VATICAN CITY,
April 10--Roman Catholicism, the oldest, largest and probably most diverse church in the world, will present a unique challenge to the man chosen later this month to succeed the charismatic Pope John Paul, Reuters said.
The 1.1 billion-strong Church is expanding vigorously in developing countries but stagnating in its European homeland.
Catholics span the spectrum from pious peasants to critical intellectuals. Views on issues such as allowing women priests or contraception range from “yes, please!“ to “no, never!“
These trends are set to continue through the next papacy, no matter how long it is, and bring Catholicism ever further away from the ideal of a single and unchanging Church that it upheld for centuries until the cultural upheavals of the 1960s.
“This Pope has had a problem, and it will be the problem of the future, to have unity in diversity,“ said Brussels Cardinal Godfried Danneels in remarks about John Paul’s legacy.
“More and more in the near future, the different regions of the world will be more different.“
Each continent seems to have its own challenges--poverty in Africa, secularism in Europe, clergy sex abuse in North America, competition from Protestants in Latin America and domination by other religions in Asia.
Cardinals due to elect the next pope can seem to talk about different churches when outlining the challenges ahead. Latin Americans rarely mention Europe’s empty pews problem while sexual abuse scandals rank low among Asian concerns.

Protesters that numbered up to 10,000 march on Beijing streets, against Japan's dealing with its wartime past, April 9. (AFP Photo)

BEIJING, April 10--Anti-Japan protests erupted for a second day in China on Sunday, as Tokyo demanded an apology and better protection for its citizens and diplomats after demonstrators smashed windows and threw eggs at the Japanese embassy, AP reported.
Demonstrations against Japan have spread in China since Tokyo approved a new history textbook that critics say glosses over atrocities by Japan’s military in the first half of the 20th century, including forcing tens of thousands of Asian women into sex slavery.
Beijing denounced the decision, calling the book “poison“ for youthful minds in Japan.
Some 10,000 protesters surrounded a Japanese-run Jasco supermarket in the southern city of Shenzhen on Sunday, said Ide Keiji, a spokesman for the Japanese Embassy in Beijing.
They shouted “Boycott Japanese goods!“ and some threw plastic bottles of mineral water at the store.
About 3,000 people marched toward the Japanese Consulate General in the southern city of Guangzhou for a peaceful “spontaneous demonstration“ and police were maintaining order, said a spokesman with the Guangzhou municipal government who refused to give his name when reached by telephone.
Police prevented demonstrators from getting near the consulate, Keiji said.
On Saturday, about 1,000 protesters hurled rocks and broke windows at Japan’s Embassy in Beijing, demanding a boycott of Japanese goods to oppose the new schoolbook. They also urged their government to prevent Tokyo from gaining a permanent seat on the United Nations’ Security Council.
China said Sunday it had ordered anti-Japanese protesters in Beijing to stay “calm and sane“ and mobilized extra police to maintain public order but Japanese officials complained that not enough was done.
Japan’s ambassador to China, Anami Koreshige, called the incident “gravely regrettable“ and called on Chinese authorities to protect Japanese citizens and businesses, as well as the embassy and other consulates in China, Keiji said.

Mohamed ElBaradei

OSLO, Norway,
April 10--The head of the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog said in an interview that Al-Qaeda and other extremist groups had sought to obtain a nuclear weapon, Norwegian television reported on Saturday.
“They were actively looking into acquiring a nuclear weapon and other weapons of mass destruction,“ Mohamed ElBaradei, Reuters quoted head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), as saying in an interview in Vienna with Norway’s commercial TV 2 channel.
TV 2 said that ElBaradei’s remarks referred to the Al-Qaeda network, blamed for the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks in the United States, and other extremist groups.
Its website quoted ElBaradei as saying that proof had been found in Afghanistan, where US-led-troops toppled the Taliban government in 2001 after it refused to hand over Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden.
“I would be surprised if they did not try to acquire nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction. That would be the most horrible scenario because these extremist groups--if they have the weapon, they will use it,“ ElBaradei said.
He said there was a “race against time“ to stop the spread of nuclear weapons and plug gaps in the security of atomic weapons and materials.
“The more nuclear weapons that exist, the more threat we are facing. And the more countries that have nuclear weapons, the more danger we are facing,“ ElBaradei said.
“We can’t afford one single lapse in the system of security of nuclear material or nuclear weapons,“ he said.

ANKARA, Turkey, April 10--Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Sunday urged the often heavy-handed Turkish police to respect civil liberties, warning that the European Union was closely watching the country as it bids for membership in the bloc, Anatolia news agency reported.
“At a time when Turkey has entered a period crucial for its EU objective and when all attention, be it well-intended or not, is on us, I’m calling especially on each member of the security establishment, on each citizen to contribute more to peace in the country,“ Erdogan told a police gathering.
His appeal came in the wake of harsh EU criticism of police beatings at a women’s demonstration in Istanbul last month.
Erdogan at the time implicitly defended the police reaction to what was described as an unauthorized demonstration, and blamed the local media for “tipping off“ the EU to the clampdown with its extensive coverage of the events.
Turkey, set to start EU accession talks on October 3, is still under pressure to ensure that the democracy reforms it has undertaken to boost its membership bid are properly implemented on the ground by all segments of the establishment.

