Florida man to plead guilty to credit-card data theft

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.

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Ted Kennedy called a man of quiet faith

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.

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Ted Kennedy’s Quiet Catholic Faith

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

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Spielberg gets movie cash with India partnership

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

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Should a Pious Muslim Practice Yoga?

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 contorting myself into reverse triangle across the Middle East for about a decade, and I fretted that all my favorite yoga centers and teachers might get hassled by morality police types

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The Dilemma of ‘Virginity’ Restoration

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 possibly violence that could result from husbands and families discovering from blood-free bridal sheets that their wedding night had not been their first sexual experience.

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Muslim women uncover myths about the hijab

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

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A Hard-Line Sequel to the Case of the Pregnant Nine-Year Old

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 prelate considered close to Benedict, tried to soften the Church’s approach on the Brazilian case by writing in the Vatican’s official newspaper L’Osservatore Romano that the girl “should have been defended, hugged and held tenderly to help her feel that we were all on her side.” Two weeks ago, the Vatican announced that Sobrinho, who had been serving past retirement, was stepping down

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