Pope washes women's feet in break with church law

ROME (AP) — In his most significant break with tradition yet, Pope Francis washed and kissed the feet of two young women at a juvenile detention center — a surprising departure from church rules that restrict the Holy Thursday ritual to men.

No pope has ever washed the feet of a woman before, and Francis' gesture sparked a debate among some conservatives and liturgical purists, who lamented he had set a "questionable example." Liberals welcomed the move as a sign of greater inclusiveness in the church.

Speaking to the young offenders, including Muslims and Orthodox Christians, Francis said that Jesus washed the feet of his disciples on the eve of his crucifixion in a gesture of love and service.

"This is a symbol, it is a sign. Washing your feet means I am at your service," Francis told the group, aged 14 to 21, at the Casal del Marmo detention facility in Rome.

"Help one another. This is what Jesus teaches us," the pope said. "This is what I do. And I do it with my heart. I do this with my heart because it is my duty. As a priest and bishop, I must be at your service."

In a video released by the Vatican, the 76-year-old Francis was shown kneeling on the stone floor as he poured water from a silver chalice over the feet of a dozen youths: black, white, male, female, even feet with tattoos. Then, after drying each one with a cotton towel, he bent over and kissed it.

Previous popes carried out the Holy Thursday rite in Rome's grand St. John Lateran basilica, choosing 12 priests to represent the 12 apostles whose feet Christ washed during the Last Supper before his crucifixion.

Before he became pope, as archbishop of Buenos Aires, the former Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio celebrated the ritual foot-washing in jails, hospitals or hospices — part of his ministry to the poorest and most marginalized of society. He often involved women. Photographs show him washing the feet of a woman holding her newborn child in her arms.

That Francis would include women in his inaugural Holy Thursday Mass as pope was remarkable, however, given that current liturgical rules exclude women.

Canon lawyer Edward Peters, who is an adviser to the Holy See's top court, noted in a blog that the Congregation for Divine Worship sent a letter to bishops in 1988 making clear that "the washing of the feet of chosen men ... represents the service and charity of Christ, who came 'not to be served, but to serve.'"

While bishops have successfully petitioned Rome over the years for an exemption to allow women to participate, the rules on the issue are clear, Peters said.

"By disregarding his own law in this matter, Francis violates, of course, no divine directive," Peters wrote. "What he does do, I fear, is set a questionable example."

The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said he didn't want to wade into a canonical dispute over the matter. However, he noted that in a "grand solemn celebration" of the rite, only men are included because Christ washed the feet of his 12 apostles, all of whom were male.

"Here, the rite was for a small, unique community made up also of women," Lombardi wrote in an email. "Excluding the girls would have been inopportune in light of the simple aim of communicating a message of love to all, in a group that certainly didn't include experts on liturgical rules."

Others on the more liberal side of the debate welcomed the example Francis set.

"The pope's washing the feet of women is hugely significant because including women in this part of the Holy Thursday Mass has been frowned on — and even banned — in some dioceses," said the Rev. James Martin, a Jesuit priest and author of "The Jesuit Guide."

"It shows the all-embracing love of Christ, who ministered to all he met: man or woman, slave or free, Jew or Gentile."

For some, restricting the rite to men is in line with the church's restriction on ordaining women priests. Church teaching holds that only men should be ordained because Christ's apostles were male.

"This is about the ordination of women, not about their feet," wrote the Rev. John Zuhlsdorf, a traditionalist blogger. Liberals "only care about the washing of the feet of women, because ultimately they want women to do the washing."

Still, Francis has made clear he doesn't favor ordaining women. In his 2011 book, "On Heaven and Earth," then-Cardinal Bergoglio said there were solid theological reasons why the priesthood was reserved to men: "Because Jesus was a man."

On this Holy Thursday, however, Francis had a simple message for the young inmates, whom he greeted one-by-one after the Mass, giving each an Easter egg.

"Don't lose hope," Francis said. "Understand? With hope you can always go on."

One young man then asked why he had come to visit them.

Francis responded that it was to "help me to be humble, as a bishop should be."

