Regional officials have praised the bravery of the troops, after Russia’s top brass blamed them for their own deaths.
The post EXPLAINED: Why the Kremlin is Struggling to Contain the Makiivka Strike Fallout first appeared on The Brooklyn Guide.
Day: January 5, 2023
2023-01-05T07:53:54Z
The logo of Foxconn, the trading name of Hon Hai Precision Industry, is seen on top of the company’s headquarters in New Taipei City, Taiwan March 29, 2016. REUTERS/Tyrone Siu/File Photo
Taiwan’s Foxconn (2317.TW), the world’s largest contract electronics maker, on Thursday said revenue in December dropped 12.3% year-on-year after production problems related to COVID-19 controls at a major iPhone factory in China’s Zhengzhou.
The company in a statement said production at the major iPhone factory in China “basically returned to normal” in December. It did not elaborate.
2023-01-05T08:06:58Z
Preparations for former Pope Benedict’s funeral in operation outside St. Peter’s Basilica, while the former Pope’s body lies in state at the Basilica, at the Vatican January 4, 2023. REUTERS/Kai Pfaffenbach
Pope Francis will preside at a funeral Mass in St. Peter’s Square on Thursday for his predecessor former Pope Benedict, who died on Saturday at the age of 95.
More than 60,000 people are expected to attend. There will be official delegations from Italy and Benedict’s native Germany. Other leaders, including the king and queen of Belgium and about 13 heads of state or government, will attend in a private capacity. Most countries will be represented by their ambassadors to the Vatican.
Here is a guide to what is expected to happen:
After the end of his lying-in-state on Wednesday evening, Benedict’s body was placed in a cypress coffin which was closed privately in the presence of a few close aides, such as his long-time secretary, Archbishop Georg Ganswein, and other members of the household where he lived after he resigned the papacy in 2013, the first pope to do so in 600 years.
Papal items such as vestments symbolising his role as pope and bishop were placed inside the coffin, along with coins and medals that were minted during his pontificate. Also included was a lead tube with a deed in Latin listing the key points in his pontificate.
At 8:45 a.m. (0745 GMT), ushers known as papal gentlemen carried the coffin in procession out of the basilica and placed it on the steps facing St. Peter’s Square. The faithful will pray the rosary for about 45 minutes.
The funeral Mass presided over by Pope Francis is due to start at 9:30 a.m. (0830 GMT). At first, the pope will sit before the coffin facing the crowd. The Sistine Chapel choir will start its singing with the introductory rites.
The pope will then move to a chair to the side of the altar and preside from there, sitting most of the time because of knee aliment that impedes him from standing for too long. The celebrant standing at the altar will be Italian Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, dean of the College of Cardinals.
Francis will deliver the homily at the Mass, which will be con-celebrated by 120 cardinals, 400 bishops and nearly 4,000 priests.
At the end of the Mass, Francis will recite “The Final Commendation and Farewell” asking God to “console the Church”.
The liturgy for the funeral Mass is based mostly on that for a pope who dies while reigning, with some minor modifications, particularly in a few prayers and readings.
One prayer will include petitions to God for both Benedict and Francis.
Near the end of the Mass, Francis will sprinkle holy water on the coffin and incense it.
He will say in Latin: “Gracious Father, we commend to your mercy Pope Emeritus Benedict, whom you made successor of Peter and shepherd of the Church, a fearless preacher of your word and a faithful minister of the divine mysteries.”
The choir will then sing in Latin: “May the angels lead you into paradise; may the martyrs come and welcome you and take you into the holy city, the new and eternal Jerusalem.”
The pall bearers will then carry the cypress coffin back into the basilica for a private service in which it will be sealed and wrapped in ribbons.
It will then be placed into a zinc coffin, which will be soldered shut. Both will then go into a larger, wooden coffin.
Benedict will then be buried according to his wishes in the same spot in the crypts under St. Peter’s Basilica where Pope John Paul II was originally interred in 2005 before his body was moved up to a chapel in the basilica in 2011.
The burial will also be a private service.
(This story has been refiled to remove extraneous words in paragraph 2)
2023-01-05T07:29:49Z
The Buffalo Bills said on Wednesday that safety Damar Hamlin has shown “signs of improvement” since suffering a cardiac arrest during a Monday night NFL game in Cincinnati, but that he is still in critical condition.
“Damar remains in the ICU (intensive care unit) in critical condition with signs of improvement noted yesterday and overnight,” the Bills said in a social media post.
“He is expected to remain under intensive care as his healthcare team continues to monitor and treat him.”
During the first quarter of the Bills’ penultimate regular season game against the Bengals, Hamlin got to his feet after making a tackle and then collapsed.
After having his heartbeat restored on the field as stunned players from both teams cried, prayed and hugged, an ambulance took Hamlin to University of Cincinnati Medical Center.
