Brazil elects Dilma Rousseff, nation's first woman president

Brazil elects Dilma Rousseff, nation's first woman president

(CNN) Dilma Rousseff has won the election for president in Brazil, according to the country's Supreme Electoral Tribunal Minister, making her the nation's first woman to hold the office.

TSE Minister Ricardo Lewandowski made the announcement to the local press around 8 p.m. local time (6 p.m. Eastern) stating on the tribunal's website that she was "mathematically elected the president of Brasil."

Rousseff -- President Luiz Inacio da Silva's right-hand woman -- has served as his chief of staff. Previously, as energy minister, she claims to have helped turn Brazil into one of the world's leading energy giants.

A left-wing guerrilla fighter during the military dictatorship rule in the 1960s, Rousseff said during a congressional hearing that she was "barbarically tortured" after she was charged with subversion by the military regime.

Her opponent, Jose Serra, also suffered persecution during Brazil's military rule and was forced into exile during the 1960s.

A centrist politician, he served as health minister during Fernando Henrique Cardoso's government. He recently left his job as governor of Brazil's richest state, Sao Paulo, to run for presidency.

Millions of voters lined up across Brazil's vast territory to vote in the heated runoff.

Voters living abroad correspond to about 0.15 percent of the Brazilian electorate, about 200,000.

In 60 Brazilian cities, voters used their thumbs instead of ballots on a newly launched biometric system, where voters scan their fingers to log in and vote.

TSE officials said all regions, however remote, will have the ubiquitous electronic voting machine. In indigenous areas in the Amazon, these voting machines were delivered by boats and helicopters. It costs the state of Amazonas 5 million reais. (U.S. $3 million) to place the voting machines.

One of the most challenging trajectories, officials said, is the one to Sao Gabriel da Cachoeira, a densly-forested area in the Amazon.

"There, our electronic machines first leave Manaus by plane," said Pedro Batista, TSE Director for the Amazon.

"It's loaded onto a helicopter, and then travels by boat before being carried on some one's back for a long walk to a remote village," he said.

In Sao Paulo, Brazil's largest city, voters faced heavy rains and threats of flooding.

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Accused pastor crusaded against homosexuals

Accused pastor crusaded against homosexuals

Atlanta, Georgia (CNN) -- As Bishop Eddie Long poked through a salad in his church office one summer day in 1999, he shot a weary look at a person ticking off his ministry's successes.

His Atlanta megachurch had already reached 25,000 members. He had been invited to the White House, built a global television ministry and drove around town in a luxury automobile.

But Long told the visitor who had come to write about him that the pressures of being a high-profile pastor could be brutal.

"You don't want any of this," he said in a raspy baritone as he shook his head. "You don't want any of this ..."

Long didn't get more specific about those pressures.

Today, the 57-year-old minister, known for his public crusades against homosexuality, faces serious allegations.

On Tuesday, two young men who were members of Long's New Birth Missionary Baptist Church filed lawsuits claiming he used his position as their spiritual counselor to coerce them into sexual relationships.

The men -- Anthony Flagg, 21, and Maurice Robinson, 20 -- allege Long used a private spiritual ceremony to mark a "covenant" between them, with both becoming his "spiritual son."

Flagg alleges that Long then used that relationship to take him on overnight trips where they shared a bedroom and engaged in kissing, masturbation and "oral sexual contact."

Robinson, who claimed Long engaged in oral sex with him, said the pastor would cite Scripture to justify their relationship.

"We categorically deny the allegations," Art Franklin, Long's spokesman, said in a written statement. "It is very unfortunate that someone has taken this course of action."

Franklin said "our law firm will be able to respond once attorneys have had an opportunity to review the lawsuit."

The men's lawyer, Brenda Joy (B.J.) Bernstein, would not make them available for comment.

Long's crusades against homosexuality

The allegations against Long run contrary to his public image.

