Record Six Million In Manila For Pope's Mass

Written By Unknown on Minggu, 18 Januari 2015 | 23.59

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Record crowds have filled Manila's main park and surrounding areas for Pope Francis' last mass in the Philippines before he returns to Rome.

An estimated six million worshippers attended the event, making it the largest ever papal gathering, despite constant rain.

The turnout easily surpassed the previous record of five million for a mass by John Paul II at the same venue in 1995.

Francis arrived at Rizal Park in a 'popemobile' based on the design of a jeepney, a popular form of transport in the Philippines.

He was wearing the same plastic yellow rain poncho handed out to the masses during his visit to typhoon-hit Tacloban on Saturday.

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Gallery: Pope Draws Huge Crowds In Manila

Huge crowds filled Manila's main park and surrounding areas for Pope Francis' last mass in the Philippines before his return to Rome

Air force pictures show a packed Rizal Park - the landmark and areas around it had an estimated six million people attending

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It was a record attendance for a papal mass - surpassing the five million who attended a mass by John Paul II in Manila in 1995

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The 78-year-old Pontiff was mobbed as he arrived at the park

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People make their way through the streets to Rizal Park. Continue for more images

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The 78-year-old waved and smiled at the cheering crowds that lined the route taken by his motorcade to the park.

His vehicle stopped repeatedly so he could lean over barriers and kiss babies.

Philippine authorities mounted one of their biggest ever security operations, deploying some 40,000 soldiers and police.

"This is a sea of faith we are dealing with," acting national chief Leonardo Espina told reporters.

Earlier, Francis drew an estimated 200,000 people to Manila's Catholic university, where he came close to tears hearing two rescued street children speak of the hardship they had faced.

By the time the gates to Rizal Park opened, the roads leading to it were mostly closed.

Many people camped outside the entrance the night before to make sure they got in.

The government warned the elderly, pregnant women and children against attending.

The pope's five-day visit to the Philippines, which began on Thursday, followed two days in Sri Lanka.

His visit to Tacloban had to be cut short because of looming stormy weather, and there was drama at the airport when a plane carrying VIPs connected to the papal visit was blown off a runway as it prepared to take off shortly after the Pope's aircraft departed.

It is Francis' second trip to Asia in five months, reflecting its growing importance to the Catholic Church with support dwindling in Europe and the United States.

It is also the fourth papal visit to the Philippines, where four-fifths of the population are Catholics.

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'Uber Rape' Drives Boost For Women Cabbies

By Neville Lazarus, India Reporter

Taxis have almost become a no-go for women in Delhi after a string of rape allegations against a driver hailed from the Uber app.

The Delhi government banned the US-based taxi service in the Indian capital after a 26-year-old woman accused Uber driver Shiv Yadav, 32, of raping her.

Since his arrest six more women have come forward and accused him of the same crime.

Yadav, who denies charges of assault, rape and kidnapping, has gone on trial at a fast-track court in the city.

Two years ago, the gang rape and murder of a 23-year-old woman in a bus had turned the spotlight on violence women suffer in India.

Unprecedented protests forced the government to enact new laws, but even with stringent punishments by fast-track courts the scourge of violence on women continues.

At the Sakha driving institute young women have taken things into their own hands.

They are a cab service driven by women for women. And its popularity is growing.

Given months of training on driving, self defence, first aid and legal advice they are ready to break the glass ceiling in an entirely male dominated industry.

Meenu Vadhera, an activist for over 20 decades, runs the project as part of her charity.

She told Sky News: "Public spaces are not safe for women and apart from other measures that are required one important factor is to have more women out on the roads, and on public transport, driving buses, autos, taxis.

"The fact that there are more women on the roads will make roads safer for women."

The young women she employs come from the weaker and marginalised sections of society. Many are survivors of violence or seen at very close quarters.

"The women who have become chauffeurs have almost transformed their life conditions by standing up to all things that stopped them from coming here including violence, beliefs and assumptions that women should not go out on the roads and also including their own beliefs that this is a job basically for men.

"By the time they finish their training and one more year of work they are so much more in control of their lives."

Khushi Prajapati, 24, has been driving the all-women's cab for over a year. She is the eldest of her four siblings.

Her father, a construction worker, could barely make ends meet. Khushi now earns about £150 a month, which helps pay for the school fees of her sisters and supplement the household expenses.

Khushi told Sky News: "The beginning was difficult as I was doing a job which only men did. Drivers would stare and pass comments at me.

"But the support from Sakha and my parents helped me overcome it all. Now girls from my neighbourhood want to become chauffeurs like me."

