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When she whipped out her iPhone, Erica Sadum could feel her husband's eyes roll. But she had a point to prove. And in less than a minute, she was able to report to the skeptics around the dinner table that Menno Simons, whose followers are known as Mennonites, was in fact born in 1496. Apple Inc.'s iPhone, which went on sale nine months ago, isn't the only so-called smart phone that provides itinerant access to the Web. But its wide screen and top-quality browser make it easy to use and read, which means it can in seconds change a lighthearted...

Ex-Symbionese Liberation Army fugitive Sara Jane Olson, released this week after serving time for trying to bomb police cars, is back in custody, according to authorities.

WASHINGTON — New government research has found “large and growing” disparities in life expectancy for richer and poorer Americans, paralleling the growth of income inequality in the last two decades. Life expectancy for the nation as a whole has increased, the researchers said, but affluent people have experienced greater gains, and this, in turn, has caused a widening gap. One of the researchers, Gopal K. Singh, a demographer at the Department of Health and Human Services, said “the growing inequalities in life expectancy” mirrored trends in infant mortality and in death from heart disease and certain cancers. The gaps have...

LUXOR, Egypt (AFP) - Egyptian and European archeologists on Saturday announced they had discovered a giant statue of an ancient pharaonic queen on the spectacular south Egypt site of the Colossi of Memnon. The statue represents Queen Tiy, the wife of 18th dynasty Pharaoh Amenhotep III, and stands 3.62 metres high (almost 12 feet). It was discovered around the site of the massive Colossi of Memnon twin statues that command the road to Luxor's famed Valley of the Kings. Two sphinx representing Tiy and Amenhotep III as well as 10 statues in black granite of the lion-headed goddess Sekhmet, who...

LARGO -- A Dunedin mother is facing attempted murder charges after police say she met up with her 15-year-old son at a Largo doctor's office and used a knife to stab and slash him. Celeste Minardi is held without bond in the Pinellas County Jail after stabbed her son and slashed his throat and face in a doctor's office Saturday morning along Seminole Boulevard. Largo Police say the teen suffered serious injuries but are not saying what prompted the attack. Minardi meets her son at the doctor's office but instead of bringing him personal care items police say she brought...

HOUSTON (Reuters) - John McCain's Phoenix pastor, Dan Yeary, is a folksy patriotic Southern Baptist who opposes abortion and believes homosexuality to be a biblical sin, but says Christians have an obligation to love such sinners. That puts Yeary, who heads the church attended for the past 15 years by the Republican presidential candidate firmly in the U.S. Southern Baptist mainstream, and in line with the Republican Party. He offers a sharp contrast to Democratic contender Barack Obama's former preacher Jeremiah Wright, who has stirred controversy with his fiery comments on race and America. Obama had been seen by some...

Tomorrow’s the big day — or rather, today is, if plans proceed to post the movie online at midnight (European time, I’m assuming). I’ve been monitoring the official website since this morning and until the past hour it looked like this. Click to enlarge: That’s from the British website, which is still up and running as I write this. The American page looked exactly the same except for “Coming Soon” in place of the date. Now it looks like this. Click again to enlarge:Here’s Network Solutions’s terms of use. Is paragraph 7 the operative one, do you think — or...

Corzine, who presided over mergers and acquisitions as chairman of Goldman Sachs, is telling hundreds of New Jersey's smallest towns and boroughs that they are too small to exist. Multiple layers of government are financially wasteful, he says, and the littlest towns and boroughs need to merge with their bigger neighbors to achieve economies of scale. Corzine's incentive -- more like a hammer -- is a threatened cutoff of state aid. Under the governor's proposed budget, the state's 323 towns with populations of fewer than 10,000 people would face drastic cuts if they do not consolidate. Towns with populations between...

There's still room for whimsy at the New Yorker magazine, I don't care what you've heard. Just the other day two of the New Yorker's bloggers (now there's a phrase to send Harold Ross spinning) were chewing over the widely noted eloquence of Barack Obama. They were struck by "Obama's wonderful line," as one of them described it, to the effect that "We are the ones we've been waiting for." Obama uses it as one of his signature refrains. Some of his followers even turned it into a music video. So one thing led to another, as it does on...

It’s not over. That’s the message out of the Clinton campaign today. On a conference call with reporters Saturday, campaign aides responded to an article posted on politico.com that states that “Hillary Rodham Clinton has virtually no chance of winning” the nomination. The article also quotes an anonymous “important Clinton adviser” as saying privately that Clinton has no more than a ten percent chance of winning her race against Barack Obama. “Sen. Clinton has been counted out many times in this campaign,” said communications director Howard Wolfson. “The press has on several occasions decided the campaign was over, Sen. Clinton...

