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causes. Maine's Catholic diocese says it raised about $80,000 with a designated collection in 2009 in its effort to overturn Maine's same-sex marriage law, which was passed by the Legislature that year and later rejected by voters. The Catholic church isn't actively campaigning this time, instead focusing on teaching parishioners about the sanctity of marriage between a man and a woman Father's Day, June 17, seemed an appropriate time to kick off this year's fundraising campaign because of the day's focus on family, Conley said. Additional collection-plate offerings at churches are expected in the months ahead.
• "The messaging we're using is that those who are seeking to redefine marriage in Maine believe there's no difference between moms and dads," Conley told The Associated Press. "We believe those differences are relevant. We don't think the differences in the genders are societally imposed roles, and we believe that children benefit when they're in that ideal environment where there's a mom and dad."
• Protect Marriage Maine has been in contact with about 800 churches across the state and expects 150 to 200 to participate in the Father's Day collections, Conley said. They include Methodist, Baptist, Pentecostal, Nazarene, Church of God, Wesleyan, Evangelical Free, Advent Christian and other denominations.
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• JERUSALEM (AP) -- Recent rapes blamed on African migrants have ignited a political and emotional backlash against their ballooning numbers, with Israelis and their leaders stridently -- and in an alarming new development, violently -- calling for their expulsion.
• Israel, bound by an international refugees treaty it ardently promoted, doesn't seem to have that option, and the gap between rhetoric and reality threatens to send simmering social antagonisms boiling over into open conflict.
• It has raised questions, relevant all over the developed world, about how much is owed to the impoverished migrants who manage to sneak in.
• Over the past seven years, as many as 60,000 African migrants, most from Sudan and Eritrea, have slipped across Israel's border with Egypt, exploiting the lack of a physical barrier and widespread lawlessness in the Sinai Peninsula that has been one result of the fall last year of longtime Egyptian ruler Hosni Mubarak.
• Israel is erecting a barrier along the roughly 200 kilometers (125 miles) of border. While this work drags on, the migrants continue to arrive at a rate of about 1,000 a

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