Philadelphia - A former financial executive of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia has pleaded guilty to stealing more than $900,000 from the church.

Forty-two-year-old Anita Guzzardi of Haddon Heights, N.J. pleaded guilty Friday to charges of theft by deception, unlawful use of a computer and forgery.

Prosecutors say Guzzardi used hundreds of church checks to pay personal credit card bills from 2005 to 2011. The investigation began after American Express contacted authorities.

The Internal Revenue Service is signaling that it will increase its scrutiny of tax-exempt political organizations, which are becoming a force in elections by raising tens of millions of dollars from undisclosed donors.

The IRS has been corresponding with such groups and is preparing questions to ask them as part of effort to determine whether their fundraising or advertising work runs afoul of tax law. IRS spokesman Terry Lemons said on Thursday the scrutiny will affect a range of tax-exempt groups.

The move comes as such tax-exempt groups - many of which have better-known sister organizations known as "Super PACs," or political action committees - are under criticism from Democrats and some Republicans for using money from anonymous sources to try to influence elections.

Like Super PACs, tax-exempt political groups can raise and spend unlimited funds - in contrast to political campaigns, which may receive only $2,500 per donor each election cycle.

Two long-suffering wives have finally dumped their high-profile husbands. Katie Holmes has filed for divorce from Tom Cruise, demanding sole custody of their daughter Suri.

Tom seems to relish playing dorks - in his latest film Rock Of Ages, he is Stacee Jaxx, a repulsive singer in a heavy metal band,who performs stripped to the waist, a bold move for a chap turning 50.

Sadly, the film, like his marriage, has bombed - according to this paper, it's 'crass when it should be comic' - but did weirdo Tom ever have a sense of humour?

The man who leapt on a sofa on Oprah, declaring his love for Katie in 2005, has never seemed to be an earthling, more an alien dropped from outer space, striving to appear 'normal', but not quite succeeding.

An unnamed Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, boy joined a dangerous new meme this week when he burned a large Christian Cross on his back using salt and ice and posted the video on YouTube.

The 12-year-old zealot took up a challenge sweeping the internet that instructs young Christians to draw crosses on their backs using regular table salt and press an ice pack against the design. The process induces an endothermic reaction, which usually results in serious burns and scarring. The phenomenon, according to New York's Daily News, is known in religious circles as the "salt-and-ice challenge."

The craze has affected so many kids that officials at a Philadelphia middle school put out a PSA warning parents about the challenge in April.

Greece, N.Y. School District Will Also Require 50 Hours Of Community Service

The middle school students who tormented a bus aide in Upstate New York have been suspended from school for one year, according to the Greece School District.

The students insulted Karen Klein and made fun of her weight and looks - calling her "fat" and saying she looks "like a troll" - and threatened to egg her house.

At one point, a student even says Klein's family killed themselves to not be anywhere near her. Klein's eldest son committed suicide a decade ago.

The incident was captured in a 10-minute cell phone video by one of the students and posted to YouTube, drove Klein to tears.

At least 10 minutes of the bullying was recorded, but it is unclear how long the taunting lasted.

Components of Amelia Earhart's plane might have floated for weeks in the waters of an uninhabited island in the southwestern Pacific republic of Kiribati, according to new analysis of a photograph taken three months after the disappearance of the glamorous aviator on July 2, 1937, during a record attempt to fly around the world at the equator.

Shot by British Colonial Service officer Eric R. Bevington in October 1937, during an expedition to assess the suitability for future settlement and colonization of Nikumaroro, a deserted island between Hawaii and Australia, the grainy photo has prompted a new expedition to find pieces of Earhart's long-lost Lockheed Electra aircraft.

"We will depart Honolulu on July 3rd aboard the University of Hawaii oceanographic research ship R/V Ka Imikai-O-Kanaloa. In about eight days we should get to Nikumaroro, where we will carry out a deep-water search for the wreckage," Ric Gillespie, executive director of The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR), told Discovery News.

