Audit Into Sex Abuse In Spain To Be Ready Next Month – Catholic Church

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Audit Into Sex Abuse In Spain To Be Ready Next Month – Catholic Church

The audit was originally expected to be delivered within a year but was delayed.

Spanish Ombudsman Angel Gabilondo, right, delivers to the Speaker of the Spanish Congress Francina Armengol, left, the Ombudsman’s report on allegations of sexual abuse in the Spanish Catholic Church 

 

Spain’s Catholic Church said Friday it will receive an audit it ordered into child sexual abuse by members of the clergy on December 15, after an independent commission estimated over 200,000 victims.

The Church in February 2022 tasked private law firm Cremades & Calvo-Sotelo with an audit into past and present sexual abuse by clergy, teachers and others.

The move was labelled as a “smokescreen” by a victim’s association which have long accused it of stonewalling and denial.

Unlike in other nations like France, Ireland and the United States, in Spain — a traditionally Catholic country that has become highly secular — clerical abuse allegations are only now gaining traction.

The audit was originally expected to be delivered within a year but was delayed.

The law firm will now deliver the report on December 15, the secretary general of the Spanish Bishops Conference, Francisco Garcia Magan, told a news conference, but he did not say when it would be made public.

Last month Spain’s first independent probe into the issue estimated that over 200,000 minors had been sexually abused in the country of around 39 million people by Roman Catholic clergy since 1940.

The report did not give a specific figure, but said a poll of over 8,000 people found some 0.6 percent of Spain’s adult population said they had suffered sexual abuse by members of the clergy when they were still children.

The percentage rises to 1.13 percent — or over 400,000 people — when including abuse by lay members, according to the results of the probe which was led by Spain’s national ombudsman.

In a message posted to social media after the report’s publication, Cardinal Juan Jose Omella, president of the Episcopal Conference, said the Church was aware of 1,125 cases of sexual abuse.

Omella on Monday rejected  “the dubious reliability of the results” of the independent probe and called for “an exhaustive and impartial examination of the data” that was used for what he called  “malicious purposes”.

The independent commission recommended the creation of a state compensation fund for victims, an idea supported by Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez.

But Spain’s Catholic Church has ruled out taking part in such a fund if it is set up exclusively to compensate victims clerical abuse, and not all minors who are victims of sexual abuse in any setting.

To do so would be “discrimination”, said Omella.

The Spanish Bishops Conference said Friday it would draw up a “comprehensive reparation plan for the victims” that will apply even if the statute of limitations for the abuse has expired or the perpetrator has died. It gave no further details.

Source: Channel TV

Everton: Guardiola Says He Would Stay If Man City Face Sanction

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Everton: Guardiola Says He Would Stay If Man City Face Sanction

The Toffees were docked 10 points for breaking rules over a three-year period, while City are awaiting a ruling after being charged in February with 115 breaches of financial rules. The club denies all the charges.

Manchester City’s Spanish manager Pep Guardiola attends the English FA Cup fourth round football match between Manchester City and Arsenal at the Etihad Stadium in Manchester, northwest England, on January 27, 2023. 

 

Pep Guardiola says he would stay at Manchester City even if the club are found guilty of breaching Premier League financial rules and relegated to third-tier League One as a punishment.

City’s fate has been brought back into sharp focus following Everton’s 10-point deduction last week, which plunged them into the relegation zone.

The Toffees were docked 10 points for breaking rules over a three-year period, while City are awaiting a ruling after being charged in February with 115 breaches of financial rules. The club denies all the charges.

City were banned for two years from UEFA competitions in February 2020 by European football’s governing body for “serious financial fair play breaches”, but the sanction was overturned by the Court of Arbitration for Sport later that year.

Guardiola was asked on Friday whether any potential punishment would make him consider his position but he pledged his loyalty in the champions.

“I will answer when I have the sentence,” he said. “You are questioning like we have been punished. And in the moment we are innocent until guilt is proven. I know the people want it. I know, I feel it. I will wait.

“Wait and see and after the sentence has been done we will come here and explain it. But absolutely I will not consider my future (if) it depends (on) being here or being in League One. Absolutely.

“There is more chance to stay if we are in League One than if we were in the Champions League.”

Guardiola, whose team host Liverpool on Saturday, hinted that plenty of people in the football world would like to see City harshly punished.

“When you read (what is said) then we should be relegated, relegated, relegated, yeah, of course, but nobody knows exactly,” he said.

“All the people who say that didn’t read the statements, don’t know exactly what happened — not even myself. I didn’t read all the breaches, I didn’t read our defence.

“But wait. What I said a month ago — OK, if we’ve done something wrong we’ll be punished. But wait — we can defend ourselves can’t we?”

The City boss insisted City’s case was “completely different” from the one involving Everton.

“I want to say the case for Everton, and I don’t know what happened, but only I know from the lawyers and people at my club… is that they are completely different cases,” he said. “That’s why you cannot compare because every case is completely different.”

Source: Channel TV

Dyche 'Stunned' By Everton's 10-Point Deduction

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Dyche 'Stunned' By Everton's 10-Point Deduction

The exceptional discipline, the greatest focuses punishment in Premier league history, leaves Everton nineteenth in the table and two focuses from safety.

