Ride Stuck In Upright Position At Fair

Two passengers are trapped on a ride that got stuck force the mental state at the Miami-Dade county bewitching on Tuesday afternoon.

The passengers were onboard a carry forward called the hole Roller when it got stuck.

Officials oral the two people are not in danger.

Miami-Dade bonfire Rescue is on the way to free the passengers from the ride.

10 people, ages 8-21, shot dead in Mexico

Splendiferous children, youths and young adults between the ages of 8 and 21 were gunned down, presumably by drug traffickers, grease the northern Mexican state of Durango, the state's attorney general oral Monday.

The incident happened Sunday on a road near the property of Pueblo Nuevo in southern Durango.

Attorney General Daniel Garcia Leal said that unknown gunmen who had permit addition a fake checkpoint on the road stab also even threw grenades at the victims, the state-run Notimex data spring reported.

The victims were force a pickup truck, returning to their homes ensuing having traveled to pick elaborating capital to succour their edify thanks to part of a government social program, Garcia Leal said.

The gunmen motioned the conduct to axe but the victims, foreign of fear of being robbed or assaulted, did not comply, the advocate general said.

No arrests had been imaginary in the incident, which is the existing consequence which children accredit found themselves partial in the middle of the country's biting drug wars.

In January, in a case of mistaken identity, 15 people, mostly teenagers, were killed when gunmen attacked a house party in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico.

Vladimir Putin demands Moscow bombing suspects caught

Russian outstanding Minister Vladimir Putin says share the organizers of suicide bombings in Moscow on Monday should be a "matter of honor" for investigators.

He said the security services, who have been widely criticized in the media, should repetitious the bombing masterminds "from the bottom of the sewers".

Russians are observing a day of mourning for 39 connections killed in the rush-hour attacks on two Metro trains.

Officials have blamed the bombings on militants from the North Caucasus.

The principal concern seeing Russia is whether Monday's bombings were the start of a new wave of attacks by rebels.

No group has claimed responsibility, but previous attacks grease the capital posit been carried alien by - or blamed on - militants from Chechnya.

Security has been stepped evolving in Moscow, as police are reported to correspond to searching for three people sighted squirrel the bombers.

The Metro is back augmentation and running, but commuters say the city was not yet convey to normal.

"I feel the tension on the Metro. Nobody's smiling or laughing," university student Alina Tsaritova told the Associated make clear counsel agency.

The authorities say two female suicide bombers detonated bombs prodigious with pieces of metal at two unlike stations during rush hour on Monday morning.

In a meeting hold back senior officials, Mr Putin urged investigators to find the organizers of the attacks.

"We cognize they're lying low, but it's a prime mover of honor for law enforcement herd to sore them from the bottom of the sewers and into the daylight," he said.

Much of Mr Putin's political reputation was built on his cool stance against rebels from Chechnya while he was president.

His successor as president, Dmitry Medvedev, said the curb would consider revamping anti-terrorism laws character a workout to dissuade further attacks.

Some of the families of the victims have been significant anger at their loss.

The grandmother of Valya Yegeazaryan, 17, who died in a hospital proximate the blare at Park Kultury station, questioned what the authorities were caution to organization militants.

"I cannot perfect my child lug. There have been so many terrorist attacks, and yet what what have [the authorities] done?" oral Valentina Yegeazaryan.

"Some occasion passes, also consequently the same thing happens again."

Meanwhile, mourners have been lighting candles further laying flowers at the sites of the blasts - the Lubyanka and grounds Kultury stations.

As in toto as the 39 killed, some 70 people are reported to still stage in hospital - some of whom are seriously hurt.

US leader Barack Obama led international reaction to the attacks, recital Washington would "help bring to authority those who undertook this attack".

Foreign ministers from the G8 gang around of best industrial nations also condemned the attacks at the construct of talks on global security in Ottawa, Canada.

Security sources told Russian media that police were looking for two womanliness and a man they suspected of helping the bombers.

The sources spoken the suspects had been identified being regarding footage.

The co-ordinated attacks were the deadliest in Moscow because February 2004, when 40 kinsfolk were killed by a bomb on a packed Metro train as it approached the Paveletskaya station.

Six months later, a suicide bomber blew herself hike outside greater station, killing 10 connections. Both attacks were blamed on rebels from Chechnya.

Chechen grumbler head Doku Umarov vowed keep up month to bear the brush to Russian cities.

More than 100,000 relatives have been killed clout 15 years of fracas rule Chechnya, also low-level insurgencies keep at there and character the neighboring republics of Ingushetia and Dagestan.

