The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston has offered to settle about 200 lawsuits from the pedophile priest scandal there, offering average payments of $75,000, lawyers for the accusers said on Friday. The payments are worth about half the $155,000 average payment made to more than 500 other area parishioners in a landmark 2003 settlement, the lawyers said. Mitchell Garabedian, a lawyer representing 55 of the cases, called the offer "cold and callous." "As far as the church is concerned, the sexual abuse scandal has blown over," he said. The Archdiocese of Boston confirmed it is in talks to settle the cases but declined further comment. Claims of sexual abuse by priests surfaced in Boston in 2002, then spread to other U.S. parishes, prompting a drop in donations at churches across America. Squeezed by the cost of settlements, the Boston diocese has shut more than 60 churches and schools, triggering protests by churchgoers. It is not yet clear how many of the 200 plaintiffs would ...
http://abcnews.go.com
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Editor - 17:55:00 12-30-05
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 OAS officials abducted in Haiti |
Two members of the Organization of American States have been kidnapped in the Haitian capital, police have said. The officials were working towards presidential elections, which were originally scheduled for 8 January but are now set to be delayed. Electoral workers say conditions for holding the vote have not been met. Haiti has been blighted by political and criminal violence since armed insurgents overthrew President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 2004. A UN peacekeeping force has been unable to restore complete order in the country. The two OAS employees - a Guatemalan and a Peruvian - were abducted while driving on a road near the international airport. The Haitian spouse of one of the two OAS workers was also abducted with them in Port-au-Prince, police said. They were a short distance away from the Cite Soleil neighbourhood, where several kidnappings and shootings have taken place. ...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4570120.stm
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Editor - 17:51:00 12-30-05
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| Dozens of Cubans, at Least Nine Children Among Them, Land Along Florida Beaches |
Dozens of Cuban refugees, including at least nine children, came ashore Friday throughout southern Florida, officials said. Authorities reported at least five groups of Cubans landed at different points along the coast. In Miami Beach 28 people came ashore, police Officer Arley Flaherty said. The refugees were taken to immigration offices where their cases will be processed, Flaherty said....
http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=1457050
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Editor - 17:37:00 12-30-05
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| British Hostages In Gaza Freed |
A British aid worker and her parents were released from captivity late Friday, two days after armed gunmen seized the family in the southern Gaza Strip, a Palestinian official said. Palestinian mediator Kamal Sharafi gave no further details, including where the family was released or who had kidnapped them. Kate Burton, 25, a worker with the Al-Mezan human rights group in Gaza, was kidnapped with her parents Wednesday by Palestinian gunmen in the southern town of Rafah. There was no claim of responsibility, and officials did not say what demands the kidnappers had made. Jamil Sarhan, Mezan's executive director, said the family was "fine, in good health." ...
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/12/30/world/main1172296.shtml?CMP=OTC-RSSFeed&source=RSS&attr=World_1172296
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Editor - 17:30:00 12-30-05
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| Wall Street is road to nowhere for indexes |
Investors marked the last trading day of 2005 Friday with the same conundrum they faced all year — trying to find a good reason to buy stocks and coming up short. Stocks fell to their December lows, and the Dow Jones industrials finished the year lower.With little news to spur buying, stocks fell as investors consolidated their meager profits on the year, and as a result, the Dow closed the year with a loss for the first time since 2002, though other major indexes were expected to post modest gains for 2005. The Dow fell 67.32, or 0.6%, to 10,717.50. Broader stock indicators also lost ground. The Standard & Poor's 500 index fell 6.13, or 0.5%, to 1248.29, and the Nasdaq composite index fell 12.84, or 0.6%, to 2205.32. The Dow lost about 0.6% for the year; the S&P 500 is up 3% — or just one-third of last year's 9% advance. And the Nasdaq is up about 1.4% in 2005....
http://www.usatoday.com/money/markets/us/2005-12-30-stocks_x.htm?csp=34
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Editor - 17:21:00 12-30-05
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| Ore. Ruling Makes Archdioses' Property Vulnerable in Sex Abuse Cases |
A bankruptcy judge ruled Friday that the Archdiocese of Portland, not its parishes, owns church assets, dealing a major blow to its efforts to protect church property from lawsuits filed by alleged victims of priest sex abuse. U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Elizabeth Perris, in a pair of opinions, ruled that church property and real estate is under the control of the archdiocese, not its individual parishes, as attorneys for the archdiocese had argued.Her ruling settles one of the main questions on the bankruptcy — whether accepting the jurisdiction of a federal court might violate theFirst Amendment rights of the church to the "free exercise" of religion by forcing it to ignore church law on ownership."There is no First Amendment impediment to this court's jurisdiction," Perris wrote....
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,180255,00.html
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Editor - 14:37:00 12-30-05
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