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Mundy, Mundy By George Neumayr Published 6/20/02 12:01:00 AM Alicia Mundy, a columnist for Editor & Publisher, writes that "it's time the press developed a new paradigm for covering the possible fallout of religious beliefs." The media "uses kid gloves on mainstream religion," she argues. Mundy is upset that the Washington Post didn't blame traditional Catholic moral teaching for the accidental death of a 21-month-old girl from a large Catholic family in Virginia. The Post titled one of its stories about the child's death (she was forgotten in a van, due to a family miscommunication), "Death Mars a Flattering Family...

US Senate climate warming hearing delayed until July WASHINGTON - Senate Democrats said yesterday they would postpone a hearing on global warming until July, when Bush administration officials have promised to clarify if the president agrees with a recent report concluding that greenhouse gas emissions from human activities were the main cause of global warming. The report from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency caused a stir because it aligned the administration for the first time with scientists who believe car emissions, and pollution from power plants and oil refineries are to blame for rising global temperatures. Previously, President George...

A Memo to Aspiring Politicians by George F. Smith If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal. — Emma Goldman So you want to be a politician? Do you have what it takes? American politicians need to understand the rules of the game if they are to retain office. It must be a game to them (you) — they (you) could not seriously want their (your) fellow citizens to live under a leviathan of red tape, taxation, waste, and corruption while criminally neglecting the one function they're (you're) responsible for. But since they're committed to playing politics, this is what...

CAIRO, June 20 (AFP) - Arab information ministers launched here Thursday a 22.5 million dollar media campaign to denounce Israel's "racist" policy toward the Palestinians and terrorism accusations in the West against the Arabs.The announcement came at the end of a two-day meeting at the Cairo headquarters of the 22-member Arab League.Part of the money will fund an "Arab media observatory" to be set up in Europe or the United States tasked with responding to accusations "portraying the Palestinian struggle as terrorism".The observatory will also seek to counteract charges of terrorism against Arabs, which have been frequent since the September...

<p>The first comes courtesy of Terry Lynn Barton, a U.S. Forest Service employee who stands accused of purposely starting the Hayman fire in Colorado. So far, Hayman has charbroiled 120,000 acres, chased 5,500 people from their houses and destroyed 25 homes. Firefighters fear the fire might rage all summer.</p>

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The United States obtained a slightly altered indictment against accused Sept. 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui, updating information on financial transactions that the government contends helped fund the terrorist attacks. An allegation in the original indictment that Moussaoui and alleged hijacker leader Mohammed Atta looked into how to use planes for crop-dusting also was removed. The new indictment, issued Wednesday, adds that suspected hijacker Fayez Ahmed used a credit card in Florida to obtain $4,900 from an account that Moussaoui has been linked to, according to the government. The new indictment also adds Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia to...

Answer: Yes, beheading hurts. How much depends on the executioner's skill, or lack of it. When Mary, Queen of Scots, was executed at Fotheringay Castle in 1587, a clumsy headsman gave her three strokes without quite managing to sever her head. The headsman then had to saw though the skin and gristle with his sheath knife before the job could be regarded as complete. The profound, protracted groan Mary gave when the axe first hit left the horrified witnesses in no doubt that her pain was excruciating. How long is the interval of consciousness after the head is severed? In...

Soon you could be swapping your mobile phone for a molar phone. Royal College of Art students in London have developed a phone that fits inside a tooth. The concept device picks up signals with a radio receiver and uses a tiny vibrating plate to convey them as sound along the jawbone to a person's ear. The designers said the mini-molar phone could be implanted in a tooth during routine dental surgery. The prototype phone is the work of graduates James Auger and Jimmy Loizeau and forms part of the Royal College of Art's annual summer exhibition. Known as The...

GAZA, June 20 (Reuters) - Two Palestinian militant groups rebuffed on Thursday an appeal by Yasser Arafat to cease violence against Israeli civilians and said such attacks would continue as long as Israel kept killing Palestinian civilians. Representatives of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, which have carried out many of the suicide bombings in the Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation, said they considered their attacks to be acts of self-defence under Israeli occupation. "We are in a process of legitimate self-defence. Israel is the one that kills innocent children and women. This war has been imposed on us by Israel," Nafez...

WASHINGTON, June 20 — A divided Supreme Court reversed itself Thursday and ruled that executing the mentally retarded is unconstitutionally cruel — a decision that reflects changes in public attitudes on the issue since the court declared such executions constitutional in 1989. THE 6-3 RULING is confined to mentally retarded killers, and does not address the constitutionality of capital punishment in general. When the court first declared such executions constitutional in 1989. Then, only two states that used capital punishment outlawed the practice for the retarded. Now, 18 states prohibit it. “It is not so much the number of these...

9:04 A.M. EDT THE PRESIDENT: Good morning. The global devastation of HIV/AIDS staggers the imagination and shocks the conscience. The disease has already killed over 20 million people and it's poised to kill at least 40 million more. In Africa, the disease clouds the future of entire nations and threatens to hold back the hopes of an entire continent. In the hardest-hit countries of sub-Sahara Africa as much as one-third of the adult population is infected with HIV, and 10 percent or more of the school teachers will die of AIDS within five years. The wasted human lives that lie...

