The Vatican - The State of Rogues?



The top crime neighborhood in the world isn't in Sao Paulo or Lagos. It's not the Bronx in New York, or even Wedding in Berlin. It's the small city ruled by Pope Benedict XVI, which apparently sees more criminal cases per capita than any other part of the world.

The Vatican's attorney general Nicola Picardi released the astounding statistic at the start of 2007: The tiny nation's justice department in 2006 had to contend with 341 civil and 486 criminal cases. In a population of 492, that measures out to 1.5 cases per person -- twenty times the corresponding rate in Italy.

By this measurement at least, crime is soaring in the Vatican in spite of a security force that would put a police state to shame. The seat of the Catholic Church has one Swiss guard for every four citizens, not to mention museum guards and police assigned to the Vatican by Italy.

Picardi did say that most criminal cases were matters of pickpocketing or purse-snatching. The rest amounted to other petty crimes like fraud and forgery -- committed not by kleptomaniacal nuns but by a handful of black sheep among the 18 million pilgrims and tourists who visit St. Peter's Cathedral, St. Peter's Square and the Vatican Museums every year. About 90 percent of these crimes go unpunished, which is not a measure of Christian mercy but a sign of the perpetrators' favorite method of escape. They can break for the border -- a few meters away -- to Italy.

Even if it did prosecute every pickpocket, the Vatican wouldn't have room in its jails for so many sinners, since it has no prison system. Criminals sentenced to prison in the Vatican have to serve time in Italy, with costs covered by the papal state.

Picardi releases similar alarming statistics almost every year, when he makes his annual report on the state of the Vatican's security. He'd like his country to join the Schengen Agreement, a 1985 treaty signed by EU nations to bring down border controls and allow cooperation among justice departments and police. Picardi would even like to promote cooperation between the Vatican and some non-EU nations. So far, though, he hasn't achieved either ambition.

Pope Benedict XVI recommended another strategy in a speech to Vatican security personnel. "Let us pray," he said, "for the maternal protection of the Virgin Mary." He may have been thinking of the weeks in April 2005 when Pope John Paul II was dying. A total of 6 million pilgrims arrived for vigils in St. Peter's Square, and not a single incident of pickpocketing was reported.

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Costs keep students from first-choice colleges



Mary Beth Marklein,

USA TODAY

Fewer college freshmen are attending their top choice of schools, and many appear to be doing so not because they were rejected by their first choice but for financial reasons, a national survey shows.

More than two-thirds (67.3%) are attending their No. 1 choice, the survey says. Of those who are not, 52.6% said they were accepted and opted not to go.

That was "quite surprising," says John Pryor, director of the Cooperative Institutional Research Program at UCLA's Higher Education Research Institute, which conducted the survey, out today. "The general assumption is that if you're not going to your first choice, it's because you didn't get in."

The survey, an annual snapshot of student behavior and beliefs, is based on responses of 271,441 first-time, full-time students at 393 four-year colleges and universities and is adjusted to reflect the 1.3 million freshmen who entered four-year colleges last fall.

Most students cited "academic reputation" and evidence that graduates "get good jobs" as "very important" reasons for attending the college where they're now enrolled. For students attending a school other than their first choice, "the cost of higher education is really the trump card," says survey research manager Victor Saenz.

•One in five attending their second choice said they "could not afford my first choice." Among students attending their third or fourth choices, 26% and 28.4%, respectively, said affordability was the reason.

•Students enrolled in a school other than their first choice were more likely than those at their first choice to cite "the cost of attending this college" as one of their top five reasons for enrolling.

•Students attending their second or third choice were more likely than those attending their top choice to include money-related concerns as very important factors in their decision. Students attending their fourth choice or lower were the most likely of all to cite reasons related to cost.

The number of students attending their top choice has fluctuated over the years, but has generally declined from 77.2% in 1974 when the question was first asked. This year, the number attending a choice other than their first is up 2.5 percentage points from last year and 4.2 percentage points from a decade ago.

Rising tuitions likely explain some of the attention to finances. Second- or third-choice colleges may also be luring top students away from their top choice by offering merit aid, says David Hawkins, director of public policy at the National Association for College Admission Counseling.

An increase in the numbers of college-bound low-income students is also a factor.

While 64.1% of students said they have "some" or "major" concerns about their ability to pay for their education, low-income and middle-income students were most likely to choose a college based on financial issues, Pryor says.

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Storms in Europe Kill 46, Disrupt Travel


Europeans labored Friday to restore services across the continent after hurricane-force winds toppled trees, brought down power lines and damaged buildings, killing at least 46 people and disrupting travel for tens of thousands.

