The road to jail for April Griffin began soon after her son Jesse was born, though she would have never guessed it at the time. Because she had sought state aide for medical coverage for the child, the state brought suit to determine paternity… read more | digg story

The funeral Mass at the cathedral of Our Lady of Lebanon in HarissaPope Benedict XVI sent a message deploring the “unjustified violence”Funeral ceremonies have taken place in Lebanon for Gen Francois al-Hajj, the army’s head of operations who was assassinated on Wednesday. read more | digg story

Al-Qaeda’s deputy leader has purportedly said Arab leaders have betrayed the Palestinians by attending US-hosted Middle East talks last month. read more | digg story

Shortly after ESPN broke the news yesterday that Roger Clemens and Andy Pettitte would be nailed in the Mitchell Report, WNBC-TV, the NBC affiliate in New York, blew the story wide open. read more | digg story

report to the commissioner of baseball of an independent investigation into the illegal use of steroids and other performance enhancing substances by players in major league baseball. read more | digg story

A not-so merry message on a Christmas T-shirt hit the shelves of a local store just in time for the holidays in Florida. read more | digg story

EU leaders are preparing to sign a treaty in the Portuguese capital, Lisbon, that will greatly alter the way members govern themselves. The treaty creates an EU president and a vastly more powerful foreign policy chief for the Union’s 27 nations. At the same time the document scraps veto powers in many policy areas. read [...]

South Korean scientists have cloned cats by manipulating a fluorescent protein gene, a procedure which could help develop treatments for human genetic diseases, officials said Wednesday. read more | digg story