Feb. 18 Photo Brief: A year to go until the Sochi 2014 Winter Games, Libya celebrates second anniversary of uprising, Iberia workers on strike
A year to go until the Sochi 2014 Winter Games, Libya celebrates second anniversary of uprising, Iberia workers on strike and more in today’s daily brief.
- A man sits among his belongings on the beachfront beneath a large “Welcome to Sochi!” sign in central Sochi on February 18, 2013. With a year to go until the Sochi 2014 Winter Games, construction work and development continues as Olympic tests events and World Championship competitions are underway. (Leon Neal/AFP/Getty Images)
- The Olympic Rings are displayed outside Adler airport, near Sochi, on February 18, 2013. With a year to go until the Sochi 2014 Winter Games, construction work and development continues as Olympic tests events and World Championship competitions are underway. (Leon Neal/AFP/Getty Images)
- A general view shows the construction site of the Olympic athletes village in front of the Olympic Park with the Olympic stadium for the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics in Adler, near Sochi February 18, 2013. (Kai Pfaffenbach/Reuters)
- A general view shows the construction site of a bridge for the new highway and rail track connecting Sochi, the host city for the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics, and the winter sport resort of Krasnaya Polyana, February 18, 2013. Construction will be completed by August 2013 according to organizers. The Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics opens on February 7, 2014. (Kai Pfaffenbach/Reuters)
- A general view shows the construction site of the Olympic athletes village in front of the Olympic Park with the Olympic stadium for the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics in Adler, near Sochi February 18, 2013. (Kai Pfaffenbach/Reuters)
- The Central Stadium for the Winter Olympics 2014 is seen through the window of a derelict house in Sochi on February 18, 2013. With a year to go until the Sochi 2014 Winter Games, construction work and development continues as Olympic tests events and World Championship competitions are underway. (Leon Neal/AFP/Getty Images)
- A Free Syrian Army fighter holds an improvised mortar shell inside a factory which previously manufactured steel and iron in Aleppo February 18, 2013. (Hamid Khatib/Reuters)
- Members of the ‘Youth 4 Raila’ political supporters group, wear t-shirts bearing presidential candidate Raila Odinga’s face during a rally in Bomet, in the Rift Valley on February 17, 2013. Odinga and his ODM party were campaigning in the area as part of the CORD Coalition ahead of the country’s March 4, 2013 elections. (Will Boase/AFP/Getty Images)
- A farmer loses control over his pair of oxen as they race through a paddy field during the “Kakkoor Kalavayal” festival at Kakkoor village, on the outskirts of the southern Indian city of Kochi, February 18, 2013. The post-harvest festival is celebrated by the farmers of Kakkoor and the surrounding villages. (Sivaram V/Reuters)
- Riot Spanish Civil Guards are pictured during a demonstration by strikers of Spanish airline Iberia at Madrid-Barajas airport on February 18, 2013 in Madrid, as they launched a five-day action against job cuts. Iberia’s cabin crew, ground staff and maintenance workers are striking from Monday to Friday in the first of a series of three five-day strikes to protest plans to axe 3,800 jobs. (Pedro Armestre/AFP/Getty Images)
- An Iberia worker is arrested by Spanish riot police officer during clashes at Madrid’s Barajas airport February 18, 2013. Workers at loss-making Spanish flag carrier Iberia began a five-day strike at midnight on Monday, grounding over 1,000 flights and costing the airline and struggling national economy millions of euros. (Sergio Perez/Reuters)
- Pakistani paramedics treat an injured victim after the militants’ attack on the office of the top political official of Khyber tribal region in Peshawar on February 18, 2013. Militants including a suicide bomber attacked the office of a senior official in Pakistan’s northwestern city of Peshawar on Monday, killing five people, officials said. (Hasham Ahmed/AFP/Getty Images)
- A man walks through a courtyard in Yakutsk, in the Republic of Sakha, northeast Russia, February 3, 2013. The coldest temperatures in the northern hemisphere have been recorded in Sakha, the location of the Oymyakon valley, where according to the United Kingdom Met Office a temperature of -90 degrees Fahrenheit was registered in 1933 – the coldest on record in the northern hemisphere since the beginning of the 20th century. Yet despite the harsh climate, people live in the valley, and the area is equipped with schools, a post office, a bank, and even an airport runway (albeit open only in the summer). (Maxim Shemetov/Reuters)
- Some 200 people gathered by French association “Droit au Logement” (DAL) occupy a municipal gymnasium on February 17, 2013 in Paris to demand that City Hall house them. (Guillaume Baptist/AFP/Getty Images)
- A seagull flies on February 18, 2013 at St Peter’s square in front of the window (top-C) where the new Pope will appear for the first time after being elected. Pope Benedict XVI began the same day a week-long spiritual retreat out of the public eye on Monday ahead of his resignation on February 28, with the field of candidates to succeed him still wide open. (Gabriel Bouys/AFP/Getty Images)
- Thousands of Libyans celebrate the second anniversary of the Libyan uprising at Martyrs square on February 17, 2013 in Tripoli. Security forces were on high alert across Libya as the north African nation marked two years since the start of the revolt that toppled Moamer Kadhafi after four decades of iron rule. The anniversary of the uprising that ended with Kadhafi’s killing in October 2011 comes as Libya’s new rulers battle critics calling for a “new revolution” and accusing them of failing to usher in much-needed reforms. (Mahmud Turki/AFP/Getty Images)
- A depiction of a hanging of war criminals is seen during a nationwide strike in Dhaka on February 18, 2013. One protester was shot dead as police fired rubber bullets at Islamists in a eastern town as a strike enforced by Bangladesh’s largest Islamic party crippled life across the nation. (Munir uz Zaman/AFP/Getty Images)
- A nude visitor looks at the laserchrome prints “Shepherd Boy (Tank Top)” (L) and “Jason (Briefs)” by Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset at the art exhibition “Nude Men” at Leopold museum in Vienna February 18, 2013. The museum welcomed naked viewers from the public on Monday in an after-hours showing of the exhibition, which has been extended to run until March 4, 2013. (Heinz-Peter Bader/Reuters)
- This authentic human head was created in early the 1930s and is on display at the Mutter Museum of The College of Physicians of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. “We donít sugarcoat or glorify anything,” says curator Anna Dhody. “We ask visitors to come with open minds and focus on the subjects that appeal to them.” (Harry Fisher/Allentown Morning Call/MCT)
U.N. body says U.S. lax on clerical sex abuse cases
Tom Heneghan, Religion Editor | Reuters
12:56 p.m. EST, February 18, 2013
VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – A U.N. committee has accused U.S. legal authorities of failing to fully pursue cases of child sex abuse in religious groups, an issue especially troubling the Roman Catholic Church.
