Новини

Britain’s young royals, brothers Prince William and Prince Harry and their wives Kate and Meghan, launched a new phone messaging service Friday to help people suffering a mental health crisis.

The two princes have been widely praised for speaking out about their own struggles with mental health in the wake of the death of their mother, Princess Diana, in a 1997 car crash and have made the issue one of their main charitable causes.

Shout

The new text messaging service, called “Shout,” aims to provide 24/7 support for people suffering from crises such as suicidal thoughts, abuse, relationship problems and bullying by connecting them to trained volunteers and helping them find longer-term support.

“We are incredibly excited to be launching this service, knowing it has the potential to reach thousands of vulnerable people every day,” the four royals said in a statement. “We have all been able to see the service working up close and are so excited for its future. We hope that many more of you will join us and be part of something very special.”

The service is particularly aimed at younger people and using text messaging means it is silent and private, allowing people to use it at school, on a bus or at home, the organizers said. 

Appeal for volunteers

As part of the launch, William appears in a video appealing for people to come forward as the service seeks to expand from 1,000 to 4,000 volunteers.

The initiative is one of the first to involve the quartet of royals who are joint patrons of the Royal Foundation, their primary vehicle for helping charities and good causes and which is supporting the Shout scheme.

It comes after the British media has been rife with speculation of a rift between the brothers and their wives, although there has been no public indication of any disagreements.

On Monday, Meghan, 37, and Harry, 34, celebrated the birth of their first child Archie, with William, 36, and Kate, 37, saying they were absolutely thrilled at the news.
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The European Union’s 28 countries consume the Earth’s resources faster than they can be renewed and none of them has sustainable consumption policies, a report released Thursday said, as EU leaders met to discuss priorities for the next five years.

“All EU countries are living beyond the means of our planet. The EU and its citizens are currently using twice more than the EU ecosystems can renew,”  the report  by the World Wide Fund (WWF) and Global Footprint Network said.

It was issued as leaders met in the Romanian city of Sibiu to set the course for the bloc after Britain’s planned departure from the EU.

Climate change key priority

French President Emmanuel Macron said before the summit that climate change was among his key priorities and it was included in the bloc’s 10 “commitments” for the future until 2024, agreed by all the 27 leaders meeting in Sibiu.

But the bloc is divided on how to achieve any ambitious climate goals and it remains far from clear how the Sibiu declaration would be implemented.

Some 100 Greenpeace activists and students from several European countries marched through Sibiu carrying a huge banner saying “Broken Climate Broken Future.”

“We cannot talk about a prosperous future without a healthy climate,” Greenpeace climate activist Alin Tanase told Reuters.

Views on concrete action to be taken to combat climate change differ between EU countries, influenced greatly by their dominant industries, such as carmakers in Germany or the coal industry in Poland.

Tusk sensitive to climate change

The chairman of the summit, President of the European Council Donald Tusk, said there was no future for politicians who were not sensitive to climate change and environment protection issues.

“The young generation is much more united on this than the member states. The truth is that nothing has changed when it comes to this divide and different opinions about this. What is new is this very fresh and energetic pressure,” he told a news conference after the summit.

Climate protection and sustainable development is also an important topic in the election campaign for the May 23-26 European Parliament elections, which will influence the leadership of European institutions and their programs.

The European Commission has been pushing for the EU to become climate neutral by 2050 through reducing carbon emissions that will otherwise boost the Earth’s average temperatures with devastating consequences.

“The EU uses up almost 20 percent of the Earth’s bio-capacity although it comprises only 7 percent of the world population,” the WWF report said.

“In other words, 2.8 planets would be needed if everyone consumed at the rate of the average EU resident,” it said.

Luxembourg smallest but fastest

It said the EU’s smallest and richest country, Luxembourg, was also the one which used up renewable resources the fastest last year. Just 46 days into the year, it had consumed its full share of the Earth’s resources, it said.

