The suit accuses church officials of moving the Rev. Jerome Kern to an Edina church in 1969 after parents in St. Paul said he fondled boys.

A Catholic priest known by the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis for sexual misconduct was sued Thursday - the first of what attorneys say will be multiple lawsuits against him and the archdiocese.

The Rev. Jerome C. Kern was accused in a lawsuit of "sexual battery" involving an Edina boy from 1972 to 1976. Kern had been transferred to our Our Lady of Grace Church in Edina in 1969, after parents at his St. Paul church informed the archdiocese that he had sexually fondled their two school-age sons, attorneys said.

The lawsuit, in Ramsey County District Court, also names the archdiocese on civil charges related to its transfer of Kern to that church without addressing his alleged problems and without notifying families.

The plaintiff, now a man in his 50s, is one of at least 10 people abused by Kern that the law firm of Jeff Anderson & Associates is aware of, attorney Mike Finnegan said. The firm is preparing three more suits against Kern, he said.

An Arlington, Va.-based conservative group, whose existence until now was unknown to almost everyone in politics, raised and spent $250 million in 2012 to shape political and policy debate nationwide.

The group, Freedom Partners, and its president, Marc Short, serve as an outlet for the ideas and funds of the mysterious Koch brothers, cutting checks as large as $63 million to groups promoting conservative causes, according to an IRS document to be filed shortly.

The 38-page IRS filing amounts to the Rosetta Stone of the vast web of conservative groups - some prominent, some obscure - that spend time, money and resources to influence public debate, especially over Obamacare.

The group has about 200 donors, each paying at least $100,000 in annual dues. It raised $256 million in the year after its creation in November 2011, the document shows. And it made grants of $236 million - meaning a totally unknown group was the largest sugar daddy for conservative groups in the last election, second in total spending only to Karl Rove's American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS, which together spent about $300 million.

Short, a soft-spoken but ferociously conservative 43-year-old operative, provided us a draft of a forthcoming IRS filing that will soon be available to the public. Short, like most in the Koch empire, feels wealthy conservative activists such as Charles and David Koch get a bum rap from the media. So, Short wants to ease his groups and their cause out of the shadows.


"There's a mystery around us that makes an interesting story," Short said in an interview in his conference room. "There's also a vilification that happens that gets exaggerated when your opposition thinks you're secretive. Our members are proud to be part of [the organization]."

Four investigations, hundreds of testimonies and stacks of medical reports on Yasser Arafat's unexplained death in 2004 have failed to produce hard evidence of what killed him - and findings presented Friday only created more confusion.

Palestinian officials said a report they received from Russia on the role of radioactive polonium in Arafat's death was inconclusive. They spoke just a day after Swiss scientists said the Palestinian leader was probably poisoned by the rare and extremely lethal substance.

Despite those discrepancies, the Swiss and Russian reports agreed that Arafat's death "was not caused by old age or disease, but as a result of a toxic substance," said Dr. Abdullah Bashir, a medical expert in the three-member Palestinian team that has been investigating Arafat's death. This, he told a news conference, is in line with the long-standing Palestinian contention that Arafat was poisoned.

The reports revived Palestinian allegations that Israel was behind the attack, despite its denial.

The Palestinian team's leader, Tawfik Tirawi, said Israel had the technical means and the motive.

"I say, with all the details available about Yasser Arafat's death, that he was killed, and that Israel killed him," he said. The former Palestinian intelligence chief did not present evidence to back up the claims.

In the four years leading up to his death, Arafat's relationship with his longtime nemesis, Israel's then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, had become increasingly hostile. Sharon, a hard-liner, blamed Arafat for encouraging anti-Israeli violence instead of working toward a peace deal and kept him isolated at his West Bank compound for extended periods.

The chief of the Federal Aviation Administration predicted Thursday that U.S. airspace could be crowded with as many as 7,500 commercial drones within the next five years, as he unveiled a long-awaited regulatory blueprint that seeks to protect Americans' privacy while requiring testing for law enforcement and private companies seeking to operate unmanned aerial vehicles.

FAA Administrator Michael Huerta said his agency would set up six sites across the country to test drone operators, but cautioned that there could be delays for those looking to obtain certificates to operate unmanned aircraft once the regulatory guidelines are in place. He said ensuring safety in increasingly congested skies was his agency's top priority.

"We must fulfill those obligations in a thoughtful, careful manner that ensures safety and promotes economic growth," Mr. Huerta said in a speech to aerospace industry executives.

