Spider-Man Broadway debut is a web of bugs.

From the Daily Bugle... err.. NY Post:

Not even Spider-Man could avert this disaster.

Last night's opening pre view of Broadway's most expensive production ever, "Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark," was an epic flop as the $65 million show's high-tech gadgetry went completely awry amid a dull score and baffling script, theatergoers griped.

Stunned audience members were left scratching their heads over the confusing plot -- when they weren't ducking for cover from falling equipment and dangling actors at the Foxwoods Theatre on West 42nd Street, some said.

At various points, overhead stage wires dropped on the audience, scenery appeared on stage missing pieces -- and the show's star was even left swaying helplessly over them midair during what was supposed to be the climatic end to the first act.

The production -- directed by Julie Taymor of "Lion King" fame and with a score by U2's Bono and The Edge -- appeared cursed from the start, audience members said.

It opened with Taymor's personal creation, the eight-legged female character Arachne, taking the stage.

The spider is the radioactive arachnid that bites Peter Parker, giving the photographer his superhuman Spider-Man powers.

As the character, played by actress Natalie Mendoza, finished her big number "Rise Above" while suspended over the crowd, an apparent wire malfunction left her stopped in midair -- where she remained for an embarrassing seven or eight minutes as stagehands worked feverishly to figure out the problem.

The stage manager finally said over the loudspeaker, "Give it up for Natalie Mendoza, who's hanging in the air!"

The show had to be stopped four times in the first act alone for various snags.

Parker's love interest, Mary Jane, was supposed to be saved from atop the Chrysler Building. But part of the building was missing, and Mary Jane was no where in sight.

As puzzled theater patrons looked around, Spider-Man -- played by Reeve Carney -- suddenly flew in with Mary Jane in his arms and put her down on stage.

He was then supposed to fly off in a dramatic end to the first act.

Instead, Spider-Man got stuck in midair and swung back and forth over the crowd as three stagehands leaped up and down futilely trying to grab onto one of his feet to haul him back to earth.

Another sticky situation involved Spider-Man nemesis Green Goblin, said disgruntled audience members.

As the Goblin -- played by Patrick Page of "Grinch" fame -- sat down at the piano for a scheduled number, he was left to continue playing on . . . and on . . . as stage workers openly rushed around to fix faulty equipment.

Page finally started vamping it up for grateful audience members, riffing on the tune, "I'll Take Manhattan."

"This is the best part of the whole show," grumbled theatergoer Steve Poizner of California.

The production dragged on for nearly 3½ hours.

In its last 10 minutes, the show was completely stopped for at least half that time to work out kinks.

"I don't know about the rest of you, but I feel like a guinea pig tonight!" one woman angrily shouted out from her orchestra seat during the down time.

"I feel this was a dress rehearsal!"

Taymor was at the preview, as was producer Michael Cohl, although Bono and The Edge were in Australia on tour with U2.

Football player blames God for dropped ball.

I love this guy. From CNN:

Buffalo Bills wide receiver Stevie Johnson dropped a game-winning touchdown in the end zone Sunday in overtime against the Pittsburgh Steelers. Anyone who has ever tossed the pigskin around in the back yard dreams of that scenario - minus the drop, of course.

Johnson did not even have to work for the ball. Quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick's pass was text-book perfect, landing squarely in Johnson's hands.

After the game, Johnson's twitter account filed this faithy tweet:

@StevieJohnson13

I PRAISE YOU 24/7!!!!!! AND THIS HOW YOU DO ME!!!!! YOU EXPECT ME TO LEARN FROM THIS??? HOW???!!! ILL NEVER FORGET THIS!! EVER!!! THX THO...

[...] This brings us to a larger theological question: Does God hate the Buffalo Bills? You may remember this is the very team that lost four straight Super Bowls.

Dead: Leslie Nielsen.

Shirley, you can't be serious. From NY Daily News:

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Leslie Nielsen, who went from drama to inspired bumbling as a hapless doctor in "Airplane!" and the accident-prone detective Frank Drebin in the "Naked Gun" comedies, has died. He was 84.

