Vatican forced to defend itself over abuse cases

As accusations of historic sexual abuse by Roman Catholics emerge in another European country, the Vatican has insisted it has dealt with "the very serious issue" promptly and decisively.

After recent revelations of widespread abuse in Ireland, and claims of similar mistreatment of children by priests in Austria and Germany, Catholic bishops in the Netherlands have now set up an independent inquiry to look into allegations there.

More than 200 reports of abuse have been made to a victims' support organisation in the last few days.

Dutch bishops have offered their apologies to those who were abused.

The Church in Ireland is already struggling to repair relations with a disillusioned public after three official reports in the past five years detailed abuse stretching over several decades and condemned the Church for keeping it secret.

Pope Benedict is expected to issue a letter to be read out in Catholic churches in Ireland later this month, in which he will respond publicly to the scandal.

'Wall of silence'

The allegations from Germany are particularly sensitive, because the Pope was born in the country, and because they include a choir led by his brother Georg.

Reports surfaced last month that Catholic priests had sexually abused more than 170 children at Jesuit schools in Germany.

Those have been followed by fresh allegations of abuse at three Catholic schools in Bavaria, and within a boys' choir that was directed for 30 years by Monsignor Georg Ratzinger.

Monsignor Ratzinger said he was aware that children had been beaten at schools attended by the choristers.

However, he said he knew nothing of the kind of sex abuse now being reported.

In Austria the head of a Benedictine monastery in Salzburg has resigned after admitting to sexually abusing a 12-year-old boy more than four decades ago.

Criticism of the Church has intensified in Germany, with an accusation by the justice minister that bishops behaved secretively in dealing with even severe cases of abuse.

Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger said: "In many schools there was a wall of silence allowing for abuse and violence."

Church officials called the minister's remarks "absurd", and the Vatican insisted that Roman Catholic leaders had "shown a desire for transparency".

Authority at risk

Its spokesman, Frederico Lombardi said the Church had accelerated the process of unearthing abuse by encouraging victims to speak out about old cases.

Fr Lombardi acknowledged "the gravity of the anguish the Church is going through", adding that it was striving for better protection for children as well as its own "purification".

However, he insisted that the problem of sex abuse - although especially reprehensible when it happened inside the Church - was a problem belonging to the whole of society.

The Church is already fighting a battle against secularisation in Western Europe, and the steady erosion of its influence.

There are demands for modernisation, especially the ending of celibacy for priests, fiercely resisted by Pope Benedict.

The experience of the Catholic Church in the United States shows how damaging a long drawn out scandal of sex abuse could be to the Church's authority and prestige in Europe too.

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Probe call over 'triple suicide' at Glasgow tower block

Calls have been made for a public inquiry after a family of Russian asylum seekers in Glasgow apparently committed suicide.

The father, mother and son are believed to have jumped from the 15th floor of a tower block at the Red Road flats in the city's Springburn area on Sunday.

Positive Action in Housing said it was organising a demonstration outside the UK Border Agency in Glasgow on Tuesday.

It called for an inquiry and an end to "barbaric" asylum system practices.

The BBC understands the Russian couple and their son had previously been granted asylum in Canada but left after a dispute with the authorities there.

They first arrived in the UK in 2007 and had been living at the tower block at 63 Petershill Drive, which is currently let to the YMCA.

Their application to remain in the UK had recently been refused but they had not been issued with a removal order.

According to a source familiar with the case, the family had been told that they had to leave their flat in Springburn after their application was refused.

No removal order had been issued, however, and they were advised to seek help from the Scottish Refugee Council to find alternative accommodation.

The family are believed to have jumped to their deaths shortly before 0845 GMT on Sunday.

The bodies were discovered by the concierge at the tower block after they had fallen from the 15th floor.

Police said there did not appear to be any suspicious circumstances.

In a statement, Positive Action in Housing said: "We believe there should be a public inquiry into these deaths, and the impact of the UK Border Agency and its terror campaign - disguised as asylum policy - on the lives of asylum seekers who have lived here for years but live in permanent fear of destitution, detention and removal.

