NEWS FROM AROUND THE WORLD

Halloween On Sunday Troubles Some Southerners

cnn.com 10/15/04

Marines Turn To God Ahead Of Anticipated Fallujah Battle

NEAR FALLUJAH, Iraq—With U.S. forces massing outside Fallujah, 35 marines swayed to Christian rock music and asked Jesus Christ to protect them in what could be the biggest battle since American troops invaded Iraq last year.
   Men with buzzcuts and clad in their camouflage waved their hands in the air, M-16 assault rifles laying beside them, and chanted heavy metal-flavored lyrics in praise of Christ late Friday in a yellow-brick chapel.  
   They counted among thousands of troops surrounding the city of Fallujah, seeking solace as they awaited Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi's decision on whether or not to invade Fallujah.
   The U.S. military, with many soldiers coming from the conservative American south and Midwest, has deep Christian roots.
"It's always comforting. Church attendance is always up before the big push," said First Sergeant Miles Thatford.
   The young men lined up and at least three of them stripped down to their shorts. The three laid down in a rubber dinghy filled with water and the chaplain's assistant, Navy Corpsman Richard Vaughn, plunged their heads beneath the surface.
   Dripping wet, Corporal Keith Arguelles beamed after his baptism. "I just wanted to make sure I did this before I headed into the fight," he said on the military base not far from the city of Fallujah.

drudgereport.com 11/6/04

Italian Woman's Veil Stirs More Than Fashion Feud

  Drezzo, Italy—The immediate issue is how one woman in one tiny town in northern Italy dresses so it made a certain kind of sense for Giorgio Armani to weigh in. His opinion? A woman should wear what she likes, even if what she likes is a veil that hides her face completely.
"It's a question of respect for the convictions and culture of others," Mr. Armani, the fashion designer, said in a statement released late last month. 
    He was speaking out in defense of Sabrini Varroni, a Muslim woman from this town near the Swiss border who has been fined 80 euros, about $100 for appearing twice in public wearing a veil that completely covered her face. Her punishment has won cheers from some Italians and has horrified others.
    The case of Ms. Varroni is not a simple one about religious freedom. Drezzo, population 1,800, is controlled by the Northern League, a political party in Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's governing coalition that has advocated the secession of northern Italy and strict controls on immigration. The case has been viewed by some as a telling clash of two ideologies: Islam versus Italian xenophobia.
   To fuel that view, the mayor here, Cristian Tolettini, fined Ms. Varroni under a 1931 Fascist-era law banning the wearing of masks in public.
   Ms. Varroni, 34, a mother of four, is a native Italian who grew up in Drezzo and married a Tunisian more than 10 years ago, converting to Islam. Late last month, she wrote an impassioned letter to the Italian president, Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, complaining of threats to her and her family and begging for help.
   "I'm scared of the violence that this unwanted publicity will seek out," she wrote. "I've never tried to proselytize, or use my veil as a provocation. What harm am I doing? I am not masked. I'm simply wearing a veil that is obligated by my faith."
   Similar arguments have been made by female students in France, Germany, and Turkey, which restrict the wearing of a less severe symbol of Islam, the head scarf, in schools.
   Ms. Varroni's lawyer, Serena Soffitta, said the fines represented a personal vendetta against her client and were an example of the Northern League's opposition to foreign immigration.
   Hard-line members of Parliament have supported Mr. Tolettini for upholding of the laws, and Cesarino Monti, a Northern League senator, has proposed an even tougher one: a fine of up to 5,000 euros and up to six months in jail for people who cover their faces in public.
   Mr. Monti pointedly excluded events in which Italians often wear some kind of mask, like fans at sporting events and revelers at public festivals like carnivals.
   The opposition, meantime, has condemned what it says is overzealous application of the law in a way that, its leaders say, sends a message of intolerance toward Islam and foreigners.

