Free Republic

A 'pay-to-confess' telephone hotline for Catholics too busy to go to church has been condemned as 'utterly unacceptable' by bishops in France. The service - called the Phoneline to the Lord - charges users 30p a minute to confess their sins to an automated answering machine. When the number is called, a soothing male voice says: 'For advice on confessing, press one. To confess, press two. To listen to some confessions, press three.'   But with soft organ music playing in the background, the voice warns: 'In case of serious or mortal sins - that is, sins that have cut you...

(04-09) 16:37 PDT SAN JOSE -- Vandals cut fiber-optic cable lines belonging to AT&T at two locations early today, knocking out phones and access to 911 emergency services to thousands of residential customers and businesses in southern Santa Clara County, in Santa Cruz and San Benito counties and along the Peninsula, authorities said. Four AT&T fiber-optic cables in an underground vault were severed shortly before 1:30 a.m. along Monterey Highway north of Blossom Hill Road in south San Jose, police Sgt. Ronnie Lopez said. Four more underground cables, at least two of which belong to AT&T, were cut about two...

LONDON, June 8 (Reuters Life!) - The creaking and splashing sounds of Europe's largest glacier slipping into an ocean grave are just a phone call away now that an artist has installed a microphone in its surrounding waters. Glaswegian artist Katie Paterson was moved to set up the line after hallucinating about Iceland's giant Vatnajokull glacier during a bout of fever. The link encourages people to connect emotionally with the glacier, she told Reuters from her tent on the Icelandic shoreline. "It is really poetic: a river of ice slowly disintegrating, quite discreetly, quite invisibly. Sheets of ice are constantly...

Phone lines were purposely cut in Newtown, Dec. 26, causing the loss of service to between 100 and 150 Verizon customers -- including the County Press - according to Verizon spokesman Ellsworth V. Edwards.