Nearly 2,700 call German church abuse hot line

Nearly 2,700 people have called the church's sexual abuse hot line in Germany in the first three days it was operating, a Catholic church spokesman said Tuesday.
A team of psychologists and other experts had conversations with 394 people so far, ranging from several minutes up to an hour, Trier Diocese spokesman Stephan Kronenburg said.
"Most callers report cases of sexual abuse," he told The Associated Press.
The hot line — which began operating March 30 — received around 13,300 calls total in its first three days. Kronenburg said this worked out to about 2,670 people, as many called several times.
In addition, around 100 people used an online form to contact the service.
Most of the callers are people who say they were victims of sexual abuse or their relatives, with some callers also reporting cases of physical abuse, he said.
"The boundaries between both are often loose," Kronenburg added.
The Catholic Church in Pope Benedict XVI's homeland has been rocked by a widening scandal of physical and sexual abuse in recent weeks, with hundreds of people who say they were victims coming forward.
The church decided to set up a national hot line as pressure mounted and many victims seemed reluctant to report abuse cases to the diocese where they had been abused.
Most cases date back years, if not decades, and the statute of limitations may have passed, Kronenburg said.
"The hot line shall give the victims an opportunity to talk about what has happened to them. From there, we decide what to counsel them," Kronenburg told the AP.
Should the hot line experts learn of an alleged child abuse case involving a priest currently on duty, they would alert the diocese and also prosecutors, Kronenburg said.
In the past, the Catholic Church was accused of covering up abuse cases. Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger for instance spoke of a "wall of silence" surrounding the church.
During the Easter holidays, however, several prominent bishops — among them the dean of the bishops' conference, Robert Zollitsch — called for a "renewal" of the church and condemned the abuses cases as "heinous crimes."
In Munich, meanwhile, an independent lawyer hired by the church wrapped up his investigation of abuse allegations at the southern Ettal monastery.
"The investigation clearly shows a system of abuse that lasted for decades," Thomas Pfister told the AP.
There are some cases of sexual abuse, but most of the victims who came forward were physically abused, Pfister said in a telephone interview. Most cases happened before 1990, he added.
The lawyer declined to cite exact figures or release more details on the reported cases as his final report is due to be published next week.

David Mikael Taclino
Inyu Web Development and Design
Creative Writer

Read More

Protesters clash with police in Kyrgyzstan

Baton-wielding police dispersed an anti-government demonstration in former Soviet Kyrgyzstan on Tuesday, but protesters fought through tear gas and flash grenades to regroup, burning police cars and hurling stones and Molotov cocktails.
By late Tuesday hundreds of protesters angry over rising heat and power prices had overrun a government office on the main square of Talas, a town of 30,000 people west of the capital, Bishkek — just hours after police had forced them out of the area.
The clashes began after the demonstrators in the impoverished Central Asian nation assembled on the central square armed with rocks and flammable liquids, residents told The Associated Press by telephone. Some of the protesters gathered at the local police station and threw Molotov cocktails at President Kurmanbek Bakiyev's portraits.
Special forces stormed the square and government office, freeing a regional governor who had been taken hostage by the demonstrators. But the forces quickly lost control as the crowd swelled. Toward nightfall the protesters thinned out.
A correspondent for the local affiliate of U.S.-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in Talas said one person was shot with a rubber bullet fired from inside the police precinct.
Interior Ministry spokesman Rakhmatillo Akhmedov in Bishkek confirmed to The Associated Press that police had used tear gas and said several officers were injured by stones in Talas. The ministry insisted the situation in the town had been brought under control.
The clashes occurred three days after U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon visited Kyrgyzstan and repeatedly criticized it for human rights problems in a strong rebuke to the country once regarded as former Soviet Central Asia's "island of democracy."
In Bishkek on Tuesday, Almazbek Atambayev, the country's most popular opposition politician, barricaded himself inside his home, according to Irina Karamushkina, another politician who said she was with him. Karamushkina said in a telephone interview that police were trying to enter the building and had threatened to arrest them both.
Other opposition activists were arrested in the capital, according to local reports. Access to the Internet was disabled, but it was unclear how far the electronic disruption reached.
Nationwide rallies are planned for Wednesday, and the unrest could spread through the country. The government warned of "severe" repercussions, and the main opposition party said U.S. and Russian diplomats should urged the government to refrain from violence.
On Tuesday, Ban, who is still traveling in central Asia, expressed concern about the situation in Talas.
"He emphasizes that while freedom of assembly is an essential element of any democratic society the rule of law must be respected," the U.N. spokesman's office in New York said in a statement. "He calls on all concerned to show restraint and appeals for dialogue."
Prime Minister Daniyar Usenov said about 100 policemen had been dispatched to Talas, which is a six-hour drive west of the capital, Bishkek, as backup.
"I urge the organizers of these actions to desist from what they are doing. For those that do not listen, measures will be severe," Usenov said. He said there would be no curfew.
Kyrgyzstan, a mountainous country of 5 million people, hosts a U.S. air base that supports military operations in neighboring Afghanistan and serves as an important transit point for coalition troops and supplies.
Since coming to power on a wave of street protests in 2005, Bakiyev has ensured a measure of stability, but many observers say he has done so at the expense of democratic standards.
Over the past two years, Kyrgyz authorities have clamped down on free media, and opposition activists say they have routinely been subjected to physical intimidation and targeted by politically motivated criminal investigations.
Anti-government forces have been in disarray until recently, but widespread anger over soaring utility bills has galvanized the fractious opposition.

