Magazine exposes 'double life' of Vatican's gay priests

NOT FOR the first time in recent months, an Italian media source yesterday revealed embarrassing details of a flourishing gay “scene” within the Holy See in Rome.

Carmelo Abbate, an undercover reporter from weekly news magazine Panorama , provides in its latest issue graphic detail of a month-long series of gay parties and brief encounters in and around the Holy See, featuring openly gay priests.

Abbate, who introduced himself into the community thanks to an (unnamed) gay friend, begins his latter-day Decameron with a party in the Testaccio area of Rome.

He and his friend were invited to the party by a French priest, referred to as Paul, whom the friend claims he first met in a sauna. After watching two semi-naked, oiled and muscular gay dancers go through their routine, Fr Paul climbed up on stage for what the reporter calls a session of “Dirty Dancing For Three”.

That first night ended with Fr Paul spending the night with Abbate’s friend. The Panorama article is accompanied by clandestine photos allegedly depicting the said Fr Paul in striped boxer shorts in the friend’s bedroom on the morning after.

The article goes on to detail homosexual encounters with two other Rome-based priests, “Carlo” and “Luca”, passionate encounters that are also photographically documented. After sex, Fr Luca, for example, proudly shows off his clerical vestments, walking around the bedroom half-naked. Fr Carlo claims that “98 per cent” of the priests he knows are homosexuals.

The reporter’s friend says he knows many priests who frequent gay spots such as the Coming Out bar near the Coliseum.

Fr Paul and the friend begin a relationship via affectionate text messages. At one point the priest explains he has “to say Mass this evening at six o’clock but I’ll say a prayer for you, if you like”.

At the Testaccio party, a Sardinian claims he has come to Rome just for the party, and asks: “Did you meet Fr Paul when you went to confession?”

There was no official Vatican response to the Panorama article yesterday, but the pope’s man in the diocese of Rome, namely the vicariate of Rome, Cardinal Agostino Vallini, issued a statement condemning the “double life” of certain priests and adding: “Coherence calls for them to come clean. We do not wish them any ill but we cannot accept that because of their behaviour, the honour of all priests is besmirched.”

Sergio Rovasio, secretary of the radical group Certain Rights, said: “Finally, a piece of investigative journalism which documents something which anyone who frequents gay spots in Rome knows only too well – namely, there are a lot of priests who attend these places and who have sexual encounters without seeming to be minimally worried by the evident hypocrisy of what they preach by day and what they do by night.”

Last March the Vatican was shaken by media reports claiming disgraced papal gentleman Angelo Balducci, now in prison, had been active in a gay prostitution ring which also involved subsequently dismissed Vatican chorister Chinediu Thiomas Ehiem.

Your request is being processed... North Korea Vows 'Nuclear' Response To U.S. Military Exercises

ABOARD USS GEORGE WASHINGTON — A massive nuclear-powered U.S. supercarrier began maneuvers Sunday with ally South Korea in a potent show of force, four months after the sinking of a South Korean warship. North Korea threatened the exercises could lead to nuclear war.

The military drills, set to run through Wednesday, involve about 8,000 U.S. and South Korean troops, 20 ships and submarines and 200 aircraft. The USS George Washington, with several thousand sailors and dozens of fighter jets aboard, was deployed from Japan.

The exercises will be the first in a series of U.S.-South Korean maneuvers conducted in the East Sea off South Korea's east coast, and in the Yellow Sea closer to China's shores in international waters. The exercises also are the first to employ the F-22 stealth fighter – which can evade North Korean air defenses – in South Korea.

The American and South Korean defense chiefs announced last Tuesday in Seoul they would stage the military drills to send a clear message to North Korea to stop its "aggressive" behavior.

Washington and Seoul blame Pyongyang for the sinking of the 1,200-ton Cheonan warship in late March near the Koreas' maritime border. A five-nation team of investigators concluded a North Korean torpedo sank the Cheonan, considered the worst military attack on the South since the 1950-53 Korean War.

North Korea, which denies any involvement in the sinking, has warned the United States against attempting to punish it. The regime called the drills an "unpardonable military provocation."

"The army and people of the DPRK will legitimately counter with their powerful nuclear deterrence the largest-ever nuclear war exercises to be staged by the U.S. and the South Korean puppet forces," the National Defense Commission said in a statement Saturday. North Korea's official name is the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

The North's military "will start a retaliatory sacred war of their own style based on nuclear deterrent any time necessary in order to counter the U.S.," said the statement carried by the nation's official news agency.