The 26-day expedition and its findings will be captured by a film crew from Discovery Channel and aired as a documentary in August.

Archival research and a number of artifacts unearthed on Nikumaroro during nine previous archaeological expeditions have provided strong, circumstantial evidence for a castaway presence on the coral atoll.

Gillespie believes that Earhart's twin-engined plane did not crash in the Pacific Ocean, running out of fuel somewhere near her target destination Howland Island. Instead, he thinks Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan made an emergency landing on Nikumaroro's flat coral reef. There, they would have survived as castaways "for a matter of weeks, possibly more," said Gillespie.

From a statement read in court by Tarek Mehanna, a twenty-nine-year-old Massachusetts man who in April was sentenced to seventeen and a half years in prison on charges including materially supporting terrorism, for offenses such as translating and posting Al Qaeda propaganda online.

I was born and raised right here in America. This angers many people: How can an American believe the things I believe, take the positions I take? In more ways than one, it's because of America that I am who I am.

When I was six, I began putting together a massive collection of comic books. Batman implanted a concept in my mind, a paradigm as to how the world is set up: that there are oppressors, there are the oppressed, and there are those who step up to defend the oppressed. Throughout my childhood, I gravitated toward any book that reflected that paradigm - Uncle Tom's Cabin, The Autobiography of Malcolm X, even The Catcher in the Rye.

By the time I began high school and took a history class, I was learning just how real that paradigm is. I learned about the Native Americans and what befell them at the hands of European settlers. I learned about how the descendants of those European settlers were in turn oppressed under the tyranny of King George III. I read about Paul Revere, Tom Paine, and how Americans began an armed insurgency against British forces - an insurgency we now celebrate as the American Revolutionary War. I learned about the fight against slavery in this country, and the struggles of the labor unions, working class, and poor. I learned about the civil rights struggle.

Amid a global crackdown against alleged black money in secret accounts of Swiss banks, their bankers are selling a new safe-haven idea to their rich clients from India and other countries -- the high-value 1,000 franc notes to be stored in safe deposit boxes.

These boxes -- kept inside the premises of Swiss banks -- are also said to be being used to stash gold, diamond, paintings and art works among other valuables -- apparently because of limited risk of catching the preying eyes of foreign governments having signed banking information exchange treaties with Switzerland.

According to industry sources, bankers are telling their rich clients that Switzerland's tax and information exchange treaties with India and other countries are mostly limited to funds in customers' savings, deposit and investment accounts, and do not apply to the safe deposit boxes.

The FBI has taken Bernard Madoff's brother, Peter, into custody as a federal judge in New York prepares to accept his plea to criminal charges.

FBI spokesman J. Peter Donald says Madoff was arrested at his lawyer's Manhattan office around 7 a.m. EDT Friday.

Madoff is scheduled to enter a plea to conspiracy and falsifying records. The government told a judge that he has agreed to serve 10 years in prison and relinquish his fortune.

The plea by the 66-year-old chief compliance officer at the Madoff investment business comes three years after his brother admitted to mammoth fraud.

Bernard Madoff is serving a 150-year prison term. He has insisted he carried out his fraud alone for decades, cheating thousands of people of billions of dollars.

This is a BREAKING NEWS update. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

The younger brother of a man who became an icon for financial crime after the economy collapsed in 2008 is poised to plead guilty to criminal charges, taking his place in history alongside Bernard Madoff, the sibling he shared an office with for decades.

The recent terrifying spate of 'cannibal attacks' seems to have spread to China, as a drunk bus driver was caught on camera gnawing at a woman's face in a horrific random attack.

The unfortunate woman will apparently require plastic surgery to repair the damage done by her crazed attacker. According to local news reports, the driver, named Dong, had been drinking heavily during lunch with his friends before the outburst on Tuesday.

He then ran on to the road in the city of Wenzhou, in south-east China, and stood in front of the car being driven by a woman named Du, stopping her from moving.