The Committee on the Rights of the Child wrote this month that it was “deeply concerned” to find widespread sexual abuse by clerics and staff of religious institutions and “a lack of measures … to properly investigate cases and prosecute them”.
Britain’s National Secular Society, which drew attention on Monday to the little-noticed report, said it hoped the Catholic pope to be elected next month would open Church files to help prosecute as yet undiscovered cases of clerical sexual abuse.
The scandal of predator priests has haunted the pontificate of Pope Benedict, who will resign on Feb 28. The pope has apologized for the abuse and met victims in several countries, but cases and damning internal files are still coming to light.
After years of legal battles, the Los Angeles archdiocese bowed to a court order last month and released 12,000 pages of files showing its former head, Cardinal Roger Mahony, had sent accused abusers out of state to avoid justice in the 1980s.
“The committee is deeply concerned at information of sexual abuse committed by clerics and leading members of certain faith-based organizations and religious institutions on a massive and long-term scale,” said the report, which gave no details.
It said it also found a “lack of measures taken by (U.S. legal authorities) to properly investigate cases and prosecute those accused” and urged them to order law enforcement officials to step up efforts to uncover and bring charges against abusers.
NEW POPE
The National Secular Society, which campaigns at the United Nations against privileges for religious groups, accused Benedict of hushing up abuse cases and obstructing justice.
“We can only hope that his successor opens the secret files and treats victims with the respect they deserve,” its executive director Keith Porteous Ward said in a statement.
The abuse crisis is expected to be among issues cardinals discuss before they enter the Sistine Chapel in mid-March to elect a new pope, but the secrecy of their consultations means it is not clear how much of a role it will play in their choice.
The committee, which drew its conclusions after a routine review of U.S. compliance with the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child, adopted its report in Geneva on Feb 1.
The Church and its insurance companies in the United States have already paid more than $2 billion in damages to victims. Clerics from other faiths have also been accused or convicted of sexual abuse of children, but on a lesser scale than Catholics.
Catholic dioceses with known abuser priests have staff files on them and correspondence with the Vatican about some of them. These are confidential but courts and government inquiries in several countries have forced some of them to be opened.
Sexual abuse cases in the Catholic Church began coming to light in the 1980s and became a major crisis in 2002, when U.S. media began reporting systematic cover-ups for abusive priests.
Ireland, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands have grappled with similar scandals after official or Church-led reports exposed abuse in schools and church organizations.
AWKWARD QUESTIONS
The Church in many countries has set up new guidelines to deal with past abuse, prevent new cases, report abuse to police and stop potential abusers from entering the priesthood.
But campaigners say there is much still to be discovered about how the Church behaved in the past and want more bishops who were aware of abuse to be held responsible.
“Hundreds if not thousands of clerics have wrongly escaped incarceration due to the continuing secrecy of the Church and the issue being almost ignored by law enforcers,” Porteous Wood said. “Prosecuting authorities have some very awkward questions to answer, and not just in the U.S.”
Boston’s Cardinal Bernard Law resigned after scandals were exposed there but was named to a prestigious Church post in Rome. Mahony, who had already retired as Los Angeles archbishop, was stripped of his public ministry when files were opened there.
Victims’ groups have tried to establish a legal link between abuse cases in countries such as the United States and Germany and the Vatican, which in some cases appeared more concerned about protecting the Church’s image than helping the victims.
Before his election in 2005, Benedict headed the Vatican’s doctrinal office and took over handling of sexual abuse cases in 2001. Supporters say Vatican infighting kept him from responding decisively but he took a tougher stand once he was pope.
Critics say he failed to take effective action. “He publicly spoke about the crisis more than his predecessor but that alone is no achievement,” SNAP, an abuse victims’ advocacy group, said after he announced his resignation on Feb 11.
In 2010, Benedict was named as a defendant in a U.S. law suit alleging that he failed to take action as a cardinal in 1995 when he was allegedly told about a priest who had abused boys at a school for the deaf decades earlier.
The lawyers withdrew the case last year and the Vatican said it was a major victory that proved the pope could not be held liable for the actions of abusive priests in their dioceses.
(Editing by Alison Williams)