Umberto Bossi urges Silvio Berlusconi to quit : Italy

      Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's key coalition partner has urged him to step aside ahead of a crucial budget vote.

         Northern League leader Umberto Bossi is a volatile ally who brought down Mr Berlusconi's first government in 1994.
Mr Berlusconi's majority has crumbled ahead of the vote, with several MPs defecting or saying they will rebel.
Until now he has insisted he has enough support to be able to continue to govern and has denied he will resign.
While Italy's deficit is relatively low, investors are concerned that the combination of Italy's low growth rate and 1.9tn euro (£1.63tn; $2.6tn) debt could make it the next country to fall in the eurozone debt crisis.
Meanwhile Milan's blue-chip FTSE MIB stock index rose 2.5% on the news of Mr Bossi's statement. Markets had rallied in the morning on incorrect reports that Mr Berlusconi was stepping down.

 Test of strength
"We asked the prime minister to stand aside," Mr Bossi told reporters on the margins of parliament, adding that the former justice minister and personal protege of Mr Berlusconi, Angelino Alfano, should take over.
The Northern League is the second largest party in the coalition, with about 60 seats.
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The normally routine vote on approving state finances has taken on much more significance now as a test of Mr Berlusconi's political strength.

After late-night talks with his own party and Northern League leaders, Mr Berlusconi is reported to have said that he would wait to see the outcome of the vote before making a decision on his future.
One of Berlusconi's closest allies, MP Francesco Cicchitto, told reporters that leaders of the coalition would wait to see the result of the vote.
"One thing at a time. First the vote, let's let it happen. Then we'll reflect on the vote," Mr Cicchitto said.
Mr Berlusconi spent the morning attempting to shore up his support with those MPs who had threatened to abandon him ahead of the vote, which has now been delayed until 16:00 GMT.
Borrowing costs spike
Last month, the same budget measure was defeated in parliament by a single vote. Mr Berlusconi is reported to be short of the 316 votes - more than than half of the 630-member chamber - needed to prove that he still has a majority.
But analysts say Mr Berlusconi may still win as the centre-left may abstain, allowing the essential measure to pass.
Members of the opposition have said they will be present in the chamber, but will not vote, La Repubblica reports.
"Our message to the coalition is, 'be counted'," Pier Luigi Bersani, secretary of the centre-left Democratic Party said, according to the paper.

Were Mr Berlusconi to lose, he could either resign immediately or be ordered by President Giorgio Napolitano to call a confidence vote.

The BBC's Alan Johnston, in Rome, says it is certainly worth remembering that Mr Berlusconi is a master deal-maker and political infighter, having survived more than 50 confidence motions in the past.
But this crisis is different as it goes beyond Italian politics, our correspondent says.
The international money markets are now forcing Italy to pay interest rates that could eventually ruin it, which means the pressure on Mr Berlusconi is extraordinary, he adds.
Doubt about Italy's governance and its ability to repay its debts have sent the markets seesawing over the past two days.
On Tuesday, the cost of government borrowing spiked at a new record of 6.74% because of the crisis, just short of the 7% threshold at which Portugal and Ireland were forced to accept bailouts.






 

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Russia satirists use YouTube to challenge Kremlin

Media control has been one of the key factors that have allowed Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to dominate Russia's political landscape since he was first elected president in 2000.

     As the country prepares for parliamentary and presidential elections, though, there are signs that the Kremlin is facing a fresh media challenge in the form of an increasingly politicised audience on Youtube.
Over the past few weeks, a number of Russian politics-themed clips on Youtube have achieved over one million views.
The videos are in a variety of genres - political polemic, satire and song - but they have one thing in common: a critical or irreverent attitude to the country's leadership - Mr Putin, President Dmitry Medvedev and their party, United Russia.
Earlier this year, anti-corruption campaigner and blogger Aleksey Navalnyy launched a web campaign against United Russia under the banner "Party of Crooks and Thieves".
One of the latest instalments in this campaign is a clip on his Youtube channel entitled: ". The video lists what it says are United Russia's failures and broken pledges, and concludes: "They have not just lied, they have brought the country to such a state that these and other promises seem to be mockeries". It also urges viewers to vote for any party but United Russia in December's parliamentary election.
The video was posted on Youtube on 7 October. By 28 October, it been viewed more than a million times.
Satire
Youtube is not only giving a powerful voice to the opposition, it is also helping to revive subversive art forms.
TV political satire has been virtually extinct in Russia since the puppet show Kukly (along the lines of the now-defunct UK satirical programme Spitting Image) disappeared from the screens shortly after Mr Putin came to power.
Now, though, this kind of satire is making a comeback on the internet. Not all the satire is anti-government, but it is generally irreverent towards authority.

One of its brightest exponents on Youtube is Dmitry Ivanov, who uses the online nickname Kamikadze_d.
Ivanov's fast-talking stand-up routines on the Russian political scene have been growing in popularity for several months now.
The first of them to break the one-million-view mark was a lampoon of a TV debate between leading politicians that was posted on 9 September.
Ivanov quickly repeated the feat with a routine called "Putin's terrible secret", in which he suggests that hidden clones of the prime minister are taking over Russia.
For those who like their satire a bit darker, there is Mr Freeman, a spooky black-and-white cartoon character whose nightmarish visions of the modern world have won him a cult following among Russian internet users.
On 11 October Mr Freeman abandoned satire and posted an "open letter" to President Medvedev, urging him to stop Mr Putin from becoming president again. By the end of the month it, too, had got over a million views.
The clip says Mr Putin's first stint as president "plunged Russia into a medieval gloom" and that the only way to prevent a repeat of this is for Mr Medvedev to sack him from the post of prime minister.
Protest music
Youtube has also helped revive Russian protest music, which, like satire, has been virtually banned from popular mainstream media outlets.
In 2010, hip-hop artist Ivan Alekseyev, aka Noize MC, got over a million views with a song about his imprisonment for singing anti-police lyrics at a concert in Volgograd.
Another protest song that has gone viral is "Our madhouse is voting for Putin" by the Yekaterinburg-based band Rabfak, which has already reached an aggregate audience of over one million since being posted on Youtube on 11 October.
The song describes how Russia is awash with corruption and abuses, but says that people will still support Mr Putin. And it warns that those who question this will be given "an injection in the backside".
The jaunty refrain runs:
"Our madhouse is voting for Putin; Putin is just the candidate for us"
Politicisation
According to the  by polling organisation the Public Opinion Foundation (FOM), some 60 million Russians now have access to the internet out of a total population of just over 140 million.
Until recently, though, political content on the internet has not tended to attract a mass audience.
In 2010, there were some signs that this was changing - most notably, the growing popularity of protest songs.
The appearance of a spate of overtly political videos with one-million-plus audiences in just a few weeks is unprecedented. The Russian website Gazeta.ru . Only six Russian clips got over one million views in the whole of 2010. And it is a further sign that the internet audience in Russia is becoming increasingly politicised.
Moreover, the prevailing political mood is distinctly anti-government.
Since Mr Medvedev became president in 2008, the authorities have made great efforts to influence the internet community. The president himself launched a and then a  which currently has over 625,000 followers.
But on Twitter, as on Youtube, the political traffic appears to be mainly one-way. In October, a pro-government activist tried to celebrate Mr Putin's birthday with the hashtag "SpasiboPutinuZaEto" (ThanksPutinForThat). But his plan backfired, as the hashtag became a magnet for jokes at the prime minister's expense.
Changing perceptions
Anti-government or satirical clips on Youtube are unlikely to have a decisive effect on the outcome of the forthcoming elections.
But they may already be changing perceptions.
Recent research by academics from Moscow State University found that Mr Putin is regarded in a much more negative light today than before the previous presidential elections he fought in 2000 and 2004.
The researchers found that just 17.1% of respondents had a positive view of his professional capacities as against 69% in 2000 and 64 per cent in 2004. According to the website Gazeta.ru, among the negative sides of Mr Putin's rule listed by respondents were , "failure to solve corruption problems", "excessive populism" and "excessive authoritarianism".
Watching political content on Youtube is likely to reinforce these perceptions.