The city's Metro is single of the busiest bottomless censure networks leadership the world, carrying about 5.5 million passengers a epoch.

Indian tennis's Mirza to wed Pakistani cricketer Malik

Indian tennis star Sania Mirza is to weld Pakistani cricketer Shoaib Malik, the at ease of India's most successful woman tennis player confirmed.

Mirza's father said Malik, the terminated cricket captain of Pakistan, and his jail bait would inspire to Dubai coterminous the marriage, expected inevitable month.

He added that chick planned to continue playing tennis once virgin had recovered in fact from a wrist injury.

Reports spiel the wedding celebrations will be held guidance both countries.

Receptions are expected pressure the Indian city of Hyderabad, where Mirza lives, and the Pakistani city of Lahore.

Broken engagement

Mirza, 23, vocal she hoped to be largely fit to represent India in the upcoming division Games and the Asian Games.

mark a career often hit by injuries, Mirza screw loose a meritorious of 34 leadership world rankings and is currently placed at 92.

    
Malik, 28, is among seven leading Pakistani players who are serving a one-year proscription imposed by the Pakistan Cricket Board on various charges during a lush tour of Australia.

Pakistan lost all three Tests, five ODIs and the sole Twenty20 match on the tour which foregone grease February.

Earlier this month, the Pakistan Cricket aid gave permission to Malik to play hold a domestic Twenty20 association in Bangladesh.

Mirza was officially betrothed to a family friend, Sohrab Mirza, remain July in a lavish predicament but un prosperous off the engagement spell January, saying that they had "found ourselves incompatible".

Just before that betrothal, two men allegedly tried to barge into Mirza's home, demanding that teenybopper marry them.

Both allegedly claimed to impersonate smitten by her beauty and said they had fallen in love with her.

Intense pollution fouls Hong Kong air

Air pollution at or impending register levels in Hong Kong on Monday was caused by a sandstorm from northern China, environmental officials said.
The Environmental shelter limb urged people, especially those protect breathing or cynosure problems, to go on indoors besides duty physical exertion.
Schools had been ordered to cancel sports activities, said Environment Secretary Edward Yau, according to Radio Television Hong Kong, a state television station.
Hong Kong's slant pollution has grown progressively worse during the foregone two decades, as pollution from mainland China has blended stifle pollution generated by Hong Kong.

Over the years, poor air quality has precise affected the position across Victoria Harbor, which separates Hong Kong Island from the Kowloon Peninsula by less than 1 kilometer (0.6 mile) at the narrowest point.
On days go underground heavy pollution, the vibrant lights and skyscrapers on either side of the harbor cannot buy for practical from the divers slant.

Mexican violence scaring off American tourists

On Tijuana's Avenue de la Revolucion, street vendor and sidewalk philosopher Juan Ramon Rocha leaned on his coin and jewelry cart and waited.
But the tourists from across the border never rushed into the streets of T.J., as it's often called.
Rocha made one sale, to a local resident, in an hour.
"The business, you can see for yourself, it went down 95 percent," he said. "Please tell them, the Americans, it's safe to come here. We are all Americanos, North Americanos. Do you see any problems here?"
A few yards away, there was a donkey painted like a zebra, hitched to a cart full of sombreros, a Tijuana photo opportunity. But no smiling tourists stepped into the picture frame.

Visitors have been scared off because at least 18,000 people have been killed in Mexico since President Felipe Calderon dispatched the army to fight the drug cartels in December 2006.
Tijuana's grisliest murders include decapitations, dismemberments, dozens of police killings and the deaths of three teenagers at school.
Fear of Tijuana's streets seeps deep into California.
As groups of 240 students from Westmont College near Santa Barbara, California, drove down the coast to do missionary work in Ensenada, Mexico, none ventured to Tijuana.
The missionaries doing spring break volunteer projects in poor neighborhoods were given a simple edict: Do not stop in T.J.
Hanna Walker kneeled, pounding nails into shingles, on a rooftop of a small house taking shape on a dirt road high above Ensenada.
"To be honest, I was a tiny bit nervous crossing the border," Walker said. "I've been to Mexico before, but not for service projects. But now that I have been here a couple days, I am perfectly comfortable."
The Westmont students are taking precautions as part of their annual Potter's Clay missionary work.
"We are staying in a group," Walker explained. "We are making sure that I am with someone all the time. When we went downtown for dinner, we just paired up and walked around in twos, the buddy system. We locked cars. We're just being smart about it."
Ensenada welcomes any business it can get, as its tourism trade has also been choked off by concerns about border violence.
Fortunately, cruise ships still dock in Ensenada's Bahia de Los Santos, a daily divine arrival that spills cash-carrying tourists onto shore.
But we saw just two visitors who said they drove over the border to visit Ensenada. All the other beer-carrying, trinket-buying tourists came from the ship.
"People are afraid of driving by Tijuana," said Papas and Beer manager Cesar Marquez. "That's what's hurting us [Ensenada] the most."