He is a celebrity preacher in the black church world and a star in the evangelical world as well. His church is one of the largest in the country.

In the pulpit, Long seamlessly blends muscle and ministry.

He wears tight shirts that display his weight-lifter arms. He writes books such as "Gladiator, the Strength of a Man," that teach men how to be warriors for God. He says he has a special calling to reach out to men.

He's a married man who preaches about the sanctity of the union between a man and a woman. He denounces homosexuality. In 2004, he led a march in Atlanta against gay marriage. He once declared that his church had created a ministry that "delivered" people from homosexuality.

His public statements about gays and lesbians have helped reinforce homophobia in the black church, says Shayne Lee, a sociologist and author of "Holy Mavericks: Evangelical Innovators and the Spiritual Marketplace."

"The homophobic atmosphere he helped perpetuate," Lee said, could "come back to possibly harm him."

Long's controversial ministry

Long has been the center of public controversy before.

In 2005, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that a charity Long created to help the poor and spread the Gospel had made him its biggest beneficiary.

An examination of the nonprofit's tax returns and other documents revealed that the charity provided him with at least a million dollars in salary over four years, and the use of a $1.4 million home and the $350,000 Bentley.

A frequent critic of black preachers (he once said they "major in storefront churches"), Long responded by saying he was a CEO of a global business who deserved his lifestyle.

"You've got to put me on a different scale than the little black preacher sitting over there that's supposed to be just getting by because the people are suffering," Long said, explaining the compensation he received from his charity.

In 2007, Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, of the Senate Finance Committee, sent a letter to Long asking detailed questions about his financial operations. Long was one of six televangelists whom Grassley targeted.

After an initial flurry of publicity following Grassley's request, the investigation appeared to peter out.

In recent years, Long seemed to become more humble, says the Rev. Tim McDonald, senior pastor of First Iconium Baptist Church in Atlanta.

In private talks, McDonald said, Long told him about the pressures of leading a megachurch. He said he no longer had as many close friendships and yearned to return to the more intimate relationships that McDonald seemed to have with his much smaller congregation.

"He said, 'Tim, I may have the numbers, but you have the love,' '' McDonald said.

God's 'scarred leader'

For all his outward confidence, Long also displayed a vulnerable side.

He built an intimate bond with many members of his church by talking about his private failings: his divorce from his first wife; being rejected by his father; and being fired from a job in corporate America.

He called himself God's "scarred leader."

He also became known for his generosity. He would give out cars and money to strangers at church services. He built ministries to help the poor, AIDS patients and young people.

He talked proudly about his ability to reach young men. He called himself a "spiritual daddy" to many of the young men he mentored at New Birth.

He would pay the college tuition for some men, give business suits to others and play basketball and lift weights with his male ministers.

Once, he even boasted to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that some mothers at New Birth trusted him enough to bring their wayward teenage boys to him for paddling.

"When I say bend over, even on Sunday, they bend over," he said, referring to the boys he paddled. "Why? Because they respect me. Because I first died for them ..."

The two men who filed suit against Long, though, said he used their relationships to instruct them, as "spiritual sons," to follow their "master."

They also say Long enticed them "with cars, clothes, jewelry, and electronics." Robinson claims the pastor paid for his college tuition.

In Flagg's suit, he claimed that when some young men found girlfriends, Long would attempt to block those relationships by "increased contact and spiritual talk" about "the covenant between the Spiritual Son and himself."

In addition to Long, the lawsuits name as defendants his church and a youth academy where Long was pastor and mentor. Both suits seek unspecified punitive damages on counts ranging from negligence to breach of fiduciary duty.

Lee, the sociologist who has written about Long, says he expects him to mount a fierce counterattack.

"He'll demonize the accusers," Lee said, "and couch it in terms of how the enemy Satan is trying to hurt the ministry."

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Religious leaders hit back at Hawking

Religious leaders hit back at Hawking

London, England (CNN) -- Religious leaders in Britain on Friday hit back at claims by leading physicist Stephen Hawking that God had no role in the creation of the universe.

