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<p>The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops voted overwhelmingly Friday to adopt a new national policy on the sexual abuse of minors by priests that would remove all offenders from any job connected with the church but would not necessarily force them out of the priesthood.</p>

<p>Bishop Wilton D. Gregory is president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.</p> <p>DALLAS -- Hours before the nation's bishops were set to begin debating a policy on predatory priests, the clerics who drafted the plan met privately with victims whose stories may lead to tougher standards.</p>

<p>It was the holiday season of 50 years ago, and Roosevelt Elementary was holding its Christmas pageant.</p> <p>We still called such things Christmas pageants back then. Although half the school was Jewish, we all sang carols and lit menorahs, too, and nobody seemed to mind. It just goes to show how very unenlightened we were back then.</p>

THERE is an interesting by-product of the bombings on September 11, 2001 that seems to be sweeping the country. In universities and the media, people are learning about Al-Qaida and their religious philosophy. There is a tendency in our country, particularly among academics, to treat all beliefs as worthy of equal merit. It is a type of intellectual relativism that ignores the obvious in favor of the inquiry. The sudden interest in the core beliefs of Al-Qaida and similar groups appears entirely due to their success in killing a great number of people. Yet, any mental defective with enough ...

With Afghanistan so much in the news I thought it would be worthwhile to take a survey of the avian population there. I found little other than postage stamps and another page, which is not only a decent survey of the bird life in the country, but gives a detailed geographical overview of the country as well. I've provided a key of English names that correspond to the Latin names in the article. KEY maronettu angustirostris -- this may be a mispelling. No info available. Oxyura leucocephala -- white-headed duck Phoenicopterus ruber -- greater flamingo Grus leucogeranus -- Siberian crane ...

<p>Thursday, October 4, 2001 Homepage Search CyberSurveys Ask the Expert News Talk Sports Talk Lions Talk Wings Talk Tiger Talk Car Talk Tech Talk Horoscope Hot Sites Lottery Weather Staff Autos Joyrides Business Careers Census Columnists Commuting Detroit History Editorials Health Metro / State Livingston Macomb Oakland Wayne On Detroit Nation / World Obituaries Death Notices Politics / Govt. Real Estate Religion Schools Special Reports Technology Sports Home Lions/NFL Red Wings/NHL Pistons/NBA Shock/WNBA Tigers/Baseball MSU U-M More Colleges Golf Guide High Schools Motor Sports Outdoors More Sports Scoreboards Entertainment Casino Guide Movie Finder TV Listings Crossword Homestyle home Decorating Food Gardening Home Improvement Home Life Home Tech Wine Report Sports Red Wings Lions Autos Joyrides News History Copyright 2001 The Detroit News. Use of this site indicates your agreement to the Terms of Service (updated 08/09/2001). Jerome Delay / Associated Press Taliban Ambassador to Pakistan Abdul Salam Zaeef, right, announced this week that Afghanistan's ruling regime would not give up Osama bin Laden but was willing to enter negotiations with the United States about bin Laden's suspected role in the Sept. 11 attacks in America. Editorials Taliban's Fate Sealed; Balking Allies Beware By The Detroit News The Issue Should balking Middle East allies dictate the West's military response to the Taliban? Two weeks ago, President George W. Bush, in an address to a joint session of Congress, delivered a blunt ultimatum to the Taliban, the ruling regime in Afghanistan. The president demanded that it hand over Osama bin Laden and give the West full access to his terrorism network.</p>

<p>It's a question much on American minds as they grapple with the seemingly senseless suicide attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The most common answer is that such fanatics resent America's power, detest U.S. culture and feel threatened by America's freedom. But don't discount the fact that when you are trying to consolidate power within, it's useful to have enemies without.</p>

<p>SOFIA, Bulgaria -- Could it be that Noah's Ark lies well-preserved somewhere in the inky depths of the Black Sea? A U.S.-Bulgarian scientific expedition is combing the Black Sea for traces of a lost civilization -- a mission that could shed more light on the controversial timing and site of the biblical Great Flood.</p>

The clock on your microwave oven apparently is consuming far too much energy, as is your TV remote and stereo -- at least according to federal lawmakers intent on forcing appliance makers to undertake a costly redesign of thousands of products. Little noticed amid all the hoopla on Capitol Hill over attempts to impose tighter automotive fuel economy regulations and possible Arctic oil drilling was the House's recent approval of another energy conservation measure. It would actually allow the federal government to regulate the amount of power required by an alarm clock, answering machine, baby monitor, coffee maker, doorbell, ...

A major shadow hangs over the struggling world economy: Japan. Unlike 10 years ago, however, the shadow isn't the threat of a Japan Inc. on the verge of running its economic competitors into the ground. Quite the reverse. The much-feared Japan Inc. may still export lots of goods to America and other countries, but it is essentially bankrupt -- as is the once-fashionable notion that its government-guided economy was superior to old-fashioned free enterprise. Japan hit the economic wall about 10 years ago and hasn't recovered. The country is in its fourth straight year of economic decline after a ...

