Vatican denies internal split on US nun crackdown

VATICAN CITY (AP) — The Vatican is denying there are any internal divisions over its crackdown on the largest umbrella group of U.S. nuns.

The head of the Vatican's office for religious orders, Cardinal Joao Braz de Aviz, was quoted over the weekend as saying his office wasn't consulted or even advised by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith about its decision to overhaul the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, which represents 80 percent of American sisters.

On Tuesday, the Vatican said Braz's words were misinterpreted, and that he and the prefect of the doctrine office "have collaborated throughout the process." It said the two men met Monday and reaffirmed their commitment to renewing religious life in the U.S. as well as to the Vatican's reform plan for the Leadership Conference.

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Venezuela's opposition denies it would scrap Chavez welfare aid

By Andrew Cawthorne and Mario Naranjo

CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuelan opposition candidate Henrique Capriles denied on Wednesday accusations from acting President Nicolas Maduro that he would scrap popular welfare policies if he wins Sunday's election.

Social "missions" in poor areas, from subsidized groceries to Cuban-staffed medical clinics, were a mainstay of the late Hugo Chavez's 14-year socialist rule and kept his popularity high.

His chosen successor, Maduro, 50, says he is the guarantor of their continuation and accuses Capriles of planning to disband the missions and also privatize state oil company PDVSA, whose export revenues fund the projects.

That, said Capriles at a dawn campaign event, was nonsense and scaremongering. The 40-year-old state governor likes to show off his social record in Miranda state and describes himself as a "progressive," but he is depicted by Maduro as a right-wing puppet of Venezuela's wealthy elite and U.S. interests.

Rather than end the missions, Capriles said he would improve, expand and de-politicize them.

"Simply being Venezuelan will give people the right to free education, quality healthcare, social security and housing," he said. "In our plans there will be no blackmailing ... People will not have to be members of a political party to get aid."

Capriles, who has shown plenty of Chavez-style populist traits himself, listed his social policy plans from a 40 percent rise in the minimum wage to subsidized medicines.

"The government elite get annoyed because they want total control over the missions as if they belonged to them. They don't understand they belong to Venezuelans, not those who put the red shirt on," he added, referring to the color of the ruling Socialist Party.

"Don't be deceived, the missions are not going to be ended. The government says that to cheat people and have control."

FRENETIC CAMPAIGN

Accusations and insults have been flying between both camps in the frantic run-up to Sunday's vote for leadership of the South American OPEC nation of 29 million people.

Most polls have shown Maduro comfortably ahead, but a couple of the latest weekly surveys put the gap at below 10 points and Capriles' camp believes the opposition is on a late surge as emotion over Chavez's March 5 death from cancer wanes.

Maduro, a former bus driver who rose to be Chavez's vice-president, has been playing up his working-class roots in contrast to Capriles' wealthy family background. His former boss successfully played Venezuela's class politics for years to guarantee passionate support among the poor.

"The little bourgeois doesn't know what it's like to get up at four in the morning, have a coffee and half a piece of bread, then go to work early to keep a family," Maduro told a rally late on Tuesday.

"The only thing he knows is how to count the money gained from exploiting consumers."

Maduro also received a celebrity boost from former Argentine soccer star Diego Maradona, an avowed supporter of Latin American leftists, including Cuba's Fidel Castro and Venezuela's Chavez.

Maradona was to appear at Maduro's closing campaign rally in Caracas on Thursday, the acting president said.

Venezuela's election will not only determine the future of "Chavismo" socialism in Venezuela but also who controls the world's largest oil reserves and whether aid to a clutch of left-leaning nations around the region will continue.

Maduro is campaigning on Chavez's legacy, while Capriles wants to implement a Brazilian-style political model.

The winner faces a complicated set of problems, including strained state coffers after last year's heavy election spending, the highest inflation in the Americas, crime rates among the world's highest, and stuttering services.

(Editing by Eric Beech and Paul Simao)

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Martha Stewart denies wrongdoing in store deal

NEW YORK (AP) — Home diva Martha Stewart testified in court on Tuesday that she did nothing wrong when she signed an agreement to open up shops within most of J.C. Penney's stores across the country.

Stewart testified in New York State Supreme Court as part of a legal battle over whether the company that she founded breached its contract to sell cookware, bedding and other items exclusively at Macy's when she inked the deal with Penney in 2011.

Stewart, who founded Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia Inc., during three hours of testimony, denied Macy's allegations that she did anything unethical in brokering the deal with Penney. She said that she was only looking to expand and offer new opportunities for shoppers.

In fact, Stewart said it's Macy's that didn't uphold its end of the agreement to try to maximize the potential of her business. She her brand, which is about a $300 million business at Macy's, has grown "static" at the department store chain. She said she was hoping the business would exceed well over $400 million.

"We were disappointed," Stewart, wearing a sleeveless jacket and mini skirt, testified. "We did have hopes that the business would be much bigger ... We got to a certain dollar amount and struggled and never got any further."

The trial, which began Feb. 20, focuses on whether Macy's has the exclusive right to sell some Martha Stewart branded products such as cookware, bedding and bath items.

