LEADERS of China, France, Germany and the European Commission have agreed to seek fairer global trade rules and work together to face the world’s economic and security challenges in an implicit response to the United States’ protectionist policies.
Chinese President Xi Jinping, on a state visit to France, met in Paris with French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker.
European countries seek to boost relations with China while also putting pressure over its business practices amid trade tensions between the United States and both China and the European Union.
The EU is China’s biggest trade partner.
IN Israel, prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu returned home from Washington and headed straight into military consultations after a night of heavy fire as Israeli aircraft bombed Gaza.
Schools in southern Israel were cancelled following the violence that threatened to escalate into a major conflict two weeks before the Israeli elections.
Militants in Gaza retaliated by firing rockets into Israel, but the fighting subsided by this morning.
The cross-border fighting was triggered by a surprise rocket fired early Monday. There have been no fatalities on either side yet.
ELSEWHERE, Algeria’s powerful army chief wants to trigger the constitutional process that would declare ailing President Abdelaziz Bouteflika unfit for office.
After more a month of mass protests against Bouteflika’s long rule, army chief of staff Ahmed Gaid Salah said the solution to the political crisis is to apply Article 102 of the Algerian Constitution.
Under that article, the Constitutional Council could determine that the president is too ill to fully exercise his functions, and ask the parliament to declare him unfit.
The 82-year-old has barely been seen in public since a 2013 stroke.
MEANWHILE, the founder and the all-female editorial board of the Vatican’s women’s magazine have quit after what they say was a campaign to discredit them and put them “under the direct control of men” after they denounced the sexual abuse of nuns by clergy.
The editorial committee of Women Church World, a monthly glossy, made the announcement in a planned April 1 editorial and in an open letter to Pope Francis.
In the editorial, which went to the printer last week but has not been published, magazine founder Lucetta Scaraffia wrote: “We are throwing in the towel because we feel surrounded by a climate of distrust and progressive de-legitimisation.”
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