A Miami, Florida, man indicted earlier this month in the largest case of identity theft in U.S. history has agreed to plead guilty to 19 felony counts for his role in another massive credit-card data breach, according to a court document. The following are excerpts from the letter as read by Cardinal Theodore McCarrick at Kennedy's private burial service Saturday in Arlington National Cemetery: "Most Holy Father, I asked President Obama to personally hand-deliver this letter to you. As a ...

Sen. Edward "Ted" Kennedy didn't wear his faith on his sleeve, but those close to him say Catholicism was much more than an ethnic and cultural identity. Kennedy's family chose Boston's Basilica of Our Lady of Perpetual Help, also known as the Mission Church, for his funeral Mass on Saturday. The church held a special significance for the senator because he prayed there every day when his daughter, Kara, was diagnosed with cancer. Kennedy died Tuesday night after a 15-month ...

The wall heading down to the basement in my parents' house is covered with framed photos of friends and family members. Yet hanging right there in the midst of them, next to graduation portraits and vacation snapshots, is a photo of Bobby Kennedy. In that reverential treatment of the Kennedy clan, my parents were far from alone. For million of American Catholics, the election of John Kennedy in 1960 as the first Catholic U.S. President was a personal triumph, ...

Financing for Steven Spielberg's partnership with one of India's richest men was finalized Monday, giving the legendary Hollywood director money to resume making movies. The deal with Anil Ambani, chairman of India's Reliance BIG Entertainment, provides Spielberg's DreamWorks Studios with $875 million, coming from Ambani, the Walt Disney Co. and loans made by a syndicate of banks. Disney will distribute and market Spielberg's films around the world, with the exception of India, where Reliance will have those rights. The DreamWorks ...

To the long list of things that everyone else loves but that Muslims are supposed to hate — democracy, dogs, women with uncovered hair — we can now add yoga. A council of muftis in Malaysia issued a fatwa over the weekend banning yoga for Muslims, claiming that the sweaty 'Oms' and other Hindu elements of a standard 60-minute yoga class could "destroy the faith of a Muslim." For a moment, this news had me selfishly worried. I've been ...

Once lost, virginity can never be replaced — but modern medicine now offers women a near-perfect physical simulation of their lost innocence. Hymenoplasty, the surgical reconstruction of the hymen broken during a women's first experience of intercourse, or, increasingly, during demanding exercise or as a result of a collision or fall by women who've never had sex, has prompted a growing number of young betrothed women in France to make a last-ditch attempt to avoid the humiliation, repudiation, and ...

Rowaida Abdelaziz doesn't want your pity. She doesn't want your frosty public stares; the whispers behind her back; the lament that she's been degraded by her father. What the Muslim high school senior wants you to understand is that she doesn't wear the hijab, the head scarf worn by Muslim women, because she is submissive. "It represents beauty to me," says Abdelaziz, the 17-year-old daughter of two Egyptian parents living in Old Bridge, New Jersey. "My mom says a girl ...

Faith schools across Britain are holding their breath and waiting to see if they will need to change their admissions procedures after Europe's largest Jewish school was last week given the right to appeal a court decision saying its entry policy was racist. In June, the British High Court of Appeals exposed a rift within Britain's Jewish community when it ruled that the admissions policy run by JFS School in North London was in breach of the Race ...

The Catholic Church were presented with a public relations powder keg last March when news broke that a nine-year-old Brazilian girl underwent an abortion after she'd been raped and impregnated with twins by her stepfather. Catholics from Sao Paolo to Paris were outraged after the swift public declaration by the local archbishop, Jose Cardoso Sobrinho, that the girl's family, as well as the doctors who performed the abortion, were automatically excommunicated. Monsignor Rino Fisichella, a solidly traditionalist Rome ...

It was December, the start of a dreary Russian winter, and Barack Obama's face was staring down at pedestrians walking along Moscow's gray streets. But the photograph of the U.S. President wearing a black suit and a smile had nothing to do with his election win a month earlier. It was part of an ad for a chain of tanning salons called Sun People, which was using Obama's picture to promote the benefits of booking some time in their ...