U.S. Briefs: Mormons go on a building spree in Utah and beyond

Russell M. Nelson, president of the Latter-day Saints, announced during the group’s annual conference in Salt Lake City, Utah, on Oct. 6 that Mormons would build 17 new temples around the world. The new construction in the U.S., Ireland, Uganda, El Salvador, and elsewhere will bring the total number of Mormon temples to 367. Since 2018, Nelson has announced 185 new temples, and he claims they will enable members of his faith to draw closer to God. Temples are separate from the religion’s publicly accessible meetinghouses and are reserved for devout Mormons. Independent researcher Matt Martinich tracks the religion’s growth and suggested the building spree is tied less to meeting demand than to the LDS leadership’s goal of increasing temple accessibility. Meanwhile, community members in Las Vegas packed planning meetings earlier this year to oppose the construction of a three-story temple there. The City Council ultimately approved it in July. In Fairview, Texas, the town council rejected plans for a temple that would have been among the city’s largest buildings. Opponents in both communities insisted that they were more concerned about the buildings’ sizes than religious affiliation. —Lauren Canterberry

Minnesota

When police arrested six suspects for a string of armed robberies and two car crashes in Minneapolis Oct. 8, they found the perpetrators to be surprisingly young: boys and girls ages 11 to 14. The juveniles allegedly drove stolen vehicles, with one of the cars leading a police chase that ended in a wreck on Interstate 94. One of the girls was hospitalized, but the other five were released from custody, a typical procedure for children with no prior contact with police. In a separate case less than a week earlier, school officials called Minneapolis police after a 10-year-old drove a stolen car onto a playground. According to FBI data, the number of U.S. juveniles accused of violent crime rose nearly 10 percent last year, while property crime arrests in that age group jumped almost 30 percent. —Kim Henderson

Texas

The Texas General Land Office on Oct. 10 announced what it described as the largest offshore lease for capturing carbon dioxide emissions in the United States. The agency sold Exxon Mobil Corp. leases for more than 270,000 offshore acres to store CO2 captured from Gulf Coast petrochemical operations. The Texas-based oil giant plans to transport through its pipelines CO2 captured at industrial facilities and then inject it into undersea rock formations. Petroleum industry leaders believe government tax breaks and 34 billion metric tons of energy-related CO2 emissions annually, according to an Exxon Mobil forecast, can garner trillions of dollars in revenue. Exxon Mobil proposed a public-private partnership in 2021 to raise $100 billion to fund Gulf Coast CO2 storage. —Todd Vician

Washington

Apartments built to provide long-term housing for homeless seniors (plus military veterans and low-wage workers with disabilities) opened Oct. 9 in Olympia. A new city-funded, five-story building hosts 40 studios and 24 one-bedroom apartments, a community room with a kitchen, and a central laundry room. The city originally bought land for the project with money from a tax levy voters passed in 2018 to increase the amount of affordable housing. It then sold the parcel to a nonprofit developer, the Low Income Housing Institute (LIHI), in 2023 for a dollar. The new housing is part of a regional effort and national trend to help more homeless seniors find affordable living spaces. About 1 in 5 homeless people nationwide were 55 or older last year, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. At the Olympia project, rent for senior residents will be 30 percent of their income, and the local housing authority will cover the rest of the bill. LIHI built and manages a similar facility in downtown Olympia, and a 65-apartment complex with a shelter run by an interfaith organization sits adjacent to the newest project. —Todd Vician

Michigan

A tree-planting nonprofit plans to plant a forest of giant sequoias in where else but … Detroit? Arboretum Detroit has already planted about 20 of the huge, fast-­growing trees in several parks it owns and manages in the Poletown East neighborhood. The planned forest site is a city block left empty by the demolition of a public school. By fall 2025, once the land is purchased and rid of trash and invasive plant species, Arboretum Detroit plans to plant the lot with 200 sequoias—particularly good at scrubbing pollution from the air—along with 200 native trees, according to MLive.com. The property will also be seeded with understory trees and meadow plants. Michigan’s climate is much colder than the sequoias’ native Sierra Nevada mountains, but the saplings already planted are thriving. Hobbyists have successfully planted sequoias in nearly every U.S. state. In about 25 years, the Detroit trees are expected to be 60 to 80 feet tall. —Elizabeth Russell

Florida

Cru, one of the nation’s largest campus ministries, is phasing out its controversial staff training on sexuality and gender. By the end of this year, employees will no longer have access to the training, called Compassionate and Faithful, according to Cru’s theological director, Keith Johnson. On Oct. 2, podcaster Jon Harris aired leaked portions of a recorded Cru staff meeting from Sept. 26 in which Johnson announced the changes. In the nearly two years since Orlando-based Cru, formerly known as Campus Crusade for Christ, introduced its mandatory training, it has weathered criticism from staffers and prominent evangelical speakers who said its curriculum deviated from Scriptural teaching by leaving room for Christians to use “preferred pronouns” for transgender people or to adopt LGBT identity labels. Going forward, Cru will shift away from “external communicators” and incorporate training on sexuality and gender issues into its courses for new employees and interns, Johnson said. He refrained from admitting error but referred to the training as a “learning experience.” —Mary Jackson