Month: April 2019

Pope Francis has accepted the resignation of Washington Cardinal Donald Wuerl after he became entangled in two major sexual abuse and cover-up scandals and lost the support of many in his flock.

Wuerl, who turns 78 in November, becomes the most prominent head to roll in the scandal roiling the Catholic Church after his predecessor as Washington archbishop, Theodore McCarrick, was forced to resign as cardinal over allegations he sexually abused at least two minors and adult seminarians.

A Vatican statement Friday said Francis had accepted Wuerl’s resignation, but named no replacement; Wuerl’s office said he had been asked to stay on in a temporary capacity until a new archbishop is found.

The decision came after months in which Wuerl initially downplayed the scandal, insisted on his own good record, but then progressively came to the conclusion that he could no longer lead the archdiocese.

Wuerl had submitted his resignation to Francis nearly three years ago, when he turned 75, the normal retirement age for bishops. But Francis kept him on, as popes tend to do with able-bodied bishops who share their pastoral priorities.

But a grand jury report issued in August on rampant sex abuse in six Pennsylvania dioceses accused Wuerl of helping to protect some child-molesting priests while he was bishop of Pittsburgh from 1988 to 2006. Simultaneously, Wuerl faced widespread skepticism over his insistence that he knew nothing about years of alleged sexual misconduct by McCarrick.

Wuerl has not been charged with any wrongdoing but was named numerous times in the grand jury report, which details instances in which he allowed priests accused of misconduct to be reassigned or reinstated.

In one case cited in the report, Wuerl – acting on a doctor’s recommendation – enabled priest William O’Malley to return to active ministry as a canonical consultant in 1998 despite allegations of abuse lodged against him in the past and his own admission that he was sexually interested in adolescents. Years later, according to the report, six more people alleged that they were sexually assaulted by O’Malley, in some cases after he had been reinstated.

In another case, Wuerl returned a priest to active ministry in 1995 despite having received multiple complaints that the priest, George Zirwas, had molested boys in the late 1980s.

Wuerl apologized for the damage inflicted on the victims but also defended his efforts to combat clergy sex abuse.

His defenders have cited a case that surfaced in 1988, when a 19-year-old former seminarian, Tim Bendig, filed a lawsuit accusing a priest, Anthony Cipolla, of molesting him. Wuerl initially questioned Bendig’s account but later accepted it and moved to oust Cipolla from the priesthood. The Vatican’s highest court ordered Wuerl to restore Cipolla to the ministry, but Wuerl resisted and, after two years of legal procedures, prevailed in preventing Cipolla’s return.

"No bishop or cardinal in the nation has had a more consistent and courageous record than Donald Wuerl in addressing priestly sexual abuse," contends Bill Donahue, president of the Catholic League.

The Rev. Thomas Reese, a Jesuit priest who writes for Religion News Service, described Wuerl as an ideological moderate.

"He was totally enthusiastic about John Paul II, and then Pope Benedict, and now he’s totally enthusiastic about Pope Francis," Reese said. "There are not many people in the church who are totally enthusiastic about all three of them."

Numerous conservative Catholic activists and commentators, though, considered him too tolerant of the LGBT community and too liberal on some other issues. They resented his pivotal role a decade ago in resisting a push by some of his fellow bishops to deny Communion to Catholic politicians who support the right to abortion.

Wuerl was born in Pittsburgh, attended Catholic University in Washington and received a doctorate in theology from the University of Saint Thomas in Rome. He joined the priesthood in 1966, was ordained a bishop by Pope John Paul II in 1986, and served briefly as auxiliary bishop in Seattle before going to Pittsburgh.

The elite Stowe School has taken a group of sixth-form students to visit Rohingya refugee camps in Bangladesh on a trip it hopes will make them more aware of their privilege. 

“We wanted to take the children outside of their comfort zones,” says Jan de Gale, the teacher from Stowe behind the trip, “to open their eyes and develop their sense of social conscience.”

Twelve pupils from the school, all aged between 15 and 17, spent two days with children’s charity UNICEF, visiting learning centres and child-friendly spaces. 

“The point was not to make them feel guilty but to offer perspective,” said Dr Fitz Smith, an English teacher, also leading the trip, “and to look at the privileges we have, not just as people from a first world country, but also a public school.”

Situated in in southern Bangladesh, the camps are home to 700,000 Rohingya, a Muslim minority who have fled persecution from Rakhine state in neighbouring Burma. 

Around half of the population of the underfunded and overcrowded camps are children, with around 50 per cent of those who fled without their parents having been orphaned by the conflict. 

The majority have no access to education, as both Burma and Bangladesh have refused permission for their curriculum to be used in the camps, with Dhaka wary of lending any sense of permanence to the refugee population. 

