Hundreds of thousands join Pope Francis at canonization of Sri Lanka"s first saint

Jan. 14, 2015: A devotee stretches out his hand to touch the hand of Pope Francis as he arrives to hold a mass at Colombo’s seafront Galle Face Green for the canonization ceremony of Joseph Vaz. (AP Photo/Saurabh Das)

Pope Francis waves to the crowd as he arrives to hold a mass at Colombo’s seafront Galle Face Green for the canonization ceremony of Joseph Vaz, Wednesday, Jan. 14, 2015. Francis declared Vaz a saint at the start of the service. The church considers Vaz a great model for today’s faithful, ministering to the faithful of both Sri Lanka’s ethnic groups and putting himself at great risk to spread the faith. (AP Photo/Saurabh Das) (The Associated Press) Members of the audience listen to Pope Francis holding a mass at Colombo’s seafront Galle Face Green for the canonization ceremony of Joseph Vaz, Wednesday, Jan. 14, 2015. Francis declared Vaz a saint at the start of the service. The church considers Vaz a great model for today’s faithful, ministering to the faithful of both Sri Lanka’s ethnic groups and putting himself at great risk to spread the faith. (AP Photo/Saurabh Das) (The Associated Press) A Sri Lankan Catholic devotee reads a newspaper carrying portraits of Pope Francis as she waits for his arrival at the church premise of Our Lady of Madhu in Madhu, northern Sri Lanka, Wednesday, Jan. 14, 2015. The visit is the first by a pope to the northern Tamil territory that was devastated by Sri Lanka’s 25-year civil war, which erupted in 1983 with Tamil demands for an independent homeland because of perceived discrimination by the Sinhalese majority. (AP Photo/Eranga Jayawardena) (The Associated Press)

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka –  Pope Francis pressed his call for Sri Lankan reconciliation Wednesday by canonizing the country’s first saint as a model for national unity and visiting the war-ravaged north to pray at a shrine revered by both Sinhalese and Tamil faithful.

More than a half-million people packed the capital’s seafront park for the Mass, with some spending the night under the stars to ensure a good spot. Seemingly rested after a grueling first day of his Asian tour, Francis arrived well ahead of time to greet the crowd, getting off his popemobile to kiss the sick and handicapped.

Bells rang out and the crowd erupted in applause when Francis declared the Rev. Joseph Vaz a saint at the start of the service. Vaz was a 17th century Indian missionary who revived the faith in Sri Lanka during a time of anti-Catholic persecution by Dutch colonists, who were Protestant Calvinists.

The Catholic Church considers Vaz a great model for today’s faithful, ministering to the faithful of both of Sri Lanka’s main ethnic groups and putting himself at great risk to spread the faith.

Francis told the crowd that Vaz lived at a time — like today — when Catholics were a minority and often persecuted, and yet he ministered to all, regardless of their ethnic or religious background.

“St. Joseph shows us the importance of transcending religious divisions in the service of peace,” Francis said in his homily, delivered in English and then translated for the crowd in both Sinhalese and Tamil. “As the life of St. Joseph Vaz teaches us, genuine worship of God bears fruit not in discrimination, hatred and violence, but in respect for the sacredness of life, respect for the dignity and freedom of others, and loving commitment to the welfare of all.”

He said the Sri Lankan church today only wants to continue Vaz’s legacy of service to all, asking only for the freedom to preach in return. “Religious freedom is a fundamental human right,” he said.

To underscore that point, Francis gave Sri Lanka’s bishops a replica of a 17th century decree from the then-king of Kandy allowing Catholic conversions of Buddhists — a somewhat provocative message given the recent upswing in violence against Muslims and some Protestant churches by Buddhist extremists who want Sri Lanka exclusively Buddhist.

After Mass, Francis was heading by helicopter to the northern city of Madhu to pray at the Our Lady of Madhu shrine, a Catholic pilgrimage site that is a destination for people of other faiths as well. The visit is the first by a pope to the northern Tamil territory that was devastated by Sri Lanka’s 25-year civil war, which erupted with Tamil demands for an independent homeland because of perceived discrimination by the Sinhalese majority.

Francis is expected to call again for reconciliation between Sinhalese and Tamils, and people of different faiths, to overcome the wounds of the war.

Upon his arrival in Sri Lanka on Tuesday, Francis called for reconciliation but also for the truth to come about injustices committed during the conflict, which ended in 2009 with the army’s violent crushing of the Tamil Tiger rebels.

Catholics make up slightly more than 6 percent of Sri Lanka’s population of 21 million. They are by far the largest Christian denomination in the country, but are a distinct minority compared to Buddhists, who make up about 70 percent, with Hindus comprising 13 percent. Muslims make up about 10 percent of the population.

