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GENEVA, Switzerland, June 10, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) – Pope Francis’ representative to the United Nations told the World Health Assembly in Switzerland last month that the Holy See “welcomes” goal 3 of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), focused on ensuring “healthy lives,” and the goal’s 13 targets. However, the representative is coming under fire because one of the 13 targets included in his praise, specifically target 3.7, calls for “universal access to sexual and reproductive health care services.” The UN defined these terms at the 1994 Cairo conference to mean providing women with “modern contraception” for “family planning” and with “safe...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Despite Democratic fears, predictions of the demise of President Barack Obama's agenda appear exaggerated after a week of cascading controversies, political triage by the administration and party leaders in Congress and lack of evidence to date of wrongdoing close to the Oval Office. "Absolutely not," Steven Miller, the recently resigned acting head of the Internal Revenue Service, responded Friday when asked if he had any contact with the White House about targeting conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status for special treatment. "The president's re-election campaign?" persisted Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif. "No," said Miller.

ven as President Obama highlights impending cuts to national parks because of the sequester, he plans to use his power as president to designate five new national monuments Monday, according to an administration official. The new monuments will be: the Rio Grande del Norte National Monument in New Mexico; the San Juan Islands National Monument in Washington State; the First State National Monument in Delaware and Pennsylvania; the Charles Young Buffalo Soldiers National Monument in Ohio and a monument commemorating Harriet Tubman and her role in helping black slaves reach freedom through the the Underground Railway in Maryland.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States must look past the violence and extremism that has erupted after the "Arab Spring" revolutions and boost support for the region's young democracies to forge long-term security, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Friday. Clinton, seeking to reinforce the Obama administration's Middle East policy following a wave of anti-American violence and last month's deadly attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya, said Washington cannot be deterred by "the violent acts of a small number of extremists." "We recognize that these transitions are not America's to manage, and certainly not ours to win...

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Euro zone finance ministers inched towards approving a second bailout for debt-laden Greece on Monday that would resolve Athens' immediate repayment needs but seems unlikely to revive the nation's shattered economy. Agreement on a 130-billion-euro rescue package on strict conditions would draw a line under months of uncertainty that has shaken the currency bloc, and avert imminent bankrupcty. As the ministers met, officials were struggling to make the numbers add up. EU sources said they had to cut a further 6 billion euros, via various means, to make the financing work, and private investors might have to...

The main US share index, the Dow Jones, has closed down 5.6%, despite US President Barack Obama moving to try to reassure investors. In his first public reaction to Standard & Poor's downgrading the US, President Obama said markets continued to regard US government debt as being the highest possible grade. Yet despite his comments, the Nasdaq index fell even further, losing 6.9%. Prior to President Obama's speech, the Dow had only been 2.5% lower. He called on both Republicans and Democrats on Capital Hill to avoid party-political positioning over the issue. "It is not a lack of plans or...

In marked contrast to vows as a candidate not to use presidential signing statements as “an end run around Congress,” President Obama released a statement on the just-signed spending bill saying despite the law’s restrictions on “czars,” he will “construe” the law not to interfere with “presidential prerogatives.” The move is an aggressive power play by Obama to gain an added advantage from the deal struck a week ago between the president, Republican House Speaker John Boehner and Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to narrowly avert government shutdown. The legislation prohibits government money being spent on four Obama “czars,”...

Kota Kinabalu (AsiaNews) - Catholic community in the Archdiocese of Kota Kinabalu, capital of Sabah, is growing where the faithful are now more than 180 thousand, nearly 10% of the population. Sabah is one of 13 states of Malaysia and is situated in the northern part of Borneo.Many churches have increased the number of Sunday Masses, to cope with the influx of the faithful. The church of Stella Maris, for example, decided to celebrate on Sunday a third function in Bahasa Melayu, the local language, along with two others in English.Leonard Chin, faithful of the parish, told AsiaNews that "the...

Great Smoky Mountains National Park officials euthanized a 60-pound female black bear Thursday afternoon that attacked a hiker and ended up becoming an Internet cause celebre. Wildlife biologists determined the young bear that park rangers captured May 13 bit the foot of an unidentified man who got too close with a camera as he was hiking along the popular Laurel Falls Trail the day before. Park spokeswoman Nancy Gray said park policy dictates that all animals who attack humans must be euthanized. The bear was put down "in a humane manner," according to a National Park Service news release Thursday.

If U.S. officials had followed up on a 1994 response plan for a major Gulf oil spill, it is possible that the spill could have been kept under control and far from land. The problem: The federal government did not have a single fire boom on hand. burn2.jpgView full size(AP Photo/U.S. Coast Guard, Petty Officer 1st Class Justin Sawyer)This April 28, 2010 image made from video released by the Deepwater Horizon Response Unified Command, shows an in situ burn in the Gulf of Mexico, in response to the oil spill after the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon. The "In-Situ Burn"...

