News round up - April 24th

The news you may have missed (the last one is my favorite):

• A memorial to Blessed Pope John Paul II in Krakow (where he had been Archbishop before his election to the See of Peter) has been vandalized ahead of his canonization on Sunday.

• While we're on the topic of anti-Catholic vandalism, a display for Divine Mercy Sunday in Chicago's Daley Plaza clearly displeased a vandal.

• Aborted babies in Canada are being used to heat hospitals in Oregon. This report comes shortly after we learned the same is being with hospitals in Britain. It is deplorable that the bodies of dead babies are labeled as "medical waste," thereby allowing this to happen.

• A man in the United Kingdom has invoked the medieval right to trial by combat to contest a motor vehicle violation. The court has refused his claim. You cannot make this up. It was not until 1819 that the British Parliament put an end to trial by combat as a means of legal recourse.