Free Republic

Angry claims by some Kyoto residents about the presence of an evil arsonist trying to torch one of their favorite landmarks have been silenced following the discovery that a series of fires had actually been caused by crows, the Mainichi has learned. A Fushimi Inari priest takes aim at crows such as those blamed for starting fires at the Kyoto shrine in a composite image. Security cameras caught the crows stealing candles hung up around the Fushimi Inari Taisha shrine in the ancient capital's Fushimi-ku, while a later check revealed the black birds were also squirreling away the candles they...

(Filed: 04/11/2002) Brian Behan, the Irish author and playwright who died on Saturday aged 75, was never as celebrated as his brother Brendan, yet possessed a fair measure of the family's literary talent, and a full share of its irreverence and conviviality. In his younger days he was heavily involved in radical politics. He would often talk of having met Josef Stalin and Mao Tse Tung. His outstanding literary success was Mother of All the Behans (1984), an autobiography he ghosted on behalf of his parent. Adapted by Peter Sheridan into a one-woman show, it ran in New York, as...

After completing rehab, Mr. Perry finished both his work on "Friends" for the season and his remaining scenes in "Serving Sara." Then, he says, he "went to the college of me," to focus on learning more about himself.—The Times. The following are fall course offerings from the College of Matthew Perry, an institution of higher learning founded in 2002 for the study of the "Friends" star Matthew Perry. Matthewmatics 1: An introduction to Matthewmatics, the study of numbers and numerical concepts relating to Matthew Perry. The course covers such concepts as positive numbers ($24 million for the 2002-03 season of...

Illusionist Criss Angel took the plunge in Times Square yesterday, vowing not to come up to the surface of a 220-gallon water tank for 24 hours in a tribute to legendary escape artist Harry Houdini. Angel, 34, planned to free himself from shackles and emerge from his watery holding cell at 8:30 a.m. today, much like the escapes Houdini made more than 75 years ago. The updated stunt, however, has Angel using a breathing tube that will allow him to stay underwater longer than his famous predecessor. Angel's air supply will be cut off during the illusion's last hour. "I'm...

When he looked back, the tower had disappeared, and, for a minute, the Otis pilot manning one of the two military jets first on the scene at the World Trade Center thought World War III had begun. A second hijacked airliner had just sliced into the towers on the morning of Sept. 11, and the two Otis pilots were trying to clear the airspace over Lower Manhattan. No one was sure if the attack had ended, and the fighter pilots scrambled to steer all nonemergency aircraft away from New York's besieged skyline. Then, while facing away from the city, the...

Aug. 6 — A rare, huge, stinky flower that only blooms every three years is poised to release its rancid scent this week at The Huntington Library in San Marino, Calif., the library reports on its Web site. Amorphophallus titanum is also called the Corpse Flower for its fragrance, sometimes described as a mix of rotting flesh and excrement. The flower was discovered in the rainforests of its native Sumatra in 1878, and came via London's Kew Gardens to the New York Botanical Garden in 1937, where it bloomed for the first time in the United States. Specimens of the...

Hilaire Belloc wrote some of the finest comic verse in English. The best of what might be called his serious light verse is pretty good, too: Tarantella, for example, with its great line about "the fleas that tease in the high Pyrenees" and its "Waterfall like Doom". Most of Belloc's other writing has faded. Many of his books - he published no fewer than 120 - were mere hackwork. But his idiosyncratic travel books still have their admirers, especially (and deservedly) The Cruise of the Nona. He was a witty essayist. The political novels he wrote during the Edwardian period...

The crime-and motive-the media ignored. On September 9, Reginald Carr and his brother Jonathan go on trial for what has become known as the Wichita Massacre. The two black men are accused of a week-long crime spree that culminated in the quadruple homicide of four young whites in a snowy soccer field in Wichita, Kansas. In all, the Carr brothers robbed, raped or murdered seven people. They face 58 counts each, ranging from first-degree murder, rape, and robbery to animal cruelty. Prosecutors will seek the death penalty. The only survivor of the massacre is a woman whose identity has been...

Major Geoffrey Gibbon Major Geoffrey Gibbon, who has died aged 82, was a dashing international showjumper, big game hunter and founder of drive-through safari parks. An outstanding horseman, Geoff Gibbon was a member of several Nations Cup winning British teams in the 1950s and later acted as chef d'equipe of the British showjumping team during the Stockholm Olympics in 1956. The next year he took on the joint mastership of the Monmouthshire Hunt from his showjumping friend Colonel Harry "Foxhunter" Llewellyn, who had invited him into partnership of an engineering business. Gibbon soon gained notoriety for the number of gates...

A show jumper has been awarded £1,000 compensation for the psychological damage her horse suffered in a road accident last year. In what was thought to be a landmark ruling, a county court judge accepted the evidence of a "horse whisperer" that the six-year-old mare Tilly had lost value following the accident, which had made it hesitant and nervous. The British Horse Society said it was unaware of any previous case of compensation being awarded for psychological rather than physical damage to an eventing horse. At Gloucester county court on Thursday, Judge Paul Singleton awarded Gill James a total of...

