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Cardinal Godfried Danneels was questioned as a witness in Belgium’s sex-abuse inquiry
The former head of the Catholic Church in Belgium tried to stop a victim of sex abuse from going public with their story, Church officials have confirmed.
During a meeting in April, Cardinal Godfried Danneels advised the victim to delay a public statement until the bishop who abused him had retired.
Bishop Roger Vangheluwe, who was also at the meeting, admitted to the abuse in April and resigned.
The victim recorded the meeting, and released the tape to Belgian media.
On the tape, the cardinal tells the abuse victim: “It might be better to wait for a date in the next year, when he is due to resign.
“I don’t know if there will be much to gain from making a lot of noise about this, neither for you nor for him.”
Church spokesman Jurgen Mettepenningen confirmed that the transcripts were correct.
A spokesman for the cardinal, Toon Osaer, said there had been no attempt to cover up the meeting, and that the cardinal had openly discussed it in April.
Cardinal Danneels retired in January and has been questioned as a witness in an investigation into sexual abuse by the Church in Belgium.
Over the past year, allegations of abuse levelled against Catholic priests have surfaced in many countries.
There have also been accusations that Church authorities in Europe and North and South America failed to deal with cases openly or properly.
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A paraglider has died after falling 150ft (46m) near cliffs in Devon, the coastguard said.
The alarm was raised when a leisure boat user witnessed the paraglider fall to the ground close to a golf course at Staddon Heights, near Plymouth, at 1700 BST on Saturday.
Brixham Coastguard, Plymouth and Yealm Coastguard and a land and air ambulance were called but the man was pronounced dead at the scene.
Police have started an investigation.
A Maritime and Coastguard Agency spokesman said the man had been “beyond assistance” when he was located.
A Devon and Cornwall Police spokesman said: “Officers are at the scene and are in the process of investigating the circumstances surrounding the accident.”
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The drill will first make a pilot shaft and then widen it out sufficiently for a rescue capsule to be lowered
The special hydraulic bore which will be used to drill an escape shaft down to 33 miners trapped in a Chilean mine is being assembled at the site.
“We’ve finished building the machine’s platform… we hope between Sunday and Monday to begin drilling the shaft,” chief engineer Andre Sougarret said.
The Strata 950 will drill a 60-70cm-wide shaft down which a capsule can be lowered to rescue the men one by one.
But even drilling round the clock, the rescue will probably take months.
On Friday Chile’s Health Minister Jaime Manalich said five of the 33 miners, trapped 700m (2,300ft) below ground, were showing signs of depression.
They are reported to not be eating properly and refused to appear in a 45-minute video which the miners had filmed for their families.
“They are very isolated, they did not want to appear on the film, they are not eating well,” Mr Manalich said. “I would say depression is the right word.”
He said psychologists would attempt to treat the men from the surface over an intercom system.
The men, who have already been stuck in the shaft for three weeks, were only discovered on 22 August.
The BBC’s James Reynolds, who is at the San Jose mine gold and copper mine, near the city of Copiapo, some 725km (450 miles) north of Santiago, says the men’s relatives are being urged to write to their loved ones as often as possible as part of the effort to keep their spirits up.
The miners were told on Wednesday that it could take up to four months to rescue them.
At the time, Mr Manalich said they had reacted calmly to the news, but he pointed out that they were “going to suffer from huge challenges regarding their psychological conditions”.
A special exercise and recreation programme is being set up to keep the men mentally and physically fit during their long wait. They have also been told to use lighting to distinguish between day and night.
The BBC’s Gideon Long describes the footage of the miners as they sent greetings from underground
Next week doctors from the US space agency Nasa, experts in keeping astronauts alive and well on long missions in confined spaces, will arrive in Chile to assist medical officials with the miners.
Despite their ordeal, most of the men looked relatively upbeat in a film broadcast on Chilean TV on Thursday.
A small tunnel has been drilled down to the men from the surface to allow supplies to be sent down.
Meanwhile, the families are questioning why the mine was allowed to reopen in 2008, a year after it had been shut because of an accident.
Relatives of 28 of the miners are suing both San Esteban Mining, which owns the mine, and several safety inspectors from the country’s mining body, which allowed the mine to reopen.
San Esteban’s owners, Alejandro Bohn and Marcelo Kemeny, have denied any responsibility for the accident.
On Thursday, a judge froze $1.8m (£1.2m) in assets belonging to the firm in case it has to pay compensation.
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Three men have been arrested after a man was stabbed as he confronted thieves breaking into his van in Gateshead, police said.
The 43-year-old suffered “potentially life threatening injuries” in the stabbing, which happened at 0217 BST on Saturday in Selkirk Crescent, Birtley.
Northumbria Police said two 23-year-olds and a 21-year-old were arrested on suspicion of attempted murder.
The victim suffered multiple stab wounds to his torso.
A Northumbria Police spokesman said the stabbing happened as he tried to apprehend three people who were breaking into his Ford Escort van.
