Saturday, April 10, 2010
LE POINT: Larmes aux yeux, abattus, les Polonais étaient traumatisés samedi par la nouvelle de la mort du chef de l'État Lech Kaczynski et de hauts responsables polonais dans l'accident de l'avion présidentiel qui s'est écrasé le matin à Smolensk, dans l'ouest de la Russie.
"C'est invraisemblable. Je n'arrive pas à y croire. Je suis sous le choc" - la voix faible de Katarzyna, 32 ans, tremble un peu, ses yeux sont humides. Comme des milliers de Varsoviens, elle est venue, accompagnée de ses amis, devant le siège de la présidence, dans le centre la capitale, pour rendre hommage au président Lech Kaczynski, mort à 60 ans. Le chef de l'Etat était accompagné par son épouse, ainsi que par les principaux chefs de l'armée et des personnalités politiques de premier plan. Au total, 96 personnes, 88 passagers et 8 membres de l'équipage ont péri dans cet accident, sans précédent dans l'histoire de la Pologne. Comme des centaines de personnes, Katarzyna a apporté une gerbe de roses blanches et rouges, aux couleurs nationales de la Pologne. D'autres y ont allumé des bougies. Certains, rassemblés autour d'un prêtre, se sont plongés dans la prière. >>> AFP | Samedi 10 Avril 2010
Liens en relation avec l’article >>>
TRIBUNE DE GENÈVE: BANGKOK | Plus de 90 personnes - soldats, policiers ou manifestants - ont été blessés samedi lors de heurts entre les forces de l'ordre et les "chemises rouges" qui réclament la démission du gouvernement d'Abhisit Vejjajiva, a-t-on appris auprès des autorités sanitaires.
Plus de 90 personnes - soldats, policiers ou manifestants - ont été blessés samedi lors de heurts entre les forces de l'ordre et les "chemises rouges" qui réclament la démission du gouvernement d'Abhisit Vejjajiva, a-t-on appris auprès des autorités sanitaires.
"A 16h40 (09h40 GMT), nous avons comptabilisé 93 blessés dans les heurts, dont 71 civils, 19 soldats, trois policiers", a indiqué un responsable du centre des urgences de Bangkok. >>> AFP | Samedi 10 Avril 2010
LE TEMPS: Les Etats-Unis ont pour la première fois participé à une session de l’organe onusien avec une ambassadrice qui se consacre entièrement aux droits humains. Arrivée à Genève voici un peu plus de deux semaines, elle livre ses premières impressions du Conseil >>> Stéphane Bussard | Samedi 10 Avril 2010
WELT ONLINE: Am Sonntag wählt Ungarn: Die Prognosen lassen einen Triumph antidemokratischer und antisemitischer Kräfte befürchten. Die Situation erinnert an die düstere Vorkriegszeit. Das Land wird überschüttet mit völkisch-paranoiden Parolen, mit Fabulierungen über das "ungarische Wesen".
Die Wahlen in Ungarn werden durch die Vergangenheit bestimmt. Durch eine Vergangenheit, die in die 30er- und 40er-Jahren des vorigen Jahrhunderts reicht und im Jahre 1945 eingefroren wurde.
Ungarn ist im Vergleich zu Westeuropa ein Entwicklungsland. Es ist von seiner Geschichte noch nicht geheilt, somit im Grunde „frühreif“ für die Mitgliedschaft in der EU. Was hier die politische Atmosphäre bestimmt, ist westlich der Elbe und der Leitha längst überwunden worden: Die Mehrheit der Bevölkerung ist autoritär eingestellt.
Sie hält wenig von Freiheit ruft nach Ordnung. Das demokratische Prinzip eines Gleichgewichtes zwischen Freiheit und Ordnung ist in den Augen der Mehrheit eine liberal-kosmopolitische Täuschung. >>> Von Rudolf Ungváry | Freitag, 09. April 2010
THE TELEGRAPH: A Greek man is suing a Swedish dairy firm for £4.5 million after his photograph ended up on yoghurt tubs marketed as a "Turkish" brand.
The man, who is furious at being portrayed as a Turkish [sic], the traditional national enemy of Greece, has accused Lindahls dairy of using his image without permission.