The gesture, he said, came "from my heart. Things from the heart don't have an explanation."

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Follow Nicole Winfield at www.twitter.com/nwinfield

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Obama makes impassioned plea for gun control legislation

By Steve Holland

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama attempted on Thursday to inject fresh momentum into efforts to pass gun-control legislation, pleading with U.S. lawmakers not to forget those shot to death in Newtown, Connecticut three months ago.

Amid signs that he may have to accept a scaled-down version of gun legislation, Obama sounded a note of frustration in calling upon Americans to demand action from the U.S. Congress in the weeks ahead.

He said the legislation's opponents, the powerful U.S. gun lobby led by the National Rifle Association, are "doing everything they can" to derail the effort barely 100 days after the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre, in which a gunman killed 20 children, six staff members and then himself.

"The entire country pledged we would do something about it and that this time would be different. Shame on us if we've forgotten. I haven't forgotten those kids. Shame on us if we've forgotten," said Obama, appearing at the White House with mothers of children who had been shot to death.

The gunman in Newtown, Adam Lanza, fired 154 rounds in less than 5 minutes, selecting high capacity magazines from a home arsenal stocked with swords, knives and a cache of guns, officials said Thursday.

Despite events like this, a grassroots organizing effort by Obama supporters and a high-profile advertising campaign funded by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg to keep up the pressure, gun legislation has been stalled on Capitol Hill in recent weeks.

The best chance of success for gun-control advocates is that Congress will approve universal background checks for gun purchasers and tougher penalties for gun trafficking.

Less likely to pass are bans on assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition clips, two of the main proposals to emerge from Vice President Joe Biden's gun violence task force, formed by Obama after the Newtown shootings.

'JUST THE BEGINNING'

Biden seemed to acknowledged the challenge when he said on a conference call on Wednesday organized by Mayors Against Illegal Guns that the administration will keep pressing for action regardless of what Congress does in the immediate future.

"Let me say this as clearly as I can: This is just the beginning," Biden said.

Obama had hoped at the outset of his second term to use his re-election mandate to make rapid progress on three major issues: gun violence, deficit-reduction and immigration reform.

All are moving slowly, however.

Immigration may offer the best prospect for action as Republicans seek to attract more Hispanic Americans who voted overwhelming for Obama and his Democrats in the 2012 elections.

Republicans insist that any pathway to citizenship for 11 million illegal immigrants be preceded by certification that U.S. borders are secure.

The biggest stumbling block to an immigration bill concerns creation of a guest-worker program to allow immigrants to cross the U.S.-Mexican border legally for temporary jobs.

U.S. labor unions, which worry such a program would lead to a loss of jobs for Americans, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce have yet to arrive at a formula acceptable to both. Their agreement is considered crucial to bringing Congress along.

Obama has said he is encouraged by the progress, and he believes the dispute over the guest-worker program can be resolved. After first declaring the U.S.-Mexican border sufficiently secure, Obama now says it can be improved, a position that may permit him to make a deal with Republicans.

"I'm actually optimistic about this, in part because I think both Republicans as well as Democrats are now recognizing that it's the right thing to do," Obama told Univision, a Spanish-language network, in an interview on Wednesday.

Obama's attempt to negotiate a "grand bargain" aimed at reducing the U.S. budget deficit is facing old-fashioned political gridlock and could collapse into a partisan sinkhole.

In a fresh round of schmoozing to discuss this and other legislative items, Obama will dine with a dozen Republican senators on April 10, the second such meeting he will have held in his attempts to engage his political opponents.

TAXING THE RICH

Lawmakers are still bruised from a fight over $85 billion in automatic spending cuts that went into effect a month ago despite Obama's attempt to head them off.

Obama still wants what Republicans refused to give him in that budget fight, an increase in taxes on the wealthy by eliminating some deductions and loopholes. Republicans instead want to cut spending.

The White House struck a pessimistic note this week on the prospects for success given the Republican leadership's refusal to agree to raise more tax revenues.

