Today, the Michigan-based ministry International Aid announced its decision to cease operations. The news release (posted today, but dated yesterday) reads as follows:

SPRING LAKE, Mich., July 1, 2009 – Spring Lake, Mich. - based International Aid (IA) said today it is ceasing operations effective immediately. Board Chair Roger Spoelman said the board voted this morning to shut down the agency.

“While this was a tough decision for all of us who believe in the mission of the organization, we simply do not have the resources to continue even another day,” said Spoelman. IA acting CEO Dr. Gordon D. Loux informed the agency’s 40 U.S. employees this afternoon. The shutdown also immediately affects 32 employees in Honduras and the Philippines.

Founded in 1980, International Aid provided health care services, technology, training and supplies to the poor in developing countries around the globe in addition to emergency aid for those affected by natural disasters.

Loux said the agency will continue shipments of medical equipment and supplies. He said he will be working with vendors and creditors affected by today’s shut down as well as notifying the agency’s corporate and other partners.

JUNE 30 UPDATE:
The Bully! Pulpit, a pop culture news blog, reports that rumors that Michael Jackson accepted Christ may have been false. Jackson, who died of cardiac arrest last week at the age of 50, was rumored by some to have become a Christian just weeks before his death.

Gospel singer Andrae Crouch and his twin sister, singer and minister, Sandra, apparently visited Jackson recently at the pop star's request, and they did pray together. But exactly what they prayed depends on whom you ask.

Last Friday, gospel duo Mary Mary blogged on their Facebook page that Jackson "prayed with Sandra and Andre and accepted Christ into his heart. Now he's singing in the heavenly choir! Our hearts rejoice!"

But the Bully! Pulpit reported that that wasn't the full story, or even fully accurate.

The New York Times reports today that Rick Warren's quarterly magazine Purpose Driven Connection, published by Reader's Digest Association and Warren's Saddleback Church, is "the project that signals Reader’s Digest’s future."

“That is the model going forward,” RDA president and CEO Mary Berner tells the paper. Reader's Digest itself will likely have more "spiritual content," and the company may spin off other titles focused on religious leaders.

“As far as I’m concerned, I don’t care what the religion is, what the spirituality is, as long as it’s legitimate, there’s a built-in community and it’s global,” Berner told the paper. “We don’t choose our partners to change the world, we choose them because we’re running a business. I guess it sounds cynical if you believe that to run a business to make money is cynical. But that’s what I’m paid to do.”

Times reporter Stephanie Clifford seems skeptical, especially in this paragraph:

“[RDA's titles] are brands that may not be considered cool by the often elitist and self-absorbed standards of New York media,” [Berner] said. She had taken a car from Manhattan that morning, and wore a pink wool shirt-dress, patent leather Manolo Blahnik heels, and diamond hoop earrings.

Update: Never mind?

The demand was made by French prosecutors on Monday (June 15) as they wrapped up their case against the church's Paris headquarters and bookshop. If found guilty, the institutions may also face a nearly $6 million fine.

Six members of the church are also on trial, and may also face heavy fines along with prison sentences if convicted.

The plaintiffs, two former Scientologists, claim the church conned them into spending tens of thousands of dollars in bogus products in the 1990s, including an "electrometer" that the church says can measure energy levels.

But the church, which claims a membership of 45,000 in France, rejects the accusations and claims it is being persecuted.

The plaintiffs, are "apostates who ... want to criticize their ex-religion," Fabio Amicarelli, a European Scientology representative, told French media recently.

While the charges pose the most serious challenge to the French church to date, they are only the latest clash in a nearly two-decade long battle against Scientology. Several fraud cases have already been judged and several members convicted of embezzlement in France, where Scientology is viewed with deep suspicion.

In one case, the head of the church's Lyons chapter was sentenced to 18 months in prison in 1996 for his role in a member's suicide.

Founded in 1954 by late American science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard, the church is considered a religion in the United States with adherents that include Hollywood stars Tom Cruise and John Travolta.

The French government, however, lists Scientology as a sect, reflecting an official intolerance of unorthodox religions. Indeed, the government even has an official sect watchdog body -- known as MIVILUDES, the Interministerial Mission for Monitoring and Combatting Cultic Deviances.

A government report published in May said the number of religious sects had tripled in France over the past 15 years to at least 600 different movements.

Christianity Today's coverage of Scientology, including a brief explainer of why Christians object to it, dates back to 1969.