The EU’s poorest nation, Romania, took the longest to arrive at that point, on July 12th. But that was still earlier than the world’s average of Aug. 1, called Earth overshoot day.
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Russia on May 9 marked one of its most important holidays, Victory Day over Nazi Germany in World War II. The Soviet Union – which included Russia – suffered the biggest losses with 26 million Soviet citizens killed in the conflict. At V-Day commemorations, victims are honored and the military presents a display meant show enemies its strength. Many also recall the time Russia and the United States fought on the same side against a common enemy. In Moscow, VOA’s Igor Tsikhanenka caught up with one Soviet World War II veteran who recalls that time very well.
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It’s a little-known fact that Sweden was the first western country to recognize the government of Vietnam, in 1969, at a time when many states were wary of ruffling the feathers of their ally, the United States, which was fighting a war in the Southeast Asian country.

Sweden went on to become the biggest foreign donor in Vietnam, which faced international isolation in the 1980s leading up to the 1990s, when Washington lifted its economic embargo on Hanoi.

Now Stockholm and Hanoi are marking their 50 year anniversary with what they call a shift from aid to trade. Vietnam sees some potential pointers from Sweden, a small country with social democratic policies that is home to many companies people may not realize have Swedish roots: Skype, Spotify, and Ericsson, as well as Ikea, Volvo, and H&M.

Sustainable trade

The Crown Princess of Sweden, Victoria Ingrid Alice Desiree, brought a delegation to Hanoi this week to try some Vietnamese bun bo noodles and conical hats, as well as to promote commerce that is good for the environment.

“I would like to stress that sustainability and trade are not mutually exclusive,” the crown princess said, adding that, on the contrary, sustainable trade is the only option going forward.

That is in contrast to global trade after the first industrial revolution, when businesses did not mind burning fossil fuels and filling garbage dumps — known in economics as a classic externality, because the culprit does not suffer the direct impact of its pollution.

A different Kind of industrialization

As Vietnam industrializes, some hope it will do things differently from the west’s old polluting industries. It can join the “circular economy” that wastes fewer raw inputs, with more emphasis on putting materials back into the business process.

Swedish firms have been looking for ways to clean up their act. H&M, for example, allows shoppers to bring back clothes for recycling, although that can give them an excuse to consume even more new products.

The fashion retailer also aims to source from factories that treat and reuse wastewater. Ikea will ban single-use plastic from its stores by next year and find new uses for plastic so that it doesn’t end up in the ocean. The plastic efforts are an example of areas where big corporations may have a bigger impact than the individuals who have stopped using plastic straws and plastic bags to do their part.

A Swedish model

Vietnamese Deputy Prime Minister Pham Binh Minh said Sweden was a small country that turned to foreign trade and industrialized responsibly.

“That is a lesson Vietnam wants to learn from Sweden,” he said.

Relations between the two countries used to be underpinned by Sweden’s official aid money to Vietnam, money that went toward common goals like gender equality. The Swedish crown princess, for example, is next in line to the throne because her country revised a law that had restricted royal succession to males. In Vietnam, Sweden has supported equality programs in areas from agriculture, such as training female farmers to market their products, to Wikipedia, where there are more biographies of men than of women.

Business partners

But today the focus is changing from development assistance to business development. Instead of getting aid from Sweden, Vietnam is getting investment, whether it’s Spotify launching its music streaming app in the communist country in 2018, or Electrolux selling air conditioners and washing machines to the emerging middle class.

The change is also indicative of broader trends in Vietnam, generally shifting from cash assistance from foreign countries, to doing business with them. Among Vietnam’s many new trade deals is the European Union-Vietnam Free Trade Agreement, which Swedish officials also touted on their visit this week to increase cross-border commerce.

Such commerce, including more technology investment, could help Vietnam move up from lower middle income status.

“How to escape the middle income trap in a rapidly changing global economy,” Fulbright scholar Vu Thanh Tu Anh told an audience of Vietnamese and Swedish businesses this week. “That is our objective.”

 
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Turkey’s surprise move to allow Abdullah Ocalan, the imprisoned leader of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), to meet with his lawyers after an eight-year hiatus is spurring speculation of a shift in Ankara’s hard-line policy following the 2015 collapse in peace talks with the rebel group.

