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Even before his arrival, there've been signs of potential discord between church and state over the emotional and controversial issue of abortion. Brazil’s head of state, President Lula who will be seeing the Pope on Thursday morning, has made it clear that he regards the possible legalization of abortion more as a matter of public health than of moral choice. For his part, Pope Benedict, in his first ever impromptu news conference on the plane during the flight from Rome, has made it abundantly clear that he would tolerate no deviation from church teaching on the inherent sinfulness of abortion.

Meanwhile, after forty years of deliberations, a panel of senior Roman Catholic prelates has concluded that the controversial Wartime Pope Pius Ⅻ should be beatified despite the accusations that he turned a blind eye to the Nazi holocaust. The panel of fifteen cardinals and fifteen bishops voted by a majority to submit him for beatification which is one of the last steps the church takes before declaring someone a saint.

The governor of Helmand province in Southern Afghanistan says an air strike by the America-led international forces has killed a number of civilians, the latest in a series of such incidence which have led to an outcry across the country. The governor Assadullah Wafa said the deaths came while the planes were in action in support of foreign troops fighting Taliban insurgents near Sangin. “I have to say this was a regret with last night in three villages in Sangin. Twenty one people were killed including children, women and the elderly. I’m very sorry for this.”
The US military spoke of a sixteen-hour battle in the area, but said it had no report of civilian casualties.

President Bush has threatened to use his veto again to block a new bill for funding the war in Iraq, currently being drawn up by Democratic Party leaders and the House of Representatives. He vetoed an earlier version of the bill last week because it contained a timetable for pulling US troops out of Iraq. In its latest draft, the bill will pay for military operations until the end of July, but then give congress the option of cutting off funds.

The government in Zimbabwe has announced power cuts of up to twenty hours a day for households across the country. The statement said the measure was necessary to allow an uninterrupted electricity supply for the irrigation of the crucial winter wheat crop. A spokesman for the state-run Zimbabwean electricity company said they expected to start the rationing immediately.

World News from the BBC.

Security forces loyal to both parties in the Palestinian coalition government have begun deploying across the Gaza Strip. The rival Fatah and Hamas Movements have agreed that they should share policing responsibilities in a bid to hold the deteriorating security situation in the territories. A senior Fatah leader Nabil Shaath said the police officers would all wear the same uniform and take orders from the Independent Interior Ministry. “I think the determination is there and the mechanism has been arranged, agreed to, and I think what will be seen in the next forty eight hours I think a full deployment in order to deal with the lawlessness that has bedeviled this area.”

American scientists say they have carried out researches which suggest that South Korean fishermen are catching many more whales than they declare, possibly breaking an international moratorium on commercial whaling. Whale meat can be sold legally in South Korea if the animals are caught by accident in fishing nets. But the researchers say fishermen may be intentionally trying to catch the whales. Here is our science correspondent Neal Baudler.

Officially, 458 minke whales were landed accidentally between 1999 and 2003. But the researchers from Oregon State University are claiming the real figures may be nearly twice that much. They use DNA testing on minke meat bought from local markets to calculate the number of whales, the whales actually being caught. They calculated that 827 minke whales have been caught during the same years.

A seven-decade long battle over the ownership of a painting by the Norwegian master Edvard Munch has ended with Austria returning the work to the family of the composer Gustav Mahler . The painting “Summer Evening at the Beach”was taken from his widow Almer Mahler during the Nazi era. His granddaughter Marina Fistoulari-Mahler received the painting from the hands of the Austrian Culture Minister.

BBC World News.

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