Tuesday, Dec 16th
Last update09:33:48 AM GMT
Special Interest Glance
About 700 people launched new claims of sexual abuse against Catholic clergy in the United States last year, including 21 who are still minors, according to a new report released by US bishops.
Many of the clergy members accused have since died, or been relieved of their church duties. More than 280 of them had been accused in the past, it said.
The Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church was caught on camera wearing a $30,000 Breguet watch. I can think of little that’s more worthless than spending the entirety of a middle-class working person’s yearly salary on an ostentatious geegaw that has no function that isn’t served as well as a $10 throwaway or the ubiquitous cell phone…no function other than showing off that you’re more profligately wealthy than anyone else, that is. You know, if someone gave me something that trivial and that overpriced, I would thank them, quietly sell it, and then find a cause on Foundation Beyond Belief that could make better use of the money than being tied up in flashy bling.
In the study, 4AutoInsuranceQuote.org points out that the only significant effect that marijuana has on operating a motor vehicle is slower driving. 4AutoInsuranceQuote.org says, while referencing a study by the US National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA), that driving slower “is arguably a positive thing” and that driving under the influence of marijuana “might even make you a safer driver.” A similar study by the NHTSA shows that drivers with THC (the active ingredient in marijuana) in their system have accident responsibility rates below that of drug free drivers.
A former CIA officer who expressed public doubts over the use of waterboarding as an interrogation technique was indicted Thursday on charges that he leaked classified secrets to journalists, including the role of an associate who worked with him on a covert mission to track down and capture a top al-Qaida figure.
Kiriakou received public attention for his statements on waterboarding, which he called an “unnecessary” form of interrogation during a 2007 interview with ABC. Zubaydah was waterboarded 83 times.
The Catholic Church has never had a particularly easy relationship with science. After all, this is the institution that sentenced Galileo Galilei as a heretic for his theories on the universe during the Roman Inquisition.
Two thousand years later, the church forgave Galileo and called the whole misunderstanding a “tragic mutual incomprehension” but it remains safe to say the Vatican doesn’t have a great track record when it comes to empirical open-mindedness.
There are about a dozen holocaust museums in the United States. The largest is The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C.. It is dedicated to “helping leaders and citizens of the world confront hatred, prevent genocide, promote human dignity, and strengthen democracy.”
The first Catholic Church official to go on trial for allegedly covering up sexual abuse of children by predator priests was described by prosecutors Monday as more concerned with protecting the church than children.
Calling Lynn "the keeper of secrets," Coelho said: "The protection of children is the furthest thing from defendant Lynn’s mind.’’
In a landmark case, Lynn is the first U.S. church official charged with endangering children by protecting abusive priests and covering up the child rape and sexual abuse scandal that rocked the church. Lynn, 61, supervised priest assignments as secretary for clergy at the Archdiocese of Philadelphia from 1992 to 2004.
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