National Notes
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Spanish Bible selling well. Less than a year after its launch, the Nueva Version Internacional--a Spanish-language Bible produced by the International Bible Society--has topped the 1 million mark in sales in the United States and Latin America. "The NVI activity this first year has soared beyond our greatest expectations," said Dean Merrill, vice president for IBS-U.S. Publishing, which owns the copyright to NVI. "We had no idea that so many pastors, church members and evangelistic organizations would embrace it so readily, both in the U.S. and throughout Latin America."
___ Court rejects challenge to Good Friday law. The U.S. Supreme Court has rejected a challenge to a Maryland law that mandates the annual closing of schools on Good Friday. Without comment, the justices Jan. 18 turned away an appeal by retired teacher Judith Koenick, who argued the rule violated the separation of church and state required by the U.S. Constitution.
___ Abortion rate lowest in two decades. The number of legal abortions in the United States dropped to its lowest rate in 20 years in 1997, the government's Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta said Jan. 6. About 1.2 million legal abortions were reported to the CDC in 1997 (the latest year for which figures are available), a 3 percent decrease from 1996 and the lowest number since 1975. The CDC pointed toward a decline in unplanned pregnancies, attitude changes about abortions and reduced access to the procedure as factors that could have influenced the drop in numbers. The CDC reported that slightly more than half of women who received an abortion in 1997--52 percent--were 24 years of age or younger, and most were white and unmarried. Fifty-five percent of the procedures were completed within the first two months of pregnancy.
___ Falwell sues White House, FBI. In a lawsuit filed last week against the White House and the FBI, religious broadcaster Jerry Falwell claims he was denied access to information about him contained in a "secret" Justice Department database about religious and anti-abortion leaders. In the lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, Falwell claims the information about him is used for smear tactics. According to the FBI, no information relating to Falwell's request was found in a search of the agency's automated records--which date back to 1958.
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