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CHICAGO - Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley said Wednesday that new disclosures of corruption in city government, including allegations that payoff money found its way into his campaign fund, have left him "hurt, embarrassed, disappointed." "Clearly, I'm not proud or pleased," Daley told a news conference, his first since a former city water official pleaded guilty to taking payoffs from trucking companies and said some of the money went to campaign funds, including Daley's. It was the first time Daley's name surfaced in the yearlong investigation of the city's corruption-riddled, $38 million Hired Truck Program, which outsourced work to private...

TUEBINGEN, Germany - In the cafeteria at Tuebingen University's theology department, students swapping lecture notes on a rainy Wednesday weren't preoccupied by their looming exams. Instead, they were concerned about where their school's most famous former professor would take the Roman Catholic Church as Pope Benedict XVI. And they didn't exude optimism. "It's going to be interesting to see what he does," said Thomas Burchard, a 20-year-old Protestant studying for the ministry. "He's very conservative and, like the Catholic Church, he goes against what the Bible says." Fellow student Simon Reinitz, clad in black, his hair long and a stud...

PINELLAS PARK, United States (AFP) - The father of Terri Schiavo made a desperate, 11th hour appeal for authorities to reconnect a feeding tube to his severely brain-damaged daughter, and said he feared doctors might try to hasten her death. "I have a grave concern that they'll expedite the process to kill her with an overdose of morphine," Bob Schindler told the press Monday outside the hospice where his 41-year old daughter is a patient. "She's alive and she's fighting like hell to live," he added, remarking on his daughter's "amazing, amazing endurance." Schindler added that when he visited his...

Her skin is flaky, tongue dry and lips sunken. Doctors are saying Theresa Schiavo could survive another week without food or water, but she could just as easily die over the weekend. But is she suffering? On that point, expert opinion varies widely. Schiavo stopped receiving food or water last Friday. Because she is in a persistent vegetative state without conscious awareness, many medical authorities say she is unable to process or communicate pain and discomfort. Any reaction she shows is reflex, they say. And as her organs fail, they predict that she is likely to pass peacefully, as if...

I've been searching for the right word to describe what is happening to Terri Schiavo, a word that has some real blood to it. It's important to find the right word now, because, by the time you read this, the severely brain-damaged woman might be dead. Perhaps you've noticed other bloodless words being flipped at her, words like "viability" and phrases like "pull the plug." These words were once the issue of bloodless people, of clerks and sophists who can prove almost anything with their fine arguments. The rest of us have fed on them until they shape how we...

DEMRE, Turkey -- In the 4th century, a bishop named Nicholas was a local hero in this seaside town, living the kind of life that eventually led to sainthood. For most of the 16 centuries that followed, Saint Nicholas was known chiefly as the patron of sailors, barrel-makers, small children and Russians. And though it's not entirely clear just when the historical Saint Nicholas began to meld into the image of the jolly man in the red suit, historians can now say precisely when the transformation was complete. On Feb. 3, the Demre City Council voted unanimously to erect a...

Of all lenten hymns and prayers, one short prayer can be termed the lenten prayer. Tradition ascribes it to one of the great teachers of spiritual life- St. Ephrem the Syrian. Here is its text: "O Lord and Master of my life! Take from me the Spirit of sloth, faint-heartedness, lust of power and idle talk. But give rather the Spirit of chastity, humility, patience and love to Thy servant. Yea O Lord and King! Grant me to see my Own errors and not to judge my brother; For Thou art blessed unto ages of ages. Amen" This prayer is...

Saint Nicholas of Zhicha, "the Serbian Chrysostom," was born in Lelich in western Serbia on January 4, 1881 (December 23, 1880 O.S.). His parents were Dragomir and Katherine Velimirovich, who lived on a farm where they raised a large family. His pious mother was a major influence on his spiritual development, teaching him by word and especially by example. As a small child, Nicholas often walked three miles to the Chelije Monastery with his mother to attend services there. Sickly as a child, Nicholas was not physically strong as an adult. He failed his physical requirements when he applied to...

Last year when Cook County and Chicago both raised taxes on cigarettes, anti-tax activists cried foul. They argued that the new taxes would only drive smokers into the black market or onto the internet, thus depressing tax revenue. As it turns out, they were right! The Governor’s 2006 budget admits as much when it acknowledges that “total revenue from the [statewide] cigarette tax is forecast to come in significantly below budget, due to the Cook County tax increase of $0.82 in April 2004 and the subsequent increase of the City of Chicago ’s cigarette tax.” Unfortunately, the Governor fails to...

Week after week, Eastern Orthodox hierarchs guide their flocks through the incense-shrouded rites that define their ancient faith. Bishops also become experts at another intricate ritual: banquets. So Metropolitan Philip, the Antiochian Orthodox archbishop of North America, was not surprised to be asked to make a few remarks at the final banquet of the 2004 Clergy-Laity Congress of the Greek Orthodox Church in New York City. He was surprised when Greek Archbishop Demetrios indicated that this was more than a polite request. "I reminded him that when I speak, I tell it like it is," said Philip. What happened next...

