‘Much more work’ remains in anti-IS fight – Trump
WASHINGTON (AFP) – US President Donald Trump will warn that much more work remains in the war against the Islamic State (IS) group when he delivers his State of the Union address on Tuesday.
According to advance excerpts of the speech, Trump will declare that a US-led coalition has “liberated almost 100 percent of the territory once held by these killers in Iraq and Syria.’’
“But there is much more work to be done,’’ he will add, a key argument that his administration has deployed to justify the continued presence of US troops in the field.
“We will continue our fight until ISIS is defeated,’’ he will vow, drawing comparison with what he sees as his predecessor Barack Obama’s mistake in withdrawing from Iraq in 2011.
US troops had been in Iraq since 2003, when then-president George W. Bush sent them to overthrow dictator Saddam Hussein and they became mired in a deadly insurgency.
Eight years later, and with American
VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – Pope Francis is sending the Catholic Church’s top sexual abuse investigator to Chile to look into accusations a bishop covered up crimes against minors, just days after the pope defended him.
A Vatican statement on Tuesday said new information had emerged about Bishop Juan Barros and that the investigator, Archbishop Charles Scicluna of Malta, would go to “listen to those who want to submit information in their possession.”
The statement, which gave no further details, was a U-turn for the pope, who on Jan. 21 told reporters aboard his plane returning from Latin America he was sure Barros was innocent and that the Vatican had received no concrete evidence against him.
It was Scicluna who uncovered evidence of sexual abuse that led to the removal of the late Mexican priest Marcial Maciel, founder of the Legionaries of Christ, in 2005.
Controversy over Barros, bishop of the city of Osorno in Chile’s south, dominated Francis’ recent trip, with critics accusing the pope of not understanding the depth of the crisis in the South American country.
A number of men have accused Barros of protecting his former mentor, the Rev. Fernando Karadima, who was found guilty in a Vatican investigation in 2011 of abusing them and others when they were boys. Karadima always denied the allegations, and Barros said he
PARIS (AFP) – Cancer survival is increasing across the world but large gaps endure between nations, while some cancers remain hard to treat everywhere, according to a major review released Wednesday.
The progress and the gap are especially large for childhood cancers, according to the CONCORD-3 study covering 71 nations and 18 types of cancer, published in the medical journal The Lancet.
For children with brain tumors, for example, five-year survival has improved across the board from 54 percent for the period 2000-2004, to more than 60 percent for 2010-2014.
In the United States, Denmark, voters tiring of the grinding conflict, Obama withdrew the remaining forces, believing that US-trained local troops were ready to handle security.
But remnants of the local Al-Qaeda faction were reborn as the Islamic State group amid Syria’s civil war, seizing territory in that country and overrunning a swathe of Iraq in 2014.
US troops returned to the region to assist Iraqi and Kurdish forces which, backed by a global coalition, ousted the jihadists from a series of cities including Iraq’s Mosul and Syria’s Raqa, IS’s main strongholds in the two countries.
Some in Washington argued the troops should now come home and that the 2001 vote in Congress to authorize strikes on Al-Qaeda in the wake of the September 11 attacks no longer applies.
But Trump’s administration believes that the 2,000 US special forces and additional support troops in Syria could help counter Bashar al-Assad’s regime and his Iranian backers.
And they warn that if the US contingent is withdrawn too quickly, the was unaware of any wrongdoing.
Barros and his main accusers were not available to comment on the latest twist of a long-running saga that has gripped Chile and hurt the Church’s prestige there.
During the trip, a Chilean reporter managed to get close to the pope at an event and shouted out a question about Barros.
“The day I see proof against Bishop Barros, then I will talk. There is not a single piece of evidence against him. It is all slander. Is that clear?” the pope replied.
Pope caused “great pain”
His comments were widely criticized by victims, their advocates and newspaper editorials in Chile and the pope’s native Argentina.
Even Cardinal Sean O‘Malley of Boston, a key papal adviser on how to root out sexual abuse in the Church, distanced himself with a statement saying the pope had caused “great pain.”
Speaking to reporters on the plane returning to Rome, Francis apologized to victims, acknowledging that his choice of words and tone of Sweden and Slovakia, the survival rate progressed to 80 percent or better. In Mexico and Brazil, however, less than 40 percent of children diagnosed with brain tumors survived in the 2010-2014 period.
Similarly, five-year survival for the most common type of childhood cancer – acute lymphoblastic leukemia – rose to higher than 90 percent in Canada, the United States and nine European countries, but remained below 60 percent in China and Mexico.
''This likely reflects the availability and quality of diagnostic and treatment services,'' the authors said in a statement. IS group or an new jihadist successor could spring up from the ruins of Raqa or Mosul to replace it.
“Past experience has taught us that complacency and concessions only invite aggression and provocation,’’ voice had “wounded many.”
Victims and their advocates have said Francis should never have appointed Barros because there had been accusations against him. Anti-Barros parishioners demonstrated during his investiture ceremony in 2015.
“We were surprised by the Pope’s decision, because we spent three years trying to reach him to put an end to this issue,” said Juan Carlos Claret, a spokesman for Osorno parishioners. “This shows that the pope is responding more to the pressure from the media than he is to the faithful.”
While the pope, who met two victims in Chile during the trip, has vowed “zero tolerance” of sexual abuse, a planned Vatican tribunal to judge bishops accused of covering up abuse or mishandling cases has not started. Trump will tell Congress and American voters.
“I will not repeat the mistakes of the past Administrations that got us into this dangerous position,’’ he will say, according to the extracts.
SEOUL (Reuters) – South Korea will begin a joint training program at the Masikryong ski resort in North Korea on Wednesday as had been initially planned, the South’s Ministry of Unification said, with a 45person delegation set to depart for a two-day trip.
The South Korean delegation, which includes roughly 30 athletes, will fly in a chartered plane at 0100 GMT on Wednesday from Yangyang International Airport in northeastern South Korea to Kalma Airport in Wonsan, the ministry said in a mobile text.
They will fly on an Asiana Airlines plane, a ministry official told Reuters. The charter had been set up in order not to conflict with existing sanctions imposed against North Korea by the United States, the official said without providing further details.
According to US unilateral sanctions against North Korea, no ship or aircraft can visit the United States within 180 days of going to North Korea.
The South Korean delegation will be joined on their return trip by North Koreans who will visit the South to prepare for the Pyeongchang Olympics that begin on Feb. 9.
North and South Korea launched rare talks early in January to bring North Koreans to the Winter Olympics after the North’s leader, Kim Jong Un, said in a New Year’s address he was willing to open discussions with Seoul.
The two Koreas have since agreed on several things, including cultural performances by North Korea in the South and a unified women’s ice hockey team for the Olympics.
They were also scheduled to hold a joint cultural performance in North Korea’s Mount Kumgang resort but Pyongyang decided to call it off late on Monday, blaming South Korean media for encouraging “insulting” public sentiment about the North.