In Washington, a half-dozen members of Congress joined former Miss America Carolyn Sapp and ex-Wal-Mart employees last week in the Love Mom, Not Wal-Mart campaign to publicize alleged discrimination against women by the retail behemoth. It was noted in the pre-Mother’s Day event that while women comprise nearly three-fourths of Wal-Mart’s workforce, only 15 percent of store managers are women, and men get higher wages across the board …

In Rome, people are still trying to divine from the smoke signals whether Pope Benedict XVI will join other religious leaders in promoting environmental protection. Pope John Paul II often criticized abuse of the planet, asserting once that the world must confront “an environmental emergency.” Buddhist leader Dalai Lama frequently stresses harmony with nature and Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, head of the world’s 300 million Orthodox Christians, went so far as to pronounce environmental destruction “a sin”…

Our Creature Feature comes from Alaska, where it was believed until recently that you never get attacked by bears twice. That was until Scott MacInnes was mauled last month near his home on the Kenai Peninsula when he encountered a huge brown bear with her cubs in the vicinity of a freshly killed moose.

MacInnes, 51, a biologist, is expected to survive serious bite and claw wounds to enjoy a record of some note in a land where two best-selling books were Bear Attacks and More Bear Attacks. Nearly 40 years ago, MacInnes survived an attack on a popular hiking trail in the Chugach National Forest. A Canadian claims to have been attacked on two occasions by polar bear, but Tom Smith, a government bear biologist, asserted he could find no other instance of an Alaskan surviving two attacks in records dating back more than a century.