VATICAN CITY: Pope Francis on Wednesday called for prayers for the Chinese people, in unscripted remarks coming amid the Vatican’s desire to upgrade its relations with Beijing.
Relations with communist China have historically been fraught, but Francis has made it a priority to normalize them, building on a landmark 2018 pact on appointing bishops.
“This also makes me think about the beloved Chinese people: let us always pray for this noble and very courageous people who have such a beautiful culture,” the pope said.
Francis spoke during his weekly audience in St. Peter’s Square, adding to pre-written remarks as he greeted an association that honors a late Vatican envoy to Beijing.
The Vatican’s overtures to China are controversial, as critics see them as a form of appeasement toward a country accused of trampling on religious freedom and human rights.
Beijing has been following a policy of “Sinicization” of religion, trying to root out foreign influences and enforce obedience to the Communist Party.
There are an estimated 10 to 12 million Catholics in China. (Reporting by Alvise Armellini, editing by Alex Richardson)
Pope offers prayers for ‘noble, courageous’ Chinese people
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Pope offers prayers for ‘noble, courageous’ Chinese people
- Relations with communist China have historically been fraught
- The Vatican’s overtures to China are controversial, as critics see them as a form of appeasement
Sri Lanka reaches deal on debt restructuring with bilateral creditors including China and France
- The country defaulted on debt repayment in 2022
- The IMF approved a four-year bailout program last March
COLOMBO: Sri Lanka’s President Ranil Wickremesinghe announced a debt restructuring deal with countries including India, France, Japan and China in a televised address to the nation Wednesday. The agreement marks a key step in the country’s economic recovery after defaulting on debt repayment in 2022.
Sri Lanka is under an International Monetary Fund bailout program and the debt treatment deal is expected to reopen the doors to bilateral transactions and the resumption of foreign projects stalled when the island nation defaulted.
“This morning in Paris, Sri Lanka reached a final agreement with our official bilateral creditors. Similarly, we signed another agreement with China’s Exim Bank today in Beijing. ... Sri Lanka won,” Wickremesinghe said.
Sri Lanka declared bankruptcy in April 2022 and suspended repayments on some $83 billion in domestic and foreign loans amid a severe foreign exchange crisis that led to a severe shortage of essentials such as food, medicine, fuel and cooking gas, and hours-long power cuts.
Sri Lanka’s crisis was largely the result of staggering economic mismanagement combined with fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic, which along with 2019 terrorism attacks devastated its important tourism industry. The coronavirus crisis also disrupted the flow of remittances from Sri Lankans working abroad.
Additionally, the then-government slashed taxes in 2019, depleting the treasury just as the virus hit. Foreign exchange reserves plummeted, leaving Sri Lanka unable to pay for imports or defend its beleaguered currency, the rupee.
Wickremesinghe said with these agreements, Sri Lanka will be able to defer all bilateral loan instalment payments until 2028. Furthermore, Sri Lanka will be able to repay all the loans on concessional terms, with an extended period until 2043.
According to a previous president’s office statement, the agreements would cover $10 billion, but further details on the mode of restructuring were not immediately announced.
By 2022, Sri Lanka had to repay about $6 billion in foreign debt every year, amounting to about 9.2 percent of gross domestic product. The agreement would enable Sri Lanka to maintain debt payments at less than 4.5 percent of GDP between 2027 and 2032.
As Wickremesinghe addressed the nation, his supporters the watched the speech on a giant screen in the capital Colombo and celebrated the announcement by lighting firecrackers and partaking traditional milk rice.
The economic upheaval led to a political crisis that forced then-President Gotabaya Rajapaksa to resign in 2022. The Parliament then elected Wickremesinghe as president.
Sri Lanka suspended repayment of its debt as it ran short of foreign currency needed to pay for imports of fuel and other essentials. Shortages led to street protests that changed the country’s leadership. The IMF approved a four-year bailout program last March.
The economic situation has improved under Wickremesinghe and severe shortages of food, fuel and medicine have largely abated. But public dissatisfaction has grown over the government’s effort to increase revenue by raising electricity bills and imposing heavy new income taxes on professionals and businesses, as part of the government’s efforts to meet the IMF conditions.
After Sri Lanka declared bankruptcy, all projects funded by foreign loans were also halted.
on Wednesday, Wickremesinghe said the new agreements would pave way to resume the foreign funded projects such as highways, light railway and airport development and also initiate new projects too.
