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Rubio to Visit Vatican, Rome after Trump Row

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, speaks during a Memorandum of Understanding signing ceremony with EU Commissioner for Trade and Economic Security Maros Sefcovic, at the State Department, Friday, April 24, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Rod Lamkey, Jr.)
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, speaks during a Memorandum of Understanding signing ceremony with EU Commissioner for Trade and Economic Security Maros Sefcovic, at the State Department, Friday, April 24, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Rod Lamkey, Jr.)
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Rubio to Visit Vatican, Rome after Trump Row

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, speaks during a Memorandum of Understanding signing ceremony with EU Commissioner for Trade and Economic Security Maros Sefcovic, at the State Department, Friday, April 24, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Rod Lamkey, Jr.)
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, speaks during a Memorandum of Understanding signing ceremony with EU Commissioner for Trade and Economic Security Maros Sefcovic, at the State Department, Friday, April 24, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Rod Lamkey, Jr.)

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio will visit Rome and the Vatican this week, an Italian government source said Sunday, weeks after President Donald Trump's stinging criticism of Pope Leo XIV.

Italian media reported that Rubio would meet the US pontiff himself on Thursday.

The government source told AFP that Rubio would meet Vatican Secretary of State Pietro Parolin and Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani.

The meetings come just weeks after Trump's extraordinary criticism of Pope Leo over the Catholic leader's anti-war rhetoric.

The source said Rubio had asked for a meeting with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, one of Trump's closest European allies, whom he turned on after she defended the pope.

Media reports said he was also due to meet Defense Minister Guido Crosetto, amid a deepening rift in transatlantic ties over the Middle East war.

Leo, 70, will on Friday mark one year as leader of the world's 1.4 billion Catholics, after being elected by cardinals on May 8, 2025, following the death of Pope Francis.

As the first ever pope from the United States, his words have arguably carried more weight in Washington than previous pontiffs -- and he has used them, criticising notably the Trump administration's crackdown on immigration.

But it was the pontiff's increasing anti-war rhetoric, particularly following the US-Israeli attacks on Iran, that triggered Trump's ire.

Leo declared Trump's threat to destroy Iran "unacceptable" and urged Americans to demand that US lawmakers "work for peace".

The US president slammed the pontiff in a social media post as "WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy".

Trump also said he was "not a big fan of Pope Leo" and that he does not "want a pope who thinks it's OK for Iran to have a nuclear weapon."

The pontiff responded by saying he had a "moral duty to speak out" against war -- and then sparked more headlines with a speech in Cameroon lambasting "tyrants" ransacking the world.

However, he insisted afterwards that the remarks were written long before the row, and said he had not intended to start a new debate with the US president.

Christians across the world expressed their solidarity with the pope, and Meloni condemned Trump's remarks as "unacceptable" -- prompting the president to turn his fire on her.

"I'm shocked at her. I thought she had courage, but I was wrong," the US president said in an interview with Italian daily Corriere della Sera.

He accused Meloni -- a far-right leader who has sought to act as a bridge between diverging US and European views -- of failing to help the United States with NATO.

Trump has threatened to pull US troops from Italy, saying Rome "has not been of any help to us" in the Iran war.

He has made a similar threat towards Spain, while the Pentagon has announced it will withdraw 5,000 US troops from Germany.

As of December 31, 2025, there were 12,662 active-duty US troops in Italy and 3,814 in Spain. In Germany, there were 36,436.

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World

IAEA Raises 'Proliferation' Fears Over Iran Sites

Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Rafael Mariano Grossi speaks during a press conference in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, June 2, 2026. REUTERS/Amr Alfiky
Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Rafael Mariano Grossi speaks during a press conference in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, June 2, 2026. REUTERS/Amr Alfiky
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IAEA Raises 'Proliferation' Fears Over Iran Sites

Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Rafael Mariano Grossi speaks during a press conference in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, June 2, 2026. REUTERS/Amr Alfiky
Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Rafael Mariano Grossi speaks during a press conference in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, June 2, 2026. REUTERS/Amr Alfiky

The UN nuclear agency reaffirmed in a confidential report on Thursday that a lack of access to verify nuclear material in Iran posed a "proliferation concern,” calling on the country to "engage the agency constructively.”

