The number of sex abuse claims against Roman Catholic clergy dropped for the third consecutive year, but total payouts to victims nearly doubled to reach their highest level ever, according to a new report for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.
Dioceses and religious orders received 691 new allegations last year, compared with 714 in 2006. The overwhelming majority of claims date back decades. Settlements with victims increased by 90% over the same period, to more than $526 million — the largest amount for one year.
Church sex abuse costs skyrocket
Top Ranking CIA Operatives Admit Al-qaeda Is a Complete Fabrication
BBC’s killer documentary called “The Power of Nightmares“. Top CIA officials openly admit, Al-qaeda is a total and complete fabrication, never having existed at any time. The Bush administration needed a reason that complied with the Laws so they could go after “the bad guy of their choice” namely laws that had been set in place to protect us from mobs and “criminal organizations” such as the Mafia. They paid Jamal al Fadl, hundred’s of thousands of dollars to back the U.S. Governments story of Al-qaeda a “group” or criminal organization they could “legally” go after.
True Cost of War -- Staggering Number of Wounded Vets
About 15 soldiers are wounded for every fatality, compared with 2.6 per death in Vietnam and 2.8 in Korea.
But with those saved soldiers comes a financial price — one veterans groups and others claim the government is unwilling to pay.
Those critics also say that the tens of thousands of soldiers wounded in Iraq are part of a political numbers game, one they say undermines the system meant to care for them.
The most frequently cited figure is the 29,320 soldiers wounded in action in Iraq as of Thursday. But there have been 31,325 others treated for non-combat injuries and illness as of March 1. (2008)
Lou Dobbs: New World Order Can Be Defeated
"What we have permitted in allowing the Bush administration to have effectively further reduced our sovereignty and respect for our laws and certainly regard for our borders and our ports - it's been a shameless, shameless period in American history that we're going to have to reverse," Dobbs told the Alex Jones Show.
Dobbs said that if people did not wake up to the unfolding North American Union agenda as well as the Trans Texas Corridor under the banner of the Security and Prosperity partnership, then America could "kiss its future goodbye."
I'll Have My Cosmetics with a Side of Infertility, Please
Carcinogens in cosmetics? Petrochemicals in perfume? If only this were an urban legend. Unfortunately, it's a toxic reality, and it's showing up in our bodies.
In 2004, scientists found pesticides in the blood of newborn babies. A year later, researchers discovered perchlorate, a component of rocket fuel, in human breast milk. Today, people are testing positive for a litany of hazardous substances from flame retardants to phthalates to lead.
AP Chief: Press Freedoms Among Casualties of 9/11
"Congress steps back from its constitutional role of executive oversight. Civilian oversight of the military wanes. A Justice Department interprets laws in ways that extend police powers. More drastically, prisons are established in places where government or military operatives circumvent due process or control trials," Curley said in accepting the foundation's First Amendment Leadership Award.
"It's at moments like these when a free press matters most," he said.
The Armageddon Plan
There things stood until September 11, 2001, when Cheney and Rumsfeld suddenly began to act out parts of a script they had rehearsed years before.
Their participation in the extra-constitutional continuity-of-government exercises, remarkable in its own right, also demonstrates a broad, underlying truth about these two men. For three decades, from the Ford Administration onward, even when they were out of the executive branch of government, they were never far away. They stayed in touch with defense, military, and intelligence officials, who regularly called upon them. They were, in a sense, a part of the permanent hidden national-security apparatus of the United States—inhabitants of a world in which Presidents come and go, but America keeps on fighting.
OPEC Faults U.S. As Oil Hits New High
OPEC on Wednesday accused the U.S. of economic "mismanagement" it said is pushing oil prices to new record highs, rebuffing calls to boost output and laying the blame at the feet of the Bush administration.
OPEC President Chakib Khelil told reporters the global market is being affected by what he called "the mismanagement of the U.S. economy," and that America's problems were a key factor in the cartel's decision to hold off on any action.
"If the prices are high, definitely they are not due to a lack of crude. They are due to what's happening in the U.S.," Khelil said. "There is sufficient supply. There's plenty of oil there."
Racism in Israel on the rise
The Association for Civil Rights in Israel's (ACRI) report on civil rights in Israel paints a bleak picture: Increasing racism, restriction of personal freedoms and discrimination even within the Knesset walls – and that's just scratching the surface.
Published Saturday, the report reveled that Israeli youths are bombarded with stereotypic, racist imagery, and their opinions have developed accordingly: Over two-thirds Israeli teen believe Arabs to be less intelligent, uncultured and violent. Over a third of Israeli teens fear Arabs all together.
The report becomes even grimmer, citing the ACRI's racism poll, taken in March of 2007, in which 50% of Israelis taking part said they would not live in the same building as Arabs, will not befriend, or let their children befriend Arabs and would not let Arabs into their homes.
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