The National Council of Churches says the Presbyterian Church USA lost 27.3 percent of its members between 2004 and 2012, the United Church of Christ fell by 25.8 percent, the Episcopal Church declined by 19.6 percent - and all other mainline Protestant faiths also shrank. However, strong growth was enjoyed by Mormons, who say that Jesus came to America (up 12.1 percent), Jehovah's Witnesses, who await the return of Christ at the Battle of Armageddon (up 13.7 percent), and Assemblies of God, whose members speak in the "unknown tongue" (up 11.3 percent).
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Marshall University is interviewing possible new presidents - including Jerome Gilbert, provost of Mississippi State University. Ray Rappold, former director of the National Youth Science Camp, says Dr. Gilbert came to the West Virginia mountain camp in 1973 as a brainy teenage delegate from Mississippi, and has remained a loyal camp alumni.
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School pupils can be witty. Cheers for Winfield Middle School kids who brought a "Donald Trumpkin" - complete with a picture of the mop-topped billionaire politician - to the yearly pumpkin drop at Appalachian Power Park.
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Another mighty institution wiped out by the computer revolution: Playboy magazine says it will stop printing nude photos, because the Internet provides "every sex act imaginable for free."
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We're proud of Mark Washburn, a Gazette reporter who went to Knight-Ridder newspapers and won three Pulitzer Prizes for heading disaster news teams - for Hurricane Andrew in 1993, the Red River Flood in 1997 and Hurricane Katrina in 2005. He spoke last week at his alma mater, West Virginia Wesleyan College.
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What are the essentials of life? Sigmund Freud reportedly said: "Love and work are the cornerstones of our humanness." The phrase isn't in his writings, but were attributed to him by a biographer.
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Subaru cars bear a lovely star cluster as a logo. The Japanese automaker says the cluster represents the tiny Pleiades group in the sky - but, actually, the formation on the cars doesn't look much like the formation in the heavens.
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Bearing arms in West Virginia: In a shooting rampage that began in Huntington, Stephen Wayne Hatfield killed his ex-girlfriend and wounded two men. He pleaded guilty and drew a life term. But now he wants the state Supreme Court to void his sentence on grounds that he was mentally ill at the time.
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Rep. Alex Mooney, R-W.Va., visited an eating disorders clinic and other Charleston facilities last week. Well, that wipes out suspicion that the former Maryland Republican chairman doesn't know where Charleston is located.