Cincinnati quarterback Joe Burrow told reporters on Wednesday there was “a lot of chaos” after Hamlin was taken off the field, before the NFL announced the game was postponed.
“We didn’t really know what was going on,” Burrow told reporters on Wednesday. “Nobody wanted to continue to play the game in a situation like that.
“It was a scary, emotional night.”
U.S. President Joe Biden, speaking to reporters in Hebron, Kentucky, said Hamlin’s collapse was not a sign that the NFL has become too dangerous, while noting the inherent risk of a sport with violent collisions on nearly every play.
“I think working like hell on the helmets and the concussion protocols, that all makes a lot of sense. But … it is dangerous,” he said. “We’ve got to just acknowledge it.”
Back at the White House, Biden told reporters that he spoke to Hamlin’s mother and father “at length” but did not offer details about their conversation.
The Bills offered no further details on Hamlin’s condition, but his friend and business partner Jordon Rooney said in an ESPN report earlier on Wednesday that doctors saw promising readings overnight that they had hoped to see by Wednesday morning.
Rooney did not reply when asked by Reuters to provide details on Hamlin’s condition.
Earlier on Wednesday, the Bills held meetings and a walk-through – a slower-paced practice in which players typically do not wear pads and go through plays without physical contact – but did not provide any media availability.
The NFL, whose regular season concludes on Sunday, has said the Buffalo-Cincinnati game would not resume this week.
During a conference call with reporters on Wednesday, NFL Executive Vice President of Communications Jeff Miller said the conversation about what to do about the game has started and a decision will be made in the coming days.
The game, if played, would have playoff implications for both teams as they are battling with the Kansas City Chiefs for the top seed in the American Football Conference, which comes with a first-round playoff bye.
The Bills are scheduled to host the New England Patriots at 1 p.m. ET (1700 GMT) on Sunday.
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Football fans tape a sign to a fence during a vigil outside the University of Cincinnati Medical Center where Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin lies in critical condition, after suffering a cardiac arrest during the January 2 National Football League (NFL) game against the Cincinnati Bengals, in Cincinnati, Ohio, U.S., January 3, 2023. REUTERS/Megan Jelinger
Items are placed by football fans during a vigil outside University of Cincinnati Medical Center where Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin lies in critical condition, after suffering a cardiac arrest during the January 2 National Football League (NFL) game against the Cincinnati Bengals, in Cincinnati, Ohio, U.S., January 3, 2023. REUTERS/Megan Jelinger
Jan 2, 2023; Cincinnati, Ohio, USA; The Buffalo Bills gather as an ambulance parks on the field while CPR is administered to Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin (3) after a play in the first quarter of the NFL Week 17 game between the Cincinnati Bengals and the Buffalo Bills at Paycor Stadium in Downtown Cincinnati. The game was suspended with suspended in the first quarter after Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin (3) was taken away in an ambulance following a play. Mandatory Credit: Sam Greene-USA TODAY Sports
CASTEL GANDOLFO, Italy (AP) — The shopkeeper named her daughter after him. The parish priest wears his old vestments. The former mayor dedicated a plaque to him on City Hall, and residents up and down this picturesque hilltop town reminisce about hearing him play the piano behind the palace walls on cool summer evenings.
Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI is particularly beloved in Castel Gandolfo, where he joined a centuries-long list of pontiffs who summered at the papal villa overlooking Lake Alban in the hills south of Rome. Benedict’s death has hit its residents hard, since many knew him personally, and had already said their emotional farewells when he uttered his final words as pope from the palace’s balcony overlooking the town square on Feb. 28, 2013.
On that night, thousands had thronged Castel Gandolfo’s main piazza and gave Benedict a thundering round of applause as the palace’s brass-studded doors swung shut at 8 p.m., signaling the official end of his papacy.
Benedict then began the first papal retirement in 600 years in the seclusion of the palace’s grounds, where he waited out the conclave that elected Pope Francis. He returned to the Vatican two months later to live his remaining years in a converted monastery in the Vatican Gardens, where he died Saturday, nearly 10 years after that momentous night in Castel Gandolfo.
“It was really awful seeing the big door close that night,” said Stefano Carosi, who runs the coffee shop on the main piazza, a stone’s throw from the palace entrance. “It made us realize that this pope wouldn’t be with us anymore … that he had left us.”
It was Pope Urban VIII who had the palace built on the northern end of town in 1624, to give popes an escape from the sweltering Roman summers. It was enlarged over succeeding pontificates to its present size, which is now bigger than Vatican City itself.
Aside from the extensive gardens and a pool that St. John Paul II installed, the palace grounds are home to a working farm that supplies the Vatican with fresh dairy, eggs, honey and produce, as well as an observatory that boasts a world-class meteorite collection.
