Missionaries

Visit a large Korean church in Southern California and you are likely to see a distinctive part of the decor -- a world map peppered with markers locating missionaries supported by the church. At Grace Korean Church in Fullerton, two walls inside the elegant atrium serve as a photo gallery highlighting the work of 208 missionaries serving in 47 countries, including Sweden, Italy, Argentina, Bangladesh, Russia and Vietnam. "Mission is prayer. Mission is warfare.

An internal investigation by the CIA found that agency officials engaged in a cover-up to hide agency negligence in the downing of a private airplane over Peru in 2001 as part of a mistaken attack on an aircraft suspected of carrying illegal narcotics. Excerpts of an internal CIA report released Thursday accuse agency officials of lying to members of Congress and withholding crucial information from criminal investigators and senior Bush administration officials.

Family practitioner Alberto Hernandez suffers anxiety attacks. Dentist Norah Garcia is prone to bouts of uncontrollable sobbing. General practitioner Cesar Fernandez, 31, has high blood pressure. They are among the tens of thousands of doctors, nurses, surgeons and dentists dispatched from their Cuban homeland as medical missionaries to some of the world's poorest countries, in the process earning hard currency for the communist regime.

Police in western India arrested two Christian missionaries, who allegedly forced conversions, and 11 Hindu hard-liners accused of attacking them this week, officials said. The two missionaries were charged with "unlawful religious conversions" after a complaint filed by two Hindu residents of Ichalkaranji, 140 miles south of Mumbai, police said. The missionaries told police they were attacked by Hindu extremists, and TV footage showed them being kicked and punched.

Since 23 South Korean Christian aid workers were kidnapped by Taliban insurgents more than two weeks ago in Afghanistan, members of nearly 1,000 Korean churches in Southern California have been in prayer. From Thursday evening through Friday this week, many who had been praying for the hostages and their families came to Koreatown to express their sorrow and remember the Rev. Bae Hyung-kyu 42, and Shim Sung-min, 29 of Saemmul Community Church, who were slain by their captors.

Centenarians were rare in 1907, when Marshall Philip Welles was born. More people live to be 100 these days, but Welles still stands apart. For starters, he holds a valid California driver's license -- one of 183 people in his age group who do. In 2002, just 58 people 100 or older held a license. "I like the freeways better than the streets," Welles said in an interview. "Cars are coming at you from all directions on the streets, but only one direction on the freeway. I never go over 70 mph."

Nineteen South Korean Christian volunteers abducted by Taliban militiamen in Afghanistan more than five weeks ago appeared to be on the brink of release Tuesday after negotiators for both sides said they had struck a deal that should set them free within days. Their freedom appeared to come with few concessions from the South Korean side.

UCLA quarterback Ben Olson was living on $130 a week, rising at 6:30 a.m. to get ready for work. There was one hour for lunch, then the nose went back to the grindstone until he returned home at 9:30 p.m. This was his life during a two-year Mormon mission that took him from the football field to Sparwood, Canada. The only "sack" he knew during that period was welcomed, the one he fell into after a long day on the job. "It's a very disciplined life," Olson said.

Paul Filidis thought little of Christianity as he backpacked through Afghanistan in the early 1970s, searching for top-grade hashish and Eastern enlightenment. Then his passport was stolen and he took shelter with a group of missionaries who had moved to Kabul to help wanderers on the hippie trail. "They looked just like me," Filidis said. The missionaries took Filidis in and helped him get a new passport.

A man was charged in Chesapeake with killing a Mormon missionary and wounding another in a shooting that police suspect occurred because the victims had witnessed a crime while they were discussing their religion door-to-door. James Rickey Boughton Jr., 19, was arrested at his home and was being held without bond, police said. He is charged with first-degree murder and malicious wounding, among other counts.