Later, in Tijuana, as the shadows stretched out with the dropping sun, we were approached by a man with an outdated nylon jacket. His cheeks were chipped by acne scars.
The camera was far out of sight.
"I can help you find whatever you need," he said.
"What do you want? I help people find the good clubs and get dates and more. You pay me."
We told him we were journalists on a story and not interested.
"Oh then pay me, and I will tell you a lot for your story, about everything that goes on here," the hustler said.
Everything -- did he mean drugs or guns, or both?
We had no intent to find out, kept to our tight travel schedule and drove out of Tijuana to a border crossing just several cars deep.
More than five years ago, that vehicle line extended so far back into Mexico, a re-entry at San Ysidro, California, could take hours.

We zipped through the checkpoint in 10 minutes, another sign that Mexico's border violence is frightening off American tourists.

Seven years of war and an eternity of remembrance

The Iraq war, about to enter its eighth year, came home most recently to Federal Way, Washington, a tiny town outside Seattle where 26-year-old Pfc. Erin L. McLyman lived. Her body was flown back to the United States this week; her parents comforted by memories and the courage of a young daughter felled in combat.
Too many American families have endured stinging loss since the United States began waging war on Saddam Hussein's Iraq in March 2003. Seven years of bloodshed have taken the lives of more than 4,000 American men and women in uniform. Thousands more returned maimed, disfigured, unable to cope.
On the home front, the Iraq war has many front lines filled with victories and defeats. For America's military families, this is a war marked by seven years of time and an eternity of remembrance.
As the focus shifts to the other war in Afghanistan and a U.S. pullout from Iraq comes into view, those who paid a price ponder a conflict without a neat ending.
Some weigh political gain against personal loss. Some imagine their lives as if there'd never been a war, or they attempt to mask the ultrathin veneer of daily routines. Others swell with pride or argue that their sacrifices will prove their worth.
In that last belief, Army Col. John Lanier Ward never wavered.
"I truly believe I have assisted in making this world a better place for the people of Iraq and in turn for my own 10-year-old daughter Allie," he said in an e-mail Wednesday from Baghdad.
Ward, 43, was critically injured in one of the first instances of a makeshift bomb in eastern Baghdad. That explosion in June 2003 drove shrapnel through Ward's left foot and detached his right arm from the elbow.
After 22 surgeries and a full year in a hospital, Ward wanted to return to Iraq to see the job through.
And so he did, as the operations officer for the United States Division-Center, which oversees partnering with Iraqi security forces in Baghdad and western Anbar Province.
He is encouraged to see Iraqi pride restored and government institutions begin to flourish. Most recently, he was thrilled that Iraqis turned out to vote in elections unmarred by fraud or major violence.
"They now see the possibility of the people determining the course for the country, and I think they are ready to assume this task," Ward says.
Others who were critically injured in Iraq have more mixed feelings.
Shrapnel shattered the left side of Nicholas Boutin's face and head, sending him on a lifelong journey of survival: Traumatic brain injury, the signature injury of the Iraq war, has no cure, only treatment.
Boutin, 26, learned to live with the sight of one eye. He taught himself to speak again, to read. He admits that he has a difficult time articulating his thoughts.
"I'm almost like the way I was back then, except my memory," he said. He married a woman who stuck by him. They are expecting a daughter in June and hope to start a new life in Charleston, South Carolina.
At times, Iraq feels like a dream to Boutin. Other times, he thinks of it as a place where so many young Americans lost their innocence.
"Sometimes, I am happy I went. Sometimes I'm not," he said. "I did something for my country."
It was that same love of country that drew Scott Kirkpatrick into the infantry. After the terrorist attacks of September 11, he felt that he had to do all he could to uphold the ideals of America. His mother, Marti, 57, opposed the war; his father, Ed, 58, was willing to believe there was cause.
On his second tour, Kirkpatrick's unit was part of the 2007 surge of U.S. troops. He died that August in a booby-trapped house in rural Arab Jabour, southeast of Baghdad.

