By NICOLE WINFIELD

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Leo XIV called Wednesday for humanitarian aid to reach the Gaza Strip and for an end to the “heartbreaking” toll on its people, as he presided over his first general audience in St. Peter’s Square.

The Vatican said that around 40,000 people were on hand for the audience, which came just days after an estimated 200,000 people attended the inaugural Mass on Sunday for history’s first American pope.

Leo, the former Cardinal Robert Prevost of Chicago, began the audience with a tour through the piazza in the popemobile and stopped to bless several babies. In addressing specific greetings to different groups of pilgrims, Leo spoke in his native English, his fluent Spanish as well as the traditional Italian of the papacy.

“I renew my heartfelt appeal to allow the entrance of dignified humanitarian aid to Gaza and to put an end to the hostilities whose heartbreaking price is being paid by children, the elderly and sick people,” he said.

The general audience on Wednesdays is a weekly appointment that popes have kept for decades to allow ordinary faithful to have a face-to-face encounter with the pontiff. It features the pope delivering a brief reflection on a theme or Scripture passage, with summaries provided by others in different languages and the pope directing specific messages to particular faith groups.

The encounter, which lasts more than an hour, usually ends with a brief topical appeal by the pope about a current issue or upcoming event. Leo began it with his now-frequent mantra “Peace be with you.”

To that end, Leo on Tuesday reaffirmed the Vatican’s willingness to host the next round of ceasefire talks between Russia and Ukraine during a phone call with Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni, the Italian leader’s office said.

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Meloni made the call after speaking with U.S. President Donald Trump and other European leaders, who asked her to verify the Holy See’s offer.

“Finding in the Holy Father the confirmation of the willingness to welcome the next talks between the parties, the premier expressed profound gratitude for Pope Leo XIV’s willingness and his incessant commitment in favor of peace,” Meloni’s office said in a statement late Tuesday.

Trump had referred to the Vatican’s longstanding offer to host talks in reporting on his phone call Monday with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

While low-level talks could take place in Rome, Italy would be hard-pressed to allow Putin to fly into Rome for any higher-level negotiation. Putin is subject to an international arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court, of which Italy is a founding member and therefore obliged to execute its warrants.

Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

By LINDSAY WHITEHURST, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — A judge has ordered U.S. officials to appear at an emergency hearing Wednesday to answer questions about their apparent deportation of immigrants to South Sudan and other countries.

U.S. District Judge Brian E. Murphy in Massachusetts ruled late Tuesday that the Trump administration must retain custody and control of those “currently being removed to South Sudan or to any other third country, to ensure the practical feasibility of return” if he finds such removals were unlawful. Lawyers for immigrants said the Republican administration appears to have begun deporting people from Myanmar and Vietnam to South Sudan despite a court order restricting removals to other countries.

The judge left the details to the government’s discretion, but said he expects the migrants “will be treated humanely.”

FILE – Internally displaced people walk along a street in Juba, South Sudan, Thursday, Feb. 13, 2025. (AP Photo/Brian Inganga, File)

Attorneys for the migrants told the judge that immigration authorities may have sent as many as a dozen people from several countries to Africa. The lawyers say that violates a court order that people have a “meaningful opportunity” to argue that sending them to a country outside their homeland would threaten their safety.

The apparent removal of one man from Myanmar was confirmed in an email from an immigration official in Texas, according to court documents. He was informed only in English, a language he does not speak well, and his lawyers learned of the plan hours before his deportation flight, they said.

A woman also reported that her husband from Vietnam and up to 10 other people were flown to Africa on Tuesday morning, attorneys from the National Immigration Litigation Alliance wrote.

The lawyers asked Murphy for an emergency court order to prevent the deportations.

Murphy, who was nominated by Democratic President Joe Biden, previously found that any plans to deport people to Libya without notice would “clearly” violate his ruling, which also applies to people who have otherwise exhausted their legal appeals.

Murphy summoned U.S. officials to court Wednesday to identify the migrants impacted, address when and how they learned they would be removed to a third country and what opportunity they were given to raise a fear-based claim. He also ruled that the government must provide information about the whereabouts of the migrants apparently already removed.

The Department of Homeland Security and the White House did not immediately return messages seeking comment.

South Sudan’s police spokesperson Major General James Monday Enoka told The Associated Press on Wednesday that no migrants had arrived in the country and that if they do, they would be investigated and again “redeported to their correct country” if found not to be South Sudanese.

