BEIRUT (CNS): “We appeal to the international community to shoulder its responsibility and strive to put an end to the ongoing conflicts and wars and to ensure the dignified return of the Palestinian refugees and displaced Syrians, Iraqis and others to their country,” Bechara Cardinal Rai, patriarch of Antoich and head of the Maronite Church said, as Lebanon’s Christian and Muslim religious leaders, met with the president of Switzerland, Alain Berset.
 

ROME (CNS): Tweeting with hashtags that translate as “Closed ports” and “Open hearts,” Matteo Salvini, the interior minister of Italy, disputed claims that the Italian government was complicit in leaving a migrant to die in the Mediterranean Sea as she clung to a board from a destroyed fishing boat.
 
Salvini strongly supported Italy’s policy of having the Libyan coast guard patrol its own shores, pushing back refugee boats or taking the migrants and refugees back to camps in Libya.
 

HONG KONG (SE): The knee-jerk reaction of the president of the United States of America (US), Donald Trump, to the attack in the streets of New York on October 31 to put in place what he termed extreme vetting on all migrants coming into the country appears to be a choice to demonise an unseen enemy rather than face the reality of what has happened.
 

ROME (CNS): Violence erupted in Rome when police attempted to clear around 100 mostly Eritreans and Ethiopians with official refugee status from a square near the main Roma Termini railway station on August 24.
 
Police claim they were forced to use water cannons after people started throwing things at them and hitting them with sticks.
 
On August 19, some 800 refugees had been evicted from an abandoned building nearby, where they had be sheltering since 2013.
 

TOKYO (UCAN): Michiko Inukai, a nationally-known Catholic author who supported refugees in Japan and abroad, died on July 24 due to advanced age. She was 96.
 
Inukai was a granddaughter of the prime minister, Tsuyoshi Inukai, whose assassination by young naval officers in 1932 marked the end of effective civilian control of the Japanese government until after World War II.
 

KUALA LUMPUR (AsiaNews): The Malaysian government has become one of the first to introduce a skills training programme for the Rohingya people who have fled persecution in the Union of Myanmar and failed to find a welcome in Bangladesh or Thailand.

The programme is aimed at turning out semi-skilled workers that can be absorbed into the country’s labour market. It will also normalise their status in the country in order to give them the protection of labour legislation.