Most Sinhalese are Buddhist and most Tamils Hindu, but the Catholic Church counts both ethnic groups as its members, and as a result considers itself a source of unity for the country.

Wednesday morning’s Mass drew people from across the teardrop-shaped Indian Ocean island nation, eager to see the first visiting pope since St. John Paul II in 1995. In fact, it was during that brief visit that John Paul beatified Vaz, using the same altar that Francis used Wednesday to make Vaz a saint.

The crowds poured off buses and out into the street from the nearby railway station. Security was tight, and everyone had to walk the last few hundred meters (yards) to the Galle Face Green, but the atmosphere was festive and ordered. Taxi drivers handed out free cups of tea and the crowd was treated to traditional dancing and music.

The park has a capacity of 500,000 and the Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said the crowd more than surpassed the half-million mark.

“My son can’t understand what’s going on, but I will take photographs and show him when he grows up how he attended this Holy Mass,” Pradeep Niroshan, a 31-year-old insurance agent, said as he carried his 2-year-old son to the service. “It will be memorable for him, because the next pope to come to Sri Lanka may be after 20 years.”

On Thursday, Francis flies to the Philippines for the second and final leg of his Asian pilgrimage.

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Hundreds of thousands join Pope Francis at canonization of Sri Lanka"s first saint

Top Gear crew "chased by thousands"

4 October 2014 Last updated at 10:50 Lizo Mzimba reports on the controversy surrounding the licence plate

Top Gear presenter Jeremy Clarkson has claimed he was thrown out of Argentina by state officials after being pelted with rocks.

He said in a tweet that “thousands” of locals rounded on the Top Gear team in apparent protest at a number plate which appeared to refer to the 1982 Falklands war.

A Porsche used in filming had a registration plate that read H982 FKL.

Clarkson and team had been filming in South America for a Top Gear special.

On his return to the UK Clarkson tweeted: “The number plate WAS a coincidence. When it was pointed out to us, we changed it.

“Thousands chased crew to border. Someone could have been killed.”

He added: “This was not a jolly jape that went awry. For once, we did nothing wrong.”

Clarkson told the Sun newspaper, for which he writes a regular column: “We knew absolutely nothing about the number plate, it was just an unbelievable coincidence. I swear on my kids’ lives.

“When we saw people on Twitter getting upset we took the plate off. But they still attacked us so we made a break for it to our hotel in Ushuaia.

“The mob just descended on the hotel and encircled us. State representatives came and ordered us out of the country.”

Vehicles carrying Top Gear production crew were also targeted

He added: “I’ve been to Iraq and Afghanistan but this was the most terrifying thing I’ve ever been involved in.

“There were hundreds of them. They were hurling rocks and bricks at our cars. They were trying to attack us with pickaxe handles.

“They were shouting. ‘Burn their cars, burn them, burn the pirates’. I am convinced the mob was state organised.”

In a tweet, he said the programme’s crew “abandoned our cars as they thought they might be what was making people angry”.

The BBC confirmed the show’s decision to leave, but denied the offending car was chosen for its number plate.

Andy Wilman, executive producer for Top Gear, said on Thursday: “Top Gear production purchased three cars for a forthcoming programme; to suggest that this car was either chosen for its number plate, or that an alternative number plate was substituted for the original is completely untrue.”

The team departed three days early after being denied permission to film by local authorities.

Clarkson flew into the country last month to film a special which saw him and co-stars Richard Hammond and James May drive the famous Patagonian highway – Route 40 – to the southern city of Ushuaia.

A BBC spokesman said: “We’re pleased the team is safe and would like to thank all of those who have helped. As the executive producer has made clear, the number plate issue is a very unfortunate coincidence.”

Final warning

It is not the first time the show has met with controversy. In July Ofcom ruled that Top Gear had breached broadcasting rules after Jeremy Clarkson used a racial slur during a programme in Burma.

A 2011 episode caused a diplomatic incident in Mexico.

James May, Richard Hammond and Jeremy Clarkson are no strangers to controversy

Co-host Richard Hammond said Mexican cars reflected national characteristics – saying they were like a “lazy, feckless, flatulent oaf with a moustache, leaning against a fence asleep, looking at a cactus with a blanket with a hole in the middle on as a coat”.

In May this year, the BBC faced calls to fire Clarkson after leaked footage showed him mumbling an offensive version of the nursery rhyme Eeny, Meeny, Miny, Moe in a clip that was not broadcast.

Clarkson revealed he had been given a final warning and would be sacked if he made “one more offensive remark, anywhere, at any time”.

