Free Republic

SYDNEY (Reuters) - Pope Benedict on Thursday told a huge gathering of young people that they were inheriting a planet whose resources had been scarred and squandered to fuel insatiable consumption. His latest appeal to save the planet for future generations came in a address to some 150,000 youths in Sydney after he rode through the city's harbor standing on the outdoor deck of a white ferry as dozens of boats blew their horns. "Reluctantly we come to acknowledge that there are also scars which mark the surface of our earth, erosion, deforestation, the squandering of the world's mineral and...

Registered domestic partners will continue to get the same tax benefits as married couples who transfer property under a recent court ruling that upheld a 2003 decision granting that right. The ruling last week by the Sacramento County Superior Court Judge Jack Sapunor upheld the California Board of Equalization decision to extend to domestic partners a property tax exemption originally written for spouses. Under tax code dating back to 1979, people who inherit property after the death of their spouses are exempt from the category of "change in ownership," which would subject them to reassessment of the property's value. The...