Friday, Oct 31st
Last update07:49:12 AM GMT
Special Interest Glance
It had all the trappings of sabotage: an explosion at a major nuclear facility in Iran, allegedly confirmed by an Israeli official. But it all turned out to be speculation, the White House said on Monday, debunking the sensational story.
An Iranian exile who goes by the name of Reza Kahlili reported the alleged blast in Fordow four days ago on World News Daily, a far-right website known for publishing conspiracy theories about President Obama’s birthplace.
Fifteen years before the clergy sex abuse scandal came to light, Archbishop Roger M. Mahony and a top advisor discussed ways to conceal the molestation of children from law enforcement, according to internal Catholic church records released Monday.
The archdiocese's failure to purge pedophile clergy and reluctance to cooperate with law enforcement has previously been known. But the memos written in 1986 and 1987 by Mahony and Msgr. Thomas J. Curry, then the archdiocese's chief advisor on sex abuse cases, offer the strongest evidence yet of a concerted effort by officials in the nation's largest Catholic diocese to shield abusers from police.
Barack Hussein Obama officially began his second term as the nation’s 44th president Sunday, taking the oath of office in a low-key ceremony at the White House.
It was a crisp and flawless 30-seconds of history in the Blue Room between Obama and Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. The two flubbed the 35-word oath four years ago, but not Sunday. With Michelle Obama and daughters Malia and Sasha standing behind him, Obama quickly repeated the oath from Roberts, who this time carried a note card.
Black & Veatch’s latest trouble in Afghanistan comes with a federal audit, published in December, that determined that the company failed to provide an installation plan for millions of dollars in electrical equipment that sat unused for months in a warehouse near the city of Kandahar.
The U.S. Agency for International Development had awarded a $3.4 million contract to Black & Veatch in 2009 to provide technical assistance, training and support to the country’s national power utility. Afghanistan ranks among the countries with the lowest energy production in the world.
A former Catholic priest busted on charges of selling crystal meth would appear at his Connecticut church dressed as a woman and was fond of sex in the rectory, according to a published report.
Msg. Kevin Wallin, 61, resigned as spiritual leader of St. Augustine’s Parish in Bridgeport in 2011, but he continued to receive a stipend from the Roman Catholic Diocese until his Jan. 3 arrest on drug charges.
The Vatican on Wednesday (Jan. 16) criticized a ruling from the European Court of Human Rights that affirms employers’ right to limit the expression of religious beliefs in the workplace when it conflicts with equality laws.
In an interview with Vatican Radio, Archbishop Dominique Mamberti, the Vatican’s foreign minister, said that on “morally controversial subjects, such as abortion or homosexuality,” people have the right to defend their freedom of conscience.
The White House and the Pentagon -- with a helping hand from the State Department -- ensure that the U.S. remains by far the leading purveyor of the “right to bear arms” globally.
Given these last weeks, who doesn’t know what an AR-15 is? Who hasn’t seen the mind-boggling stats on the way assault rifles have flooded this country, or tabulations of accumulating Newtown-style mass killings, or noted that there are barely more gas stations nationwide than federally licensed firearms dealers, or heard the renewed debates over the Second Amendment, or been struck by the rapid shifts in public opinion on gun control, or checked out the disputes over how effective an assault-rifle ban was the last time around?
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