Valletta, May 16.─ An Italian parliamentary commission said today that that Malta and Tunisia should do more to help Italy tackle the huge numbers of migrants who are using Libya as a springboard in search of a better life in Europe.
The commission also called for more controls on humanitarian organisations that are taking an increasingly significant role in rescuing migrants from the Mediterranean.
Chicago, May 10.─ James Comey had no intention to leave his job. “You are stuck with me for about six and a half years,” said the former deputy attorney-general, who was appointed as the head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation by Barack Obama at a cyber-conference in Boston in March 2013. But it was not to be. On May 9th the next president, Donald Trump, sent Mr Comey a letter informing him that his attorney-general and deputy attorney-general had recommended his dismissal—and that he had accepted their recommendation.
In his brief letter to Mr Comey, Mr Trump said he was firing him because he was not able to lead the bureau effectively. In a longer memorandum, Rod Rosenstein, the deputy attorney-general, cast Mr Comey’s dismissal entirely as the result of his handling of the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private e-mail server during her tenure as secretary of state. “The FBI’s reputation and credibility have suffered substantial damage, and it has affected the entire Department of Justice,” wrote Mr Rosenstein. “I cannot defend the director’s handling of the conclusion of the investigation of Secretary Clinton’s e-mails, and I do not understand his refusal to accept the nearly universal judgment that he was mistaken. Almost everyone agrees that the director made serious mistakes; it is one of the few issues that unites people of diverse perspectives.”
Paris, May 6 (DP.net).─ Macron won by promoting a program of fiscal, social and environmental clauses in trade agreements with the European Union. He promised to demand a full integration in all trade agreements with the European Union of clauses including tax cooperation, as well as binding social and environmental clauses, such as the lowering of tariffs on goods and services and establishing trade sanctions in case of violation of those clauses.
Defeated Marine Le Pen is now positioning herself as “the first opposition force” ahead of the traditional major parties against president-elect Emmanuel Macron’s policies. “France has voted for continuity,” she noted during her concession speech in a tone that implied her defeat was clearly no surprise. Having established that, Le Pen was quick to set the stage for her next political act.
Washington DC, May 4 (CNA).─ Religious freedom advocates credited President Donald Trump with taking a “first step” toward protecting religious freedom with an executive order he signed on Thursday, but stressed that there is still more work to be done.
“I thought the executive order was a great step forward,” Cardinal Donald Wuerl of Washington, D.C. told CNA. “[Trump] himself says this is the first step. But it’s the beginning, and we’ve waited a long time for it.”
President Donald Trump signed a religious freedom executive order on Thursday in the White House Rose Garden, on the National Day of Prayer, with religious leaders – including Cardinal Wuerl – standing around him.
Cairo, Apr.28.─ "Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.” So said Manuel II Palaiologos, a Byzantine emperor, of Islam’s founder. Some six centuries later, in 2006, Pope Benedict XVI used the quotation in a speech about reason and religion. The Muslim world was not pleased.
Jorge Bergoglio, then a cardinal in Argentina, criticised Benedict’s comments. In 2013, when Father Bergoglio succeeded Pope Benedict, taking the name of Francis, he immediately called for more interfaith dialogue. Two weeks later, when the new pope washed the feet of prisoners in Rome, a Christian ritual, he included two Muslims. In 2014 he toured Jordan, Israel and Palestine, further mending the Vatican’s relations with Islam.
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