Chinese bishops legit
ROME: Pope Francis will accept the legitimacy of seven bishops appointed by the Chinese government, in an attempt to score a “breakthrough” deal with Beijing, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday.
Giving a blessing to the appointments – made without the pope’s input – could potentially ease a decades-long conflict between the Vatican and communist China, the paper said.
Francis would lift an excommunication on the bishops and accept their status. The Beijing authorities would give the pope veto powers on future bishop appointments.
Castro’s son in suicide
HAVANA: The oldest son of late Cuban leader Fidel Castro killed himself on Thursday after months of treatment for depression, state media reported. He was 68. The official website Cubadebate said Fidel Castro Diaz-balart had been in a “deeply depressed state”.
The oldest son of Cuba’s revolutionary leader was known for his resemblance to his father, earning him the nickname Fidelito or Little Fidel.
Castro Diaz-balart was born to Fidel Castro’s first wife, Mirta Diaz-balart, a woman from Cuba’s aristocracy who Fidel married in his youth before beginning the revolutionary struggle.
Mid-air collision
PARIS: Investigators suspect that a collision between two French army helicopters caused the crash that killed five officers on Friday morning, the prosecutor in charge of the case said.
“The working hypothesis… is the hypothesis of a collision between these two aircraft,” Marseilles prosecutor Xavier Tarabeux said.
The Gazelle helicopters crashed between 8.30 and 8.45am at Carces, less than 30km from their base at an army flight training school between Nice and Marseilles.
Ballad for black lives
NEW YORK: Just days before the Super Bowl, John Mellencamp sank to his knees in support of the Black Lives Matter movement after performing a ballad on the Late Show With Stephen Colbert.
The singer-songwriter sang the violin-and-piano dirge Easy Target, with the lyrics “In the street and the gutters/ The cotton fields in this land/ Here’s an easy target.”
The song comes from Mellencamp’s album Sad Clowns & Hillbillies, which came out late last year.
Boundaries set
THE HAGUE: The International Court of Justice laid down definitive maritime boundaries on Friday between Costa Rica and Nicaragua in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean and a small land boundary in a remote, disputed wetland.
As part of the complex ruling, the UN’S highest judicial organ ruled that a Nicaraguan military base on part of the disputed coastline close to the mouth of the San Juan River is on Costa Rican territory and must be removed.
Decisions by the court are final.
‘Set reporter free’
NEW YORK: Sudanese authorities should immediately release al-jarida reporter Ahmed Jadein, cease confiscating newspapers and allow journalists to report on matters of public interest without fear of reprisal, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said yesterday.
Sudan’s National Intelligence and Security Services (NISS) arrested Jadein on January 31 while he was reporting on antiinflation protests in the city of Bahri in Khartoum state, according to news reports and the independent Sudanese Journalists Network.
Sources: Ap/dpa/african News Agency (ANA)