In his new book "The Grand Design," Britain's most famous scientist says that given the existence of gravity, "the universe can and will create itself from nothing," according to an excerpt published in The Times of London.

"Spontaneous creation is the reason why there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist," he wrote.

"It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper [fuse] and set the universe going."

But the head of the Church of England, the Archbishop of Canterbury Dr. Rowan Williams, told the Times that "physics on its own will not settle the question of why there is something rather than nothing."

He added: "Belief in God is not about plugging a gap in explaining how one thing relates to another within the Universe. It is the belief that there is an intelligent, living agent on whose activity everything ultimately depends for its existence."

Williams' comments were supported by leaders from across the religious spectrum in Britain. Writing in the Times, Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks said: "Science is about explanation. Religion is about interpretation ... The Bible simply isn't interested in how the Universe came into being."

The Archbishop of Westminster Vincent Nichols, leader of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales, added: "I would totally endorse what the Chief Rabbi said so eloquently about the relationship between religion and science."

Ibrahim Mogra, an imam and committee chairman at the Muslim Council of Britain, was also quoted by the Times as saying: "If we look at the Universe and all that has been created, it indicates that somebody has been here to bring it into existence. That somebody is the almighty conqueror."

Hawking was also accused of "missing the point" by colleagues at the University of Cambridge in England.

"The 'god' that Stephen Hawking is trying to debunk is not the creator God of the Abrahamic faiths who really is the ultimate explanation for why there is something rather than nothing," said Denis Alexander, director of The Faraday Institute for Science and Religion.

"Hawking's god is a god-of-the-gaps used to plug present gaps in our scientific knowledge.

"Science provides us with a wonderful narrative as to how [existence] may happen, but theology addresses the meaning of the narrative," he added.

Fraser Watts, an Anglican priest and Cambridge expert in the history of science, said that it's not the existence of the universe that proves the existence of God.

"A creator God provides a reasonable and credible explanation of why there is a universe, and ... it is somewhat more likely that there is a God than that there is not. That view is not undermined by what Hawking has said."

Hawking's book -- as the title suggests -- is an attempt to answer "the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything," he wrote, quoting Douglas Adams' cult science fiction romp, "The Hitch-hiker's Guide to the Galaxy."

His answer is "M-theory," which, he says, posits 11 space-time dimensions, "vibrating strings, ... point particles, two-dimensional membranes, three-dimensional blobs and other objects that are more difficult to picture and occupy even more dimensions of space."

He doesn't explain much of that in the excerpt, which is the introduction to the book.

But he says he understands the feeling of the great English scientist Isaac Newton that God did "create" and "conserve" order in the universe.

It was the discovery of other solar systems outside our own in 1992 that undercut a key idea of Newton's -- that our world was so uniquely designed to be comfortable for human life that some divine creator must have been responsible.

But, Hawking argues, if there are untold numbers of planets in the galaxy, it's less remarkable that there's one with conditions for human life. And, indeed, he argues, any form of intelligent life that evolves anywhere will automatically find that it lives somewhere suitable for it.

CNN's Richard Allen Greene contributed to this report.

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Hunt for Jamaican drug suspect to resume

Hunt for Jamaican drug suspect to resume

Security forces in Jamaica plan to renew a push Monday to arrest an accused drug lord at the center of violence that has now killed 76 people, the country's police commissioner said.

CNN

Police officers and soldiers plan to launch the second phase of an operation Monday aimed at executing an arrest warrant for Christopher "Dudus" Coke, a suspected drug kingpin who is wanted in the United States, police commissioner Owen Ellington said.

The death toll has risen to 76 as a result of violence triggered by Jamaican authorities' attempts to arrest Coke, Ellington said. The dead include 73 civilians, two police officers and one soldier, he said.

Authorities have detained more than 700 people, he said.

