NEWS OF THE DAY
From Around the World
1 Church abuse: A report released Tuesday found that at least 547 former members of Germany’s most storied Catholic choir for boys were physically or sexually abused, the latest revelation in a case that has roiled the Domspatzen choir in Regensburg, led for many years by the brother of Pope Benedict XVI, Georg Ratzinger. The abuse was carried out by priests and teachers at the prestigious choir in southeast Germany, according to a lawyer, Ulrich Weber, who was tasked with carrying out an independent investigation. All told, he discovered 500 cases of physical abuse and 67 cases of sexual abuse.
\2 Embezzlement case: A Vatican tribunal rejected attempts by two former executives of the pope’s children’s hospital to dismiss an embezzlement case, asserting Tuesday it could prosecute them on charges they diverted nearly $578,000 in hospital donations to renovate a top cardinal’s penthouse. Lawyers for former hospital president Giuseppe Profiti and ex-treasurer Massimo Spina argued that the Vatican court had no jurisdiction to prosecute activities of a hospital foundation that was located in Italy, not the Vatican. But tribunal president Judge Paolo Papanti-Pelletier rejected the motion as the trial opened.
3 Rights activists jailed: A Turkish court on Tuesday jailed Amnesty International’s Turkey director and five other human rights activists pending trial for allegedly aiding an armed terror group — making them the latest suspects in a massive government crackdown initially launched against alleged supporters of last year’s failed coup but since broadened to include government opponents. In a decision that Amnesty International called a “crushing blow for rights in Turkey,” the 10 were detained in a July 5 police raid on a hotel on the island of Buyukada, off Istanbul, where they were attending a digital security workshop.
4 Nazi collaboration: Hungary’s collaboration with Nazi Germany during World War II was a “mistake” and a “sin” as it failed to protect its Jewish community, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said Tuesday in Budapest. Orban said he told visiting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that he was aware of the “difficult history behind us.” Some 550,000 Hungarian Jews were killed in the Holocaust. Netanyahu said he thought about Hungary first in relation to the birth of modern Zionism, as Theodore Herzl, “our modern Moses,” was born in Budapest in 1860.
5 Miniskirt scandal: Saudi Arabian police arrested a woman Tuesday who appeared in a video posted online in which she wears a miniskirt and crop top, exposing her legs and midriff in violation of the country’s strict dress code for women. The video of the woman, identified online only as Khulood, prompted a debate on social media soon after it was uploaded to Snapchat over the weekend. It was rapidly shared across the Internet by people who supported her display and — perhaps more interesting — by those who opposed it, resulting in an official investigation.
6 Malala speaks out: Nobel Peace laureate Malala Yousafzai was greeted with cheers Tuesday by dozens of young women in the northeastern Nigerian city of Maiduguri, where she spoke out for the many girls abducted under Boko Haram’s deadly insurgency. Yousafzai was 15 when she was shot in the head by Taliban militants in 2012, targeted due to her advocacy for women’s education.
Chronicle News Services