Proving that you are never too old to find love, Henry Kerr, 97, and Valerie Berkowitz, 87, are marrying at Sunridge Court residential home in Golders Green.

When Henry Kerr met an attractive younger woman, he feared she wouldn't give an older man a second glance.

So he embarked on a four-year campaign to win over the object of his affections, writing her love poetry and spending hours exchanging life stories.

And yesterday, 97-year- old Mr Kerr proved you can't hurry love, when he finally wed his younger companion - Valerie Berkowitz, 87.

He said: 'I would have asked her much earlier, if I had thought such an attractive, witty young lady of 87 would have anything to do with an old codger like me.'

Mr Kerr believed his love life was over following his wife Gladys's death in 2004, but said he was 'struck like a thunderbolt' when he met Mrs Berkowitz at the North London care home they share.

He said: 'I thought she found me pushy and conceited - until she acquired an analytical interest in the poems I read at the poetry circle I founded when I moved in here. Then we found our affinities.'

When they started talking, the pair discovered they had both lived in South Africa, and both had families scattered across the world.

He wrote several love poems in an attempt to win her affections.

Mr Kerr, who moved to the care home in 2006 when he was 94, said: 'When I did ask her to marry me a few months ago she went hysterical - she put her head down on the table and couldn't stop laughing.'

Even once Mrs Berkowitz had accepted the proposal, the couple expected to stay permanently engaged to avoid the ' complication' of marriage.

But Mr Kerr, who ran an investment company before retirement, said: 'I felt people were whispering behind their hands and gossiping about us moving in together, and that it was important for us to be Mr and Mrs.'

The couple finally married in a traditional Jewish ceremony yesterday at their care home in Golders Green, followed by a high tea for 90 guests.

Jindo Island is the third largest island in Korea, next to Jejudo and Geojedo Island. It is made up of 250 smaller islands, and it is famous for the appearance of a dry road in the middle of the sea, near the end of February and mid June of the lunar calendar. As it resembles a passage in the Old Testament in the Book of Exodus, the event is called “The Miracle of Moses”. When the water recedes, a road about 30-40 meter wide and 2.8 km long appears, which stays for about an hour before being submerged again.
Jindo Island has some legends which are still popular today, especially that of “Old Woman Bbyong of Hoedongri”. A long time ago, there were many tigers on Jindo Island. When tigers began appearing frequently in the village, the people fled to Modo Island. In the process, only the old woman Bbyong ended up remaining on the island, so the lady prayed everyday to Yongwang, the god of the ocean, to let her see her family again. Around February, Yongwang appeared to her in her dream and said, “I will send a rainbow to the sea tomorrow; ride it and cross the ocean”. The next day old woman Bbyong went out to the sea and prayed again, and the seawater parted as the rainbow road appeared. Through this road, her family and the other villagers came back to the island. Therefore when the sea parts, the people celebrate this phenomenon by holding the Yeongdeung Festival to remember the Old Woman Bbyong. During the Festival, original folk plays of Jindo Island are performed and draws many tourists into Jindo Island.

In south-western Korea, Jindo will host its 28th Yeongdeung Festival July 22~24. For a few days each year, a wide sandbar appears during low tide and temporarily connects the two islands of Jindo and Modo. The 2.8 km land bridge draws countless visitors who are eager to make the crossing and explore the ocean floor.

Following his trip to Jindo in 1975, a French Ambassador to Korea, Pierre Lande wrote an article of the tidal phenomenon for a French newspaper. He witnessed the sea parting and dubbed it the “Moses’ Miracle in Korea”, thus propelling Jindo into the global public’s spotlight. Visitors to the Jindo Yeongdeung Festival will have a rare opportunity to bask in the poetic sunset seen from Jindo Island as well as soak up the rich cultural heritage present in the region. Peruse the works of Heo Yu, a great painter during the Joseon Dynasty at the Ullimsanbang studio. Or traverse the islands of Dadohae Haesang National Park, which consist of more than 1,700 islands and islets.

By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down;
yea we wept, when we remembered Zion.

When the wicked
Carried us away in captivity
Required from us a song
Now how shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land.

