Churches in the immediate vicinity of Life Is Beautiful say the festival can be extremely disruptive. Father Courtney Edward Krier says once the bass starts blaring, it starts to feel like an earthquake, and no one in church can hear him. “Not with the bass, because the bass is obviously going to break up everything,” Krier said. MORE

Forget about life being beautiful. Down at Bob’s Bail Bonds, Becky Simmons will settle for life getting back to normal on the east end of Ogden Avenue.

As officials from the Life is Beautiful music, food and art festival fenced off a substantial section of downtown late last week, longtime local business owners and members of the clergy continued to have run-ins with insensitive security personnel despite assurances to the contrary. MORE

“Spanish priest Fr Pablo d’Ors, a consultant to the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Culture, yesterday said he was “absolutely” in favour of opening up the priesthood to women.” MORE

Pope Francis on Saturday demoted an outspoken conservative American cardinal who has been highly critical of the pontiff’s reformist leadership of the Roman Catholic Church.

Cardinal Raymond Burke, 66, was removed as head of the Vatican’s highest court and appointed to the ceremonial post of chaplain of the charity group Knights of Malta. MORE

My mother was on it (and successfully quit smoking using it) and she had some outrageous paranoia. She would accuse us of conspiring against her, making her sick, not loving her, lying to her, stealing things (that she misplaced), turning the dog against her, trying to poison her and sabotaging her car…she smoked for 40 years and failed at quitting hundreds of times. Chantix did the trick somehow but made her nuts. MORE

Conservatives and liberals approach almost every issue with completely different philosophies, underlying assumptions, and methods. That’s why it’s so hard to find genuine compromise between conservatism and liberalism — because not only are liberals almost always wrong, their solutions almost always make things worse. MORE

1) No matter what they fail at, it’s always someone else’s fault. George Bush did it, the Republicans are mean, the dog ate Obama’s homework. It’s not his fault that he’s flunking every class!MORE

New research by British scientists at the Royal London Hospital shows that sodium bicarbonate can dramatically slow the progress of chronic kidney disease.[1] We don’t need a thousand years of tests to understand something as simple as water and it is quite the same with bicarbonate, which is always present in the best drinking waters. MORE

How does a typhoon in the Pacific impact the weather of the continental U.S.? CBS News science contributor and City University of New York physics professor Michio Kaku joins “CBS This Morning” to discuss the science behind the coming Arctic blast. MORE

Kenya’s Catholic bishops are charging two United Nations organizations with sterilizing millions of girls and women under cover of an anti-tetanus inoculation program sponsored by the Kenyan government. MORE

An explosive storm that has surpassed the intensity of Superstorm Sandy is set to batter Alaska’s Aleutian Islands over the weekend and bring freezing temperatures and snow across the U.S.

The massive storm, with hurricane-force winds and waves 50 feet high, potentially could be one of the most intense to ever hit the North Pacific, weather service forecaster Brian Hurley warned. MORE

A swarm of hundreds of earthquakes that has been striking a corner of the Nevada desert near the Oregon border for months has intensified in recent days, prompting new warnings from seismologists.

About 750 earthquakes, mostly magnitude 2.0 to 3.0, have struck the area about 50 miles southeast of Lakeview, Ore., since the swarm started in July, said Ian Madin, chief scientist for Oregon’s Department of Geology and Mineral Industries. MORE

Instead, the longtime Fort Lauderdale resident is dealing with the demands of celebrity after his insistence on feeding the homeless in defiance of a new city ordinance thrust him into an international spotlight.

“I’ve had calls from Moscow and Syria. The phone is ringing every 15 seconds,” he said this week from the kitchen of his home, a day after police for the second time charged him with violating a new law aimed at the public feeding program he has run since 1991. MORE

It is not for federal judges to redefine marriage for us. When they do, it is tantamount to cultural suicide, and we should not be surprised at the cultural and social degradation sure to follow. MORE