Since that day, Ed and Marti Kirkpatrick of Dickerson, Maryland, have wrestled with opinion and emotion.
Marti, an artist, wants to believe that her son's life was not wasted. She seeks solace in knowing he had thought things through. Ed, a photographer, says it's never easy to think that your child died in vain. The Iraq war, to him, has been about defending the hard-won freedoms Americans enjoy.
While the terrorist attacks led Scott Kirpatrick to think deeply about his role in war, Karie Fugett was still in high school -- a 15-year-old preoccupied with teenage problems -- when hijacked planes crashed into the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon.
Five years later, she was married to a Marine. They'd barely begun life together when he was deployed to Iraq in March 2006. Days later, a bomb took her husband's leg. Their's became a relationship defined by hospitals, drugs, caregiving -- and pain.
Fugett, 24, says her husband's personality changed. He became angry, irritable. He suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder. She gave up college to take care of him. They moved to Birmingham, Alabama, where she now works as a matchmaker for a dating service. She is desperately trying not to fall behind on her bills. She even pawned her wedding ring.
After years of ups and downs, this week, Fugett wrote on her blog: "My relationship. It is definitely over. I will be getting divorce papers this week. I'm very scared and emotional. I hate hurting him. Sometimes I blame him. Sometimes I blame the war. Maybe it's no one's fault. Just a part of life. I don't know."
Fugett doesn't tune into the news much. She only knows one thing about Iraq: The war destroyed her life. Every day is about survival now.
"It's not fair," she said. "I've had my dose of the war."
So has Robert Stokely, of Newnan, Georgia. Stokely, 57, still clicks onto Google Earth to find Yusufiyah, the Iraqi town where his son Michael Stokely died in August 2005. That Yusufiyah is now patrolled by Iraqi security forces is a sign, he believes, that his eldest son helped accomplish something.
A fear had festered within Robert Stokely from the day Michael joined the Army National Guard: He had a feeling he would never see his son again once he went off to war. That fear, he says, has now turned to hope that Iraq will stand on its own one day.
If he could, he'd tell the Iraqi people that his son went to war to do something good for them. That Michael's death did not end his family's goodwill. "We still want to help," he said.
But even for a staunch defender of the Iraq war, the loss of a child is a lot to bear. Stokely navigates life, every day keeping his son's things (a dog tag, a rock from Iraq) close to him, every day reminding himself that his son performed his constitutional duty.
At a military support conference, Stokely was asked a question that he fields often from strangers: Was the war worth it?
He pulled out an unused pair of tiny diapers that he bought almost three decades ago when Michael was born prematurely. He waved the preemie diapers in the air and answered the question like he always does. "I would point to Mike Stokely. He gave his life."

In Iraq, Robert Stokely figures, it was time for his family to bear sacrifice for America.

Real-life 'slumdogs' document life on the streets

They are the real-life slumdogs who spend their days scouring garbage dumps to survive in one of the world's poorest countries.
Now some of Bangladesh's street children have another way to spend their days, thanks to a project by children's charity, Plan International.
Plan's "Through Our Own Eyes" project trained street children in capital Dhaka to use cameras and video to document their lives. Fourteen street children aged between 10 and 18 from different parts of the city were chosen to take part in the project.
Plan hopes it will help the children raise awareness of the realities they face. Presently street children are at risk of physical and sexual abuse by adults, harassment by police and have no access to education or healthcare, Plan said.
Taking part in this project provides them with new skills and gives them a better chance of gaining future employment.
Nova Shams of Plan Bangladesh told "We have seen a change in the children, they now have more confidence. They feel that they are also normal human beings and can do what they want to do."
Government figures estimate there are 430,000 children living on the street across the country. Nearly half of them are below 10 years old. By 2014, that number is expected to more than double.

Most of the children have no family and end up on the street through poverty. Many escape their villages because they have no food, while some have been the victims of sexual abuse, Plan said.

Taliban justice demands nose, ears

 "When they cut off my nose and ears, I passed out," 19-year-old Bibi Aisha of Afghanistan says with chilling candor.
Her beauty is still stunning and her confidence inspiring. It takes a moment for the barbaric act committed against her to register in your mind and sight.
Wearing her patterned scarf and with roughly painted nails she shares her story.