"As long as Republicans are saying we're not going to ask the wealthiest and well-connected to pay a single dime to reduce our deficit, then it is hard to imagine that we're going to reach a compromise," White House deputy press secretary Josh Earnest said Wednesday.

The difficulties in gaining passage of major legislation reflects the continued grip partisan politics holds on Washington, with the White House and Senate run by Democrats and the House of Representatives controlled by Republicans. This makes the 2014 midterm congressional elections of increasing importance.

"Look, it's what we all thought when Obama was re-elected," said Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia's Center for Politics. "There is just not going to be a lot of new legislation in Obama's second term, unless he wins the House in 2014, and even then it looks very, very tough."

(Editing by Fred Barbash and Todd Eastham)

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South Sudan says 150 killed in battle with rebels

JUBA (Reuters) - More than 150 people have been killed in a battle between South Sudan's army and insurgents in the eastern Jonglei state, officials said on Thursday.

The African country's army earlier this month launched an offensive against rebels led by David Yau Yau in Jonglei where the government hopes to search for oil with the help of France's Total.

Since winning independence from Sudan in July 2011, South Sudan has been struggling to impose its authority across vast swathes of territory bristling with weapons after decades of civil war with Khartoum.

Yau Yau mounted a rebellion last year, with support from his Murle ethnic group, after losing local elections in 2010.

Army spokesman Philip Aguer told Reuters his forces had killed 143 fighters from Yau Yau's militia in a battle east of Pibor town on Tuesday. Twenty soldiers were killed and 70 people were wounded, he said.

Information Minister Barnaba Marial Benjamin said the army, or SPLA, had seized an air strip which had been used to drop ammunition and arms to Yau Yau's troops.

"The SPLA is moving in the area so as to put an end to the rebellion," he said.

South Sudan has accused arch rival Sudan of supporting Yau Yau and other rebel groups, a claim denied by Khartoum.

A shortwave radio station with links to the Yau Yau rebellion says the group is fighting the government in reaction to abuses committed during a state disarmament program in Jonglei.

Rights groups accuse South Sudan's army of human rights violations during a disarmament push aimed at ending a cycle of clashes between the Murle and Lou Nuer tribes.

Nearly 900 people died when about 7,000 armed youths of the Lou Nuer tribe attacked Murle villages in the Pibor area at the end of last year, according to the United Nations.

(Reporting by Andrew Green in Juba; Writing by Ulf Laessing in Cairo; Editing by Michael Roddy)

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Ashley Judd Won't Run for Senate in Kentucky

ABC News' Michael Falcone and Shushannah Walshe report:

After months of flirtation, actress Ashley Judd announced on Wednesday that that she will not pursue a Senate bid against Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.

She made the announcement in a series of tweets late Wednesday afternoon:

"After serious and thorough contemplation, I realize that my responsibilities & energy at this time need to be focused on my family. Regretfully, I am currently unable to consider a campaign for the Senate. I have spoken to so many Kentuckians over these last few months who expressed their desire for a fighter for the people & new leader. While that won't be me at this time, I will continue to work as hard as I can to ensure the needs of Kentucky families are met by returning this Senate seat to whom it rightfully belongs: the people & their needs, dreams, and great potential. Thanks for even considering me as that person & know how much I love our Commonwealth. Thank you!"

A source familiar with Judd's decision-making process said the news that Kentucky Secretary of State Allison Lundergan Grimes has also been considering a Senate run "gave her the space to really make a decision and decide what was best for her."

The source said Judd has known she was not running for "the past few days" but only decided to make her decision public on Wednesday.

As late as last Friday, Judd was still hinting at a run, referring to her potential run against McConnell and foreshadowing what she presumed would be a barrage of attack ads from his campaign. She told a conference audience in Cincinnati that she used to be averse to hearing criticism, which she said was ironic because she was "about to get $40 million worth of it."

In the same speech, she also joked that her mother, country star Naomi Judd, couldn't wait to turn her garage into campaign headquarters.

Rep. John Yarmuth, D-Ky., who was one of Judd's most vocal boosters, issued a statement on Wednesday through his spokesman.

