03 World

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Pope Francis will be laid to rest Saturday after lying in state for three days in St. Peter’s Basilica, where the faithful are expected to flock to pay their respects to history’s first Latin American pontiff.

The cardinals met Tuesday in the Vatican’s synod hall to chart the next steps before a conclave begins to choose Francis’ successor, as condolences poured in from around the world. According to current norms, the conclave must begin between May 5 and 10.

The cardinals set the funeral for Saturday at 10 a.m. in St. Peter’s Square, to be celebrated by the dean of the College of Cardinals, Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re. U.S. President Donald Trump said he and first lady Melania Trump plan to attend, and Argentine President Javier Milei is also expected.

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More than 100 US universities and colleges, including Ivy League institutions Princeton and Brown, issued a joint letter on Tuesday condemning President Donald Trump’s “political interference” in the education system.

The move comes a day after Harvard University sued the Trump administration, which has threatened to cut funding and impose outside political supervision.

“We speak with one voice against the unprecedented government overreach and political interference now endangering American higher education,” the letter read.

“We are open to constructive reform and do not oppose legitimate government oversight. However, we must oppose undue government intrusion,” it said, adding: “We must reject the coercive use of public research funding.”

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At least 26 Palestinians have been killed – including 11 believed burned to death – in ferocious Israeli attacks across Gaza. Horrific imagery of bodies being pulled out of a rubbled housing complex in Khan Younis, in the Strip’s south, showed the scale of the morning air-strikes.

An attack early on Tuesday destroyed a multistory home in the southern city of Khan Younis, killing nine, including four women and four children. The dead included a 2-year-old girl and her parents and the early morning attacks were part of a widening Israeli campaign in Gaza to try and and wipe out Hamas and force the release of hostages.

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Some of the reports coming out of the U.S-Iran nuke talks are extremely disappointing. President Trump seems to have a cabal of Iran appeasers and Israel-haters in his national security team. There is a concern that they could convince President Trump to accept a substandard deal with Iran. Rubio, Waltz, Huckabee, and other sensible Trump Admin officials are going to have to fight the Iran appeasers, and make sure that only a strong deal is signed with Iran. A deal in which Iran’s nuclear program is completely dismantled.

Related – Trump team’s Iran divide: Dialogue vs. detonation to end nuclear threat

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Pope Francis died of a cerebral stroke and irreversible heart failure, Vatican doctor Andrea Arcangeli has said in a death certificate.

The certificate released on Monday for the 88-year-old pontiff said the pope had fallen into a coma before his death earlier in the day.

Pope Francis had suffered various ailments during his 12-year papacy, with severe complications in recent weeks following a bout of double pneumonia for which he spent 38 days at Rome’s Gemelli Hospital.

The Vatican also released Pope Francis’s spiritual testament – a written statement of faith – in which he said he wished to be buried in Rome’s Basilica of Saint Mary Major and not at St Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican, unlike many of his predecessors.

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Paramilitary shelling on Sudan’s besieged city of El-Fasher, in the western region of Darfur, killed more than 30 civilians and wounded dozens more, activists said on Monday.

The attack, which took place on Sunday, involved “heavy artillery shelling” and targeted the city’s residential neighbourhoods, said the local resistance committee, one of hundreds of volunteer groups coordinating aid across Sudan.

Since April 2023, the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces have been locked in a brutal war.

El-Fasher, the capital of North Darfur, remains the last major city in the vast Darfur region that the paramilitary group has not conquered.

Last week, the RSF launched a renewed offensive on the city and two nearby displacement camps — Zamzam and Abu Shouk — killing over 400 and displacing some 400,000 people, according to the United Nations.

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US President Donald Trump on Sunday said Russia and Ukraine could reach an agreement “this week,” possibly to end their war of more than three years. He also said the two rivals could then do “big business” with the United States and “make a fortune.”

“Hopefully Russia amd (sic) Ukraine will make a deal this week. Both will then start to do big business with the United States of America, which is thriving, and make a big fortune!” Trump posted to his Truth Social network.

However, he did not share details of any progress in peace talks Washington has sought to push forward between Moscow and Kyiv, since he took over from Joe Biden in January.
The US president’s Truth Social post comes just days after his secretary of state, Marco Rubio, warned that Washington could “move on” from its push to broker an agreement to end the conflict, which began in February 2022.
“We need to figure out here now within a matter of days whether this is doable in the short term, because if it’s not, then I think we’re just going to move on,” Rubio said on Friday in Paris, after high-level discussions with European and Ukrainian leaders.

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The clash over President Donald Trump’s bid to exercise unprecedented powers in deporting migrants deepened Sunday as he again bashed the judiciary, while a top Democrat warned the country was “closer and closer” to a constitutional crisis.

The latest events followed a dramatic intervention by the Supreme Court in the pre-dawn hours of Saturday to temporarily block Trump’s use of an obscure law to deport Venezuelan migrants without due process.

Trump lashed out Sunday on his Truth Social platform, not specifically naming the high court but slamming the “WEAK and INEFFECTIVE Judges and Law Enforcement Officials who are allowing this sinister attack on our Nation to continue, an attack so violent that it will never be forgotten!”

Samuel Alito, one of two conservative high-court justices to vote against the halt, called the emergency ruling by the court’s majority “legally questionable.”

