Andrew Lloyd-Webber is planning a fourth instalment of his casting show in which hopefuls audition for a lead role in one of his musicals. This time around it’s the turn of Jesus Christ Superstar and the prospect of Lloyd-Webber telling people “you could be Jesus” has Stephen Green (the only confirmed member of Christian Voice) wetting himself with excitement.

The prospect of the BBC auditioning pop hopefuls in front of Andrew Lloyd Webber for the role of Jesus has led a Christian group to promise Jerry Springer the Opera-style protests and evangelism if the project goes ahead.

Christian Voice said [on Friday] that they might even try to get young Christians into the audition room itself to share the Gospel of the real Jesus Christ with Lord Lloyd-Webber himself.

And we all know where Green’s Jerry Springer campaign ended up.

Naturally, this has led to outrage (via).

At issue is the Women in Arabic and Islamic Literature course which, according to the Australian National Imams Council, gives a negative view of women in Islam. Not content with complaining, the Imams have circulated a petition recording its “deep concern with regards to the course structure and content”, claiming it involved “repeated and unjustified attacks upon Islam”.

Another group, Muslims for Peace, has also tried to get in on the act by branding the centre as “evil” and demanding lecturer Samar Habib be dismissed and the course abolished.

University of Western Sydney executive dean of the College of Arts, Wayne McKenna said that, although the university has not received a direct complaint, it was examining the content of the course.

The email is provocative, to say the least. Not only does it say Mr. Zelnick is “like the Hitler Youth,” it also attributes the deaths of three Alabama policemen and “a recent plethora of cop killings” to prior entries in the GTA series.

Thompson claims that the email - which is addressed to Mrs. Zelnick and carries a subject of “Your Son, Strauss Zelnick” - was not sent to Zelnick’s mother, but to his lawwyer, in keeping with a prior settlement that prevents Mr. Thompson from contacting Take-Two, unless he does so through legal counsel.

YouTube’s terms of service clearly say “A user whose account has been terminated is prohibited from accessing, possessing or creating any other YouTube accounts.”

But the world’s largest video sharer hasn’t applied this rule to the brand new channel launched by Scientology itself - and trumpeted with an official Scientology press release. Like Bunker, Scientology had an earlier account erased after it violated site policy.

In March, the New York Post reported that Scientology launched a YouTube channel in an attempt to discredit members of Anonymous, the internet group intent on making life difficult for the cult. Dubbed the “Scientology Official Report on Anonymous Hate Crimes,” the channel identified individual members of the group, describing them as “terrorists.”

YouTube doesn’t allow videos that broadcast personal information. And the account was suspended.

In a conversation with The Post, a Church spokesperson confirmed the organization was behind the channel. “We absolutely made the videos,” they said. “We have researchers that have found these men. When you get death threats and bomb threats directly going after the church, we don’t take it lightly.”

A similar statement was made by a church minister speaking to The Battle Creek Enquirer after an alleged Anonymous bomb threat.

And now, in contravention of YouTube’s terms of service, Scientology is back on the video sharing site. And not only are they back, they are also paying for ads on the site, looking to drive some traffic onto its new channel.

Not surprisingly, Mark Bunker is annoyed. “I hope YouTube does the right thing,” he said. “It certainly looks like there’s a double standard at work.

The plaintiffs - which include Powell’s Books, Dark Horse Comics, the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund and the Association of American Publishers – are arguing that the four-month-old law violates their constitutional right to free speech and criminalizes material that would otherwise not be considered sexually explicit, like textbooks, comics or magazines.

In an affidavit, Michael Powell said his six stores sold books of all types that could be considered sexually explicit under the new law. Those include the sale of books in stores and online on photography, graphic novels and health and wellness titles.

Ken Lizzi, Dark Horse Comics’ general counsel and assistant secretary, said in an affidavit that his company store, Things From Another World Inc., often sells graphic novels and comics that could put it in legal jeopardy. The company publishes about three dozen comics or other books each month that might include sexually explicit content, Lizzi said in the affidavit.