A nationwide hunger strike calling for an end to Ocalan’s isolation spurred Turkish authorities to allow his lawyers a visit at Imrali Island prison where the 70-year-old Kurdish leader is being held.

“The lawyers were informed they could meet Ocalan on the day of the announcement of a death fast [hunger strike leading to death], which involves at least 2 or 3,000, which has put the government in a difficult position,” said Ertugrul Kurkcu, honorary president of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP).

In a statement, Ocalan called on his supporters not to engage in activities that could harm them. What drew the most attention, however, was the rebel leader’s call to Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) that “Turkish sensitivity should be taken into consideration.”

Turkey on the border 

Turkish forces are currently amassed on the Syrian border facing off against the SDF. Ankara accuses the People Protection Units (YPG), which makes up a large part of the SDF, of being a terrorist organization linked to the PKK. The PKK has waged a decades-long insurgency inside Turkey.

“I think he is showing the YPG the limits they should remain within in the Syrian context and not bother the Turkish government,” said Kurkcu. “He [Ocalan] seeks to finalize the situation without any losses of Syrian Kurdish population because Turkey is looking for an opportunity to intervene.”

Washington has been lobbying hard to prevent a Turkish intervention because the YPG is a crucial ally in its war against Islamic State. U.S. Special Representative for Syria, James Jeffrey, visited Ankara earlier this month for high-level talks to broker a solution.

“We know James Jeffrey, the former U.S. ambassador to Ankara, is already the go-between to find the middle ground between the Ankara regime and the Kurdish political movement, be it in Turkey or Syria,” said political scientist Cengiz Aktar.

“So, the Ocalan lawyers’ visit could be a proposal by him, because Ocalan is considered the symbolic leader of the YPG. We know from the Kurdish authorities in Syria that James Jeffrey was active to establish an indirect dialogue between Ankara and [YPG leader] Mazlum Kobane,” Aktar added.

Ocalan’s influence

Former senior Turkish diplomat Aydin Selcen, who founded Turkey’s consul in the Iraqi Kurdistan regional capital, Irbil, said the significance of Ocalan’s statement should not be overestimated.

“Will it change anything on the ground? I am not sure, because on the ground, even the relationship between Qandil [PKK Iraqi headquarters] and the YPG commanders is quite opaque, not clear, let alone Ocalan’s influence,” he said. 

Selcen added, “What is the most interesting point is whether now there is some sort of coordination between the United States, the SDF, Ankara and Ocalan, and even perhaps between Qandil. That we shall see in the coming months.”

Reports of tentative communications between Ankara and the SDF, coupled with Ocalan’s lawyers’ meeting, is spurring speculation of a possible resumption of broader PKK peace talks. 

Turkish government members previously engaged in peace talks with Ocalan, which were accompanied by a PKK cease-fire and a partial withdrawal from Turkey.

The process collapsed in 2015 amid mutual recrimination. The resulting fighting claimed thousands of lives and the destruction of numerous town and city centers across Turkey’s predominately Kurdish region.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is ruling out a return to peace talks.

“There is no question of such a thing as the peace process,” he said Monday.

Erdogan’s AKP is in a coalition with the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), which is ardently opposed to any peace talks.

“It’s [the AKP-MHP coalition] a problem, but it is also an opportunity,” Selcen said. “It might mean Erdogan can change his coalition. It might mean he can opt for a new partner.”

Growing tensions?

Turkish media have been awash with reports of growing tensions between the AKP and MHP, which have been exacerbated by the political defeat in most of Turkey’s main cities, including Istanbul, during the local elections in March.

Kurkcu played down hopes of new peace talks.

“The present line of the PKK is devoted to changing the interlocutor, changing the negotiating partner, which they believe cannot be the AKP,” he said. “The credit the AKP had five to six or seven years ago has vanished in tyranny. The AKP doesn’t have the promise for any positive change in Turkey. It only offers dictatorship.”

Kurkcu confirmed that the HDP would again back Ekrem Imamoglu of the opposition CHP, who won the Istanbul mayoral election in March but is re-runningafter the AKP succeeded in having the vote annulled over claims of voting irregularities.
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Turkey’s main opposition party on Wednesday appealed to the country’s top electoral body to annul local election results in Istanbul’s 39 districts, as well as last year’s presidential and parliamentary results, after the authority annulled the opposition’s victory in Istanbul’s mayoral race and ordered a new vote.