Everton fans applaud their players after the English Premier League football match between West Ham United and Everton at the London Stadium, in London on October 29, 2023. Everton won the game 1-0. 

 

Everton boss Sean Dyche said he was shocked by the “unjust” 10-point penalty deduction that plunged his side into the Premier League relegation zone.

Dyche's club were hit with the sensation authorize last week after they surpassed misfortunes allowed under the Premier Leagues's financial rule.

The remarkable discipline, the greatest focuses punishment in Premier league history, leaves Everton nineteenth in the table and two focuses from wellbeing.

Everton have reported their goal to pursue and, in his most memorable public remarks since the decision, Dyche said the deduction was brutal.

"I think like everybody in these parts, we're stunned. Apparently the rush of commotion from that point forward, it seemed like the vast majority in football, around football are stunned," Dyche told columnists on Friday.

"Its immensity, unbalanced is a word that has been utilized by the club, so clearly we will feel a piece distressed by that."

The Premier league alluded Everton, who have posted misfortunes for five back to back years, to an autonomous commission in Spring for the break of its productivity and supportability rules.

Clubs are permitted to lose a most extreme £105 million ($132 million) more than a three-year time frame however Everton surpassed that by £19.5 million in the three seasons finishing in 2021/22.

Subsequent to saving Everton from transfer last season, Dyche had would have liked to supervise an ascent to mid-table decency for the chronic underachievers this term.

They had gained great headway towards that desire, winning three of their beyond five associations games preceding the deduction.

Dyche, whose side host Manchester United on Sunday, promised the punishment wouldn't crash his main goal to resuscitate Everton.

"The concentration since I arrived has been figuring things out on the pitch, getting the group to win, getting the group to feel unique, the exhibitions to appear as something else," he said.

"We were clearly on the right lines for that and conveying solid exhibitions I felt. This has quite recently given us a push in reverse to then come advances once more.

"The occupation hasn't changed for me. It's simply made it a smidgen more troublesome in the ongoing conditions until the allure obviously."

Everton fans were supposed to challenge the decision by March to Premier league central command on Friday night.

What's more, while they anticipate fresh insight about the allure, Dyche is certain Everton's crew have the person to adapt to the blow.

"It changes the perspective yet it doesn't change what we're doing," he said. "It upgrades what we're doing, as a matter of fact. It simply implies we must go more enthusiastically for longer and more grounded," he said.

"It's been more about pull together than anything. The gathering have been excellent in themselves I should say… all the senior young men especially energizing saying 'What will be will be, how about we continue ahead with it' type thing.

"So I feel that has been the reasonable message from me to the players and from them to one another — we should take on the following test."

Oscar Pistorius Granted Parole 11 Years After Killing Girlfriend

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Oscar Pistorius Granted Parole 11 Years After Killing Girlfriend

Pistorius killed Steenkamp, a model, in the early hours of Valentine's Day 2013, firing four times through the bathroom door of his ultra-secure Pretoria house.

(FILES) South African Paralympian Oscar Pistorius gestures during the third day of his hearing at the Pretoria High Court for sentencing procedures in his murder trial in Pretoria on June 15, 2016. 

 

South Africa’s ex-Olympic runner Oscar Pistorius was granted early release from prison on Friday, a decade after he fatally shot his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp, in a crime that gripped the world, prison authorities said.

A parole board reviewing whether Pistorius, 37, was fit for social reintegration decided to place him on parole from January 5, the Department of Correctional Services said.

“Mr Pistorius will complete the remainder of the sentence in the system of community corrections and will be subjected to supervision in compliance with parole conditions until his sentence expires”.

Earlier Steenkamp’s mother told the parole hearing that she did not believe the ex-athlete was rehabilitated for he had not shown true remorse.

“Rehabilitation requires someone to engage honestly, with the full truth of his crime and the consequences thereof. Nobody can claim to have remorse if they’re not able to engage fully with the truth,” June Steenkamp said in a statement to the board.

But her spokesman told the board she was not opposing parole for Pistorius.

The hearing held at a correctional centre outside Pretoria where he is currently detained, was Pistorius’s second shot at parole in less than eight months.

He lost a first bid in March when the board found Pistorius had not completed the minimum detention period required to be let out.

The Constitutional Court last month ruled that was a mistake, paving the way for a new hearing.

Pistorius killed Steenkamp, a model, in the early hours of Valentine’s Day 2013, firing four times through the bathroom door of his ultra-secure Pretoria house.

Known worldwide as the “Blade Runner” for his carbon-fibre prosthetics, he was found guilty of murder and given a 13-year jail sentence in 2017 after a lengthy trial and several appeals.

He had pleaded not guilty and denied killing Steenkamp in a rage, saying he mistook her for a burglar.

My child ‘screamed for life’ –

But June Steenkamp said she does not believe him.

“I do not believe Oscar’s version,” she said in her submission to the board that was read to the media outside the detention centre by a family spokesman.