His agent John S. Kelly says Nielsen died Sunday at a hospital near his home in Ft. Lauderdale where he was being treated for pneumonia.

The Canadian-born Nielsen came to Hollywood in the mid-1950s after performing in 150 live television dramas in New York. With a craggily handsome face, blond hair and 6-foot-2 height, he seemed ideal for a movie leading man.

He quickly became known as a serious actor, although behind the camera he was a prankster. That was an aspect of his personality never exploited, however, until "Airplane!" was released in 1980 and became a huge hit.

Priest solicited murder of boy he abused.

From CNN:

A Catholic priest, facing criminal charges and a lawsuit alleging that he sexually abused a teenage boy, is now charged with attempting to hire someone to kill the youth, authorities said Tuesday.

The Rev. John M. Fiala was in the Dallas County, Texas, jail on Tuesday, charged with one count of criminal solicitation to commit capital murder, according to the Texas Department of Public Safety and the jail's website. He also is charged with two counts of aggravated sexual assault of a child. His bail totals $700,000.

Fiala, 52, of Dallas, was out on bond on other sexual assault charges involving the youth, now 18, when he allegedly attempted to negotiate the boy's murder, said Tom Rhodes, the teen's attorney.

He was arrested last week after he offered an undercover agent with the Texas Department of Public Safety $5,000 to kill the teen, according to department spokeswoman Lisa Block.

"This guy," Edwards County Sheriff Don Letsinger said, "is an evil man."

A call to Rex Gunter, the defense attorney listed in jail records for Fiala, was not immediately returned Tuesday.

The youth met Fiala in 2007, according to Rhodes. The attorney said the priest started "grooming him," buying him gifts including a computer and a car. In early 2008, when the boy was 16, under the guise of providing private catechism lessons, Fiala "gained access to him and began to sexually abuse him once or twice a month, including on church grounds," Rhodes said.

At the time, Fiala was administrator of Sacred Heart of Mary in Rocksprings, Texas, which is in Edwards County. The alleged abuse occurred in two counties -- Edwards and Howard -- and included the youth's rape at gunpoint, the attorney said.

Fiala allegedly threatened to kill the youth if he told anyone -- threats he repeated in daily text messages, Rhodes said, and Fiala also threatened to kill himself, telling the teen they would "go to heaven together."

The teen, after struggling with the abuse, told a school counselor, who notified authorities, Rhodes said. He filed suit in April against Fiala, as well as the archdioceses of San Antonio, Texas, and Omaha, Nebraska -- where Fiala was before Texas -- and Fiala's religious order, the Society of Our Lady of the Most Holy Trinity, the attorney said.

Spanish woman claims she owns the Sun - and will start charging users.

Well, better her than Con Edison. From Daily Mail:

It has been up there in the sky in plain view for billions of years - and nobody seems to have thought of its earning potential - until now.

A canny Spanish woman from Galicia - a sun-drenched region on the boarder with Spain and Portugal - has decided that she owns the warming star, and has the registration papers to prove it.

Angeles Duran, 49, says that the Sun officially belongs to her now, having had the celestial body registered in her name at a local notary office.

Ms Duran told the online edition of daily El Mundo she took the step in September after reading about an American man who had registered himself as the owner of the moon and most planets in our solar system.

There is an international agreement which states that no country may claim ownership of a planet or star, but it says nothing about individuals, she added.

'There was no snag, I backed my claim legally, I am not stupid, I know the law.

'I did it but anyone else could have done it, it simply occurred to me first.'

The document issued by the notary public declares Ms Duran to be the 'owner of the Sun, a star of spectral type G2, located in the centre of the solar system, located at an average distance from Earth of about 149,600,000 kilometers'.

Ms Duran, who lives in the town of Salvaterra do Mino, said she now wants to slap a fee on everyone who uses the sun and give half of the proceeds to the Spanish government - and 20 per cent to the nation's pension fund.

She would dedicate another 10 per cent to research, another 10 per cent to ending world hunger - and would keep the remaining 10 per cent herself.

She said: 'It is time to start doing things the right way, if there is an idea for how to generate income and improve the economy and people's wellbeing, why not do it?'