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Ireland to close embassies to Vatican, Iran and E Timor

The Irish Republic has decided to close its embassies to the Vatican and two other nations on cost-saving grounds.

       It said the closure of the missions in Vatican City and also in Iran and East Timor would save about 1.25m euros (£1.1m; $1.7m) a year.
But Dublin stressed that the move was not related to a clerical child abuse row between Ireland and the Holy See.
In July, a report accused the Vatican of aiding child-abuse cover-ups in Cork - a claim denied by the Holy See.
The Vatican later recalled its special envoy in Dublin to discuss the impact of the damning Cloyne Report.
'Profound disappointment' "It is with the greatest regret and reluctance that the government has decided to close Ireland's (embassy) to the Holy See," said a statement from the Irish foreign ministry on Thursday.
It added that Dublin "believes that Ireland's interests with the Holy See can be sufficiently represented by a non-resident ambassador".
Irish Foreign Minister Eamon Gilmore said diplomats at Ireland's Italian embassy would move into the villa currently used by its Vatican staff.
Mr Gilmore pointed out that the government had to implement cuts to meet targets set out in Ireland's economic rescue deal backed by the European Union and the International Monetary Fund.
Ireland - like many other nations - has maintained two diplomatic posts in Rome: one for the Holy See, the other for Italy.
Predominantly Catholic Ireland has traditionally had close relations with the Vatican, where the embassy was opened in 1929.
Responding to the closure announcement, Cardinal Sean Brady, the ecclesiastical head of the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland, expressed his "profound disappointment".
"I hope that today's decision will be revisited as soon as possible," he said in a statement.

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Greece PM Papandreou faces fresh call to resign

Greece's centre-right opposition has demanded Prime Minister George Papandreou resign, throwing into disarray plans for a unity government.

Opposition leader Antonis Samaras also called for snap elections before leading his MPs in a dramatic walkout of parliament.
Mr Papandreou's government faces a crucial confidence vote on Friday.
He earlier said that opposition support could mean dropping controversial plans for a referendum on an EU bailout.
Mr Papandreou had faced a rebellion in his governing Socialist party (Pasok) over the proposed referendum, which sent markets into turmoil.
The BBC's Gavin Hewitt in Athens says Greece had seen 24 hours of political horse trading and power struggles.
Mr Papandreou's party holds a tiny majority in parliament - 152 out of 300 seats.
Last week's hard-fought EU deal to bail out debt-ridden Greece was heralded as a breakthrough.
But Mr Papandreou threw it into doubt by announcing on Monday that Greece would put the deal - which would mean crushing austerity measures - to a referendum.

He was summoned for urgent talks at the G20 summit in Cannes on Wednesday where the leaders of France and Germany told him that any referendum would turn on the question of whether Greece wanted to stay in the eurozone.

They also put on hold the next tranche of Greece's existing bailout until after a vote was held.
With Greece's euro membership and its bailout lifeline in danger, Mr Papandreou returned to Athens under mounting pressure to resign.
After a day of turmoil on Thursday, he told MPs that talks with the opposition on forming a "broader scheme" - apparently meaning a coalition government - should start immediately.
However, an angry Mr Samaras questioned the motives behind Mr Papandreou's actions.
"I am wondering; Mr Papandreou almost destroyed Greece and Europe, the euro, the international stock markets, his own party in order to ensure what? So that he could blackmail me and the Greek public? Or to ensure what I had already said several days ago; that I accept the bailout agreement as unavoidable?"
Mr Papandreou told MPs the referendum was never an end in itself, and there were two other choices - an election, which he said would bankrupt the country, or a consensus in parliament.
Division within Mr Papandreou's own party was clearly visible when Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos, addressing Pasok MPs immediately after the prime minister, said Greece must say it was not holding a referendum.
He said Greece should do everything it could to reassure its international partners it will immediately implement the eurozone bailout deal.
The EU bailout deal, agreed last month, would give the heavily indebted Greek government 130bn euros (£111bn; $178bn) and it imposes a 50% write-off on private holders of Greek debts, in return for deeply unpopular austerity measures.
Analysts say eurozone leaders must solve the Greek problem swiftly or risk the crisis spreading to other vulnerable economies, particularly Italy.

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Painstaking search for survivors

The main street in Ercis has been transformed. Some of the buildings lean over at alarming angles, bits of debris dropping from them.

       Then there are the mounds of concrete slabs, multifloor apartment blocks crushed down to the height of a single storey.
They are all swarming with orange-suited rescue workers, hammering and drilling, cranes standing by to lift the sawn-off hunks of masonry in the hope that someone may have survived in an air pocket.
Every so often, there is a call for silence. The drills, saws and generators stop, and one of the rescuers shouts into the rubble, listening intensely for any sounds of life.
For most of the day, those calls have gone unanswered. But in the morning, they could hear a woman's voice.
The activity moved down to a buckled doorway, and after hours of digging away, a rare moment of elation in this tragedy. A rescue worker walked out cradling two-week-old Azra in his arms, remarkably unharmed by her ordeal.
A few hours later, they brought out her mother and grandmother, carrying only minor injuries.
Throughout the day, there have been these ups and downs.
At another site, they brought out a 29-year-old man, alive and well. But they also brought out the body of six-year-old Elif, who had lived on the top floor of the six-storey building. Her family buried her a few hours later.
Lessons learnt All day, families have walked down the street, grieving openly for their loss. I met Fikret Ergin, watching in tears as they dug through the remains of the building where his daughter and son-in-law had lived.
He had seen bits of their clothing in the rubble, and was sure they were dead.

It is an emotional task for the rescuers. I met Savas, who has been working without a break since Sunday. How did he keep going? "I just think all the time about my four year-old daughter, and what I would do if she was under there," he said.

At the airport in the city of Van, plane after plane have been flying in, carrying emergency teams and relief supplies.
Turkey insists it does not need any outside help, and the rescue operation has certainly been scaled up very quickly to meet the needs.
But there have been complaints about the way the operation has been organised, even from some of the rescuers themselves, who told us they were initially sent without essential equipment.
Turkey has come a long way since the last big earthquake of August 1999, when at least 17,000 died, and the response by the authorities was widely condemned as hopelessly inadequate.
Lessons were learned, and improvements made.
But one lesson that seems not to have been learned is how to ensure buildings are constructed to withstand the tremors that frequently shake the country.
The building codes are quite strict - but the distressing sight of all those mangled apartment blocks in Ercis suggests the codes are not always honoured.

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Government will accept foreign aid

Turkey will accept offers of aid from foreign countries to cope with the aftermath of the Van earthquake, after initially declining offers of help.

          Officials said that, with more than 2,000 buildings destroyed, there was an urgent need for accommodation.
The death toll from the disaster stood at 461 but the Red Crescent fears hundreds are still trapped under rubble, feared dead.
A teacher, 27, and a student, 18, were rescued on Wednesday in Ercis.
Gozde Bahar, an English-language teacher, was rescued as her mother watched in tears.
University student Eyup Erdem was found using tiny cameras mounted on sticks.
Rescuers broke into applause as he emerged from the debris.
Caravans needed
Turkey is seeking assistance for reconstruction and temporary accommodation for the thousands who have been left homeless, the semi-official news agency Anatolia reports.

