The Lo Zone

Two Roman Catholic priests stole millions in offerings and gifts made to their parish as far back as 40 years ago, prosecutors said Thursday.

Monsignor John Skehan, who was pastor at St. Vincent Ferrer Catholic Church for four decades, was arrested Wednesday night on charges that he stole $8.6 million from the church, using the money to buy property and other assets, investigators said.

The 79-year-old priest was arrested at Palm Beach International Airport as he returned from Ireland and was being held on $400,000 bond on grand theft charges.

The Rev. Francis Guinan, who succeeded Skehan three years ago, has disappeared and was being sought, city police and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement said. He is alleged to have stolen an unspecified amount of money to take gambling trips to Las Vegas and the Bahamas.

At Sylvia’s restaurant, a temple of Southern cooking in Harlem, the fried chicken tastes the same. At the Carnegie Delicatessen and Restaurant in Midtown, which beckons to tourists and New Yorkers alike, nobody has complained about the potato pancakes. At Junior’s, an institution in Brooklyn with two Manhattan branches, the cheesecake is still as popular as ever.

All three places have done what the city’s Board of Health has proposed that all of New York’s 20,000 restaurants eventually do: get rid of all but a minute amount of artificial trans fats in their cooking in the interest of better health. If the plan is enacted, New York would become the first large American city to severely limit trans fats in restaurants.

But while more and more restaurants are already moving to rid their kitchens of trans fats, which are squarely tied to the increased risk of heart disease, New Yorkers’ reaction to the city’s proposal, approved unanimously on Tuesday by the health board, typically went something like, “Right, but on the other hand ...”

...which debuts tonight, have been consistently glowing.

Set in the enchanted and dangerous forest of New York publishing and fashion, peopled with characters who are obviously good or evidently evil, it has the power and sweetness of a fairy tale; but it isn't exactly the Cinderella story it first seems. It is more emancipated than that. Betty is also Dorothy gone over the rainbow — though all the color is back home in Queens, where she lives with her loving father (Tony Plana), sassy sister (Ana Ortiz) and budding fashionista nephew (Mark Indelicato), while the offices of Mode are largely white and icy blue, designed with the clean, curving and slightly antiseptic lines of a 1960s vision of the future.

As the magazine's creative director Wilhelmina, frostily furious at having been denied the editor's job, Vanessa Williams is every inch the evil queen and comes with her own Magic Mirror/Flying Monkey, the obsequious and ironic Marc (Michael Urie), who does her dark errands and administers her Botox injections. Ashley Jensen plays a fairy godmother figure, a Mode wardrobe mistress who looks out for Betty. And Daniel is the charming prince, but only sort of.

This is not "Working Girl," though it repeats that film's Manhattan versus the Boroughs dialectic, nor "The Devil Wears Prada," though it also concerns an unfashionable person coming to work at a fashion magazine. Betty, though she is not what walks down the runways of Milan and Paris (and is sometimes shot in a way that emphasizes her wideness), is neither a frump nor a mouse for technicians or magicians to make over — she's a ray of sunshine, a whole sunrise, bursting with color, face lighted up by a wide smile doubly gleaming for the braces splayed across her perfectly white teeth. When she tells herself "You are an attractive, intelligent, confident businesswoman," she is only reminding herself of what she already believes.

Flamboyant Dallas Cowboys receiver Terrell Owens tried to kill himself by overdosing on pain medication, a police report said, even putting two more pills into his mouth after a friend intervened.

Having won Oscars earlier this year, the members of rap group Three 6 Mafia are heading next to Emmy domain _ television.

MTV announced Wednesday that the rap group will star in a new reality comedy series called "Adventures in Hollyhood."

The series, which will begin in 2007, will follow the group's main members, Juicy J and DJ Paul, and their entourage as they make their way from Memphis to Los Angeles.

Goony-goo-goo, y'all. Goony-goo-goo.

For the first time in years, large schools of giant sea bass are swimming right alongside divers at La Jolla Cove. One of those divers emailed us to say it’s a sight we shouldn’t miss.

Divers are always looking for that special moment underwater, the one they can savor. In the waters off La Jolla Cove, that moment has arrived. Giant sea bass started showing up about two weeks ago, but we’re not talking one or two.

“Every once in a while, you’ll see one out here off La Jolla, but nothing like this many fish – 15, 20 fish is unheard of together so tightly spaced,“ said diver Roger Bly.

[...]

The giant sea bass we saw today ranged between 75 and 125 pounds, with the biggest bass well over 150 pounds.

These magnificent fish are as gentle as they are big, and will allow an up close look.

You know?

Yum.