Some countries do not accept deportations from the United States. That has led the administration to strike agreements with other countries, including Panama, to house them. The U.S. has sent Venezuelans to a notorious prison in El Salvador under an 18th-century wartime law, an action being contested in the courts.

South Sudan has endured repeated waves of violence since gaining independence from Sudan in 2011 amid hopes it could use its large oil reserves to bring prosperity to a region long battered by poverty. Just weeks ago, the country’s top U.N. official warned that fighting between forces loyal to the president and a vice president threatened to spiral again into full-scale civil war.

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The situation is “darkly reminiscent of the 2013 and 2016 conflicts, which took over 400,000 lives,” Nicholas Haysom, head of the almost 20,000-strong U.N. peacekeeping mission.

The State Department’s annual report on South Sudan, published in April 2024, says “significant human rights issues” include arbitrary killings, disappearances, torture or inhumane treatment by security forces and extensive violence based on gender and sexual identity.

The Homeland Security Department has given Temporary Protected Status to a small number of South Sudanese already living in the United States, shielding them from deportation because conditions were deemed unsafe for return. Secretary Kristi Noem recently extended those protections to November to allow for a more thorough review.

South Sudan’s diplomatic relations with the U.S grew tense in April when a deportation row led to the revocation of visas and a ban on South Sudanese nationals.

The U.S is one of the biggest donors to South Sudan’s humanitarian aid programs with the total funding in 2024 standing at over $640 million, according to the U.S embassy in South Sudan.

Associated Press writers Tim Sullivan in Minneaopolis, Elliot Spagat in San Diego and Rebecca Santana in contributed to this report.

While politicians, environmental groups and union leaders rejoiced that Empire Wind can move forward, some worry the Trump administration’s concession is meant to pressure Gov. Hochul to approve local gas pipeline projects. 

Gov. Kathy Hochul at a press conference about offshore wind opportunities in 2022. (Flickr/Governor Kathy Hochul)

The U.S Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) lifted a month-long stop work order Monday on the New York-based offshore wind project, Empire Wind 1. 

Although it took 14 years to secure federal approvals for the venture, on April 16 the Trump administration had halted work on the project, claiming the approval process had been “rushed.”

But Empire Wind was set to power 500,000 homes in New York City with clean energy and create more than 1,000 union jobs in New York communities, leading environmental groups and politicians to push back on the federal hold. 

“I fought to save clean energy jobs in New York—and we got it done,” Gov. Kathy Hochul said in a statement this week. The governor was on the phone with President Donald Trump three times over the weekend, for over an hour each time, fighting to bring the project back, her Deputy Communications Director Paul DeMichele told City Limits.

Although environmentalists applaud the governor’s effort, it’s also spurred speculation that Hochul may have struck a deal with the administration to bring more gas into the state in exchange for lifting the stop-work order. 

President Trump said earlier this year that he wanted to revive fracked gas projects like the Constitution Pipeline, a major venture by the Williams company that sought to transport fracked gas from Pennsylvania to the Southern tier of New York. New York State rejected permits for the project in 2016 and the company pulled out of the venture in 2020.

“I am encouraged by Governor Hochul’s comments about her willingness to move forward on critical pipeline capacity,” Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum, who ordered Empire Wind’s pause, said on the social media platform X hours after the administration agreed to resume the project. 

But the governor’s office told City Limits the social media nod did not mean they agreed to approve any projects in return. 

DeMichele confirmed that during lengthy conversations with Trump over the weekend, gas pipeline projects were brought up, but said “no deal on any natural gas pipeline was reached.”

However, Hochul’s office said the governor is not opposed to pipeline projects more generally, as long as they have undergone the necessary permitting processes issued by the state authorities.

“New York will work with the Administration and private entities on new energy projects that meet the legal requirements under New York law,” the governor said in a statement.

Environmental groups warn that  new gas pipeline projects would usher in more planet-warming emissions into the state, accelerating the impacts of climate change. But utility companies and some experts argue that added gas supply is necessary, saying there still isn’t enough clean energy available to heat New York homes, especially in the winter.

The South Brooklyn Marine Terminal in Sunset Park is being revived as an operation and maintenance hub for the Empire Wind project. (Adi Talwar for City Limits)

 ‘So much at stake‘

Putting Empire Wind on hold would have dealt a blow to New York’s local economies, City Limits reported earlier this month.

The project, BOEM projects, will generate $195 million in income for New York City and inject $1.6 billion into the state-wide economy during the planning and construction phases, according to developer Equinor.

