Pope Benedict bids farewell

 

VATICAN CITY: Pope Benedict XVI yesterday admitted “stormy waters” during his papacy as he gave an emotional farewell at St Peter’s Square before tens of thousands of pilgrims on the eve of his momentous resignation. A smiling Benedict looked relaxed as his white “popemobile” bore him through the famous plaza where more than 150,000 people had gathered under a bright, cloudless sky for his historic sendoff. A hush fell over the sea of pilgrims as the Pope began speaking.  “The Lord gave us days of sun and of light breeze, days in which the fishing was good. There were also moments when there were stormy waters and headwinds... as if God was sleeping,” the Pope said in an apparent reference to the multiple scandals that have plagued his reign. “But I always knew that God was in that boat and I always knew that the boat of the Church is not mine, is not ours, but is his and he will not let it sink,” the leader of the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics told the cheering crowd. “I never felt alone,” he said. 
 

 

LONDON: British Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg admitted yesterday that “very serious mistakes” were made over a sex scandal which has rocked his Liberal Democrat party ahead of a crucial by-election. Clegg repeated his insistence that he was unaware of allegations of sexual harassment by several female party workers against former Lib Dem chief executive Lord Chris Rennard until they emerged last week. But he conceded that rumours about the behaviour of Rennard — who strongly denies groping the women — had been “in the background” of the peer’s resignation due to ill-health in 2009. The Lib Dems, the junior coalition partners in Prime Minister David Cameron’s Conservative-led government, have launched two internal inquiries into the allegations.
 

 

MOSCOW: Vladimir Putin ordered military leaders yesterday to make urgent improvements to the armed forces during his new presidential term, saying Russia must thwart attempts by the West to tip the strategic balance of power. Putin’s remarks, to rows of uniformed officers and defence officials, reflected increasing hawkishness since he returned to the Kremlin for a six-year term last May. “Attempts are being made to tip the strategic balance,” said Putin, who as president is commander-in-chief of the armed forces. “Geopolitical dynamics call for a quick and considered response ... Russia’s armed forces must move on to a new level of capabilities in the next three to five years.” Putin has been the driving force behind plans to spend $750bn through 2020 to upgrade Russia’s ageing armaments.
 

 

PARIS: French resistance hero and Holocaust survivor Stephane Hessel (pictured), whose 2010 manifesto Time for Outrage sold millions of copies and inspired protest movements worldwide, has died at the age of 95, his wife said yesterday. Hessel joined Charles de Gaulle in exile during World War II, was waterboarded by the Nazis, escaped hanging in concentration camps and took part in drafting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948.  Tributes poured in for Hessel, with French President Francois Hollande praising “the exceptional life” of a man he said was a symbol of human dignity and the United Nations celebrating a “monument” in the history of human rights. Time for Outrage, his 32-page essay that sold more than 4.5 million copies in 35 countries, provoked the “Occupy Wall Street” movement which began in New York’s financial district and spread to other countries. Hessel served as a diplomat in Vietnam and Algeria and had been made ambassador for life. 
 

 

LONDON: Britain is set to cull up to 5,000 badgers in a bid to combat tuberculosis in cattle which has outraged animal welfare groups, after two pilot schemes were given the green light yesterday. The culls will see 70 percent of the black and white animals killed in two areas of southwest England — Gloucestershire and west Somerset — after the Natural England government agency approved the pilots. Ministers say culls are needed as bovine TB, which spreads from badgers to livestock, costs farmers and the taxpayer millions of pounds every year. “Bovine TB is spreading at an alarming rate and causing real devastation to our beef and dairy industry,” Environment Secretary Owen Paterson told a conference of Britain’s National Farmers’ Union. 
 

 

MASERU: Britain’s Prince Harry visited his charity projects in Lesotho yesterday, finding time to perform traditional dance moves with children during his return visit to the southern African kingdom. On the last day of a three-day tour, the 28-year-old stopped by schools for deaf and blind children in and around the capital Maseru. He watched fascinated as students at St Bernadette’s Resource Centre for the Blind played a football match unassisted, and chatted with pupils afterwards. “What do you want to be when you grow up?” he asked a boy dressed in the school’s khaki-coloured uniform. “A soldier,” he replied in Sesotho, the local language. “I’m a soldier myself. I’ll tell you what that is like next time,” said Harry, who returned in January from a five-month tour in Afghanistan as army helicopter gunner. 

Agencies