Philadelphia - A monsignor who oversaw hundreds of priests in the Philadelphia Archdiocese was found guilty on Friday of one count of endangering the welfare of a child, making him the first senior U.S. Roman Catholic Church official to be convicted for covering up child sex abuse.

The jury acquitted Monsignor William Lynn on two other counts - conspiracy and another charge of child endangerment -after 10 weeks of testimony in a trial that raised questions about personal responsibility and institutional constraints within the church hierarchy.

Removing his black clerical jacket but leaving on his collar, a stoic Lynn, 61, was led out of the courtroom and into custody by deputy sheriffs as his family members wept.

"Every juror there wanted to do justice. ... We wanted to do what was right," jury foreman Isa Logan, 35, a bank customer service representative, told reporters outside the courtroom.

Sentencing for Lynn, who faces up to seven years in prison, was set for August 13 by Judge M. Teresa Sarmina.

"This is a monumental victory for the named and un-named victims," said Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams. "This was about evil men who did evil things to children."

While the district attorney's office argued that Lynn should immediately be jailed, the judge said she would consider house arrest if the defense asked for it.

The jury deliberated 13 days before reaching the mixed decision in the trial of Lynn, who, prosecutors charged, covered up child sex abuse allegations, often by transferring priests to unsuspecting parishes.

Lawyers for Lynn said they planned to appeal the case.

"He's really upset," said one of his attorneys, Jeff Lindy. "He's upset, he's crushed. He didn't want anything other than to help kids, he's crushed about this."

Bellefonte, Pennsylvania - A jury on Friday found former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky guilty on 45 of 48 counts in his child sex abuse trial after some 21 hours of deliberation.

Sandusky, who faces potentially hundreds of years in prison, was escorted immediately out of the courthouse in handcuffs and taken into an awaiting sheriff's cruiser.

A large crowd gathered outside the Centre County Courthouse in central Pennsylvania to learn news of the decision, and cheered loudly as the news was released.

Sandusky stood and faced the foreman as the verdict was read. Sandusky, wearing a brown sports court, tucked his hands into the pockets of his gray pants and appeared expressionless.

His wife, Dottie, sitting behind him, showed no emotion.

"They're devastated," defense attorney Joe Amendola said of Sandusky's relatives, "but they've been devastated ever since these charges came to light."

Amendola said he was examining the grounds for an appeal.

Sue Berelowitz, Deputy Children's Commissioner, said abuse was taking place in "leafy rural areas" as well as inner cities, and involved organised gangs as well as lone paedophiles using computers.

Although the focus has been on men of Pakistani origin abusing vulnerable white girls, she said that people of all races and backgrounds are seeing others in their community as providing "easy access" for exploitation.

Some youths are using the latest mobile phone technology to invite their friends to join in the raping of girls, or filming the assaults in a form of blackmail, while adults are masquerading as teenagers to befriend young people on Facebook.

Boys are trying to copy what they see in online pornography and parents are powerless to stop them accessing it because such images can be easily viewed on mobile phones as well as home PCs, Mrs Berelowitz said in stark testimony to the Home Affairs Select Committee.

Asked by MPs how many victims she estimated there were, she replied: "We're talking about thousands. We are talking about a big problem.

Children are being groomed for sex on a huge scale across Britain but police have only uncovered "the tip of the iceberg", a Government minister has said.

Tim Loughton, the children's minister, said there is a "real problem in this country" with exploitation of children.

The MP spoke out after a series of recent cases in which men have been jailed for grooming young girls for sex.

Speaking in the House of Commons, Mr Loughton said he has long though the grooming of children for sex is "much bigger problem than it may appear now on the radar".

"We are only seeing the tip of the iceberg now," he said. "For too long it was something of a taboo issue in this country, little spoken about, little appreciated, little acknowledged or dealt with.

Kenny Markiewicz of Duluth had just stepped into what looked like a regular puddle when he was sucked into a hidden sewer. 'I thought I had lost you!' he cried, when he was finally reunited with his mother.