The man is being treated in Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Gateshead.
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The test is designed to establish which mothers could have a vaginal birth and who may need a C-section
A test which could stop women labouring for hours in the hope of a “normal” birth only to end up with a Caesarean section has been developed in Sweden.
Researchers have established that when high levels of lactic acid are measured in the amniotic fluid, it is unlikely the mother will deliver vaginally.
Measuring this acid could help decide whether to end a difficult labour and opt for a Caesarean earlier.
The test is being rolled out in a number of European hospitals.
Prolonged labours which end up in a Caesarean section are seen by many as the worst of all worlds.
In the UK, despite the mantra “too posh to push” more than half of Caesareans are emergency rather than elective procedures, in which the mother frequently undergoes a long and painful labour before an urgent operation is deemed necessary to protect the health of both her and her baby.
The test was developed by the Swedish company Obstecare on the back of research led by Liverpool University and Liverpool Women’s Hospital.
Their studies showed that the uterus produces lactic acid as other muscles do when they work hard, but that when it reaches a certain level the substance starts to inhibit contractions.
“The truth is there has not been a new drug to treat problems in labour for 60 years”
Professor Susan Wray Centre for Better Births
The hormone oxytocin is usually administered in cases of slow labours to stimulate the uterus into contracting, but not all labouring women respond to it.
Johan Ubby of Obstecare says the test should help doctors establish which women may go on to deliver vaginally, as low levels of lactic acid suggest the uterus could still produce the contractions needed to push out the baby.
“But a high level of lactic acid in the amniotic fluid indicates that the uterus is exhausted. To stimulate this kind of labour with an oxytocin infusion would be like asking a marathon runner to run an extra 10,000 metres after he or she has passed the finish line.”
He says the system of testing, which has already started in hospitals in Sweden, Norway and Belgium, should reduce the number of Caesareans for women who may not need them and accelerate them for those that do to “avoid the risk of complications from a long birth and limit unnecessary suffering”.
Professor Donald Peebles, a spokesman for the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists and consultant at University College, London, described the test as a “nice idea”.
“I can definitely see the logic, and it would be straightforward to carry out. I would be interested in seeing a large prospective study where you could see the impact it had on the management of labour and whether overall outcomes were improved.”
Professor Susan Wray of the Centre for Better Births added that one next step would be to work out how to “wash away” the acid which appears to inhibit labour.
“Prolonged labour occurs in one in 10 births and it’s particularly a problem for first time mums. The truth is there has not been a new drug to treat problems in labour for 60 years – pharmaceutically, there’s been nothing new since oxytocin.
“It’s high time for this to move up the agenda. We simply do not always give women’s health the priority it deserves.”
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A man has been arrested in connection with an alleged cricket betting scam carried out during the current test between Pakistan and England at Lord’s.
The News of the World claims it gave £150,000 to a middleman who promised to arrange for Pakistan to bowl “no balls” during a match.
A 35-year-old man is being held on suspicion of conspiracy to defraud bookmakers.
There has been no comment yet from the Pakistani cricket team.
The BBC’s Andy Swiss said the allegations involved “very minor, very small details within the match that might seem ridiculously trivial to a lot of people”.
But he added: “That sort of information is worth a huge amount of money in the betting world where you can put bets on the tiniest details within a cricket game”.
And he suggested the allegations could affect the sport’s reputation.
“Cricket prides itself on the integrity of its reputation for fair play.
“This is a difficult situation for cricket and there are going to be some uncomfortable questions for the Pakistan team when the match resumes,” he said.
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Rwandan and Congolese troops are accused of slaughtering Hutu refugees
Rwanda has threatened to withdraw co-operation with the UN if a draft report criticising its army is published.
Kigali said it would reconsider its contributions to UN peacekeeping missions, dismissing claims in the UN report as “insane”.
The document accuses Rwanda’s Tutsi-led army of killing Hutus in Democratic Republic of Congo in the 1990s – acts it says may amount to genocide.
Extremist Hutus killed an estimated 800,000 Tutsis in Rwanda during 1994.
But the UN draft report, which was leaked on Friday, says in the years following the genocide, the Tutsi-dominated Rwandan army went into neighbouring Zaire (now DR Congo) and killed tens of thousands of ethnic Hutus – including women, children and the elderly.
It emerged on Saturday that Rwandan Foreign Minister Louise Mushikiwabo had responded to the report earlier this month, sending a strongly worded letter to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.
In the letter, obtained by journalists in the US, she criticised the sourcing and methodology of UN investigators.
She concluded: “Attempts to take action on this report – either through its release or leaks to the media – will force us to withdraw from Rwanda’s various commitments to the United Nations, especially in the area of peacekeeping.”
Rwanda contributes thousands of peacekeepers to the joint UN-African Union mission in the Sudanese region of Darfur, and the commander of the force is a Rwandan.