David Mikael Taclino
Inyu Web Development and Design
Creative Writer

Read More

Britain's election finally set for May 6

Britain is bracing for a May 6 general election that may alter the landscape of its politics — a race that offers at least three unpredictable outcomes and one of the most dramatic since Tony Blair defeated the Conservatives in 1997.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced the long-awaited election date Tuesday as the resurgent Conservatives prepared for battle against the bedraggled Labour incumbents with the nation drowning in debt after a golden age of economic prosperity.
Youthful and charismatic Conservative leader David Cameron once seemed certain to grab power after 13 years of Labour rule — but tightening polls and quirks of the British election system leave the outcome uncertain. Whoever wins, Britain could well become an altered state with higher taxes, fewer services, tougher business regulations and less willingness to join expensive U.S.-led military campaigns.
"Last year, I didn't care at all about this election," said Jacob McDonald, a 24-year-old business graduate who has been on a job hunt for nearly a year. "But now I think this could actually be big — so big that it could to make or break my life in the next five years. I plan on voting, but haven't made a choice yet."
The election comes at a bruising time for Britain's main political parties — all three were stung in a scandal about expenses that exposed lawmakers who filed claims for everything from pornography to chandeliers at their country estates. Voters, meanwhile, lost jobs and homes as Britain struggled with the worst recession since World War II and the largest deficit among the Group of Seven nations.
In the end, voter disillusionment may help. But polls suggest it's more likely that for the first time since 1974, neither party will win an absolute majority in Parliament.
Polls have given Cameron's Tories a slight lead — between 4 and 10 percentage points — but Britain has an election system that at times has been stacked against the Conservatives because of voting districts. It is the majority of districts won — not the majority of votes — that will determine which party will lead the next government.
The Conservatives need to capture about 130 more seats in the House of Commons from Labour and other parties to win a majority. Labour now holds 345 of the House of Common's 646 seats. A party needs 326 seats to win a majority in government.
Recent district changes to reflect population shifts will give the Tories an estimated 12 more seats while Labour loses seven, according to the University of Plymouth. The recent changes and the expected gains may still be too few to give the Tories a majority lead, although polls indicate more people may be voting Tory this election.
Like U.S. congressional districts, district seats are allocated according to population, but Britain's system has been slow to catch up to massive shifts of population.
If the election result gives neither party a majority, a government could be delayed and parties forced to scramble for a coalition. It could also spell another election this year.
Brown, who has often been criticized for his wooden persona but admired for his intellectual prowess, promised Tuesday to "fight on behalf of hard working families on middle-class and modest incomes," and said only Labour, not the Conservatives, could be trusted to keep the economy out of a downturn.
A Labour defeat would bring to a close a British political era that began with Blair's landslide 1997 election victory, which saw unprecedented three successive electoral triumphs for the center-left party. But it would also be a crushing personal blow to the 59-year-old Brown, who waited until 2007 for Blair to step aside.
If the Conservatives beat their image as being the so-called "nasty party" of privilege, the 43-year-old Cameron could be the youngest prime minister in nearly two centuries since Lord Liverpool was elected at 42. Blair became prime minister days before his 44th birthday.
Cameron, who has been criticized by Labour for a lack of substance, has sought to replace his party's stuffy image with a more modern brand of "compassionate Conservatism," appointing more women and ethnic minorities as candidates for an organization long dominated by affluent white men like himself.
With his bicycle riding, informal "call-me-Dave" manner and young family — his wife Samantha is expecting their fourth child in September — Cameron appears best placed to benefit from a U.S.-styled personality-centered contest. Some see a parallel with Labour's former savior Blair.
"It's the most important election for a generation, and it comes down to this: You don't have to put up with another five years of Gordon Brown," he said Tuesday, urging that Tory was "voting for the fresh start our country so badly needs."
The third place Liberal Democrats' leader Nick Clegg said the election would be anything but the "two-horse race" between Labour and Conservatives.
"It is a very exciting opportunity for everyone in Britain who wants fairness and real change, who wants something different," Clegg said Tuesday, blaming Labour for what he called the illegal invasion of Iraq, corruption in Parliament and the failure to regulate the banks.
Labour lost a significant share of its seats in 2005 when voters blamed them for joining the U.S.-led invasion in Iraq.
An ICM poll published late Sunday by The Guardian newspaper showed Labour closing in on its main rival — climbing to within a few percentage points of the Tories. Other polls, however, showed larger Tory leads. The forecasts are based on the parties' current seats and how a significant swing in votes could alter the outcome.
Britain's struggling economy and enormous debt will dominate the campaign. Both Labour and the Conservatives say they will trim spending and slash the country's 167 billion pound ($250 billion) deficit — but they differ on how deep, and how soon, to make cuts.
The Tories have pledged to reverse Labour's planned increase to national insurance, a payroll tax, and implement about 6 billion pounds in spending cuts this year. Labour says major cuts should be deferred until 2011 to give the economy more time to recover.
Cameron's party also plans to cut the number of lawmakers, offer tax breaks to married couples and overhaul Britain's education system. Brown promises a public referendum on changing Britain's voting system, improved cancer treatment and a new high-speed national rail network.
The major parties agree on international issues — both would keep British troops in Afghanistan and seek to preserve the so-called "special relationship" with the U.S.
The campaign will also include the first U.S.-styled TV debates among the leaders of Labour, the Conservatives and the third-placed Liberal Democrats.
Parliament will shut Monday for the start of campaign. Brown met with Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace on Tuesday to ask her to dissolve Parliament.
While voter turnout in the election is likely to hover around 60 percent, Britain's enthusiasm for political betting remains strong.
Bookmakers say 20 million pounds ($30 million) will rest on the election.
Bookmaker Paddy Power said the Conservatives were 1-6 favorites to win, with Labour at 7-2. The odds of a hung Parliament were 13-8.
Spokesman Darren Haines said for bookies "the most favorable outcome would be a Lib-Dem win" — a 200-1 longshot.

