The Belgian Catholic Church must have felt it hit a nadir last year when it had to face harrowing revelations of rampant child sex abuse among its priesthood. However, the church's reputation is now at a new low, thanks to the ill-judged comments of the disgraced former Bishop of Bruges, who in April 2010 admitted to abusing his nephew. Belgians have been left in open-mouthed disbelief after the airing of a TV interview with Roger Vangheluwe in which he glossed over his history of abusing children.
Speaking on Belgian television on Thursday evening, April 14, Vangheluwe, 74, said he had in fact abused a second nephew as well. That would have been shocking enough: last year, when Vangheluwe initially owned up to the abuse — and stepped down as bishop — the move unleashed a flood of revelations by other victims of abuse in the church.
Just 'a Game': Outrage as Shamed Belgian Priest Downplays Child Abuse
Lawmakers blast Navy over Lejeune water contamination
Five members of Congress on Friday called the Department of the Navy to task — again — for what they say is an apparent resistance to keeping veterans informed about past water contamination at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina.
In a tartly written letter to the Navy, Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida, Sens. Kay Hagan and Richard Burr and Rep. Brad Miller of North Carolina, and Rep. John Dingell of Michigan said the military continues to mislead the public about a high-profile scientific report on the contamination.
Armed agents kidnap child from mother who used holistic treatments instead of pharmaceutical drugs to treat condition
Maryanne Godboldo of Detroit, Mich., recently learned the hard way that freedom of choice in medicine is no longer tolerated by the medical mafia in the supposed "land of the free." Recently, armed officers from the Special Response Team (SRT) of the Detroit Police Department (DPD), at the command of Child Protective Services (CPS), unlawfully kicked down the door of Godboldo's home and kidnapped her 13-year-old child. Her crime? Maryanne chose to follow the lead of a doctor's recommendation to take her daughter off a pharmaceutical drug treatment recommendation for psychosis that was worsening the child's symptoms, and instead chose to use natural remedies to treat the condition.
U.S. groups nurtured Arab uprisings
Democracy-building campaigns undertaken by U.S. agencies in authoritarian Arab states helped nurture the nascent uprisings in those countries, official say.
A selection of American groups, given limited funding and led by organizers trained in campaigning through social media, played a larger part in the pro-Democracy movements of the Arab Spring than military and anti-terrorism campaigns, receiving billions of dollars, The New York Times reported Friday.
Pacific salmon may be dying from leukemia-type virus
In Canada's Fraser River, a mysterious illness has killed millions of Pacific salmon, and scientists have a new hypothesis about why: The wild salmon are suffering from viral infections similar to those linked to some forms of leukemia and lymphoma.
For 60 years before the early 1990s, an average of nearly 8 million wild salmon returned from the Pacific Ocean to the Fraser River each year to spawn. Now the salmon industry is in a state of collapse, with mortality rates ranging from 40 percent to 95 percent.
Some bacteria in grocery meat resistant to anti-biotics
Researchers have found high levels of bacteria in meat commonly found on grocery store shelves, with more than half of the bacteria resistant to multiple types of antibiotics, according to a study released on Friday.
While the meat commonly found in grocery stores is still safe to eat, consumers should take precautions especially in handling and cooking, the chief researcher for the study said.
Veterans advocate kills self after war tours
Handsome and friendly, Clay Hunt so epitomized a vibrant Iraq veteran that he was chosen for a public service announcement reminding veterans that they aren't alone.
The 28-year-old former Marine corporal earned a Purple Heart after taking a sniper's bullet in his left wrist. He returned to combat in Afghanistan. Upon his return home, he lobbied for veterans on Capitol Hill, road-biked with wounded veterans and performed humanitarian work in Haiti and Chile.
Then, on March 31, Hunt bolted himself in his Houston apartment and shot himself.
Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%
Americans have been watching protests against oppressive regimes that concentrate massive wealth in the hands of an elite few. Yet in our own democracy, 1 percent of the people take nearly a quarter of the nation’s income—an inequality even the wealthy will come to regret.
It’s no use pretending that what has obviously happened has not in fact happened. The upper 1 percent of Americans are now taking in nearly a quarter of the nation’s income every year. In terms of wealth rather than income, the top 1 percent control 40 percent. Their lot in life has improved considerably. Twenty-five years ago, the corresponding figures were 12 percent and 33 percent. One response might be to celebrate the ingenuity and drive that brought good fortune to these people, and to contend that a rising tide lifts all boats. That response would be misguided. While the top 1 percent have seen their incomes rise 18 percent over the past decade, those in the middle have actually seen their incomes fall. For men with only high-school degrees, the decline has been precipitous—12 percent in the last quarter-century alone. All the growth in recent decades—and more—has gone to those at the top. In terms of income equality, America lags behind any country in the old, ossified Europe that President George W. Bush used to deride. Among our closest counterparts are Russia with its oligarchs and Iran. While many of the old centers of inequality in Latin America, such as Brazil, have been striving in recent years, rather successfully, to improve the plight of the poor and reduce gaps in income, America has allowed inequality to grow.
Experts fear another oil disaster
With everything Big Oil and the government have learned in the year since the Gulf of Mexico disaster, could it happen again? Absolutely, according to an Associated Press examination of the industry and interviews with experts on the perils of deep-sea drilling.
The government has given the OK for oil exploration in treacherously deep waters to resume, saying it is confident such drilling can be done safely. The industry has given similar assurances. But there are still serious questions in some quarters about whether the lessons of the BP oil spill have been applied.
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