Chavez sees Bush as 'devil'

"Yesterday, the devil came here ... and it smells of sulfur still today," said Chávez, whose international reputation has grown largely on the strength of his opposition to U.S. policy. Chávez said Bush was "talking as if he owned the world."

South African Christians seeking a quick spiritual boost will be able to download the entire bible on to their mobile telephones phones from Wednesday as part of a drive to modernize the scriptures.

The South African wing of the non-denominational International Bible Society, which translates and distributes the Bible, said mobile phone users with the right type of phone could download the whole bible in either English or Afrikaans using the text messaging function SMS.

"The Virtual Bible will enable the Bible Society to supply the Bible to every modern cell phone user in a fast and affordable format," Rev. Gerrit Kritzinger, chief executive of the Bible Society in South Africa, said in a statement.

The Bible Society hopes the gimmick, which costs 40 rand ($5.43), will appeal to young people in mobile-mad South Africa, where the majority of the population is Christian.

Customers can choose between the traditional King James version of the bible or more up-to-date translations. Zulu and Xhosa version will be available soon and other languages will follow.

A 3.3-million-year-old skeleton of a young child curled into a ball no bigger than a cantaloupe - a unique fossil described as "a bright beam of light" on human evolution - was unveiled Wednesday by paleontologists working in the sun-baked badlands of Ethiopia.

The tiny bundle of bones may be the best fossil yet found of the primitive human ancestor Australopithecus afarensis. That is the same species as the superstar fossil dubbed Lucy, an adult female discovered nearby in 1974.

The skeleton, described in the British scientific journal Nature and National Geographic magazine, represents the first juvenile remains of these ancient humanlike creatures, making the fossil the oldest child by far ever found.

"This is something you find once in a lifetime," said Zeresenay Alemseged, of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, an Ethiopian paleoanthropologist who led the team that discovered it.

[Brad] Pitt is being seriously considered to take the place of his "Interview with the Vampire" co-star, Tom Cruise, in the next installment of "Missison Impossible."

The studio is reportedly willing to pay the actor $40 million, which, if he accepts, would make him the highest-paid actor in Hollywood history.

Chinese doctors say they successfully transplanted a penis on a man who lost his own in an accident, but had to remove it two weeks later because of psychological problems experienced by the man and his wife.

[...]

Fourteen days after the penis transplant, the recipient and his wife requested that the organ be removed "because of the wife's psychological rejection as well as the swollen shape of the transplanted penis," the surgeons report in the journal.

Astronauts on the International Space Station put on protective clothing after reporting a foul-smelling vapor on Monday, but the three crew members were not in danger, NASA said.

Initial reports of smoke on the space station proved false and the situation was now stable, said NASA spokesman Kelly Humphries in Houston.

"The crew was asked to put on some protective gear," Humphries told CNN.

He said the alarm was set off by "an odor that was not normal."

That's what I think.

When a man carrying a knife lunged toward six police officers inside a Wonder Lake home over the weekend, two beanbags fired from a shotgun failed to stop the charge, but a third bag penetrated his head and left him fighting for his life Monday, authorities said.

Illinois State Police are investigating whether the McHenry County sheriff's deputy who fired the silver-dollar-size beanbags Saturday did so with intent to kill the man, identified as David Maxson, 43.

[...]

The injury to Maxson caused dangerous brain swelling, said Anthony Redici, 33, whose mother is engaged to Maxson and who lives with the couple in the 4800 block of West Wonder Lake Drive, where the incident happened.

"David has severe depression, and police have been out here twice and they're aware of his suicidal tendencies," Redici said. "There should be police training that enables officers to calm down a person like David rather than resort to violence."

David Bowie and D'Angelo are fans. So is Elton John. But the soul man Lewis Taylor isn't exactly thrilled by his growing popularity. Happiest as a studio hermit at home in London, he has little interest in performing live or seeking a wider audience, say, in the United States...

For much of the last decade, arguably the most brilliant R&B artist of this generation has toiled in relative obscurity in Britain. It's not that Lewis Taylor is unknown -- Elton John, David Bowie, D'Angelo, Chaka Khan, Darryl Hall (of Hall & Oates) and the late Aaliyah -- are among his fervent admirers.

Lewis Taylor is a brilliant soul singer. But his artistic strength and Achilles’ heel is that he’s so much more: Musical tributaries flow in from Brian Wilson, Todd Rundgren, Prince and Jimi Hendrix, just for starters. His near-flawless eponymous 1996 solo debut had the faithful swearing that Marvin Gaye had been reborn...

On paper, Lewis Taylor's musical formula looks like a surefire recipe for disaster. But when the reclusive Brit combines his natural affinity for old-school soul with his flair for prog-rock bombast, the results are usually enchanting, sometimes jaw-dropping.