For those who might be a little too broke to venture out in the sunlight - and risk a large bill at the end of the day - Ms Dueran has not yet figured out a way of enforcing her sun charge.

More than 1 in 3 South African men admit to rape.

Awful. From Yahoo! News:

JOHANNESBURG – A new survey says more than one in three South African men admit to having committed rape.

A 2010 study led by the government-funded Medical Research Foundation says that in Gauteng province, home to South Africa's most populous city of Johannesburg, more than 37 percent of men said they had raped a woman. Nearly 7 percent of the 487 men surveyed said they had participated in a gang rape.

More than 51 percent of the 511 women interviewed said they'd experienced violence from men, and 78 percent of men said they'd committed violence against women.

A quarter of the women interviewed said they'd been raped, but the study says only one in 25 rapes are reported to police.

A survey by the same organization in 2008 found that 28 percent of men in Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal provinces said they had raped a woman or girl. Of the men who had committed rape, one third did not feel guilty, said Rachel Jewkes, a lead researcher on both studies.

Two-thirds of the men surveyed in that study said they raped because of a sense of sexual entitlement. Other popular motivating factors included a desire to punish women who rejected or angered them, and raping out of boredom, Jewkes said.

"Rape is completely trivialized by a great number of men. It is seen as a legitimate activity," she said.

Jewkes believes South Africa's history of racial division and associated trauma is part of the reason of the high incidence of sexual violence in the country.

"Apartheid has contributed to culture of impunity surrounding rape in South Africa," said Jewkes. Men who were abused or experienced trauma during their childhood are much more likely to rape, she said, adding that apartheid destroyed family life, fostering violence and anti-social behavior.

The apartheid period also saw very little enforcement of common law, which has contributed to a culture of impunity, said Jewkes.

"We need to start interventions in childhood, focusing on building a more empowering childhood environment in South Africa, especially for boys," she said, "and we need to make it worth their while for women to report sexual violence."

The new study, conducted with a gender rights advocacy body, is the first community-based study of its kind with women in 12 years.

The group hopes to replicate the study across southern Africa.

French fast food chain to sell foie gras burgers.

From the Daily Mail:

It may be steeped in controversy and prohibitively expensive, but foie gras is a favourite Christmas delicacy in France.

Now, though, it is set to become a far more mainstream snack, as a fast food chain is launching a limited-edition foie gras burger.

Quick, which is a rival to McDonalds in France, will be selling the 'Supreme Foie Gras Burger' for just 5 euros, or 7.50 euros with fries and a soft drink.

The burger features pieces of foie gras atop a minced beef patty, with onion relish and rocket leaves.

It will be served at its 360 outlets across the country for three days only, from December 17 to 19.

Foie gras, which translates literally as ‘fatty liver’, is produced mainly in the southwest of France by farmers who force-feed poultry with large quantities of ground corn and wheat in order to swell the birds’ livers.

Once extracted the livers can fetch up to 100 euros per kilo at markets in the Aquitaine region and even more in Paris during the pre-Christmas shopping rush.

The move from the fast food chain is likely to enrage animal rights groups, who argue that methods used to create the delicacy causes unnecessary suffering to geese and ducks.

Defenders of animal rights fear that if Quick's three-day offer is successful, it may spark a consumer taste for foie gras, as well as demand for cheap eastern European imports.

Producers defend the practice, arguing that the birds actually enjoy being force-fed.

Tom DeLay found guilty of money laundering.

From the NY Times:

AUSTIN, Tex. — Tom DeLay, one of the most powerful and divisive Republican lawmakers ever to come out of Texas, was convicted Wednesday of money-laundering charges in a state trial, five years after his indictment here forced him to resign as majority leader in the House of Representatives.

After 19 hours of deliberation, a jury of six men and six women decided that Mr. DeLay was guilty of conspiring with two associates in 2002 to circumvent a state law against corporate contributions to political campaigns. He was convicted of one charge of money laundering and one charge of conspiracy to commit money laundering.

As the verdict was read, Mr. DeLay, 63, sat stone-faced at the defense table. Then he rose, turned, smiled and hugged his wife and then his weeping daughter in the first row of spectators. He faces between 5 and 99 years in prison, though the judge may choose probation.