South Carolina United Methodists held their annual meeting May 19-22. They approved, among other things, a resolution to oppose allowing concealed weapons on church property. This well-intended resolution ironically states, “Houses of worship and learning are places of sanctuary in accordance with biblical teaching, custom and tradition and should be kept holy and safe.” How may they expect their houses of worship to be safe sanctuaries when seditious murderers, to whom their resolutions mean nothing, are allowed to slaughter worshippers unimpeded? Any place that Jesus taught his followers was a house of worship and learning. In Luke 22, Jesus instructs...

June 20, 2002Thursday of the Eleventh Week in Ordinary Time Psalm: Thursday Week 28 Reading I Responsorial Psalm Gospel Reading ISir 48:1-14 Like a fire there appeared the prophet Elijahwhose words were as a flaming furnace.Their staff of bread he shattered,in his zeal he reduced them to straits;By the Lord's word he shut up the heavensand three times brought down fire.How awesome are you, Elijah, in your wondrous deeds!Whose glory is equal to yours?You brought a dead man back to lifefrom the nether world, by the will of the Lord.You sent kings down to destruction,and easily broke their power into...

WASHINGTON, Jun 20, 2002 (AP Online via COMTEX) -- Vice President Dick Cheney complained to lawmakers Thursday about leaks that he believes led to disclosure of the National Security Agency's Sept. 10 intercepts of at least two messages in Arabic that suggested a major event was to take place the next day. At President Bush's direction, Cheney called Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla., chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and Rep. Porter Goss, R-Fla., chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, "to express the president's concerns about this inappropriate disclosure," White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said. "The information that is being...

William Tyndale lived in England in the 1500's. He asked the bishop of London for permission to translate the Bible into English. He was denied. Tyndale then left for Germany where he began working on a translation of the New Testament into English. It was finished and smuggled into England in 1525, the first printed edition of the New Testament in English. The authorities burned it, but still it spread. Tyndale was eventually arrested and burned at the stake. The people leading the church were the ones forbidding and burning Bibles. This man gave his life so that the Word...

AUGUSTA — Although he once vowed he would never use “gimmicks” like state shutdown days to balance the budget, Gov. Angus S. King told reporters Wednesday he would be incorporating that very mechanism in order to offset a dramatic decline in projected revenues. “I do this with the greatest reluctance,” King said. “I said seven or eight years ago that I would not do this and here I am doing this. I’m fessing up. I never dreamed I would be in this situation. I see this as the best of a series of unpalatable alternatives.” The first of three state...

[ The Atlanta Journal-Constitution: 6/20/02 ] Name recognition, getting black vote big challenges for Majette in her bit to unseat McKinney By BILL TORPY and JIM GALLOWAY Atlanta Journal-Constitution Staff Writers CASH ADVANTAGE Rep. Cynthia McKinney (D-Ga.) starts her re-election bid with a fund-raising advantage over challenger Denise Majette: MCKINNEYCash on hand: $278,112Total raised: $248,689From PACs: $94,500 MAJETTECash on hand: $26,123Total raised: $130,148From PACs: $1,000 Source: Federal Election Commission Rep. Cynthia McKinney has been unbeatable during her decade in Congress because she's never faced a formidable Democratic opponent. Denise Majette, who is set to file Thursday to run for McKinney's...

Asteroid gives Earth closest shave in yearsPARIS (AFP) Jun 20, 2002 A football-pitch-sized asteroid capable of razing a major city came within a whisker of hitting the Earth on June 14, but was only spotted three days later, scientists said Thursday. Asteroid 2002 MN, estimated at up to 120 metres (yards) long, hurtled by the Earth at a distance of 120,000 kilometers (75,000 miles), well within the orbit of the Moon and just a hair's breadth in galactic terms. It is the closest recorded near-miss by any asteroid, with the exception of a 10-metre (33-feet) rock, 1994 XM1, which...

In the wee hours of last Monday morning, the American soccer team claimed its biggest World Cup victory ever, defeating Mexico 2-0 in a second round match in Jeonju, South Korea. But walking through the streets of Washington DC, you wouldn't have known it. Apart from a few forlorn looking Latino men standing with their heads bowed at the bus stop, evidence of this historic triumph was nowhere to be found. In Dakar, thousands of Senegalese had celebrated in the streets when their team beat Sweden in a similar round-of-16 upset; and in London hundreds of England supporters jumped...

JIDDAH, Saudi Arabia - Saudi Arabia will not allow outside investigators to question al-Qaida suspects who tried to shoot down a U.S. military plane, according to a report in a government-controlled newspaper yesterday, a day after the kingdom announced its first such arrests since Sept. 11. The daily Okaz newspaper said access to the 11 Saudis, an Iraqi and a Sudanese will be limited to Saudi authorities because "the crimes that they committed or planned to carry out occurred or were going to take place on Saudi territories." The kingdom announced Tuesday that the suspects "were planning to carry out...