Names and faces

LITTLE ROCK — The congregation of Southland Christian Church in Lexington, Ky., is being asked to send letters of love and support to troubled popstar Britney Spears, described by the pastor as having made "devastating life choices." "Take a few minutes and write a note to Britney Spears," pastor John Weece said in a sermon and in a blog on the church Web site. "No preaching. No criticizing. Just love. As a church, let's love Britney the way Jesus loves her." Weece said the idea came as he watched repeated reports of Spears' reported problems with drugs and alcohol and the loss of custody of her children. "If she were your next-door neighbor in the same situation without the money and success, wouldn't you care about her problems?" he asked members of the church. Cindy Willison, the church's director of communications, was still collecting the letters Friday and looking for the best wayto get them directly to Spears. "This is an opportunity for us to reach out to someone who probably doesn't have a lot of people in her life that care for her as a person," Willisonsaid.

Former astronaut Neil Armstrong on Saturday addressed a crowd at the dedication of a new engineering building named for himat Purdue University, his alma mater, in West Lafayette, Ind. Armstrong, the first person to set foot on the moon, said the faculty, not the building's name, would make it valuable to students. "We dedicate this building today, but by itself, it cannot impart knowledge. It requires people," Armstrong, 77, told a crowd of about 350 who gathered for the dedication. Armstrong, who graduated from Purdue in 1955 with a degree in aeronautical engineering, gained international fame when the Eagle, Apollo 11's lunar module, landed on the moon on July 20, 1969. NASA chose Armstrong to descend a ladder and leave the first lunar footprints. Sixteen of Purdue's 22 graduates who became astronauts attended Saturday's dedication, including Gene Cernan, who was the last man to walk on the moon in Apollo 17's December 1972 lunar visit.