Learning centres run by UNICEF and other aid organisations fill the gap as much as possible. In bamboo structures dotted throughout the camps, volunteers teach basic lessons. 

Their experience couldn’t be further from life at Stowe, one of the UK’s most prestigious public schools, where pupils pay up to £12,200 a term to receive an elite education in an 18th century mansion. Most expect to go on to study in top universities.

Visiting the camps “made me feel very lucky,” said 17-year old Hermione, who said she was was particularly moved by meeting teenage Rohingya girls just a few years younger than herself. 

Young women and girls in the camps are particularly vulnerable to physical and sexual abuse, with widespread reports of early marriage and human trafficking. Many are left to support younger siblings – “something I don’t have to do,” noted Hermione.   

“As girls we can walk around by ourselves. We don’t have just one room or space to go to get away and feel safe. Wherever we are at Stowe is a child-friendly space.”

Mrs de Gale described the camp’s "child friendly spaces" as a “haven.” 

“The spaces were so colourful and airy,” she said. “We were expecting doom and gloom and were surprised by how happy and positive the children were: they were inspirational.”

For the Stowe pupils the experience has been “sobering”. Hearing the stories of what the Rohingya children have been through left the pupils shocked. “I can’t even imagine,” said Amelia, 17, “and somehow they’re all still smiling.”

Members of a migrant “caravan” heading north through Mexico paused on Tuesday to pay their respects to two of their fellow travellers who have died en route, as hundreds turned back from the perilous journey to the US border. 

Mike Pence, the US vice president, said he had been told by Juan Orlando Hernandez, president of Honduras, that the migrant caravan was being "financed by Venezuela."

“And by the Democrats?” asked Mr Trump, seated at his desk in the Oval Office.

The crowd laughted uneasily.

“It has been organised by Leftist groups," said Mr Pence, after a pause. 

Mr Pence re-stated Mr Trump’s unproven claim that there were “unknown Middle Easterners” among the 7,000 migrants.

“It’s inconceivable that there are not people of Middle Eastern descent in a crowd of more than 7,000 people advancing toward our border,” he said.

“In the last fiscal year, we have apprehended more than 10 terrorists or suspected terrorists per day at our southern border.”

In the year to September 30, over 300,000 people were detained at the US-Mexico border, of whom 0.02 per cent – 61 people – were from countries in the Middle East. None of the reporters following the caravan have met anyone of Middle Eastern descent.

Pressed on whether there were people from the Middle East in the caravan, Mr Trump said: "There is no proof of anything, but there may well be."

Yet the claims are being frequently repeated on Fox News, as Mr Trump and his supporters watch his ratings rise with his repeated rants against the caravan.

On Monday night, Mr Trump called the caravan an “assault on our country” and suggested, without citing evidence, that “Democrats had something to do with it.”

He added: “We need a wall built fast.”

The government of Honduras, from where the caravan set out on October 13, announced on Monday that 300 people had elected to turn back. A further 150 had abandoned the march the previous day, taking up the government’s offer of flights and buses back to their country.

The country’s official Twitter stream showed images of exhausted-looking migrants on drips, being tended to by Red Cross personnel, or boarding buses to head home. Ana Garcia de Hernandez, the first lady of Honduras, published a video begging her fellow citizens not to carry on their dangerous path.

Two Hondurans have died so far, both falling off trucks – one on Saturday, and one on Monday.

“This person had a dream,” said one of the caravan’s leaders, addressing the crowd in the Mexican town of Huixtla, 35 miles north of the Guatemalan border.

“They suffered, we know this is the route of death, where a lot of people have died. Everyone, please light a candle in your homes, in memory of them.”

The caravan paused on Tuesday in respect for the dead.

On Wednesday organisers plan to continue, heading north along the coast to the town of Mapastepec, 38 miles away.

A lucky American could walk away with a record-breaking $1.6 billion (£1.2 billion) in prize money during Tuesday night’s Mega Millions draw, spreading lottery fever across the US.

It comes after the latest round of the country’s lottery draw on Friday night failed to produce a winner.

The total amount has now swelled to an estimated $1.6 billion jackpot for the latest draw, which costs $2 to play.

Should Tuesday produce a winner, it will be the largest prize in US history – and the sum is likely to grow even larger before the draw as excitement around the record-breaking cash prize tempts more people to play.

A few customers waited in line at a news stand in the Port Authority Bus Terminal in New York City to purchase last-minute tickets. Fernando Chavez, 27, said if he wins he would immediately hire a financial adviser.

"I’d buy a few properties, get my family in order and share with my neighborhood," said Mr Chavez, who lives in Harlem.

