The following is a selection of recent editorials from around the world that may be of interest to readers of The Royal Gazette.

The Times Herald-Record, Middletown, N.Y., on laws regarding church sex abuse:<$>

If one stands back from the trees in order to take a look at the forest for a moment, it seems almost preposterous that a law should be needed to force officials of the Roman Catholic Church to report suspected cases of paedophilia to civil authorities.

It is nearly a matter of instinct to trust the clergy to do the right thing. But it is now clear that such a law is necessary. ...

The abuse is so widespread that it belies the church’s long-standing claim that instances of priest paedophilia amount to a few isolated incidents. The institutional coverup is mind-boggling. Good priests have sadly been tainted by the scandal. Church coffers are emptying as lawsuits now amounting to $1 billion are settled. Pressure is growing to allow priests to marry and women to be ordained in the belief that it would normalise the church leadership and put an end to the view that the priesthood is a sanctuary for sexual deviants.

Those are all matters for the church itself to come to terms with. In accordance with our nation’s long-standing “hands-off” policy over theological matters, they are the church’s business, not America’s. But protecting children of the Catholic church when it becomes clear that the church itself is unwilling to do so is, indeed, America’s business. To that end, the Senate and Assembly must reach a quick compromise and get this law on the books.

The Sacramento (Calif.) Bee, on Yasser Arafat and Mideast violence:

Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, confined to a single room by an Israeli military offensive meant to seal him off from what Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon calls the “infrastructure of terror,” is not the only one trapped by escalating violence. Sharon and President Bush also are ensnared by conflicting impulses that offer no obvious way out.

Sharon, responding to ongoing suicide-bomb attacks by sending Israeli tanks and troops into West Bank cities, has encircled the man he calls the “enemy” of the free world. Sharon could easily finish off Arafat, but has promised Washington not to harm him. Thus Sharon’s plan apparently is to wipe out Palestinian terrorist cells while rendering Arafat impotent. That seems a daunting task, but even if that were to happen, what then? Let’s say Arafat were neutralised or expelled to a third country. With whom would Sharon deal, even in the unlikely event Israeli forces could suppress a seemingly inexhaustible pool of Palestinians willing to kill themselves along with their Israeli victims?

Sharon surely knows that, however justified Israel is in defending itself, only a negotiated solution that involves an Israeli withdrawal from occupied areas can stop the attacks, if anything can. Yet at the moment he is said to oppose negotiations. That looks more and more like a formula for unending terror.

Quite apart from diverting the administration from its desire to focus on Iraq as its next anti-terror target, the continuing bloodshed between Israelis and Palestinians risks scrambling the alignment of forces in the Middle East in ways that are hard to predict and that could render all current assumptions moot. Whether the United States has the capacity to defuse this crisis is questionable, but at a minimum it needs to be seen as trying hard.