Pilgrims awake to sunny skies for final pope Mass(Photo-Video)

Sunny skies have greeted more than a million young people who spent the night in sleeping bags, tents and under tarps awaiting Pope Benedict XVI's final Mass at the end of the Catholic Church's youth festival in Spain.

Dawn broke with sunshine over Madrid's Cuatro Vientos airbase after a fierce thunderstorm Saturday night

forced Benedict to cut short his speech to the crowd at a prayer vigil.

Six people were injured slightly when a tent collapsed. Earlier in the day, hundreds were treated for heat-related problems.

The storm also damaged some makeshift chapels set up on the field's perimeter, forcing organizers to announce Sunday morning over loudspeakers that not everyone would be able to receive Communion during the Mass. A new area at the airbase was also opened to accommodate late arrivals.

Spain nabs 3 suspected of global cyber attacks

The Spanish police said on Friday that they had apprehended three men suspected of computer hacking in connection with recent attacks on Sony’s PlayStation Network as well as corporate and government Web sites around the world. The National Police identified the three as the local leadership of the shadowy international network of computer hackers known as Anonymous, which has claimed responsibility for a wide variety of attacks. Anonymous is composed of people from various countries organized into cells that

share common goals, the police said, with activists operating anonymously in a coordinated fashion. One of the three suspects, a 31-year-old Spaniard, was detained in the southern Spanish city of Almería sometime after May 18, the police said. He had a computer server in his apartment in the northern Spanish port city of Gijón, where the group is believed to have attacked the Web sites of the Sony PlayStation online gaming store. The same computer server was also believed to have been used in coordinated attacks against two Spanish banks, BBVA and Bankia; the Italian energy company Enel; and government sites in Algeria, Chile, Colombia, Egypt, Libya, Iran, Spain and New Zealand, the police said. The two other men, both also Spaniards in their early 30s, were picked up in Barcelona and Valencia. The police statement did not make clear the timing of those detentions, but a police spokeswoman said all had occurred recently. The spokeswoman, who did not want to be identified in accordance with department policy, said all three were subsequently released, without bail, pending formal charges. They were expected to be charged with forming an illegal association to attack public and corporate Web sites, a charge that carries a potential sentence of up to three years in prison. The police opened their investigation last October, after hackers overwhelmed the Spanish Ministry of Culture’s Web site to protest legislation increasing punishments for illegal downloads. It was not immediately clear how much of a role the group may have played in the recent attacks on Sony. About a dozen Sony Web sites and services around the world have been hacked; the biggest breaches forced the company, which is based in Tokyo, to shut down its popular PlayStation Network for a month beginning in April. The Japanese company has acknowledged that hackers compromised the personal data of tens of millions of user accounts. Earlier this month, a separate hacker collective called Lulz Security, or LulzSec, said it had breached a Sony Pictures site and released vital source code. Sony has estimated that the hacker attacks will cost it at least 14 billion yen ($175 million), in damages, including spending on information technology, legal costs, lower sales and free offers to lure back customers. Mami Imada, a Sony spokeswoman in Tokyo, said she had no information on the detentions and declined to comment. The police said that they had analyzed more than two million lines of chat logs since October, as well as Web pages used by the group to identify the leadership in Spain “with the capacity to make decisions and direct attacks.” Members of Anonymous used a computer program called L.O.I.C. to crash Web sites with denial-of-service attacks, the police said. Among recent attacks, the hackers also brought down the site of the Spanish National Electoral Commission last month before regional and municipal elections. It was that attack, on May 18, that led to the detention of the suspect in Almería. The movement against the antipiracy law has been closely linked to the broader youth-led political movements that have occurred in Puerta del Sol, the central square in Madrid, and in other city squares since May 15. These protests have called for a complete overhaul of Spain’s political system and laws aimed at stopping illegal downloading.

Thousands of Spaniards defy pre-election rally ban

Madrid - Thousands of young Spaniards were Saturday attending sit-in protests all over the country, despite a ban on such rallies ahead of Sunday's local and regional elections.

The protesters are demanding a reform of Spain's democratic system, which they see as corrupt, serving the interests of banks and capital, and as favouring only two large parties.

Police will not disperse the rallies unless they turn violent, the government announced Friday.

The government was trying to avoid pre-election violence, despite a decision by the national electoral commission to prohibit rallies on Saturday, which is a pre-election 'reflection day,' and on election day itself.

At Madrid's central Puerta del Sol square, more than 25,000 demonstrators protested against the ban when it entered into force at midnight. Many sealed their mouths with tape or plaster.

In Barcelona, at least 8,000 people gathered on Catalonia Square, where they greeted the midnight hour with applause and shouted: 'We shall not leave!'

The protests were described as peaceful and well organized. No police interventions were reported.

Hundreds of people attended similar rallies staged by expatriate Spaniards in other European capitals and in Latin America, according to media reports.

Any pre-election violence was deemed likely to cost votes for Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero's Socialists, who had already been expected to suffer heavy losses to the opposition conservatives.

The protesters, however, have not sided with any political party, nor called for abstention or casting blank votes.

The movement has become known as M-15, in reference to May 15, when tens of thousands of people took to the streets in more than 50 Spanish cities.

