President Donald Trump plans to nominate Callista Gingrich as ambassador to the Vatican, the White House said in a statement on Friday. She is the wife of former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich and produces documentary films on public policy and history. The announcement came as Trump embarked on Friday on his maiden foreign trip […]
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President Donald Trump will visit the Western Wall in Jerusalem, Judaism’s holiest prayer site, the White House said on Monday amid controversy in Israel over reported comments by a U.S. diplomat that the wall was in the occupied West Bank. Trump will say a prayer at the Western Wall, national security adviser H.R. McMaster said, […]
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Pope Francis has voiced serious doubt about the authenticity of alleged continuing apparitions of the Madonna in Medjugorje, a once-obscure village in Bosnia boosted by the pilgrim business. “These presumed apparitions don’t have a lot of value. This I say as a personal opinion,” he told reporters on his plane returning on Saturday night from […]
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Pope Francis called attention on Sunday to the plight of people affected by war and conflict in the Middle East as U.S.-backed forces close in on Islamic State militants in Iraq. “So many innocent people are being sorely tested, be they Christian, or Muslim, or from minority groups like the Yazidi, who are suffering tragic […]
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Pope Francis said on Saturday he would be “sincere” with U.S. President Donald Trump over their sharp differences on subjects such as immigration and climate change when the two hold their first meeting at the Vatican later this month. But the pope also told reporters aboard a plane returning from Portugal that he would keep […]
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Pope Francis on Saturday criticised the naming of the U.S. military’s biggest non-nuclear explosive as “the Mother of All Bombs”, saying the word “mother” should not be used in reference to a deadly weapon. The U.S. Air Force dropped such a bomb, officially designated as the GBU-43 Massive Ordnance Air Blast (MOAB) on suspected Islamic […]
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Family members of three victims of the December 2015 shooting rampage in San Bernardino, California, have sued Facebook, Google and Twitter, claiming that the tech giants permitted Islamic State to flourish on social media. The plaintiffs assert that by allowing Islamic State militants to spread propaganda freely on social media, the three companies provided “material […]
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U.S. President Donald Trump said on Thursday he will travel to Saudi Arabia and Israel this month, kicking off his first foreign trip, where he will work to reinvigorate traditional alliances in the region. Trump said he would also visit the Vatican along with his swing through the Middle East before attending a NATO meeting […]
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The French prosecutor’s office launched an inquiry on Thursday into suspicions of fake news being spread to influence Sunday’s presidential vote after far-right leader Marine Le Pen implied her rival Emmanuel Macron held an offshore account. Macron, favourite to win the presidency, denied allegations of using a foreign tax haven that were made on social […]
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Former Afghan warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar returned to Kabul on Thursday after two decades in hiding, calling for peace with Taliban insurgents and criticising the Western-backed government, which he said was not working. Hekmatyar’s comments in a ceremony at the presidential palace highlighted the complications likely to face President Ashraf Ghani, who signed a peace deal […]
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