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Top Gear crew "chased by thousands"

Thousands of pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong undeterred by tear gas, barricades - VIDEO: Hong Kong protests for democracy

HONG KONG –  Hong Kong’s police on Monday defended their use of tear gas and other tactics to control protests that have paralyzed the city’s financial district, appealing to the thousands gathered to demand more democracy to stop the unprecedented mass act of civil disobedience for the sake of safety and stability.

The employment of tear gas appeared to have backfired, judging from the growing crowds Monday as people finished work and joined weary-looking students camped on major roads near the city’s government headquarters and in several other parts of Hong Kong.

“The students are protecting the right to vote, for Hong Kong’s future. We are not scared, we are not frightened, we just fight for it,” said Carol Chan, a 55-year-old civil service employee who took two days off to join the protests after becoming incensed over police use of tear gas on Sunday.

Instead of candlelight, a few hundred people staged a brief “mobile light” protest on Monday night, raising their mobile phones with their screens glowing into the air. One person chanted the name of the city’s unpopular leader, Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying, while the others responded with “Resign. Resign.”

Signaling it doesn’t expect a quick end to the demonstrations, the government announced it was canceling a fireworks display planned for Oct. 1 National Day celebrations.

In a shift of tactics Monday, uniformed police manned barricades and looked on, preventing access to some buildings, but otherwise not intervening.

Police said they used 87 rounds of tear gas on Sunday in what they said was a necessary but restrained response to protesters’ efforts to push through cordons and barricades. They said 41 people were injured, including 12 police officers.

“Police cordon lines were heavily charged, by some violent protesters. So police had to use the minimum force in order to separate the distance at that moment between the protesters and also the police,” Cheung Tak-keung, the assistant police commissioner for operations, told reporters Monday.

Protesters donned rain capes, surgical masks and goggles, wrapped their heads and glasses in plastic and used umbrellas to shield themselves from the searing clouds of tear gas unleashed by police on Sunday. Each time they fled, but returned in defiance. Late Sunday, riot police withdrew and Hong Kong’s chief executive, Leung Chun-ying, issued a public appeal for everyone to go home and stop blocking traffic.

Across Victoria Harbor, in crowded Kowloon, crowds blocked a major intersection, as young people climbed atop subway station exits and activists rallied the crowds.

The crowds were constantly shifting, as people moved in and out of the sit-ins, some bringing in food and drink while others fetched their own.

“It’s already the fourth day, so it’s really tiring,” said Ching-ching Tse, a 24-year-old student at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Tse, wearing cotton gloves, said she was on her second day of picking up trash in the protest area with her friends. “So we are forming some groups and hope we can do some shifts and take turns.”

While many Hong Kong residents support the calls for greater democracy — dubbed the “umbrella revolution” by some although the crowds’ demands fall far short of revolution — the unrest worries others.

“I strongly disagree with the protesters,” said an older woman who gave only her surname, Chan. “Those of us who came to the city 60 or 70 years ago had nothing and we worked and suffered so much to make Hong Kong the rich city it is today. And now the protesters have made our society unstable. For me, being able to eat and sleep is already a luxury. I don’t need democracy. What does it mean?”

Many younger Hong Kong residents have much higher expectations. Raised in an era of plenty and with no experience of the political turmoil of past decades in mainland China, they are demanding universal suffrage and protesting Beijing’s decision last month that candidates in the city’s first-ever election for the top leader must be hand-picked by a committee of mostly pro-Beijing tycoons, a move many residents of the former British colony view as reneging on promises to allow greater democracy in the semi-autonomous territory.

China has called the protests illegal and endorsed the Hong Kong government’s efforts to quell the demonstrations, which are undermining the city’s image as a safe financial haven. Beijing has taken a hard line against a variety of threats to the Communist Party’s monopoly on power, including clamping down on dissidents and Muslim Uighur separatists in the country’s far west.

The Hong Kong authorities’ efforts to shut down the protest so far have backfired, said Steve Tsang, a senior fellow at the University of Nottingham’s China Policy Institute.

“People are feeling a kind of guilt that they were allowing the young kids in their late teens and early 20s to take all the risks, so people are coming out to support them. That’s what we are seeing on the ground,” he said.

While Hong Kong was under British rule, its leader was chosen by London in an arrangement that faced virtually no opposition. After China took control from the British in 1997, it agreed to a policy of “one country, two systems” that allowed the city a high degree of control over its own affairs and kept in place liberties unseen on the mainland. It also promised the city’s leader would eventually be chosen through “universal suffrage,” a pledge that Hong Kongers now say Beijing is failing to keep.

The protests began a week ago with a class boycott by university and college students, who said they would stand firm until officials meet their demands for reforming the local legislature and withdrawing the requirement that election candidates be screened.