Its rhetoric regarding using nuclear deterrence was seen by most as bluster, but its angry response to the maneuvers underscores the rising tensions in the region.

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ABOARD USS GEORGE WASHINGTON — A massive nuclear-powered U.S. supercarrier began maneuvers Sunday with ally South Korea in a potent show of force, four months after the sinking of a South Korean warship. North Korea threatened the exercises could lead to nuclear war.

The military drills, set to run through Wednesday, involve about 8,000 U.S. and South Korean troops, 20 ships and submarines and 200 aircraft. The USS George Washington, with several thousand sailors and dozens of fighter jets aboard, was deployed from Japan.

The exercises will be the first in a series of U.S.-South Korean maneuvers conducted in the East Sea off South Korea's east coast, and in the Yellow Sea closer to China's shores in international waters. The exercises also are the first to employ the F-22 stealth fighter – which can evade North Korean air defenses – in South Korea.

The American and South Korean defense chiefs announced last Tuesday in Seoul they would stage the military drills to send a clear message to North Korea to stop its "aggressive" behavior.

Washington and Seoul blame Pyongyang for the sinking of the 1,200-ton Cheonan warship in late March near the Koreas' maritime border. A five-nation team of investigators concluded a North Korean torpedo sank the Cheonan, considered the worst military attack on the South since the 1950-53 Korean War.

North Korea, which denies any involvement in the sinking, has warned the United States against attempting to punish it. The regime called the drills an "unpardonable military provocation."

"The army and people of the DPRK will legitimately counter with their powerful nuclear deterrence the largest-ever nuclear war exercises to be staged by the U.S. and the South Korean puppet forces," the National Defense Commission said in a statement Saturday. North Korea's official name is the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

The North's military "will start a retaliatory sacred war of their own style based on nuclear deterrent any time necessary in order to counter the U.S.," said the statement carried by the nation's official news agency.

Its rhetoric regarding using nuclear deterrence was seen by most as bluster, but its angry response to the maneuvers underscores the rising tensions in the region.

Story continues below

The North routinely threatens attacks whenever South Korea and the U.S. hold joint military drills, which Pyongyang sees as a rehearsal for an invasion. The U.S. keeps 28,500 troops in South Korea and another 50,000 in Japan, but says it has no intention of invading the North.

South Korea was closely monitoring North Korea's military but spotted no unusual activity Sunday, the Defense Ministry said.

Though the impoverished North has a large conventional military and the capability to build nuclear weapons, it is not believed to have the technology needed to use nuclear devices as warheads.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton announced Wednesday, after visiting the Demilitarized Zone dividing the two Koreas, the U.S. would slap new sanctions on the North to stifle its nuclear ambitions and punish it for the Cheonan sinking.

On Friday, the European Union said it, too, would consider new sanctions on North Korea.

In an apparent bow to China, the George Washington will participate in the exercise in the East Sea, but there are no plans for it to enter the Yellow Sea for subsequent exercises.

China, a traditional North Korean ally, has voiced concerns that military drills in the Yellow Sea could inflame tensions on the Korean peninsula and also fears exercises too close to its own shores could breach Chinese security.

The Nimitz-class George Washington had been expected to join in exercises – code-named "Invincible Spirit" – off South Korea sooner, but the Navy delayed those plans as the United Nations Security Council met to deliberate what action it should take over the Cheonan sinking.

The council eventually condemned the incident, but stopped short of naming North Korea as the perpetrator.

___

Associated Press writers Kwang-tae Kim and Hyung-jin Kim in Seoul contributed to this report.

US bank failures reach 108 for 2010

Seven more local and regional banks have closed their doors in the United States, bringing the total number of US bank failures to 103 this year, federal bank regulators announced.

The numbers released by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation indicate that the failure rate in 2010 was quicker that the year before.

Only 64 banks went under in the United States by this time last year. A total of 140 bank failures were registered in all of 2009, according to the FDIC

White House Predicts Record $1.47 Trillion Deficit

New estimates from the White House on Friday predict the budget deficit will reach a record $1.47 trillion this year. The government is borrowing 41 cents of every dollar it spends.

That's actually a little better than the administration predicted in February.

The new estimates paint a grim unemployment picture as the economy experiences a relatively jobless recovery. The unemployment rate, presently averaging 9.5 percent, would average 9 percent next year under the new estimates.