Penney signed a pact in December 2011 with Martha Stewart Living to open shops at most of its 1,100 stores by this spring. But one month later, Macy's renewed its long-standing exclusive deal until 2018 and sued Martha Stewart Living and Penney.

Martha Stewart and Penney are using what they believe is a loophole in the agreement between Macy's and Martha Stewart to move forward with the deal. It's a provision that allows Martha Stewart to sell goods in categories like bedding in Martha Stewart stores.

According to Martha Stewart lawyers, because the Macy's agreement doesn't specify that these Martha Stewart stores have to be "stand alone" stores, the mini shops within Penney stores do not fall under the exclusive agreement. Moreover, Stewart said in court Tuesday that even Amazon.com could be considered a store, given that shoppers are shifting more to online buying.

"I don't think you need walls to be a store," she said.

The trial has unveiled some of the drama that has taken place behind-the-scenes between Stewart and the CEOs of Macy's Inc. and J.C. Penney Co.

During his testimony on Friday, Penney CEO Ron Johnson rejected claims by Macy's lawyers that he plotted to push Martha Stewart to breach her deal with Macy's with the goal of eventually becoming the sole carrier of some of Stewart's products.

Johnson, dressed in a dark suit and striped navy tie during his testimony, said that he just wanted to get a piece of the action while helping the struggling Martha Stewart business grow. She also said that the expanded partnership could be good for everyone, including Macy's.

Macy's attorneys, meanwhile, have portrayed Stewart as someone who turned her back on a good friend, Macy's CEO Terry Lundgren, to broker a deal with a rival company. During testimony earlier in the trial, Lundgren said that he hung up on Stewart after she told him about the deal she'd reached with Penney, and hasn't spoken to her since.

"I was quite taken back by his response and when he hung up on me I was quite flabbergasted," Stewart said on Tuesday.

Stewart's testimony comes as the company she founded continues to struggle. Martha Stewart Living just finished its fifth straight year of losses. The company has also had steep sales declines.

Martha Stewart Living has been trying to bolster its merchandising business, which represents 30 percent of the company's annual revenue, to offset declines in its broadcast and publishing divisions as people continue to shift toward the Web and mobile apps to get their recipes and food tips.

The biggest opportunities for Martha Stewart Living are in the home category. That's because as the housing recovery gains momentum in the economic recovery, consumers will likely put more money into their homes.

During her testimony on Tuesday, Stewart said she always wanted to open big shops at Macy's, but the retailer never embraced that concept. Instead, she noted the merchandise is just "here and there."

That's why she said that a proposal from Penney's CEO Ron Johnson to create shops filled with all sorts of home merchandise was appealing.

"We hoped this business would be growing," Stewart said. "It just boggles my mind that we're here sitting in front of you, judge."

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Vatican denies sinister motives behind diplomat's transfer

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - The Vatican denied on Friday that Pope Benedict's decision to send a senior official to a new post in Latin America was linked to a secret report about leaked papal papers.

Since Benedict announced his resignation on February 11, Italian newspapers have been full of rumors about conspiracies, secret reports and lobbies in the Vatican that they say pushed the pope to abdicate.

Some reports hinted there were sinister motives behind the pope's decision to promote Monsignor Ettore Balestrero, an Italian who holds a post roughly equivalent to deputy foreign minister, to be the Vatican's new ambassador to Colombia.

The Vatican spokesman, Father Federico Lombardi, said the suggestion that the pope had made the appointment to get Balestrero out of the Vatican was "absurd, totally without foundation".

Lombardi said the appointment had been decided weeks ago and that the Vatican had waited for the Colombian government's official agreement before announcing it.

The pope has announced that he will step down on February 28, becoming the first pontiff to abdicate in some six centuries.

The 85-year-old Benedict said his failing health no longer enabled him to run the 1.2 billion-member Roman Catholic Church as he would like.

Italy's Repubblica newspaper has run a series of unsourced stories about the alleged contents of a secret report prepared for the pope by a commission of three cardinals who investigated the so-called Vatileaks scandal last year.

In that scandal, Paolo Gabriele, the pope's butler, was convicted of stealing personal papal documents and leaking them to the media.

The documents alleged corruption in the Vatican and infighting over the running of its bank, which has been at the heart of a series of scandals in past decades.

The Italian media stories suggested Balestrero was mentioned in the cardinals' report, which was handed to the pope and is still secret.

Balestrero was head of the Vatican's delegation to Moneyval, the Council of Europe's committee that evaluates how countries are applying international standards on financial transparency.

The Vatican, a sovereign city-state surrounded by Rome, subjected itself to Moneyval's investigations in an attempt to achieve full financial transparency and put its scandal-tinged financial past behind it.

The Moneyval report, issued last July, gave the Vatican an overall passing grade but said it had to made improvements in several areas, including the management at its bank, the Institute for Works of Religion (IOR).

The Vatican has said it is willing to adhere to all of Moneyval's recommendations.

Bogota is one of the most prestigious posts in Latin America for a Vatican diplomat because it is the headquarters of CELAM, the umbrella group for all of the continent's bishops conferences.

(Reporting By Philip Pullella; Editing by Robin Pomeroy)

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