David Mikael Taclino
Inyu Web Development and Design
Creative Writer

Read More

Vatican blasts anti-Catholic 'hate' campaign

The Vatican heatedly defended Pope Benedict XVI on Tuesday, claiming accusations that he helped cover up the actions of pedophile priests are part of an anti-Catholic "hate" campaign targeting the pope for his opposition to abortion and same-sex marriage.
Vatican Radio broadcast comments by two senior cardinals explaining "the motive for these attacks" on the pope.
"The pope defends life and the family, based on marriage between a man and a woman, in a world in which powerful lobbies would like to impose a completely different" agenda, Spanish Cardinal Julian Herranz, head of the disciplinary commission for Holy See officials, was quoted as saying.
Herranz didn't identify the alleged lobbies, but "defense of life" is Vatican shorthand for anti-abortion efforts.
Also rallying to Benedict's side was Italian Cardinal Giovanni Lajolo, who heads the Vatican City State's governing apparatus.
The pope "has done all that he could have" against sex abuse by clergy of minors, Lajolo said on the radio, decrying what he described as a campaign of "hatred against the Catholic church."
Sex abuse allegations, as well as accusations of cover-ups by diocesan bishops and Vatican officials, have swept across Europe in recent weeks. Benedict has been criticized for not halting the actions of abusive priests when he was a Vatican cardinal and earlier while he was the archbishop of Munich in his native Germany.
The mainland European scandals — in Germany, Italy, Austria, Denmark and Switzerland — are erupting after decades of abuse cases in the United States, Canada, Australia, Ireland and other areas.
In Germany, nearly 2,700 people called the church's sexual abuse hotline in the first three days it was operating, a Catholic church spokesman said Tuesday.
A team of psychologists and other experts have spoken with 394 people so far, ranging from several minutes up to an hour, Trier Diocese spokesman Stephan Kronenburg said.
"Most callers reported cases of sexual abuse," he told The Associated Press.
Benedict has ignored victims' demands that he accept responsibility for what they say is his own personal and institutional responsibility for failing to swiftly kick abusive priests out of the priesthood, or at least keep them away from children.
But he has been protected by a vanguard of senior Vatican prelates who are fending off what they contend is an orchestrated attempt to attack the leader of the world's more than 1 billion Catholics.
The Vatican No. 2 official, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, indicated to reporters who asked him about the pontiff's silence that Benedict was standing firm.
"He's a strong pope, the pope of the Third Millennium," he told reporters shortly after his arrival in Chile on Tuesday.
Bertone, now the Holy See's secretary of state but formerly Benedict's deputy when the future pope, then-called Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, headed the Vatican's morals office, has himself been swept up in the scandals.
During a May 1998 meeting at the Vatican, Bertone told Wisconsin bishops to halt a church trial against an ailing priest who was accused of sexually abusing 200 deaf children, according to a Vatican transcript. The priest died soon afterward.
"It's not true, it's not true! We have documented the opposite," the Italian news agency ANSA quoted Bertone as saying in Chile. "Let's not talk about this topic now, because otherwise we'll be here all day verifying precisely the action taken by me and by his eminence, Cardinal Ratzinger."
