UNITED STATES
Prince Andrew to settle
Britain’s Prince Andrew, accused in a lawsuit of sexually abusing a then-17-year-old girl supplied to him by financier Jeffrey Epstein, has agreed to settle by making a donation to his accuser’s charity and declaring that he never meant to malign her character, a court filing showed on Tuesday. The deal avoids a trial. Besides the undisclosed donation to Virginia Giuffre’s charity, it says that Andrew acknowledges she has suffered as an abuse victim. It did not specify whether Giuffre would personally receive money as part of the settlement. Judge Lewis Kaplan said he would suspend the case until March 17, when he might set a trial date if the lawyers do not ask for a dismissal by then.
UNITED STATES
Priest gets blessing wrong
Thousands of Catholics might have to be rebaptized after the church discovered that a priest had gotten one word wrong in the blessing for decades, invalidating the rite. For 26 years, Father Andres Arango had been performing the first sacrament of Catholic life with the words: “We baptize you,” instead of “I baptize you,” which is what the Vatican stipulates. “It is not the community that baptizes a person and incorporates them into the Church of Christ; rather, it is Christ, and Christ alone, who presides at all sacraments; therefore, it is Christ who baptizes,” Bishop of Phoenix Thomas Olmsted said. Arango’s error was identified in the middle of last year, a quarter of a century after he began working as a priest, diocese spokeswoman Katie Burke told reporters on Tuesday. “Father Arango was using the incorrect words from the beginning of his priesthood until it was brought to the attention of the diocese last summer,” she said. “I do not have an exact number of people baptized between 1995 and 2021, but I believe they number in the thousands.” Since the mistake came to light, Arango has quit his regular job “to dedicate his full time ministry to helping and healing the people who were affected by this mistake,” Burke said. “The diocese is working closely with Father Arango and the parishes at which he was previously assigned to notify and make arrangements to baptize anyone who may have been baptized invalidly.” A Web site has been set up to answer questions from worried parishioners, including: “Does this affect my marriage?” and: “Do I need to go to confession?”
BRAZIL
Flooding, landslides kill 18
Landslides and flooding triggered by heavy rainfall killed at least 18 people in a tourist town in the hills above Rio de Janeiro, firefighters said on Tuesday. “So far, 18 deaths caused by landslides and floods have been confirmed,” the Rio de Janeiro Fire Department said in a statement. More than 180 firefighters and other rescue workers were at the scene in the hill town of Petropolis, the statement said.
MEXICO
Migrants sew mouths shut
A dozen undocumented migrants on Mexico’s southern border on Tuesday sewed their mouths shut in a bid to convince the country’s immigration authority to grant them passage toward the US border. The migrants helped each other seal their lips using needles and plastic thread, leaving a small space to consume liquids and using alcohol to wipe away drops of blood from the stitches, images showed. “We hope that the National Migration Institute can see that they are bleeding, that they are human beings,” said Irineo Mujica, a rights advocate at the demonstration.
CONDITIONS: The Russian president said a deal that was scuppered by ‘elites’ in the US and Europe should be revived, as Ukraine was generally satisfied with it Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday said that he was ready for talks with Ukraine, after having previously rebuffed the idea of negotiations while Kyiv’s offensive into the Kursk region was ongoing. Ukraine last month launched a cross-border incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, sending thousands of troops across the border and seizing several villages. Putin said shortly after there could be no talk of negotiations. Speaking at a question and answer session at Russia’s Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, Putin said that Russia was ready for talks, but on the basis of an aborted deal between Moscow’s and Kyiv’s negotiators reached in Istanbul, Turkey,
In months, Lo Yuet-ping would bid farewell to a centuries-old village he has called home in Hong Kong for more than seven decades. The Cha Kwo Ling village in east Kowloon is filled with small houses built from metal sheets and stones, as well as old granite buildings, contrasting sharply with the high-rise structures that dominate much of the Asian financial hub. Lo, 72, has spent his entire life here and is among an estimated 860 households required to move under a government redevelopment plan. He said he would miss the rich history, unique culture and warm interpersonal kindness that defined life in
AERIAL INCURSIONS: The incidents are a reminder that Russia’s aggressive actions go beyond Ukraine’s borders, Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha said Two NATO members on Sunday said that Russian drones violated their airspace, as one reportedly flew into Romania during nighttime attacks on neighboring Ukraine, while another crashed in eastern Latvia the previous day. A drone entered Romanian territory early on Sunday as Moscow struck “civilian targets and port infrastructure” across the Danube in Ukraine, the Romanian Ministry of National Defense said. It added that Bucharest had deployed F-16 warplanes to monitor its airspace and issued text alerts to residents of two eastern regions. It also said investigations were underway of a potential “impact zone” in an uninhabited area along the Romanian-Ukrainian border. There
A French woman whose husband has admitted to enlisting dozens of strangers to rape her while she was drugged on Thursday told his trial that police had saved her life by uncovering the crimes. “The police saved my life by investigating Mister Pelicot’s computer,” Gisele Pelicot told the court in the southern city of Avignon, referring to her husband — one of 51 of her alleged abusers on trial — by only his surname. Speaking for the first time since the extraordinary trial began on Monday, Gisele Pelicot, now 71, revealed her emotion in almost 90 minutes of testimony, recounting her mysterious
RSS