It also seeks to breathe new life into the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal (SBMT), an industrial port in Sunset Park that serves as an operational and maintenance hub for Empire Wind and other offshore ventures.

The project ushered in business to the industrial zone, which has long been overlooked for economic investment, into what the city calls “a prime destination for environmentally sustainable industry.”

A Project Labor Agreement (PLA) that Equinor signed for the construction of SBMT guaranteed “over 1,000 union construction jobs and apprenticeships in local New York communities.” The agreement prioritizes hiring union members from the Sunset Park community, and secondarily, union members from New York City. It also gives hiring priority to union members who are NYCHA residents and veterans.

“There was so much at stake for the renewable energy industry, the union employees who would be performing the work, and the opportunities for the surrounding communities to participate in the project,” said Christopher Erikson in a statement. 

Erikson is business manager at Local Union No. 3 IBEW, representing the workers at Sunset Park’s marine terminal.

Despite its reversal on Empire Wind, the Trump administration said it’s still reconsidering a federal grant to build an onshore and offshore wind safety training facility un upstate New York. And an executive order that suspended new leasing and permitting for wind projects is still at large. 

Raking in record donations from the fossil fuel industry while running for office, Trump has continuously positioned himself against non-polluting renewable energy sources like wind and has encouraged drilling for more oil and gas instead.

At the same time, environmental groups worry Gov. Hochul’s commitment to significantly lowering New York’s greenhouse gas emissions may be waning, citing the state’s approval of another pipeline expansion project earlier this year. 

The decision is out of step with New York’s Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act, they argue. The CLCPA, passed by Albany in 2019, established a roadmap for the state to mostly phase out planet-warming fossil fuels like gas by 2050, and transition to clean energy instead.

“We and others will fight tooth and nail to stop new fracked gas pipelines the state already rejected, if Hochul is doing a deal to approve those. Hell no to that,” said Pete Sikora, climate and inequality campaigns director with New York Communities for Change.

To reach the reporter behind this story, contact Mariana@citylimits.org. To reach the editor, contact Jeanmarie@citylimits.org

Want to republish this story? Find City Limits’ reprint policy here.

The post Trump Lifts Pause on NY Offshore Wind Project, But Does it Come at a Price? appeared first on City Limits.

JERUSALEM (AP) — U.S. President Donald Trump’s plan for a “Golden Dome” to protect the United States from long-range missiles was at least partly inspired by Israel’s multitiered missile defenses.

Trump announced the $175 billion concept in the Oval Office on Tuesday, saying it would put U.S. weapons in space for the first time and be would be “fully operational” by the end of his term in early 2029, though a U.S. official familiar with the program said it could take longer.

Israel’s multilayered defenses, often collectively referred to as the “Iron Dome,” have played a key role in defending it from rocket and missile fire from Iran and allied militant groups in the conflict unleashed by Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 terrorist attack.

FILE – Israeli Iron Dome air defense system fires to intercept a rocket fired from the Gaza Strip, in Ashkelon, Israel, on Oct. 20, 2023. (AP Photo/Avi Roccah, File)

The sophisticated system, developed over decades with considerable U.S. support, is capable of detecting incoming fire and deploying only if the projectile is headed toward a population center or sensitive military or civilian infrastructure. Israeli leaders say the system isn’t 100% guaranteed, but credit it with preventing serious damage and countless casualties.

Here’s a closer look at Israel’s multilayered air-defense system:

The Arrow

This system developed with the U.S. is designed to intercept long-range missiles. The Arrow, which operates outside the atmosphere, has been used to intercept long-range missiles launched by Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen and by Iran itself during two direct exchanges of fire last year.

David’s Sling

Also developed with the U.S., David’s Sling is meant to intercept medium-range missiles, such as those possessed by Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group. It was deployed on multiple occasions throughout the war with Hezbollah, which ended with a ceasefire last year.

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Iron Dome

This system, developed by Israel with U.S. backing, specializes in shooting down short-range rockets. It has intercepted thousands of rockets since it was activated early last decade — including volleys launched by Hamas and Hezbollah. Israel says it has a success rate of over 90%.

Iron Beam

Israel is developing a new system to intercept incoming threats with laser technology. Israel has said this system will be a game changer because it would be much cheaper to operate than existing systems. According to Israeli media reports, the cost of a single Iron Dome interception is about $50,000, while the other systems can run more than $2 million per missile. Iron Beam interceptions, by contrast, would cost a few dollars apiece, according to Israeli officials — but the system is not yet operational.