AUSTRALIANS FEEL THE FORCE
(Australia) - More than 70,000 fans of the Star Wars movies have upset Australia's statistics agency by identifying their religion as "Jedi" during last year's national census. The Australian Bureau of Statistics said 0.37 percent of the nation's population of 19 million, or 70,509 people, had written "Jedi" or a related response to an optional question about their faith when the head count was taken recently. Jedi is a mystical faith followed by some of the central characters in the Star Wars films. The prank began early last year when Star Wars fans circulated an e-mail across Australia saying the government would be forced to recognize Jedi as an official religion if at least 10,000 people named it on the census. When made aware of the campaign, the statistics agency announced that respondents faced a fine of $540 if they were found to have given false information. In a statement its Internet site, the agency did not say if it would try to fine the Jedi faithful. But it warned that the Australian public ultimately paid the price for census-related pranks. "The cost of wrong information is to the current and potential users of these services," the agency said. "If, for example, people of a particular religious affiliation do not provide the correct information, certain facilities might not be built that otherwise would be."