Berlin's new main train station was shut down after a two-ton girder fell from the side of the glass facade onto an outdoor staircase. The station was evacuated after the beam plummeted 130 feet Thursday night, but there were no injuries.

"I can see maybe the glass falling, but not the steel," said Thomas Mueller, an electrician who had stopped by the downtown station to survey the damage. "They just built this thing eight months ago."

Virtually the entire German national railway system shut down during the storm, with trees over many tracks and overhead power lines down, and services were being restored gradually Friday.

"We've never had such a situation in Germany," Deutsche Bahn CEO Hartmut Mehdorn said.

Off the coast of France, a coast guard tug was called upon to tow a damaged British container ship containing explosives to safety, a day after its crew of 26 was rescued from the stormy seas.

More than 1 million homes had no electricity in the Czech Republic, which was hit by winds of up to 112 mph, another 1 million households in Germany suffered power losses, while tens of thousands in Poland and Austria also were hit with outages.

The flow of Russian oil through a Ukrainian pipeline to other parts of Europe was restored Friday after a temporary shutdown caused when the storm knocked out power to a pumping station. The interruption occurred Thursday night on a section of the Druzhba, or Friendship, pipeline from the city of Brody in western Ukraine to Slovakia and Hungary, but Oleksandr Dikusarov, a spokesman for the Ukrtransnafta pipeline company, said the flow of oil was fully restored Friday afternoon.

The storm led to the deaths of at least three people in the Czech Republic, 12 in Germany, 14 in Britain, six in the Netherlands, three in France, two in Belgium and six in Poland.

It was the highest death toll from a storm in Europe since 1999, when gales downed trees and driving snow brought on avalanches, killing more than 120 in three days.

Climate researchers had been predicting stormy weather this year for parts of Europe, saying that unusually high temperatures in the North Atlantic, around 1 to 2 degrees above normal _ would allow winds to accumulate more moisture and surge in energy.

"In times of rapid climactic change, extreme events arise more frequently," said Peter Werner of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Research.

Europe has been experiencing an extremely warm winter and has already been hit by several wind storms.

Most of the people killed in the storm were motorists, but in Germany they also included two firefighters _ one hit by a falling tree and the other dying of a heart attack _ and an 18-month old infant in Munich hit by a terrace door that was ripped from its hinges.

In London, a toddler was killed when a brick wall was knocked over by the wind and collapsed on him.

Frankfurt Airport reported that flights were again leaving regularly Friday after some morning delays and 200 cancellations Thursday.

National carrier Lufthansa canceled 331 flights across Germany on Thursday, affecting nearly 19,000 passengers, but intercontinental flights were largely on time again Friday, spokesman Thomas Jachnow said.

British Airways canceled 34 incoming flights to London's Heathrow and Gatwick airports and the two main London-to-Scotland rail routes ran reduced services.

Eurostar was running full service again, after one early Paris-to-London train was canceled. Meanwhile, London Bridge station was reopened after being closed after part of a roof collapsed.

British train companies warned of delays through the day as repairs were carried out.

Thousands of Dutch commuters were stranded overnight when the service was halted on all trains because of obstructions to the tracks and downed power cables.

By early Friday, most Dutch trains were running again after engineers worked through the night to clear debris and repair power lines, the railway said.

German subways, trams and buses were largely back in service, but only a few long-distance trains were running.

"Bringing the service back is like a puzzle _ it goes bit by bit and we're now at the first pieces," railway spokesman Martin Walden said.

The German Weather Service said the storm was the strongest to hit the country since 1999. The highest winds were felt in the southern state of Bavaria, where gusts of up to 126 mph were recorded.

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Castro in "slow, progressive" recovery


Reuters


Cuban leader Fidel Castro is making a "slow but progressive" recovery although his condition is serious due to his advanced age, a Spanish doctor who has examined him said on Friday.

Castro, 80, has suffered complications after undergoing surgery to his digestive system but could return to his normal life if he manages to make a full recovery, Dr Jose Luis Garcia Sabrido said.

"I have recent information that his recovery is slow but progressive," Garcia Sabrido, who examined Castro in Havana late last year and is a consultant to the Cuban leader's medical team, told Reuters.

Garcia Sabrido, head of surgery at Madrid's Gregorio Maranon hospital, said the outlook for any patient of Castro's age who had undergone complications after surgery, was very serious.

"For a patient of his age, who has had complications after an operation, it's always going to be a general prognosis," Garcia Sabrido said, when asked if Castro was in a "very serious condition," as reported by Spain's El Pais newspaper this week.

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