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Pope Francis is committing the Catholic Church to working more with Thailand’s majority Buddhists to launch projects to care for the poor and the environment. Francis made the pledge during a meeting Thursday with the supreme Buddhist patriarch at the Wat Ratchabophit temple. It was the second time a pope has called on the spiritual leader of Thailand’s Buddhists, after St. John Paul II visited the temple in 1984.

Wed, 20 Nov 2019 22:31:55 -0500

(Bloomberg) -- A top deputy to Chinese President Xi Jinping reaffirmed China’s commitment to market-based economic reforms, while warning that the international order “was under attack.”Vice President Wang Qishan, who’s one of China’s best known economic reformers, told Bloomberg’s New Economy Forum on Thursday that the country would follow through on policy changes despite facing serious challenges at home and aboard. He said the country would continue to let the market play a “decisive role” in the allocation for resources and stick to the path of peaceful development.“Between war and peace, the Chinese people firmly choose peace. Humanity cherishes peace,” Wang said in his keynote address in Beijing. “We should abandon the zero-sum thinking and cold war mentality.”The New Economy Forum is being organized by Bloomberg Media Group, a division of Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg News. Other guests include Microsoft Corp. founder Bill Gates, former U.S. Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.Wang’s speech comes as the U.S. and China work to assemble a partial trade agreement, even as broader tensions mount in the U.S.-China relationship from human rights concerns over Hong Kong and the western region of Xinjiang to strategic competition in the South China Sea. The sides are making progress in key areas, according to people close to the talks, even as concerns grow that efforts to nail down the first phase of a broader deal are stalling.U.S. President Donald Trump is expected to sign legislation passed by Congress supporting the Hong Kong protesters, a person familiar said, after the bill was approved unanimously by the Senate on Tuesday and passed the House 417-1 on Wednesday.Trump -- facing an impeachment inquiry at home -- may seek a political win by reaching a trade deal with China. Policy makers in Beijing face their own troubles with a slowing economy at home, as well as factory-price deflation, a fragile financial system and spiraling food costs in the wake of a catastrophic disease epidemic among the nation’s pig herd.“Development must be balanced and inclusive,” Wang said Thursday. “We need to work together to make economic globalization work for all people across the world.”Wang struck a less confrontational tone than when he addressed the same forum last year in Singapore as trade tensions were at a crescendo. In his remarks last year, he both reaffirmed China’s desire to move forward with trade talks and warned that his country wouldn’t again be “bullied and oppressed” by foreign powers.\--With assistance from Dandan Li and Tian Ying.To contact Bloomberg News staff for this story: Peter Martin in Beijing at pmartin138@bloomberg.net;Miao Han in Beijing at mhan22@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Brendan Scott at bscott66@bloomberg.net, Sharon ChenFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.

Wed, 20 Nov 2019 20:56:22 -0500

Testimony on Wednesday that U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo played a more central role than previously known in President Donald Trump’s Ukraine dealings has fueled uncertainty within the administration about the top diplomat's future. Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union and a key figure in the Democratic-led impeachment inquiry against Trump, depicted Pompeo as a participant in the president’s efforts to get Ukraine to carry out investigations that could help him politically. While Trump is not expected to oust one of his staunchest supporters over the testimony, Pompeo has been widely reported to be mulling his exit to run for the U.S. Senate from his home state of Kansas next year.

