CHURCH NEWS: Daughters of the Utah Pioneers to Celebrate 100th Anniversary
The International Society of Daughters of Utah Pioneers will celebrate their organization's centennial next week, cementing their status as one of the oldest associations related to Mormons not part of the LDS Church. The organization was established on April 11, 1901, and has since grown to include "camps" (chapters) in every Utah county as well as in Arizona and Idaho. Membership in the DUP totals some 19,000.(Read this whole story.) SPORTS: LDS Rugby Player's Conduct May End Career
LDS Rugby Player John Hopoate's professional career may have ended this past week amid a storm of controversy. Hopoate reached an agreement Sunday with his team, the Wests Tigers (in Australia's National Rugby League), under which he resigned. The action came less than a week after Hopoate was suspended from the league for 12 games for his unusual method of distracting his opponents. (Read this whole story.) POLITICS: Mormon Candidate Loses in Nauvoo, Margin Makes Registration Complaints Moot
Don Capener, an LDS man seeking to be elected the first Mormon mayor of Nauvoo in more than 20 years, lost his challenge to incumbent Tom Wilson, giving Wilson his third term in office. Wilson's margin of victory made moot the charges that some LDS Church members, apparently those temporarily in Nauvoo working on several LDS Church projects, were not allowed to register to vote.(Read this whole story.) BUSINESS NEWS: Utah's Mormon Workforce Is Advantage Leavitt is Promoting
Utah Governor, Mike Leavitt, isn't taking junket trips to Silicon Valley every month, he's persuading high tech companies to come to Utah. "What if I showed you a place that takes less time to get to by air than it takes to drive across the valley. Where they have an abundance of tech-savvy workers, with a high quality of life, where housing is reasonably priced, where there are already 2,500 technology companies and three major research institutions. Would you be interested?"(Read this whole story.) PEOPLE: Reformed Rebel: Mormon Convert 'Big Daddy' Roth Dies
Ed "Big Daddy" Roth, whose outrageous car designs and anti-hero cartoon character "Rat Fink" helped define the California hotrod culture of the 1950s and 1960s, died Wednesday in his studio in Manti, Utah. More than 25 years ago Roth re-examined his life after a divorce and the failure of his magazine and joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, leading him to put LDS symbols and references in his recent car designs. He was 69.(Read this whole story.) CHURCH NEWS: Mountain Meadows Massacre Artifacts to Remain in Arkansas
They say that time heals all wounds. Perhaps "they" never heard of the Mountain Meadows Massacre. In the latest chapter of the on-going saga of perhaps the most infamous incident in the history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Church and its primary opponent have reached an uneasy conclusion.(Read this whole story.) ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT NEWS: Brigham City PG-13 Rating Stirs Controversy
With the premiere tonight of Richard Dutcher's second movie about Mormons for a Mormon audience, the online discussion board on the film's website is brimming with controversy of the PG-13 rating given the movie. Zion Films announced earlier this week that "Brigham City" had received the rating from the Motion Picture Association of America's ratings board. But filmmaker Dutcher says he is not concerned over the controversy and in fact welcomes the debate, "It's a conversation that our people really need to have. If we're always holding ourselves to a G or a PG standard, it's going to limit the kind of films that we can make."(Read this whole story.)

CHURCH NEWS: RLDS Church Will Become 'Community of Christ' on Friday
The Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, often called the RLDS Church, will change its name this coming Friday to the "Community of Christ" in an attempt to change the way outsiders and Church members look at the Church. Tom Morain, an RLDS Church member in Ames, Iowa, says this move looks forward instead of back, "The word "reorganized' looks back to an event in the 1800s and defines us in relationship to the Mormon Church, and we've moved beyond that. We're trying to get away from the constant comparison to the Mormons," Morain explained.(Read this whole story.)