The Office of Management and Budget report has ominous news for President Barack Obama should he seek re-election in 2012 - a still-high unemployment rate of 8.1 percent. That would be well above normal, which is closer to a rate of 5.5 percent to 6 percent. Private economists don't think the unemployment rate will drop to those levels until well into this decade.

The gaping deficits are of increasing concern to voters. But Obama and Democrats controlling Congress are mostly taking a pass on deficit reduction this year as they await possible recommendations from Obama's deficit commission.

While there's a slight improvement in the deficit for the current year, next year's predicted $1.42 trillion worth of red ink - that's 37 cents of borrowing for every dollar spent - is looking worse. It's about $150 billion more than previously predicted, because of still-slumping tax revenues.

White House budget director Peter Orszag said the numbers represent a "fiscal situation that requires attention."

Deficits have skyrocketed since the recession took hold in 2008 and Congress responded with a massive bailout of the financial system and last year's $862 billion stimulus measure.

US Senate deals blow to global climate talks

WASHINGTON (AFP) – A year and a half after President Barack Obama breathed new life into global talks on a climate treaty, the United States is back in a familiar role -- the holdout.

The Senate's decision Thursday to shelve legislation on climate change is certain to cast a long shadow over December's meeting in Cancun, Mexico that will work on a successor to the Kyoto Protocol.

Obama's Democratic allies acknowledged they lacked votes to approve the first-ever US plan restricting carbon emissions blamed for global warming. The task is unlikely to get easier soon, with Democrats facing tight congressional elections in November.

"This is going to change the mood dramatically in terms of what countries are willing to put on the table in Cancun," said Jake Schmidt, international climate policy director at the Natural Resources Defense Council, which backs action to curb global warming.

"This will seriously downplay what we can realistically achieve."

Obama vowed to act on climate change when he was elected president, sharply reversing course from his predecessor George W. Bush, who was a sworn foe of the Kyoto Protocol, which he considered biased against wealthier countries.

Obama's climate negotiators enjoyed rousing welcomes when they arrived on the scene -- especially from the European Union, Kyoto's most enthusiastic champion.

The State Department, which leads international negotiations, said the Obama administration still considered climate a "priority" and would engage with other countries and with Congress.

"This is a global challenge and we have to resolve it through global cooperation and joint action by all of the key countries and key emitters. We are one of them," agency spokesman Philip Crowley said.

"And central to our ability to do our part is passing climate and energy legislation."

The clock is ticking on sealing a new treaty, with the Kyoto Protocol's obligations for rich nations to cut emissions expiring at the end of 2012.

Climate talks, including the contentious Copenhagen summit in December, have been plagued by fighting between wealthy and developing nations, which are both looking for clear commitments from the other side.

Major emerging nations have resisted any legally binding requirements to cut emissions and pressed first for industrialized powers to seal their commitments.

"Countries like China and India are not likely to commit to any sort of binding obligation if the US is not part of the discussion, part of the negotiation and makes some similar commitment," said Daniel Fiorino, an expert on environmental politics at American University.

While the United States may be the most visible holdout, other major developed nations have also grappled with controversy on climate change, a major issue ahead of Australia's August 21 elections.

Arabinda Mishra, a climate expert at India's Energy and Resources Institute, said the lack of an international treaty "has a real danger in domestic will" in his country to invest political capital on fighting global warming.

The Obama administration has authorized the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate carbon, potentially offering a way to meet US promises at Copenhagen to curb emissions by 17 percent by 2020 off 2005 levels.

But without Senate action, it would be difficult for the United States to meet another promise -- to contribute, along with the European Union, Japan and other rich nations, to a 100 billion-dollar fund to help poor nations cope with climate change.

Climate legislation was passed by the House of Representatives last year, but Republican lawmakers have strongly opposed it, rejecting Obama's arguments that a green economy would create jobs.

"We're still facing a very weak economy and we're still facing questions on the cost of any meaningful reduction," said Ben Lieberman, an energy expert at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative Washington think-tank.

"It's pretty clear that no post-Kyoto treaty is in the making -- certainly not in Cancun, and maybe not ever."

Scientists Confirm Underwater Plumes Are From Spill

Florida researchers said Friday that they had for the first time conclusively linked vast plumes of microscopic oil droplets drifting in the Gulf of Mexico to the Deepwater Horizon disaster.

