PHILADELPHIA – The child-molestation scandal in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia has taken a new turn, with prosecutors asking a coroner to examine the body of Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua to establish whether he died of natural causes.
Risa Vetri Ferman, district attorney in suburban Montgomery County, said Friday that she wants to lay to rest any speculation about Bevilacqua’s death. The 88-year-old cardinal died a day after a judge ruled him competent to testify at the trial of his longtime aide.
Bevilacqua died Jan. 31 at a seminary and was laid to rest without an autopsy.
He was suffering from dementia and cancer, and his death was assumed to be from natural causes.
Montgomery County Coroner Walter Hofman said prosecutors want to “make sure there were no intervening events that could have speeded up that demise.”
He hopes to issue a cause of death by the end of the month.
1987 kidnapping solved by victim
A woman who snatched a newborn baby from a New York City hospital in 1987, then raised the child as her own, pleaded guilty to a kidnapping charge Friday.
Ann Pettway, 51, recounted how she took a train from her home in Bridgeport, Conn., to Harlem Hospital, where she scooped up Carlina White, a 3-week-old baby who had been brought to the emergency room by her parents.
Pettway said little else during the hearing and offered no explanation. As part of her plea bargain, prosecutors agreed to recommend a prison sentence of between 10 and 12 1/2 years.
As Pettway admitted her guilt, Carlina’s birth mother, Joy White, quietly cried in the courtroom gallery.
The sensational mystery of the baby’s kidnapping was one that had stymied police for decades. In the end, the case was solved by Carlina herself.
As she grew up in Bridgeport under the name Nejdra Nance, White had become increasingly suspicious of her own identity.
Pettway ultimately told her a part-truth. White took to browsing the website of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children for clues to her identity. After matching a photo of herself with one on the site, she tracked down her true mother and the two reunited in January of 2011.
Obama’s budget raises taxes, deficit
President Obama will send Congress a 2013 spending plan that would raise taxes on the rich and pump nearly $500 billion into new transportation projects over the next decade, launching an election-year debate over the budget that promises starkly different visions for managing government debt and the sluggish economy.
The president’s blueprint calls more than $1.5 trillion in new taxes on corporations, hedge-fund managers and the wealthy, in part through the expiration of the George W. Bush-era tax cuts on annual incomes of more than $250,000.
Obama also has called for changes to the tax code that would require households earning more than $1 million a year to pay at least 30 percent of their income in federal taxes, but senior administration officials said Friday that the blueprint will provide no additional details on how such a levy would be structured.
The president’s plan would push this year’s deficit to $1.33 trillion, slightly higher than last year’s $1.3 trillion deficit.
Happier ads to air during dog show
Pet lovers won’t have to look away anymore when those heart-wrenching TV ads appear during the Westminster dog show – the ones with the pitiful little faces peering out from behind those rusted bars of a cage and wondering “how I ended up in here.”
Happy dogs will rule the air waves this year, thanks to a new sponsor for America’s most prestigious dog competition and a decision to air ads that shift the focus away from sad-eyed animals in need of adoption.
“The feedback we got from our primary audience was that they were seeing commercials that made them want to turn the channel,” Westminster spokesman and longtime TV host David Frei said Thursday.
Nestle Purina PetCare is the new sponsor for the competition that begins Monday at Madison Square Garden, replacing Pedigree after 24 years. The switch will bring a shift in the tone of the TV commercials.
Purina’s main spots will feature dogs running on the beach, catching a Frisbee, frolicking in the snow and riding a surfboard.