“I believe the only way for Dark Horse to ensure compliance under the statute would be to refrain from publishing this material entirely,” He said. “Attempting to determine, book by book, what may fall under the purview of the satute, including whether there are any ‘sexually explicit’ portions and if so whether such portions ‘serve some purpose other than titillation’ (even if I knew what that meant) is totally impractical, unduly burdensome and surely would result in our over-inclusive self-censorship.”

The group is also calling on publisher Take-Two Interactive and developer Rockstar Games to consider stopping distribution of the game “out of respect for the millions of victims/survivors of drunk driving.”

“We have a great deal of respect for MADD’s mission, but we believe the mature audience for ‘Grand Theft Auto IV’ is more than sophisticated enough to understand the game’s content,” Rockstar Games said in a statement to The Associated Press on Wednesday. “For the same reason that you can’t judge an entire film or television program by a single scene, you can’t judge ‘Grand Theft Auto IV’ by a small aspect of the game.”

Discredited American lawyer Jack Thompson has also waded in to make the bizarre assertion that “Grand Theft Auto IV is the gravest assault upon children in this country since polio.”

Ewan Hannah, the publisher of the Fiji Times was put on a flight to South Korea after a judge ruled he had broken visa conditions. This makes him the second Australian journalist to have been expelled from the country in recent months.

Fiji’s government, which came to power in a coup in 2006, has been widely criticised by rights groups and governments in the region.

The deportation of Mr Hannah came a day after interim Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama, who led the 2006 coup, launched a blistering attack on the island-nation’s media.

“Over the past year some media reporting has left much to be desired and some reports have been careless [and] irresponsible,” the Fijilive website quoted him as saying.

“Some [reports] have been inciteful and destabilising, posing a threat to national security and stability.”

He said there were limits to the constitutional guarantee of press freedom.

Fiji’s press was highly critical of the move, saying that it was part of a campaign of harassment against journalists.

Vandalism happens and I wouldn’t have mentioned it here if it hadn’t been for Councillor Talib Hussain who, after condemning the act immediately went on to start equivocating.

I have received complaints on a number of occasions not to put adverts like that in Sparkbrook. The city council should not give permission to advertising like that in these wards. Having families seeing naked pictures does not bring the community together, it provokes things.

The only thing that swimwear adverts provoke is swimwear sales.

The BBC agreed that it had expressed concern and Christian Choice responded by agreeing to change the form of words. The judge said that he didn’t believe the PEB had been libellous, but said that the request for a judicial review had been left far too late. If Craig seriously though he was being censored he should have launched the case before the broadcast.

BBC had indicated that if a legal challenge had been issued before the broadcast it would have “backed down and let them publish as they wished.”

What appears to have happened, therefore, is that the BBC offered some advice about a potentially controversial PEB. Christian Choice decided to follow that advice and then lie about having been censored in order to play a victim card.

Yes, I was duped and I shall – in future – bear in mind that you just can’t trust anything that Christians claim.

The judge, Mr Justice Collins, ordered Craig to pay the BBC’s £11,875 in legal costs.

At present the article imposes up to three years in prison for such an insult but, under the reform, the country’s justice minister will have to give his consent on opening investigations on possible violations of this law. It also replaces “insulting Turkishness” with “insulting the Turkish nation” and reduces the maximum sentence to two years - which could be suspended, especially for first-time offenders.

The EU has repeatedly called on Turkey to amend or scrap this part of its penal code as a prerequisite for joining the bloc but critics argue that the changes are purely cosmetic and that freedom of speech will remain limited in Turkey.

“What needs to be done is to abolish [Article] 301 altogether,” Fatma Kurtulan, a pro-Kurdish party deputy, was quoted as saying by AP.

It would be “illusive” to believe this amendment designed to please the EU would change anything substantial with regards to free speech, Ms Kurtulan added.

Many Turkish intellectuals and writers have been tried under article 301, including Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk and ethnic Armenian journalist Hrant Dink, who was murdered last year.