Ruling in favor of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s governing Justice and Development Party (AKP), Turkey’s Supreme Electoral Board this week ordered a re-run of the March 31 vote on Istanbul’s next mayor, which was narrowly won by opposition candidate Ekrem Imamoglu. The board based its decision on the fact that some officials overseeing the mayoral election were not civil servants, as required by law.

The ruling party claimed that such irregularities affected the outcome of the race.

In response, the main opposition Republican Peoples’ Party, or CHP, submitted a formal request for the cancellation of the Istanbul district elections and last year’s general elections, arguing that non-civil servants had also supervised those ballots.

CHP cannot appeal the electoral board’s decision to repeat Istanbul’s mayoral election, as that is final.

AKP won a majority of the Istanbul districts as well as last year’s general elections, which gave Erdogan a new mandate with sweeping powers.

“If you say that the local election was stained, then the same is valid for the June 24 [2018] elections,” CHP legislator Muharrem Erkek told reporters after submitting the appeal. “Ten thousand people who were not civil servants were on duty for the June 24 election.”

“If you cancel Mr. Imamoglu’s mandate, then you have to cancel Mr. Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s mandate too,” Erkek said, addressing the electoral board members.

He added there was no evidence proving that the presence of non-civil servants at the ballot stations had affected the outcome of the Istanbul vote.

Even though the Supreme Electoral board is not expected to uphold the opposition’s appeal, CHP sought to expose what it says is the decision’s unfairness.

CHP, which has questioned the electoral authority’s independence, believes that the board’s members had succumbed to pressure by Erdogan. The party has accused the president of “stealing” Istanbul city hall in order to cling to power in Turkey’s largest city and commercial hub.

“We don’t trust or believe [in the electoral body],” Erkek said. “This is a struggle for democracy. It is not about CHP or Imamoglu.”

The electoral authority issued a statement on Wednesday saying it would continue working “without being affected by the campaigns of pressure, intimidation, insult and threats” directed against it.

The loss of Istanbul — and the capital, Ankara — in Turkey’s local elections came as sharp blows to Erdogan.

Erdogan says rerunning the Istanbul mayoral vote will strengthen democracy in Turkey by ensuring that the will of the people of Istanbul is truly reflected.
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Obesity worldwide is increasing more quickly in rural areas than in cities, a study reported Wednesday, challenging a long-held assumption that the global epidemic of excess weight is mainly an urban problem.

Data covering 200 countries and territories compiled by more than 1,000 researchers showed an average gain of roughly five to six kilos per woman and man living in the countryside from 1985 to 2017.

City-dwelling women and men, however, put on 38 and 24 percent less, respectively, than their rural counterparts over the same period, according to the findings, published in Nature.

“The results of this massive global study overturn commonly held perceptions that more people living in cities is the main cause of the global rise in obesity,” said senior author Majid Ezzati, a professor at Imperial College London’s School of Public Health.

“This means that we need to rethink how we tackle this global health problem.”

The main exception to the trend was sub-Saharan Africa, where women gained weight more rapidly in cities.

Obesity has emerged as a global health epidemic, driving rising rates of heart disease, stroke, diabetes and a host of cancers.

The annual cost of treating related health impacts could top a trillion dollars by 2025, the World Obesity Federation estimated in 2017.

To date, most national and international policies to curb excess body weight have focused on cities, including public messaging, the redesign of urban spaces to encourage walking, and subsidized sports facilities.

Body-mass index

To factor health status into the comparison across nations, the researchers used a standard measure known as the “body-mass index”, or BMI, based on height and weight.

A person with a BMI of 25 or more is considered overweight, while 30 or higher is obese. A healthy BMI ranges from 18.5 to 24.9.

Approximately two billion adults in the world are overweight, nearly a third of them obese. The number of obese people has tripled since 1975.

The study revealed important differences between countries depending on income level.