LONDON, April 10--Prime Minister Tony Blair is heading for an historic third victory in Britain’s May election, polls showed on Sunday as he gave a rare joint interview with his finance minister Gordon Brown to underline party unity, Reuters reported.
Three opinion polls published by Sunday newspapers agreed that Blair would win on May 5. But the estimates differed widely from a lead of seven percentage points down to a slim two points over the opposition Conservatives.
Any of the forecasts would trim Labour’s 161-seat majority but would still allow Blair a comfortable cushion of seats.
The parties are now squaring up for the first full week of campaigning after political leaders flew to Rome on Friday for Pope John Paul’s funeral and then to attend Saturday’s wedding of heir to the throne Prince Charles to Camilla Parker Bowles.
Eager to show Labour Party unity before launching their election manifesto, Blair and Brown took the highly unusual step of giving a joint interview to the News of the World tabloid.
Relations between the two have long been volatile and markets have been unsettled by persistent rumors that Blair would be ready to move Brown from the Treasury if he secured a comfortable majority.
But Blair, who has already said he will not seek a fourth term in power, has gone out of his way in the last week to suggest that Brown, who has delivered eighth years of solid economic growth, would stay at his post after May 5.

BEIT-UL-MOQADDAS, April 10--Dozens of right-wing Israeli militants were arrested Sunday as police tried to prevent a rally at Beit-ul-Moqaddas’s disputed mosque compound as hundreds of Muslims staged their own counter-demonstration, AFP reported.
At least 10 were arrested in Beit-ul-Moqaddas itself while around 25 were also detained in Tel Aviv as they blocked the main highway to the Holy City with burning tiers.
Among those arrested in Beit-ul-Moqaddas was Israel Cohen, head of the ultra-nationalist Revava group which called for mass prayers at the site to denounce the planned withdrawal this summer of the 8,000 Jewish settlers in the Gaza Strip.
The protest was timed to coincide with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s departure to the United States for a summit with President George W. Bush which is set to be dominated by the Gaza pullout.
After banning the protest at the flashpoint compound, which is sacred to both Jews and Muslims, Israeli authorities also restricted access to only Muslim Arab Israelis and Palestinian Muslims from east Beit-ul-Moqaddas aged over 40.
Revava had called the demonstration at the site to bring some 󈫺,000 Jews to the heavily restricted Temple Mount to spark Israeli dialogue about reclaiming the holy site from its Muslim custodians.“
The mosque compound, which is called Haram Al-Sharif (Noble Sanctuary) by Muslims, shelters the Dome of the Rock (Omar Mosque) and the Al-Aqsa Mosque.
The site is also revered by Jews as it was once the site of the Jewish temple, the holiest shrine in Judaism, which was destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD.
While violence has sharply declined since Sharon and Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas drew a line under nearly five years of bloodshed at a summit two months ago, the shakiness of the truce was underlined when three Palestinian youths were shot dead by Israeli troops in southern Gaza on Saturday.

SANAA, Yemen, April 10--The US embassy in Yemen remained closed Sunday for a second day because of security threats after Washington warned of possible attacks against its nationals in the country.
“We received information about general threats,“ a US diplomat told AFP.
The embassy had closed on Saturday for one-day “administrative work“ after the US State Department authorized non-essential personnel and families of diplomats to leave Yemen.
The embassy will remain closed until further notice, said the diplomat.
But he said the closure was not related to clashes in northwest Yemen between government forces and rebels from the minority Zaidi community in which more than 200 people have been killed since the end of March.
Britain on Saturday also suspended operations at its mission in the country, the ancestral homeland of Osama bin Laden which has witnessed a series of Al-Qaeda-linked attacks in recent years. The purported chief of an Al-Qaeda cell in Yemen, one of eight suspects facing trial on charges of plotting to attack Western targets in Sanaa, told a court late last month he had planned a strike against the British embassy at the behest of the network’s Saudi branch.
Yemeni security agencies have taken heightened security measures in the capital, particularly around Western embassies and interests.
The US State Department has also warned US citizens to defer non-essential travel to Yemen.
A British Foreign Office spokesman in London said Friday that “there has been a current and credible threat“ and a precautionary measure had been taken to close the embassy until further notice.
The threat has been brushed off by a Yemeni security source.
Yemen has seen a series of attacks in recent years, notably the bombing by Al-Qaeda militants of the US destroyer Cole in Aden in 2000, which killed 17 American sailors. A 2002 attack against the French oil tanker Limburg killed one Bulgarian crew member and wounded 12 others.
Sanaa has cracked down on suspected Al-Qaeda militants since the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States, convicting several presumed extremists, including a number in connection with the Cole and Limburg attacks.