RABAT: Pope Francis told a small Catholic community in predominantly Muslim Morocco on Sunday that their mission should not be covert their neighbors.

The Pope suggested them to live in brotherhood with other faiths, report said.

Pope Francis used his trip to stress inter-faith dialogue. He also backed Moroccan King Mohammed VI’s efforts to spread a form of Islam, which promotes inter-religious dialogue.

Morocco has some 23,000 Roman Catholics – most of them French and other European expatriates and migrants from sub-Saharan Africa. They make up less than one percent of the population of 35 million. (Agencies)

SYDNEY: As the United States and China gear up for signing a trade deal, oil prices firmed on Monday, ending a tit-for-tat tariff row that has roiled financial markets across the globe.

International Brent futures were at $65.25 a barrel at 0022 GMT, up 0.3 percent, from their last close. Brent fell 1.5 percent on Friday.

U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures were at $56.05 per barrel, up 0.5 percent. WTI futures fell 2.5 percent on Friday.

Given the progress in talks between the two countries, US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping could reach a formal trade deal at a summit around March 27, the Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday.

(Agencies)

MIAMI: U.S. President Donald Trump has warned the Venezuela’s military, loyal to President Nicolas Maduro, that they are risking their future, and urged them to allow humanitarian aid into the country.

Speaking to a crowd of Venezuelan and Cuban immigrants in Miami, Trump warned if Venezuela’s military continues to support Maduro, they will find no safe harbor, no easy exit and no way out. They will lose everything.

Maduro, however, reacted that Trump’s speech was “nazi-style” alleging Trump of acting as if he were the owner of Venezuela and the citizens his slaves. (Reuters)

At least 17 people died and several others injured when a fire broke out at a hotel in the Indian capital New Delhi on Tuesday, reports said.

According to agencies, the hotel, which is located in the congested Karol Bagh area, is thronged by tourists.

Police said some 35 people were rescued in the wee hours after fire tenders were rushed to the area. Reports said most people were sleeping, and several of them died due to suffocation. (Agencies)

At least 10 people, mostly young athletes, died when a fire engulfed a dormitory at the youth team training center of one of Brazil’s biggest football clubs, reports said.

The fire broke out at Ninho de Urubu, the training ground of Flamengo football club, in Rio de Janeiro injuring three people.

The cause of the fire is not yet known, according to reports. Flamengo is one of Brazil’s biggest and best-known clubs internationally. The fire was later extinguished, according to the G1 news portal.

The injured were taken to a nearby hospital, firefighters say. Flamengo being one of Brazil’s most successful football clubs, has basketball, rowing, swimming and volleyball teams. (Agencies)