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has not had access to some key nuclear facilities in Iran since Israel and the United States launched a 12-day conflict in June 2025 that saw strikes on nuclear sites.

Nuclear sites have also been struck in the war that erupted on February 28. The IAEA has repeatedly urged access.

"While the agency acknowledged that the military attacks on Iran's nuclear facilities and sites have created an unprecedented situation, it is critical for the agency to conduct verification activities in Iran without delay," the IAEA said in the report.

The report is to be discussed at an IAEA board of governors' meeting next week.

Prior to US strikes in June 2025, the IAEA calculated that Iran possessed approximately 440 kilograms of uranium enriched to 60 percent, which is close to the 90 percent needed to make a bomb and well above the 3.67-percent limit set by a 2015 now-defunct agreement with Iran.

Since June 2025, the fate of this stockpile has remained uncertain, with Tehran refusing access to IAEA inspectors at sites ravaged by US and Israeli strikes.

"The agency's lack of access to verify the previously declared highly enriched uranium and low enriched uranium for nearly a year -- which is long overdue according to standard safeguard practices -- is a matter of proliferation concern," it added.

"The director general (Rafael Grossi) calls on Iran to engage the agency constructively in order to facilitate the full and effective implementation of safeguards in Iran," it added.

Grossi has also emphasized to Iran that “it is indispensable and urgent to implement effectively the NPT (Non-Proliferation Treaty) Safeguards ⁠Agreement ... ⁠and that its implementation cannot be suspended by Iran under any circumstances," the confidential report seen by Reuters and AFP said.

World

Trump Says He will Nominate Todd Blanche as US Attorney General

FILED - 03 March 2026, US, Washington: FILE PHOTO - US President Donald Trump speaks during a meeting in the White House. Photo: Kay Nietfeld/dpa
FILED - 03 March 2026, US, Washington: FILE PHOTO - US President Donald Trump speaks during a meeting in the White House. Photo: Kay Nietfeld/dpa
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Trump Says He will Nominate Todd Blanche as US Attorney General

FILED - 03 March 2026, US, Washington: FILE PHOTO - US President Donald Trump speaks during a meeting in the White House. Photo: Kay Nietfeld/dpa
FILED - 03 March 2026, US, Washington: FILE PHOTO - US President Donald Trump speaks during a meeting in the White House. Photo: Kay Nietfeld/dpa

President Donald Trump said he would move to nominate acting US Attorney General Todd Blanche on Thursday to permanently lead the Justice Department, which would make his former personal lawyer the nation's top law enforcement officer.

"He's acting attorney general. Tomorrow. I'm instructing Dan (Scavino) and everybody else that's involved in that very complicated process - which is going to go, I think, very quickly - that we are going to make him permanent attorney general," Trump said at a White House event, according to a video posted on X late on Wednesday by his aide Scavino, Reuters reported.

Blanche, 51, took over leadership of the Justice Department after Trump fired Pam Bondi in April amid tension over the agency's release of files related to convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and frustration that the department was not moving forcefully enough against the White House's supposed political enemies.

Blanche has faced backlash from Republican senators, and even some White House aides, over the Justice Department's now-scuttled plan to create a $1.8 billion fund for victims of alleged government "weaponization."

To be confirmed, Blanche would need near-unanimous Republican support in the Senate, which Republicans control by a narrow 53-47 margin. He said on Tuesday that the DOJ would not be moving forward with the plan, which sparked fierce bipartisan opposition and threatened to derail a $72 billion funding package for Trump's immigration crackdown.

But Trump on Wednesday would not say whether the fund had been terminated or was on hold, saying, "I'd have to ask the lawyers. I don't know."

