‘Conciliatory’ Cardinal dies in Poland

Jozef Kloch, a church spokesman, said in a statement that the Cardinal died on Wednesday evening in Warsaw. Cardinal Glemp had been ill for many years, and the Polish news agency PAP said he had lung cancer.

Earlier that day Warsaw Archbishop Kazimierz Nycz had asked the faithful to pray for the Cardinal, noting that his condition was deteriorating.

The Cardinal oversaw the church at a critical time in its history and that of Poland.

He was the primate for most of the papacy of the Polish-born Pope John Paul II, who was elected pope in 1979. The church then enjoyed huge influence in Poland, with John Paul inspiring the Solidarity movement of Lech Walesa that helped topple communism in 1989.

A key moment for the Cardinal as church leader came in 1981, when communist authorities imposed the harsh crackdown know as martial law on the nation, aiming to crush Solidarity.

Some democracy activists at the time faulted the Cardinal for failing to confront the regime forcefully at that time, but he has explained any conciliatory gestures were meant to try to prevent a blood bath in the nation.

Former Brown University president Donald F Hornig, who worked on the atomic bomb and was a scientific adviser to three US presidents, has died. He was 92.

He had Alzheimer’s disease and died on Monday, his son said.

Mr Hornig was the university’s president from 1970 to 1976.

He also taught at Princeton and Harvard.

Mr Hornig was a Harvard-trained physical chemist and one of the youngest group leaders on the Manhattan Project that developed the atomic bomb during the Second World War.