It has been a season of jolting ups and downs for Bishop John F. Kinney of the Diocese of St. Cloud, Minn., a man who nine years ago was at the center of an effort to focus the attention of the nation's Roman Catholic hierarchy on the problem of priests who sexually abuse young people. Despite that record, a month ago, at one of the four public sessions that Bishop Kinney organized to hear the views of Catholics in his 12,000-square-mile diocese in central Minnesota, he faced what one staff member called booing from some angry church members, but what...

A YOUNG pilot described yesterday the last moments of a decorated SAS veteran who deliberately leapt 5,000 feet to his death from a light aircraft. The inquest in Oxford heard that Charles Bruce, 45, a veteran of the conflicts in the Falklands and of Northern Ireland, committed suicide by jumping without a parachute from the plane as it flew over Oxfordshire last January. Mr Bruce, who joined the Parachute Regiment aged 17, and who had been a qualified skydiver, leaped from the Cessna 172 Skyhawk leaving his friend and business partner, Judith Haig, 29, to land the plane alone at...

When Megan Gaffey got her school ring last month, she said she took it as a sign that she belonged at Kellenberg Memorial High School. Yesterday, the honor student was officially told not to come back to the private Catholic school for her senior year after she refused to sing a medley of songs that she and her family consider blasphemous. As part of the spring concert, the school's chorus sang several selections from the Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber rock opera "Jesus Christ Superstar." But Gaffey, a member of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Franklin Square, said the...

Scot accused of finding fame by stealing Italian's ideas. Italy hailed the redress of a historic injustice yesterday after the US Congress recognised an impoverished Florentine immigrant as the inventor of the telephone rather than Alexander Graham Bell. Historians and Italian-Americans won their battle to persuade Washington to recognise a little-known mechanical genius, Antonio Meucci, as a father of modern communications, 113 years after his death. The vote by the House of Representatives prompted joyous claims in Meucci's homeland that finally Bell had been outed as a perfidious Scot who found fortune and fame by stealing another man's work. Calling...

Some 40 years ago in Hobart, Australia, a rapist on the run from the police sought refuge in the house of his parish priest. Father Rogers let him in. The man asked for sanctuary. Father Rogers's ministry began with a well-placed punch that knocked the man cold. Rogers then called the police and held the man until they arrived. Complete article here.

SWIMMERS have been advised to stay away from a ?sexually aggressive bottlenose dolphin which has become a tourist attraction off the South Coast. The dolphin, nicknamed Georges, arrived off Weymouth in Dorset two months ago after following a trawler across the Channel and has defied attempts to persuade him to return. Ric O'Barry, an American marine mammal expert who trained the dolphin stars of the 1960s television series Flipper, has been leading the rescue attempts. He said yesterday that the dolphin could pose a serious threat to anyone who tried to swim with him. Mr O'Barry was speaking after he...

Roman Catholic bishops have drawn up a national proposal on disciplining priests who molest children, hoping to restore trust in a church badly shaken by the monthslong abuse crisis. The plan, put together by a committee of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, was to be released to the public on Tuesday. Its recommendations include asking the Vatican to remove priests who abused more than one child in the past and those who molest any young person in the future, The Boston Globe reported. However, priests who committed abuse just once in the past could remain in ministry, if...

YOUNG churchgoers want rock 'n' roll mass, according to the biggest survey yet of Australian worshippers. Teenagers were most likely to be bored in church, said the survey of 435,000 worshippers from 19 Christian denominations. It found a generational gulf between older people, who wanted traditional services, and younger parishioners, who preferred more modern services and contemporary music. Denominations surveyed include Catholic, Anglican, Uniting Church, Presbyterian, Baptist and the Pentecostal churches. Dr Ruth Powell, a researcher with the National Church Life Survey, said churches needed to become more attractive to young people. The young, who made up 15 per cent...

An influential canon lawyer at the Vatican has written an article to be published today in a Vatican-approved Jesuit journal saying that Roman Catholic bishops should not turn over allegations or records of sexual abuse by priests to the civil authorities. The article in the magazine Civilta Cattolica by the Rev. Gianfranco Ghirlanda, dean of the canon law faculty at Gregorian University in Rome, is the second indication in recent weeks that inside the Vatican, influential church officials may disapprove of the response of American bishops to the abuse scandal. Last month, the head of a Vatican council, Archbishop Julián...

Athens 2004 Games organisers plan 'relentless' smoking ban at all venues,including open-air arenas; facilities for smokers to be created Way of life - Greeks love their cigarettes, but they will have to do without if they want to attend the Athens 2004 Olympics. ATHENS' hosting of the 2004 Olympics is often considered an opportunity to remedy some of Greece's weaker attributes, such as unruly traffic behaviour or the tendency to be lax with deadlines. Never, however, have Games organisers set themselves a task of a magnitude comparable to the one now undertaken - to force abstinence on a nation of...