In the decade since Benedict retired, Castel Gandolfo has had to adapt its livelihood and seasonal rhythms to a new pope who has chosen not to vacation here. Francis has spent every summer of his papacy in Vatican City, depriving Castel Gandolfo’s souvenir shops, restaurants and hotels of the visitors who would pack the town each summer Sunday for noon papal blessings and then stay to enjoy a cool afternoon in the countryside.
Francis has tried to make it up to them, opening the palace and its immaculate gardens to the public in an extension of the Vatican Museums, where visitors can see the papal bedroom, vestments and old uniforms of the papal court.
But even with a year-round tourism opportunity, the absence of a pope still rankles a community that for centuries had a privileged relationship with popes, especially Benedict because of his obvious love for the town and his decision to mark his final moments here as pope.
“When he arrived here (at the beginning of each summer) he looked very tired, but just with the two months he spent in Castel Gandolfo he flourished again,” said Mayor Maurizio Colacchi, whose two terms covered nearly Benedict’s entire eight-year papacy. “It was clear that the air, the atmosphere, the tranquility, the serenity were of great benefit for him.”
Colacchi recalled the visits by heads of state that turned main street into the center of the media universe for a day, as well as Benedict’s lower-profile but more frequent visitor: his late brother, the Rev. Georg Ratzinger, who often spent weeks visiting the pope in summer.
In one of his many papal encounters, Colacchi gave Georg honorary citizenship. In another, Colacchi unveiled a plaque on the façade of City Hall with a quote Benedict once uttered in expressing his love for the town. “Here I have everything: mountains, lake and I can even see the sea, and good people,” the plaque reads.
“We got to know him very well, in the sense that we had the fortune of appreciating him in a more direct way than anyone else, because here everything’s smaller,” said Patriza Gasperini, whose family has run Gasperini Souvenirs, a shop right next to the palace entrance, for three generations.
She remembered how Benedict would greet residents in the main square when he would return from his walks in the gardens, without any bodyguards, or when he’d play his beloved Mozart in the evenings, and passersby could hear it faintly in the main square.
“He was very, very good,” said Gasperini, whose shop still features Benedict-themed religious souvenirs and who named her daughter, Benedetta, when she was born a few months after his 2005 election.
Benedict was remembered with prayer during several moments of the Tuesday morning Mass in the parish church on the main square, where a large photo of him with a black ribbon across the frame was placed next to the altar.
The parish priest, the Rev. Tadeusz Rozmus, donned a white vestment that Benedict had worn during a Mass he celebrated for the Castel Gandolfo faithful in their church and then left behind as a gift.
“The popes who came here didn’t come as guests,” Rozmus said after Mass. “This was their home.”
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Follow AP’s coverage of Pope Benedict XVI at https://apnews.com/hub/pope-benedict-xvi
2023-01-04T23:04:59Z
VATICAN CITY (Reuters) -Thousands of people began arriving in the dark of the night on Thursday to attend the funeral of former Pope Benedict, a hero to Roman Catholic conservatives who shocked the world by resigning nearly a decade ago.
Former Pope Benedict will be buried according to his wishes in the same spot in the crypts under St. Peter’s Basilica where Pope John Paul II was originally interred in 2005 before his body was moved up to a chapel in the basilica in 2011.
Some began arriving in the Vatican area as early as 4 a.m. (0300 GMT), five and half hours before the funeral presided over by his successor, Pope Francis, was due to begin in St. Peter’s Square.
As a thick fog shrouded the Italian capital, they started going through security checks before dawn to begin taking seats.
More than 1,000 Italian security personnel were called up to help safeguard the event, and air space around the tiny Holy See has been closed off for the day. Italy ordered that flags around the country be flown at half staff.
Among those were Germans in traditional Bavarian outfits carrying flags and standards of the area of Germany where Benedict was born.
Benedict died at 95 last Saturday in a monastery within the Vatican gardens where he moved after becoming the first pontiff in 600 years to stand down, opening the way for the election of Pope Francis, who has proved a more reformist, hands-on leader.
The lying-in-state ended on Wednesday evening and the body was put into a plain cypress wood coffin ready for the funeral. A one-page account of Benedict’s papacy, along with other items, including Vatican coins minted during his reign, were also tucked into the coffin.
The three-page account of his life and papacy, written in Latin, says he “fought with firmness” against sexual abuse by clergy in the Church.
While many leading figures have praised Benedict since his death, criticism has also been aired, including by victims of clergy sexual abuse, who have accused him of seeking to protect the Church at all costs.
After the funeral ceremony, the coffin will be taken back inside the basilica and encased in zinc before being sealed in a second wooden casket.
Because Benedict was no longer a head of state when he died, only two countries, Italy and his native Germany, will send official delegations to the funeral.
Others leaders, including the king and queen of Belgium and the queen of Spain, and about 13 heads of state of state or government, will attend in a private capacity. Most nations were being represented by their ambassadors to the Holy See.
