It’s next on the red-alert food-scare calendar.

First they came for the trans fat, and pretty much everyone agreed it should be banned, because it can clog arteries.

Then they came for monosodium glutamate. Even though food companies say it is harmless, they eventually pulled it from many products, because that’s what the customer demanded.

Now, one in 10 young adults want regulators to ban dihydrogen monoxide from food and beverages, according to a study by research firm InsightsNow.

Um, that would be H2O, also known as water.

The food industry is grappling with just how far to bend to consumer whims about chemicals—even when those whims seem clueless. And this is giving America’s food scientists indigestion.

Whatever. You can’t be too careful.

via Anyone for Diglycerides? Anyone? Food Scientists Are Getting Fed Up With Picky Eaters – WSJ

This fellow who heads the quest for the rogue Vatican diplomat Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano comes right out of his starring role in a soon-to-be-a-major-motion-picture remake of the hit TV series of the ’60s and ’70s, “Hogan’s Heroes.”

If Viganò is afraid for his life to the point where he has to destroy his cell phone and go into hiding overseas, it is not only out of fear of being tracked down by a staffer of the apostolic nunciatures and missions of the Holy See spread throughout the world — the “long arm” of the Secretariat of State that has ordered discovery of Viganò’s whereabouts — but also if not principally out of dread for the intelligence capabilities of the Vatican City State’s paramilitary Corps of Gendarmes of the Vatican City State currently led by Domenico Giani.

Francis to his top gendarme: Get him, Domenico. The regime is counting on you.

via Santa Alleanza:

Francis finally accepted his resignation, praising him as he did so.

The case against Wuerl plus some words of defense.

But a grand jury report issued in August on rampant sex abuse in six Pennsylvania dioceses accused Wuerl of helping to protect some child-molesting priests while he was bishop of Pittsburgh from 1988 to 2006.

Simultaneously, Wuerl faced widespread skepticism over his insistence that he knew nothing about years of alleged sexual misconduct by McCarrick.

A salient skeleton in his closet:

In one case cited in the report, Wuerl – acting on a doctor’s recommendation – enabled priest William O’Malley to return to active ministry as a canonical consultant in 1998 despite allegations of abuse lodged against him in the past and his own admission that he was sexually interested in adolescents.

Years later, according to the report, six more people alleged that they were sexually assaulted by O’Malley, in some cases after he had been reinstated.

The defense speaks:

His defenders have cited a case that surfaced in 1988, when a 19-year-old former seminarian, Tim Bendig, filed a lawsuit accusing a priest, Anthony Cipolla, of molesting him.

Wuerl initially questioned Bendig’s account but later accepted it and moved to oust Cipolla from the priesthood.

The Vatican’s highest court ordered Wuerl to restore Cipolla to the ministry, but Wuerl resisted and, after two years of legal procedures, prevailed in preventing Cipolla’s return.

A Jesuit would absolve him — or give a light penance.

The Rev. Thomas Reese, a Jesuit priest who writes for Religion News Service, described Wuerl as an ideological moderate.

“He was totally enthusiastic about John Paul II, and then Pope Benedict, and now he’s totally enthusiastic about Pope Francis,” Reese said. “There are not many people in the church who are totally enthusiastic about all three of them.”

Ideological moderate, eh? Or a weather vane.

via WGN-TV