*Estimations based on averages taken from advertised male and female private escort sites

The uproar over this has been lost in the shuffle of a thousand other outrages since, which is too bad: Threatening Disney’s broadcast license for airing it really was one of the Democrats’ filthiest moments of the past two years, of a piece with every Fairness-type speech-squashing rumble that rolls through their side from time to time. The debate’s since moved on to the curious fact that Disney has yet to issue PT9/11 on DVD, despite the fact that it cost $40 million to make and aired without commercials. Granted, the ratings were disappointing, but Disney should want to recoup...

IMMEDIATELY FOLLOWING OBAMA'S appearance, Lynn was quick to issue a pass for his own church, saying neither Obama nor the UCC had "run afoul of federal tax law."

An army veteran was hauled away by secret service agents from a Clinton rally for disputing former president Bill Clinton’s claim that his wife, Hillary, would make a “great commander-in-chief.” Last Wednesday, Rick Brown, a Pennsylvania resident and a 1973 graduate of West Point, attended a Hillary Clinton town hall meeting in Bethlehem, PA, a community 70-miles north of Philadelphia. Former president Bill Clinton was the featured speaker who arrived an hour and a half late to promote his wife’s credentials for the presidency. That state’s presidential primary is scheduled for April 22nd. Twenty-minutes into Clinton’s speech Brown, a five-year...

Imagine taking your 16-year-old daughter to the store and having a pervert aim a camera up her skirt and take pictures. You would expect the man to be arrested, tried and convicted for being a peeping tom. But if you live in Oklahoma, you would be wrong. Only two out of the three steps in the process happened; the pervert was not sent to jail. (The American Heritage College dictionary defines a "pervert" as "one who practices sexual perversion" and "perversion" as "a sexual practice or act considered deviant." In my opinion, this man is a pervert.) Instead, the Oklahoma...

Ashfield (MA) lawyer Stewart 'Buz' Eisenberg visits Guantanamo Bay every 10 weeks. He refers to the base's prison, which now holds about 275 terror suspects, as 'hell's lobby.' For the past three years, Eisenberg has represented several Guantanamo detainees, men suspected of being terrorists or having knowledge of terrorist activities. His clients have spent four to six years, and counting, in isolated cells at the U.S. Navy base in Cuba. All three have been declared 'no longer enemy combatants' by the U.S. government, which means, according to the U.S. Department of Defense, they 'no longer pose a significant threat.' But...

F-18 pilot returns home to canine friend from Iraqi war zone They spent months in an Iraqi war zone cementing a special bond. Marine Major Brian Dennis greets Nubs early Saturday morning at Camp Pendleton. But after more than a month of being apart, Marine Maj. Brian Dennis began to worry if Nubs the dog would still remember him, especially in a new place like San Diego. Their reunion early Saturday at Camp Pendleton clearly showed otherwise. The 2-year-old old dog, named for his two nubby ears, drenched Dennis' face with doggie kisses and said hello with excited whimpers. “You...

Enjoy your visit to Sanity Island PHOTO(s) OF THE DAY President George W. Bush and First Lady Laura Bush (and Barney) QUOTE(s) OF THE DAY President's Radio Address ~ March 22, 2008 Good morning. This weekend, families across America are coming together to celebrate Easter. This is the most important holiday in the Christian faith. And during this special and holy time each year, millions of Americans pause to remember a sacrifice that transcended the grave and redeemed the world. Easter is a holiday that beckons us homeward. This weekend is an occasion to reflect on the things that...

Now that America has seen clips of Jeremiah Wright--Barack Obama's former pastor and longtime mentor--yelling "God damn America" and referring to the United States as the "U.S. of KKK A," there are obvious questions on everyone's mind. There is, for instance, the complicated biographical question of why Obama aligned himself with Wright in the first place. But there is also the more basic political question of why the presidential candidate didn't disown Wright sooner. After all, whatever personal affection Obama felt for the man who brought him into the Christian fold, he had to realize that Wright was a ticking...

Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign has criticized Barack Obama’s campaign for “peddling photos” of former President Clinton and Obama’s longtime pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. A photograph shows the two shaking hands at a White House prayer breakfast in September 1998. The New York Times [NYT] posted the photo to its Web site Thursday and said it was provided by the Obama campaign. Videos of the former pastor railing against the United States and accusing the country of bringing on the Sept. 11 attacks by spreading terrorism have appeared on television and the Internet. Clinton spokesman Jay Carson said yesterday: “Less...