Month: December 2017

Pope Francis called for peace in Jerusalem and “mutual trust” on the Korean peninsula in his traditional Christmas Day address “Urbi et Orbi” (“To the City and to the World”) from the central balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica. Francis spoke of “growing tensions between Israelis and Palestinians,” expressing his hope that the “will to resume dialogue may prevail between the parties and that a negotiated solution can finally be reached, one that would allow the peaceful coexistence of two states.” Palestinians were angered with President Donald Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.   The pope also focused on …

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Aid agencies report thousands of people in conflict-ridden Ukraine face a bleak Christmas and New Year because of freezing temperatures and shortages of essential goods. Temperatures in Ukraine can plummet to minus 20 degrees Celsius in January. People throughout the country are suffering. But, those living in territory held by Russian-backed rebels in eastern Ukraine are most affected by the shortages brought on by nearly four years of war. The U.N. refugee agency reports thousands of people displaced by conflict from their homes in the regions of Donetsk and Luhansk are having a tough time surviving. The situation is particularly …

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Spain’s King Felipe directed his Christmas message Sunday to the separatist-minded region of Catalonia and what he says is the need to avoid confrontation. The king urged regional leaders to help “Catalonia’s society, diverse and plural as it is, to recover its serenity, stability, and mutual respect in such a way as to ensure that ideas don’t divide or separate families and friends.” Looking back on a “difficult” year for Spain, he reminded Catalan leaders and the newly-elected parliament to “face the problems that affect all Catalans, respecting their diversity and thinking responsibly in the common good.” In an October …

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Outside the doors to the Moscow courthouse, the crowd of supporters, and reporters, swelled into the hundreds. Inside, one of Russia’s most famous theater directors was on trial for embezzlement. Just meters away, on a street corner, a young woman stood with a small sign: “Return our artist to us.” Such are the times in Russia, where art – theater, literature, painting, music, film – has again become a political battleground, where left and right fight over values and culture with increasing intensity. In President Vladimir Putin’s current term alone, the country’s cultural space has already been buffeted by an …

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Turkey dismissed more than 2,700 employees from its public service sector Sunday – the latest firings in a widescale crackdown since a failed military coup in July 2016. A total of 2,756 people, including academics, soldiers, and military personnel were dismissed on Sunday, accused of links to what Ankara has labeled as terror groups, according to the Official Gazette. In a separate emergency decree Sunday, Turkey the country’s defense procurement agency was ordered to report to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan instead of the defense ministry. Seventeen Turkish institutions, including two newspapers, were also ordered shut. Under emergency rule introduced last …

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The number of migrants crossing the Mediterranean to Europe continued to fall last month, and the European Union says its policies to ease the crisis are working.  On the so-called central Mediterranean route from North Africa, arrivals were down by a third. And Europe claimed success in slowing the arrival of migrants.  But Amnesty International claims the bloc’s collaboration with Libyan groups involved in the detention of migrants makes it complicit in gross human rights abuses. Maria Serrano of Amnesty International says this has come at a terrible human cost. “Europe has decided to cooperate with Libyan authorities, knowing the …

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Spain is trying to turn back a growing wave of African migrants who seek to enter the country through its southern coast or its small enclaves in North Africa. About 800 migrants rushed the border fence in the enclave of Ceuta on Friday. At least 30 managed to climb over the seven-meter-high fence according to Spanish police, who turned back hundreds more with help from Moroccan riot police. Ceuta and another city along the Moroccan coast, Melilla, have been Spanish possessions since the 1500s. Earlier in the week, the Spanish coast guard rescued about 60 migrants trying to cross the …

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The United States and other Western countries swiftly condemned a move in Kosovo to scrap a war crimes court, warning that if successful, it would hamper efforts for Euro-Atlantic integration. “It will be considered by the United States as a stab in the back. Kosovo will be choosing isolation instead of cooperation, and I have to say we would hate to turn the clock back for Kosovo on progress when it has come so far,” U.S. Ambassador to Kosovo Greg Delawie said Friday. The United States has been a key ally and financial backer of Kosovo since it broke away …

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Italy’s ruling Democratic Party (PD), hit by internal divisions and a banking scandal, is continuing to slide in opinion polls, with a new survey on Saturday putting it more than six percentage points behind the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement. The survey by the Ixe agency, commissioned by Huffington Post Italia, came days before parliament is expected to be dissolved to make way for elections in March. It gave the center-left PD just 22.8 percent of voter support, down almost five points in the last two months, compared with 29.0 percent for 5-Star, which has gained almost two points in the same …

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Macedonia’s main opposition party, the rightist VMRO-DPMNE, formally replaced its leader, Nikola Gruevski, on Saturday and appointed Hristijan Mickoski, a technocrat, as his successor. Gruevski, 47, resigned this month following an election defeat last year and unrest that rocked the small Balkan country in April. In his speech to the party’s convention on Saturday, Gruevski said that a key reason for VMRO-DPMNE’s fall from power was his refusal to yield to what he described as international and domestic pressure to accept a compromise in a dispute with Greece. Macedonia, which won independence in 1991 from then-federal Yugoslavia, has made little …

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