nytimes.com 10/15/04

U.S. Mourns 1,000 While Baghdad Mourns 10,000

BAGHDAD, Iraq—At Sheik Omar Clinic, a big book records 10,363 violent deaths in Baghdad and nearby towns since the war began last year.
Car bombs, clashes between Iraqis and coalition forces, mortar attacks, revenge killings and robberies caused the deaths.
   While America mourns the death of more than 1,000 of its sons and daughters in the Iraq war, the U.S. toll is far less than the Iraqi toll. No official figures exist for the entire country, but private estimates range from 10,000 to 30,000 killed since the war began in 2003.
   The violent deaths recorded at the Sheik Omar Clinic come from only one of Iraq's 18 provinces and do not cover people who died in such flashpoint cities as Najaf, Kabala, Fallujah, Tikrit, and Ramandi.
   Iraqi dead include not only insurgents, police and soldiers, but also civilian men, women and children caught in crossfire, blown apart by explosives or mistakenly shot by Iraqis or coalition soldiers.
   The records don't always say whether a death came in combat or from some other cause, such as the increased crime since Saddam Hussein's regime collapsed.
   The prospect of violent death is the latest burden for a people who suffered through decades of war and a brutal dictatorship under Hussein. Human rights groups have accused the regime of killing as many as 300,000 Iraqis it deemed enemies.
   "During Saddam's days, killings were silent. Now the killing is done openly and loudly," said Ghali Karim Hassan, who lost his 31-year-old son, Ghaidan, in April.
   His son was killed in Najaf when a demonstration called by cleric Muqtada al Sar led to a gunbattle with coalition troops, mainly Spaniards and Salvadorans. Ghaidan Karim, who left a wife and three children, was one of 22 protestors killed.

The Kansas City Star 9/11/04

Holy See And Paraguay Seal Pact On Ministering To Armed Forces

VATICAN CITY—John Paul II received Paraguay's president in audience, to celebrate the agreement reached between that country and the Holy See for religious assistance to the armed forces and national police.
   Shortly before meeting the Pope today, Paraguayan President Nicanor Duarte and Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Angelo Sodano attended the ceremony for the exchange of instruments of ratification of the agreement.
   Duarte then met briefly with the Pope in his study, and then later introduced his delegation to the Holy Father.
   During the ceremony to exchange the instruments of ratification of the agreement, Cardinal Sodano said that, in virtue of the agreement, the military bishop and chaplains became "military men with the military, to serve them better and to proclaim the salvation of our Lord Jesus Christ."