A few minutes later, Mr. DeLay said outside the courtroom that he would appeal the decision. He called the prosecution a political vendetta by Democrats in the local district attorney’s office, and revenge for his role in orchestrating the 2003 redrawing of Congressional districts to elect more Republicans.

“This is an abuse of power,” he said. “It’s a miscarriage of justice. I still maintain my innocence. The criminalization of politics undermines our very system.”

Thanksgiving miracle: Boys survive two months adrift at sea.

From NY Daily News:

Three teenagers miraculously survived nearly two months on coconuts, rainwater and a raw seagull before being rescued at sea this week.

The teens from the Tokelau Islands - Edward Nasau, 14; Samu Perez and Filo Filo, both 15 - were rescued Wednesday by a tuna boat after a crew member spotted their tiny aluminum dinghy in the Pacific Ocean, northeast of Fiji.

"We knew it was a little weird," the tuna boat's first mate, Tai Fredricsen, told stuff.co.nz. "We had enough smarts to know there were people in it and those people were not supposed to be there."

The boys had gone missing Oct. 5, and their families had already held memorial services following failed searches by the New Zealand Air Force.

They had been attempting to row their 12-foot boat between two islands in the New Zealand territory of Tokelau.

The badly sunburned seafarers were in remarkably good spirits, Fredericsen told the BBC.

"They've got a lot of gusto, a lot of strong mental spirit," he said. "Physically, they were in a bad way but mentally they are very strong."

The teens told their rescuers that they had started drinking seawater for the two days prior to their rescue, after having consumed most of their supply of coconuts.

"They did go for a period where they were only drinking fresh water, which they were capturing during the night," Fredericsen said.

The water collected on their boat's tarpaulin kept them nourished along with a seabird they managed to kill - and eat raw.

Find a local food bank.

While we stuff our maw with giblets this week, it's important to remind ourselves that 1 in 6 Americans face hunger. Please take a minute to find your local food bank and give what you can.

Food Bank Locator.

Scientists invent disposable, paper e-readers.

Wow, e-reading on paper! What will they think up next?? Item!

A breakthrough in a University of Cincinnati engineering lab could clear the way for a low-cost, even disposable, e-reader. Electrical Engineering Professor Andrew Steckl's research into an affordable, yet high-performance, paper-based display technology is being featured this week as the November cover story of ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces.

In the research, Steckl and UC doctoral student Duk Young Kim demonstrated that paper could be used as a flexible host material for an electrowetting device. Electrowetting (EW) involves applying an electric field to colored droplets within a display in order to reveal content such as type, photographs and video. Steckl's discovery that paper could be used as the host material has far-reaching implications considering other popular e-readers on the market such as the Kindle and iPad rely on complex circuitry printed over a rigid glass substrate.

"One of the main goals of e-paper is to replicate the look and feel of actual ink on paper," the researchers stated in the ACS article. "We have, therefore, investigated the use of paper as the perfect substrate for EW devices to accomplish e-paper on paper."

Flying snakes caught on tape.

Planes on a snake? From Science Daily:

Five related species of tree-dwelling snakes found in Southeast and South Asia may just be the worst nightmares of ophidiophobes (people who have abnormal fears of snakes). Not only are they snakes, but they can "fly" -- flinging themselves off their perches, flattening their bodies, and gliding from tree to tree or to the ground.

To Virginia Tech biologist Jake Socha, these curious reptiles are something of a biomechanical wonder. In order to understand how they do what they do, Socha and his colleagues recently studied Chrysopelea paradisi snakes as they launched themselves off a branch at the top of a 15-meter-tall tower.

Four cameras recorded the curious snakes as they glided. This allowed them to create and analyze 3-D reconstructions of the animals' body positions during flight -- work that Socha recently presented at the American Physical Society Division of Fluid Dynamics (DFD) meeting in Long Beach, CA.

The reconstructions were coupled with an analytical model of gliding dynamics and the forces acting on the snakes' bodies. The analyses revealed that the reptiles, despite traveling up to 24 meters from the launch platform, never achieved an "equilibrium gliding" state -- one in which the forces generated by their undulating bodies exactly counteract the force pulling the animals down, causing them to move with constant velocity, at a constant angle from the horizon. Nor did the snakes simply drop to the ground.