Wed, 20 Nov 2019 19:07:36 -0500

Centuries of Christian anti-Semitism led to the Holocaust, a landmark Church of England report has concluded.  In a foreword to the report, published today, the Archbishop of Canterbury said that Christians cannot challenge and reflect on the past honestly, “until we have felt the cruelty of our history”.  The document, which has been three years in the making, was prepared by the Church’s Faith and Order Commission and entitled: God’s Unfailing World: Theological and practical perspectives on Christian-Jewish relations. It urges Christians to not only be repentant for the “sins of the past” against Jews, but also to challenge active attitudes and stereotypes. It also marks the first time that the Church of England has made an authoritative statement on the subject of anti-Semitism. The new “tool for teaching” on Christian-Jewish relations acknowledges that Christian theology played a part in the “stereotyping and persecution fo Jewish people which ultimately led to the Holocaust”. 17 haunting Holocaust memorials “Conscious of the participation of Christians over the centuries in stereotyping, persecution and violence directed against Jewish people, and how this contributed to the Holocaust, Christians today should be sensitive to Jewish fears,” the report said. It added that, for centuries, Christian attitudes towards Judaism have provided a “fertile seed-bed for murderous anti-Semitism”, and noted that a similar hatred of Jews continues to exist today within political discourse by “pro-Palestinian advocates”.  Despite the Commission’s report being released ahead of an imminent General Election, the report’s authors would not be drawn on the anti-Semitism crisis which continues blight the Labour party. Jewish MP’s including Louise Ellman and Luciana Berger have quit the Labour party after accusing leader Jeremy Corbyn of failing to stamp out anti-Semitism within the party. It also suggested that popular hymns which are interpreted in a way to “convey the teaching of contempt” of Jews for killing Jesus should be banned and “no longer be sung in public worship”.  The report offered the example of Charles Wesley’s well-known hymn, ‘Lo, He Comes with Clouds Descending’: “Every eye shall now behold him/ Robed in dreadful majesty;/ Those who set at nought and sold him,/ Pierced and nailed him to the tree,/ Deeply wailing, deeply wailing, deeply wailing,/ Shall the true Messiah see.” “It is possible to read lines 3-6 and imagine they are about the Jewish people as collectively guilty of crucifying the Messiah,” the report notes, “who when he comes again in power and glory recognise - too late? - the terrible crime they have committed. Holocaust Survivors | The stories of those who escaped from Nazi clutches “Understood in that way, they convey the ‘teaching of contempt’ which the Church of England now rejects. If that were the only way to read them, they should no longer be sung in public worship.” The report concluded: “Christians have been guilty of promoting and fostering negative stereotypes of Jewish people that have contributed to grave suffering and injustice. They therefore have a duty to be alert to the continuation of such stereotyping and to resist it.” Six million Jews were systematically killed by the Nazis during the Holocaust. Throughout World War II, Nazi Germany killed around five million other ‘untermenschen’ - a the term for those the Nazis deemed as ‘undesireable’ or ‘sub-human’.  These included victims from Romani communities, disabled and homosexual people and those of other nationalities and religions. The number of Nazi victims is often disputed by Holocaust deniers.  In 2016 the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, likened anti-Semitism to a “virus”, adding that “it is a shameful truth that, through its theological teachings, the church, which should have offered an antidote, compounded the spread of this virus”.  Poll - Anti Semitism 17/11 “The fact that antisemitism has infected the body of the Church is something of which we as Christians must be deeply repentant,” he added.  In an afterword published by the Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis - which the Church of  England describes as “honest and challenging” - he welcomed the “kinship” and “profound friendship” between Christainity and Judaism.  However he also criticised the report, saying he has a “substantial misgiving” on the question of evangelism. “Namely, that it does not reject the efforts of those Christians, however many they may number, who, as part of their faithful mission, dedicate themselves to the purposeful and specific targeting of Jews for conversion to Christianity.” The Bishop of Coventry, the Rt Revd Dr Christopher Cocksworth, chair of the Faith and Order Commission, said: “Assumptions about Judaism and Jewish people, past and present, colour Christian approaches to preaching, teaching, evangelism, catechesis, worship, devotion and art, whether or not Chirsian communities are conscious of their Jewish neighbours, near and far; testing out those assumptions and exploring them theologically is therefore a challenge that pertains to the whole Church. “That challenge is also, however, a previous opportunity… We are convinced that the Christian-Jewish relationship is a gift of God to the Church, which is to be received with care, respect and gratitude, so that we may learn more fully about God’s purposes for us and all the world.”

Wed, 20 Nov 2019 19:01:00 -0500

Anti-abortion politicians in Ohio want doctors to attempt to re-implant ectopic pregnancies – a procedure derided by one doctor as “pure science fiction”.Members of the state’s Republican Party proposed a law this month that would force physicians to attempt an operation for which experts say technology does not currently exist.

Wed, 20 Nov 2019 18:55:16 -0500