News Briefs

Undeterred by the police detention of three senior Catholic bishops and hundreds of church activists, thousands of Christians took part in a rally on March 5 to mark the end of a monthlong protest campaign for equal rights by dalit Christians in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu. • New evidence of brain activity in patients judged to be in a persistent vegetative state should make physicians and neurologists more cautious in arriving at such assessments, said the Catholic bio-ethicist Edward Furton on March 1. • The Diocese of Burlington, Vt., is preparing to sell its headquarters building and a now-closed camp to help pay for claims and judgments stemming from clerical sexual abuse. • Archbishop Edwin F. O’Brien has decided to consolidate 13 schools—12 elementary and one secondary—after a yearlong scrutiny of the Archdiocese of Baltimore’s educational system. • U.S. bishops have called on the Senate to support the extension of favorable trade status for Haitian-made garments in a letter to senators on Feb. 19. • Polish church leaders reacted angrily to an appeals court ruling upholding an earlier judgment that their country’s top-selling Catholic newspaper libeled a single mother who sought an abortion by comparing her to Nazi war criminals.