He found out about his picture on the Turkish-style yoghurt tubs after Athanasios Varzakanos, a friend living in Stockholm, recognised him.
"I was surprised and I could not believe my eyes. It was a shock to see him there suddenly, someone I know. He didn't like it, he was upset and wondered how it had happened," he said.
In his legal writ the man, who has not been named by the courts, has argued that he is not Turkish, he is Greek, and lives in Greece, and the use of his picture is misleading both for those who know him and for buyers of the yoghurt. Greek man sues dairy firm over yoghurt pot picture >>> | Friday, April 09, 2010
THE NEW YORK TIMES: The priest, convicted of tying up and abusing two young boys in a California church rectory, wanted to leave the ministry.
But in 1985, four years after the priest and his bishop first asked that he be defrocked, the future Pope Benedict XVI, then a top Vatican official, signed a letter saying that the case needed more time and that “the good of the Universal Church” had to be considered in the final decision, according to church documents released through lawsuits.
That decision did not come for two more years, the sort of delay that is fueling a renewed sexual abuse scandal in the church that has focused on whether the future pope moved quickly enough to remove known pedophiles from the priesthood, despite pleas from American bishops.
As the scandal has deepened, the pope’s defenders have said that, well before he was elected pope in 2005, he grew ever more concerned about sexual abuse and weeding out pedophile priests. But the case of the California priest, the Rev. Stephen Kiesle, and the trail of documents first reported on Friday by The Associated Press, shows, in this period at least, little urgency.
The letter that Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, later pope, wrote in Latin in 1985, mentions Father Kiesle’s young age — 38 at the time — as one consideration in whether he should be forced from the priesthood. The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said it was wrong to draw conclusions based on one letter, without carefully understanding the context in which it was written.
“It’s evident that it’s not an in-depth and serious use of documents,” he said. Earlier Friday, Father Lombardi suggested that the pope would be willing to meet with sexual abuse victims.
But John S. Cummins, the former bishop of Oakland who repeatedly wrote his superiors in Rome urging that the priest be defrocked, said the Vatican in that era, after the Second Vatican Council, was especially reluctant to dismiss priests because so many were abandoning the priesthood. >>> Laurie Goodstein and Michael Luo | Friday, April 09, 2010
LE TEMPS: Pédophilie – Le pape a traîné des pieds pour défroquer un prêtre californien : Benoît XVI est accusé d’avoir couvert de nouveaux abus alors qu’il était encore cardinal. Le père Kiesle, qui a reconnu avoir des penchants pédophiles, avait lui-même demandé à être défroqué. Il a dû attendre plusieurs années >>> ATS/AFP | Samedi 10 Avril 2010
WELT ONLINE: Missbrauch – Papst wehrt sich gegen neue Vorwürfe aus USA: Als Präfekt der Glaubenskongregation soll der damalige Kardinal Joseph Ratzinger die rasche Entlassung eines pädophilen US-Geistlichen aus dem Priesteramt um Jahre verzögert haben. Das behauptet ein Opfer-Anwalt. Der Vatikan widerspricht. Ratzinger habe lediglich um mehr Zeit zur Aufklärung gebeten. >>> dpa/lac | Samstag, 10. April 2010
THE NEW YORK TIMES: MOSCOW — A plane carrying the Polish president, Lech Kaczynski, and his wife crashed in western Russia on Saturday morning, and there were no survivors, according to Russian media.
Officials did not immediately have information on the identities of the dead.
A spokeswoman for the emergency management ministry said on Russian television that the plane, a Tupolev 154, crashed as it was landing in Smolensk, and 87 people on board had died. >>> Ellen Barry and Clifford J. Levy | Saturday, April 10, 2010
THE TELEGRAPH: The Polish president's plane has crashed as it approached a Russian airport, killing 130 people.
President Lech Kaczynski was travelling with his wife from Warsaw to Smolensk airport, 220 miles southwest of Moscow.
Sergei Antufiev, the regional governor of the Smolensk, said that everyone on board had been killed.