This week, as Jews around the world observed the fasting day of Tisha B’av, commemorating the destruction of the First and Second Jewish Temples in ancient Jerusalem, a Brazilian megachurch received planning permission to build a 10,000-seat replica of Solomon’s Temple in the city of São Paulo.

As Tom Phillips of The Guardian noted, a Brazilian newspaper, Estado de São Paulo, reported that the church will cost an estimated $200 million and should be completed in four years.

According to a post on the blog of Bishop Edir Macedo, the founder of Brazil’s evangelical Universal Church of the Kingdom of God, which is building the replica, the structure will be 180 feet high, making it nearly twice as tall as the Christ the Redeemer statue that towers over Rio de Janeiro. Mr. Macedo also said that stones of the same type used by Solomon had been ordered from Jerusalem to be used in a complex which will also house 36 Bible schools, television and radio studios and a 1,000-space parking lot.

To get to church on a recent Sunday morning, the Yeldell family walked no farther than their own living room to greet fellow worshippers.

The members of this "house church" are part of what experts say is a fundamental shift in the way U.S. Christians think about church. Skip the sermons, costly church buildings and large, faceless crowds, they say. House church is about relationships forged in small faith communities.

In general, house churches consist of 12 to 15 people who share what's going on in their lives, often turning to Scriptures for guidance. They rely on the Holy Spirit or spontaneity to lead the direction of their weekly gatherings.

"I think part of the appeal for some in the house church movement is the desire to return to a simpler expression of church," said Ed Stetzer, a seminary professor and president of Lifeway Research, which is affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention. "For many, church has become too much (like a) business while they just want to live like the Bible."

House church proponents claim their small groups are sort of a throwback to the early Christian
church in that they have no clergy and everyone is expected to contribute to the teaching, singing and praying

The man, who was not identified, called his wife while she was travelling in Europe to tell her he was returning to their home country and taking all the furniture, the online edition of the Yediot Aharonot newspaper said.

The woman rushed back to Israel only to find their home empty. Even her clothes, jewelry and cats were gone. Her husband cancelled her credit card and medical insurance.

But she told YNet what hurt most was the loss of her 40 cats and two dogs.

She filed a theft complaint with the police.

Indonesian Muslims have been praying in the wrong direction, the country's highest Islamic authority has said.

The Indonesian Ulema Council told the country's Muslim populace in March to turn west when they offered their daily prayers. Muslims are supposed to face the Kaaba, the religion's most sacred site in the city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia.

At the time, the council said that the direction of Kaaba from Indonesia laid to the west.

Turns out, it didn't. Africa did.

So, on Friday, the council issued a new edict: face northwest.

"After the first fatwa (edict) a few months ago that stated that the praying direction is west, we have announced that the correct direction for praying is indeed northwest, and we have issued a new fatwa (edict) to correct it," said Ma'ruf Amin, the head of fatwa division in the Indonesian Ulema Council.

"This is important because facing west will mean that people were facing Africa when they pray," he said.

Amin said the new edict does not mean that mosques in the country will need to be torn down. "They (those praying inside) just need to adjust their praying direction slightly," he said.

Some residents of the world's most populous Muslim country took the change in stride.

"I don't really worry about the praying direction," said Riza Irwansyah, an office worker in Jakarta. "The important thing is I prayed to Allah and I believe He will listen, no matter which way I'm facing."

A Jordanian national from the city's Far North Side was convicted today in federal court of mailing a bomb threat to a Jewish school in Chicago, officials said.
Mohammad Alkaramla, 26, of Chicago, was convicted in a two-day bench trial before U.S. District Court Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer, according to U.S. attorney's office spokesman Randall Samborn.

Pallmeyer revoked bond for Alkaramla and ordered him detained pending sentencing, scheduled for Sept. 29, said Samborn.

Alkaramla faces a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

Alkaramla was arrested in March 2009 for mailing a threatening letter where he threatened to kill, injure and intimidate individuals and destroy the building, officials said.

The letter was addressed to numerous rabbis and leaders in the Jewish community and mailed to the Ida Crown Jewish Academy in Chicago, officials said.