Clashes have unnerved residents in the Kingston neighborhoods of Tivoli Gardens and Denham Town.

Violence flared there after authorities tried to arrest Coke, who was charged last year in U.S. federal court with conspiracy to distribute marijuana and cocaine and with conspiracy to illegally traffic in firearms. Authorities in Jamaica sought to arrest him after federal prosecutors in New York sought his extradition, but his supporters attacked police stations in response.

Coke has a heroic reputation in Kingston's slums. He has been likened to Robin Hood and Jesus because he has helped the community by handing out food, sending children to school and building medical centers.

The plans for a new push to arrest Coke unfolded amid credible evidence that criminals from around the country have converged on Tivoli Gardens to help him avoid arrest, Ellington said in a press briefing with reporters.

At that briefing, Ellington reiterated government denials that members of the security forces have burned bodies. Some people in Tivoli Gardens told CNN this week that they saw security forces torch dead people and that they feared the authorities were burning bodies to cover up the extent of the violence.

"I literally saw them wrap up men in sheets and put tires on them and burn them," one man said, adding that the people were already dead when their bodies were burned.

He and others who described burning bodies declined to be identified for fear of reprisals from the authorities.

Reports that authorities have burned or secretly buried bodies are false, Ellington said. Several senior officials who investigated the reports found no sign that they were true, he said.

The violence that gripped much of Kingston for much of the last week seemed to have largely abated Friday. Charred debris, broken windows and deserted streets served as a reminder of an anxiety still felt by some, but businesses in Kingston's main commercial district were open, and officials expressed hope for a sense of normalcy.

The president of Jamaica's Chamber of Commerce, Milton Samuda, said more businesses reopened Friday.

"I anticipate and hope that it will be fully back to normal by Monday," he said.

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Pope says 'sorry' for Irish church abuse

Pope says 'sorry' for Irish church abuse

(CNN) Pope Benedict XVI said Saturday he is "truly sorry" for the abuse suffered by victims at the hands of Catholic priests in Ireland.

The pope directly addressed the church abuse crisis that has rocked the Irish Catholic Church in an 18-page letter, which was made public Saturday. It is expected to be read in churches across Ireland on Sunday.

"I have been deeply disturbed by the information which has come to light regarding the abuse of children and vulnerable young people by members of the church in Ireland, particularly by priests and religious," the pope wrote.

"I can only share in the dismay and the sense of betrayal that so many of you have experienced on learning of these sinful and criminal acts and the way church authorities in Ireland have dealt with them."

The deeply Catholic country has been badly shaken by a government-backed report that 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.

The head of the church in Ireland, Cardinal Sean Brady, apologized this week for his role in the church's investigation of an abusive priest in 1975.

Brady's office said he investigated the priest, who was later convicted of dozens of counts of child abuse, and reported his findings to his superiors. But critics say Brady should not have remained silent about what he learned.

"No one imagines that this painful situation will be resolved swiftly," Benedict said in his letter.

Contributing factors to the crisis can include inadequate procedures for determining suitable priesthood candidates, insufficient moral and spiritual formation in seminaries, and "misplaced concern for the reputation of the church and the avoidance of scandal," the pope said. He called for them to be addressed urgently.

The pope acknowledged the crisis has shaken people's faith and even turned many away from the church, saying it has "obscured the light of the Gospel to a degree that not even centuries of persecution succeeded in doing."

Benedict then addressed the victims of abuse and their families, recognizing the tragedies they have been through.

"You have suffered grievously and I am truly sorry," he says. "I know that nothing can undo the wrong you have endured. Your trust has been betrayed and your dignity has been violated. Many of you found that, when you were courageous enough to speak of what happened to you, no one would listen."

According to Father Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman, the pope started thinking about writing the letter last summer after the publication of the Ryan report -- one of three separate reports on sexual and physical abuse by Irish clergy that has come out since 2005.