"It clipped the tops of the trees, crashed down and broke into pieces," Mr Antufiev, told Russia-24 television news network by telephone. "There were no survivors." Polish state news agency PAP also said there were no survivors. >>> | Saturday, April 10, 2010
RUSSIA TODAY: Polish president killed in air crash near Russia's Smolensk: More than 80 people have died after a Polish presidential TU-154 plane crashed near an airport outside Smolensk in western Russia. The Polish president and his wife were killed in the crash. >>> | Saturday, April 10. 2010
LE FIGARO: Le président polonais tué dans le crash de son avion : L'appareil, qui transportait notamment Lech Kaczynski et plusieurs hauts responsables, aurait accroché des arbres au moment de son atterrissage à Smolensk dans l'ouest de la Russie. Il n'y aurait aucun survivant, selon les autorités russes, qui suspectent une erreur du pilote. >>> Par lefigaro.fr | Samedi 10 Avril 2010
NZZ ONLINE: Flugzeug mit polnischem Präsidenten abgestürzt: Maschine zerschellt bei Landeanflug auf Smolensk am Boden >>> sda/afp/Reuters/dpa | Samstag, 10. April 2010
WELT ONLINE: Dutzende Spitzenpolitiker und führende Vertreter von Kirche und Militär sind mit Polens Staatspräsident Lech Kaczynski in den Tod gestürzt. Vorübergehend übernimmt Parlamentspräsident Bronislaw Komorowski die Geschäfte des Staatsoberhaupts. Er soll innerhalb von 14 Tagen über vorgezogene Präsidentenwahlen entscheiden.
Polen in der Schockstarre: Nach dem Tod von Staatspräsident Lech Kaczynski versammelten sich am Samstag vor dem Präsidentenpalast in Warschau spontan Hunderte von Menschen zum Gebet. Angesichts der Tragödie flatterte die Staatsflagge auf Halbmast, während die Trauernden vor dem Gebäude Kerzen anzündeten.
Sogar der frühere Präsident Lech Walesa, der sonst immer eine schnelle Antwort auf jede Frage parat hat, suchte lange nach den richtigen Worten. Bei diesem Flugzeugabsturz sei „die Elite der Nation“ gestorben, sagte der Friedensnobelpreisträger und einstige Arbeiterheld. Der Verlust sei so gewaltig wie vor 70 Jahren in Katyn. >>> Von Jacek Lepiarz | Samstag, 10. April 2010
Related:
Video: Katyn Massacre Anniversary >>> | Thursday, April 08, 2010
Friday, April 09, 2010
THE GLOBE AND MAIL: A 1993 letter focuses on protecting the church’s image by preventing public knowledge of Bernard Prince’s abuse of altar boys
More than a decade before police got wind that a priest had molested several altar boys in small towns in the Ottawa Valley, Vatican and Canadian church officials knew about the matter and discussed in a letter how to keep it secret.
The letter, written in 1993, focused on protecting the church’s image by preventing the scandal from becoming public – the very essence of an international wave of allegations now battering the Roman Catholic clergy and the Vatican.
“It is a situation which we wish to avoid at all costs,” the late Bishop Joseph Windle of Pembroke, Ont., wrote in Feb. 10, 1993, to the Pope’s envoy to Canada, Carlo Curis.
The man Bishop Windle was writing about was then-monsignor Bernard Prince, now 75, a friend of the late Pope John Paul II who had just been posted to the Vatican as a high-ranking official working with missionary societies.
The year before Mr. Prince was sent to Rome, a man had complained to the diocese that the priest had molested him when he was a child. At least one Vatican archbishop, Jose Sanchez, now a cardinal, had been warned about Mr. Prince’s problem before he was sent to Rome, Bishop Windle said in the letter.
Bishop Windle wrote that he told Cardinal Sanchez that he agreed with posting Mr. Prince to the Vatican. “While the charge against Fr. Prince was very serious, I would not object to him being given another chance since it would remove him from the Canadian scene.”
In his letter to the papal nuncio, Bishop Windle cautioned the Vatican to avoid honouring Mr. Prince because it could anger victims and prompt them to contact police.
“The consequences of such an action would be disastrous, not only for the Canadian church but for the Holy See as well,” the bishop wrote. >>> Tu Thanh Ha | Friday, April 09, 2010
TIMES ONLINE: Thousands of followers of Eugene Terre’Blanche, the murdered white supremacist, attended his funeral amid tight security today.
Mourners, many dressed in combat gear, sang the apartheid-era national anthem as the coffin entered the church. Some among the congregation performed Nazi salutes during the service.