SPRINGFIELD -- On Thursday of this week, legislation determining whether a baby born alive is to be defined as “a person” in Illinois will face its first hurdle in the state’s General Assembly. It is likely to be heard in the House Judiciary I Committee, now chaired by Chicago Democrat Rep. John Fritchey. Similar proposals have been stopped four times in the past five years, but supporters say that because the language is simplified, the odds have increased that it may be finally successful in getting through the Illinois House committee. This movement is despite resistance by Planned Parenthood and...

WASHINGTON — The introduction of the Medicare prescription drug benefit means that soon the government will be picking up almost half of the nation's healthcare costs, a report released Wednesday shows. At the same time, private-sector spending on healthcare also will increase, according to economists and actuaries for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Writing in the online edition of the journal Health Affairs, the federal agency's economists and actuaries predicted that the continuing increases in public and private healthcare spending would lead to "heightened pressure to find ways to slow cost growth without compromising quality of access." The...

TOKYO (AFP) - As Japan produces fewer children and more retirees, toymakers are designing new dolls designed not for the young but for the lonely elderly -- companions which can sleep next to them and offer caring words they may never hear otherwise. Talking toys have become such a hit that some elderly people have embraced them as substitutes for the children who have grown old and deserted entire neighborhoods in the rapidly greying country. The Yumel doll, which looks like a baby boy and has a vocabulary of 1,200 phrases, is billed as a "healing partner" for the elderly...

Urging a major shift in U.S. policy, some health experts are recommending that virtually all Americans be tested routinely for the AIDS virus, much as they are for cancer and other diseases. Since the early years of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s, the government has recommended screening only in big cities, where AIDS rates are high, and among members of high-risk groups, such as gay men and drug addicts. But two large, federally funded studies found that the cost of routinely testing and treating nearly all adults would be outweighed by a reduction in new infections and the opportunity...

The New York City Law Department intends to take the Manhattan Supreme Court decision ordering the city to permit same-sex marriages straight to the Court of Appeals, the city's chief attorney announced Monday. "[W]e plan to seek permission to appeal directly to the Court of Appeals so that a decision on this important issue can be reached as quickly as possible," Corporation Counsel Michael A. Cardozo said in a written statement. "Since courts of this state disagree whether or not the state marriage law is unconstitutional, it is essential that this issue of statewide importance be decided definitively by the...

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - A visit to church may be good for the soul but not so good for the lungs, a new study shows. Scientists from Maastricht University found that burning candles and incense in church can release dangerous levels of potentially carcinogenic particles, according to research published this week in the European Respiratory Journal. "After a day of candle burning we found about 20 times as much as by a busy road," Theo de Kok, the author of the study, told Reuters. "These levels were so unbelievably high we thought we should report it to the public." The air...

This column was originally published on March 15, 1978, in The Courier-Journal, Louisville, Ky., where Elinor Brecher was a staff writer. The Herald reprints it following the death of Yasser Arafat, who then headed the terrorist Palestine Liberation Organization. Brecher's cousin, Gail Rubin, was the first victim of what became known as the March 11 Coastal Road Massacre. She was photographing wading birds at Kibbutz Ma'agan Michael when she was shot in the head by PLO terrorists. Later that day, they hijacked a bus and blew it up in Tel Aviv, killing 36 and wounding 82 Israelis. Nine terrorists died...

SPRINGFIELD - Senate President Emil Jones (D-Chicago) informed Republican Minority Leader Frank Watson (R-Greenville) that a surprise vote on a bill adding the term “sexual orientation” to the Human Rights Act will be taken in the Illinois Senate Tuesday afternoon, Springfield sources say. “If Rick Garcia said that a vote on SB 101 wasn’t going to be taken this week, he just didn’t tell you what he was promoting,” Rev. Bob VandenBosch of Concerned Christian Americans said today. “There is likely to be a vote this afternoon on adding ‘sexual orientation’ to the Human Rights Act, and it will be...

RANDOLPH COUNTY - Something was missing from absentee ballots recently sent to military personnel from Randolph County in southwestern Illinois, according to servicemen who received the ballots. The absentee ballots, which appeared to have been made up on ordinary paper, failed to list two fairly high profile candidates-- President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. David Blow, a member of the U.S. Air Force, stationed in San Antonio, Texas, called his cousin who resides in Randolph County and asked him to see if the "Special Write-In Absentee Blank Ballot" was really legal. Blow told his cousin Rick Hall...

LIVERMORE, Calif. - It didn't take a nuclear physicist to realize changes were needed after a $40,000 ceramic mural was unveiled outside the city's new library and everyone could see the misspelled names of Einstein, Shakespeare, Vincent Van Gogh, Michelangelo and seven other historical figures. "Our library director is very frustrated that she has this lovely new library and it has all these misspellings in front," said city councilwoman Lorraine Dietrich, one of three council members who voted Monday to authorize paying another $6,000, plus expenses, to fly the artist up from Miami to fix the errors. Reached at her...