"Congressman Yarmuth has said all along he would be surprised if Ashley Judd did not make this race and he's certainly surprised and while he's disappointed because he believed Ashley Judd would be a strong candidate against Sen. McConnell he's confident that a strong candidate will emerge to take on Sen. McConnell who is the least popular senator in the country," Yarmuth spokesman Stephen George said in a statement to ABC News.

George added that Judd and Yarmuth spoke earlier this week where she did "express some reservations about the race," but he added they had been speaking throughout the process and that was not unusual."

Judd's interest in the race spurred widespread national attention, including from former President Bill Clinton who spoke to both Judd and Grimes about the seat, encouraging them both to take a hard look at the race.

ABC News reported last week that Clinton encouraged Judd to enter the race and promised he would help her, according to several Kentucky political sources. That conversation happened sometime between the November election and President Barack Obama's second inauguration.

Earlier this month Clinton also met with Grimes after he spoke at an event for former Kentucky Sen. Wendell Ford in Owensboro, Ky., according to multiple political sources in the state. Clinton encouraged Grimes to consider taking on McConnell, adding as he did with Judd that he would support her.

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Despite threats, North Korea keeps border factories open

By Ju-min Park

PAJU, South Korea (Reuters) - A heavily armed border crossing between North and South Korea that allows the North access to $2 billion in trade a year, one of its few avenues to foreign currency, remained open on Thursday despite Pyongyang's move to cut communications.

North Korea on Wednesday severed the last of three telephone hotlines with South Korea as it readied its troops to face what it believes to be "hostile" action from Seoul and Washington. The phone line is used to regulate access to the Kaesong industrial park on the North Korean side of the border as well as for military communications with the South.

But nearly 200 South Koreans and 166 vehicles carrying oil and materials drove into the park a few miles inside the impoverished North starting at 2330 GMT after North Korean authorities used a separate phone line from the park's management office to allow access, South Korean officials said.

The North has already cut a direct hotline to U.S. military forces stationed in South Korea and a Red Cross line that had been used by the governments on both sides.

"I am a bit nervous but it looked the same as before when I went in there yesterday," truck driver Park Chul-hee, 44, told Reuters outside the Paju customs office. North Korean soldiers in and around Kaesong had been wearing combat fatigues recently, he added.

Workers and traders crossing the world's most heavily militarized border were making sure they had U.S. dollar bills for the trip, some borrowing from a co-worker to make sure they had enough of the officially accepted currency in the zone.

Pyongyang's harsh rhetoric against Washington including a vow to attack its military bases in the Pacific and to stage a nuclear strike has not yet extended to its willingness to accept dollars, which South Koreans said they had to use to buy cigarettes and other goods in the zone.

The North's move on the hotline was the latest in a series of threats in response to U.N. sanctions imposed after its February nuclear test and to routine military drills conducted by the South Korean and U.S. militaries.

North and South Korea are technically in a state of war because their 1950-53 conflict ended with the signing of an armistice, not a peace treaty.

The North-South military hotline was used on a daily basis to process South Koreans and vehicles across the border and in and out of the Kaesong project, where 123 South Korean firms employ more than 50,000 North Koreans to make household goods.

About 120 South Koreans remain in the park on an average day. The presence of South Koreans at Kaesong poses a potentially serious political risk for Seoul given they could be trapped if Pyongyang sealed the border.

On Thursday, 511 people in 398 vehicles are scheduled to come out of the zone, according to South Korean customs office estimates.

"I think the third nuclear test is the last tipping point. I was worried so I came out," said one South Korean who has been running a factory in Kaesong for six years and who requested anonymity due to the sensitivity of the issue.

Few people believe the North will shut down the project.

The $2 billion a year it generates reduces Pyongyang's dependency on China, which accounted for almost $6 billion in trade in 2012, according to South Korean government estimates.

Kaesong also generates more than $80 million a year in cash in wages. This is paid to the state rather than to workers.

(Writing by Jack Kim, Editing by Dean Yates)

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Syria's Assad appeals to African summit for help

DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) — Syria's increasingly isolated president appealed on Wednesday to the leaders of a five-nation economic forum meeting in South Africa to help end his country's two-year conflict.