The government is seeking tents, prefabricated houses and living containers, it says.

Israel will be among the first to send aid, according to AFP news agency.
Ties with Turkey have been strained since May 2010, when Israeli naval commandos stormed a flotilla trying to sail to Gaza in defiance of a blockade, killing nine Turks.
"Turkey has asked us for caravans for the homeless after the earthquake," Israeli foreign ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor told AFP.
He said they had accepted the request and would seek to supply them as quickly as possible.
Israel's defence ministry said a first Boeing 747 would transport mobile homes to Turkey on Wednesday, and other planes would follow in the coming days.
The Japanese embassy in Ankara said its government would send around $400,000 (£250,000), Anatolia reports.
The BBC's Jonathan Head, in Ercis, says that the government has recognised that it now needs specific help in technical areas where it lacks the resources to get things up fast enough.
Aid trucks looted The Turkish government has pledged more aid to the thousands made homeless and aid agencies have set up field hospitals and kitchens and distributed thousands of tents and blankets.
But survivors, many now living in camps, have fought over shipments of aid and blocked aid shipments.
Health officials have urged them to drink bottled water after detecting an increase in diarrhoea cases, especially among children.
Nazmi Gur, a local politician in Van, told the BBC News website that "hundreds of thousands of people" needed help.

Two people were pulled from the rubble on Wednesday

"We can provide food but they desperately need shelter," he added.
The Turkish Red Crescent said that 17 trucks carrying aid had been looted in Van and Ercis.
People in Ercis, which bore the full brunt of the quake, told AFP that unidentified individuals had stopped a truck carrying tents. They told AFP they suspected the goods would be sold on the black market.
Local officials in Van said that early on Wednesday, dozens of survivors, furious at not receiving aid supplies, had raided trucks carrying food and blankets in the city of Van.
Turkish officials have warned that the death toll is likely to rise but there has been no official estimate of the number of people missing.
Turkey is particularly vulnerable to earthquakes because it sits on major geological fault lines.
The latest disaster struck on Sunday at 13:41 (10:41 GMT) at a depth of 20km (12 miles), with its epicentre 16km north-east of the city of Van.

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Euro summit: EU leaders seek deal on debt crisis

EU leaders are holding an emergency summit in Brussels aimed at tackling the eurozone debt crisis.

But with disagreement on how to expand the EU's bailout fund for debt-ridden countries, there is growing doubt a comprehensive deal will be reached.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel, after winning support from her parliament for moves to boost the fund, said there remained "many problems to settle".
There are fears that the Greek debt crisis could spread to Italy and Spain.
As MPs prepared to vote in Berlin, Chancellor Merkel said it was worth taking the risk to maximise the bailout fund's spending power in order to safeguard Germany's future prosperity.
"The world is watching Germany and Europe," she said. "They are looking to see if we are ready and able to assume our responsibilities during Europe's worst crisis since the end of World War II."
Mrs Merkel won a comfortable majority for plans to strengthen the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) - the single currency's 440bn-euro bailout fund.
Later, as she arrived in Brussels, she told reporters: "There are still many problems to settle and negotiations to carry out."

Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou said: "Our challenge today is not simply to save the euro. It's to safeguard the ideals we cherish so much in Europe: peaceful co-operation amongst our nations, social cohesion and solidarity."

As attention shifts to Italy and its huge public debt, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has been asked to provide his EU colleagues in Brussels with details of plans for economic reforms.
Sticking points Among the main points of agreement reportedly reached at the weekend by EU officials are:

• European banks must raise more than 100bn euros (£87bn) in new capital to shield them against possible losses to indebted countries
• The EFSF will be given more firepower, although it is not clear how this will be achieved
• Lenders to Greece will be asked to agree to much deeper losses than the 21% write-off currently on the table.
• After the talks began, British Prime Minister David Cameron told reporters that the deal on bank recapitalisation had been approved by the EU leaders, but that it would only go ahead once an overall agreement had been reached.
  According to the plan, the 100bn-euro in new capital would be provided to banks by commercial investors, national governments and the EFSF.
  Key points of disagreement remain between the main eurozone powers.
  France had hoped that the European Central Bank (ECB) would support the EFSF by providing it with loans that could increase the fund's total capacity to 2tn-3tn euros.
  But this idea was blocked by Chancellor Merkel.
  Instead, governments are expected to agree that the EFSF can help out troubled eurozone governments such as Italy and Spain by providing partial guarantees to investors and banks who lend them more money.
  Stopgap BBC business editor Robert Peston says the EU is left with using complicated financial engineering that may only boost the EFSF capacity to about 1tn euros.
  He says the markets may be disappointed in this move, which may only buy a year or so - not enough time for fundamental reform of Europe's debt-ridden economies.
  There was also disagreement over the extent of losses that should be imposed on Greece's lenders, with Germany seeking a 50%-60% haircut.
  The ECB is said to be against such an increase in potential losses.
  And difficulty about such details appear to have been behind a decision to cancel a meeting of EU finance ministers which was to have preceded the leaders' summit.
  French Prime Minister Francois Fillon said that if Wednesday's summit ended in failure, "this could tip the European continent into unknown territory".
  Mr Berlusconi is expected to provide only promises of economic reforms in Italy, even though other eurozone leaders have demanded he bring concrete plans to Brussels of how the government intends to reduce its debt.
  In a long day of talks with his Northern League coalition partner, an agreement was reached on the contentious issue of raising the retirement age to 67 by 2025.
  The BBC's David Willey in Rome says there is little ground for optimism that the deal is going to satisfy either Italy's EU partners or international financial markets about the country's ability to repay its long-term debts.
  
   

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Hungary Nazi war crimes suspect Sandor Kepiro dead

Sandor Kepiro, a former Hungarian policeman recently acquitted of Nazi-era war crimes, has died in hospital in Budapest at the age of 97.

    His death was reported by his family and lawyer, who said he believed the trial this summer had contributed to his client's poor health.
A Budapest court dismissed charges he had ordered the execution of 30 people because of insufficient evidence.
Mr Kepiro once topped an international list of wanted war crimes suspects.
His acquittal in July caused outrage at the Simon Wiesenthal Center with its chairman, Efraim Zuroff, pledging to do "everything possible to see that it's overturned".
'Refused to shoot' More than 1,200 Jewish, Serb and Roma civilians were murdered over three days by Hungarian forces in a notorious massacre in the Serbian city of Novi Sad in 1942.
Mr Kepiro was accused of rounding up 36 people during the raid. Thirty of them were put on a lorry, allegedly on the defendant's orders, and taken away to be shot.
The prosecution had demanded at least a prison sentence for Mr Kepiro, but he insisted he had not killed anyone.
He said he had been "the only person to refuse the order to use firearms", and that he had intervened to save five people about to be killed by a corporal.
Mr Kepiro was previously convicted of involvement in the killings in Hungary in 1944 but his conviction was quashed by the fascist government.
He returned to Hungary in 1996 after decades in Argentina, and was first accused in 2006 by the Nazi hunters at the Simon Wiesenthal Center.

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France's Jacques Chirac 'not in fit state' for court

Ex-French President Jacques Chirac says he is not in a fit state to attend his corruption trial, reports say.

   

He is accused on two counts of paying members of his Rally for the Republic (RPR) party for municipal jobs that did not exist.