Social Security is anything but secure. President George W. Bush aims to restore security through innovative reform, but Democrats seem content to maintain the status quo -- an actuarially bankrupt system that leaves millions of Americans uncertain as to the future of the program and their own retirement security. Leaving taxpayers and retirees in a fearful state of uncertainty is bad politics and bad economics. Unfortunately, the recent stock market plunge has been seized upon by opponents of the president's private individual retirement account (IRA)-type Social Security accounts as evidence that this reform is too risky for American workers. Of ...

Here we go again. A fifty-ish politician takes up with a twenty-something California intern, who is the daughter of a doctor. Wasn’t it Congressman Gary Condit who once lectured Bill Clinton about coming forward with all the facts? Now it’s Condit who’s allowing the “drip, drip, drip” of revelations while he keeps his stony silence. The Condit case has one major difference, since the former intern, Chandra Levy, is missing and may be the victim of a crime. But assuming that the congressman played no role in her disappearance, this new edition of a sex scandal looks a lot like ...

African-American students are dropping out of Michigan universities at rates far greater than whites, adrift at schools that vigorously recruited them. A Detroit News investigation of seven Michigan universities shows that among black students who were freshmen in 1994, just 40 percent got their diplomas after six years, compared to 61 percent of white students and 74 percent of Asians. "We're throwing them out after taking their money and they're getting nothing out of it," said Barry Mehler, a history professor at Ferris State University, who helped start a program to keep minority students in college. "We're mugging (the ...

Price controls last long past the short-term crises they’re designed to fix. By Richard L. Gordon, a professor emeritus of mineral economics at Pennsylvania State University, and an adjunct scholar with the Cato Institute. The best and worst thing about the Bush energy strategy is that it omits discussion of price controls. It is good that the idea is ignored in the face of the growing demagogic calls for electricity price caps and "action" on gasoline. It is bad, however, that the arguments are not confronted head-on. It is worse that they are given some support by the plan's rhetoric ...

THE Rev. Al Sharpton never ceases to inspire contemplation or exasperation. When I became aware of him about 20 years ago, I found him absurd. He was almost always in a jogging suit with a Martin Luther King Jr. medallion hanging down his chest and some fried hair topping the package. He specialized in marching and chanting. I thought he was just comic backup or a hustler. And, in fact, the Sharpton tale frequently has been attended by the hilarious. For instance, back in his pre-fried days, he was sent on a mission to meet with singer James Brown. The ...

The U.S. Supreme Court had very little choice but to rule as it did this week in disallowing the distribution of marijuana for medical use in California. Under the the Controlled Substances Act, it is categorized as a Schedule I drug. That means Congress has legally defined marijuana as a drug that has "no accepted medical use." The Supreme Court ruling was also decided on narrow grounds, governing the distribution of the drug through large cooperatives rather than its actual use. Both of these issues should be reconsidered. There is, despite the congressional definition, a significant body of evidence ...

Well, they're breaking down the census and America is changing very rapidly. That's the subject of this evening's Talking Points memo. The fastest change is in households headed by single mothers. That's up 25 percent since 1990. Of course, single moms raising kids by themselves is usually a ticket to poverty. And are you ready? Seventy percent of African-American babies are now born out of wedlock compared to 26 percent of white babies. Now, you may want to know why the poverty cycle continues. That's why. And there's little society can do about it. About the only thing that would ...

At the heart of the debate over the fate of Timothy McVeigh lies the question that supposedly animated McVeigh to perpetrate his awful crime in the first place: Can't government get anything right? It was Atty. Gen. Janet Reno's bungled decision to launch the bloody assault on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco in 1993, after all, that led directly to the Oklahoma City bombing two years later. McVeigh and his accomplice, Terry Nichols, caught up in a groundswell of anti-government paranoia, decided to get even by committing an even bloodier assault on the federal government. That atrocity had ...

-- THE latest statistics validate President Bush's campaign charge that the country is in an "education recession." Now it's up to him and Congress to get us out of it. It looked as though they were cooperating to do just that, but a much vaunted agreement to combine quality reforms with added resources may be in danger of breaking apart. That would be tragic. It's vital that, beginning this week, Congress pass - and Bush put into action -a new education initiative, given the dismal results just registered in the National Assessment of Education Progress. The so-called "nation's report card" ...

WASHINGTON -- In the rehearsal halls of Democratic presidential politics, a dozen or so political stars and newcomers already are auditioning for the role of the party's 2004 White House nominee. The big question is when will last year's nominee, Al Gore, clarify his plans about the presidential race. The betting is later this year. Democrats around the country say Gore would be a formidable candidate, probably the party's front-runner, if he decides to run. But they acknowledge his unsuccessful 2000 presidential race left some lingering questions. "There are people who think if he wants the nomination, he should have ...