Leaders of the broader Occupy Central civil disobedience movement joined them early Sunday, saying they wanted to kick-start a long-threatened mass sit-in demanding Hong Kong’s top leader be elected without Beijing’s interference.

Occupy Central issued a statement Monday urging Leung to resign and saying his “non-response to the people’s demands has driven Hong Kong into a crisis of disorder.” It said the protest is now “a spontaneous movement” of all Hong Kong people.

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Thousands of pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong undeterred by tear gas, barricades - VIDEO: Hong Kong protests for democracy

Thousands of Barbadians march in protest against solid waste tax

BRIDGETOWN, Barbados, Thursday July 24, 2014, CMC - Thousands of Barbadians took to the streets on Thursday to protest against the imposition of the Municipal Solid Waste Tax.

The midday march, led by Mia Mottley – leader of the opposition Barbados Labour Party (BLP) ended outside the office of Prime Minister, Freundel Stuart, where she delivered a letter of protest on behalf of people across the island.

“Today is about sending a message to the government about this bad Solid Waste Tax that they need to repeal and rethink,” Mottley said before proceeding to Prime Minister Stuart’s office.

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“The people of Barbados have spoken across the length and breadth, that we’ve had 27 other taxes and fees imposed on us in the last six years. We can take no more.”

“This march is for the repeal of the Solid Waste Tax. This march is for a new government mechanism that allows us…as Bajans not to be surprised by a tax , not to be unfaired [sic] by a tax.

“But we say we know we are in trouble as a nation. Talk to your people Freundel, and let us work with you.

“And if you cannot talk to your people and let us work with you, do the decent thing and step one side.”

This new tax was announced last year with a sweeping .03 per cent charge on the site value of real estate property across the island, but there have been widespread complaints about the financial burden it places on residents.

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Thousands of Barbadians march in protest against solid waste tax

Thousands for NYS summer employment programme

Four thousand 500 youngsters will be placed in jobs under a J$90 million summer Employment Programme being led by the National Youth Service (NYS).

Starting on Monday, they will be assigned to public and private sector entities for six weeks.

Deputy Director of  Community Service at the NYS, Nickeisha Lindsay, says the participants were selected from high schools and tertiary institutions across the island.

They were required to have at least three CSEC passes.

Physically challenged persons were included.

Lindsay explained that the programme is not geared towards securing permanent employment for the participants, but to provide work experience.

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Thousands for NYS summer employment programme

Hawaii molasses spill killing thousands of fish

Latest News

Thursday, September 12, 2013 | 11:27 AM

HONOLULU (AP) — Thousands of fish are expected to die in Honolulu waters after a leaky pipe caused 1,400 tons of molasses to ooze into the harbour and kill marine life, state officials said.Hundreds of fish have been collected so far, the state Department of Health said in a statement Wednesday. Many more fish are expected to die and thousands will likely be collected, it said.The fish are dying because the high concentration of molasses is making it difficult for them to breathe, said department spokeswoman Janice Okubo. Television footage shows some fish sticking their mouths out of the water.The department has warned people to stay out of the area because the dead fish could attract sharks and other predators like barracuda.The brown, sugary substance spilled Monday from a pipe used to load molasses from storage tanks to ships sailing to California. The shipping company, Matson Navigation Company, repaired the hole and the pipe stopped leaking Tuesday morning, spokesman Jeff Hull said.As much as 233,000 gallons of molasses leaked into the harbour, Matson said. That’s equivalent to what would fill about seven rail cars or about one-third of an Olympic-sized swimming pool.Underwater video taken by Honolulu television station Hawaii News Now showed dead fish, crabs and eels scattered along the ocean floor of the harbour and the water tinted a yellowish brown.State officials expect the spill’s brown plume will remain visible for weeks as tides and currents flush the molasses in to nearby Keehi Lagoon and out to sea.There’s a possibility the state could fine Matson for violations of Clean Water Act after the department investigates the circumstances of the spill, Okubo said. The state’s focus is currently on public safety, she said.The state was documenting the fish it collected and keeping them on ice for possible testing. Officials were also collecting water samples. The data will allow the department to estimate the duration and severity of the contamination.Matson ships molasses from Hawaii to the mainland about once a week. Molasses are a made at Hawaii’s last sugar plantation, run by Hawaiian Commercial & Sugar Co. on Maui.Matson said in a statement it takes its role an environmental steward very seriously. The company is taking steps ensure spills don’t occur in the future, it said.Like our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/jamaicaobserverFollow us on Twitter https://twitter.com/JamaicaObserverA worker from Pacific Environmental Corporation skims the water near the Matson shipyard in the Kapalama Basin in Honolulu, Hawaii on Wednesday. -AP

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Hawaii molasses spill killing thousands of fish