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...first time since the 1970s, Britons may find themselves ruled by a minority government. Back then, Labour's pact with the smaller Liberal Party proved short-lived, and the government eventually fell to a no-confidence motion. Britain's third party now has a longer name - the Liberal Democrats - and hopes to exert a more enduring influence on any new administration. Smaller parties will flex their muscles if there's a hung Parliament. This raises the specter of political instability, gridlock and even a second general election within the year. Such an outcome could only exacerbate the economic turbulence that...
This all adds to the daunting challenges facing Britain's next government. Its first priority will surely be to get the economy out of the emergency room. The parties disagree on the speed and severity of action needed to cut the British deficit, but all accept that there must be reductions in public expenditure. Inevitably such cuts will hit the nation's most deprived communities hardest. And it is in such communities that the social consensus that underpins Britain's democracy is fracturing...
...view on how they should be treated was more complicated. Some years before, as head of the Vatican body investigating abuse by priests, he argued that accused clergymen should not be handed over to secular authorities. Rather, he wrote confidentially to bishops around the world in 2001, they should first be investigated under utmost secrecy within the church - thereby avoiding public hysteria and second-guessing by the media. (See pictures of President Obama meeting Pope Benedict...
...town near San Bernardino, Calif., and opened a drive-in movie theater. Tharp's mother, an accomplished pianist, had put her precocious daughter through the usual cultural paces--lessons in ballet and tap as well as several musical instruments--but the family movie palace is where Tharp got her first real feel for an audience. She'd work at the snack bar and sit in a junked car way up front to watch the movies--westerns, musicals, horror-film fright fests on Friday the 13th. Whenever a plot started to drag, Tharp would have to hurry back to the concession...
This is not Texas' first such skirmish. Since the 1970s, the state has tried to drop books that were seen as too liberal or anti-Christian, to omit passages on the gay-rights movement and to tone down global-warming arguments. But the nation's battle over textbooks stretches back almost half a century earlier. In 1925, Tennessee's Butler Act (which was repealed in 1967) made it illegal to teach "any theory that denies the story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible." The Scopes "monkey trial" famously followed. In 1974, a clash erupted...