Instead, Socha says, "the snake is pushed upward -- even though it is moving downward -- because the upward component of the aerodynamic force is greater than the snake's weight."

"Hypothetically, this means that if the snake continued on like this, it would eventually be moving upward in the air -- quite an impressive feat for a snake," he says. But our modeling suggests that the effect is only temporary, and eventually "the snake hits the ground to end the glide."

Hackers taking holographic liberties with Microsoft's Kinect.

Hey, at least someone is having fun with Kinect! From NY Times:

When Oliver Kreylos, a computer scientist, heard about the capabilities of Microsoft’s new Kinect gaming device, he couldn’t wait to get his hands on it. “I dropped everything, rode my bike to the closest game store and bought one,” he said.

But he had no interest in playing video games with the Kinect, which is meant to be plugged into an Xbox and allows players to control the action onscreen by moving their bodies.

Mr. Kreylos, who specializes in virtual reality and 3-D graphics, had just learned that he could download some software and use the device with his computer instead. He was soon using it to create “holographic” video images that can be rotated on a computer screen. A video he posted on YouTube last week caused jaws to drop and has been watched 1.3 million times.

Mr. Kreylos is part of a crowd of programmers, roboticists and tinkerers who are getting the Kinect to do things it was not really meant to do. The attraction of the device is that it is outfitted with cameras, sensors and software that let it detect movement, depth, and the shape and position of the human body.

Companies respond to this kind of experimentation with their products in different ways — and Microsoft has had two very different responses since the Kinect was released on Nov. 4. It initially made vague threats about working with law enforcement to stop “product tampering.” But by last week, it was embracing the benevolent hackers.

“Anytime there is engagement and excitement around our technology, we see that as a good thing,” said Craig Davidson, senior director for Xbox Live at Microsoft. “It’s naïve to think that any new technology that comes out won’t have a group that tinkers with it.”

Freemason kills mom with ceremonial sword.

Maybe he saw the fnords. From the NY Post:

An actor who had a part in "Ugly Betty" repeatedly stabbed and killed his mother with a Freemason ceremonial sword this morning, cops said.

Yannick Brea, 55, was found in her second-floor Brooklyn apartment around 2:20 a.m. with multiple stab wounds. Her son, Michael Brea, 31, was taken into custody and then to Kings County Hospital, where he is undergoing psychiatric evaluation.

Cops were called to a domestic disturbance at the home earlier in the evening but left shortly thereafter. Neighbors Vernal Bent and his mother Phyllis said they heard yelling from the floor below between 1 a.m. and 2 a.m. and called 911.

"I heard a shriek and a woman yelling 'help me'," Vernal Bent said. "We called 911 and we kept hearing screams and then we didn't hear them any more. Michael was chanting Biblical phrases and kept calling for Moses, Jerusalem and the 'architect of the universe'."

Taliban leader in peace talks was an imposter.

From the NY Times:

KABUL, Afghanistan — For months, the secret talks unfolding between Taliban and Afghan leaders to end the war appeared to be showing promise, if only because of the appearance of a certain insurgent leader at one end of the table: Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour, one of the most senior commanders in the Taliban movement.

But now, it turns out, Mr. Mansour was apparently not Mr. Mansour at all. In an episode that could have been lifted from a spy novel, United States and Afghan officials now say the Afghan man was an impostor, and high-level discussions conducted with the assistance of NATO appear to have achieved little.

“It’s not him,” said a Western diplomat in Kabul intimately involved in the discussions. “And we gave him a lot of money.”

American officials confirmed Monday that they had given up hope that the Afghan was Mr. Mansour, or even a member of the Taliban leadership.

NATO and Afghan officials said they held three meetings with the man, who traveled from in Pakistan, where Taliban leaders have taken refuge.

The fake Taliban leader even met with President Hamid Karzai, having been flown to Kabul on a NATO aircraft and ushered into the presidential palace, officials said.