The Ryan report, published in May 2009, investigated abuse in Catholic-run institutions primarily from 1936 to 1970. Many of the alleged abusers in the 2,600-page report were not priests, but nuns or Catholic lay people.

The pope says he expressed "shame and remorse" and asks the victims not to lose hope.

"I know some of you find it difficult even to enter the doors of a church after all that has occurred," he says.

"I pray that, by drawing nearer to Christ and by participating in the life of his church -- a church purified by penance and renewed in pastoral charity -- you will come to rediscover Christ's infinite love for each one of you."

Next in the letter, the pope turned his attention to the priests and religious officials who have abused children. He sharply criticized them and said they must answer to the authorities.

"You betrayed the trust that was placed in you by innocent young people and their parents, and you must answer for it before Almighty God and before properly constituted tribunals," he says. "You have forfeited the esteem of the people of Ireland and brought shame and dishonor upon your confreres."

He added, "Together with the immense harm done to victims, great damage has been done to the church and to the public perception of the priesthood and religious life."

The pope urged guilty priests to "take responsibility" for their sins and "seek to atone personally" for their actions.

"Openly acknowledge your guilt, submit yourselves to the demands of justice, but do not despair of God's mercy," he said.

Lombardi said guilty priests should follow the laws in their own country and cooperate with justice authorities, as well as follow the church's rules. Benedict proposed several concrete steps to address the situation, including asking the Irish faithful to pray for the church for one year, starting at Easter.

But he also announced an apostolic visitation of certain Irish dioceses, seminaries, and congregations. Such visitations are actually Vatican investigations; the church held one in the United States after the clerical sex scandal in 2002.

The letter is specific to Ireland and did not address similar scandals now coming to light in other European countries like Austria and Germany. Lombardi said the pope is aware of the situations in those countries, but did not think it was appropriate to address all of them in Saturday's letter.

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US defends $6.4bn weapons sale to Taiwan

US defends $6.4bn weapons sale to Taiwan

The US has defended a proposed weapons sale to Taiwan following a furious response from China.

BBC

The US State Department said on Saturday that the sale contributed to "security and stability" between Taiwan and China, Reuters reported.

Beijing announced a series of moves against the US in retaliation for the proposed $6.4bn (£4bn) sale.

Ties between the two countries are already strained by rows over trade and internet censorship.

"Such sales contribute to maintaining security and stability across the Taiwan Strait," said US State Department spokeswoman Laura Tischler, quoted by Reuters.

The US is the leading arms supplier to Taiwan and has a treaty obligation to provide it with defensive arms.

'Severe harm'

Beijing said it would suspend military exchanges with the US, review co-operation on major issues and impose sanctions on companies selling arms.

However, the US - like the EU - has banned its companies selling arms to China since the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, so it was not clear what effect Chinese sanctions would have.

Chinese defence ministry spokesman Huang Xueping said the measures reflected the "severe harm" posed by the deal.

A foreign ministry spokesman said the arms deal would have "repercussions that neither side wishes to see".

Difficult ties

Taiwan and China have been ruled by separate governments since the end of a civil war in 1949.

Beijing has hundreds of missiles pointed at the island and has threatened to use force to bring it under its control if Taiwan moved towards formal independence.

Defence ties between Washington and Beijing have been on ice for several years because of differences over Taiwan, though the two countries' leaders pledged to improve them in 2009.

Taiwan, meanwhile, welcomed the US move.

"It will let Taiwan feel more confident and secure so we can have more interactions with China," the Central News Agency quoted President Ma Ying-jeou as saying.

The Pentagon earlier notified the US Congress of the proposed arms sale, which forms part of a package first pledged by the Bush administration.

Friday's notification to Congress by the Defense Security Co-operation Agency (DSCA) was required by law. It does not mean the sale has been concluded.

US lawmakers have 30 days to comment on the proposed sale, Associated Press reported. If there are no objections, it would proceed.