Analysts say the possible withdrawal of these troops would be a massive blow, especially as it comes at a time of increased violence in Darfur.
Rwandan officials have always said their forces entered the former Zaire, now DR Congo, to pursue the Hutu militias responsible for carrying out mass killings of Tutsis in Rwanda in 1994.
Rwanda’s Justice Minister Tharcisse Karugarama told the BBC’s Network Africa programme that there was no way Kigali’s troops had killed civilians.
“Anybody who would suggest the RPA [Rwandan Army] could do something close to genocide, would be called in this country… mad, insane,” he said.
The government was considering what action to take, said Mr Karugarama, who labelled the report a “stab in the back”.
The UN report covers the wider conflict in DR Congo, which dragged in several neighbouring countries in what has been called “Africa’s world war”.
The document lists alleged rights violations by security forces from all the countries involved.
It accuses Congolese troops of involvement in the slaughter of ethnic Hutus – both Rwandan refugees and Congolese Hutus.
The final UN High Commission for Human Rights report is due to be made public in the next few days.
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Vandals have smashed 90 windows at a school in a County Londonderry village.
Garvagh High School on Main Street was attacked between 1530 BST on Friday and 1000 BST on Saturday morning.
Detectives in Coleraine are investigating the attack. They said criminal damage had been caused to the school.
They have appealed for anyone who witnessed the vandalism, or has any information about it, to contact them.
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The floodwaters are threatening to swamp the town of 300,000 residents
Officials in southern Pakistan are battling to save the town of Thatta, where the raging Indus river has again breached its levees.
Tens of thousands of people have fled the town in the past few days and some outlying districts were reported to already be under water.
A local official said it could take up to three days to repair the breach.
The massive floods in Pakistan have lasted for more than a month, leaving 8m people in need of emergency relief.
As the waters start to recede in the north of the country, the full extent of the damage has begun to emerge.
The UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has warned that the Indus river in the south has swollen to 40 times its usual capacity.
More than seven million people have now been displaced in southern Sindh province – one million in the past few days alone. Out of the 23 districts in the province, 19 have so far been badly affected by the floods.
Across the country, some 17 million people have been affected.
Provincial irrigation minister Jam Saifullah Dharejo told the AFP news agency that Saturday would be a crucial day for Thatta.
“If nothing is done, an estimated 72,000 children… are at high risk of death”
Martin Mogwanja UN official
“We are using all our resources to stop the water flow towards Thatta. We are making gigantic efforts,” he said. The outlying Belo area of Thatta, with 10,000 residents, is already reported to be under water.
Chief minister Syed Qaim Ali Shah said disaster teams were hopeful that they could repair the breaches in two to three days, but that “the danger to Thatta remains”.
Some 175,000 people have already left the town, which has a population of 300,000, say officials. The army and navy were both involved in the overnight evacuation of more than 200,000 people from the town, 70km (45 miles) east of Karachi.
The BBC’s Chris Morris witnessed a flood barrier breach near the city of Shahdadkot on Thursday. He said that as a breach widened, a series of fields rapidly filled up, taking on the appearance of an inland sea.
Flood victims in Sindh have complained that not enough help is arriving.
Survivors have blocked roads demanding more aid from the government
One displaced woman said she and her family had to abandon their home quickly and had no belongings left.
“No-one is helping us. We are poor and helpless,” Amta Bibi told the Associated Press news agency.
“If someone helps us I will pray for him”.
On Saturday, survivors blocked a road to protest about the shortage and the way the limited aid is distributed, AP reports.
“The people who come here to give us food treat us like beggars. They just throw the food. It is humiliating,” one woman told AP.
The relief commissioner of Sindh has appealed for more help to deal with the crisis, saying some 2.3 million people had still received no food or emergency shelter.
“The magnitude of this catastrophe is so huge that the government cannot cope with it alone. We are trying to grapple it, but we need international support,” Ghulam Ali Pasha told AFP.
Health officials say there is also a growing risk of disease and malnutrition among the millions of displaced people, most of whom have little or no access to clean water, sanitation and food supplies.
The BBC’s Chris Morris witnessed where flood defences had been breached in Shahdadkot
Martin Mogwanja, UN humanitarian co-ordinator in Pakistan, said children were particularly in danger.
“If nothing is done, an estimated 72,000 children, currently affected by severe acute malnutrition in the flood-affected areas, are at high risk of death,” said Martin Mogwanja, UN humanitarian co-ordinator in Pakistan.
The monsoon floods started in the mountainous north and have steadily surged south, destroying 1.2m homes and damaging 3.2m hectares (7.9m acres) of farmland – about 14% of Pakistan’s land under cultivation.
The Pakistani government has so far confirmed that 1,600 people have been killed.
The UN says it has received or been pledged about $325m of the $459m sought in a flash appeal of foreign donors, while an additional $600m has been provided or promised outside the appeal.
If you would like to make a donation to help people affected by the floods in Pakistan, you can find information about how to do so by clicking here.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
