1) The number of Christians has declined 12% since 1990, and is now 76%, the lowest percentage in American history.

2) The growth of non-believers has come largely from men. Twenty percent of men express no religious affiliation; 12% of women.

3) Young people are fleeing faith. Nearly a quarter of Americans in their 20's profess no organized religion.

4) But these non-believers are not particularly atheist. Instead, these individuals have a belief in God but no interest in organized religion, or they believe in a personal God but not in a formal faith tradition

Ardi, short for Ardipithecus ramidus, is the newest fossil skeleton out of Africa to take its place in the gallery of human origins. At an age of 4.4 million years, it lived well before and was much more primitive than the famous 3.2-million-year-old Lucy, of the species Australopithecus afarensis. By replacing Lucy as the earliest known skeleton from the human branch of the primate family tree, the scientists said, Ardi opened a window to "the early evolutionary steps that our ancestors took after we diverged from our common ancestor with chimpanzees."

Ardi's feet had yet to develop the arch-like structure that came later with Lucy and on to humans. The hands were more like those of extinct apes. And its very long arms and short legs resembled the proportions of extinct apes, or even monkeys.

David Pilbeam, a professor of human evolution at Harvard University who had no role in the discovery, said in an e-mail message that the Ardi skeleton represented "a genus plausibly ancestral to Australopithecus" and began "to fill in the temporal and structural 'space' between the apelike common ancestor and Australopithecus."

In some ways the specimen's features are surprising, Dr. Hill added, "but it makes a very satisfactory animal for understanding the changes that have taken place along the human lineage."

Dr. White, Berhane Asfaw of the Rift Valley Research Service in Ethiopia and other team members concluded that "despite the genetic similarities of living humans and chimpanzees, the ancestor we last shared probably differed substantially from any extant African ape."

As Dr. Hill of Yale said, "It is always new specimens, particularly those from little known time periods or geographic areas, that provoke the greatest changes in our ideas." Looking ahead, Dr. White lamented that there were so few sites in Africa known to have fossil deposits six million to seven million years old. "We are getting so close to that common ancestor of hominids and chimps, and we'd love to find an earlier skeleton," he said.

Blair could be ushered into the European Union's top post at a summit on October 29 if the Lisbon Treaty passes, the London-based newspaper said.

Nations currently preside over the EU, holding a rotating presidency for six months at a time, but under the Lisbon Treaty, a single president will be chosen. The treaty has been ratified by 24 of the 27 member states, with the signatures of the Polish and Czech presidents needed for full ratification.

Since stepping down as prime minister in June 2007, Blair has been the envoy for the Middle East Quartet -- comprising the EU, Russia, the United Nations and the United States -- which aims to mediate between Israel and the Palestinians

The bill, which could be given final approval by the council as early as December, would expand current laws that recognize same-sex marriages performed in other jurisdictions to allow such marriages to be performed in the District. Currently, four states perform same-sex marriages. New Hampshire is scheduled to begin performing same-sex marriages in 2010, and Maine voters will consider the issue in a ballot initiative in November.

Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, the District's nonvoting congressional representative, said she was confident that a same-sex marriage bill would survive any congressional opposition. "Opposition by some in the House already has been announced, but I believe we can and should defeat opposition to gay marriage rights in the District of Columbia as enacted by the District's own elected officials," she said.

"Democrats have the House, the Senate and the presidency, so it is an uphill battle at best," said Mr. Chaffetz, who opposes same-sex marriage. "The deck is stacked against us at this point."

The patents, held by VeriChip partner Receptors LLC, relate to biosensors that can detect the H1N1 and other viruses, and biological threats such as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, VeriChip said in a statement.

The technology will combine with VeriChip's implantable radio frequency identification devices to develop virus triage detection systems.

The triage system will provide multiple levels of identification -- the first will identify the agent as virus or non-virus, the second level will classify the virus and alert the user to the presence of pandemic threat viruses and the third level will identify the precise pathogen, VeriChip said in a white paper published May 7, 2009.

Speaking at a conference on inter-faith relations in Geneva this week, outgoing WCC General Secretary the Rev. Dr. Samuel Kobia said that a fruitful understanding between people of faiths depended on honesty and being able to recognize and hold in "creative tensions," areas of convergence as well as genuine differences.

"Because we are different, we each have something unique to contribute, and every contribution counts. At the same time, dialogue partners seek to discover and appreciate the common values held by all," he said during the gathering initiated by the Muslim World League and also attended by Jewish leaders.

Kobia went on to stress that dialogue should not be restricted to discussions in conferences and councils, but was rather "a way of living out our faith in relation to one another."

"In loving and serving the God we know, we find our common calling to affirm human dignity, uphold human rights, preserve the environment and bring warfare to an end," he said.

"We are one humanity, expressed in different civilizations, sharing the same earth," Tveit said. "It is time for dialogue, honest dialogue, about our attitudes to our neighbor, about our common responsibility toward the earth and toward the coming generations."

Tveit, who was elected this past August to succeed Kobia as WCC's general secretary, has stressed that fulfilling Jesus' prayer "that they may be one" remains the global ecumenical body's primary task