The first count accuses Mr Chirac of embezzlement and breach of trust relating to 21 so-called "ghost jobs".
The second came about from a separate investigation in the Paris suburb of Nanterre and involves an illegal conflict of interest relating to seven ghost jobs.
For years there were persistent rumours of wrongdoing, but Mr Chirac had immunity from prosecution while he was president from 1995 to 2007.
After 11 years of legal wrangling, he and nine other defendants finally went on trail in March.
However, on the second day of the trial a lawyer representing Mr Chirac's former chief of staff at city hall, Remy Chardon, challenged the two cases being brought together.
He argued that the statute of limitations had expired in the first case.
The judge decided to refer the question to the Court of Cassation, which ruled that the constitutional challenge was not valid.
He has asked the Paris court for his lawyers be allowed to represent him, AFP news agency has reported.
Mr Chirac, 78, is accused of embezzling public funds in the 1990s, when he was mayor of Paris. He denies the charges.
The trial is due to start on Monday, having been adjourned in March after a co-defendant argued that some of the charges were unconstitutional.
In a letter to the Paris court on Friday, the former leader wrote that he wanted his trial to go ahead "even if he no longer has the full ability to participate in hearings", said a statement from Mr Chirac's lawyers.
"In the letter... he requested that his lawyers be able to represent him and carry his voice during these hearings," said the statement.
A copy of the former president's medical records was enclosed in the letter, it added.
French media described Mr Chirac as tired during a holiday in St Tropez last month, although he reportedly signed autographs and posed for pictures with tourists.
Immunity from prosecution Jacques Chirac, who was mayor of Paris from 1977 to 1995, is the first former head of state to stand trial in France since World War II.

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Vatican rejects cover-up claims over Cloyne report

The Vatican has rejected claims by Irish PM Enda Kenny that it sabotaged efforts by Irish bishops to report child-molesting priests to police.

     It follows the damning Cloyne Report that showed how allegations of clerical sex-abuse in Cork had been covered up.
In a speech to parliament in July, Mr Kenny accused the Church of putting its reputation ahead of abuse victims.
The Vatican said it was "sorry and ashamed" over the scandal but said his claims were "unfounded".
"The Holy See is deeply concerned at the findings of the commission of inquiry concerning grave failures in the ecclesiastical governance of the diocese of Cloyne," said the Vatican,
"The Holy See... in no way hampered or sought to interfere in any inquiry into cases of child sex abuse in the Diocese of Cloyne."
"Furthermore, at no stage did the Holy See seek to interfere with Irish civil law or impede the civil authority in the exercise of its duties."
'Misinterpretation' Mr Kenny had told the Irish parliament that the report into how allegations of sex abuse by priests in Cork had been covered up showed change was urgently needed.
"The rape and torture of children were downplayed or 'managed' to uphold instead the primacy of the institution, its power, standing and 'reputation'," he said.
Parliament then passed a motion deploring the Holy See for "undermining child protection frameworks" after a letter to Irish bishops appeared to diminish Irish guidelines on reporting sex abuse by referring to them as "study guidelines".
The Vatican then recalled its special envoy in Dublin, Papal Nuncio Giuseppe Leanza, to discuss the impact of the report.
But the Holy See's response, published on Saturday, said Mr Kenny's blistering accusations were based on a misinterpretation of a 1997 Vatican letter expressing "serious reservations" about the Irish bishops' 1996 policy requiring bishops to report abusers to police.
"In a spirit of humility, the Holy See, while rejecting unfounded accusations, welcomes all objective and helpful observations and suggestions to combat with determination the appalling crime of sexual abuse of minors," said the statement.
Released in July, the 400-page Cloyne Report found that Bishop John Magee - who stood down in March 2009 after serving as bishop of Cloyne since 1987 - had falsely told the government and the health service that his diocese was reporting all abuse allegations to authorities.
It also found that the bishop deliberately misled another inquiry and his own advisors by creating two different accounts of a meeting with a priest suspected of abusing a child - one for the Vatican and the other for diocesan files.
It discovered that, contrary to repeated assertions on its part, the Diocese of Cloyne did not implement the procedures set out in the Church protocols for dealing with allegations of child sex-abuse. It said the greatest failure was that no complaints, except one in 1996, were reported to the health authorities until 2008.
It said the disturbing findings were compounded by the fact that the commission found that the Vatican's response to the Church guidelines was entirely unhelpful and gave comfort and support to those who dissented from the guidelines. It said this was "wholly unacceptable".

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Bavaria: Fugitive German cow Yvonne gives herself up

A cow called Yvonne who made headlines in Germany has given herself up after three months on the run.

   Yvonne escaped from a farm in Bavaria, just before she would have been sent for slaughter. Efforts to recapture her failed and she roamed free in forests.
But after finally turning up again on Thursday, the future is looking bright for the daring six-year-old dairy cow.
She has been bought by an animal sanctuary and will live out her years alongside other members of her family.
The Gut Aiderbichl sanctuary paid 700 euros (£617) to take Yvonne off the hands of her former owners - and has taken the lead in finding her.
A spokeswoman said they got a call from a farmer near Muhldorf on Thursday and staff were able to confirm the cow was indeed Yvonne by her ear tag.
She has since been transported to their sanctuary at Deggendorf in Bavaria, where she was reunited with her two-year-old son Friesi and her sister Waltraud - whom the sanctuary also tracked down and bought.
"She arrived at ten this morning and was met by her son Friesi, whom she recognised," the spokeswoman said. "She is calm and doesn't appear to have suffered in any way from her adventures".
Waltraud was with Yvonne when she charged through a 4,000-volt electric fence of a farmyard in southern Bavaria in late May. Waltraud returned the next day, but Yvonne carried on, apparently living alongside a herd of deer and foraging with them at night.
She managed to evade a shoot-to-kill order that was ordered after she bolted in front of a police car.
The Gut Aiderbichl sanctuary used both Waltraud and a breeding bull called Ernst to try to entice Yvonne to givie herself up, but to no avail.
The cow's plight became a popular topic in German newspapers and TV - and she was dubbed the "the cow that wants to be a deer" and "the heroine of the summer".
But even though Yvonne may not be in the headlines quite so much now she has been captured, she will not be out of sight.
The Gut Aiderbichl sanctuary in Deggendorf is open to the public, and staff hope she proves to be a popular draw.

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Gaza flotilla row: New low in Turkish ties with Israel

Expelling an ambassador is always a dramatic act. Turkey's decision to order Israeli Ambassador Gaby Levi to leave Ankara by next Wednesday is a blunt statement of how far relations between the two countries have fallen over the past three years.

    Given the immense public anger in Turkey over the deaths of nine activists during clashes with Israeli troops aboard the flotilla, the government could hardly have asked for less than an Israeli apology. When that was refused, a strong gesture of disapproval by Turkey was inevitable.
In reality, though, the Turkish reaction to the publication of the UN inquiry merely formalises the freeze in their relations. Turkey had already withdrawn its ambassador to Tel Aviv right after the flotilla incident, and suspended military co-operation, which had in any case been greatly cut back.
 
Pressure from US
This formal break with Israel would have come a lot sooner, but for pressure from the United States. President Obama has urged both countries - each of them important US allies in the region - to find a compromise.
Senior diplomats have been exploring a form of words which could sound like an apology to Turkey, but be presented as something less than an apology to Israel. The publication of the UN inquiry was delayed three times to allow the talks to progress, and as recently as last month they seemed close to a deal.
That this did not happen is a consequence of domestic politics in both countries. Hardliners within the governing coalition in Israel opposed any statement that sounded like an apology. And the Turkish Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, kept up a torrent of criticism of Israel.
His constituency is a conservative, Muslim one which is strongly sympathetic to the Palestinians, and hostile to Israel, so talking tough goes down well with his supporters; a compromise would have been a harder sell, and probably distasteful to a politician who gets visibly angry about Israeli policies.
 