zenit.org 10/18/04

Arafat Dead At 75

RAMALLAH, West Bank—Yasser Arafat, who triumphantly forced his people's plight into the world spotlight but failed to achieve his lifelong quest for Palestinian statehood, died Thursday at age 75.
   The French military hospital where he had been treated for nearly a month said he died at 3:30 a.m. The Palestinian leader spent his final days there in a coma.
   Palestinian Cabinet Minister Saeb Erekat and Tayeb Abdel Rahim, a top Arafat aide, confirmed that Arafat died, in a conversation with reporters at Arafat's headquarters in the West Bank city of Ramallah.
   Arafat's last days were as murky and dramatic as his life. Flown to France on Oct. 29 after nearly three years of being penned in his West Bank headquarters by Israeli tanks, he initially improved but then sharply deteriorated as rumors swirled about his illness.
   Top Palestinian officials flew in to check on their leader while Arafat's 41-year-old wife, Suha, publicly accused them of trying to usurp his powers. Ordinary Palestinians prayed for his well being, but expressed deep frustration over his failure to improve their lives.
   Arafat's failure to groom a successor complicated his passing, raising the danger of factional conflict among Palestinians.
   A visual constant in his checkered keffiyeh headdress, Arafat kept the Palestinians' cause at the center of the Arab-Israeli conflict. But he fell short of creating a Palestinian state, and, along with other secular Arab leaders of his generation, he saw his influence weakened by the rise of radical Islam in recent years.
   Revered by his own people, Arafat was reviled by others. He was accused of secretly fomenting attacks on Israelis while proclaiming brotherhood and claiming to have put terrorism aside. Many Israelis felt the paunchy 5-foot, 2-inch Palestinian's real goal remained the destruction of the Jewish state.
   Arafat became one of the world's most familiar faces after addressing the U.N. General Assembly in New York in 1974, when he entered the chamber wearing a holster and carrying a sprig. "Today I have come bearing an olive branch and a freedom fighter's gun," he said. "Do not let the olive branch fall from my hand."
    Two decades later, he shook hands at the White House with Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin on a peace deal that formally recognized Israel's right to exist while granting the Palestinians limited self-rule in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The pact led to the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize for Arafat, Rabin and Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres.
   But the accord quickly unraveled amid mutual suspicions and accusations of treaty violations, and a new round of violence that erupted in the fall of 2000 has killed some 4,000 people, three-quarters of them Palestinian.
   The Israeli and U.S. governments said Arafat deserved much of the blame for the derailing of the peace process. Even many of his own people began whispering against Arafat, expressing disgruntlement over corruption, lawlessness and a bad economy in the Palestinian areas.
   A resilient survivor of war with Israel, assassination attempts and even a plane crash, Arafat was born Rahman Abdel-Raouf Arafat Al-Qudwa on Aug. 4, 1929, the fifth of seven children of a Palestinian merchant killed in the 1948 war over Israel's creation. There is disagreement whether he was born in Gaza or in Cairo, Egypt.
   Educated as an engineer in Egypt, Arafat served in the Egyptian army and then started a contracting firm in Kuwait. It was there that he founded the Fatah movement, which became the core of the Palestine Liberation Organization.
   After the Arabs' humbling defeat by Israel in the six-day war of 1967, the PLO thrust itself on the world's front pages by sending its gunmen out to hijack airplanes, machine gun airports and seize Israeli athletes at the 1972 Summer Olympics.
   "As long as the world saw Palestinians as no more than refugees standing in line for U.N. rations, it was not likely to respect them. Now that the Palestinians carry rifles the situation has changed," Arafat explained.

azcentral.com 11/10/04

Signals Suggest N Korea Arms Test

WASHINGTON—President Bush and his top advisers have received intelligence reports in recent days describing a confusing series of actions by North Korea.
   Some experts think the actions could indicate that the country is preparing to conduct its first test explosion of a nuclear weapon.
  Although the indications were viewed as serious enough to warrant a warning to the White House, U.S. intelligence agencies appear divided about the significance of the North Korean actions, much as they were about the evidence concerning Iraq's alleged unconventional weapons stockpiles.
   A senior scientist who assesses nuclear intelligence said the new evidence "is not conclusive," but is potentially worrisome.
   If successful, a test would end a debate that stretches back more than a decade over whether North Korea has a rudimentary arsenal. Some analysts also fear that a test could change the balance of power in Asia, perhaps leading to a new nuclear arms race there.
   The likelihood of a North Korean test had risen significantly in the past four weeks, the official said. That changed assessment led to the decision to give an update to Bush.
   The activities included the movement of materials around several suspected test sites including one near a location where intelligence agencies reported last year that conventional explosives were being tested that could compress a plutonium core and set off a nuclear explosion. But officials have not seen the classic indicators of preparations at a test site, in which cables are laid to measure an explosion in a deep test pit.
   "I'm not sure you would see that in a country that has tunnels everywhere," said one senior official who has reviewed the data.
   If North Korea successfully tested a nuclear weapon, the reclusive country would become the eighth nation to have proven nuclear capability—Israel is also assumed to have working weapons—and it would represent the failure of 14 years of efforts to stop the North's nuclear program.