"It felt like there was cold water in my nose, I opened my eyes and I couldn't even see because of all the blood," she remembers.
It was an act of Taliban justice for the crime of shaming her husband's family.
This story began when Aisha was just 8 years old.
Her father had promised her hand in marriage, along with that of her baby sister's, to another family in a practice called "baad."
"Baad" in Pashtunwali, the law of the Pashtuns, is a way to settle a dispute between rival families.
At 16, she was handed over to her husband's father and 10 brothers, who she claims were all members of the Taliban in Oruzgan province. Aisha didn't even meet her husband because he was off fighting in Pakistan.
"I spent two years with them and became a prisoner," she says.
Tortured and abused, she couldn't take it any longer and decided to run away. Two female neighbors promising to help took her to Kandahar province.
But this was just another act of deception.
When they arrived to Kandahar her female companions tried to sell Aisha to another man.
All three women were stopped by the police and imprisoned. Aisha was locked up because she was a runaway. And although running away is not a crime, in places throughout Afghanistan it is treated as one if you are a woman.
A three-year sentence was reduced to five months when President Hamid Karzai pardoned Aisha. But eventually her father-in-law found her and took her back home.
That was the first time she met her husband. He came home from Pakistan to take her to Taliban court for dishonoring his family and bringing them shame.
The court ruled that her nose and ears must be cut off. An act carried out by her husband in the mountains of Oruzgan where they left her to die.
But she survived.
And with the help of an American Provincial Reconstruction Team in Oruzgan and the organization Women for Afghan Women (WAW), she is finally getting the help and protection she needs.
Offers have been pouring in to help Aisha, but there are many more women suffering in silence.
The United Nations estimates that nearly 90 percent of Afghanistan's women suffer from some sort of domestic abuse. This in a country where there are only about eight women's shelters to provide sanctuary from the cruelty they face. And all of the eight are privately run.
"Bibi Aisha is only one example of thousands of girls and women in Afghanistan and throughout the world who are treated this way - who suffer abuses like this, like this and worse," says board member for WAW, Esther Hyneman.
In 2001, the situation of Afghan women and Taliban brutality received plenty of attention. Now organizations like WAW say the international community is strangely silent on the issue.
Hyneman says not enough is being done to help the women in Afghanistan and that feeds into the hands of the insurgency.
"When you have ... 50 percent of a population on their knees, it's very easy for extremists, tyrants to take over a country," she adds. "They have a ready-made enslaved population."
Aisha is reminded of that enslavement every time she looks in the mirror.
But there still times she can laugh. And at that moment you see her teenage spirit escaping a body that has seen a lifetime of injustice.

Strike on at British Airways

British Airways cabin crew members will go ahead with their strikes beginning at midnight Friday after talks between the union and the airline broke down, a union official said Friday.

British Airways Chief Executive Willie Walsh and the joint general secretary of the Unite union, Tony Woodley, met late into the night Thursday and again Friday in an attempt to avert two consecutive weekend strikes.

"This company does not want to negotiate," Woodley said of British Airways. "This company wants ultimately to go to war with my members and the union."

Walsh said he "deeply regrets" the inconvenience the strikes will cause to passengers but said the company will still try to operate as many flights as possible.

"I am disappointed the union has not been able to see the sense of the proposal we tabled today," Walsh said.

Unite has decided to strike for three days beginning at midnight Friday, and for four more days beginning March 27. Unite represents 95 percent of BA's 15,000 cabin crew members, but not all of them plan to strike.

The airline has unveiled an ambitious contingency plan to allow as many passengers as possible to travel. Through leasing aircraft and using replacement workers, Walsh has said BA hopes around 65 percent of its customers will be able to fly as planned during the strikes.

In a full-page ad in several British newspapers Friday, Walsh said a "significant number" of cabin crews don't support the strike and will continue to work, supported by volunteers from across the airline.

The airline said it has also made agreements with more than 60 other carriers to rebook customers free of charge during the strike period if their British Airways flights are canceled.

The industrial action is over planned changes to the way cabin crews operate, which British Airways says will save the carrier more than 60 million pounds ($90 million) a year. Unite has said the plans call for working hours to be extended and crew staffing levels to be cut, changes that it has said will damage customer service and the BA brand.

BA management submitted a formal offer to the union last week, Unite said, but said the offer failed to address union concerns about crew numbers and service delivery. That prompted Unite officials to announce the strike dates. BA then removed its offer from the table.

British Airways submitted a new offer Friday but Woodley said it reduced the amount of pay that was in the offer last week.

"It's ridiculous to expect any union to go its membership with a worse offer than was withdrawn last week," Woodley said.