The FAA's announcement is the latest step in the march toward transitioning drones from the military use in the war on terrorism that made them famous to civilian applications that can range from collecting survey and weather data to assisting rescues and law enforcement operations.

The Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems, the leading trade group for the nation's private-sector drone operators, estimated this year that the commercial drone industry will create more than 100,000 jobs and generate more than $82 billion in economic impact over the next 10 years - if the government moves quickly to establish workable operating regulations and safeguards.

The impending boom has raised concerns among privacy advocates about how and where drones might be used to collect data. The FAA is requiring future test sites to develop privacy plans and make them available to the public. The policy also requires test site operators to disclose how data will be obtained and used.

'Fedspeak' was first used to describe the long, often vague statements by Alan Greenspan on changes in Federal Reserve policy. In fact, Greenspan claims opaque answers to straight forward questions were part of the job as he did not want to make markets overreact. In his words,

"What tends to happen is your syntax collapses... All of a sudden, you are mumbling. It often works. I created a new language which we now call Fedspeak. Unless you are expert at it, you can't tell that I didn't say anything."

Recently, in a departure from 'Fedspeak', Central bankers around the world have made their intentions known about how they plan to manage their foreign exchange reserves, giving investors a rare glimpse into how to manage their own portfolios.

Jaipur - If you want a government job in Rajasthan, quit smoking and chewing gutka first. For, the department of personnel has issued a circular to all other departments and district collectors to extract an undertaking from candidates to the effect that they do not smoke or consume gutka while in government service.

In November 2012, state-level coordination committee (SLCC) for tobacco control had recommended that an undertaking should be taken from candidates before giving them government jobs. Such an undertaking would help young smokers to quit the habit in the initial stages itself, which otherwise would result in cancer, the committee felt.

Principal secretary, department of personnel, Sudarshan Sethi said, "Gutka and smoking are very harmful and their consumption is not at all a fashion statement. People should stay away from it."

A copy of the circular, issued on October 4, has been sent to the governor, Rajasthan Public Service Commission, secretary, Rajasthan Vidhan Sabha and registrar, Rajasthan High Court Jaipur/Jodhpur.

The circular was issued on the same day when the model code of conduct for assembly elections came into effect in the state.

Rob Ford 'embarrassed' but gives no sign that he will step down after video published showing him staggering and shouting
Rob Ford, the mayor of Toronto who this week admitted to having smoked crack cocaine, has become embroiled in a fresh controversy after the publication of a video which shows him shouting abuse and making threats.

Ford apologised to the people of Toronto on Tuesday after making his extraordinary crack cocaine admission, but has refused to bow to mounting pressure from federal and council officials to step down and get help for his problems.

A new video, published by the Toronto Star on Thursday, shows Ford staggering around a room, talking to someone out of sight.

"I'm gonna kill that fucking guy. I'm telling you, it's first-degree murder," Ford rants, in a tirade directed at an unknown person. "No hold barred, bro. He dies or I die, brother. ... I'll rip his fucking throat out. I'll poke his eyes out ... I'll make sure that motherfucker's dead," Ford says, gesticulating with his hands as if engaged in a violent fight.

Dave Muscato, director of media relations for American Atheists, Inc., said that Christians who complain about persecution in the public square don't actually want equality with other viewpoints, they want supremacy over them.

In an interview with Raw Story, Muscato responded to avowals by Louisiana public officials that prayer will continue in public forums by saying that Christian officials who foist their views on private citizens are in violation of the some of this country's most sacred founding beliefs and of the U.S. Constitution.

"These Christians," he continued, "they've had a monopoly for so long. They don't want equality, they want privilege. And when they don't get special rights, they cry that they're being persecuted."

Forensic experts have exhumed 430 bodies so far from a mass grave left over from the 1992-1995 Bosnian war, possibly the largest gravesite found in Bosnia-Herzogivina, officials said Thursday.

"Remains of 430 victims have been exhumed so far and among them 275 complete bodies," Lejla Cengic of the Bosnian Institute for Missing People told AFP.

The bodies are believed to be those of Muslims and Croats tortured and killed by Bosnian Serb forces in northwestern Bosnia at the beginning of the war.

Let's take a look at ObamaCare without the party politics.

When it comes to the Affordable Care Act, AKA Obamacare, a large percentage of the public is completely misinformed about what the law actually entails.

Many of these misconceptions have been intentionally cultivated by political pundits from both the left and the right. An predictably, people have latched onto the distortions which most closely fit in with their world view.

Let's remove all the party politics and set the record straight.