put it on your calendar

Pope Benedict XVI Tuesday tweeted for the first time, announcing the launch of a Vatican news information portal. Benedict's tweet read: "Dear Friends, I just launched News.va Praised be our Lord Jesus Christ! With my prayers and blessings, Benedictus XVI." The portal www.news.va for the first time aggregates information from the Vatican's various print, online, radio and television media. It's the latest effort by the Vatican to bring its evangelizing message to a greater, Internet-savvy audience and follows forays into Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. Benedict put the site online himself by tapping an iPad, said Thaddeus Jones, project coordinator.

A statue of former U.S. President Ronald Reagan was unveiled Wednesday in Hungary's capital of Budapest, where he was honored for his leadership in helping to end communism. The bronze (7-foot likeness of the 40th president was erected in Budapest at Freedom Square, near both the U.S. Embassy and a World War II memorial to Soviet soldiers killed during the ouster of the Nazis from Hungary. Prime Minister Viktor Orban and former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice helped unveil the statue Wednesday. Reagan "changed the world and created a new world for Central Europe," Orban said at the unveiling ceremony.

A man got a big surprise on a recent commercial flight from Seattle to Anchorage, Alaska, when he was stung by a scorpion while sitting in his plane seat. Jeff Ellis, of Oregon, said he was trying to sleep on an overnight Alaska Airlines flight when he felt something in his sleeve and tried to brush it away. He said he felt the crawling again, looked down and saw the culprit. "I picked my hand up and said, 'Oh, my God. That's a scorpion.'" He said he grabbed the scorpion with a napkin and showed it to his girlfriend, but not before it stung him on the elbow. Two doctors on board checked out Ellis, who is fine.