In high-income nations, for example, the study found that rural BMI were generally already higher in 1985, especially for women.

Lower income and education levels, the high cost and limited availability of healthy foods, dependence on vehicles, the phasing out of manual labour — all of these factors likely contributed to progressive weight gain.

Conversely, urban areas “provide a wealth of opportunities for better nutrition, more physical exercise and recreation, and overall improved health,” Ezzati said.

Around 55 percent of the world’s population live in cities or satellite communities, with that figure set to rise to 68 percent by mid-century, according to the United Nations.

‘Ultra-processed foods’

The most urbanized regions in the world are North America (82 percent), Latin America and the Caribbean (81 percent) and Europe (74 percent).

More recently, the proportion of overweight and obese adults in the rural parts of many low- and middle-income countries is also rising more quickly than in cites.

“Rural areas in these countries have begun to resemble urban areas,” Barry Popkin, an expert on global public health at the University of North Carolina, said in a comment, also in Nature.

“Modern food supply is now available in combination with cheap mechanized devices for farming and transport,” he added. “Ultra-processed foods are also becoming part of the diets of poor people.”

At a country level, several findings stand out.

Some of the largest BMI increases from 1985 to 2017 among men were in China, the United States, Bahrain, Peru and the Dominican Republic, adding an average of 8-9 kilos per adult.

Women in Egypt and Honduras added — on average, across urban and rural areas — even more.

Rural women in Bangladesh, and men living in rural Ethiopia, had the lowest average BMI in 1985, at 17.7 and 18.4 respectively, just under the threshold of healthy weight. Both cohorts were well above that threshold by 2017.

The populations — both men and women — in small South Pacific island nations have among the highest BMI levels in the world, often well above 30.

“The NDC Risk Factor Collaboration challenges us to create programmes and policies that are rurally focused to prevent weight gain”, Popkin said.
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Britain is eager to negotiate trade deals with the United States and China to compensate for leaving the European Union, by far the country’s largest trading partner, but it is already discovering the snag of balancing geo-political requests of its traditional ally with the ambitions of Beijing, say analysts and diplomats. 

Beijing hopes a trade deal will not only make Britain a secure base for Chinese companies looking to enhance their global brand value and make new acquisitions, but will lead to the British becoming advocates within the West for China’s interests, say China-watchers. 

Beijing has “high hopes of the UK acting as a cheerleader for China’s global ambitions,” according to Yu Jie of Britain’s Chatham House. But cheerleading for China will come at the expense of its traditional alliance with the United States.

Lure of Huawei 

The transatlantic spat over whether Britain should allow the Chinese technology giant Huawei to build parts of Britain’s fifth-generation (5G) mobile network is a preview of Britain’s post-Brexit dilemma. 

Chinese technology and investment already looks alluring enough for a Britain desperate to fashion post-Brexit trade deals to disregard U.S. security alarm over Huawei and to place short-term commercial gain ahead of its established diplomatic relations with the United States. 

Washington fears the Chinese telecoms giant will act as a Trojan horse for China’s espionage agencies, allowing them to sweep up data and gather intelligence, compromising not only Britain’s security, but also America’s, say U.S. officials. 

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo reiterated Washington’s alarm in meetings Wednesday with Prime Minister Theresa May and British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt in London. Pompeo has warned Western allies to shun Huawei or risk losing intelligence-sharing arrangements with Washington. U.S. officials say a failure to reverse the decision will harm Britain’s much vaunted special relationship with America.

The United States has blocked Huawei from government communication systems, but Washington has not yet banned Chinese telecommunications gear from civilian networks. That’s partly because some American carriers in rural areas already use Huawei equipment.

May provisionally gave the go-ahead last month for the Chinese tech giant’s involvement in developing the 5G network. She did so in the face of opposition from her security and foreign ministers, amid the dire U.S. warnings.

A White House official told VOA the issue will likely be raised during U.S. President Donald Trump’s state visit next month to Britain.

Australia and New Zealand have decided to block or heavily restrict using Huawei’s technology in developing their 5G networks.

Huawei denies being controlled by the Chinese government and says its equipment can’t be used for espionage.