Other who could not fit inside the church filled the streets of the small farming town of Ventersdorp, 62 miles (100km) west of Johannesburg.
South Africa’s pre-apartheid flag and Terre'Blanche's party's flag, which resembles the Nazi swastika, fluttered from pickup trucks in the surrounding streets.
Reverend Ferdie Devenir told the congregation that Mr Terre’Blanche had been “a good leader”.
“The world was against him, they looked for the bad things about him.”
Two of Mr Terre’Blanche’s black workers have been charged with beating and hacking him to death on his farm last Saturday.
Police suspect the murder was financially rather than politically motivated but the killing has exposed the country's persistent racial divide 16 years after the end of white minority rule.
Helicopters circled above the streets and police were out in force. Few black South Africans were among the crowds. >>> Joanna Sugden | Friday, April 09, 2010
LE FIGARO: L'apparente lune de miel entre Obama et Medvedev réveille de vieilles craintes à Prague, Varsovie, Budapest et ailleurs, où le souvenir de l'occupation soviétique demeure très présent, dix-neuf ans après la fin de la guerre froide et la désagrégation de l'URSS.
À Prague
Une fois la poignée de main historique échangée avec Dmitri Medvedev, jeudi à Prague, Barack Obama n'était pas encore tout à fait au bout de ses peines. Tandis que le président russe regagnait Moscou sitôt la cérémonie de signature du traité Start terminée, son homologue américain s'apprêtait à prolonger son séjour de quelques heures dans la capitale tchèque. Le temps de recevoir à dîner onze chefs d'État et de gouvernement d'Europe centrale et orientale à la résidence de l'ambassadeur américain, avant de redécoller vendredi matin pour Washington à bord d'Air Force One. Faire pièce aux visées russes >>> Par Maurin Picard | Vendredi 09 Avril 2010
PINK NEWS: It often shocks people to hear this but talk to Iraqi gays who've made it out and they'll tell you – life was better under Saddam.
Baghdad played the role that Beirut does now as a sanctuary for Middle Eastern gay life with clubs which men from the Gulf and Saudi Arabia flocked to.
In sharp contrast, for the past six years Iraq has been the worst place in the entire world to be gay. Far, far worse than Uganda or even Iran. Hundreds of gays, lesbians and trans people have been hunted down and killed in the most vile ways imaginable – and imagination is the right word. Doctors have confirmed reports of men have had their anuses glued shut by militia forces and others have accused the government of being involved.
No one has been prosecuted and the Iraqi government has failed to do anything to stop it. So Iraqi gays have helped themselves. They have created safe houses, although many have been discovered and become a new killing field.
Many have fled but they have faced a cold wall of indifference and they have needed friends and luck to actually make it to sanctuary. >>> Paul Canning | Wednesday, March 24, 2010
TOPNEWS.in: Iraq turns a "blind eye" to torture, murder of gay men >>> Submitted by Sahil Nagpal | Monday, August 17, 2010
MAIL ONLINE: A 13-year-old Yemeni girl died of internal injuries four days after a family-arranged marriage, a human rights group said.
Elham Mahdi Shoi, from Hajja province, northwest of the capital San'a, died on April 2, four days after her marriage to a 23-year-old man, said Majed al-Madhaji, a spokesman for the Sisters Arab Forum for Human Rights.
Authorities detained the husband.
Sigrid Kaag, regional director for UNICEF, said in a statement that the United Nations child agency was 'dismayed by the death of yet another child bride in Yemen'.
'Elham is a martyr of abuse of children's lives in Yemen and a clear example of what is justified by the lack of limits on the age of marriage,' SAF said in a statement.
A medical report from al-Thawra hospital said she suffered a tear to her genitals and severe bleeding.
The Yemeni rights group said the girl was married off in an agreement between two men to marry each other's sisters to avoid having to pay expensive bride-prices.
The practice of marrying young girls is widespread in Yemen and drew the attention of international rights groups seeking to pressure the government to outlaw child marriages.
Legislation that would make it illegal for those under the age of 17 to marry is in serious peril after strong opposition from some of Yemen's most influential Islamic leaders. >>> Mail Foreign Service | Friday, April 09, 2010
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