Month: April 2018

Pope Francis called on world leaders on Sunday to renew efforts to bring peace to Syria, saying he was deeply troubled by their failure to agree on a joint plan to end the bloodshed. “I appeal again to all the political leaders, so that justice and peace prevail,” he said in his weekly address to the faithful gathered in St. Peter’s Square. “I am deeply disturbed by the current world situation, in which, despite the tools available to the international community, it is difficult to agree on a common action in favorof peace in Syria and other regions of the …

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Britain’s foreign secretary says there are no plans to launch additional military strikes against Syria but his country and its allies will consider further action if Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad uses chemical weapons against his people in the future. “There is no proposal on the table at the moment for further attacks because so far, thank heavens, the Assad regime have not been so foolish as to launch another chemical weapons attack,” Boris Johnson told the BBC. The U.S., France and Britain launched the strikes early Saturday morning, firing 105 missiles at three Syrian chemical weapons facilities — one in …

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Estonia’s largest political party has chosen a new leader, its third one in four years, as it seeks to restore popularity and mend its tarnished image among voters ahead of a parliamentary election next year.  Delegates for the center-right Reform Party voted Saturday to elect Kaja Kallas. The 40-year-old lawyer and lawmaker at the European Parliament will be the first female leader of a major political party in the Baltic country. Previous Chairman Hanno Pevkur said in December that he would step down after less than a year in the post. Kallas is the daughter of former Prime Minister Siim …

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Thousands of Hungarians protested Saturday in Budapest against what organizers said was an unfair election system that gave Prime Minister Viktor Orban another landslide victory at the polls after a “hate campaign” against immigrants. Orban won a third straight term in the April 8 elections after his anti-immigration campaign message secured a strong majority for his ruling Fidesz party in parliament, granting him two-thirds of seats based on preliminary results. In a Facebook post before the rally, organizers called for a recount, a free media, a new election law, and more efficient co-operation among opposition parties instead of the bickering seen in the run-up to the vote. Fidesz received …

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U.S. President Donald Trump spoke by phone to the leaders of Britain and France about the joint air strikes the three nations launched on Syria Saturday morning.  The White House said Trump spoke with British Prime Minister Theresa May and French President Emmanuel Macron in separate phone calls. The three world leaders each affirmed that that the air strikes were “successful and necessary” to deter Syrian President Bashar al-Assad from further use of chemical weapons on the Syrian people. Earlier, U.S. President Trump commended Britain and France for the joint air strikes with a tweet that said, “A perfectly executed …

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Russia’s foreign minister says Moscow has received a document from a Swiss lab that analyzed the samples in the nerve agent poisoning of an ex-Russian spy, which points at a Western-designed nerve agent as a likely cause. Minister Sergey Lavrov said Saturday that Moscow received the confidential information from the laboratory in Spiez, Switzerland, that analyzed samples from the site of the March 4 poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter in the English city of Salisbury. He said the analysis was done at the request of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. The OPCW’s report confirmed British …

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On Syrian state TV, President Bashar al-Assad strolls into his office carrying a briefcase around 9 a.m. Saturday, only hours after Western missiles rained down on suspected chemical weapons sites in Damascus and Homs. They labeled the video on Twitter, “a morning of steadfastness.”    But with the Middle East once again skirting the brink of an all out war between world powers, the region is anything but unwavering, with mounting fears that the attacks could cause dangerous ripple effects.   Some analysts are urging restraint, saying the consequences of escalation could be disastrous.   “A large part of the …

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Moments after President Donald Trump concluded his seven-minute broadcast Friday announcing the start of precision airstrikes on Syrian government facilities associated with the development of chemical weapons, loud explosions shook Damascus. Among the sites struck in a coordinated operation by U.S., French and British forces shortly before dawn prayers was a scientific research center on the outskirts of the Syrian capital, a chemical weapons storage facility near Homs and a nearby command post, the Pentagon said. There were also reports by political activists that the Syrian Army’s 4th Armored Division, an elite formation commanded by President Bashar al-Assad’s brother, Maher …

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Western warplanes and naval vessels fired a barrage of missiles at three Syrian chemical weapons sites, the opening salvo in what could be a sustained campaign against the government of President Bashar al-Assad and his supporters. U.S. military officials said the bombardment, a coordinated effort involving both Britain and France, began at 9 p.m. EDT Friday and rained down more than 100 cruise missiles on Syrian facilities in the capital, Damascus, and the city of Homs. “Right now, this is a one-time shot,” U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis told Pentagon reporters late Friday, cautioning more strikes could be in the …

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The United States, Britain and France, launched military airstrikes in Syria that targeted a scientific research center, a chemical weapons storage facility and another storage facility that also included an important command post. U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis said the “decisive” efforts were intended to send a “clear message” to the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for its suspected chemical attack against civilians last week and to deter him from doing it again. Mattis said at a briefing at the Pentagon late Friday that the targets were selected to inflict “long-term degradation” and “maximum damage” to Syria’s stockpile of …

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