posted that Evans was not going to be attending the convention in September but did not state a specific reason why, which Hale took issue with,” the Deseret News reported. “In her email to him, she called for a public statement clarifying and refuting Farr’s statement on the harassment allegations, stating that she would not feel comfortable attending the convention and letting her fans come to a place that was unsafe.”
Brandenburg listed several ways FanX responded to sexual harassment and assault in his response.
Read Hale’s reaction at the Deseret News.
Legendary author Philip Roth dies
American literary giant Philip Roth passed away this week, according to The New York Times. He reportedly died from congestive heart failure at the age of 85.
Roth’s works included “American Pastoral” and “Goodbye Columbus,” among many others.
The Pulitzer Prize-winning author drew much of his inspiration from Jewish family life.
“In the course of a very long career, Mr. Roth took on many guises — mainly versions of himself — in the exploration of what it means to be an American, a Jew, a writer, a man,” the Times wrote. “He was a champion of Eastern European novelists like Ivan Klima and Bruno Schulz, and also a passionate student of American history and the American vernacular.”
More than half of Mormon missionaries transfer out of Nicaragua
The LDS Church is moving 169 of its 327 missionaries in Nicaragua to other countries, the Deseret News reported.
"Due to growing political instability in Nicaragua, the church is in the process of transferring 169 missionaries out of that country," said Daniel Woodruff, spokesman for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. "This includes 37 missionaries from the Nicaragua Managua North Mission, all of whom were nearing the end of their service and will return home. In the Nicaragua Managua South Mission, 20 missionaries will return home while 112 missionaries will be temporarily reassigned to other missions in North America, South America and the Caribbean."
Church officials said they plan to move 158 missionaries in the country to safe areas.
Protests broke out in Nicaragua after the country’s president proposed making taxpayers pay into the social security system.
AROUND THE WEB:
- CBS: Trump says planned North Korea summit may happen after scheduled date
- Quartz: Among Kim Jong Un’s worries about a summit in Singapore: a coup back home
- CNN: Man defending Hawaii home from volcano is hit by flaming lava bomb
- CNN: Duke and Duchess of Sussex make first appearance since royal wedding
- Reuters: Venezuela expels U.S. envoys in response to sanctions