The Vatican is to set up a new e-learning centre to help safeguard children and victims of sexual abuse by clergy, as part of its efforts to deal with damaging scandals.
The Roman Catholic Church is preparing for a major conference on abuse to take place next February in Rome. The Vatican has told bishops to come up with guidelines to combat abuse, in line with local laws. The Catholic Church has been rocked by scandals of sexual abuse by priests.
Vatican to set up clergy sexual abuse help center
'Magic Mushrooms' Can Improve Psychological Health Long Term
The psychedelic drug in magic mushrooms may have lasting medical and spiritual benefits, according to new research from Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.
The mushroom-derived hallucinogen, called psilocybin, is known to trigger transformative spiritual states, but at high doses it can also result in "bad trips" marked by terror and panic. The trick is to get the dose just right, which the Johns Hopkins researchers report having accomplished.
Report: Paul Ryan May Personally Benefit From Preserving Billions In Taxpayer Oil Subsidies
The Daily Beast’s Daniel Stone is reporting that Ryan’s protection of billions in wasteful oil subsidies may relate to his own personal fortune. Newly released personal finance disclosures reveal that Ryan and his wife “own stakes in four family companies that lease land in Texas and Oklahoma to the very energy companies that benefit from the tax subsidies in Ryan’s budget plan.” Stone reports that those companies are among his most valuable assets:
Ryan’s father-in-law, Daniel Little, who runs the companies, told Newsweek and The Daily Beast that the family companies are currently leasing the land for mining and drilling to energy giants such as Chesapeake Energy, Devon, and XTO Energy, a recently acquired subsidiary of ExxonMobil.
N.Y. Target store workers reject unionization
Workers at a Target store in New York voted against joining the country's largest retail union Friday night, but the union said it would press on and broaden its push to represent the company's workers nationwide.
The United Food and Commercial Workers Union Local 1500 also said it would contest the results and ask the federal government to order a new election, alleging that Target illegally intimidated workers. Target denied the union's allegations.
U.S. drops charges against Osama bin Laden
U.S. criminal charges against Osama bin Laden were formally dropped Friday, 13 years after he was first indicted and seven weeks after his death. A judge signed an order based on a recommendation by the U.S. attorney's office in New York, ABC News reported.
The action officially closes the case against bin Laden. The first indictment, handed up in 1998, charged bin Laden as head of al-Qaida with planning the bombing of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Several superseding indictments added hundreds of individual charges.
TVNL Comment: Osama Bin Laden was NEVER charged with involvement in the 9/11 attacks. Think about that!
Jewish court sentences dog to death by stoning
A Jerusalem rabbinical court condemned to death by stoning a dog it suspects is the reincarnation of a secular lawyer who insulted the court's judges 20 years ago, Ynet website reported Friday.
One of the sitting judges then recalled a curse the court had passed down upon a secular lawyer who had insulted the judges two decades previously.
Obama administration to end health care waivers
Removing a potential political distraction ahead of next year's elections, the Obama administration Friday announced an early end to a health care waiver program that has come under fire from congressional Republicans.
Political considerations were "absolutely not" part of the decision, said Steve Larsen, head of a section of the Health and Human Services department that oversees President Barack Obama's health care law.
UN group backs gay rights for first time
The United Nations has endorsed the rights of gay, lesbian and transgender people for the first time ever. The U.N. Human Rights Council passed the cautiously worded resolution by a narrow margin. It espresses "grave concern" about abuses suffered by people because of their sexual orientation and commissions a global report on discrimination against gays.
The U.S. and other backers, including the European Union and Brazil, are hailing the document put forward by South Africa as "historic." One gay rights advocate says the resolution "breaks the silence that has been maintained for far too long."
Fukushima: It's much worse than you think
"Fukushima is the biggest industrial catastrophe in the history of mankind," Arnold Gundersen, a former nuclear industry senior vice president, told Al Jazeera.
Gundersen, a licensed reactor operator with 39 years of nuclear power engineering experience, managing and coordinating projects at 70 nuclear power plants around the US, says the Fukushima nuclear plant likely has more exposed reactor cores than commonly believed.
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