The episode underscores the uncertain and even bizarre nature of the atmosphere in which Afghan and American leaders search for ways to bring the nine-year-old American-led war to an end. The leaders of the Taliban are believed to be hiding in Pakistan, possibly with the assistance of the Pakistani government, which receives billions of dollars in American aid.

Many in the Taliban leadership, which is largely made up of barely literate clerics from the countryside, had not been seen in person by American, NATO or Afghan officials.

Red wine packed with anti-diabetes compounds.

From New Scientist:

Red wine is a potent source of antidiabetic compounds – but they might not get past your gut. The finding is sure to enliven the ongoing debate over the drink's health benefits.

Alois Jungbauer and colleagues at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences in Vienna, Austria, tested 10 reds and two whites to find out how strongly the wines bound to a protein called PPAR-gamma, which is targeted by the antidiabetic drug rosiglitazone. (This drug is marketed under the brand name Avandia and, while still available in the US, has been withdrawn in Europe because of fears over side effects.)

PPAR-gamma is a type of protein called a receptor. Among other things, it regulates the uptake of glucose in fat cells. Rosiglitazone targets PPAR-gamma in fat cells to make them more sensitive to insulin and improve the uptake of glucose. It is used as a treatment for type 2 diabetes, a condition where people either do not make enough insulin to keep their body's glucose levels down, or become resistant to normal insulin levels.

Several studies have shown that moderate consumption of red wine can reduce the risk of type 2 diabetes. So Jungbauer and colleagues determined the wines' binding affinity for PPAR-gamma and compared the results with the effects of rosiglitazone. They found that the white wines had low binding affinities, but all the reds bound readily: the tendency of 100 millilitres of red wine – about half a glass – to bind to PPAR-gamma is up to four times as strong as the same tendency in the daily dose of rosiglitazone.

"It's incredible. It's a really high activity," says Jungbauer. "At first we were worried it was an artefact, but then we identified the compounds responsible in the wine."

The flavonoid epicatechin gallate – which is also present in green tea – had the highest binding affinity, followed by the polyphenol ellagic acid, which comes from the oak barrels the wine is kept in. The researchers think that some of the antidiabetic activity of red wine could be due to these compounds activating PPAR-gamma.

But Jungbauer warns that these compounds don't make red wine a magic bullet. The compounds in a glass of wine may have other antidiabetic effects and in any case, not all of the compounds will be absorbed and available to the body to use. "Wine also contains ethanol, which will add to your calories," he says.

Véronique Cheynier, research director at the department of oenology at the University of Montpellier 1, France, says that most polyphenols do not pass through the digestive tract unchanged and may not be absorbed at all.

GOP risking nuclear annihilation to screw Obama.

From Yahoo! News:

LISBON, Portugal – President Barack Obama appealed Saturday to Republicans in the U.S. Senate to stop blocking a nuclear arms pact with Moscow, saying failure to soon ratify it could jeopardize improving relations with Russia and send a mixed signal to Iran about the strength of the international front against its nuclear program.

He blamed the supercharged partisan climate in Washington for the delay and said inaction on the pact would leave "a partner hanging" at a time of better cooperation among the United States, its NATO partners and Russia.

Obama said European allies at the NATO summit told him that the stalled treaty is critical to U.S.-European security. He talked with reporters after the 28-nation alliance met with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev.

Obama used his weekly radio and Internet address to press his case, noting that Russia had voted with the U.S. and other allies to impose the latest round of U.N. penalties against Iran over its nuclear program. Russia is a partner with Iran in a civilian nuclear power project and generally has been less concerned than the U.S. that Iran may be hiding a bomb program.

Obama suggested Republican senators standing in the way of the pact with Russia were abandoning Ronald Reagan's lesson of nuclear diplomacy: "Trust but verify."

The treaty would limit each country's stockpile of nuclear warheads to 1,550, down from the current level of 2,200, bringing the arsenals to a level last seen in the 1950s. It would replace the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or START I, which expired last December.

Republicans led by U.S. Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona say they won't consider it until the Obama administration budgets adequate money for the nation's nuclear arsenal and the laboratories that oversee them. Kyl says he needs assurances that the remaining nuclear arsenal is modernized and effective.

