News in brief

Pope halts audiences
POPE John Paul II has cancelled all private and public audiences until further notice, the Vatican has announced. The 72-year-old pontiff is to rest for two months on doctors' orders following his operation two weeks ago for the removal of a benign colon tumour. His visit to Latin America in October to mark the 500th anniversary of Christopher Columbus' arrival there has been curtailed from four countries to just one, the Dominican Republic.
AN Illinois priest has pleaded Innocent to two child molestation charges. Fr Myles White appeared in court after an investigation by the Marshall County Sheriff's Department.
CAFOD, the Catholic overseas development agency, has provided two pick-up trucks to aid emergency relief operations in Ethiopia. Food shortages have been affecting six million people and the local distribution nework is paralysed. The purchase of the trucks has been made possible by money raised in response to CAFOD's "Food for Life" appeal, launched in June and now standing at £1.1 million.
MOTHER Teresa opened a seminar this week in Calcutta on AIDS by asking for prayers for those workingto halt the process of the virus. "I want you to find a medicine to cure AIDS before it is too late," said the Nobel Prize-winning nun.
CHURCH officials have welcomed a US court's ruling that the Bush administration is acting illegally by sending refugees fleeing Haiti back to their homeland. Cardinal Antony Bevilacqua of Philadelphia said that Haitian refugees should be accorded the same rights as any others and that his government should be working to tackle the economic and political instability that has prompted an estimated 40,000 people to flee Haiti.
THE Belorussian authorities have threatened to deport 29 Polish priests in a move that appears to reflect eastern Europe's re-emerging ethnic and religious rivalries. Catholics of Polish origin make up about 20 per cent of the population in Belorus