“My dear child screamed for her life loud enough for the neighbours to hear her. I do not know what gave rise to his choice to shoot through a closed door four times at somebody with hollow-point ammunition when I believe he knew it was Reeva.”

Nevertheless, she said she forgave the former sprinter “long ago, as I knew most certainly that I would not be able to survive if I had to cling to my anger.”

As part of his rehabilitation, Pistorius met Steenkamp’s parents last year, in a process authorities said aims to ensure inmates “acknowledge the harm they have caused”.

June Steenkamp was not present at the parole hearing on Friday and was being represented by a family spokesman and a lawyer.

Steenkamp’s father Barry died in September aged 80.

“I’ve no doubt that he died of a broken heart,” the widow said in her statement.

Family spokesman Rob Matthews said it was going to be very difficult for June Steenkamp to attend the proceedings given what she had recently gone through.

“It’s been a real tough road that June has travelled… in March there was a parole hearing and it took all her courage to attend that,” he said.

Offenders in South Africa are automatically eligible for parole consideration after serving half of their sentence.

The board, normally made up of correctional services and community members, assesses whether an inmate still poses a danger to society.

This takes into account the seriousness of the offence as well as Pistorius’s behaviour behind bars.

Release usually comes with some conditions, such as monitoring from authorities and duty to report to a community correction centre.

Source: Channel TV

Ministry Of Information, Solid Mineral Collaborate For Improved GDP

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Ministry Of Information, Solid Mineral Collaborate For Improved GDP

From left: Minister of Solid Mineral Alake; Information Minister, Mohammed Idris

Ministries of Information and National Orientation and that of the Solid Mineral Development will collaborate to make the Solid Minerals sector actualize its goal of contributing significantly to the Gross Domestic Product of the country.

The Minister for Solid Minerals Development, Oladele Alake made this known when he received the Minister of information and National Orientation, Mohammed Idris in his Office in Abuja.

Alake explained that the visit by Idris was most significant in view of its capacity to favourably project the Solid Minerals Sector of the country for economic benefits to the country.

Responding, the Minister for Information and National Orientation, Mohammed Idris, affirmed the readiness of the Ministry of Information and National Orientation to cooperate with the Ministry of Solid Minerals Development towards achieving the vision of President Tinubu to diversify the economy.

Source: AIT

Tinubu’s Government Inherited Dead Economy — Soludo

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Tinubu’s Government Inherited Dead Economy — Soludo

The 63-year-old ex-CBN chief accused the apex bank of illegally printing money.

 

Governor of Anambra, Professor Charles Soludo

 

Governor of Anambra State, Prof Charles Soludo, has stated that the President Bola Tinubu administration inherited a dead economy from its predecessors.

Soludo made this assertion on Thursday while commenting on policies of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) in an interview on Channels Television’s Politics Today programme.

“This economy inherited a dead economy. From a macroeconomic point of view, this government inherited a dead horse that was still standing and people didn’t know it was dead,” the former CBN governor stressed.

“Because you can’t pour water on a rock and not expect the rock not to be wet, there are humungous challenges and I think it is important that Nigerians understand this and it is not a tea party.”

Soludo, while explaining his role in putting curbs on monetary structures when he headed the apex bank between 2004 and 2009, accused the CBN of illegally printing money.

“We must realise where we are coming from,” he said.

“We sat here in this country and  saw  the monetary authorities literally printing money, illegally I must say, because I superintended the development of  drafting of the 2007 Bank Act.”

“And to prevent us from where we are today, that is why we had an explicit clause there that prevents Central Bank  from lending recklessly to the Federal Government.

“That you can not grant to the Federal Government more than 5 per cent of the previous year’s actual revenue.”

He maintained that the CBN failed to comply with the 2007 CBN Act, adding that the current monetary trajectory was avoidable in the first place.

“We all sat here and saw how the CBN brazenly, illegally violated that law year after year and kept on printing money,” the governor said.

“When you continue to credit the account of government, one trillion people shouted, two trillion,10 trillion, 15 trillion and 20 trillion and we kept going.”

Source: Channel TV

Yahaya Bello Freezes All State Govt Accounts

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Yahaya Bello Freezes All State Govt Accounts

The governor said the instruction is with immediate effect.

 Kogi State Governor, Yahaya Bello

 

Barely a few days after berating his aides over what he described as poor misrepresentation of his administration, Governor Yahaya Bello of Kogi State has directed the freezing of all state and local government accounts with immediate effect.

In a statement on Thursday, the Commissioner for Finance, Asiru Idris, said no imprest or any form of payment should be made to anyone from Government Account henceforth.

According to the statement, all “standing orders and investment instructions are hereby cancelled forthwith”.

“All Kogi State and Local Government Accounts are hereby frozen with effect from today, Thursday 22nd November 2003.”

Bello, who is at the end of his eight-year double tenure, is expected to hand over power to the Governor-Elect, Usman Ododo, in January 2024.

Ododo, an ex-Auditor General of Local Government in Kogi under Bello, and the All Progressives Congress (APC) candidate had won the November 11, 2023 Kogi State Governorship Election.

Source: Channel TV