Major Rome square renamed for John Paul II

ROME (AP) — A corner of a big Rome piazza, known for hosting free rock concerts and political rallies, will be renamed after late pontiff John Paul II, with Pope Francis coming to the unveiling ceremony Sunday.

While Francis instantly proved to be a crowd pleaser — about 100,000 people turned out in St. Peter's Square Sunday and a nearby street for his noon blessing — the mention of the widely beloved John Paul still prompts affectionate cheers. When Francis noted that John Paul "closed his eyes to this world" exactly eight years ago this month, in 2005, the new pope drew so much applause, he couldn't finish his sentence as he spoke from the papal studio window overlooking St. Peter's Square.

Francis invited people to join him later in Rome's main church, St. John in Lateran Basilica. Pontiffs are also the bishop of Rome, and a traditional installation ceremony at the basilica formally recognizes that Francis is Rome's bishop as well as the leader of the worldwide Roman Catholic church.

Before entering the basilica, Francis was scheduled to attend the unveiling of a plaque on a corner of the square near the church, naming that part of the piazza after John Paul. The late pontiff enthusiastically embraced his role as Rome's bishop, visiting hundreds of city parishes on Sunday mornings.

Francis might be the pope who decides whether another miracle has been attributed to John Paul's intercession, which would enable the late, Polish-born pontiff to enjoy the church's highest honor, sainthood. The church process to certify a first miracle needed for John Paul's beatification went exceptionally fast. The six years it took from his death until Pope Benedict XVI beatified him in 2011 was the shortest time in modern history. Beatification is the last formal step before sainthood.

The vast St. John in Lateran piazza, which can hold hundreds of thousands of people, is a popular venue for free rock concerts on Labor Day, May 1, and a frequent rallying point for union leaders and politicians. Rome's city hall said the square was picked as an apt place to honor John Paul after consulting with an Italian cardinal who serves as the pope's vicar general for the Rome diocese.

Pope Francis seemed to be adding a new twist to the role of public squares in everyday life. At his Vatican appearance Sunday, he encouraged faithful to "go into the piazzas and announce Christ our savior" to the people. "Bring the Good News with sweetness and respect," he added. The "Good News" refers to the Gospels.

John Paul, then Benedict, and now Francis have all made shoring up flagging faith on the traditionally Christian European continent as well as in other affluent areas of the world a priority of their leadership. The Vatican is also keen on preserving Catholic loyalty in places like South America, where dynamic evangelical sects have been attracting baptized Catholics away from their faith, as well as encourage growing communities of Catholics in Africa and Asia.

The new pope is expected to lead Catholic youth in pep rallies this summer in Rio de Janiero, Brazil, during a pilgrimage that would take the world's first pope to be born in South America back to his home continent.

When Francis spoke of the installation ceremony Sunday evening, he urged the crowd to pray with him so that together, "bishop and people, walk in faith and charity."

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China to attend major U.S.-hosted naval exercises, but role limited

By Phil Stewart

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - China's People's Liberation Army has accepted an invitation to participate for the first time in a major U.S.-hosted naval drill, but legal restrictions will limit its role to less sensitive exercises, like disaster relief, U.S. officials say.

Beijing's agreement to join the drills being held next year comes at a moment of heightened tensions between China and U.S. ally Japan over disputed East China Sea islets, and unease in the United States about China's rapid military buildup and its cyber capabilities.

The Rim of the Pacific exercise, known as RIMPAC, is billed as the world's largest international maritime exercise, with 22 nations and more than 40 ships and submarines participating the last time it was held off Hawaii in 2012.

Not all the participants are treaty allies with the United States. Last year's participants included Russia and India.

But China has never participated in the event, although it did send observers to RIMPAC in 1998, the Pentagon said.

Deputy Defense Secretary Ashton Carter acknowledged China had agreed to participate in RIMPAC during a little-noticed speech on Wednesday in Jakarta. Carter said he was "delighted that they have accepted" the American invitation, extended last year by then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta.

At the time, Panetta said he asked China to send a ship to the exercises. Beijing said later it would give the offer "positive consideration.

"We seek to strengthen and grow our military-to-military relationship with China, which matches and follows our growing political and economic relationship," Carter said, according to prepared remarks on the Defense Department's website.

U.S. law prohibits the Pentagon from any military contacts with the PLA if it could "create a national security risk due to an inappropriate exposure" to activities including joint combat operations.

There is an exemption for operations or exercises related to search and rescue and humanitarian relief, and China participated with the United States last year in a counter-piracy drill.

'SECURITY SAFEGUARDS'

Lieutenant Colonel Catherine Wilkinson, a Pentagon spokeswoman, said China's participation in RIMPAC would adhere to U.S. law and noted precautions taken by the Navy in drills to avoid revealing sensitive information.

"The U.S. Navy has operational security safeguards to protect U.S. technology and tactics, techniques and procedures from disclosure," Wilkinson said.

Dean Cheng, an analyst at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative Washington think tank, questioned whether Chinese intelligence operatives would not benefit from their participation in RIMPAC, which also includes live-fire exercises by key U.S. allies.

"If they have a frigate, or even a hospital ship, in the middle of that exercise, the hospital ship is going to be staffed by intelligence officers," Cheng said.

