World News joined 2

[OMEN]

Take one Pope, 1500 ministers and a racecourse full of the faithful, add 300 kilos of flour, 300 litres of water and 120 litres of wine, and what have you got?

Answer: holy communion for half a million people.

These are the logistics organisers are juggling with as they plan Pope Benedict XVI's huge July 20 mass at Sydney's Randwick racecourse, the final event of the church's week-long World Youth Day (WYD).

"Mass was not meant to be celebrated by quite so many people, so the challenges are great but not insurmountable," said Father Peter Williams, WYD director of liturgy, as he visited an inner Sydney bakehouse busy making one million communion hosts, or altar bread, for the event.

Half a million of the hosts will be used at the final mass, and the rest at other WYD events, including the opening mass celebrated by Sydney's Catholic Archbishop, Cardinal George Pell, which is expected to attract up to 180,000 people at Darling Harbour on July 15.

"We have doubled our production. We are now making 45,000 hosts a week to meet the July contract," said Rod Silber, business development manager for the Ozanam Bakehouse at Stanmore, a St Vincent de Paul Society operation providing supported employment for people with physical and mental disabilities.

"There is not usually a large market for communion hosts.

"It's something I can safely say will never happen again."

Bakehouse supervisor Aida Santos said the hosts were being made in plain, wholemeal and low gluten varieties, each 100,000 of them requiring some 30 kilos of flour and 30 litres of water.

Father Williams said bishops, priests and deacons would serve as ministers of communion at the mass, as well as commissioned laymen, seminarians and brothers and sisters from religious orders.

The Pope will administer holy communion to 24 young people he will confirm on the day.

The communion, planned to take 30 minutes, is so vast that many hosts will be "pre-consecrated" at other masses around Sydney.

Randwick will be divided into a grid system so that the hosts can be quickly ferried in 1,800 ciboria -- round metal communion bowls - to designated staging points and tents

.

AAP

[OMEN]

The Red Cross' first aid plane will fly into cyclone devastated Myanmar today as pressure builds on the reclusive Asian nation to open its borders to international aid.

The official death toll from the aftermath of the weekend's Cyclone Nagris stands at 22,980, but some experts fear that number could rise to 100,000.

Western countries, which have imposed tough sanctions against Burma over its human rights record, have been urging its military junta to urgently open its borders to help.

United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said overnight that millions of dollars in assistance was waiting to be delivered and international disaster experts were on standby in nearby countries, ready to help, but they Burma is yet to give them visas.

"This is the kind of crisis which will only get worse without humanitarian assistance being made available from the international community," she said.

Some aid agencies with an established relationship with the Burmese government, such as the Red Cross and CARE Australia, have been able to begin work in the country.

Red Cross and Red Crescent, John Sparrow, said the organisation's first aid plane loaded with supplies would be flying from Malaysia into Burma today, and hoped it would be the first of many.

"We can't move quickly enough. We are a very happy though that later today our time we can get our first plane into Myanmar and we'll be taking shelter materials from Kuala Lumpur," Mr Sparrow told the Australian Nine Network this morning.

"So there are some positives. Of course we need to move much faster, there is no doubt about that. I'm looking right now at the positives."

But Mr Sparrow would not comment on the military regime's refusal to allow the freer flow of foreign aid.

"I think also it is time to be saying, for us right now, thank you for the go ahead on that first flight that's coming up today," Mr Sparrow said.

"For us it's a test run - for procedures, for getting a more active logistics pipeline going.

"We want to build on that. That's where we should be putting the emphasis right now."

CARE Australia spokesman Robert Yallop said it was not unusual for there to be a delay in aid getting into areas affected by major disasters, including New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.

"In any disaster of this magnitude, no matter which government you are dealing with, it takes time to figure out the scale and the scope and the proportion," he told the Nine Network.

He said the challenge in Myanmar was enormous.

"It takes some time for the administrative arrangements, for the support and so on to be put in place," he told the Nine Network.

"CARE is making arrangements with the United Nations and the government authorities to bring in relief supplies within the next couple of days.

"But the real concern that we all have is to focus on how we get support and assistance to those in need."

He said he believed a UN relief flight from Italy was on its way to Rangoon.

"I have full confidence that the United Nations, working with the government authorities, will make the appropriate arrangements to get staff and to get materials and everything else in that is required for this relief effort.

He said relief was getting through to victims.

