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  • iPad coming to church altars with daily missal app


    An Italian priest has developed an application that will let priests celebrate Mass with an iPad on the altar instead of the regular Roman missal.

    The Rev. Paolo Padrini, a consultant with the Vatican's Pontifical Council for Social Communications, said Friday the free application will be launched in July in English, French, Spanish, Italian and Latin.

    Two years ago, Padrini developed the iBreviary, an application that brought the book of daily prayers used by priests onto iPhones. To date, some 200,000 people have downloaded the application, he said.

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  • Kinect for Xbox 360 vs. Playstation Move. Which Will be a Leader

    The more time I spent with Playstation Move and Kinect for Xbox 360, the more I'm convinced that they're both hitting the market about six months too early.

    Not that there's anything wrong with the hardware. Kinect, a special camera that tracks motion, worked fine -- if not a tad laggy -- in the games I played on the show floor. Same goes for the Move, which behaves a lot like a Wii remote, but also with a camera that traces the positioning of the controller in 3D space, and of course the benefit of better graphics. But before the show, I , and neither the Move nor Kinect have it -- yet.

    I played two of Microsoft's Kinect games developed in-house -- a suite of mini-games called Kinect Sports and yet another suite of mini-games called Kinect Adventures -- plus Dance Central, essentially a full-body Dance Dance Revolution by Harmonix, makers of Rock Band. The Microsoft games felt like tech demos. While it was definitely neat to grab a virtual bowling ball out of thin air and see it move in my hands on the screen, it's still Wii Sports all over again, and the hurdle-jumping game I played was eerily similar to the Nintendo Power Pad from the late 1980s. Dance Central had more substance, but if the novelty of music games can wear off, the same will be said for aerobic dancing games.

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  • Paraguay leads Slovakia 1-0 after 75 minutes

    BLOEMFONTEIN, South Africa — Paraguay leads Slovakia 1-0 with 15 minutes to play in their Group F match at the World Cup on Sunday.

    The Paraguayans broke through in the 27th minute when midfielder Enrique Vera ran onto Lucas Barrios' pass and angled a shot into the bottom left corner of the net.

    Slovakia had struggled to contain Paraguay's three-man forward line of Barrios, Nelson Valdez and the recalled Roque Santa Cruz in the first half at Free State Stadium. Getting the start, Santa Cruz was twice denied by busy goalkeeper Jan Mucha.

    Slovakia improved in the second half but couldn't provide forwards Robert Vittek and substitute Filip Holosko with any clear openings.

    Paraguay nearly doubled its lead in the 72nd minute but Vera headed wide off Santa Cruz's cross.

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  • Suicide blasts kill 26 at Iraqi state-sector bank

    The blasts wounded 53 people at one of the public sector's most active financial institutions, which is at the forefront of efforts to encourage foreign investment in Iraq as the sectarian violence that followed the 2003 U.S.-led invasion fades.


    They underscored fears of increasing violence as militants try to exploit the political vacuum that followed the March 7 election which produced no outright winner.

    A week earlier, gunmen and suicide bombers laid siege to Iraq's central bank in Baghdad, killing 18 people.

    Baghdad security spokesman Major General Qassim al-Moussawi said two cars packed with around 80 kilograms of explosives each were driven at the main gates of the Trade Bank of Iraq and detonated on striking blastwalls protecting the building.

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  • Yuan Move Has Mixed Impact on Japan

    Tokyo joined Washington and others in welcoming China's decision to increase the flexibility in its currency policy over the weekend. But the uniquely close and complex interdependence between Asia's two largest economies suggests the impact could hurt, as well as help, Japan.

    Unlike the U.S. and some European economies with huge trade deficits with China, Japan enjoys a relatively balanced trade with the nation. This rules out Japan as an instant beneficiary of the currency move.

    Many Japanese companies, both big and small, have shifted their production to China during the past decades, and now manufacture a range of products there both for local consumption and for exports to the rest of the world.

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  • Kyrgyzstan investigating whether troops involved in ethnic violence

    Kyrgyzstan will investigate allegations that government troops were involved in ethnic violence, an official said Sunday.

    Col. Kursan Asanov, appointed by the Kyrgyz interim government to run the reconciliation operation in the southern city of Osh, did not say whether the investigation would include independent investigators.

    Asanov said that a government-imposed curfew in Osh that was due to expire Sunday had been extended to Friday. The curfew stretches from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. (10 a.m. to 10 p.m. ET).

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  • Israel Navy's Gaza flotilla probe 'finds planning, intel flaws'

    Israel's May 31st raid on the Gaza-bound aid ship Mavi Marmara suffered from serious defects, a new investigation into the raid led by Israel's naval commando unit concluded, Israel Radio reported on Sunday.

    The internal Israel Navy probe concluded that the commando unit was inadequately prepared, lacked sufficient intelligence, and was ill-used in its approach to the Turkish-flagged ship.

    The probe concluded that due to the fact that a mass offensive against Israel's commando officers was not taken into account, the officers acted accordingly under the circumstances.

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  • Tiger Woods surges at US Open but Dustin Johnson

    Saturday, Woods truly returned. He did so at Pebble Beach Golf Links, where 10 years ago this week he recorded one of his most historic victories. He did so in the third round of the U.S. Open, which he entered -- if this is even possible -- as something of an afterthought. He did so after bogeying two of his first three holes, somehow turning around his day -- and the entire tournament -- with an oh-no-here-he-comes 66.

    And he did so as Dustin Johnson -- a 25-year-old South Carolinian who hits the ball, as Woods said, "for miles" -- matched him shot for shot.

    "I played better," Woods said, and he smiled. Johnson, though, was able to duplicate those pearly whites, because his own 66 thrust him into the lead at 6-under-par 207. He is three strokes ahead of Irishman Graeme McDowell, who played icily until bogeys at 16 and 17, but still managed 71. They are the only men ahead of Woods, whose 15th major championship -- an unlikely notion after his first three holes -- is within reach.

    "It does feel good to play this well going into a final round," Woods said, "and I put myself back in the tournament."

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  • Jamel Turner shot; 17-year-old girl dead

    Police say an Ohio State football recruit Jamel Turner is in critical condition and a 17-year-old girl is dead after both were shot multiple times early Saturday morning in Youngstown.

    Turner, a defensive end who played high school ball at Ursuline High School in his native Youngstown, signed with the Buckeyes in February.

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  • Australia, Telstra Sign Broadband Deal

    SYDNEY--Telstra Corp. said Sunday it has agreed to participate in the Australian government's planned new national broadband network by allowing access to its infrastructure and traffic, a move that will deliver the telecommunications company a net 11 billion Australian dollars (US$9.57 billion).

    The deal, with the final contract to be negotiated in coming months, follows a year of wrangling between Telstra and the Labor government and will be viewed as an important stepping stone in the government's plan to roll out a new, A$43 billion "fiber-to-the-home" broadband network across Australia through its National Broadband Network Co.

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