"I love it. I think it's so important," Trump told reporters at the White House. "The weaponization fund, as far as I'm concerned, was a beautiful thing."

Some lawmakers have called for a ban on the fund to be documented in writing or codified into law. Blanche told members of Congress this week that he would not commit to putting anything into writing. Trump said in an interview broadcast on Wednesday that he was likely to nominate Blanche to the permanent position.

Blanche has moved quickly as acting attorney general to ingratiate himself to Trump and his political movement. In addition to the fund, the DOJ under Blanche has removed press releases detailing cases arising from the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol, released a report condemning past prosecutions of anti-abortion activists and secured criminal charges against the Southern Poverty Law Center civil rights group and former FBI Director James Comey, a longtime Trump foe.

 

 

 

World

Norway Aid Group: Sudan, DR Congo Top World's Most Neglected Crises

Sudanese refugees from Al-Fashir, displaced by ongoing conflict in Sudan, gather at sunset at the Tine transit camp in eastern Chad, November 23, 2025. REUTERS/Amr Abdallah Dalsh
Sudanese refugees from Al-Fashir, displaced by ongoing conflict in Sudan, gather at sunset at the Tine transit camp in eastern Chad, November 23, 2025. REUTERS/Amr Abdallah Dalsh
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Norway Aid Group: Sudan, DR Congo Top World's Most Neglected Crises

Sudanese refugees from Al-Fashir, displaced by ongoing conflict in Sudan, gather at sunset at the Tine transit camp in eastern Chad, November 23, 2025. REUTERS/Amr Abdallah Dalsh
Sudanese refugees from Al-Fashir, displaced by ongoing conflict in Sudan, gather at sunset at the Tine transit camp in eastern Chad, November 23, 2025. REUTERS/Amr Abdallah Dalsh

Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Colombia top the list of the world's most neglected displacement crises, the Norwegian Refugee Council aid group said on Thursday.

Sudan, which since 2023 has been ravaged by a bloody conflict between two rival generals competing for power, has more than nine million internally displaced people, the prominent aid organization said in a statement.

A further four million Sudanese have fled to neighboring countries and nearly 19.5 million people there are also suffering from hunger, the NRC said.

"It is incomprehensible that a displacement crisis of similar proportions to the crises in Syria and Ukraine at their peak can continue to worsen almost unnoticed," NRC chief Jan Egeland said.

"Countries have become much more inward-looking, more nationalist.

Rearmament is now an absolute priority because we have to ensure our own security in Europe. There is Putin threatening us, and so on," Egeland said in comments to the NRK broadcaster.

"But people then forget that there will be pandemics, migratory movements, and enormous loss of human life if we don't invest in hope on other continents."

"Africa is just across the Mediterranean, where we go on holiday. And if the continent collapses, we will also suffer the consequences."

Relatives mourn during the funeral of a person who died of Ebola in Bunia, Ituri Province, Democratic Republic of the Congo, 03 June 2026. EPA/DIEUDONNE DIROLE

The Democratic Republic of Congo, where an Ebola epidemic has added turmoil to the east of the country ravaged by decades of conflict, appears on NRC's list for the 10th year in a row.

In 2025, only 27.4 percent of the funding needed for DR Congo has been secured, leaving more than 21 million people in need, according to the NRC.

"This is a testament to the world's failure to respond to crises that are not regarded as strategically important for rich countries," Egeland said in the NRC statement.

"Millions of people are being abandoned because we have chosen not to act, not because we cannot."

The NGO's list is based on three criteria: lack of humanitarian funding, lack of media coverage, and lack of political will within the international community.

Several African countries -- Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Mali and Nigeria -- have featured on NRC's list six or more times, pointing to "a systemic pattern of deliberate neglect", NRC said.

The 10 most neglected crises for 2025 are Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Colombia, Yemen, Afghanistan, Honduras, Ecuador, Cameroon, Nigeria and Mozambique, spanning three continents and tens of millions of people.