"Many asylum seekers flee persecution or death, only to be terrorised by the prospect of removal back to an unsafe country, and in the process face destitution or long term detention.

"The current asylum system is based on the false premise that all asylum seekers are bogus. We need a complete rethink."

'Could be better'

John Wilkes, chief executive of the Scottish Refugee Council, told BBC Radio Scotland that while he would not comment on this specific case, the asylum system could be improved.

"One of the things that we continue to call for is much better clarity for people who are going through the system about what's happening, what the next steps might be and what the options might be.

"That's certainly something that has improved but its could be better.

"People also see other people in the system, maybe who've been refused, getting a claim on appeal, so we need to improve the quality of decision making at the first stage, so that there are fewer appeals in the system."

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Brazil slaps trade sanctions on US over cotton dispute

The Brazilian government has announced trade sanctions against a variety of American goods in retaliation for illegal US subsidies to cotton farmers.

The World Trade Organization (WTO) approved the sanctions in a rare move.

Brazil published a list of 100 US goods that would be subject to import tariffs in 30 days, unless the two governments reached a last-minute accord.

It said it regretted the sanctions, but that eight years of litigation had failed to produce a result.

It said it would raise tariffs on $591m (£393m) worth of US products - from cars, where the tariff will increase from 35% to 50%, to milk powder, which would see a 20% increase in the levy.

Cotton and cotton products would be charged 100% import tariff, the highest on the list.

The Office of the US Trade Representative said it was "disappointed" by Brazil's decision and called for a negotiated settlement.

Critics say the US has given its cotton growers an unfair advantage by paying them billions of dollars each year.

In 2008, the WTO ruled that subsidies to US cotton producers were discriminatory.

Tall order

Carlos Marcio Cozendey, head of economic affairs at Brazil's foreign ministry, told a news conference: "The idea was to distribute the retaliation broadly in order to maximise pressure.

"US farm subsidies are condemned worldwide. This archaic practice must stop."

However some analysts say major changes to these subsidies would involve modifying agricultural legislation - a tall order for the US Congress against a difficult economic and political backdrop, says the BBC's Gary Duffy in Sao Paulo.

Our correspondent says the dispute, which began in 2002, is one of the few in which the WTO has allowed cross-retaliation, meaning the wronged party can retaliate against a sector not involved in the case.

He adds that it appears the Brazilian government has deliberately chosen a wide range of products in order to have maximum impact.

Safety net

Cotton producers in the US argue that the system of subsidies has changed since the WTO made its original ruling in 2005.

"The US has made changes in the cotton programme as well as the export guarantee programme," Gary Adams, chief economist at the National Cotton Council told the BBC, adding that US cotton production was now 40% to 45% lower.

Mr Adams said he believed that subsidies were still justified.

"We feel this is a very important financial safety net for producers," he said.

Steven Bipes of the Brazil-US Business Council urged the US to take steps to avoid what he called "damaging" retaliation by Brazil.

"The business community finds it extraordinarily important that countries, including the US, comply with its WTO obligations and otherwise negotiate to find common ground when there are disputes," he told the BBC.

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EU observer fears over Togo poll

European Union observers at Togo's presidential election have raised concerns about a la

The opposition has already voiced its concerns about irregularities.

The Union of Forces for Change (UFC) says it was cheated of victory by President Faure Gnassingbe in 2005.

The UFC's Jean-Pierre Fabre is trying to prevent President Gnassingbe from winning a second term.

'Lynchpin' it comes. It says ballot papers did not have serial numbers,

BBC West Africa correspondent Caspar Leighton says the counting of votes in polling stations is generally believed to have been correct but Mr Gahler says the detail is starting to go at the next level - when results were transmitted to local offices of the national electoral commission.

ck of transparency in the collation of results.

European Parliament mission leader Michael Gahler said it had not been possible to track results after they were read out at polling stations.