British officials dismiss claims May’s decision was made in Britain’s search for post-Brexit trade deals. 

But critics say if Britain is going to strike a trade deal with China after leaving the European Union, Huawei will likely play a major role and London could ill-afford to offend Beijing by blocking the telecom giant. Huawei, one of China’s biggest exporters, has pledged to spend $4 billion on British products and services. 

The critics worry the Huawei decision is part of the pattern of a Chinese government that attaches political strings to commercial deals. 

‘Easy prey for Beijing’

A post-Brexit Britain will be “easy prey for Beijing,” fears Ed Lucas, a commentator for Britain’s The Times newspaper. He argues London will be in a position of weakness in negotiating bilateral trade deals and there is a high risk of a “hard-pressed and isolated Britain being bossed around by China’s Communist Party.”

“On most fronts, Britain is already quite prepared to grovel,” he said, pointing to the visit last month of Britain’s finance minister, Philip Hammond, to a conference in China. 

In Beijing, Hammond praised the “truly epic ambition” of China’s Belt and Road Initiative, a massive trillion-dollar trade, investment and infrastructure program launched in 2015 to spur trade along land and sea routes linking Asia, Africa and Europe, that is prompting Western concern. The European Union last month dubbed China a “systemic rival.” 

Britain’s previous Conservative government also looked toward China for commercial deals. Hard-pressed from the fallout of the 2008 financial crash, it too was attracted by Chinese investment, and in 2013 became the first Western country to join the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.

The move was condemned by the administration of then-U.S. President Barack Obama, with a senior U.S. official complaining to the London-based Financial Times about Britain’s failure to maintain a united front and its “constant accommodation” of China. 

As Britain re-thinks its place in the world, it appears to be hedging its bets when it comes to choosing between Washington and Beijing, says Jonathan Shaw, the former head of cybersecurity at Britain’s defense ministry, a critic of May’s Huawei decision. “We are facing a new technological Cold War between China and America, and America has asked us to choose,” he told a London radio program. 
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Wednesday is V-E Day — Victory in Europe — the 74th anniversary of the formal end of World War II in Europe, when the allied powers defeated German leader Adolf Hitler and his once invincible Nazi war machine.

While V-E Day is not considered a major day of reflection and thanksgiving in the United States, it is observed across Europe and much of the former Soviet Union.

The true number of people killed in the war may never be known, but historians believe at least 35 million Europeans were killed during World War II, including 6 million Jews murdered by the Nazis.

V-E-Day is also marked in Israel, home to thousands of Soviet Jewish immigrants and Holocaust survivors.

Surrender May 7

Germany offered unconditional surrender on May 7. Gen. Alfred Jodl, representing what was left of the Nazi leadership, signed four separate surrender papers at U.S. General Dwight Eisenhower’s headquarters in Reims, France — one each for Britain, France, the Soviet Union and the United States.

U.S. President Harry S. Truman and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill declared that May 8 be celebrated as V-E Day.

At Soviet leader Josef Stalin’s insistence, however, another Nazi general signed additional surrender papers in Soviet-occupied Berlin, and Stalin declared May 9 as victory day.

​Celebrations break out

Huge celebrations broke out across Europe. Stalin and Churchill were revered as heroes. They’d crushed an enemy whose fanatical leader once swore he would rule the globe for a thousand years.

Hundreds of thousands packed Times Square in New York City, where the jubilation was tempered when Truman reminded celebrants that there was still the war in the Pacific that needed to be won.

In Germany, survivors wandered through cities blasted into an unrecognizable state from allied firebombs. Their homes were gone, and there was no food. Hitler escaped punishment by committing suicide in an underground bunker.

Loss of Roosevelt

President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who led the United States through the Depression and war, and had become a steadfast ally to Churchill and Stalin, did not live to see victory.

Author and Marist College history professor David Woolner called Roosevelt’s final days a “heroic and historic story.” In his 2016 book “The Last 100 Days: FDR at War and at Peace,” Woolner chronicled the president’s life from Christmas 1944 until his death from a cerebral hemorrhage on April 12, 1945, a time when the German army was crumbling.

