Further US-Iran talks expected this week, as Tehran insists only negotiation can end conflict
US President Donald Trump’s weekend rejection of Iran’s proposal for reopening the Strait of Hormuz and ending hostilities prompted Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi to say in a social media post: “Our conditions are clear, and any move toward reopening the Strait of Hormuz is contingent on these conditions being met. Only a negotiated solution can get them out of this deadlock.” Trump told reporters at the White House: “They want to make a deal to open the Hormuz Strait immediately because they’re losing so badly.” However, he acknowledged in an interview that he expected US negotiators to engage in more talks this week.
Pope calls for rooting out “scourge” of sexual abuse in Roman Catholic Church
Pope Leo urged French bishops to persevere in confronting the “painful scourge” of sexual abuse in the church, and “maintain the greatest vigilance”. The pontiff delivered his message during a private meeting at the Sanctuary of Our Holy Lady of Lourdes, a holy site in southern France, on the third day of his four-day official visit to France. A 2021 inquiry found that clergy or lay members of the Church had abused about 330,000 people as children in France over 70 years. Pope Leo said: “You have faced with determination the painful scourge of abuse of minors committed by members of the clergy or within an ecclesial context. It is important to persevere along the path you have begun, maintaining the greatest vigilance.”
Washington White Cross Project not in support of “special treatment” for farm murders – Roets
Dr Ernst Roets, executive director of Lex Libertas, the organisation behind the White Cross Project near the Washington Monument in the US capital, says the project is not intended to promote special treatment for farm murders or for people who live on farms, but rather equal treatment. The campaign has been mounted jointly with the New York Young Republican Club. The display of 3,000 white crosses is intended to memorialise victims of farm murders and to bring the human cost of farm attacks to the attention of an international audience. Some crosses are blank; Lex Libertas has published a verified list of 2,203 names of victims, and promises to add to or amend the list as and when more information is provided. Roets said critics of the project were not contesting the facts of farm crime, but the “narrative”. He believed there was a clear political motive behind farm murders.
German town criticised for banning ‘stumbling stone’ memorials to Nazi victims
The decision of Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party and the conservative CDU councillors of Heidenau, near Dresden in Saxony, to ban “stumbling stone” memorials to victims of the Nazis has been described as a “scandal” by Germany’s Education Minister Karin Prien. Since the 1990s, many towns in countries across Europe, including in Germany and Austria,have embedded small brass plaques in the streets in memory of Jews and other victims of Nazi atrocities. The plaques, called Stolpersteine in German, are often placed outside the houses where the victims used to live or work. They are frequently funded by donations. The councillors said memorials should in future be placed at the city’s Nordfriedhof cemetery to make it “impossible to step directly onto the memorial elements”. However, Prien – who is also a member of the CDU – commented: “Anyone who banishes Stolpersteine and memorial sites commemorating Jewish life from public spaces to the cemetery is prioritising death over life and rendering Jewish people invisible once again.”
Sources: BBC, Reuters, Netwerk24