American Buddhist Net

Senior Bush administration officials sternly cautioned the 9/11 Commission against probing too deeply into the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, according to a document recently obtained by the ACLU.

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The head of a new-age sect in Italy, said to have at least a thousand followers, has been arrested on suspicion of sexually abusing young girls and their mothers.

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DUBLIN – It often starts as a voice in the wilderness, but can swell into an entire nation's demand for truth. From Ireland to Germany, Europe's many victims of child abuse in the Roman Catholic church are finally breaking social taboos and confronting the clergy to face its demons.

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By John Cooney
Saturday March 13 2010

A depressing week for Pope Benedict dramatically escalated last night into an unprecedented papal crisis when he was directly implicated in a cover-up of a German paedophile priest when he was Cardinal Archbishop of Munich 30 years ago.

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It took just minutes for Naila Farhat to be transformed from a bubbly 13-year-old with plump, rosy cheeks, full lips and a sweet smile into a half-blind, disfigured survivor of acid violence. A spurned suitor, Irshad Hussein, and his friend, Farhat's science teacher Mazhar Hussein, ambushed the girl on her way home from school in 2003 in the Pakistani town of Layyah in Punjab province, and splashed corrosive liquid on her face. "I felt it burning. I couldn't see clearly, but I could hear them laughing," she says. "I wanted justice."

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Third acid attack in same Hong Kong district in 6 months, serial attacker feared
Cambodia: Ninth acid attack in 2010 shows need for tighter laws
Singapore: Man jailed for acid attack

A prostitution ring linked to alleged corruption in the awarding of public works contracts for the G8 summit in Italy involved as many as 350 women, investigating magistrates said yesterday.

The apparent scale of the “sex for favours” affair, which was previously said to involve three or four women, is a further blow to the centre-Right Government of Silvio Berlusconi.

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IPOH: There is a growing trend of youths being hired as hit men in exchange for monthly salaries, Deputy Minister in the Prime Minister's Department Datuk T. Murugiah said.

These youths, he said, were also given assignments to injure their targets and also to rob or steal from others.

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In the wake of the latest sex abuse claims in the Catholic Church in Germany, a number of senior clergy have called for a debate on the issue of celibacy in the priesthood.

The Archbishop of Vienna called for a thorough examination of the link between celibacy and child sex abuse by priests and the Archbishop of Salzburg asked whether it was an appropriate way of life for priests today.

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Celibacy vow

Jesse Ventura on AlJazeera w/ Riz Khan (part 2)

MUAR: Police yesterday nabbed a suspected mental patient who tried to burn down a Buddhist temple, but quickly ruled him out as the suspect involved in the kindergarten attack.

The 48-year-old man was nabbed as he tried to set fire to the 30-year-old Buddhist temple in Jalan Muar-Yong Peng yesterday morning.

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TACOMA, Wash. — A 47-year-old woman in Washington state has been sentenced to 16 years in prison for raping her 8-year-old daughter adopted from China.

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The FBI says that the anthrax case is closed, and that they have proved that Dr. Bruce Ivins did it.

But Congress is not convinced.

On March 3, 2010, Representative Holt called for a new investigation:

Last week, [Congressman Holt] succeeded in including language in the 2010 Intelligence Authorization Bill that would require the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community to examine the possibility of a foreign connection to the 2001 anthrax attacks.

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Ventura: ‘You’re not allowed to ask’ about 9/11

LUANG PRABANG: More than a 10th of the Buddha statues in Luang Prabang, an ancient city in north-central Laos whose urban district is a World Heritage Site, have gone missing in the past few years.

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FAIRMONT, W.Va. (AP) - Prosecutors in West Virginia have dropped a misdemeanor charge that accused an FBI security guard of spying on girls as they tried on prom gowns at a Fairmont mall.

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A former Transportation Security Administration contractor is being charged in Colorado for allegedly injecting malicious code into a government network used for screening airport security workers and others.

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CANNABIS CULTURE - Ex-narcotics officer Barry Cooper is fuming over a police raid on his home and plans to sue the officers and officials involved for $30 million, calling their conduct "obvious retaliation" for a sting operation he pulled on Texas police for his show KopBusters.

"We are going to sue every Williamson County officer involved in the raid, the judges who signed my warrants, the sheriffs department, and the jail for false imprisonment," Cooper told Cannabis Culture. "According to my lawyers, it will be about $30 million."

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Barry and Candi Cooper speak out about their arrest

The American Civil Liberties Union sued state prison officials and a private company Thursday, claiming violence is so rampant at the Idaho Correctional Center that it's known as "gladiator school" among inmates.

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BANDUNG: An Indonesian court jailed six people under the country’s anti-pornography law for performing an erotic dance at a bar in the early hours of New Year’s Day, a prosecutor said Friday.

The four female dancers, the show promoter and bar manager received a two and half months each for a performance in Bandung, West Java, which violated a controversial anti-pornography law that came into effect in October 2008.

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New York (CNN) -- The WTC Captive Insurance Co. announced settlements Thursday with more than 10,000 plaintiffs who claimed sickness or injuries after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The settlements could total up to $657 million.

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Jan 11, 2010

TOKYO — A Japanese woman who drove home with the body of an 80-year-old pedestrian lodged in her windscreen has been arrested on charges of causing a deadly traffic accident and fleeing the scene, police said Monday.

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Kemp said Ivins repeatedly denied that he sent the letters or that he developed the deadly anthrax spores. And Kemp cited Ivins' fellow scientists, who insisted he was incapable of making such a high-grade, dried anthrax with the equipment available at his workplace at the Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases in Frederick, Md.

"There's not one shred of evidence to show he did it," Kemp said.

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Henry Judy, the pastor of Life Point Church in Bonita Springs, is being accused by parishioners of bilking them out of $60,000.

Judy could not be reached for comment, but the Lee County Sheriff’s Office is investigating.

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Many Catholic priests and religious have abused children in their care. But is the church's record worse than the world's?

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A 50-year mystery over the 'cursed bread' of Pont-Saint-Esprit, which left residents suffering hallucinations, has been solved after a writer discovered the US had spiked the bread with LSD as part of an experiment.

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JOS, Nigeria (AP) - Nearly 3,000 people have fled to a neighboring state after hundreds were slaughtered in several mostly Christian villages over the weekend, aid officials said Thursday.

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An Ames man was arrested for second-degree burglary after allegedly entering the First Christian Church while it was closed and using electronic equipment at the church to watch pornography in the church’s basement.

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In this edition of CrossTalk host Peter Lavelle asks his guests why discussion of the events of 9/11 continue to attrack so much attention but is all but banned in the media mainstream.

Scientific examination of the subject has found that as the use of porn increases, the rate of sex crimes goes down.

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A Brooklyn rabbi faces decades behind bars - and sentencing on the eve of Passover - after a jury quickly convicted him of sexually assaulting a teenage boy.

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