“The city of Gainesville has denied Dove World Outreach Center’s application for a burn permit to set fire to copies of the Quran on Sept. 11, but the church says it plans to burn the holy books anyway. Gene Prince, interim chief of Gainesville Fire Rescue, said Wednesday that under the city’s fire prevention ordinance, an open burning of books is not allowed.” [Gainesville Sun, via TPM]

“Sacrilege at Ground Zero: A place is made sacred by a widespread belief that it was visited by the miraculous or the transcendent (Lourdes, the Temple Mount), by the presence there once of great nobility and sacrifice (Gettysburg), or by the blood of martyrs and the indescribable suffering of the innocent (Auschwitz).” [WaPo]

“Evangelical Christian minister Tim LaHaye says that the policy initiatives put forth by the Obama administration are bringing the country ‘closer to the apocalypse.’ LaHaye issued the dire warning in an appearance this week on Mike Huckabee’s talk show on Fox News.” [HuffPo]

“As electronic highway billboards flashing neon advertisements become more prevalent, the next frontier in distracted driving is already approaching — ad-blaring license plates… The device would mimic a standard license plate when the vehicle is in motion but would switch to digital ads or other messages when it is stopped for more than four seconds, whether in traffic or at a red light.” [San Jose Mercury News]

“Mark Pincus, chief executive of Zynga, comes on stage to announce that FarmVille will be coming to the iPhone at the end of June. He says 70 million people play the game each month, mostly on Facebook. You can now farm anytime and anywhere, Mr. Pincus says.” [NYT iPhone liveblog]

No, this is not a concept sketch for Roland Emmerich’s next disaster-porn spectacular:

This photo just posted to the Guatemalan Government’s Flickr feed shows a spontaneous sinkhole (“hundimiento”) 20 meters deep and 15 wide that appeared today in Zone 2 of Guatemala City, after overwhelming saturation of rains from tropical storm Agatha. Local press reports that it swallowed an entire 3-story building.

Guatemala also endured a volcano eruption last Thursday, which killed a reporter on the scene.

Guatemala: First, volcanic eruption; then, devastating tropical storm [Boing Boing, via Sully]