NATION/WORLD
Sidney Daily News, Friday, March 15, 2013R
Pope pays hotel bill
TODAY IN HISTORY BY THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Today is Friday, March 15, the 74th day of 2013. There are 291 days left in the year. Today’s Highlight in History: On March 15, 1913, President Woodrow Wilson met with about 100 reporters for the first formal presidential press conference. On this date: • In 44 B.C., Roman dictator Julius Caesar was assassinated by a group of nobles that included Brutus and Cassius. • In 1493, Christopher Columbus returned to Spain, concluding his first voyage to the Western Hemisphere. • In 1767, the seventh president of the United States, Andrew Jackson, was born in Waxhaw, S.C. • In 1820, Maine became the 23rd state. • In 1919, members of the American Expeditionary Force from World War I convened in Paris for a three-day meeting to found the American Legion. • In 1944, during World War II, Allied bombers again raided German-held Monte Cassino. • In 1956, the Lerner and Loewe musical play “My Fair Lady,” based on Bernard Shaw’s “Pygmalion,” opened on Broadway. • In 1962, a chartered Flying Tiger Line airplane carrying 107 people, most of them U.S. Army personnel, disappeared while en route from Guam to the Philippines. “No Strings,” Richard Rodgers’ first musical following the death of longtime collaborator Oscar Hammerstein II, opened on Broadway. • In 1964, actress Elizabeth Taylor married actor Richard Burton in Montreal; it was her fifth marriage, his second. • In 1970, Expo ‘70, promoting “Progress and Harmony for Mankind,” opened in Osaka, Japan. • In 1972, “The Godfather,” Francis Ford Coppola’s epic gangster movie based on the Mario Puzo novel and starring Marlon Brando and Al Pacino, premiered in New York. • In 1985, the first Internet domain name, symbolics.com, was registered by the Symbolics Computer Corp. of Massachusetts. Ten years ago: Hu Jintao was chosen to replace Jiang Zemin as the president of China. Protesters in Washington, D.C., and around the world demonstrated against an anticipated war with Iraq.
OUT OF THE BLUE Newborn speeds into officer’s arms IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP) — An Iowa City police officer pulled over a speeding SUV — then helped the driver and his passenger deliver a baby. When Officer Kevin Wolfe stopped the vehicle Sunday night, the driver jumped out and yelled, “Sir, we’re delivering a baby right here, right now!” Wolfe tells Cedar Rapids TV station KCRG that by the time he reached the passenger door of the SUV, the baby’s head and arms were already out. He assisted in the final stages of the delivery and wrapped the child in a blanket before escorting the family to a hospital. The episode was captured by Wolfe’s dashboard camera. Police spokeswoman Vicki Lalla says Wolfe didn’t issue a speeding ticket and so did not take down the parents’ names.
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AP Photo/J/ Scott Applewhite
HOUSE MINORITY Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., speaks after a closed-door meeting with President Barack Obama on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, March 14, 2013, as Assistant Minority Leader Jim Clyburn, D-S.C., (left) and House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, D-Md., (right) listen.
Senate GOP tells Obama to tone down the attacks WASHINGTON (AP) — Polite yet firm, Senate Republicans told President Barack Obama on Thursday to tone down his political attacks and prod Democratic allies to support controversial changes in Medicare if he wants a compromise reducing deficits and providing stability to federal benefit programs. Participants at a 90-minute closed-door meeting said Obama acknowledged the point without yielding ground — and noted that Republicans criticize him freely. “To quote an old Chicago politician, ‘Politics ain’t beanbag,’” the president said. The discussion came as Obama wrapped up a highly publicized round of meetings with rank-and-file lawmakers
in both parties and both houses of Congress in hopes of building support for a second-term agenda of deficit reduction, immigration overhaul and gun control. Obama met separately with Senate Republicans and House Democrats as legislation to lock in $85 billion in spending cuts and avert a government shutdown on March 27 made plodding progress. Separately the two parties advanced rival longer-term budgets in both houses. No breakthroughs had been anticipated and none was reported in the closed-door sessions, although Obama told reporters before returning to the White House, “We’re making progress.”
In the Senate, several Republicans told the president his rhetoric was not conducive to compromise. Sen. John Thune of South Dakota referred to a recent interview in which Obama said some Republicans want to eviscerate Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. “Nobody here believes those programs ought to be gutted,” Thune told Obama, the senator later recalled. “It’s better if the president is here fully engaged with us than traveling around the country saying Congress isn’t doing its job,” Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming later told reporters, summarizing comments he and others had made. “The president needs to be here working side by side with Congress.”
Physicists find a Higgs boson GENEVA (AP) — It helps solve one of the most fundamental riddles of the universe: how the Big Bang created something out of nothing 13.7 billion years ago. In what could go down as one of the great Eureka! moments in physics — and win somebody the Nobel Prize — scientists said Thursday that after a half-century quest, they are confident they have found a Higgs boson, the elusive subatomic speck sometimes called the “God particle.” The existence of the particle was theorized in
1964 by the British physicist Peter Higgs to explain why matter has mass. Scientists believe the particle acts like molasses or snow: When other tiny basic building blocks pass through it, they stick together, slow down and form atoms. Scientists at CERN, the Geneva-based European Organization for Nuclear Research, announced in July that they had found something that looked like the Higgs boson, but they weren’t certain, and they needed to go through the data and rule out the possibility it wasn’t something else.