Khushi is part of the brave new face of Indian women determined to change their destiny by overcoming age-old barriers.

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Indonesia: Foreigners Executed By Firing Squad

Six people, including five foreign nationals, have been executed by firing squad in Indonesia after they were convicted on drug charges.

The foreigners, from Brazil, the Netherlands, Vietnam, Malawi and Nigeria, were executed at around midnight, authorities said, despite international appeals.

The sixth, an Indonesian woman identified as Rani Andriani, was also killed.

"The execution of the six convicts has been carried out," spokesman for the attorney general's office, Tony Spontana, told news agency AFP.

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff had issued a last-minute plea to Indonesian authorities to spare former pilot Marco Moreira.

It was rejected by Indonesian President Joko Widodo who said the judicial proceedings had followed Indonesian law.

The Dutch government had issued a similar appeal for its citizen Ang Kiem Soei.

Brazil and the Netherlands have recalled their ambassadors from Indonesia in the wake of the executions.

Clemency appeals for the pair, as well as Namaona Denis of Malawi, Daniel Enemuo of Nigeria, and female convict Tran Thi Bich Hanh of Vietnam were rejected in December.

All six had been sentenced on drug charges from 2000 to 2011.

"What we do is merely aimed at protecting our nation from the danger of drugs," Attorney General Muhammad Prasetyo told reporters on Thursday.

"There is no excuse for drug dealers, and hopefully this will have a deterrent effect."

Five of the convicts were killed on Nusakambangan Island, off the south coast of the Indonesian island of Java.

The sixth was killed in Java's Boyolali district.

They were the first executions carried out since President Widodo took office in October.

At least 138 people are on death row in Indonesia, mostly for drug offences.

Roughly a third of them are foreigners.

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Qatar Migrant Worker Claims 'A Dirty Game'

By Paul Kelso, Sports Correspondent

Complaints about the treatment of migrant workers in Qatar are "a dirty game" to discredit the country, a senior government minister has told Sky News.

Human rights groups and trade unions have raised concerns over the treatment of migrant labourers driving the construction boom in Qatar, with the government admitting that almost 1,000 workers from Nepal, India and Bangladesh died in 2012 and 2013.

There are concerns that without reform, many more could die as construction on 2022 World Cup facilities accelerates in the coming months and years.

In an interview with Sky's economics editor Ed Conway, however, Abdullah bin Hamad al Attiyah, a former advisor to the Emir of Qatar and now president of the Administrative Control & Transparency Authority, said critics had "a heightened agenda".

"I think this is a big trick. People start talking about human rights, they just have a heightened agenda and they just try and use it against Qatar. This is what I call the dirty game," he said.

"Just to come only to talk about human rights. What of the human rights in Israel? What of the human rights in Europe? What about human rights in America? Why are you just talking about a small country trying to create a scapegoat and try to blame it just as human rights?

"I believe we have a lot of nationalities who work in Qatar who save their family and their own home. We create millions of jobs for people who come. And they can buy their choice. No one forced them."

The minister's comments are in contrast to the official government line, and the position of the Qatar 2022 Supreme Committee, which says it has committed to a series of measures to improve worker safety.

Migrant workers make up around 75% of Qatar's 1.9 million population, with many of them employed under the kafala system, under which labourers cannot change job or leave the country without permission from their sponsor.

Qatar 2022 has introduced a code of conduct for companies wishing to secure World Cup contracts worth an estimated £100m.

These include agreeing to audits of workers' conditions and guarantees on pay.

The standards set by Qatar 2022 do not apply to wider infrastructure projects, and Amnesty International believe that Abdullah bin Hamad al Attiyah's comments suggest that the government is only paying lip-service to reform.

"It is very surprising to hear claims like this from a senior member of the Qatari government when we have been told in public several times that the Qatari government does accept there is a problem," said James Lynch of Amnesty.

"This would seem to indicate there is division in the government or there is a difference between the public line and what people really think.

"Time is running out for this World Cup to be built free of exploitation. If you still have senior government ministers refusing to accept that there is a problem that does not bode well at all."

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Ex-MI5 Boss: Terror Laws 'Not Fit For Purpose'

The former head of MI5 has warned that Britain's anti-terror laws are "not fit for purpose".

Lord Evans' comments about the powers of intelligence and security agencies were reported as the Prime Minister said Britain is facing a "very severe threat" from Islamist extremists, including so-called "lone-wolf" terrorists.