Middle East turmoil
But Turkey has not severed relations altogether, and in time they could yet be revived.
There will be pressure to do so because of the turmoil in the rest of the Middle East.
Last year Turkish diplomats liked to point out that they simply did not need Israel as much as they used to. Turkey had reversed decades of frosty relations with its immediate neighbours, building new commercial and political ties with the governments in Iran, Iraq and Syria. Turkey's economic success and dynamic politics were the envy of the Muslim world; Mr Erdogan's readiness to scold Israel made him a hero on the Arab street.
But all those calculations have been undone by the popular uprisings this year in the Arab world. The carefully nurtured rapport with the Assad regime in Syria has collapsed. Outright hostility towards Israel is a luxury Turkey may eventually feel it should drop as it grapples with the shifting political landscape on its border.
 
Mending fences
Ending military co-operation means the Turkish armed forces will have to look elsewhere for equipment. In the past it signed substantial contracts with Israeli companies to upgrade its US-made planes and tanks. Last year it took delivery of ten Israeli-made Heron drones, which are being used in the war against Kurdish insurgents along the border with Iraq.
It also means Israeli forces can no longer exercise in Turkey. But that co-operation too has been declining for some years.
Tourism has also suffered, but then the numbers were never very large. Trade between Turkey and Israel, however, is doing surprisingly well - up 26% in the first half of this year.
When their friendship started to sour, it was not just the US that pushed for a rapprochement. The government in Syria, one of Israel's most implacable foes, also urged Turkey to mend fences with Israel. Given how far Turkish-Syrian ties have now fallen that call is unlikely to be repeated. But it demonstrated how useful the Turkish-Israeli axis was, even to other Arab countries. It is badly damaged, but probably not beyond repair.

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Turkey expels Israeli ambassador over Gaza flotilla row

Turkey has expelled Israel's ambassador and suspended all military agreements over its refusal to apologise for last year's raid on a Gaza-bound flotilla.

   This comes a day after a leaked UN report said Israeli commandos used excessive force when they boarded an aid ship. Nine Turkish activists died.
The Turkish Foreign Minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, said it was "time Israel pays a price for its illegal actions".
Israel has refused to apologise and said its troops acted in self-defence.
"Israel, like any other country, has a legitimate right to protect its citizens and soldiers," an Israeli government official told the BBC.
"Israel has made many attempts in the recent months to settle the dispute between our countries. Unfortunately these attempts were unsuccessful."
'Null and void' The nine pro-Palestinian activists who died were on board the Turkish-flagged ship, Mavi Marmara, when it was intercepted by the Israeli navy in international waters as sailed towards Gaza's coast on 31 May 2010.

At the time, the Israeli military said its commandos fired live rounds only after being attacked with clubs, knives and guns. But activists on board said the commandos started shooting as soon as they hit the deck.

The UN inquiry chaired by former New Zealand Prime Minister Geoffrey Palmer,  found the Israeli troops faced "significant, organised and violent resistance from a group of passengers" and were therefore required to use force for their own protection.
But it said Israel's decision to board the vessels "with such substantial force at a great distance from the blockade zone and with no final warning immediately prior to the boarding was excessive and unreasonable".
Forensic evidence showing that most of the deceased were shot multiple times, including in the back, or at close range".
The inquiry also found Israel's naval blockade "was imposed as a legitimate security measure in order to prevent weapons from entering Gaza by sea and its implementation complied with the requirements of international law".
The report was completed months ago, but its publication was delayed several times as Turkey and Israel attempted to repair their diplomatic relations, which have been frozen since the flotilla incident.
But on Friday, hours before the report was expected to be released, Turkey' announced that diplomatic relations had been reduced to the level of second secretary and all military agreements had been suspended.
"The time has come for Israel to pay for its stance that sees it above international laws and disregards human conscience," Mr Davutoglu said. "The first and foremost result is that Israel is going to be devoid of Turkey's friendship."
"As long as the Israeli government does not take the necessary steps, there will be no turning back," he warned.
Mr Davutoglu said the report "displayed the violence committed by the Israeli soldiers", but added that some of its findings were questionable.
"Turkey does not recognise Israel's blockade of Gaza. It will secure the study of this blockade at the International Court of Justice."
Asked to comment on the UN panel's decision not to recommend that Israel apologise, Turkish President Abdullah Gul said: "To be frank, the report is null and void for us."
Hamas, whose decision to seize control of the Gaza Strip in 2007 led to Israel imposing the blockade, applauded the Turkish move.
"This is a natural response to the Israeli crime against the flotilla," spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri told the BBC.
The Israeli official said the government accepted with "reservations" the UN report, which it considered "professional, profound and serious".
"During the events of the Mavi Marmara flotilla, Israeli soldiers boarded the boat with non-lethal means. They had no intention to hurt anyone," the official said.
"Once the Israeli soldiers were viciously attacked by dozens of violent IHH activists, armed with batons, knives and steel pipes, the soldiers had to defend themselves," the official added, referring to the IHH Humanitarian Relief Foundation, which Israel has banned for supporting Hamas.
"After many of the soldiers were wounded during the operation, nine of the IHH rioters who had endangered their lives were killed."
"As recommended in the report, Israel again expresses regret about the loss of life but will not apologise for acts of self-defence by its soldiers."
The official noted that the Israeli ambassador had finished his posting in Ankara a few days ago, and said Israel assumed that Turkey would "respect the rules of international maritime law in the Mediterranean".

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Pukkelpop storm: Belgian festival deaths reach five

Witness: "People screamed and ran... the big middle poles were just gone"

The death toll at the Pukkelpop music festival in Belgium, hit by a sudden violent storm, has now risen to five, say local officials.

Staging collapsed, giant screens fell, tents were flattened and trees were uprooted, all in the space of minutes after the storm struck.
Dozens more people were hurt, several seriously.
Belgian Prime Minister Yves Leterme has sent his condolences to the families of the victims.
Reports say organisers have now decided to cancel the rest of the event.
"During the night, the fifth festival-goer died in hospital. I think that the organisation of Pukkelpop rightly took the courageous decision to stop the festival," Hasselt mayor Hilde Claes was quoted as saying on the website of De Standaard newspaper.
She said all the dead were Belgians, adding that 140 people were injured in the storm, 10 of them seriously.
Dr Pascal Vranckx, of the Jessa Hospital in Hasselt, added: "There are still three patients in critical condition fighting for their lives."
Festival organiser Chokri Mahassine said in a statement: "Pukkelpop is in deep mourning."
'End of the world'

About 60,000 people were believed to be at the event, one of Europe's largest outdoor festivals, when the storm hit. Headline acts this year were set to include Eminem, the Foo Fighters and the Ting Tings.