“This was a man who was confined to a wheelchair since the age of 39, couldn’t get out bed in the morning, yet has to run the United States,” he said.

Roosevelt was severely ill, suffering from heart disease. He was in nonstop pain from the heavy steel braces around paralyzed legs, the result of polio.

Woolner noted that Roosevelt knew running for an unprecedented third term in 1940, and then a fourth term in 1944, would certainly shorten his life.

But Roosevelt was fighting enemies on two fronts, against Germany and Japan, and the country needed him to negotiate with a sometimes-disagreeable Churchill and a paranoid, distrustful Stalin.

“He frankly admits that he used the war as an opportunity to draw the Russians into the international community because he understood that there wasn’t going to be peace in the world if the great powers didn’t get along with one another,” Woolner said.

Differences among victors

In his last State of the Union speech, Roosevelt said, “The nearer we come to vanquishing our enemies, the more aware we become of the differences among victors.”

“Almost as if he was warning the American people that this was not going to be an easy task to maintain good relations among the allies once the war was over,” Woolner added.

Roosevelt died at age 63, less than a month before the Nazis surrendered.

He did not live to see the United Nations come into being or the formation of his other postwar vision: a Jewish homeland in the Middle East. That task was left to his successor, Truman.
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Pope Francis said Tuesday more study was needed on the role of women deacons in the early Christian Church, which eventually could affect decisions on the role of women today.

Speaking to reporters on the plane returning from a trip to Bulgaria and North Macedonia, Francis was asked about the results of a commission he set up nearly three years ago on the topic.

Deacons, like priests, are ordained ministers and must be men in today’s Church. They may not celebrate Mass, but they may preach, teach in the name of the Church, baptize and conduct wake and funeral services.

Scholars have debated the precise role of women deacons in the early Church.

Some say they ministered only to other women, such as at immersion rites at baptism and to inspect the bodies of women in cases where Christian men were accused of domestic violence and brought before Church tribunals.

Others scholars believe women deacons in the early Church were fully ordained and on a par with the male deacons at the time.

​Commission breaks up

“All the conclusions were different. They (the commission members) worked together but were in agreement only up to a certain point. Each has their own vision and it is not in accord with that of others,” Francis said.

“So they stopped working as a commission and they are studying how to move forward (individually),” he said.

The commission was made up of six women and six men under a president who is a bishop. Nearly all of the members are theologians and university professors. Of the six women, two are nuns and four are lay women.

What early women deacons did

The Church did have women deacons in the early part of its history, but the pope said it still was not clear if they had been sacramentally ordained, as male deacons were.

“That’s still not clear,” he said. “Some say there are doubts, and more study should be done. So far there is nothing (definitive).”

The Church did away with female deacons altogether in later centuries.

Francis and his predecessors have ruled out allowing women to become priests.

But advocates of women priests say a ruling that women in the early Church were ordained ministers might eventually make it easier for a future pope to study the possibility of women priests.
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The United States said Tuesday that a “healthy democracy” with transparent elections is in Turkey’s own interest, after authorities annulled the Istanbul mayoral election following the defeat of the ruling party.

The State Department, without directly criticizing the election body’s decision, said that free elections were “a fundamental pillar in any democracy.”

“We expect a free, fair and transparent electoral process to be fully respected by all involved so that the will of the voters is acknowledged in the results,” a State Department spokeswoman said.

“A healthy Turkish democracy is in the interest of Turkey and its partners, including the United States, and helps ensure a stable, prosperous and reliable ally,” she said.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a former Istanbul mayor with Islamist roots who has led Turkey since 2003, saw his bloc suffer its first defeat in 25 years in the country’s largest city during the March 31 vote. A recount confirmed the opposition candidate’s narrow win.

Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party refused to accept the result and on Monday, the electoral authorities annulled the result, with a new vote scheduled on June 23.

Turkey is a NATO ally of the United States but Erdogan has had an uneven relationship with Washington, where officials have been uncomfortable with his threats to strike US-allied Kurds in Syria, his often fiery denunciations of Israel and his mass crackdown on journalists and perceived critics since a failed 2016 coup bid.
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