Bashar Assad's appeal came a day after the Arab League endorsed Syria's Western-backed opposition coalition, delivering another blow to the regime in Damascus.

Assad sent a letter urging the leaders of the five nation BRICS forum — Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa — to "work for an immediate cessation of violence that would guarantee the success of the political solution" in Syria. The World Bank says these countries are driving global economic growth.

"This requires a clear international will to dry up the sources of terrorism and stop its funding and arming," Assad said in the letter, which was carried by Syrian state media on Wednesday.

Assad said Syria is subjected to "acts of terrorism backed by Arab, regional and Western nations" — a reference to the Western-backed opposition fighting his regime.

Attempts to end Syria's crisis through peaceful means have so far failed to make progress. The opposition, including the main Syrian National Coalition, says it will accept nothing less than Assad's departure from power while his government has vowed to continue the battle until its troops crush the rebel forces.

On Tuesday, Syria's opposition for the first time took over the country's seat in the Arab League at a summit in Qatar in a diplomatic triumph by Assad's opponents.

The opposition's ascension to the League further demonstrated the extent of the regime's isolation two years into a ferocious civil war that the U.N. says has killed an estimated 70,000 people.

And in a further show of solidarity with anti-Assad forces, the summit in Qatar endorsed the "right of each state" to provide the Syrian people and the rebel Free Syrian Army with "all necessary means to ... defend themselves, including military means."

But the opposition alliance is marred by severe divisions among its ranks, and often disconnected from the rebel forces fighting inside Syria, so it's not immediately clear how the developments in Qatar would translate on the ground.

At the gathering in the South African resort of Durban, President Jacob Zuma and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, were asked Tuesday whether they would use their influence to persuade Assad to allow unimpeded U.N. humanitarian access across all Syria's borders, as leading activists from BRICS countries have asked for.

Zuma ignored the question while Putin, in a throwaway remark, said: "We will think about it." Earlier, the Russian president said the forum's leaders would jointly "work for a peaceful resolution to the Syrian crisis.

BRICS countries, including Assad's key ally Russia, oppose foreign intervention in Syria and accuse the West of trying to force regime change. Russia, China and South Africa have also voted against U.N. Security Council resolutions on Syria.

In his letter, Assad criticized European and U.S. sanctions imposed on his regime and urged BRICS leaders to "exert every possible effort to lift the suffering of the Syrian people that were caused by the sanctions."

He said the sanctions are "directly effecting the lives of our people," an apparent reference to shortages of goods and soaring prices.

In Syria, activist groups reported violence in different areas in the country on Wednesday, including Damascus and its suburbs and the southern Quneitra region along the cease-fire line separating Syria from Israeli-occupied Gold Heights.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and the Local Coordination Committees reported clashes and shelling in Quneitra villages of Bir Ajam, Rasm al-Hawa and Ein el-Darb. The Observatory said rebels overran three army posts near Bir Ajam on Wednesday.

The area near Golan Heights, a strategic goal of the rebels, has been the scene of heavy clashes for days.

The Observatory, which relies on a network of activists on the ground, also reported an air raid by Assad's air force on the town of Qusair near the border with Lebanon as well as aerial attacks on the Damascus neighborhood of Qaboun.

Syria's crisis began in March 2011 with protests demanding Assad's ouster. Following a harsh government crackdown, the uprising steadily grew more violent until it became a full-fledged civil war.

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Mroue reported from Beirut.

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Part of Berlin Wall removed in pre-dawn operation

BERLIN (AP) — For nearly 30 years, the Berlin Wall was the hated symbol of the division of Europe, a gray, concrete mass that snaked through neighborhoods, separating families and friends. On Wednesday, it took hundreds of police to guarantee the safe removal of 15 feet (less than 5 meters) of what's left of the wall.

Construction crews, protected by about 250 police, hauled down part of the three-quarter of a mile (1.3-kilometer) strip of the wall before dawn to provide access to a planned luxury apartment complex overlooking the Spree River.