"Today we will be providing food and water to 10,000 people. In the coming days we will be providing assistance to another 50,000 people down in the delta

"That was given full support by the ministry of social welfare yesterday when our country director met with them.

"It is frustrating ... but I have complete optimism that it will happen and will happen in a way that is appropriate to the situation."

- AAP

[OMEN]

Tonga is to spend more than $4 million - equivalent to a third of New Zealand's annual aid vote to the kingdom - on the July coronation of ageing bachelor King George Tupou V.

Details are due to be announced today by the Palace Office in Nuku'alofa, but leaks reveal the big bash is to have a celebrity guest list including Sir Elton John and Sir Mick Jagger.

It will also feature three balls: one for "very very important people", another for "very important people" and another for the rest who do not make the cut.

London tailors have designed the king's robes and a new sceptre in gold has been cast for the occasion. It is said to be similar to the Queen's. The king has reportedly given exclusive broadcasting rights to the BBC.

The Tongan Government is to keep its state of emergency in place fearing a repeat of the November 2006 riots that caused $86 million worth of damage to the capital.

The king, who turned 60 last Sunday, assumed the title in September 2006 on the death in Auckland of his father, Taufa'ahau Tupou IV. Riots broke out five weeks later with the commercial businesses owned by the current king targeted.

The Tongan Government delayed plans to hold the coronation last year, fearing public reaction to the extravagance.

Few public details are known yet of the coronation, which will run from July 30 to August 3. No official budget has been released, but Tongan Government sources say they expect it to run between T$5 million to T$6 million (NZ$4 million). Other sources say the cost could climb to T$10 million.

No aid money is expected to be spent. New Zealand aid to Tonga for the current financial year is worth NZ$11.5 million.

As crown prince, the king was seen as an unpopular dilettante who collected toy soldiers and dressed up in military uniforms.

He became a multimillionaire by taking over state businesses, including electricity generation, mobile telephone services, Internet domain name registration and the Royal brewery.

The dominion Post

[OMEN]

Brig.-Gen. Dennis Thompson, the next commander of Canadian troops in Afghanistan, arrives at Kandahar airfield on Wednesday.
The next commander of Canadian troops in Afghanistan arrived in Kandahar on Wednesday, saying he believes the mission will take on a different flavour during his nine-month tour.

Brig.-Gen. Dennis Thompson is replacing current commander Brig.-Gen. Guy Laroche. The official handover will take place soon, although a date hasn't been specified.

Thompson said evolving conditions in the war-torn region mean there will be a greater emphasis on the civilian side of development and reconstruction.

Still, he said, there will still be a military aspect and he doesn't expect the army will be adopting a defensive posture just because the focus is shifting.

"I think there will be a change in emphasis, but I'm not prepared to say how much that will be [because] there are other players here," Thompson said, referring to the Taliban.

Canada's Conservative government is in the process of refocusing the mission and setting down objectives to be achieved before Canada's military mission ends in 2011.

Thompson will be laying the groundwork for refocusing the mission, and for a civilian administration at the provincial reconstruction base, which Canada operates in the city of Kandahar.
Thompson coped with losses while leading in Petawawa

Thompson is the former commander of the 2nd Canadian Mechanized Brigade at CFB Petawawa in Ontario, a base that has suffered a lot of casualties, and he says that aspect of loss personalizes this assignment for him.

"You tend to know an awful lot of people that are either injured or killed," he said.

"It sharpens your focus and it makes you want to do everything you can to mitigate all of those risks."

Thompson arrived at Kandahar airfield one day after a Canadian soldier was killed in an ambush in the Pashmul region outside Kandahar city. Cpl. Michael Starker was killed while on patrol with his Civil-Military Co-operation unit, which reaches out to local Afghan villages and serves as a bridge to the community.

Despite the killing, Laroche said yesterday that Kandahar province is safer than when he took over almost 10 months ago.

He said the area where Starker was killed on foot patrol was an area Canadians couldn't enter a year ago.

CBC

[JohnCenaFan28]

Thanks for the news.

[JohnCenaFan28]

Thanks for the story.

[JohnCenaFan28]

Thanks for the news.

[JohnCenaFan28]

Wow, thanks for the news.

[JohnCenaFan28]

I'm glad they're getting help, thanks for the story.

[JohnCenaFan28]

That's interesting, thanks for the news.