In Brief: Nation & World: 6-27-16

Pope: Gays and others marginalized deserve an apology

ABOARD THE PAPAL PLANE — Pope Francis says gays — and all the other people the church has marginalized, such as the poor and the exploited — deserve an apology.

Francis was asked Sunday en route home from Armenia if he agreed with one of his top advisers, German Cardinal Reinhard Marx, who told a conference in Dublin in the days after the deadly Orlando gay club attack that the church owes an apology to gays for having marginalized them.

Francis responded with a variation of his famous “Who am I to judge?” comment and a repetition of church teaching that gays must not be discriminated against but treated with respect.

He said some politicized behaviors of the homosexual community can be condemned for being “a bit offensive for others.” But he said: “Someone who has this condition, who has good will and is searching for God, who are we to judge?”

“We must accompany them,” Francis said.

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British political turmoil deepens after EU referendum

LONDON — Britain’s shocking decision to remove itself from the European Union brought more political turmoil Sunday as Scotland’s leader threatened to block the move and the opposition Labour Party’s leader faced a coup attempt from his own legislators.

The sense of unease spread as European leaders stepped up the pressure on Britain to begin its complex exit from the 28-nation EU immediately, rather than wait several months as British Prime Minister David Cameron prefers.

The vote to leave sent the pound and global stock markets plunging. Britain’s Treasury said finance minister George Osborne would make an early morning statement Monday “to provide reassurance about financial and economic stability” before the London Stock Exchange reopens.

The leaders of the successful campaign to leave the EU stayed largely out of the public eye, as opponents accused them of lacking a plan to calm the crisis the result has triggered. In his first statement since Friday morning, “leave” leader and former London Mayor Boris Johnson used his column in the Daily Telegraph newspaper to urge unity and say “the negative consequences (of the vote) are being wildly overdone.”

He said Britain would forge “a new and better relationship with the EU — based on free trade and partnership, rather than a federal system.”

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British expatriates fear for their future after UK vote

BENIDORM, Spain — Tad Dawson’s pub in this Spanish vacation town was doing a brisk business in the summer sun. The only dark clouds he saw were coming from the bar’s TV, tuned to a British news channel.

Inside the Yorkshire Pride were many British tourists watching the screen as their prime minister announced his resignation Friday after the U.K. voted to leave the European Union.

Dawson, a 51-year-old Englishman who has lived in Spain since the 1990s, admits the decoupling of Britain from the EU other 27 member nations has him spooked.

His future is suddenly uncertain.

“We’re very scared because I’ve been here 23 years. I’ve got my house, my kids were born here, they went to a British-Spanish school, I’ve got a bar, I’ve got a lot to lose,” Dawson said at his pub, which was decked out with the red-and-white English flags featuring the St. George’s Cross.

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For Trump and Brexit voters, echoes of the same frustrations

MAYBOLE, Scotland — At the heart of the campaign that led Britain to vote to leave the European Union was a desire to regain independence lost amid a globalized world. It’s the same kind of feeling that Donald Trump rode to become the presumptive Republican nominee in the U.S., where he campaigns to put “America first” and “make America great again.”

“I love to see people take their country back. And that’s really what’s happening in the United States,” Trump told reporters this weekend during a visit to his golf resort in western Scotland.

The anxiety that drove the stunning “Brexit” decision has been brewing for at least a decade in the United Kingdom, as waves of immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe arrived as the global economy plunged into recession. In the years since, right-leaning leaders have stoked populist concerns about their impact on wages, as well as fears about the loss of ethnic identity, which runs deep in parts of largely white rural England and Wales.

“There’s a real feeling things have changed and they’ve changed too fast,” said Muriel MacGregor, filling up her car at a BP station on her way to work as a clerk at a hotel in Aberdeen, Scotland.

MacGregor, 52, said that, unlike many of her friends, she proudly voted for “leave.” ”This isn’t the country I remember from growing up. I don’t know exactly what happens next. I don’t think anybody does. But I really feel like we needed something different, because this isn’t working,” she said.

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Fallujah fully liberated from IS group, Iraqi commander says

BAGHDAD — Five weeks after a military operation began, a senior Iraqi commander declared Sunday that the city of Fallujah was “fully liberated” from the Islamic State group, giving a major boost to the country’s security and political leadership in its fight against the extremists.