On Easter, the most important day in the Catholic faith, the Vatican broke with tradition and began its service in St. Peter's Square with a ringing defense of Benedict delivered by the dean of the College of Cardinals, Angelo Sodano.
In an interview Tuesday in Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano, Sodano said the church is "certainly" suffering because of pedophile priests but he asserted that "Benedict XVI has apologized several times."
"But it's not Christ's fault if Judas betrayed" him, Sodano said. "It's not a bishop's fault if one of his priests is stained by grave wrongdoing. And certainly the pontiff is not responsible."
Vatican Radio, presenting listeners with some of the most vehement counterattacks yet in the weekslong buildup of scandal revelations, depicted the church as a victim.
"There are those who fear the media campaign of anti-Catholic hatred can degenerate," Vatican Radio said.
It noted anti-Catholic graffiti on walls of a church outside Viterbo, a town near Rome, and reminded listeners that a bishop was attacked by a man during Easter Mass in Muenster, Germany. The bishop fought back with an incense bowl.
The radio likened the recent campaign to the persecution suffered by early Christian martyrs. "The crowds, incited by the slanders of the powerful, would lynch the Christians," the radio said.
In Munich, meanwhile, an independent lawyer hired by the Catholic church wrapped up his investigation of abuse allegations at the southern Ettal monastery.
"The investigation clearly shows a system of abuse that lasted for decades," Thomas Pfister told The Associated Press.
There were some cases of sexual abuse at Ettal but most victims who came forward were physically abused and most cases took place before 1990, Pfister said in a telephone interview.
The lawyer declined to elaborate as his final report will be published next week.

David Mikael Taclino
Inyu Web Development and Design
Creative Writer

Read More

Nothing compares to iPhone

Now more than ever, Americans are falling all over themselves to continue their collective love affair with the Apple iPhone.
In J.D. Power's most recent quarterly survey of smartphone owners' satisfaction levels with their handsets, the iPhone again has come out — far and away — at the top of the heap. In every metric but one, owners give the iPhone the highest marks: 5 stars out of 5 in the J.D. Power "Power Circle Ratings."

Apple owners gave their iPhones top marks for ease of operation, operating system, physical design, handset features, and an overall satisfaction rating.

The iPhone, however, earned a mere 2 out of 5 rating for its puny battery life. (I feel your pain on that one, folks.)

In comparison, the other smartphone makers rated earned dismal scores. The BlackBerry line got a 3 out of 5 overall satisfaction rating, enough to put it in a solid second place in the survey. All the other brands analyzed — Palm, HTC, Nokia, and Samsung — scored a pathetic 2 out of 5 stars for overall satisfaction.

The good news: Owners of other brands of phones aren't completely turned off by their devices. The BlackBerry earned a 5 out of 5 rating for its battery life, and both Nokia and Samsung scored 4 out of 5 in that category.

But other than those highlights, the numbers are pretty grim. In fact, while the iPhone's overall satisfaction rating remained unchanged since the last survey, every other manufacturer's rating has been on the decline.

What do users polled in this survey like the most about their phones? The touchscreen. Failure to include a touchscreen on a smartphone was responsible for a healthy smackdown in a phone's average rating, and consumers now say that they even prefer traditional ("dumb") phones with touchscreens by a wide margin over those with nothing but keypads.
David Mikael Taclino
Inyu Web Development and Design
Creative Writer

Read More