CONCLAVE Reciting a hypnotic Gregorian chant, the 115 princes of the church, dressed in red robes over white lace tunics, filed two by two into the frescoed masterpiece that is the Sistine Chapel and took their seats at four rows of tables. One used a wheelchair and was helped to his place by his colleagues. Then each man moved to the front and took an oath not to reveal what was about to occur: “we promise and swear not to break this secret in any way, either during or after the election of the new pontiff.” With a cry of “extra omnes” — “all out” — the massive double doors swung shut, the key was turned and the conclave was under way. Saying it twice No matter how beautiful the chapel, Chicago Cardinal Francis George said, the acoustics aren’t great. The presiding cardinal, Giovanni Battista Re, had to explain each step in the ritual twice, once to each side of the room. Other than that, there was only silence. “The conclave is a very prayerful experience,” O’Malley said. “It’s like a retreat.” Each man wrote a few words in Latin on a piece of paper: “I elect as supreme pontiff…” followed by a name. One by one, they held the paper aloft, placed it on a gold-and-silver saucer at the front of the room, and tipped it into an urn. And then the tallying began, with three cardinals — known as scrutineers — reading out the name on each slip. When they finished counting, it was clear the field remained wide open, said Cardinal Sean Brady, leader of the church in Ireland. “There were a number of candidates,” he said. A cardinal threaded the ballots together and put them in a stove. Outside in St. Peter’s Square, as black smoke billowed from the chimney, the cheering crowd fell silent and began to thin. Ritual repeated On Wednesday morning, the cardinals
VATICAN CITY (AP) — On his first day as shepherd of the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics, Pope Francis picked up his luggage at a Vatican hotel, personally thanked each member of the staff and even paid his own bill. Then, at his first Mass, he delivered a short, unscripted homily — in Italian, not the Latin of his predecessor — holding the cardinals who elected him responsible for keeping the church strong. Pope for barely 12 hours, Francis brushed off years of tradition and formality Thursday with a remarkable break in style that sent a clear message that his papacy is poised to reject many of the trappings enjoyed by now-retired Benedict XVI. That was hardly out of character for Francis. For years, as Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, the Argentine pastor took the bus to work, kissed the feet of AIDS patients and prayed with former prostitutes, eschewing the luxurious residence that would have been his due as archbishop of Buenos Aires. But now he is pope — the first from the New World and the first Jesuit — and his style both personal and liturgical is in a global spotlight. On his first day, he couldn’t have signaled a greater contrast to Benedict, the German academic who was meek and generous in person but formal and traditional in public. The differences played out Thursday in the Sistine Chapel as the 76-year-old Francis celebrated his first public Mass as pope. Whereas Benedict read a three-page discourse in Latin, Francis had a far simpler message. Speaking off-thecuff for 10 minutes in easy Italian, he said all Catholics must “build” the church and “walk” with the faith. He urged priests to build their churches on solid foundations, warning: “What happens when children build sand castles on the beach? It all comes down.” “If we don’t proclaim Jesus, we become a pitiful NGO, not the bride of the Lord,” he said.
From Page 1 filed in again and repeated the ritual of voting. Each man filled out his ballot and walked to the front of the room. “When you walk up with the ballot in your hand and stand before the image of the Last Judgment, that is a great responsibility,” O’Malley said. There were two votes before lunch, and the field was narrowing. But the smoke was black again, and the crowd was again disappointed. This time, however, they didn’t leave the square. He was somber At lunch, O’Malley sat down besides Bergoglio. “He is very approachable, very friendly,” he said. “He has a good sense of humor, he is very quick and a joy to be with.” But with the vote going his way, Bergoglio was uncharacteristically somber. Almost there In the first afternoon ballot, the cardinals were getting close to a decision. But not quite. They started over, and the scrutineers read out the names. And it began to dawn on the men that their work was done. “It was very moving as the names were sounding out,” Brady said. “Bergoglio, Bergoglio, and suddenly the magic number of 77 was reached.” The cardinals applauded at 77, and again once the tally was complete. “I don’t think there was a dry eye in the house,” said Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York. Will you accept? A cardinal asked Bergoglio whether he accepted the papacy. “I am a sinner, but as this office has been given to me, I accept,” he said, according to three French cardinals. Bergoglio announced the name he would assume — Francis — and went to change into the papal robes in the Room of the Tears, so named because many have wept at the enormity of the task they face. When Francis returned to the chapel, “his first action was to go to a cardinal in
a wheelchair and go to the back of the chapel to greet him,” Brady said. Aides brought in a platform with a white chair for Francis to sit on as the cardinals came one by one to pay their respects. The pope declined, Dolan said. “He met with us on our own level,” Dolan said. Dolan said he felt a strange emotion as he kissed the pope’s ring. “It’s very difficult to explain,” Dolan said. “You obviously get to know your brother cardinal. But all of a sudden the identity is different.” Facing the public It was time to face the public. More than 100,000 people had jammed into the square, and Francis prepared to greet them from the balcony. Vatican workers lined up to shake his hand, but Francis was worried about a delay, Dolan said. There were too many people outside waiting in the rain, and he didn’t want to keep them. As Francis stepped out on the balcony, cardinals rushed to the windows to look out over the crowd. It was nighttime, and George expected a “sea of umbrellas.” Instead, he saw flashing lights of cameras across the square. “It looked like jewels,” George said. The crowd jumped up and down, poking umbrellas in the air. Strangers embraced. He took a bus After the address, a car came to take the new pope to dinner, and buses for the rest of the cardinals. The car returned empty. “As the last bus pulls up, guess who walked out,” Dolan said. Francis had dinner with the others. They toasted him, “then he toasted us and said, ‘May God forgive you for what you’ve done,’” Dolan said. By the time the night was over, cardinals said, the new pope seemed comfortable in his new robes. “Last night, I think there was a peace in his heart,” O’Malley said, “that God’s will had been accomplished in his life.”