Pope: Ukraine should muster the courage to start talks with Russia
ROME — Pope Francis said in an interview that Ukraine, facing a possible defeat, should have the courage to negotiate an end to the war with Russia and not be ashamed to sit at the same table to carry out peace talks.
The pope made his appeal during an interview recorded last month with Swiss broadcaster RSI, which was partially released Saturday.
“I think that the strongest one is the one who looks at the situation, thinks about the people and has the courage of the white flag, and negotiates,” Francis said, adding that talks should take place with the help of international powers.
Ukraine remains firm on not engaging directly with Russia on peace talks, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said multiple times the initiative in peace negotiations must belong to the country that has been invaded.
Russia is gaining momentum on the battlefield in the war now in its third year and Ukraine is running low on ammunition. Meanwhile, some of Ukraine’s allies in the West are raising the prospect of sending troops.
Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni said Saturday that Francis picked up the “white flag” term that had been used by the interviewer. He issued a statement of clarification after the pope’s “white flag” comments sparked criticism that he was siding with Russia in the conflict.
Throughout the war, Francis has tried to maintain the Vatican’s traditional diplomatic neutrality, but that has often been accompanied by apparent sympathy with the Russian rationale for invading Ukraine, as when he noted that NATO was “barking at
Russia’s door” with its eastward expansion.
Francis said in the RSI interview that “the word negotiate is a courageous word.”
“When you see that you are defeated, that things are not going well, you have to have the courage to negotiate,” he said. “Negotiations are never a surrender.”
President Joe Biden signed a $460 billion spending package Saturday to avert a shutdown of critical federal departments even as lawmakers continue to wrestle over a financing blueprint for many other agencies more than halfway into the current fiscal year.
The president finalized the legislation, which will extend funding through the rest of the fiscal year, ending Sept. 30, for about half of the government, including the departments of Agriculture, Energy, Justice, Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Veterans Affairs.
But the rest of the government, including the Pentagon and the Homeland Security Department, remained on short-term life support, facing the prospect of running out of money by March 22 unless Congress and the president can agree on a plan.
Federal funding:
The Department of Justice has launched a criminal investigation into the Boeing jetliner blowout that left a gaping hole in an Alaska Airlines plane in January, The Wall Street Journal reported Saturday.
Citing documents and people familiar with the matter, the newspaper said investigators have contacted some passengers and crew who were on the Jan. 5 flight.
The Boeing plane used
Boeing probe opened:
by Alaska Airlines suffered the blowout seven minutes after takeoff from Portland, Oregon, forcing the pilots to make an emergency landing. Boeing has been under increased scrutiny since the incident, when a panel that plugged a space left for an extra emergency door blew off a Max 9 jet. There were no serious injuries.
Boeing acknowledged in a letter to Congress on Friday that it cannot find records for work done on the door panel of the Alaska Airlines plane.
Police and palace guards worked Saturday to retake some streets in Haiti’s capital after gangs launched massive attacks on at least three police stations.
Guards from the National Palace accompanied by an armored truck tried to set up a security perimeter around one of the three downtown stations after police fought off an attack by gangs late Friday.
The unrelenting gang attacks have paralyzed the
Haiti violence:
country for more than a week and left it with dwindling supplies of basic goods. Haitian officials extended a state of emergency and nightly curfew Thursday as gangs continued to attack key state institutions.
Caribbean leaders issued a call late Friday for an emergency meeting Monday in Jamaica on what they called Haiti’s “dire” situation. They have invited the United States, France, Canada, the U.N. and Brazil to the meeting. Members of the Caricom regional trade bloc have been trying for months to get political actors in Haiti to agree to form an umbrella transitional unity government.
A new plea hearing has been set for an Alabama woman accused of falsely telling police she was abducted last summer after stopping her car to check on a toddler wandering near a highway.
Carlee Russell’s two-day disappearance, and her story of being abducted, captivated
Alabama kidnap hoax:
the nation before police called her story a hoax.
Russell was scheduled for trial March 18, but a court document filed Thursday shows a plea hearing is now set for March 21.
Russell’s attorneys appealed her case to circuit court after a municipal judge, in an October ruling, found Russell guilty of misdemeanor charges of false reporting to law enforcement and falsely reporting an incident.
Russell disappeared July 13 after calling 911 to report a toddler beside a stretch of Interstate 459 in the Birmingham suburb of Hoover. She returned home two days later and told police she had been abducted and forced into a vehicle.
A helicopter flying over the U.S.Mexico border in Texas crashed Friday, killing two National Guard soldiers and a Border Patrol agent, the military said. Another
Texas copter crash:
soldier on board was injured.
The UH-72 Lakota helicopter was assigned to the federal government’s border security mission when it went down near Rio Grande City, according to a statement released by Joint Task Force North. The cause was under investigation.
Starr County Judge Eloy Vera, the county’s top official, said those on board included one woman and three men. He said the injured person was in critical condition.
Nigeria kidnappings: Armed men broke into a boarding school Saturday in northwestern Nigeria and seized 15 children as they slept, police said, about 48 hours after nearly 300 students were taken hostage in the conflict-hit region.
School abductions are common in Nigeria’s northern region, especially since the 2014 kidnapping of more than 200 schoolgirls by Islamic extremists in Borno state’s Chibok village shocked the world.