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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.

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.

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.

A landslide in north-west Colombia has killed at least 23 people and injured around 30 more, local authorities say.

The road connecting the cities of Medellín and Quibdo had been closed by several landslides, so many people stopped their cars to take shelter in a house near the community of Carmen de Atrato, a local official said.

Another landslide then struck the road, burying them and some of the vehicles.

Brussels wants to launch a bespoke EU mission to protect commercial vessels in the Red Sea from attacks by Iran-backed Houthi rebels.

In a document dated January 10 and seen by Euronews, the EU’s diplomatic service proposes sending "at least three" warships with "multi mission capabilities" to the region as early as next month.

The document recommends the "fast-tracking implementation" of an operation mandated to act "from the Red Sea to the Gulf," in order to protect maritime security in a region plagued by instability in recent weeks.

Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) criticized U.S.-led strikes on Yemen, saying they were “an unacceptable violation of the Constitution.”

“Article 1 requires that military action be authorized by Congress,” Jayapal added in her post on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, late Thursday.

Other Democrats, including Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), also criticized the strikes.

If I could have one wish for the new year, it would be for Britain’s criminal justice system to be reformed in a way that would ensure the arrest, prosecution and conviction of every single rapist in the country. I do not mean, of course, any man accused of rape, but every man who has actually committed rape.

One of the most prevalent and persuasive myths about rape and sexual assault is that a large number of allegations are false and men who have been publicly accused of rape but could not be convicted in a court of law are the victims of grave miscarriages of justice.

"We have issued the last package that we had withdrawn and for which we had funding," John Kirby said. White House National Security Council strategic communications coordinator John Kirby said at a briefing Thursday that "the assistance we were providing has come to a halt."

The White House official also said it is very important that Congress continues to approve the allocation of money to Ukraine. He stressed that Kiev needs help more urgently during the winter period.

The UK prime minister, Rishi Sunak, is visiting Ukraine on Friday to meet his counterpart, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, as the UK announced it would provide further military aid to the country over the coming year.

The UK has been one of Kyiv’s staunchest supporters since Russia’s invasion and Sunak said Britain would boost its support in the next financial year to £2.5bn, an increase of £200m on the previous two years.