Monday, Dec 08th
Last update07:39:18 AM GMT
Special Interest Glance
The entire Christian calendar is based on a miscalculation, the Pope has declared, as he claims in a new book that Jesus was born several years earlier than commonly believed.
The 'mistake' was made by a sixth century monk known as Dionysius Exiguus or in English Dennis the Small, the 85-year-old pontiff claims in the book 'Jesus of Nazareth: The Infancy Narratives', published on Wednesday.
A Manchester lawyer took a teenage girl to Canada, had her engage in sexual activity and convinced her to let it be filmed, according to federal indictments.
FBI agents swiftly arrested Lisa Biron yesterday morning as she awaited a hearing on child pornography charges at Manchester’s district court. About 9 a.m. FBI agents entered the courtroom, told Biron to leave her belongings and took her into an adjoining conference room where she remained for several minutes before coming out in handcuffs.
A retired bishop has been arrested over suspicions that he sexually abused children in the 1970s and 1980s.
The Right Reverend Peter Ball, who is thought to be the highest-ranking clergyman in the Church of England to be arrested over child abuse, faces allegations that he molested eight boys and young men aged between 12 and their early 20s. He was detained at his home in Langport, Somerset.
The 80-year-old served as the Bishop of Lewes and Gloucester before resigning in 1993. The claims against him relate to his time serving in the Diocese of Chichester.
A nearby star appears to be circled by six planets, including one "Super Earth" world that orbits at distances that could allow the existence of oceans, astronomers report.
Astronomers had earlier reported that three planets closely orbit the star, HD 40307, which is about 43 light years away (one light year is about 5.9 trillion miles). Now in the forthcoming Astronomy & Astrophysics journal report led by Mikko Tuomi of the United Kingdom's University of Hertfordshire, the team reports three more planets larger than Earth — but not as big as Jupiter — likely orbit the star.
The protesters who occupied Wall Street and parts of London and other cities were morally and intellectually right, a senior Bank of England official said.
"Some have suggested ... that Occupy's voice has been loud but vague -- long on problems, short on solutions," Andrew Haldane, a member of the central bank's Financial Policy Committee, told an event called "Socially Useful Banking," organized by Occupy Economics, an offshoot of the Occupy movement, in London Monday night.
"Others have argued that the fault lines in the global financial system, which chasmed during the crisis, are essentially unaltered -- that reform has failed," he said.
Longtime Catholic priest Rolando Garcia is accused of sexual abuse for the fourth time, prompting the Archdiocese of Miami to take a defensive stand while many parishioners condemn him.
Last week, Simmons, a decorated U.S. Army specialist who served in the Iraq war, accused Garcia in a lawsuit of sexually abusing him during the mid-1990s, starting when he was 16 years old.
For the first time in recent memory, Miami’s Catholic Church leaders reacted defensively to his negligence suit, the latest of more than 100 filed against the local archdiocese since the clergy-sex abuse scandal broke nationwide a decade ago.
The WikiLeaks website began publishing on Thursday what it said were more than 100 U.S. Defense Department files detailing military detention policies in camps in Iraq and at Guantanamo Bay in the years after the September 11 attacks on U.S. targets.
In a statement, WikiLeaks criticized regulations it said had led to abuse and impunity and urged human rights activists to use the documents, to be released over the next month, to research what it called "policies of unaccountability".
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