The arms package includes 114 Patriot missiles, 60 Black Hawk helicopters and communications equipment for Taiwan's F-16 fleet, the agency said in a statement.

It does not include F-16 fighter jets, which Taiwan's military has been seeking.

Last week US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton angered Beijing with a call to China to investigate cyber attacks on search giant Google, after the company said email accounts of human rights activists had been hacked.

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Haitian doctor takes 100 patients into his home

Haitian doctor takes 100 patients into his home

But a magnitude-7.0 earthquake has brought the 59-year-old pediatrician's involvement to a whole new level.

Surena has converted his property into a field hospital for more than 100 quake victims. His patients are treated in the shaded, leafy patio of his undamaged home while thousands of others in the city lie in the dirt under a merciless sun waiting for attention from a handful of doctors.

"I have to thank whoever brought me," said Steve Julien, who says the last thing he remembers before he blacked out was rescue workers calling his name as they dug through the rubble of his house.

When he woke up, he was lying on a mattress inside Surena's soothing oasis.

It wasn't long after Tuesday's earthquake leveled nearly all of the houses next to Surena's that neighbors started showing up at his doorstep.

"It was a blessing from God my house is safe," he said. "We at least have been able to do something for everyone."

Surena has been relying on food and supplies salvaged from ruined homes to treat patients' broken bones and, for the dying, provide at least a minimum level of comfort away from the devastation.

The patients show physical and emotional wounds from having their homes collapse on them. Julien, 48, is among the least severely injured, with only a few scrapes and a sore body. Others have compound fractures and festering wounds. Surena said at least 10 patients are in critical need of more substantial help.

The injured sing Christian hymns as they huddle close together beneath sheets strung up as tents, but the earthquake still haunts them. Aftershocks rattled the city as recently as Friday morning.

"Sometimes they just start crying. We still get some movement," said Surena, who is also the local district chairman for Haiti's disaster relief agency.

The conditions at his home are far from ideal. Plastic buckets serve as toilets, and for some patients Surena can do little more than change dressings on infected wounds. But they are better off then many in Port-au-Prince, the capital city of 3 million people.

Surena earned his medical degree in Haiti and spent a year at the University of Illinois training in neonatology. He has been tending his ward with the help of two other doctors, including a Lake Worth, Florida-based gynecologist, Frantz Python, who was working in the area when the earthquake struck.

Eighteen of their patients have died. No case hit Surena harder than a pregnant woman who died shortly after she started having contractions Tuesday night, likely from internal hemorrhaging. Despite a rudimentary Cesarean-section, they could not save the baby.

"She was really suffering," Surena said. "The most difficult thing emotionally is that you know how to do it, but you don't have the materials do it."

The patients say they knwo Surena is doing his best.

Florene Francois, 19, was trying to soothe her fussing 18-month-old son, Rick Joey, on blankets in a corner of the patio between Surena's grill and a built-in bar. She said she is fine despite the scrapes on her face, but she worries about a deep gash on the back of her son's head.

"They just don't have what they need for the stitches," she said.

A 39-year-old tailor, Roger Hubert, had bandages on wounds and a sling for a severely broken arm. His bones have not been reset because there is no X-ray machine available.

"Considering the materials here, they are taking good care of us," Hubert said.

The supplies of food, water and medicine were quickly running out. Surena drove himself to the airport Thursday after neighbors cleared away debris blocking the only road down the hill, but his hopes of finding help were dashed in the confusion of so many arriving aid flights.

"So many planes. You don't know where to go and who to talk to," he said.

Still, he is optimistic more help is coming. He said Rotary International has pledged to send supplies including shelter boxes for the patients, and he expects more doctors to come, too.

Meanwhile, he keeps everyone at his house because they have nowhere else to go. He sent three patients in urgent need of surgery to a hospital on the airport road Thursday, but he took them back in after they were refused admission.

"They would have left their bodies on the street," Surena said.

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