When Pope John Paul II visited Damascus in May 2001, Bashar used his welcoming speech to denounce the Jews, saying, “They tried to kill the principles of all religions with the same mentality in which they betrayed Jesus Christ and the same way they tried to betray and kill the Prophet Muhammad.”   read more

U.S. President Donald Trump tweeted that the time has come to remove all Superman comic books from libraries and shops and all Superman movies from all sources because “they glorify an illegal alien.”   read more

Iran’s foreign ministry spokesperson, Bahram Ghasemi, explained the sudden change. “We offered Trump land to build a residential tower in Tehran and a second one in Isfahan with a promise that the tenants would not be allowed to change the buildings’ names from Trump Tower for ten years upon threat of death."   read more

“Why should we treat the United States differently than we do Venezuela?” asked German Chancellor Angela Merkel? She added that it was time for Trump to “do the right thing and call for new elections.” Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez told reporters, “We are working for the return of full democracy in the United States: human rights, fair elections, and no more imprisonment of children.”   read more

Responding to stagnating ratings and changing demographics, Fox News has announced several changes to its lineup. The morning show “Fox and Friends” will now be renamed “Trump and Friends.” Tucker Carlson, Ann Coulter and Laura Ingraham will host a new show called “Clickbait” in which they will compete to see whose outrageous statements can earn the most mentions by non-Fox News media.   read more

The anonymous Trump administration official appears to support Donald Trump’s general agenda of helping the richest Americans and ignoring everyone else. What worries the writer is not that Trump is failing “to put country first,” but that he is so emotionally disturbed that he will somehow screw up this corporatist agenda.   read more

In August 2014, Fall was made assistant director for defense programs at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, also serving as acting lead for national security and international affairs policy. Fall left the White House in August 2017. Fall was given his post at ARPA-E in January 2018. President Donald Trump has twice attempted to zero out funding for the agency, which provides grants for experimental energy projects.   read more

In October 2015, he was named minister of Federal Affairs and Pastoral Areas Development. There, he promoted a policy of “villagization,” moving families from the country into villages. After Ethiopia’s longtime leader and human rights abuser Meles Zenawi died in 2012, Tekleberhan became the vice chairman of the Meles Zenawi Foundation.   read more

Otgonbayar left the Foreign Ministry in 2004 to become secretary general of the Mongolian People’s Revolutionary Party (MPRP), now the Mongolian People’s Party. At the time, Mongolia was doing a lot of trading with China after years of being a client state of the Soviet Union. Otgonbayar worked to encourage trade with the United States, Japan, South Korea and the European Union as well. In 2006, Otgonbayar added leadership of the Ulaanbaator branch of the MPRP to his party duties.   read more

in January 2014, Yansané became Guinea's minister of mines and geology, where he oversaw his specialty: contracts for oil exploration. One of the companies he dealt with Hyperdynamics of Houston, gained the right to explore for offshore oil off the coast of Guinea. They found nothing and filed for bankruptcy in December 2017. Yansané emphasized bringing in foreign investors, who have long lusted after Guinea’s reserves of bauxite, iron ore, gold and other minerals.   read more

The recently installed ambassador from Lebanon is actually a Lebanese-American who lived in the U.S. more than 40 years. Shortly before the 2016 presidential election in Lebanon, Gabriel Issa of Detroit returned to Lebanon on a permanent basis and became a close advisor to Lebanon’s soon-to-be president, Michel Aoun. By the age of 21, Issa had founded two businesses, AAA Language Services and Iterotext Translation, which, along with several other businesses, he devoted his career to building.   read more

The plaintiffs say the Trump administration stopped interviewing program beneficiaries and froze their applications; stopped issuing decisions to likely parole candidates; and stopped scheduling the medical exams for parolees to travel to the U.S.– all in secret. Yet it continued to accept money from applicants, including $100 for medical exams and $1,400 for each child’s plane ticket to the U.S. The complaint also cites Trump’s racist statements made during the 2016 presidential campaign.   read more

Haïdara is president of the think tank Cercle Libéral de Côte d’Ivoire. He also has served as chairman of the board of SONITRA (Société nationale ivoirienne de travaux), a public-private partnership that undertakes public works projects, such as roads, bridges and other infrastructure, in Côte d’Ivoire.   read more

Robson joined the Economic Development Board of Madagascar in 2007 as the representative of President Marc Ravalomanana. He later became the organization’s director of facilitation and business. He was promoted to deputy director general in 2009, and was named director general and CEO in 2015. Robson has been affiliated with the African Infrastructure Development Partnership, a Swiss-based organization offering alternative approaches to African development, since 2015.   read more

In 1993, Oris de Roa led a group of investors who purchased San Miguel, a failing lemon producer and processor. He turned the company into the largest lemon producer in the world, but his methods made enemies in the United States. In 2000, he made a deal with U.S. citrus grower Sunkist to export Argentine lemons to the U.S. and have them labeled and marketed by Sunkist. This did not sit well with lemon growers in California and Arizona who saw their market share and profits threatened.   read more

While deputy minister of foreign affairs, Sugiyama created a controversy in 2016 after Japan and South Korea agreed on compensation for the Japanese Army’s forced sexual use of Korean women during World War II. He told the UN that an investigation found no evidence that the Japanese government or army had used such "comfort women." Sugiyama later arranged the visit of John Kerry to Hiroshima, the first time a U.S. Secretary of State had visited the site of the first use of the atomic bomb.   read more

In 1995, Tito adjusted the International Date Line so his nation would be on one side of it, and as a bonus, would make Kiribati the first country to be able to celebrate the new year in 2000. He also proposed a plan to sell Kiribati special non-citizen passports to foreigners for $15,000 each, upping the price to $20,000 the following year. He recently endorsed a plan whereby members of a Russian monarchist party would buy three Kiribati islands as a site to revive the Romanov empire.   read more