Poland, Baltics call for EU defense line on border with Russia, Belarus
BRUSSELS: Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia called on Wednesday for the European Union to build a defense line along the bloc’s border with Russia and Belarus to protect the EU from military threats and other harmful activities from Moscow.
In a letter to the chairman of the EU to be discussed at a summit in Brussels starting on Thursday, the leaders of the four countries that share borders with Russia and Belarus said the project, to protect the 27-nation bloc of 450 million people, would also need the financial support of all members.
“Building a defense infrastructure system along the EU external border with Russia and Belarus will address the dire and urgent need to secure the EU from military and hybrid threats,” said the letter of the four leaders, seen by Reuters.
Hybrid threats refer to a combination of military and nonmilitary as well as covert and overt means, including disinformation, cyberattacks, economic pressure and the pushing of migrants across borders.
“The scale and costs of this joint endeavour require a dedicated EU action to support it both politically and financially,” the letter said.
Some EU diplomats estimated the cost of building such a defensive line on the ground along the 700 km EU border with Russia and Belarus at around 2.5 billion euros ($2.67 billion).
European investment in defense and its financing will be one of the main topics of discussion among EU leaders at the summit, as Russia’s war against Ukraine has entered its third year and Moscow is stepping up hybrid operations against the West.
The call for a jointly funded ground defense line on the eastern border of the European Union comes on top of an earlier initiative by Greece and Poland to create an EU air defense system, modelled on the Israeli Iron Dome, that would coordinate the now separate air defense systems of EU countries.
“Extraordinary measures need to be employed as the EU’s external border must be protected and defended with military and civilian means,” the letter of the four countries said.
The letter said the planning and execution of the defense line on the EU’s eastern border should be done in coordination with NATO and its military requirements.
Julian Assange ‘marvelling’ at freedom in Australia
- The 52-year-old landed in Canberra the night before, hours after pleading guilty in a US Pacific island court to revealing military secrets
- He was sentenced to time already served
CANBERRA: WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is “marvelling at the horizon” as he tastes freedom in Australia after a five-year stretch in a London high-security prison, his wife said Thursday.
The 52-year-old landed in Canberra the night before, hours after pleading guilty in a US Pacific island court to revealing military secrets and being sentenced to time already served.
The deal let him walk free after a 14-year legal struggle with the US Department of Justice.
“He’s overjoyed to be back home. He’s just marvelling at the horizon,” Stella Assange told Australia’s public broadcaster ABC.
Assange spent more than five years in London’s Belmarsh prison after being dragged out of Ecuador’s London embassy where he lived for seven years to escape extradition to Sweden over sexual assault charges that were eventually dropped.
The couple have not had time to discuss how their lives will play out since his release, said Stella, who met Assange while he was still in the Ecuadorian embassy and married him in the London prison.
“That’s why we have asked for privacy and space and time to figure things out,” she said.
“I packed the bags and got on a plane and got here to receive Julian. And what happens next? Well, hopefully rest, recovery and a period of calm.”
Only 1,000 tons of Gaza aid from Cyprus distributed: US aid officials
NICOSIA: Only 1,000 tons of the 7,000 tons of humanitarian aid shipped to war-ravaged Gaza from Cyprus have been distributed because of insecurity, US aid officials said on Wednesday.
The remaining 6,000 tons was on shore in secure conditions but has yet to be distributed because of an upsurge in violence and looting, the officials said.
The sea corridor linking Cyprus with the Gaza Strip opened in March, delivering a fraction of the basic supplies needed to sustain the Palestinian territory’s 2.4 million people.
The maritime aid route has faced obstacles, including security concerns at a US military-built pier and the distribution of aid upon arrival.
“I have never seen a more challenging or complex environment for the humanitarian community to work,” said USAID’s Doug Stropes.
“There is currently a security review on the lawlessness and gang activity,” he said, referring to information received from partners on the ground.
Cyprus Foreign Minister Constantinos Kombos said that despite the challenges, the aid effort to Gaza would continue.
“There is a constant flow of vessels and sending to the other side,” he said.
“There are of course certain challenges, challenges that relate to everything going on in Gaza, but we continue the effort.
“It is not going to be an easy task.
“We are, after all, operating in what is a war zone and we are doing everything we can in cooperation with our partners to ensure that this has an impact on the daily lives of people on the ground.”