"The sky suddenly turned pitch black and we took shelter waiting for the rain," said festival-goer Catherine Blaise, according to Le Soir newspaper.
"Then suddenly, there was a downpour. The wind blew violently. There were hailstones bigger than a centimetre falling... Trees toppled over.
"It was unbelievable, the end of the world," she said.
Within 10 minutes, the storm had turned the festival site into a scene of mud and destruction, reports said.
More than 20 ambulances raced to and from the site near Hasselt, some 50 miles (80km) east of Brussels. Those with lighter injuries were being treated at a local sports complex.
Many festival-goers were inside tents which collapsed when the storm hit.
"It was mass panic," Laura Elegeert, 17, told AP news agency.
"People were trying to get out of this tent that collapsed by using their pocket knives and cutting holes in the fabric."
'Exceptional' conditions
 

On Friday, mud-splattered young people, many shoeless, trudging down the avenue leading from the festival site to bus and train stations. Many had camped on the site overnight, in the vain hope that the festival would continue.
In a news conference on Friday, Mayor Claes said initial checks on emergency planning measures - which staff told AFP news agency included "checking trees for their resistance to high winds, and testing the drainage system" - left officials confident they had done everything that could be expected of them given such freak conditions.
Hasselt officials and festival organisers described Thursday's weather conditions as exceptional, and said weather forecasters in the area had not predicted a storm of that intensity.
It was the second consecutive year of tragedy for Pukkelpop. Last year, lead singer of the group Ou Est Le Swimming Pool, Charles Haddon, committed suicide at the event.
Five people were killed last week at a festival in the US state of Indiana, when a stage collapsed in high winds.

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Blood in the water: Hungary's 1956 water polo gold

One of the hardest-fought contests in Olympic history was a water polo match between Hungary and the USSR in 1956 - a match which came to symbolise the Hungarian struggle against Soviet rule.

"A whistle came, I looked at the referee, I said 'What's the whistle for?' And the moment I did that, I knew I'd made a horrible mistake."
Ervin Zador, 21 years old in 1956, was the star player in Hungary's Olympic water polo team at the Melbourne Olympics in Australia.
"I turned back and with a straight arm, he just smacked me in the face. He tried to punch me out."
The man punching Ervin Zador was a Russian water polo player, during one of the most highly charged battles in Olympic history.
It was only a matter of weeks since Soviet tanks and troops had rolled into the Hungarian capital Budapest - brutally crushing an anti-Soviet uprising.
Hundreds of Hungarians had been killed, thousands more arrested.
But at the height of the crackdown, the country's water polo team had been cut off from the news at a training camp in Czechoslovakia.
They only found out the extent of the violence when they finally arrived in Australia.
Ervin Zador remembers how the only English-speaker on the team bought a local paper at the airport in Darwin and read the news to them.
"He said that the Russians came back, bombed Budapest and the revolution was over, reprisals and all - and that's when I said, 'OK that's it, I'm not going home.'"
 
''The game plan''
The Hungarian team won their first matches at the Melbourne Olympics easily.
 They met the Russian team in the semi-final on 6 December 1956.
Ervin Zador says their game plan revolved around "verbally agitating" the Russian players.
"We figured, if they get angry, they'll start to fight.
"Once they fight, they won't play well. If they don't play well, we'll beat them - and if we beat them, we'll win the Olympics!"
For the Hungarians, all educated in the Soviet system, being rude in Russian was not hard.
"From the age of 10, I took more Russian than Hungarian. So you can imagine, by the age of 21, I had enough Russian to do anything - it was verbal on our end, hoping that they would react physically."

Throughout the match there was kicking and punching from both sides.
 
''Bloody battle''
Five players were ordered out of the pool by the referee.
But the Hungarians were the better team. By the fourth quarter they were 4-0 ahead.

Ervin Zador had scored two of the goals. But with only a couple of minutes left in the match, one of his teammates asked him to mark an angry Russian player, Valentin Prokopov.

It was Prokopov who hit Zador in the eye, just moments before the final whistle.
"I saw about 4,000 stars. And I reached to my face and I felt warm blood pouring down.
"And I instantly said, 'Oh my God, I won't be able to play the next game.'"
As Ervin Zador climbed out of the pool with blood streaming from his head, the crowd went wild.
Spectators and Hungarian officials jumped the barrier and rushed towards the Russian team.
The Australian police had to escort them from the swimming pool. Journalists and photographers crowded round the injured player.
 
''Medals'' 
The Hungarians won the Olympic final 2-1 against Yugoslavia.

But Ervin Zador, the star player, had to sit it out by the side of the pool.

"I sat through it and that was the hardest one hour of my life."
He rejoined his team-mates for the medal ceremony, but says it was a very difficult moment.
"I wanted to cry but I couldn't. After five years training, I needed to achieve this goal, and finally I did it.
But it was in this weird circumstance that I couldn't play the last game, and I was on the podium in civilian clothes. It was very emotional."
After the Olympics were over, Ervin Zador did not return to Hungary.
He moved to the United States and settled in Northern California, becoming a businessman and swimming coach.
He trained a teenage Mark Spitz, the US Olympic swimming legend from the 1960s and 70s, and still coaches young swimmers today.

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Moscow coup 1991: With Boris Yeltsin on the tank

Two men who stood shoulder to shoulder with Boris Yeltsin to defy the attempted hardline coup in Moscow in 1991 look back on the critical hours when Russian democracy was saved - and share their disappointment with the society that has emerged.

It is one of the abiding images of modern Russian history, the famous picture of Boris Yeltsin speaking on a tank outside the parliament in Moscow on 19 August 1991.
It was a moment when the future of the Soviet Union hung in the balance.
That morning a group of communist hardliners had staged a coup against Mikhail Gorbachev's reforms. The Soviet leader was trapped in Crimea, and troops and tanks were on the streets of Moscow.

It seemed like the era of glasnost and perestroika was at an end.
But a determined group of democrats had gathered at the Russian parliament, which became the rallying point over the next three days. It is an imposing building on a bend in the Moscow River, and that August it became known as the "White House."
Boris Yeltsin, the new President of the Russian Soviet Socialist Federal Republic, was about to have his finest hour.
Moral dilemma

Also in the White House that morning was Mikhail Arutyunov. He is a scientist who had developed an interest in human rights in the 1980s. Like many people in those heady years he had then somehow fallen into politics, and was now a deputy in the Russian parliament.

Mikhail Arutyunov

Mikhail Arutyunov is quiet but steely, with an uncompromising view of right and wrong, and to this day he still looks like a slightly scatty professor.

"I was near Yeltsin in the White House that morning," he remembers. "He decided to go out and meet the tanks. He beckoned to me and said "Let's go!", and we went down. He climbed up onto a tank and he made the famous speech."
Although it was unclear to many at the time how things were going to turn out he insists that fear was not a factor that morning.
"We weren't afraid. We were certain that we were going to win - that we were right and we were going to win."
In the photographs and television pictures from the day Mikhail Arutyunov can be seen standing on the tank behind Boris Yeltsin looking slightly bemused, one of a motley collection of bodyguards, politicians and protesters who dared to believe they could beat the system that had run Russia since 1917.
At that moment one of the commanders of the same squadron of tanks was wrestling with the kind of moral dilemma that no military officer ever wants to face - whether to obey his orders, or go against them and do what he believed to be right.
Sergey Yevdokimov had been woken at his barracks soon after midnight, and was ordered to lead his tanks into Moscow. Unaware of exactly what was going on, he nonetheless made himself a secret promise as he rolled down the wide avenue into the capital to hurt no-one.
He parked his tanks on the river just across from the White House, and was then ordered to drive them over the bridge and position them outside the parliament itself.
Once there he struck up a conversation with one of the demonstrators, a businessman called Sergey Bratchikov.
"He scrambled up on to my tank and asked me this question. 'Are you going to shoot at us? Or maybe you'd rather come over to our side and start defending the parliament?'"
Anger Sergey Yevdokimov was worried that the businessman might be from the KGB, but was persuaded to go into the White House and talk to some of the senior deputies inside.
When he came down he ordered his men to encircle the parliament, and turn their tanks round so that the guns were pointing out, away from the building and towards any potential attack.
The coup took two more days to peter out, but it was those dramatic gestures on the first day that took the wind out of the sails of the hardliners.