He noted that if the drills were designed in a way that was unhelpful to the Chinese, they would also be unhelpful to allies.

Wilkinson declined to speculate about which drills China might participate in, noting the agenda had not yet been set for next year's event.

"U.S.-China military-to-military engagements can include a range of activities in areas of mutual interest including maritime security, military medicine and humanitarian assistance/disaster relief," she said.

Commander Charles Brown, a spokesman for the Navy's Third Fleet, said the initial planning conference for RIMPAC 2014 would take place in May.

"We're proud of our ability to design an exercise that everyone feels meets their objectives and is comfortable with," Brown said.

(Editing by Warren Strobel and Peter Cooney)

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Prominent Republicans back major immigration reforms

You can blame CNN all you want for its reporters feeling sorry for the now convicted rapists in the ongoing case in Steubenville, Ohio, but MSNBC, Fox News, and CNN all just outed a 16-year-rape victim to millions. Seeking to report on an emotional case for all that it's worth, apparently, all three networks ran this unedited clip from the courtroom video feed, in which one of the defendants responds to Sunday's verdict by apologizing to the Jane Doe victim by name:

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Moody's strips Britain of triple-A rating in major blow to Osborne

LONDON/NEW YORK (Reuters) - Britain suffered its first ever sovereign ratings downgrade from a major agency on Friday when Moody's stripped the country of its coveted top-notch triple-A rating, dealing a major blow to Chancellor George Osborne.

Moody's said weak prospects for British economic growth, which have thrown the government's deficit reduction strategy off course, lay behind its decision to cut the rating by one notch to Aa1 from Aaa.

Austerity has been the watchword for Osborne's fiscal policy since his Conservative-led coalition came to power in 2010 after an election in which he vowed to defend Britain's triple-A rating, which can help keep down borrowing costs.

But a very slow recovery from the financial crisis has pushed back by at least two years the government's goal of largely eliminating the budget deficit by 2015's election.

The Labour Party blames the deficit on too much austerity.

Nonetheless, Osborne insisted now was not the time to change course. His annual budget due on March 20 is expected to show a further deterioration in the country's fiscal outlook.

"Tonight we have a stark reminder of the debt problems facing our country and the clearest possible warning to anyone who thinks we can run away from dealing with those problems," he said in a statement. "Far from weakening our resolve to deliver our economic recovery plan, this decision redoubles it."

However, the downgrade may fuel unease amongst members of his own party and his Lib Dem coalition partners that Osborne's gamble that he could slash the deficit and ensure a return to growth by the May 2015 election is failing to pay off.

Sterling fell by almost a cent to around $1.5160 after the downgrade, just off Thursday's fresh 2-1/2-year low, and analysts expected it to weaken further on Monday, even if many had seen a downgrade coming sooner or later.

"It's a pretty big deal," said Kathy Lien, managing director at BK Asset Management in New York. "We didn't see a huge reaction in the pound because it's late in the New York session. But you'll see some more aggressive selling when the markets open (in Asia) on Sunday."

Moody's said the outlook on its rating on Britain was now stable, meaning any further change is unlikely for the next year or so.

Britain joins the United States and France in having lost its triple-A rating from at least one major agency, after holding a top-notch rating from Moody's and Standard & Poor's since 1978, and from Fitch Ratings since 1994.

SLUGGISH GROWTH

Moody's said that despite considerable economic strengths, Britain's growth was likely to be sluggish due to a mix of weaker global economic activity - especially in the euro zone - and a drag "from the ongoing domestic public and private-sector de-leveraging process."

"This period of sluggish growth poses challenges to the government's fiscal consolidation program, which we now assume will extend well into the next parliament," Moody's analyst Sarah Carlson said in a telephone interview with Reuters.

But Ed Balls, the Labour Party's main spokesman on finance issues, said the Moody's decision should be a wake-up call for Osborne ahead of his annual budget statement as Chancellor of the Exchequer.

"This credit rating downgrade is a humiliating blow to a Prime Minister and Chancellor who said keeping our AAA rating was the test of their economic and political credibility."

"The issue is no longer whether this Chancellor can admit his mistakes but whether the Prime Minister can now see that, with UK economic policy so badly downgraded in every sense, things have got to change."

Howard Archer, chief UK economist at IHS Global Insight, said a new approach from Osborne was improbable.

"The strong likelihood is though that it will not materially lead to a change in his plans."

Changes are more likely from the Bank of England, which surprised markets earlier this week after it revealed that Governor Mervyn King and two other policymakers favoured restarting bond purchases to boost the economy.

They remained in the minority among their fellow policymakers but economists increasingly expect more stimulus eventually by the central bank.

This - and the central bank's tolerance of above-target inflation - have combined to put pressure on sterling while leaving British government debt relatively shielded.

Charles Diebel, a fixed income strategist at Lloyds, was sanguine about the impact of the downgrade on gilts, as U.S. and French debt was not badly affected when these countries lost their triple-A ratings.

"This has been speculated as inevitable and is most likely largely in the market. I would expect only very limited damage to the gilt curve and to sterling. Historically, losing your AAA is actually a bond bullish event," he said.

(Additional reporting by Steven C. Johnson in New York and Michael Holden in London; Editing by James Dalgleish, Jon Hemming and Eric Walsh)

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