A new study published in the British medical journal the Lancet has found that suicide is the second most common cause of death for Indians aged between 15 and 29 years old.

In a surprising contrast with patterns seen in the US and Europe, the highest rates of suicide were found amongst young, wealthy and educated Indians, the authors wrote in "Suicide mortality in India: a nationally representative survey". Females were also more likely to kill themselves than males, the reverse of what researchers usually find.

Quite why that contrast exists is hard to say. Writing in the Indian newspaper the Hindu, lead author Vikram Patel of London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine theorized:

One possibility is that the higher rates of suicide in the more developed and educated communities of India may be attributed to the greater likelihood of disappointments when aspirations that define success and happiness are distorted or unmet by the reality faced by young people in a rapidly changing society where jobs may be higher paying but less secure and where social networking more accessible but loneliness more common.

Crucially, there's a large difference between suicide rates in different regions, and that points to the role of social factors contributing to suicides, Patel told the Times of India.

The study found that despite claiming a larger percentage of deaths than AIDS or maternal deaths, suicide was rarely talked about in Indian society, and also recommended restricting access to pesticides, which many people use to kill themselves.

Canada, Quebec - A private girls' school has learned a lesson of its own - don't hypnotize your students.


Officials at the College du Sacre-Coeur in Sherbrooke, Que., explained today that they didn't know 14-year-olds were more susceptible to hypnosis than other people when they booked an end-of-year hypnotism act to entertain students.

But the act went awry and one girl was left in a four-hour trance after the show by the young hypnotist, who had to bring in his mentor to snap people back to normal.

Five other students were in a daze and 13 students reported feeling nausea and headaches after the act.

Daniel Leveille, the school's director-general, said there were no long-lasting ill effects following the performance and everyone is back to their old selves.

After arresting a 30-year-old man who they said was violently assaulting several individuals, police brought him to the emergency room rather than to the station because of his behavior, including confusion, agitation and nonsensical speech.

Police reports indicated the man was "acting very strange," "agitated," "babbling" and "yelling and sweating profusely," according to a case report published online June 4 in the Journal of Emergency Medicine. Essentially, the man was in a state of what doctors call "excited delirium."

The attending physician at the Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center in Winston-Salem, N.C., found that in addition to delirium, the man was suffering from Long QT syndrome, a heart-rhythm disorder that can cause fast, erratic heartbeats. In some cases the erratic heartbeats persist so long they lead to sudden death, according to the Mayo Clinic.

The man was successfully treated with fluids and sodium bicarbonate for his symptoms.

As such, the police may have saved the man's life, as well as shed some light on a weird phenomenon in which individuals die suddenly after a display of confusion and delirium (and often after being subdued by police, making the headlines). Perhaps some of these deaths are caused by the abnormal heart condition, compounded by excited delirium, Dr. William Bozeman, an emergency medicine physician at Wake Forest Baptist, said in a statement.

It's been described as one of the largest disciplinary actions in the history of the Transportation Security Administration. After a two-month investigation, the TSA fired five workers and suspended more than three dozen others at Southwest Florida International Airport. Now, two of the fired supervisors are fighting back.

The two-month TSA investigation found dozens of security agents at Southwest Florida International Airport were not following security procedures.

While all bags were screened, the random screenings weren't done.

Roy Foxall represents two of the five TSA supervisors facing discipline.

The World Health Organisation is warning of an alarming rise in the illegal trade in human organs, saying around ten percent of transplant procedures involve organs that have been bought on the black market.

The latest estimates show that organ traffickers are exploiting poor people in China, India and Pakistan to cash in on the rising international demand for replacement kidneys.

Professor Jeremy Chapman, past President of the Transplantation Society, says that much of the demand for organs comes from citizens of developed countries.

"People feel a great pressure here, and in other developed countries in the world, where almost all around the world the needs for transplantation are not completely met by our ability to find organ donors," Professor Chapman told the ABC.