LONDON: British Prime Minister Theresa May unveiled her Brexit Plan B on Monday – and it looks a lot like Plan A.
May launched a mission to resuscitate her rejected European Union divorce deal, setting out plans to get it approved by Parliament after securing changes from the EU to a contentious Irish border measure. May’s opponents expressed incredulity: British lawmakers last week dealt the deal a resounding defeat, and EU leaders insist they won’t renegotiate it.
Opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn of the Labour Party accused May of being in “deep denial” about her doomed deal.
“This really does feel a bit like ‘Groundhog Day,’” he said, referring to the 1993 film starring Bill Murray, in which a weatherman is fated to live out the same day over and over again.
Outlining what she plans to do after her EU divorce deal was rejected by Parliament last week, May said that she had heeded lawmakers’ concerns over an insurance policy known as the “backstop” that is intended to guarantee there are no customs checks along the border between EU member Ireland and the U.K.’s Northern Ireland after Brexit.
May told the House of Commons that she would be “talking further this week to colleagues … to consider how we might meet our obligations to the people of Northern Ireland and Ireland in a way that can command the greatest possible support in the House.
“And I will then take the conclusions of those discussions back to the EU.” The bloc insists that it won’t renegotiate the withdrawal agreement. “She is wasting time calling for a revision or clarification over the backstop,” said German politician Udo Bullmann, head of the socialist group in the European Parliament.
While May stuck doggedly to her deal, she also acknowledged that control over Brexit wasn’t entirely in her hands. She noted that lawmakers will be able to amend her plan when it comes to a vote in the House of Commons on Jan. 29, exactly two months before Britain is due to leave the EU.
Groups of “soft Brexit”-backing lawmakers – who want to keep close economic ties to the bloc – are planning to use amendments to try to rule out a “no-deal” Brexit and make May ease her insistence that leaving the EU means quitting its single market and customs union.
Britain and the EU sealed a divorce deal in November after months of tense negotiations. But the agreement has been rejected by both sides of Britain’s divide over Europe. Brexit-backing lawmakers say it will leave the U.K. tethered to the bloc’s rules and unable to forge an independent trade policy. Pro-Europeans argue it is inferior to the frictionless economic relationship Britain currently enjoys as an EU member.
After her deal was thrown out last week by a crushing 432-202 vote in Parliament, May said she would consult with lawmakers from all parties to find a new way forward.
But Corbyn called the cross-party meetings a “stunt,” and other opposition leaders said the prime minister didn’t seem to be listening. On Monday, May rejected calls from pro-EU lawmakers to delay Britain’s departure from the bloc or to hold a second referendum on whether to leave.
In a nod to opposition parties’ concerns, she promised to consult lawmakers, trade unionists, business groups and civil society organizations “to try to find the broadest possible consensus” on future ties between Britain and the EU, and said the government wouldn’t water down protections for the environment and workers’ rights after Brexit.
May also said the government had decided to waive a 65 pound ($84) fee for EU citizens in Britain who want to stay permanently after Brexit.
Guy Verhofstadt, the head of the EU Parliament Brexit steering group, welcomed news that the fee was being dropped for 3 million EU nationals, saying it had been a “key demand” for the EU legislature. May’s immediate goal is to win over pro-Brexit Conservatives and her party’s Northern Irish ally, the Democratic Unionist Party. Both groups say they won’t back the deal unless the border backstop is removed.
The backstop proposes to keep the U.K. in a customs union with the EU in order to avoid checks on the Irish border. It is meant as a temporary measure that would last until a permanent solution is found. But pro-Brexit U.K. lawmakers fear Britain could become trapped in it, indefinitely bound by EU trade rules. Polish Foreign Minister Jacek Czaputowicz broke ranks with EU colleagues Monday by suggesting the problem could be solved by setting a five-year time limit on the backstop.
The idea got a cool reception. Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney said that “putting a time-limit on an insurance mechanism, which is what the backstop is, effectively means that it’s not a backstop at all.” Britain’s political impasse over Brexit is fueling concerns that the country may crash out of the EU on March 29 with no agreement in place to cushion the shock. That could see tariffs imposed on goods moving between Britain and the EU, sparking logjams at ports and shortages of essential supplies.
Carolyn Fairbairn, director-general of the Confederation of British Industry, said Monday was “another bleak day for business.” “Parliament remains in deadlock while the slope to a cliff edge steepens,” she said. Several groups of lawmakers are trying to use parliamentary rules and amendments to May’s plan to block the possibility of Britain leaving the EU without a deal.
One of those legislators, Labour’s Yvette Cooper, said May was shirking her responsibility to the country by refusing to take “no deal” off the table. “I think she knows that she should rule out ‘no deal’ in the national interest because it would be so damaging,” Cooper told the BBC. “She’s refusing to do so, and I think she’s hoping that Parliament will do this for her. That is not leadership.” AP

LONDON : The number of children taught in academy or free schools in England has for the first time exceeded the numbers in schools run by town and city councils, figures released Wednesday have revealed.
The Department for Education (DfT) said standards are rising faster in many academies than in similar council-run schools.
Education Secretary Damian Hinds hailed the milestone as a decisive moment and urged more schools to consider the freedom and opportunities offered by becoming an academy.
Until schools were given power to determine their own destinies virtually all schools were controlled and governed by local education authorities.
A spokesperson for the DfT said: “Today’s figures reflect school leaders’ recognition of the autonomy and freedom to innovate offered by the academies program, alongside the increased ability to make decisions in the interests of staff and pupils.
“This has included measures such as altering the length of the school day or adapting the curriculum to help every child access a school that meets their needs, interests and abilities.
“More than 8,300 schools in the country have become an academy or opened as a free school, with hundreds of schools making the positive choice to convert to become an academy in the last 12 months alone.”
The academies program was introduced to improve pupil performance and break the cycle of low expectation.
The 2010 Academies Act gave all schools in England the freedom to choose to become an academy and now over 50 percent of pupils in the state funded education system are taught in an academy or free school.
Alongside schools that have chosen to become an academy, some have been taken out of local authority control through government intervention because of educational underperformance.
Also published on Wednesday is an analysis shows in many cases standards have risen more quickly in under-performing schools that have become academies than in similar council-run schools.
Hinds said: “In the past, schools that failed were allowed to stay under local authority control for far too long. Academies have changed all that. Failing schools can now be taken away from local bureaucracies who have not been able to improve them and given to school leaders who can.”
Leora Cruddas, CEO of the Confederation of School Trusts, said: “This is an important moment. School trusts are no longer a small project in a much larger education system.”  (Xinhua)