The movement emerged on the internet a few months ago in response to Spain's economic crisis, which caused unemployment to soar to 20 per cent. Among young people, the jobless rate exceeds 40 per cent.

Spain has risen out of recession, but growth is expected to remain slow for years to come.

'Daddy, you're so handsome'

It's a miraculous about-face for the history books.

Just six weeks after receiving the nation's first full face transplant, Dallas Wiens, a 25-year-old construction worker from Fort Worth, Texas, appeared in public for the first time yesterday to show off his new features -- which prompted his young daughter to say, "Daddy, you're so handsome."

In footage aired on yesterday's "Good Morning America," Wiens -- who had suffered horrifying burns to his head 2½ years ago when a boom lift he was operating snagged a power line -- was reunited with his 3-year-old daughter, Scarlett, for the first time since his amazing surgery.

Wiens cited Scarlett as the reason he had signed on for the transplant in the first place.

"I could have lived like I was, no problem, if I did not have my daughter," said Wiens, who has been left blind by the accident.

"But I could not bear the thought of her growing up and being asked questions, 'Why does your daddy look different?' And dealing with that all of her childhood."

The devastating accident and the 22 surgeries that followed had left Wiens with a face without features.

All he had was a lipless mouth and a small goatee. He had no nose or eyes, and doctors even smoothed over his eye sockets with skin taken from other parts of his body.

Last March, a team of more than 30 doctors, nurses and anesthesiologists at Brigham and Woman's Hospital in Boston worked for more than 17 hours to build Wiens a new face using one from an anonymous donor that included muscles, nerves and a piece of nasal bone.

They were even able to create the muscles and nerves he needed to make it move.

Wiens also regained his sense of smell, as it was only the outside part of his nose that had been damaged.

Wiens said he cried when he woke up from the miracle surgery and felt his new nose.

The first thing he smelled was hospital lasagna.

"But it smelled really, really good," Wiens said.

Other phenomenal "firsts" for Wiens included blowing his nose and sneezing.

"This new face, it's not who I am. The old face wasn't, either," he said. "Who you are is inside -- it's internalized. It's who you show the world."

Wiens was the second person to undergo a face transplant at Brigham and Woman's Hospital. James Maki received a partial transplant in 2005 after accidentally falling face-first onto an electrified subway rail.

The world's first full face transplant was done in Spain in 2010.

‘Miracle’ transplant gives dad fresh start

The historic and ground-breaking full-face transplant conducted at Brigham and Women’s Hospital was aimed at giving hope to scores of severely battle-scarred soldiers of the Iraq and Afghan wars — but it also has given a brave little girl a daddy with a face.

A trailblazing team from Brigham and Women’s Hospital successfully completed the nation’s first complete-face transplant on a Texan left deformed by a high-voltage line accident. The only other full-face transplant was performed in Spain last year.

Dallas Wiens, 25, of Fort Worth underwent more than 15 hours of surgery last week by teams of doctors who worked to attach an anonymous donor’s nose, lips and skin, linking the donor’s facial muscles and nerves to his. The surgery was financed by the Department of Defense, which wants to develop ways to help disfigured soldiers.

“It’s a miracle, and he is determined to get well and make something of his life,” said Wiens’ grandfather, Del Peterson, who accompanied him to Boston. “His faith, and his will to live, and his youth kept him going.”

He also credits Wiens’ daughter, Scarlette, now 4, who was not yet 2 years old when he was injured, as a big reason to live after his world went dark.

“She’s the joy of his life,” Peterson said. Three years ago, doctors at the Parkland Hospital emergency room in Dallas told Wiens’ family he probably wouldn’t live.

“His whole face was gone, right down to the bone, and they called us in to say our goodbyes,” Peterson said. Wiens not only refused to die, he insisted on being with his little girl.

“The hospital introduced her to his injuries before she was 2, after they connected her with a child psychologist. The hospital said she wouldn’t recognize him, but Dallas said, ‘No, she’ll recognize my hands,’” Peterson said. Sure enough, he said, “Before she came in the room, he put his hands on his chest, and she said, ‘Those are Daddy’s hands!’ ”

Scarlette, back home in Texas, hasn’t seen her daddy’s new face, which remains swollen as he recovers. It could be months, but yesterday Wiens chatted with her by phone. With her youthful experience, the family isn’t worried this time that Scarlette won’t know her dad.

“I can recognize him through his personality and sense of humor,” Peterson said. “He’s determined to get well and make something of his life. He wants to go to college, and he has a lot of different interests.

“And I imagine that he’ll help other sightless people, too,” Peterson said.

Wiens already has. The Brigham and Women’s program that gave him a new face received a $3.4 million grant from the Department of Defense.

Facial transplant surgery remains in its infancy, with a few high-profile cases in France, Spain and the United States, while other patients wait, such as Charla Nash, the Connecticut woman mauled by a chimpanzee, a potential candidate for surgery at the Brigham.

Col. Janet R. Harris, a registered nurse with the Army Corps of Nurses, said yesterday that battlefield medical care has improved so much that there are as many as 100 American war veterans who might benefit from similar surgery.

“Many wouldn’t have survived before,” Harris said. “Eventually, we hope that this will move out of research and into the standard of care. We want to make sure our wounded warriors get covered . . . and get well.”