Month: July 2017

A British court on Monday gave the parents of 11-month-old Charlie Gard a chance to present fresh evidence that their terminally ill son should receive experimental treatment. The decision came after an emotionally charged hearing in the wrenching case, during which Gard’s mother wept in frustration and his father yelled at a lawyer. Judge Nicholas Francis gave the couple until Wednesday afternoon to present the evidence and set a new hearing for Thursday in a case that has drawn international attention. But the judge insisted there had to be “new and powerful” evidence to reverse earlier rulings that barred Charlie …

READ MORE

Thousands of unaccompanied and separated refugee and migrant children risk exploitation, trafficking, abuse and violence because European asylum countries have failed to protect them, according to three leading humanitarian organizations. To remedy this situation, the United Nations’ refugee agency (UNHCR), the U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and International Rescue Committee (IRC) have devised a “Roadmap for Action” to protect vulnerable children arriving and staying in Europe. ”While the total number of arrivals to Europe has decreased, the situation of unaccompanied and separated children remains an emergency,” said Diane Goodman, deputy director of the UNHCR’s Europe bureau. “It is wrong to assume …

READ MORE

A call by the Israeli ambassador to Hungary for an end to the billboard campaign against George Soros wasn’t meant to “delegitimize” criticism of the Hungarian-American billionaire, the Israeli Foreign Ministry said Sunday. The ministry’s statement was in response to a Facebook post by Ambassador Yossi Amrani, who said the Hungarian government’s billboards not only evoke “sad memories, but also sow hatred and fear.” The ministry said the “sole purpose” of the ambassador’s statement was to express Israel’s rejections of anti-Semitism and support “Jewish communities everywhere in confronting this hatred.” “In no way was the statement meant to delegitimize criticism …

READ MORE

The strained U.S. relations with Turkey are beginning to improve, but will require much more work, according to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. “I think we are working very hard to rebuild that level of trust that is the basis for any relationship,” Tillerson said, speaking Monday with the staff and families of the U.S. Mission in Istanbul. “It is important for so many reasons, which is why we must put the relationship on the mend, re-establish it on the proper basis and strengthen it going forward,” he said, citing the war in Syria as one of the issues on …

READ MORE

The Kremlin said Monday it was unaware of a 2016 meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump’s senior staff and a Russian attorney who promised to give them damaging information about Trump’s challenger, Democrat Hillary Clinton. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said it does not know the lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, and “cannot keep track” of every Russian lawyer and their contacts overseas. Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., said Sunday that he, Trump’s then-campaign manager, Paul Manafort, and President Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, met with the Russian lawyer in June 2016 after Trump had clinched the Republican presidential nomination. Veselnitskaya has said …

READ MORE

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has marked the anniversary this week of last year’s failed coup coup in Turkey, praising the courage of the Turkish people in defending democracy but failing to mention the widespread government crackdown that has followed since. Speaking Sunday at an oil conference in Istanbul, Tillerson recalled the brief, unsuccessful attempt last July 15 to overthrow President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. He also said the United States sees Turkey as a partner in its push for greater energy security in the region, and “looks forward to engaging with Turkey on projects that will increase global energy …

READ MORE

Top French company bosses who have for years lamented their country’s slow pace of reforms at an annual summer gathering in Provence offered glowing praise this year for the first steps taken by newly elected President Emmanuel Macron. Sixty days after Macron became France’s youngest ever president, the CEOs gathered in the southern town of Aix-en-Provence said they had sensed a radical change in the country’s image abroad. “The whole world admires France today. There is renewed confidence, optimism about the country,” Patrick Pouyanne, the head of oil major Total, France’s largest company, told reporters. “What I expect from this …

READ MORE

Tens of thousands of people massed in Istanbul Sunday to protest Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s crackdown on critics of his government in the wake of last year’s failed military coup. The demonstrators chanted “Rights, Law, Justice” in support of the main opposition leader, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, who was completing a 450-kilometer walk from the capital Ankara after a lawmaker from his party was imprisoned in June. It was the biggest protest in several years against Erdogan, whose government has arrested more than 50,000 people and dismissed at least 100,000 civil servants he has characterized as supporters of the aborted coup. …

READ MORE

U.S. President Donald Trump said Sunday that he twice “strongly pressed” Russian President Vladimir Putin about Russia’s meddling in last year’s U.S. election and it was now time to “move forward in working constructively” with Moscow. In a string of Twitter comments after returning to Washington from the G-20 summit in Hamburg, Germany, Trump noted that Putin vehemently denied any role in interfering in the election and that he and the Russian leader “discussed forming an impenetrable Cyber Security unit so that election hacking, & many other negative things, will be guarded and safe.” Key Republican lawmakers, however, immediately ridiculed …

READ MORE

Britain’s scheduled exit from the European Union may never happen because its main political parties are too divided on the issue, said Vince Cable, a veteran lawmaker bidding to lead the fourth largest political party, the Liberal Democrats. Prime Minister Theresa May’s failure to win an outright majority in a snap national election last month has cast doubt on her capacity to lead Britain out of the EU, sharpening a debate on what sort of exit deal the government should seek. “I’m beginning to think that Brexit may never happen,” Cable told the BBC on Sunday. “The problems are so …

READ MORE

Former Polish President Lech Walesa, a democracy hero, has been hospitalized with heart problems in his Baltic coast home city of Gdansk, his son said Saturday. Jaroslaw Walesa told The Associated Press via text message that his father was feeling “unfortunately weak.” It was not immediately known when he could be discharged from the heart diseases ward of the Gdansk University Clinic. Lech Walesa, 73, on Thursday attended a speech by President Donald Trump in Warsaw. He was booed by many in a crowd that supported the current government, which criticizes Walesa’s role in Poland’s politics. Walesa strongly criticizes the …

READ MORE