It is a far cry from the last papal funeral in 2005, when dozens of kings, presidents and prime ministers joined more than a million people who flooded the streets around the Vatican to pay their respects to Benedict’s charismatic predecessor, John Paul II.
An intellectual theologian, Benedict was always likely to rule in the shadow of John Paul, who was credited with helping end the Cold War. But his time in charge was to a degree spent trying to overcome problems the Church had ignored or covered up in previous decades, including rampant sexual abuses by clerics.
Benedict himself acknowledged he was a weak administrator, and after eight years in the job he stunned the world’s 1.3 billion Catholics in 2013 by resigning, saying he was no longer strong enough to lead the Church due to his “advanced age”.
Even though he largely avoided public appearances in subsequent years, he remained a standard-bearer for Catholic conservatives, who felt alienated by reforms ushered in by Francis, including cracking down on the old Latin Mass.
Over the past three days almost 200,000 people have filed past Benedict’s body dressed in a mitre and red vestments, his hands wrapped in a rosary, which was placed on a bier in St. Peter’s Basilica without any papal regalia.
At his request, Benedict will be buried in the underground Vatican grottoes in the niche where first Pope John XXIII and then John Paul II were interred before their remains were transferred to more prominent places in the basilica above.
2023-01-05T07:14:04Z
A year that began with no end in sight for one of the world’s deadliest conflicts finished on a note of cautious optimism in Ethiopia’s northern region of Tigray after a November ceasefire agreement.
The two-year-long war has caused a dire humanitarian crisis, killing tens of thousands, leaving millions in severe need of food and threatening the stability of Africa’s second-most populous country.
On Nov. 2, Ethiopia’s federal government and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), a guerrilla force-turned political party that dominates the region, agreed to stop fighting following African Union-mediated talks.
Civil war erupted in November 2020 after months of escalating recriminations between the two sides.
The TPLF, which dominated Ethiopia for nearly three decades before Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed took office in 2018, accuses his government of wanting to centralise power at the expense of regions. Abiy accuses the TPLF of trying to regain national power. Each side rejects the other’s narrative.
Human rights violations by all sides – including extrajudicial killings, rapes and looting – have been documented by United Nations agencies, Ethiopia’s state appointed human rights commission and media including Reuters. All sides deny the allegations.
The truce has enabled international aid deliveries to resume to parts of Tigray. Last week, state-owned Ethiopian Airlines resumed flights to Tigray’s capital.
But the prospects for peace remain uncertain.
Although Eritrea, a sworn enemy of the TPLF that has fought on the side of Abiy’s government, began withdrawing some of its forces from two major Tigray towns last week, it is not yet clear whether its troops will pull out of Tigray altogether.
Until they do, diplomats and analysts worry Tigray forces will refuse to disarm, risking a resumption of hostilities.
Ethiopia is a military and diplomatic powerhouse in East Africa, strategically located between war-torn Somalia, Kenya and Sudan.
Prior to the conflict, investors had flocked to Ethiopia for a slice of one of the last largely untapped economies in Africa, which had begun to open up to foreign companies.
Ethiopia’s military, which is regarded as the most effective in the Horn of Africa, plays a key role in an African Union (AU) peace-keeping force in Somalia and has also sent troops there independently.
There is also the ongoing humanitarian fallout. Aid agencies complain the Ukraine war has diverted attention from the unfolding disaster in Ethiopia.
This year will be key to determining whether the ceasefire reached in November can deliver a lasting peace in northern Ethiopia.
Major issues remain to be resolved, including the withdrawal of Eritrean and other forces that have fought alongside the government and the future of disputed territory claimed by both Tigray and the neighbouring region of Amhara.
International partners are heavily invested in ending the war. The AU, Kenya and South Africa helped mediate the truce and are keen to deliver an African solution to the problem. The United States has said it will not hesitate to impose sanctions on parties that fail to abide by the truce.
Ethiopia, seeking to revive interest from foreign investors, has restarted the sale of a 40% stake in state-owned Ethio Telecom and a separate plan to issue a second full telecoms licence.
It is also targeting a debt restructuring under the Group of 20’s Common Framework and has asked the International Monetary Fund for a new loan programme, but progress has been complicated by the war.
Explore the Reuters round-up of news stories that dominated the year, and the outlook for 2023.
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A convoy of trucks from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) deliver lifesaving medical supplies are seen on the road to Mekelle, in Tigray region, Ethiopia November 15, 2022. International Committee of the Red Cross/Handout via REUTERS/File Photo
Passengers arrive before travelling on board the Ethiopian Airlines plane that resumes flights to Mekelle, the capital of Tigray, at the Bole International Airport in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia December 28, 2022. REUTERS/Tiksa Negeri/File Photo