The administration has pledged $85 billion to maintain the nuclear arsenal over the next 10 years, in an attempt to address Kyl's concerns. But Democrats might be less willing to go along with that plan if Republicans stall the treaty.

Pope endorses condoms... for male prostitutes.

From Raw Story:

Pope Benedict XVI says in a new book that condoms can be justified for male prostitutes seeking to stop the spread of HIV, a stunning comment for a church criticized for its opposition to condoms and for a pontiff who has blamed them for making the AIDS crisis worse.

The pope made the comments in a book-length interview with a German journalist, "Light of the World: The Pope, the Church and the Signs of the Times," which is being released Tuesday. The Vaticannewspaper ran excerpts on Saturday.

Church teaching has long opposed condoms because they are a form of artificial contraception, although it has never released an explicit policy about condoms and HIV. The Vatican has been harshly criticized for its opposition.

Benedict said that condoms are not a moral solution. But he said in some cases, such as for male prostitutes, they could be justified "in the intention of reducing the risk of infection."

Benedict called it "a first step in a movement toward a different way, a more human way of living sexuality."

He used as an example male prostitutes, for whom contraception is not an issue, as opposed to married couples where one spouse is infected. The Vatican has come under pressure from even some church officials in Africa to condone condom use for monogamous married couples to protect the uninfected spouse from getting infected.

Jesus saves lamb.

From Daily Mail:

A reveller dressed as Larry the Lamb suffered these horrific burns after a prankster set fire to his outfit - and he turned into a human fireball.

Peter Buck, 35, spent four hours painstakingly gluing four bags of cotton wool to his torso to look like the famous cartoon character.

He went on a boozy night out with a group of mates - also in fancy dress - before ducking out of a pub for a cigarette.

With Peter's permission, a tipsy friend set fire to a loose strand of his costume 'to see what would happen'.

But the joke went horribly wrong and Peter's lamb costume burst into flames.

He ran screaming in agony into a busy main road before a driver swerved, narrowly avoiding mowing him down.

Then his friend Paul Bisson - an off-duty firefighter dressed as Jesus - bear-hugged him in a bid to douse the flames.

The cotton wool had melted and stuck to his body, causing a string of horrendous injuries to his body, legs, hands and torso.

Peter, an office administrator of Saint Peter Port, Guernsey, lost consciousness after the incident and woke up in hospital - eight hours later.

He said: 'It caught fire and burnt so fast, igniting my whole outfit almost instantly.

'I ran into the road trying to pat the flames out with my hands forcing a car to swerve, avoiding knocking me over by inches.

'Half the skin on my hands had burnt off as well as having numerous other burns on my legs, stomach, chest and arms.

'I burnt my face a little and had small burns to my lips and nose. I'm not a religious man, but the Lord saved me that day.

Thailand police find 2,000 fetuses in temple.

Indiana Jones & the Temple of Womb. From BBC:

Thai police say they have found the remains of more than 2,000 foetuses, thought to be from illegal abortions, hidden at a Buddhist temple in Bangkok.

The remains were discovered in the temple's mortuary in containers usually used for bodies awaiting cremation.

Police were alerted by a terrible smell after the temple's furnace broke down.

Two temple workers and a woman believed to have been paid to collect and dispose of foetuses from illegal abortion clinics have been arrested.

The bodies, wrapped in plastic bags, were discovered in a newly opened area of the mortuary, days after authorities found 348 in another room.

A 33-year-old woman has admitted taking money to collect foetuses from several clinics.

She earned just over $16 (£10) for each foetus she delivered to the temple.

Police said two temple workers had been charged with hiding the bodies.

Abortion is illegal in Thailand unless pregnancy is the result of rape or incest or a mother's health is at risk.

Police say they have begun raiding some of the 4,000 clinics in Bangkok they suspect are used to perform illegal abortions.

The case has also focused attention on the abortion business in Thailand, says the BBC's Vaudine England, in Bangkok.

Wealthy women can get abortions in safe facilities but the vast majority of Thai women wanting an abortion use clinics which could put their health and safety at great risk, our correspondent says.