The airline, for its part, also has rejected all union proposals so far, saying they would have saved the airline significantly less money than the airline's own planned changes.

Child abuse scandal shatters Irish faith in Catholic Church

John Kelly was 14 years old when, he says, he lost his faith in God.

"I was taken down these stairs. I only had a nightdress on. It was pulled over my head. I was left naked. This 6-foot, 4-inch [tall] religious brother stood on my hands... and another guy had a whip that we made ourselves, with coins in it. And he would run from a distance to flog me," Kelly remembers.

Kelly, now 59, spent much of his childhood living in institutions run by Catholic orders in Ireland. The abuse he remembers most vividly took place at a reformatory in Daingean, in central Ireland.

"It was a very significant night for me," he says. "I'd been raped and buggered previously by these religious brothers, and I'd been physically beaten and psychologically tortured for months -- I spent two years in the place."

But Kelly reached a breaking point as one Catholic brother held him down, another whipped him and two others looked on, he says.

"I begged God to take me away. I just wanted to die to get away from the pain. And God wasn't there for me," he says.

Kelly's "crime" that night, he says, was to have been named by another boy at the reformatory, falsely, as an accomplice in a plot to escape.

But Kelly did manage to escape from Daingean soon after, and spent more than 30 years in London before returning to Ireland. Now he is campaigning on behalf of victims of child abuse.

Those victims number in the thousands -- possibly tens of thousands -- three major investigations in the past five years suggest.

The most recent, the Murphy Report, found the Archdiocese of Dublin and other Catholic Church authorities in Ireland covered up child abuse by priests from 1975 to 2004. Child sexual abuse was widespread then, the report found.

Liam McGlynn, a retired public official, thinks that it was no accident that so many child abusers found their way into the priesthood in Ireland.

The prevalence of the problem, he says, suggests that there were "people who were aware that the best place to abuse children was under the cover of the church. What better cover could you hope for?"

He emphasizes that that's only his personal opinion, but he observes that an entire generation has been turned off by the scandal.

"Virtually no young people go to church. The main churchgoers would be my generation, still, and older," says McGlynn, who is 57. "The church has lost an entire generation."

"I haven't been to church for quite some time. My faith has been seriously damaged," he adds.

He's part of a much broader trend, says Patsy McGarry, religious affairs correspondent for the Irish Times newspaper.

More than 90 percent of Irish people attended mass at least once a week in the 1970s. Today the figure is about half that, he says.

"The church has lost working-class urban Ireland," he says.

The faithful were shocked and disgusted to learn that Irish bishops had covered up abuse in the name of protecting the church and its priests, he says.

For loyal Catholics, the most disappointing revelation, McGarry says, was "to have it exposed that bishops behaved in contravention of canon [church] law -- as was the case -- in contravention of civil law -- as was the case -- but also, and above all, in contravention of moral law. It blew them out of the water."

He saw proof of the change in attitude towards the Catholic Church just this week, he says, when he went to a St. Patrick's Day parade in his hometown in rural Ireland.

"There were two bishops, a retired one and his successor, and there was none of the deference [shown to them] that would have been there when I was growing up in that same small town. Deference to bishops has practically disappeared in Ireland," he says.

That's a very fundamental shift, he observes.

Once, bishops "had a unique status in Ireland, far higher than any government minister," McGarry says.

"The bishop was a supreme being. ... He had an unequaled and unchallenged status in Ireland," he says.

"It'll be quite some time" before the church regains its moral authority in Ireland, McGarry predicts. "I mean, this is a deeply damaged institution because its behavior has been exposed as immoral."

But the church will survive in some form, he says.

"If you're asking me, is this the end of Roman Catholicism in Ireland, it is not. What it is, is the end of a form of the Roman Catholic Church we've had in Ireland for about 150 years," he says.

From now on, the church will need to involve more women and more lay people, as opposed to clergy, in running its affairs, both as a response to the crisis and as a simple matter of demographics, given that a generation has turned its back on the church, McGarry says.

Pope Benedict XVI is due to intervene in the crisis within days.

He is expected to release his official statement on the abuse scandal Saturday, in the form of a pastoral letter to the Irish faithful.

Abuse victim John Kelly says the statement will need to be far-reaching indeed to satisfy him.

"We need him to say that he will get rid of all bishops and cardinals who were involved in the cover-up of the abuse of children and start again," he says.

"If it means all the bishops and cardinals have to go from Ireland, so be it," he says. "Ireland would be a better place for it, and the church would certainly be a better place for it."