The New York Times 9/11/04

World Pressure Seen Lacking In "Road Map" For Mideast Peace

Holy See Official Addresses A Committee Of The U.N. General Assembly

NEW YORK—The Holy See says that the lack of international pressure has led to the failure to date of the "road map" for peace in the Holy Land.
Archbishop Celestino Migliore, the Holy See's permanent observer to the United Nations, addressed the 4th Commission of the U.N. General Assembly on Monday on "U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East."
   "A realistic analysis of the situation finds that there is a lot of peacemaking rhetoric but very little political will shown in the resolution of difference," he said.
   "The reluctance of the international community to challenge the Israeli and Palestinian leadership to negotiate in good faith has contributed to the fact that the road map has not taken off," the papal representative added.
   The agreement tries to resolve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict at the political, economic, humanitarian and security level, including the establishment of an independent and democratic Palestinian state. It does not foresee the return of Palestinian refugees.
   Archbishop Migliore took advantage of the occasion to remind his audience that the solution to the conflict in the Holy Land included "the question of the holy city of Jerusalem."
   "In light of the numerous incidents of violence and the challenge to free movement posed by the Wall, with checkpoints and curfews, the Holy See renews its call for internationally guaranteed provisions to ensure the freedom of religion and of conscience of its inhabitants, as well as permanent, free and unhindered access to the Holy Places by the faithful of all religions and nationalities," he said.
   "Jerusalem, the holy city, is the common patrimony of the believing world and whoever has custody of the holy city is accountable for it to the international community. Its governance should not be considered solely a matter for one or other authority," the Holy See official continued.

10,000 People In U.S. Work In Forced Labor

SAN FRANCISCO—At any given time, some 10,000 people in the United States are forced to work against their will under threat of violence, a new report found.
   The report, "Hidden Slaves: Forced Labor In The United States," was released Thursday by the Human Rights Center at University of California, Berkeley, and a Washington D.C.-based nonprofit group called Free the Slaves, was based on interviews with social service providers, government officials, and labor advocates, as well as newspaper stories published between 1998-2003 that described incidents of forced labor.
   One of eight cases explored in the report concerned Lakireddy Bali Reddy, the Berkeley landlord and restaurateur sentenced to more than eight years in federal prison in 2001 for smuggling teenage girls from India for sex and cheap labor.
   Reddy came under investigation in 1999 after a 17-year-old girl died of carbon monoxide poisoning in a Berkeley apartment he owned.
   Reddy was also ordered to pay $2 million in restitution, and the report said a civil suit associated with the case was settled in April for $8.9 million.
   Researchers found that almost half of forced laborers work in prostitution or the sex industry, close to one-third are domestic workers, and one in 10 works in agriculture. And while examples of forced labor have been found in at least 90 cities in the United States, most are concentrated in states with large immigrant populations like California, Florida, New York and Texas.
   "I think everyone recognizes this is a very real issue and we're working hard to address it," said Jamie Zuieback, a spokeswoman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
   Researchers found that victims of forced labor come from at least 38 countries, but most are from China, Mexico and Vietnam. Some are born in the United States.
    The report urged increased public awareness about human trafficking, increasing monitoring of workers in sectors where forced labor is prevalent, and ensuring that victims have adequate social services when they escape.

mercurynews.com 9/24/04

What Catholics Should Do About Democracy

A Week of Brainstorming on the Role of Faith in Modern World

zenit.org 10/16/04

Pope Reiterates Christianity's Role In Making Of Europe

VATICAN CITY—Although the Constitution of the European Union does not acknowledge it, Christianity has had a decisive role in the making of the continent, says John Paul II.
   The Pope shared that insight today during a meeting with Romano Prodi, the outgoing president of the European Commission.
   The meeting took place on the eve of the signing of the Constitutional Treaty by the representatives of the 25 members of the European Union. It gave Prodi, in his capacity as European commissioner, the chance to take leave of the Holy Father.
   "The site chosen for the signing, the same one in which the European community was born in 1957, has a clear symbolic value," John Paul II said. "Whoever speaks of Rome, speaks of the radiation of universal juridical and spiritual values."
   "The Holy See favored the formation of the EU before it was juridically structured, and has followed the successive stages with active interest," the Pope said. "This is why, the Holy See has reminded all that Christianity, in its different expressions, has contributed to the formation of a common conscience of European peoples and has helped enormously in shaping its civilizations. Whether or not it is recognized in official documents, it is an undeniable fact that no historian will be able to forget.

zenit.org 10/28/04

'I Hate You:' Vancouver Family Finds Surprising Message In Baby's Toy

prisonplanet.com

Angry Germans Yearn For Past

Capitalism's allure fades amid benefit cuts, joblessness

The Kansas City Star 9/11/04