Along with the coverage by ABC News Nightline, a reporters' tour of the Draper Temple has resulted in  at least another lengthy news feature -- this one on National Public Radio.

Howard Berkes, NPR correspondent based in Salt Lake City, takes listeners on a five-minute, 30-second audio tour of the temple with the voices of Elders M. Russell Ballard and Quentin L. Cook.  NPR has photos and a Web print report about the temple.

NPR's web report notes the invitation given to four reporters for the tour with Elders Ballard and Cook. "These aren't religion writers. The small group invited to a dinner
chat with two top Mormon officials, followed by a private Temple tour, included the senior political writer for the Web site Politico, a political and war correspondent for ABC News, the Mormon beat reporter for The Associated Press and me, the Mormon beat reporter at NPR."

Like the Associated Press article, Berkes focuses on whether temples are "secret or sacred" and focuses on the attempt by LDS leaders to challenge a "reputation for secrecy."

"We were astounded by people saying you are secret, we don't know what is going on and they felt like there was a level of secrecy that we just don't think exists," Elder Cook told Berkes.

For other coverage of the temple and the open house, see coverage on the Deseret News and Mormon Times,  KSL-TV and from the LDS Newsroom.

The Salt Lake Tribune focused on artisans who created the art glass. KUTV found an odd angle for its temple story: The neighborhood near the temple is a ghost town.

Short takes

Arrests of polygamists, this time in Canada, have created more FLDS-LDS confusion. Time magazine reported about "1,000 adherents of a fundamentalist Mormon sect" and were expelled from the mainstream Mormon church in the 1930s.

Columnist John Oakley writing in Canada's National Post: "It may be more than coincidence that Mormon and Muslim share the same page in my New Canadian Webster's Unabridged. Fringe elements of both are also on the same page as far as wanting to take their case for polygamous arrangements right to the legal hilt. What's good for a few derailed Latter Day Saints is also good for some latter-day Canadians who subscribe to a certain interpretation of sharia law."

Thankfully, the Montreal Gazette got it right in an editorial: "The
people of Bountiful have few friends. Even the Mormons, of whom they
claim to be an offshoot, have disowned them. But that doesn't make it
any less reprehensible."

A touching story

LDS columnist Alfred Gunn shares the story of a refugee's first Christmas.

Wintry trek

The Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle tells about a group of Latter-day Saint youths who braved a handcart trek over the Christmas break.

Helping hands

Latter-day Saints in Washington have offered a helping hand during heavy rains and flooding. See a story in the Bellingham, Wash., Herald and Ellensburg Daily Record.

Humanitarian missionaries

The Gary, Ind., Post-Tribune features Philip and LaDawn Empey, who served as humanitarian missionaries in the Philippines.

Rebuilt

After a fire two years ago, a church building has reopened in Waianae.
Hawaii, according the Honolulu Star-Bulletin.