Sergey Yevdokimov

After the Soviet Union split up Boris Yeltsin went on to become the president of the new Russian Federation.

Mikhail Arutyunov only stayed in politics for a few more years after 1991. He strongly opposed the first Chechen War, and became utterly disillusioned with the new Russia he had helped to build. He watched, helpless, as oligarchs and corrupt officials replaced Communist Party members as the country's new elite.
"What we have ended up with is what we were fighting against at the time," he says. "The population is separating into the extremely poor and the extremely rich. Unfortunately our people have always been very passive except at critical moments."
He predicts that Russia's days of revolution are not yet over, "I think that what is happening now will eventually lead to another wave of anger."
The tank commander, Sergey Yevdokimov, left the army just as Russia's financial crisis of the 1990s started to bite. Over the next few years he worked his way through a series of low-paid, dead-end security jobs, just managing to keep his head above water.
He has watched the country that he helped give birth to become immeasurably richer on the back of economic liberalisation and high prices for oil and commodities. But he has also seen the ideals that he risked everything for become slowly eroded.
Twenty years on Russia is a democracy of sorts, but the system is deeply flawed, unaccountable and corrupt.
"What I was hoping for back in 1991 didn't ever quite materialise. And that's a shame," he says.
"But life is much better now than it was in the Soviet Union. It's not quite what we expected, but it is better."

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Pope in Madrid: Opinion divided over pontiff's visit

The Pope's visit is the highlight of a giant Catholic youth festival

Pope Benedict XVI is in the Spanish capital, Madrid, for four days of events expected to be attended by hundreds of thousands of people.

On Wednesday night there were clashes between police and protesters demonstrating against the cost of the event.
Here, four people in Madrid share their contrasting views on the pontiff's visit.

Alicia Lopez, 32, unemployed, Madrid

I joined the demonstration against the Pope's visit. The main issue is the cost of the visit, especially at a time when the government is slashing social spending.

Where is all the money coming from? I don't believe all the money has been raised privately. And they've opened up state facilities for use by the Church - for example schools for pilgrims to sleep in.

I'm also against the prominence this has given to the Catholic Church. One Church has taken over the whole city. Spain is a non-confessional state, there is no official religion in this country and we should not give so much support to the Catholic Church.
I witnessed confrontation between protesters and pilgrims - but from what I saw it was the pilgrims who were doing the provoking.
The path of the demonstration took us through the central Sol Square but when we came to it there were pilgrims there. They shouted slogans such as "This square belongs to the Pope" and "This is the youth of Pope" and "This is the youth of Spain".
The police moved them from Sol, but many remained on the roads leading to the central square. Some of the pilgrims continued to shout slogans, which provoked protesters to shout back.
As I left the protest with my placard calling for a secular state, a middle-aged woman shouted at me saying I was the shame of Spain.

Eva Moreno, 38, lawyer, Madrid

I think it's great that the leader of the Catholic Church has come to our Catholic country.

Eva Moreno

It's a great moment to remember the core values of the Church like charity and justice.

I feel really excited about the visit - I feel young again - and I plan to go to the main events.
There are some who are protesting against the visit - but they are small in number compared to those who have come to see the Pope.
And I would say to the protesters that we, as Catholics, have the right to express our opinion and our support for the Pope.
After all, we allow supporters of Real Madrid to fill the streets. Those who protest should be tolerant of our opinion.
I think it is false to say that this visit is costing the taxpayer as the visit is being paid for by pilgrims and sponsors.

Ana Munoz, 20, student, Madrid and London

Ana Munoz

I don't see how a million extra tourists in Spain could be in any way an economic burden for the central and regional governments. It's putting Spain in the spotlight - and this time not because of our poor economic situation or unemployment rate.

I was in town when the protests were happening - and from what I saw the focus was on religion, rather than the cost of the visit.
Most of the placards I saw were against the Pope or Christian beliefs. People were shouting harsh things at the pilgrims, referring to the Pope as a "Nazi". They were also flying communist and Republican flags.
I saw two gay men trying to provoke a priest by kissing and taunting him.
I am an atheist but I expect people to respect those with faith. By tradition and by majority, Spain is Catholic. A lot of our culture is based on religion.
In a way it is not surprising. I feel that the youth movements such as the indignants have been radicalised by those with anti-religious feelings.
The Socialist Party, which has been in the government for the past seven years, has had a very clear anti-Christian agenda.
This has created an even wider division in society as we are told to negate our religious culture and tradition for the sake of "modernity".

Carmen Valache, 27, market analyst, Madrid

I am a resident of Madrid and I don't like what is going on at all.

Carmen Valache

Religious convictions and choices aside, Madrid city hall decided to spend taxpayers' money at a time of economic crisis on organising festivities for pilgrims from outside Madrid.

Yes, I know they say that the money is being raised privately - but I find it hard to believe.
The money could be put to better use - such as finding ways to create jobs.
Most residents of Madrid are actually away on holiday this time of year, so they don't even get to enjoy the Pope's visit.
The flood of pilgrims has affected a normally tranquil Madrid in August. Large parts of central Madrid have been closed off. Cafes and bars are packed.
Public transportation can barely cope with the excess of people.
On Tuesday I found myself in the middle of a Mass - and I was stuck in a crowd of people for an hour and a half.
The Pope's visit does seem to have increased tensions between liberals and conservatives here. Especially as the governing Socialists may lose out to the conservative PP party at the general election in November.

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Israel strikes Gaza after Palestinian rockets in Ashdod

The BBC's Jeremy Bowen: "Everything is quite fragile here right now"

An Israeli air strike on Gaza on Friday night killed at least two Palestinians as Israel responded to Palestinian rockets which injured several people in the Israeli town of Ashdod.

Palestinian militants in Gaza fired 12 rockets at southern Israel on Friday.
Israel has launched a series of air strikes on Gaza, targeting those it blamed for an attack on Thursday in which eight Israelis died.
At least nine Palestinians have now been killed since the violence flared.
One of those hurt in Ashdod was seriously injured, Israeli officials said.
Meanwhile Egypt has formally complained to Israel over the deaths of five of its policemen who Cairo says were caught up in Thursday's shooting.
Reporting on the rocket attacks, Israeli media said rockets were fired at Ashkelon, Beersheva, Kiryat Gat and Ashdod on Friday morning.
Most landed in open ground, causing no damage or injuries, but one landed in the grounds of a religious seminary, or yeshiva, seriously wounding one person.
Another hit an industrial park on the outskirts of Ashdod, injuring six, Haaretz newspaper reported, while the rocket aimed at Ashkelon was shot down by Israel's new Iron Dome missile defence system.
 

Vehicles attacked
   Palestinian sources told the BBC that five members of the Popular Resistance Committees (PRC) - which is loyal to Hamas but sometimes operates separately - were killed in the Israeli strikes overnight, including the group's head, Kamal al-Nairab, and military chief Immad Hammad.
Hamas said two children had also been killed.
Israel said it carried out the air strikes in response to a series of attacks near Eilat on Thursday in which gunmen opened fire on several vehicles and detonated a bomb on one bus.

Six civilians and two security personnel were killed, said Israel, while seven Palestinian gunmen were killed in gun battles with the military.

The PRC and Hamas, which governs Gaza, have denied responsibility.
But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the overnight air strikes had killed those responsible.
A spokesman for Israel's domestic security agency, Shin Bet, said several of those who died in the air strikes had been involved in the 2006 kidnapping of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.
Hamas said it would retaliate if Israel attacked.
Desert security On Friday, Egypt filed a formal complaint to Israel over the deaths of five of its policemen close to the border. Three were killed by gunfire on Thursday and two died of their wounds on Friday, said officials.