Recapturing Fallujah, the first city to fall to the Islamic State group more than two years ago, means that authorities can now set their sights on militant-held Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city.

Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, visiting central Fallujah with the celebrating troops, vowed that the Iraqi flag would next be raised above Mosul. But that campaign has been progressing in fits and starts, revealing the deep divisions among the different groups that make up the security forces.

Iraqi troops entered Fallujah’s northwestern neighborhood of al-Julan, the last part of the city under IS control, said Lt. Gen. Abdul-Wahab al-Saadi, head of the counterterrorism forces in the operation.

The operation, which began May 22, “is done, and the city is fully liberated,” al-Saadi told The Associated Press.

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Argentina’s ‘stolen babies’ seek truth, face ghosts

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina — Pedro Sandoval stopped celebrating Mother’s Day, Father’s Day and even his own birthday after he found out the truth: The mom and dad he knew growing up had stolen him from his biological parents, who were kidnapped, tortured and never heard from again during Argentina’s 1976-1983 military dictatorship.

“I’m still jealous of friends who can hug or get into arguments with their parents,” said Sandoval, 38, alluding to the biological parents he never met. “But I’m also thankful that I could at least hug my grandfather and grandmother.”

Four decades after the ruling military junta launched a systematic plan to steal babies born to political prisoners, Argentina’s search for truth is increasingly focused on the 500 or so newborns whisked away and raised by surrogate families. Several hundred have yet to be accounted for.

This spring a visiting U.S. President Barack Obama and Argentine President Mauricio Macri announced, on the 40th anniversary of the coup that brought the junta to power, that Washington would open up a trove of U.S. intelligence files from Argentina’s Dirty War era, when an estimated 30,000 people were killed or forcibly “disappeared” by the regime. It may take a few years for the documents to be released, but the news gave families hope for word on the fate of other stolen babies.

For the children who have already been found, coming to grips with the past is a painful process.

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Owners of AR-style firearms defend their weapon of choice

ATLANTA — Karen Butler still remembers the first time she picked up an AR-15-style rifle a decade ago.

“Quite honestly, I was scared of it,” she recalls.

But as soon as she fired it, she became a fan.

“You know some of these people that are fearful, it’s just because they don’t have knowledge,” she said. “We call it furniture — it’s got all the accessories on it that make it look a little intimidating. But once you shoot it you realize it’s so much fun.”

Butler, of Huntsville, Alabama, started Shoot Like a Girl, an outfit that seeks to introduce and inspire women to participate in shooting sports.

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Primary odd couple pushes to unite Democratic party

WASHINGTON — It seemed like a surprising party of two.

There was Robby Mook, Hillary Clinton’s top campaign aide, known for his calm temperament and fiercely disciplined ways, and Jeff Weaver, a combative political fighter often called Bernie Sanders’ alter ego, sharing a Friday night dinner at The Farmhouse Tap & Grill in Burlington, Vermont.

But over the long months of a frequently contentious primary, the two rival Democratic campaign managers struck up an unusually friendly relationship, founded on exhaustion, goofy jokes and a shared affection for their home state of Vermont.

They talk almost daily, text frequently and email often.

Now, as Sanders lingers in the presidential race, refusing to concede the nomination to Clinton even as he says he’ll vote for her on Election Day, the competing campaign managers have become a powerful political odd couple, responsible for engineering a graceful conclusion to a hard-fought Democratic contest.

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New election fails to clarify Spain’s political future

MADRID — Spain’s repeat election Sunday failed to clarify the political future of the European Union’s fifth-largest economy, as another inconclusive ballot compelled political leaders to resume six months of negotiations on who should form a government.

The conservative Popular Party, which has ruled for the past four years, again collected the most votes in the election but still fell shy of the majority of 176 seats it needs in the 350-seat Parliament to form a government on its own.

With 99.9 percent of the votes counted late Sunday, incumbent prime minister Mariano Rajoy’s party had picked up 137 seats in Parliament. That is better than the 123 it won in December but still means it will need allies if it wants to govern. Its earlier efforts to find support from rival parties after December proved fruitless.

Even so, Rajoy declared he would make a push for power, telling a victory rally in Madrid, “We won the election, we demand the right to govern.”

It is unlikely to be as simple as that, however. For the past six months, the main parties have quarreled endlessly over who should assume power. In the end, King Felipe VI had to call another election. A third one, in six months’ time, is still a possibility.