We had recommended that they would, on the local election office level, publish the individual results and not only the accumulated results.

"That unfortunately was not done and so we urge for transparency on all levels."

Togo's electoral commission now says a provisional result should be published by Saturday evening.

Many local observers do not feel that the independent electoral commission is truly independent and is subject to pressure from the ruling party.

But the commission's vice-president, Jean Claude Homawoo, who is from the UFC, says the commission does operate freely.

"If the result is in the favour of the opposition or of the government party, we'll take it as it comes."

The Rally of the Togolese People (RPT) party has been in power for 40 years.

Our correspondent says its heritage under the current president's father Gnassingbe Eyadema is profoundly undemocratic.

Mr Gahler thinks that President Gnassinge is, however, interested in the true verdict of the people

But he said structures around him, including the military, may think otherwise.

Our correspondent says that President Gnassingbe is both the product and the lynchpin of a system that is used to the exercise of power.

He says the opposition feels it has been cheated of victory too many times and should win this time.

It says ballot papers did not have serial numbers, only the stubs did, and these could be used to stuff ballot boxes from elsewhere.

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Russia searches soul over Olympic failure

Russia has been in deep gloom since recording its worst ever Winter Olympic results. It has a massive job to prepare for its own Olympics in four years' time, says the BBC's Richard Galpin.

On a bleak, snow-covered hill north of Moscow, lies a strange, concrete contraption.

It provides an important clue as to why Russia's Olympic athletes returned home from Vancouver late on Monday night with their heads hung low, having delivered the country's worst performance in the Winter Olympics.

The contraption which twists and turns down the hill, stands alone in the middle of nowhere, a bizarre piece of modernity dropped into the countryside.

It is Russia's only professional track for the bobsleigh, luge and skeleton, and should have been a key training ground for some of the new generation of athletes which the country so badly needed before the Vancouver Games.

But it was built too late.

According to officials, the teams of athletes preparing for these important ice sports were only able to start training on the track about 18 months ago.

"None of the athletes was ready," said Oleg Sukhoruchenko, the head coach at the track and a former member of the Olympic bobsleigh team.

"Vancouver was a horrible failure."

'Fat cat' bureaucrats

Many questions are now being asked about how the money provided by the government for new facilities and training ahead of the Vancouver Olympics was actually spent.

It is reported that $25m (£17m) was allocated last year alone, and yet there is agreement that the country still lacks proper training facilities.

In his angry statement on Monday calling on senior sports officials to resign, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev warned the sports federations, saying they had become like "fat cats", and that the focus should be shifted away from the bureaucrats and onto the athletes instead.

But amid the outburst of hand-wringing and mud-slinging in Russia since the Vancouver Games drew to a close, there is a general consensus that the problem is more deep-rooted, dating back to the collapse of the Soviet Union almost 20 years ago.

"After the Soviet Union collapsed, there was virtually no investment in professional sport," says Oleg Sukhoruchenko, the bobsleigh coach.

"So we have lost a whole generation of athletes. Hence, our result in Vancouver.

"But I am certain a lot of new Russian stars will appear very soon."

The question is: How soon?

Not ready for Sochi

Russia itself is hosting the next Winter Olympics in four years' time.

The games, due to be held near the Black Sea resort of Sochi, are a matter of prestige for Russia and in particular Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who ensured Sochi's bid for the Olympics was successful.

Another dismal performance by the Russian team in 2014 would be highly embarrassing for the country which, as part of the Soviet Union, dominated the Winter Games for decades.

But Sports Minister Vitaly Mutko, who is now under pressure to resign, gave a gloomy forecast when he arrived back in Moscow on Monday night from Canada.

"It will take six to eight years to develop a new generation of Olympic athletes," he said.

"It's a very serious task, and we've only just started working on it.

"I don't think we'll be ready before the 2018 games."

President Medvedev and Prime Minister Putin will be hoping they can prove him wrong, so Russia is not humiliated once again.

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