Free Republic

DUBLIN -- A 1997 letter from the Vatican warned Ireland's Catholic bishops not to report all suspected child-abuse cases to police - a disclosure that victims' groups described as "the smoking gun" needed to show that the church enforced a worldwide culture of covering up crimes by pedophile priests. The newly revealed letter, obtained by Irish broadcasters RTE and provided to The Associated Press, documents the Vatican's rejection of a 1996 Irish church initiative to begin helping police identify pedophile priests following Ireland's first wave of publicly disclosed lawsuits...

WASHINGTON (AP) - A new government report shows the economy sank at a pace of just 1 percent in the second quarter of the year. It was a better-than-expected showing that provided the strongest signal yet that the longest recession since World War II is finally winding down. The dip in gross domestic product for the April-to-June period, reported by the Commerce Department on Friday, comes after the economy was in a free fall, tumbling at 6.4 percent pace in the first three months of this year. That was the sharpest downhill slide in nearly three decades. The economy has...