Even though most of the strip remains intact, the move angered many Berliners, who believe that developers are sacrificing history for profit.

The site, known as the East Side Gallery, has become a major tourist attraction, painted by 120 artists with colorful scenes along the gray concrete tiles.

It is the longest remaining portion of the 96-mile (155-kilometer) wall that surrounded Western-occupied West Berlin from 1961 until the peaceful revolution against the communist East German government in 1989. At least 136 people were killed trying to escape over the wall.

The flap over the future of the East Side Gallery flared last month with the announcement that developers wanted to tear away part of the wall. The announcement triggered a series of protests, including one attended by American celebrity David Hasselhoff.

Hasselhoff is remembered here fondly for his song "Looking for Freedom" that became the unofficial anthem of the 1989 revolution.

"It's like tearing down an Indian burial ground," Hasselhoff said during the March 17 protest. "It's a no-brainer."

After the protests, demolition work was suspended while local politicians and the investors looked for alternative access to the apartment site, located in the heart of the German capital.

When no other access route could be found, the main investor, Maik Uwe Hinkel, decided to resume the project. Work began at 5 a.m. Wednesday when few people were out on the streets.

In an emailed statement, Hinkel said the removal of parts of the wall was a temporary move to enable trucks to access the building site. He said that after four weeks of fruitless deliberations with city officials and owners of adjacent property, he was no longer willing to wait.

As word of the demolition spread, small crowds of Berliners turned out to watch although no one sought to block the effort.

"I can't believe they came here in the dark in such a sneaky manner," said Kani Alavi, the head of the East Side Gallery's artists' group. "All they see is their money. They have no understanding for the historic relevance and art of this place."

The irony of Berliners trying to preserve part of what was once a hated symbol of repression reflects a growing public belief that the German capital needs to preserve symbols of its past — both the good and the bad — for future generations.

Much of Adolf Hitler's capital was destroyed by Allied bombing and the 1945 Soviet ground assault that ended World War II in Europe.

With the end of the Cold War, however, Germans have worked to preserve other sites, including those that do not flatter the country.

A museum to Nazi atrocities has been built over the site of Gestapo headquarters. Tourists can wander through dungeon-like prisons operated by the Soviets and the East German secret police — as well as underground complexes built in the west of the city to protect civilians against nuclear attack.

It's all designed to allow new generations to understand the painful history behind a country that is now Europe's economic powerhouse.

"The Berlin Wall is the most significant symbol of the division of Berlin," said Maria Nooke, the deputy director of the Berlin Wall Foundation. "On the one hand it illustrates the repression in East Germany, on the other hand it symbolizes how Germans peacefully overcame that repression."

It took years for Berliners — both easterners and westerners — to develop such feelings for the wall.

"After a while, there was a growing need to deal with that part of history and to preserve it for future generations," Nooke said.

In an effort to give visitors and Berliners a taste of life in a divided city, a 70-meter (-yard) stretch of the wall on Bernauer Strasse was restored to its original state, including an East German watchtower from which guards would shoot at people trying to scale the structure.

The East Side Gallery was recently restored at a cost of more than 2 million euros ($3 million) to the city. It is now covered in colorful murals painted by about 120 artists.

Scenes include the famous image of a boxy East German Trabant car that appears to burst through the wall; and a fraternal communist kiss between Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev and East German boss Erich Honecker.

"I heard it on the radio, so I quickly took my son to nursery school and then came here," said Jana Voigt, a kindergarten teacher who grew up in East Berlin. "I feel so betrayed that they tore down that piece of the wall while I was asleep. They knew that so many Berliners don't want the wall to be touched."

She said part of the wall needs to be protected for future generations "in order to understand what happened here."

Karl-Heinz Richter was a 17-year-old teenager when he tried to escape from East Berlin three years after the wall was erected. His escape failed and he was jailed.

"What you see happening now is capitalism in its purest form: it's all about money and power, history doesn't matter anymore. That's disgusting." he said. "For me the wall is a holy site. I'm outraged that they would even dare to touch it."

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