The scientists, from the University of South Florida, matched samples taken from the plumes with oil from the leaking well provided by BP. The findings were the first direct confirmation that the plumes were linked to the spill, although federal scientists had said there was overwhelming circumstantial evidence tying them to BP’s well.

The discovery of the plumes several weeks into the oil leak alarmed scientists, who feared that clouds of oil particles could wreak havoc on marine life far below the surface. Plumes have been detected as far as 50 miles from the wellhead, although oil concentrations at those distances are extremely low, about 750 parts per billion.

This is well below the level considered acutely toxic for fish and marine organisms, but could still affect eggs and larvae, the scientists fear.

“There are a lot of things that are potentially at risk,” said David Hollander, an oceanographer with the University of South Florida who is studying the plumes. “There’s not a lot known of the toxic effects of oil on organisms living in deeper waters.”

The announcement by the Florida researchers came as federal scientists released their own report on the oil formations. The multiagency report describes the presence of large plumes of microscopic oil droplets within several miles of the wellhead at a depth of 3,280 to 4,265 feet. Oil concentrations there are as high as 10 parts per million, or the equivalent of one tablespoon of oil in 130 gallons of water.

The plumes closest to the well may be concentrated enough to pose a threat to nearby deepwater coral reefs, which host a diversity of ocean life, said Steve Murawski, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s chief scientist for the spill response. “We know that even low concentrations can be harmful to the eggs and larvae of the deep coral,” he said.

The federal report also described a drop in dissolved oxygen levels in deep water near the well, which it said probably resulted from the rapid reproduction of oil-eating microbes. Yet the reduction did not signal conditions that could cause a die-off in sea life, the report concluded.

The ultimate impact of the oil plumes on sea life in the gulf remains open to debate. A plume has been found near DeSoto Canyon, an underwater valley south of the Florida Panhandle where ocean currents push nutrient-rich water up onto the continental shelf. Some scientists fear that oil, even in the low concentrations found in the plumes, could be driven into the shelf’s life-rich shallow waters and cause harm.

“It’s almost an express route up there,” Dr. Hollander said. “That’s what raises the concerns of the biologists.”

Yet federal scientists say they believe that the oil concentrations in the deepwater plumes are too low to have much of an effect on the gulf’s commercially valuable fisheries.

BP tries to limit release of oil spill research

HOUSTON -- Faced with hundreds of lawsuits and a deep need for experts, BP has been offering some Gulf Coast scientists lucrative consulting contracts that bar them from releasing their findings on the company's massive oil spill for three years.

Some scientists say the contracts constrain academic freedom. A few signed the agreements, then changed their minds.

And others argue BP's contract is standard, and with little federal funding available to study the spill's impact, Gulf Coast researchers have few other options.

"I personally wouldn't care to have my research limited, but if I wanted to do work on the spill and this was the only way I could get out there and get working on it, I don't think there's a lot of alternatives," said Chris D'Elia, dean of the Louisiana State University School of the Coast and Environment.

BP confirms hiring more than a dozen scientists who have Gulf Coast expertise to assist with hundreds of lawsuits and assess the environmental damage caused by the spill.

"What we have asked is that they treat information from BP's lawyers as confidential, as is customary," said David Nicholas, a BP spokesman in London. "But we do not take the position that environmental data is confidential and we do not place restrictions on academics speaking about scientific data."

Still, American Association of University Professors President Cary Nelson said the three-year limitation could suppress information key to restoring the environment.

"Many scientists are turning down these contracts because they feel this research needs to be shared with the public, it needs to be shared with the government," said Nelson, whose group represents about 48,000 academics.

Researchers are asked to sign similar contracts with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the federal agency charged with tracking the oil and assessing the damage.

Also in the mix is a hesitance to be associated with the company that's responsible for around 184 million gallons of oil spilling into the Gulf of Mexico.

"Setting aside any good intentions, the idea of being affiliated with BP was not a good thing," said Joe Griffitt, a scientist at the Gulf Coast Research Marine Lab at the University of Southern Mississippi, who initially signed a deal with BP, then changed his mind.

In the end, each side will try to get as many experts on their team as possible, removing knowledge from the public domain, said Mark Davis, director of the Institute on Water Resources Law and Policy at Tulane Law School in New Orleans.

"That's not wrong. Those are the rules of the game," he said. "It's the survival of a company, the survival of a crucial industry is at stake in a vital market area. This is serious business."

Schwartz reported from Los Angeles.