Former archbishop apologizes for scandal

Former archbishopapologizes for scandal
MILWAUKEE -- Former Milwaukee Archbishop Rembert Weakland apologized Friday for the scandal caused by a $450,000 settlement with a man who accused him of sexual assault.
During a prayer service, Weakland acknowledged what he called an "inappropriate relationship" with the former theology student. He said he agreed to the settlement because he feared bringing embarrassment to himself and the church, but said he understood how the payment could be seen as "hush money."
"I apologize to all the faithful of the archdiocese which I love so much, to all its people and clergy for the scandal that has occurred because of my sinfulness," Weakland said.
The Milwaukee Archdiocese in 1998 paid the settlement to Paul Marcoux, who was a student at Marquette University when he accused Weakland of sexually assaulting him in 1979. Weakland has denied ever abusing anyone.
The money for the settlement came from the archdiocese's general budget, which includes income from sources such as investments and church-owned rental property, the archdiocese has said.
Mich. town's residentsallowed to return home
POTTERVILLE, Mich. -- This town's 2,200 residents were allowed to return home Friday for the first time since Memorial Day, when a train carrying propane derailed on nearby tracks, authorities said.
However, Eaton County Sheriff Rick Jones said that anyone other than residents would be prohibited from entering Potterville for 36 hours to prevent looting.
Laura Warren, 25, was returning home after spending the week with her mother in nearby Dimondale.
"It hasn't been that bad," she said. "I'd rather come home to a place that's safe."
Residents were allowed to return after clean up crews removed four damaged tank cars filled with highly explosive liquid propane. Crews spent the week burning off propane from one of the cars, which was punctured, and pumped propane from the other cars into tanker trucks.
Progress was slowed by thunderstorms in the area on Wednesday and Thursday. Workers also had to leave the derailment site several times throughout the week when the level of propane vapor grew dangerously high.
Noted historian resignsfrom Pulitzer board
NEW YORK -- Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, who has faced accusations of plagiarism over a 1987 book, has resigned from the Pulitzer Prize board, Columbia University announced Friday.
In a letter to board Chairman John Carroll, Goodwin said, "After the controversy earlier this year surrounding my book, 'The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys,' and the need now to concentrate on my Lincoln manuscript, I will not be able to give the board the kind of attention it deserves."
Goodwin, who joined the board in 1999, won a Pulitzer for her 1995 book "No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II."
In January, as journalists probed the biographies and works of several high-profile historians, she acknowledged that "The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys" contained sections of text taken without attribution from another author.
Goodwin said the copying was accidental, the result of a longhand note-taking system that didn't distinguish between her own observations and passages from other texts.
Both she and the author, Lynne McTaggart, said they had reached a settlement years earlier that included an undisclosed payment and revisions to Goodwin's book.
Family's land returned
MONTGOMERY, Ala. -- An Alabama family got back its farmland Friday, after saying for decades that a segregation-era court order had wrongly given the 40 acres to the state. Gov. Don Siegelman called the family "the rightful owners."
In signing a document making the transfer, the governor said, "The land was really just taken by the state ... by a legal technicality."
Siegelman reviewed the land-taking claim by Willie Williams of Sweet Water after it was detailed in an Associated Press story. In December, an AP series documented the loss of 24,000 acres by black Americans, through violence, trickery and legal maneuvers. The series, "Torn From the Land," uncovered 107 land takings during an 18-month investigation.
The Williams family lost the land in Marengo County, in western Alabama, in a 1964 court case. The state had said the property didn't belong to the family because of a 1906 federal designation as swampland.
The property is now vacant and overgrown.
Associated Press