"Egypt has demanded an urgent probe into the circumstances of the deaths and injuries of Egyptian forces' members inside our borders," the Mena news agency quoted a military official as saying.
The US, the EU and the UN have all condemned the Eilat attacks, while a UN spokesman said Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon was "concerned at the risk of escalation and calls for all to act with restraint".
Israeli officials said the men who attacked the vehicles near Eilat came from the Gaza Strip and had entered Israel through Egypt's Sinai desert.
BBC Middle East editor Jeremy Bowen, in Jerusalem, says the desert region has become increasingly lawless since the Egyptian revolution that ousted President Hosni Mubarak, with a rise in al-Qaeda-inspired militant activity.
However, given the substantial distance between the Sinai desert and Gaza, it is unclear why Israel is so certain the attackers were Gazans, says our correspondent.

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Norway attacks: Breivik bereaved visit Utoeya island

Psychologist Atle Dyregrov: ''For the families to go is important for many reasons''

Family members and friends of Norwegians killed by a gunman last month have been visiting Utoeya island, the scene of the massacre.

The visit came as police were granted a request to keep the man who admitted to the killings, Anders Behring Breivik, in solitary confinement, as they continue their investigation.
Sunday will mark the end of a month of mourning for the 77 people who died.
A national memorial service will be held at an Oslo arena.
Some 1,500 survivors, relatives and close friends of the victims were expected to visit Utoeya island, where 69 people were gunned down, on Friday and Saturday.
Some 500 arrived in a light rain on the island on Friday.
They were to hear from investigators exactly where their loved ones died, and psychologists and clergymen would be on hand to offer support, officials said.
"Going to the island helps them make sense of what happened, it helps to make it real, because up until then it can feel very unreal," psychologist Atle Dyregrov, who has organised much of the professional help for victims and relatives, told Reuters news agency.
"Seeing the facts is often less scary than the fantasies they have. The fantasy can eat you inside - it helps to see what it looks like."
 
''Phone transcripts''
Meanwhile, a Norwegian court has granted a police investigator's request to extend Mr Breivik's confinement in isolation, as a four-week limit loomed on Monday.
It means the 32-year-old right-wing extremist has no access to television, newspapers or the internet.

Judge Hugo Abelseth acknowledged that Mr Breivik had described his isolation as "boring and monotonous, and as a sadistic torture method", but said he must nonetheless spend at least four more weeks there, reported AP news agency.
The judge said the next hearing would be on 19 September.
Police also released phone transcripts of two calls made by Mr Breivik as he carried out the Utoeya shootings - the first made 26 minutes before he was arrested, with an apparent view to handing himself in.
In this call, made at 18:01 on 22 July, Mr Breivik says: "I am on Utoeya. I want to hand myself in."
Local police chief Sissel Hammer said the police had tried to call back, but that no-one had answered.
At that time, two armed officers were already across the shore from Utoeya, but were unable to find a boat to take them across. Police elsewhere were scrambling to cope with the Oslo bombing.
Mr Breivik called again one minute before being captured, and asked to be transferred to the commander of the anti-terror police unit.
"I am a commander in the Norwegian resistance movement," the transcript records him as saying. "I have fulfilled my operation, so I want to... surrender."
Mr Breivik's lawyer has previously stated that his client attempted to contact police several times during his killing spree, but that only two calls were answered - and that with no satisfactory response from the police, he continued shooting.
The police say they can neither confirm nor deny this.
The final funeral for a victim - for 16-year-old Elisabeth Troennes Lie - was held on Thursday after a delay so her 17-year-old sister, who was seriously wounded in the shooting, could take part, AFP news agency reported.
As well as the 69 victims on Utoeya, Mr Breivik is also charged with the deaths of eight in a bombing in central Oslo.
He admits to the killings but denies criminal responsibility, saying he believes the massacre was "necessary" to save Norway and Europe from Muslims and multiculturalism.
Along with those killed in the attacks, 151 people were injured, 62 of them on Utoeya and 89 in Oslo, according to Norwegian public radio.

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One giant step to EU fiscal union

Watching the French president and the German chancellor in Paris yesterday I tried to imagine myself a Dutch or Italian voter. Here, in the middle of August, the two leaders of the eurozone's most powerful countries had interrupted their August with an elected president. Fiscal union - the coordination of tax and spending - has not yet arrived but it has moved a giant step closer.
Sure it was just a proposal but there was plenty of detail. This new government, according to President Nicolas Sarkozy, "will be made up of heads of state and government that will meet twice a year and more often if necessary. It will elect a stable president for two and a half years." The eurozone and the EU can still give the appearance that it is a Franco-German enterprise.
The Paris summit was intended to send a signal that these two leaders recognise that if the single currency is to work it will require closer economic integration. That is surely true but these changes will involve countries surrendering sovereignty and it will be interesting to see whether voters will be consulted.
The Austrians quickly indicated they were not prepared to relinquish completely their ability to set economic policy for the sake of closer integration. "The agreement is very, very far away - I don't see it yet," said Maria Fekter, the finance minister.
Chancellor Angela Merkel and President Sarkozy want all eurozone nations to enact constitutional amendments requiring balanced budgets by the summer of 2012. The Germans have insisted on this. The French were far less keen. And there may well be protracted arguments in various national parliaments over this. Agreement by next year seems ambitious.
This meeting at the Elysee palace, however, had little to say about the present crisis. The markets are focused on high debt, low growth and a fragile banking system. Investors want to know what happens if a major eurozone country like Italy struggles to finance its debt.
The current bailout fund - the EFSF - is backed with 440bn euros (£387bn; $634bn). It would not be adequate to rescue large countries like Spain and Italy if they ran into trouble. The two leaders chose not to increase the fund's size. And that reflects a new reality. Growth in Germany is slowing. It has stalled in France. They cannot further commit to underwriting other countries without putting their own economies at risk.
 
'Poison bill' bonds
       President Sarkozy and Chancellor Merkel also turned their backs on eurobonds for the time being. Many see  because the debt of all countries would become common European debt with countries like Germany acting as guarantor. A single bond would have allowed weaker economies to borrow on the same basis as France and Germany which would mean lower borrowing costs.
President Sarkozy said: "Eurobonds can be imagined one day but at the end of the European integration process, not at the beginning."
Chancellor Merkel was far more cautious. Key members of her coalition have made it clear their outright opposition to eurobonds. The coalition could even break up over the issue. Deutsche Bank has called eurobonds "poison pills". The fear is that they would encourage fiscal back-sliding, leaving Germany to bank-roll other European countries with very different economic cultures.
There is another factor to this. Sentiment in Europe seems to be turning against providing further guarantees or bailouts. A poll published yesterday suggests 59% of Germans are against further bailouts, 47% of the French do not agree with more rescues and in Britain - which is not part of the eurozone - the figure rises to 65%.
Another idea was floated at the Elysee: a tax on financial transactions. It is an old idea but difficult to implement unless it is on a G20 basis. Potentially it could raise a lot of money. Its attraction to the French and German leaders is that it signals a commitment to bind economies closer together. They also propose harmonising their corporate taxes. Again it is all about showing that France and Germany are prepared to work together to protect the euro.
But fierce resistance will lie ahead, particularly from financial institutions which are lined up to take a hit on their lending to Greece. The City of London, which is Europe's main financial centre, will be particularly wary. Ireland will insist that any new financial transaction tax applies to all 27 members of the European Union. The UK will oppose this.
What was on offer yesterday was a long-term political plan intended to show closer integration of the eurozone. What it did not do was to address the current debt crisis that so unnerves investors.

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