PARIS (AFP) – A cold front is sweeping across Europe after gripping swathes of North America last month, but the deep freeze does not mean the threat of global warming has abated, caution scientists. "The major trend is unmistakably one of warming," Michel Jarraud, secretary general of the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO), told AFP. "If we look at the trajectory over the last 160 years, it overlays a large natural variability, and that's what causes confusion." The cooler weather that was a hallmark of 2008 can be explained partly by La Nina, a reversal of the phenomenon by which warm...

GENEVA (Reuters) - Record growth in the world's poorest countries has failed to prevent an increase in their total numbers of poor people, the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) said on Thursday. Recent rising food costs threaten to undercut what modest progress has been achieved, while three quarters of people living in least developed countries (LDCs) still survive on less than $2 a day, it said in a report. Income under $2 a day does not allow most people to meet basic needs for food, water, shelter, health or education, the Least Developed Countries Report 2008 noted. The...

(AP) OAKLAND University of California executives are still getting additional compensation despite withering criticism from lawmakers and others. Officials of the 10-campus system came under fire when it was revealed they had quietly been paying executives millions above their reported salaries. Since then, administrators have overhauled their system to make sure the decisions are made publicly and with the proper authority, but they haven't stopped the extra compensation. UC officials say they have to make the exceptions to stay competitive in the job market. In the 15 months following the revelations, first reported in the San Francisco Chronicle, more than...

WASHINGTON - The welfare state is bigger than ever despite a decade of policies designed to wean poor people from public aid. The number of families receiving cash benefits from welfare has plummeted since the government imposed time limits on the payments a decade ago. But other programs for the poor, including Medicaid, food stamps and disability benefits, are bursting with new enrollees. The result, according to an Associated Press analysis: Nearly one in six people rely on some form of public assistance, a larger share than at any time since the government started measuring two decades ago. Critics of...

WASHINGTON - It was 2004 and Democrats were into their 10th year as the minority party in the House when they proposed a bill of rights to ensure their participation in the democratic process. The GOP ignored them. Now Republicans, newly demoted to the minority, say they are the ones suffering abuse despite repeated Democratic promises that theirs would be a more open, democratic and inclusive rule. "It seems," said Republican leader John Boehner (news, bio, voting record), R-Ohio, "over the last three weeks that the more we reach out and offer our hand of bipartisanship, (the more) it is...

SIERRA VISTA ? Nearly four-dozen entries are scheduled to take part in the Veterans Day Parade in this community, which is home to an active-duty Army post and to a number of military retirees. For the first time, the parade's grand marshal is a woman veteran ? retired Army Col. Virginia Gannon. She was named to the honorary position ? the eighth grand marshal ? by Sierra Vista Mayor Thomas Hessler. "Sierra Vista is a better place because of people like Virginia Gannon," Hessler said. "She is one of those rare and special people who make a difference every day."...

WASHINGTON, Oct. 24, 2006 – Iraq continues to make meaningful progress despite a recent spike of violence in Baghdad and some other parts of the country, the senior U.S. troop commander in Iraq said today. “The Baghdad security plan continues to have a dampening effect on sectarian violence,” Army Gen. George W. Casey Jr. told reporters at a Baghdad news conference. U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad accompanied Casey at the briefing. U.S., coalition and Iraqi troops continue to work aggressively to further reduce violence in the capital and elsewhere in Iraq, Casey said. Extra U.S. troops dispatched to Baghdad...

Mystery of the Missing Heat: Upper ocean has cooled slightly in recent years, despite warming climate Sid Perkins Between 2003 and 2005, the top layers of the world's oceans cooled slightly, but scientists aren't sure where the heat went. According to climate data gathered worldwide, 2003, 2004, and 2005 are three of the five warmest years since reliable record keeping of global air temperatures began more than a century ago. However, oceanographic surveys suggest that on average, the upper 750 meters of the world's ice-free oceans cooled about 0.03°C during that 3-year period. This cooling reverses an oceanic-warming trend observed...

FORT BELVOIR, Va., Aug. 18, 2006 – There’s plenty of fuel available to fill the tanks of U.S. military vehicles and aircraft despite widely reported accounts of a commercial oil pipeline rupture in Alaska, a senior Defense Department logistician said here yesterday. “We’re in good shape all the time. We have significant fuel reserves. If fuel became locally unavailable, … we could move fuel from elsewhere in the United States to cover DoD’s requirements,” John S. Bartenhagen Jr., Defense Energy Support Center deputy director for operations, said. The center buys fuel for defense department needs. It is a component...

Global warming puts 12 US parks at riskreport By Deborah Zabarenko Tue Jul 25, 3:51 PM ET Grizzly bear cubs in Yellowstone National Park. Global warming puts 12 of the most famous U.S. national parks at risk, environmentalists said on Tuesday, conjuring up visions of Glacier National Park without glaciers and Yellowstone without grizzly bears. (National Park Service/Reuters) WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Global warming puts 12 of the most famous U.S. national parks at risk, environmentalists said on Tuesday, conjuring up visions of Glacier National Park without glaciers and Yellowstone Park without grizzly bears. All 12 parks are located in the...