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PARIS (AP) — France’s new government is set to take a hardline approach to migration issues as key officials have pledged to significantly reduce the number of people entering and staying illegally in the country.

ABOARD THE PAPAL PLANE (AP) — Pope Francis wrapped up a troubled visit to Belgium on Sunday by doubling down on his traditional views on women and abortion and demanding that Catholic bishops stop covering up for predator priests — a scandal that has devastated the church’s credibility around the globe.

Francis revisited the key thorny topics of his trip to Belgium during his in-flight press conference coming home, praising Belgium’s late King Baudouin as a “saint” for having abdicated for a day in 1990 rather than sign legislation legalizing abortion.

BRUSSELS (AP) — As the war in Ukraine enters a critical period, the European Union has decided it must take responsibility for what it sees as a security threat in its own neighborhood, and it’s preparing to tackle some of the financial burden, perhaps even without the United States.

PODGORICA, July 12 (Reuters) - A Montenegro court acquitted 13 people including pro-Russian politicians and two Russian intelligence officers on Friday in a retrial over an alleged 2016 election day plot to topple the government and kill then-prime minister Milo Djukanovic. The defendants were initially convicted in 2019 and given long prison terms over the alleged plot against the pro-Western Djukanovic, who led the small Adriatic state almost continuously as premier or president for three decades until 2023. But the verdict was overturned on appeal in 2021 and a retrial was ordered.

China's foreign minister Wang Yi has hit back at Nato's "groundless accusations" that Beijing is helping Russia in its war on Ukraine.

He has also warned the Western alliance against stirring up confrontation.

Mr Wang's comments, made in a call with his Dutch counterpart, came hours after leaders of Nato member states gathered in Washington DC and issued a declaration that mentioned the war.

They accused China of being a "decisive enabler" of Russia through its "large-scale support for Russia's defence industrial base", in some of their harshest remarks yet about Beijing.

WASHINGTON, June 11 (Reuters) - A U.S. review found no evidence of human rights violations by Ukraine's Azov Brigade, paving the way for it to use American training and weapons, the State Department said on Tuesday, citing Russian disinformation aimed at discrediting the unit. U.S. law bars foreign security forces from U.S. military assistance if they have committed gross violations of human rights, but a review of the National Guard of Ukraine's 12th Special Forces Azov Brigade cleared them for U.S. funds, the department said in a statement.

"After thorough review, Ukraine’s 12th Special Forces Azov Brigade passed Leahy vetting as carried out by the U.S. Department of State," the department wrote, referring to the Leahy Law. The move allows the Biden administration to reverse a decade-old ban on allowing the Ukrainian military unit to use U.S. weapons, according to The Washington Post, which first reported the decision.

The U.S. has added three more companies to an entity list that bars imports from firms allegedly involved with Uyghur forced labor in China, according to a U.S. government notice posted online on Tuesday. The latest targets include shoe manufacturer Dongguan Oasis Shoes Co, electrolytic aluminum maker Xinjiang Shenhuo Coal and Electricity Co and food processor Shandong Meijia Group Co, also known as Rizhao Meijia Group, the notice from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said.

The announcement by the head of the Republicans was a historic break with his party’s policy. Top politicians on the right have called for him to step down, bringing the party to the brink of implosion.

Last fall, a coalition of rebel groups known as the Three Brotherhood Alliance launched a rapid-fire offensive across Myanmar’s northern Shan state, quickly overrunning more than 100 military outposts and seizing several key towns along the country’s border with China.

This in itself was not unusual. Myanmar’s military government has faced insurgencies from ethnic and political militias for decades, and there’s been a major uptick in rebel activity since the 2021 coup, which brought the country’s current military junta to power, ending a short period of representative government. Over the past few months, the government has been rapidly losing ground to rebel forces in several regions of the country.

People who are poor, unemployed, homeless, immigrants, or exploited, as well as all those killed by past dictatorships and turned into rubbish by the "throwaway culture" of the present: the level of a society's civilisation is measured by the way they are treated, the Pope said.

Pope Francis reiterated the centrality of the vulnerable as well as the urgency of countering the triple "scourge" of corruption, abuse of power, and lawlessness—both in politics and in society—in his address on Wednesday with representatives of the DIALOP transversal dialogue project.

US climate envoy John Kerry will leave the administration later this winter and plans to help President Joe Biden’s election campaign, Kerry’s office said on Saturday.

Kerry, a US former secretary of state, informed his staff earlier on Saturday after speaking with Biden earlier this week, a spokesman for Kerry said.

The United Nations peacekeeping mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which has helped in the fight against rebels for more than two decades, will completely withdraw from the country by December.

“After 25 years of presence, MONUSCO will definitively leave the DRC no later than the end of 2024,” Bintou Keita, head of the mission known as MONUSCO said at a media briefing in the Congolese capital Kinshasa on Saturday.