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WASHINGTON — Vice President Mike Pence reaffirmed the Trump administration’s commitment to addressing persecution of Christians around the world and urged Americans to call the targeting of Christians by Islamic terrorists genocide during a speech Thursday. “Throughout the world, no people of faith today face greater hostility or hatred than the followers of Christ,” Pence said at the World Summit In Defense of Persecuted Christians, organized by the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (BGEA).

With the UN World Summit on Sustainable Development underway in Johannesburg this week, much is being said about sustainability and development. The phrase sustainable development is a curious mix of Western concern for environmental sustainability and the developing world's concern for substantial, economic development. At these big environmental gatherings it has historically been the First World's priorities that have won out. The challenge in Johannesburg is to finally get the courage to put development ahead of sustainability. Why does the First World worry so much about sustainability? Because we constantly hear a litany of how the environment is in poor...

World Summit Generates Tons of Trash Fri Aug 30, 4:35 PM ET By MIKE COHEN, Associated Press Writer JOHANNESBURG, South Africa (AP) - While delegates attending the World Summit wrangled over how best to save the planet's rapidly dwindling resources, they gave scant indication of leading by example. The 10-day summit, billed as the largest U.N. conference ever held, is expected to generate between 300 and 400 tons of trash, and so far, just 20 percent of it is being recycled. "We never had any illusions this would be a green summit," Mary Metcalfe, the environment minister of the Gauteng...

Earth Summit delegates feast while discussing starvation 27-08-2002, 11:45 The Michelangelo Hotel, South Africa Delegates to the United Nations World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, who are meeting to discuss starvation and poverty, are feasting on extravagant foods and fine wines flown in from around the world. British newspaper “The Sun”, which exposed the story on Tuesday, also claimed that hundreds of trees had been cut down around the conference center to make room for limousines bringing delegates in to discuss how to prevent damage to the environment. Known as the “Earth Summit”, the UN conference opened on 26...

By the lights of a globe-trotting do-goodnik, South Africa is an ideal place for a conference: As an African country, the choice of locale bespeaks solidarity with the world's poorest continent -- yet its major cities are full of the plush hotels and decent restaurants NGO types secretly cherish. Unfortunately, there's something about the country that invites snafus. We do not predict a happy ending for this week's World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg. Things started going downhill two years ago at the 13th World AIDS Conference. Invoking his privilege as national host, South African President Thabo Mbeki told...

<p>THE WORLD SUMMIT on sustainable development that gets underway this week in Johannesburg has a sprawling agenda, encompassing food security, water shortages, global warming, population growth, economic inequality, health care, free trade and debt relief for developing nations. It is hard to see how a workable plan of action can ever be achieved in 10 days, even with over 100 heads of state attending - President Bush emphatically not among them. Still, these are problems that defy national boundaries; it is obvious that the solutions also will require global reach.</p>

JOHANNESBURG: As Johannesburg readies itself for the World Summit on Sustainable Development, the slow trickle of visitors has created doubts over the outcome of the conference even before it has started. Coming ten years after the Rio Summit — whose action plan is yet to be implemented by a majority of the countries — most are not too optimistic. Many new factors find place in the agenda. In Rio, global warming hogged the limelight. This time, water is expected to figure prominently. But with only two days to go before the show begins, newspapers declare that the arrivals are not...

Where conferences on "sustainable development" are concerned, Schumacher's precept, "small is beautiful," has been long abandoned. Tomorrow 65,000 delegates will descend on Johannesburg for "Earth Summit 2002" -- the World Summit on Environment and Development. These will include 106 government heads, 10,000 officials from 174 countries, and 6,000 journalists. The BBC team alone could top 100. Twenty UN bodies will be represented. A second parallel conference, comprising a kaleidoscope of lobbyists from ornithologists to oil magnates, has already received 15,000 registrations. Sustaining the whole caboodle will be 27,000 police, who may well be relieved that George W. Bush will not...

Editor's note: The following is an interview with Dr. Harlan Watson, the U. S. State Department's Senior Climate Change Negotiator and Special Representative. TCS Host James K. Glassman conducted the interview. Watson is leaving today for Johannesburg, South Africa as part of the U.S. government's delegation to the World Summit on Sustainable Development.Mr. Glassman: The Bush Administration has made it clear that it's not going to seek Senate ratification of the multilateral Kyoto treaty. And yet the Administration is seeking bilateral agreements dealing with climate issues. Why is the bilateral approach better than the multilateral U.N. venture? Dr. Watson:...

<p>BENONI, South Africa (AP) --  Some of the world's top judges swapped ideas Tuesday on how to best enforce environmental laws at a meeting ahead of the World Summit on Sustainable Development.</p> <p>The U.N.-sponsored conference brought together judges from countries as diverse as Costa Rica and Tanzania to discuss ways to enforce environmental legislation, such as establishing an international environmental court or setting up training programs for judges in environmental science and policy.</p>