The US ambassador to Cyprus, Julie Fisher, said Washington was committed to exhausting “every possible avenue to alleviate the suffering of the Palestinian people who are facing catastrophic levels of food insecurity.”
The Gaza war began with Hamas’s October 7 attack on southern Israel that resulted in the deaths of 1,195 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures.
The militants also seized about 250 hostages, 116 of whom remain in Gaza although the army says 42 are dead.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 37,718 people, also mostly civilians, according to data from Hamas-run Gaza’s health ministry.
Sunak, Starmer clash in final TV debate before election
LONDON: The two men bidding to be British prime minister faced off late on Wednesday in a bad-tempered, last head-to-head TV debate before the country’s general election next week.
With Keir Starmer’s Labour opposition enjoying a huge poll lead, the verbal tussle in Nottingham, central England, was premier Rishi Sunak’s last big opportunity to give his Conservatives a fighting chance on July 4.
The debate turned personal at times with Sunak accusing Starmer of “taking people for fools” over Labour’s plans to reduce immigration, while Starmer accused the wealthy Sunak of being “out of touch.”
Sunak repeatedly urged voters not to “surrender” to Labour on everything from borders to taxes, while Starmer repeated his mantra that the election represents an opportunity to “turn the page” after 14 years of Tory rule.
The two also locked horns about a betting scandal that has ensnared several senior Tories and a Labour candidate, and overshadowed talk about key policies in the campaign’s final days.
Starmer pledged to “reset politics, so that politics returns to public service,” accusing Sunak of showing a lack of leadership over the furor.
Sunak, who promised to restore “integrity, professionalism and accountability” when he was named Tory leader and prime minister in 2022, said he had been “furious” when he learned about the allegations.
“I’ve been crystal clear: anyone who has broken the rules should not only face the full consequences of the law, I will ensure that they’re booted out of the Conservative Party,” he added.
But in a sign of the public’s low opinion of politicians, one audience member’s question — “are you two really the best we’ve got?” — got loud applause.
Labour has been more than 20 points ahead in surveys for over 18 months, as Britons appear weary of Tory rule dominated by austerity, Brexit and party infighting.
Sunak has failed to reduce the deficit since he called the election on May 22, six months earlier than legally required.
His rain-sodden announcement outside Downing Street was an ominous portent of what was to come.
The Tory leader has since run a lacklustre campaign featuring blunders, and caused uproar for skipping the main D-Day anniversary with other world leaders in northern France.
He has been criticized for belatedly taking action over the betting row, which this week saw the Conservatives withdraw support from two candidates being probed by the Gambling Commission regulator for allegedly betting on the election date.
One, Craig Williams, who served as Sunak’s close aide during the last parliament, is alleged to have staked £100 ($127) three days before Sunak called the vote.
The other, Laura Saunders, is married to the Tories’ director of campaigns, who took a leave of absence when the claims became public.
The party’s chief data officer also stepped back from duties over allegations he placed dozens of bets on the election date.
Separately, Labour suspended a candidate after he bet on himself losing the election, while five police officers are also being investigated.
The regulator is thought to be looking into whether anyone had privileged information when they placed their bets.
Such flutters are allowed in the UK but using insider knowledge to make them is against the law.
The tawdry row has summed up an underwhelming campaign that has failed to galvanize the public, with polls suggesting a good chunk of the electorate made up their minds months ago.
Labour’s poll lead increased hugely in October 2022, when Sunak’s predecessor Liz Truss spooked markets and tanked the pound with billions of pounds of unfunded tax cuts.
Voters were already showing signs of becoming fed up with the Tories following the “Partygate” scandal over illegal Downing Street Covid lockdown parties, which precipitated ex-premier Boris Johnson’s fall from power.
Sunak has made a number of headline-grabbing announcements during the campaign, such as national service for teenagers, but they have failed to move the polls.
Arch-Euroskeptic Nigel Farage’s decision to run for the hard-right Reform UK party has also made his job more difficult.
Starmer, in contrast, has played it safe as he tries to preserve Labour’s lead and return the party to power for the first time since 2010.
He has stopped short of announcing new policies, instead trying to reassure voters that Labour will responsibly marshal the economy and repeating his mantra that Britain is crying out for “change.”
Despite the poll lead, Labour still requires a record swing to win a majority of one, owing to the Conservatives’ landslide win under Johnson at the 2019 election.