The drawing will be held at 11 pm EDT (0300 GMT Wednesday).

Anyone who hits all six numbers to win the jackpot can choose an immediate cash payment of $904 million or receive the $1.6 billion prize over 29 years.

The huge cash prize continues a trend – the second-largest jackpot was a $1.586 billion Powerball drawing on January 13, 2016.

But a note of caution – the chance of matching all six numbers and taking home the grand prize is one in 303 million.

In comparison, the odds of getting killed by a shark are 1 in 3.7 million in a lifetime, according to the International Shark Attack File.

What is more, after federal taxes and state deductions, winners will generally end up with around half that amount in up front cash winnings.

The annuity option guarantees more money, but it is paid over 29 years and also would result in a hefty tax bill.

The Mega Millions jackpot has been growing since July, when a group of California office workers won $543 million.

Lottery officials changed the odds in recent years to lessen the chance of winning a jackpot, which in turn increased the opportunity for top prizes to reach stratospheric levels.

The strategy seems to be paying off – states have reported that lottery tickets fly out of shops when the top prizes reach gigantic sizes.

In California, for example, people were buying 200 tickets per second during the lunch hour on Thursday.

Tickets sold for Tuesday’s drawing are expected to cover 75 percent of all possible number combinations, lottery officials said.

Russian historians have discovered a British-made steam engine that was brought to the Siberian wilderness during a 19th-century gold rush.

Vladimir Chernikov and Dmitry Semenov, members of the Russian Geographical Society overseen by Vladimir Putin, found the five-tonne steam engine, one of the last of its kind in the world, after three expeditions into the forest north of Krasnoyarsk. 

The machine, which survived the harsh Siberian winters in surprisingly good condition, has been delivered to a local museum on a tipper lorry. Mr Chernikov believes that another such steam engine in the area was sold for scrap.

“We didn’t want this prize to fall into the hands of greedy people,” he told Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper. “For us it’s a historical treasure, but for some it’s just a bunch of scrap metal.”

The steam engine was built by Richard Garrett and Sons Ltd, founded in 1778 in the Suffolk town of Leiston. 

After hearing about the efficiency of assembly line production from American gunmaker Samuel Colt at the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London, Richard Garrett III established the first such production line for steam engines.

It was a huge success, exporting its products around the world, and the “Long Shop” in Leiston is still preserved as a museum.

Mr Chernikov said he’s contacted the Royal Geographic Society to try to establish when the Krasnoyarsk steam engine was made and who bought it.

It would have been shipped to Russia through the Arctic Ocean, then hauled by frozen rivers and roads to the mines. 

The 19th century Siberian gold rush began, according to legend, after a hunter discovered gold amongst the sand that had been swallowed by a grouse he shot.

Workers first panned for gold, then later dug for it. 

Miners in Krasnoyarsk probably used the Leiston steam engine to pump out groundwater and pulverise rocks.  

Mr Chernikov heard about its existence from a local who pointed out its rough location on a map, but couldn’t find it when he and his partner bicycled to the area. 

He had to give up on his second attempt because the road was too muddy to cycle. On a third try, the pair got a lift on a petrol tank lorry and hiked 10 miles through the wilderness. 

“We took a break, ate lunch and decided to go a little further, and that’s when we got lucky. Literally 100 metres along we ran into the machine,” he said. 

Ironically, it was the Russian sales of Garrett and Sons that helped bring about the firm’s demise. Following the 1917 revolution, it couldn’t collect the huge debts it was owed for machinery exported to Russia.

The company went into receivership in 1932 and was bought by Beyer Peacock of Manchester, which closed down its Leiston production in 1980.

Water that the Japanese government is planning to release into the Pacific Ocean from the crippled Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant contains radioactive material well above legally permitted levels, according to the plant’s operator and documents seen by The Telegraph.

The government is running out of space to store contaminated water that has come into contact with fuel that escaped from three nuclear reactors after the plant was destroyed in the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami that struck north-east Japan.

Its plan to release the approximately 1.09 million tons of water currently stored in 900 tanks into the Pacific has triggered a fierce backlash from local residents and environmental organisations, as well as groups in South Korea and Taiwan fearful that radioactivity from the second-worst nuclear disaster in history might wash up on their shores.

Tokyo Electric Power Co., (Tepco) which runs the plant, has until recently claimed that the only significant contaminant in the water is safe levels of tritium, which can be found in small amounts in drinking water, but is dangerous in large amounts.

The government has promised that all other radioactive material is being reduced to “non-detect” levels by the sophisticated Advanced Liquid Processing System (ALPS) operated by the nuclear arm of Hitachi Ltd.