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General Secretary Xi Jinping clearly wants to prepare China for a war over Taiwan. The measures he is taking to ready its people, economy, legal system, and especially its military are clear for everyone to see. The best way to dissuade him from actually rolling the iron dice is for Washington and Taipei to work together, because neither can stop Beijing on their own. It would be a fool’s errand for Taiwan to resist a Chinese military onslaught without its chief patron and protector. And the United States needs Taiwan to hold on and hold out long enough for the U.S. military to arrive in decisive force.

Unfortunately, this is easier said than done. Many Taiwanese citizens question whether America will actually defend them. Washington’s long standing posture of strategic ambiguity is obviously one source of skepticism. But even strategic clarity toward Taipei will not solve the problem. The fact is that Washington and Taipei have a long and complicated relationship. Taiwanese voters know the United States has a long history of turning its back on them in their moment of need.

Thus, there is no question that the United States should take steps to address Taiwan’s understandable lack of faith in America’s commitment. A sensible first step is to address the backlog in arms deliveries to Taiwan, as two Kuomintang legislative staffers recently argued in these pages. And there are a range of other things Washington can do to demonstrate that it is serious about Taiwan.

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Hamas says it has “lost contact” with the group of fighters holding an Israeli-American hostage captive in Gaza following an Israeli strike on their location.

The 21-year-old soldier, Edan Alexander, has appeared in videos released by the group in recent days.

Israel had asked for him to be released on day one of a new 45-day ceasefire proposal put forward last week which has been rejected by Hamas.

Hamas on Tuesday did not indicate when contact had been lost and has not produced any evidence for their claim. Israel regularly asserts it avoids hitting locations where it believes hostages are being held.

“We announce that we have lost contact with the group holding soldier Edan Alexander following a direct strike on their location,” Hamas spokesman Abu Obeida said in a statement.

“We are still trying to reach them at this moment,” he added.

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Paramilitary Rapid Support Forces declares rival authority in areas under its control, as the United States expresses alarm over its alleged targeting of civilians in Darfur.

Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has announced the formation of a rival government, two years since the country descended into a brutal war that has left tens of thousands dead and triggered what the United Nations calls the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

The RSF, led by Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo — also known as Hemedti — declared on Tuesday the establishment of the “Government of Peace and Unity” in areas under its control. The move directly challenges the army-led administration headed by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan.

“On this anniversary, we proudly declare the establishment of the Government of Peace and Unity, a broad coalition that reflects the true face of Sudan,” Dagalo said on Telegram.

The RSF and its allies had already signed a charter in Nairobi in February, laying out their intention to form an alternative authority.

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A Russian propagandist has taken to state TV to issue a direct threat of nuclear war against the UK, as well as Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s coalition of the willing

Vladimir Solovyov threatened the West with nuclear war(Image: (Image: Getty))

Vladimir Putin’s mouthpiece has threatened Sir Keir Starmer and his “coalition of the willing” with nuclear warfare. Vladimir Solovyov, a well-known conduit for the Russian leader’s rhetoric and an avid commentator on Russia’s involvement in Ukraine, delivered the dire warning as a retort to Western media narratives and European countries’ aid to Ukraine.

During his ‘Sunday Evening With Vladimir Solovyov’ broadcast, the figurehead of Kremlin thinking declared the UK and US “are directly waging war against us”.

And in a direct threat to the West, he warned world leaders they would “feel their consequences” the same as the soldiers on the frontline.

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Ukraine was never promised NATO membership as part of any potential settlement of its conflict with Russia, the military bloc’s secretary general, Mark Rutte, has said. He made the remarks in an interview with the broadcaster MI Ukraina while on a surprise trip to Ukraine on Tuesday.

Rutte said that while Kiev’s Western backers have stated Ukraine would “one day” become a member of NATO, “no one promised Ukraine that NATO membership would be part of the peace agreement.”

Russia has long cited Kiev’s ambitions to join NATO, which Moscow views as an overtly hostile bloc, as one of the reasons for launching its military operation in 2022.

Ukrainian neutrality remains a key demand from the Kremlin for reaching a peace deal, along with demilitarization, denazification, and recognition of the territorial realities on the ground. Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky, however, has insisted that membership or “NATO-like security guarantees” be included in any agreement.

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A coordinated attack against French prisons across the country took place last night.

Gangs attacked a large numbers of prisons with automatic gunfire or setting cars of staff ablaze.

The attacks hit French prisons with automatic weapons and arson overnight.

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The attacks hit French prisons with automatic weapons and arson overnight.

But remember, islamophobia is the problem.

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Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen is vowing to travel to El Salvador to negotiate the release of a wrongly deported man after the Trump administration ignored a Supreme Court ruling to facilitate his return to the U.S.

In a letter sent to the El Salvadorian Ambassador on April 13 before Trump’s tête-à-tête with El Salvador President Nayib Bukele, Van Hollen requested a meeting with Bukele during his U.S. visit to discuss “the illegal detention of [his] constituent, Kilmar Abrego Garcia,” after the Supreme Court agreed on Thursday to unanimously uphold U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis’s ruling that he was wrongly deported and that the U.S. government was responsible for bringing him home.

(It’s unclear if Van Hollen ever got to meet with Bukele.)