Lord Evans told the Sunday Telegraph: "The ability of the police and security agencies to do this important work of protecting our society and its vulnerable people is under threat from changing technology.

"They can only do this if they have the tools to do so - and the tools at their disposal are no longer fit for purpose."

David Cameron is currently pushing for tougher requirements for internet firms to alert authorities to suspicious online exchanges, ban encrypted communications and store data.

Former Lib Dem leader Paddy Ashdown hit out at the push for increased powers, telling Sky's Murnaghan programme: "The whole nation is made a suspect under these proposals."

He added that while he believed Mr Cameron's demand for increased powers was "sincere", it was "connected to the general election", and said the PM was "cavalier" about the protection of civil liberties.

When asked if the message from the US to allies would be to keep up with the changes to anti-terror laws implemented by Washington, the US ambassador to the UK, Matthew Barzun, told the same programme: "Sure, and we work very closely with the UK and other partners around the world to try to achieve that balance."

Mr Cameron earlier spoke to US TV network CBS about measures to tackle extremism at home.

He said: "In Britain's history, we've had some very intense times of terrorist threats.

"Certainly we face a very severe threat.

"That's what we're calling it: severe, because we believe an attack is highly likely.

"But frankly, we've been in this struggle against extremist, Islamist terrorism now for well over a decade and a half, so we know what it takes to win, but it's going to take a lot of perseverance."

He said the terror threat "keeps morphing" over time, "but it's still based on the fundamental problem of a poisonous death cult narrative which is the perversion of one of the world's major religions".

Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond and his US counterpart John Kerry are set to host talks in London with ministers from around 20 countries, including Arab states, to discuss ways of tackling Islamic State.

Members of the coalition fighting IS extremists in Syria and Iraq will meet for the summit on Thursday.

On Friday Mr Cameron vowed to tackle what he called the "poisonous narrative of Islamist extremism that is turning too many young minds".

He was speaking following two days of talks with US President Barack Obama in Washington where they said a new group would be set up to exchange information and expertise to tackle the terror threat.

There are fears about the spread of terrorism after the Paris attacks that left 17 people dead and the arrest of more than two dozen people in anti-terror raids in Belgium, Germany and France.

On Saturday, an 18-year-old woman who was arrested at Stansted airport in Essex on suspicion of terrorist offences was released on bail.

Anti-terror officers arrested the teenager when she arrived on a flight at around 4pm on Friday.

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Hundreds Of Yazidis Freed By IS Militants

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Islamic State militants have released hundreds of Yazidis including several young children who were taken prisoner in Iraq five months ago.

Kurdish military officials said most were elderly and in poor health and bore signs of abuse and neglect.

The militants transported the captives from the northern town of Tal Afar, where they were being held following IS raids last summer.

They were dropped off at the Khazer Bridge, near the Kurdish regional capital of Irbil, from where Peshmerga forces took them to a health centre for treatment.

A Yazidi rights activist, who was at the centre, told AFP: "Some are wounded, some have disabilities and many are suffering from mental and psychological problems."

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Gallery: A Profile Of The Kurdish Group

The Yazidis have long been persecuted as "devil worshippers" by many governments and communities - yet they have managed to survive 72 genocides through the centuries

Islamic State (IS) militants forced them from their homes in Sinjar, northern Iraq, and into the surrounding mountains

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The Yazidis are not an offshoot of Christianity or Islam, although some of their beliefs are derived from Christianity

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Instead they believe in a supreme being, Yasdan, who created the world then put it in the care of seven angels. They worship a fallen angel, the Peacock Angel, who was forgiven by God

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Some extremists align the fallen angel with Satan - its other name is Shaytan, which is Arabic for devil - and hence accuse the group of being devil worshippers

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It is not clear why the group were freed, although their age and condition may have played a part.

General Shirko Fatih, commander of Kurdish forces in the northern city of Kirkuk, said it was because they had become a burden.

"It probably became too expensive to feed them and care for them," he said.

Tens of thousands of Yazidis fled when IS captured the northern Iraqi town of Sinjar, near the Syrian border, last August.

But hundreds were taken prisoner, many of them women and girls who have reportedly been forced to marry or sold into slavery.

About 50,000 Yazidis - half of them children, according to the UN - fled to the mountains outside Sinjar during the onslaught. Some still remain there.

Yazidi beliefs combine elements of several ancient Middle Eastern religions and the militants, who are Sunni Muslims, regard them as heretics.

ISIS currently holds large parts of northern Iraq and Syria. It is being targeted by US-led airstrikes as part of efforts to weaken its grip on the region.

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