Documents provided to The Telegraph by a source in the Japanese government suggest, however, that the ALPS has consistently failed to eliminate a cocktail of other radioactive elements, including iodine, ruthenium, rhodium, antimony, tellurium, cobalt and strontium.

Hitachi declined to comment on the reports on the performance of its equipment. The Japanese government did not reply to multiple requests for comment.

A restricted document also passed to The Telegraph from the Japanese government arm responsible for responding to the Fukushima collapse indicates that the authorities were aware that the ALPS facility was not eliminating radionuclides to “non-detect” levels.

That adds to reports of a study by the regional Kahoko Shinpo newspaper which it said confirmed that levels of iodine 129 and ruthenium 106 exceeded acceptable levels in 45 samples out of 84 in 2017.

Iodine 129 has a half-life of 15.7 million years and can cause cancer of the thyroid; ruthenium 106 is produced by nuclear fission and high doses can be toxic and carcinogenic when ingested.

In late September, Tepco was forced to admit that around 80 per cent of the water stored at the Fukushima site still contains radioactive substances above legal levels after the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry held public hearings in Tokyo and Fukushima at which local residents and fishermen protested against the plans.

Tepco has now admitted that levels of strontium 90, for example, are more than 100 times above legally permitted levels in 65,000 tons of water that has been through the ALPS cleansing system and are 20,000 times above levels set by the government in several storage tanks at the site.

Dr Ken Buesseler, a marine chemistry scientist with the US Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, said it was vital to confirm precisely what radionuclides are present in each of the tanks and their amounts.

"Until we know what is in each tank for the different radionuclides, it is hard to evaluate any plan for the release of the water and expected impacts on the ocean", he told The Telegraph.

Experts agree that the danger posed by any release depends on the concentrations of radionuclides and the subsequent contamination of fisheries products.

The presence of strontium in the bones of small fish that might be consumed by humans could be a cause of major concern. If ingested by humans, strontium 90 builds up in teeth and bones and can cause bone cancer or leukaemia.

Shaun Burnie, a nuclear specialist with Greenpeace, also disputes Tepco’s claims that tritium is effectively harmless.

“Its beta particles inside the human body are more harmful than most X-rays and gamma rays”, he said, adding that there “are major uncertainties over the long-term effects posed by radioactive tritium that is absorbed by marine life and, through the food chain, humans.

“The planned release of billions of becquerels by Tepco cannot be considered an action without risk to the marine environment and human health”.

The Japanese authorities have been caught off-guard by the strength of local opposition to the plan to release the contaminated water into the ocean, but have so far not dropped their plans.

Sri Lanka’s  president swore in a new Cabinet on Monday despite a warning by Parliament’s speaker of a possible bloodbath if lawmakers are not summoned immediately to resolve a deepening political crisis following the president’s sacking of the prime minister.

The comments from Karu Jayasuriya, the parliamentary speaker, came hours after dismissed Ranil Wickremesinghe, the country’s prime minister, also demanded the reconvening of Parliament, saying he still controls a majority of the lawmakers.

Maithripala Sirisena, the Sri Lankan president, sacked Mr Wickremesinghe and his Cabinet on Friday and replaced him with former strongman Mahinda Rajapaksa. On Saturday, Mr Sirisena suspended Parliament in an apparent move to give Mr Rajapaksa time to muster enough support to survive any no-confidence vote.

Mr Sirisena’s moves have triggered a power struggle and some observers say it has created a constitutional crisis.

With tensions already heightened by the killing of one activist, the United States added to international pressure on President Maithripala Sirisena to annul his suspension of parliament and end the power struggle. India has made a similar call.

Mr Sirisena proceeded on Monday to swear in 12 Cabinet ministers, one state minister and a deputy minister. The rest of the ministers will be appointed later, Dharma Sri Ekanayake, a presidential spokesman, said.

Mr Jayasuriya said the crisis should be quickly resolved by Parliament and added that he has already asked Mr Sirisena to summon lawmakers.

"Some are trying to resolve this matter in the streets. If that happens, a bloodbath could occur," he said.

During his decade-long tenure Mr Rajapakse leaned heavily on China for political support loans. Cheng Xueyuan, China’s ambassador to Colombo, met separately with Mr Rajapakse and Mr Wickremesinghe on Saturday.

Lu Kang, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesman, said Beijing was closely following the situation but believed Sri Lanka had "enough wisdom" to resolve it internally.

Two people died and one was wounded in the first violence related to the political turmoil.

Arjuna Ranatunga, who was petroleum minister under Mr Wickremesinghe, said one of his security guards opened fire when Rajapaksa supporters mobbed him and protested his entry to the ministry.