Sunday Tribune

Chinese bishops legit

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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)

 ?? PICTURE: AUSTRALIA BROADCASTI­NG CORPORATIO­N VIA AP ?? Christine Forster, right, the sister of former Australian prime minister Tony Abbott, kisses her partner,virginia Edwards, in Sydney on Friday as they married in a civil ceremony.while Abbott vehemently opposes gay marriage, he said he would attend his...
PICTURE: AUSTRALIA BROADCASTI­NG CORPORATIO­N VIA AP Christine Forster, right, the sister of former Australian prime minister Tony Abbott, kisses her partner,virginia Edwards, in Sydney on Friday as they married in a civil ceremony.while Abbott vehemently opposes gay marriage, he said he would attend his...

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