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The Vatican made no immediate response to the bishops’ statement, but from Vatican City the Pontifical Council’s health spokesman, Bishop Jose Luis Redrado Marchite, who is Spanish, said condom use was “a measure Catholic morality condemns”.Padre Camino insisted that traditional methods of abstinence and fidelity remained of fundamental importance, but Ms Salgado countered that fidelity was not necessarily a sufficient protection against Aids, and abstinence was unrealistic for most people. Last June, Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, president of the Pontifical Council of the Family, told churchmen in Madrid that using contraceptives was “a form of Russian roulette” in fighting Aids. He had just met the Health Minister, Elena Salgado, to discuss co-operation in the fight against Aids.This is the first time a spokesman for the Spanish Catholic hierarchy has declared himself so strongly in favour of condoms. Last November, Padre Camino condemned a government anti-Aids campaign that recommended the use of condoms with the slogan, “For you, for everyone, use it”, saying it was “seriously false” to assert that condoms prevented the spread of Aids.He was upholding the longstanding Vatican line that condoms were not effective. It’s the appropriate way to tackle such a serious problem,” the spokes-man for Spain’s Episcopal Conference, Juan Antonio Martinez Camino, said in an unprecedented volte-face.

Spain’s Catholic bishops have defied Vatican dogma on contraception by accepting for the first time the use of condoms to prevent the spread of Aids.
“Condoms have their place in the co-ordinated and global prevention of Aids … “In Giovanni Meli it is forbidden to rob, forbidden to harass. The 30-odd jewellers along the street all have their doors open.”. Most shopkeepers, claims La Repubblica, are happy to pay up.The fact that the jewellers of Palermo’s Via Giovanni Meli don’t need to lock their doors is thanks to the pizzo. New shops setting up in the area are obliged to make a hefty downpayment.

Mafiosi coming into the area from outside have to pay 3 per cent of their take to the local bosses.The quarterly payment is collected by young mobsters with nice manners who usually have no criminal record. If the magistrates say otherwise, I don’t believe them.”But Mr Cuffaro may find it harder to refute the line-by-line, street-by-street evidence of Mafia extortion contained in the accounts book confiscated from a small-time mobster arrested recently in Palermo.Leaked to La Repubblica newspaper, the book reveals that the Mafia operates a graded tariff, with small shops paying €500 (£350) to €1000 per quarter, upmarket shops such as jewellers paying €2,500 to €3,000 and big shops paying €5,000.Shopkeepers with family members in prison are exempt, as are those with relatives in the police force and those who suffer a bereavement, who are let off a single quarterly payment. “This causes huge damage to our image precisely at the moment when tens of big entrepreneurs from the north are arriving to invest in the island .. Only 5 to 10 per cent [of shopkeepers] pay pizzo. An accounts book has fallen into the hands of the Sicilian police that reveals for the first time the rules and regulations which dictate who must pay pizzo – protection money – to the Mafia, how much they must pay, and who is exempt. How many died under his ruthless leadership is disputed but some estimates put the figure as high as 20 million..

The monument, to be unveiled before 9 May or “Victory Day”, is likely to leave many elderly survivors of Stalin’s brutal rule feeling uneasy.The Russian media said that it had already “provoked a stormy reaction in Russian society”, referring to unease about the monument among human rights activists Stalin had the blood of millions on his hands. Oleg Tolkachev, a Russian senator, said yesterday that the monument was not supposed to glorify Stalin but to reflect the Soviet Union’s historic Great Patriotic War victory over Nazi Germany.It would not, he told Ekho Moskvy radio station, become “a monument to tyranny but a monument to the leaders of the three powers who had vanquished Hitlerism”. He will be flanked by Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt, the three world statesmen at the historic Yalta Conference in 1945. More than 40 years after the body of Joseph Stalin was taken from its mausoleum on Red Square in disgrace, a monument to the Soviet dictator is to be erected in Moscow.
The sculpture is part of Russia’s celebration of the 60th anniversary of victory in the Second World War, a feat which many Russians believe would have been impossible without the ruthless “man of steel”.Stalin will not appear alone. Passengers were given a free cruise and the compensation bill topped £6 million.In October 2003, the liner was dubbed the “plague ship” after an outbreak of the contagious norovirus on board laid 600 passengers and crew low.. As she blessed her, the traditional champagne bottle did not break, which was considered a bad omen.Ill fortune quickly followed when the liner broke down in the Bay of Biscay on her maiden voyage and limped back into Southampton.