Headlines

• "Eliminating terror and extremism is not a one-country responsibility, but a challenge facing all nations".─ Pres. Trump
• The Arab-Islamic-American Summit held in Riyadh Sunday succeeded in building close partnership to confront extremism, terrorism, fostering regional and international peace, stability and development ...  

Riyadh, May 21.─ Eliminating terror and extremism is not a one-country responsibility, but a challenge facing all nations that requires them to unite to overcome it, US President Donald Trump said Sunday while addressing the Arab-Islamic-American Summit in Riyadh.

In his first speech on foreign soil, in Saudi Arabia, Trump said the fight against extremism is “a battle between good and evil,” calling on Muslim nations to take the lead in stamping out terror.

More than ever, land for peace also means land for democracy   

May 18.─ The victory of Israel over the Arab armies that encircled it in 1967 was so swift and absolute that, many Jews thought, the divine hand must have tipped the scales. Before the six-day war Israel had feared another Holocaust; thereafter it became an empire of sorts. Awestruck, the Jews took the holy sites of Jerusalem and the places of their biblical stories. But the land came with many Palestinians whom Israel could neither expel nor absorb. Was Providence smiling on Israel, or testing it?

For the past 50 years, Israel has tried to have it both ways: taking the land by planting Jewish settlements on it; and keeping the Palestinians unenfranchised under military occupation, denied either their own state or political equality within Israel (see our special report in this issue). Palestinians have damaged their cause through decades of indiscriminate violence. Yet their dispossession is a reproach to Israel, which is by far the stronger party and claims to be a model democracy.

• The National Criminal Investigation Service’s (Kripos) leader, Eivind Borge, and Einar Aas of Oslo Police, say it’s too easy for organised crime gangs to establish themselves in Norway  
• Law enforcement services in Norway are provided by the country’s single national police force called “Politi”, with a strength of 11,000 officers for a population of 5 million

Oslo, May 16.─ ‘In recent years, we’ve seen examples of criminal networks attracting professional participants such as doctors, lawyers and accountants. Criminals use these professionals to facilitate crime. In this way, criminal influence is exerted in Norwegian society’, said the head of the Tactical Investigation Department of Kripos, police inspector Eivind Borge, to Dagbladet newspaper.

'More controls needed' on aid groups rescuing migrants  

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.