Belgium takes over the EU Council Presidency for six months today, Thursday. But the country is deeply divided politically and has only a provisional government led by former Premier Yves Leterne, who was voted out of office in June. The press, however, is confident of the strength of the EU and believes the current Belgian regionalism is a model for Europe.
A newspaper cutting showing the faces of victims killed on Bloody Sunday is stuck to a memorial dedicated to them, in the Bogside area of Londonderry, Northern Ireland on June 15, 2010. The Saville Inquiry into Bloody Sunday will be published today after 12 years and a cost of £190 million pounds (275 million dollars, 230 million euros), the 5,000-page report examines the events of January 30, 1972 in Londonderry, Northern Ireland, when 13 civilians were shot dead by British soldiers at a civil rights march. AFP PHOTO/Peter Muhly
Bloody Sunday (Irish: Domhnach na Fola)?sometimes called the Bogside Massacre?
Blogger Splintered Sunrise sums up the mood of a historic day:
It would seem that on the big issue ? the innocence of those shot on Bloody Sunday ? Saville has been unambiguous. From the reaction of the crowd in Derry, and specifically the families, that is the main thing they were looking for. After not only seeing their loved ones killed, but then seeing them being traduced by the now discredited Widgery report, what they wanted first and foremost was that vindication ? the formal acknowledgement that those killed were unarmed civilians whose deaths were unprovoked and unjustified. That is also what?s behind the warm response to David Cameron?s statement ? notwithstanding Cameron?s obligatory encomia to the British military, Cameron will get credit for playing this straight, and the frank admission of injustice by a Tory (and unionist) British prime minister means an awful lot, especially since the state took this long to admit any fault whatsoever.