Globe Trot: European workers cry 'May Day' over unemployment

Workers across Europe are protesting on this May Day, demanding their governments tackle record-high unemployment with (surprise) more government bailouts.

Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy took aim at the liberal economic policy of his successor. Speaking publicly for the first time since losing office last year, he told Canadian businessmen, “If the euro implodes, the EU will explode,” and blamed President François Hollande for sparking further unrest with a divisive push to legalize gay marriage: “France is a country with Christian roots. … And during an economic crisis, a president has to be very careful not to divide the country.”

One week after the catastrophic factory collapse in in Savar, Bangladesh, the death toll has topped 400. Of the owners who left thousands of garment workers trapped inside, Pope Francis said yesterday, “Not paying a just [wage], not providing work, focusing exclusively on the balance books, on financial statements, only looking at making personal profit. That goes against God!”

Republican isolationism, once confined to the nosebleed seats, is making a comeback. “Republicans who can’t see the difference between aircraft carrier battle groups and soya bean subsidies are simply unwitting pawns in the Left’s game plan,” writes John Bolton. “Obama is entirely comfortable with American decline from a position he and the transatlantic Left think is unfairly privileged.

The independent U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) released its annual report yesterday. Chairman Katrina Lantos Swett told WORLD the U.S. government should make religious freedom a higher priority, given it is not only a moral goal but also a national security goal to combat extremism. “Pursuing religious freedom helps solve those other issues,” she said.

USCIRF research director Knox Thames highlights Pakistan’s abysmal record on religious tolerance.

Guantanamo isn’t the problem. It’s executive branch negligence in dealing with enemy combatants held there and granting due process.

Pressure is mounting for release of the Syrian bishops kidnapped last week, with leading Muslim clerics in Damascus denouncing their abduction and demanding they be set free. The Organization of Islamic Cooperation also called for the bishops’ “immediate and unconditional” release

Wycliffe Bible Translators said it would comply with a panel recommendation about literal translations of “God the Father” and “Son of God” in Muslim contexts. The panel, headed by the World Evangelical Alliance, “recommends that when the words for ‘father’ and ‘son’ refer to God the Father and to the Son of God, these words always be translated with the most directly equivalent familial words within the given linguistic and cultural context of the recipients,” the report says.

Here’s how Christianity Today in reported the finding: “Bible translations that avoid the phrase ‘Son of God’ have proven successful among Muslims. But dismay by some missionaries and scholars recently led at least two denominations—including the three-million-member Assemblies of God—to threaten boycotts of Wycliffe Bible Translators unless it ended the practice. …”

Virginia tobacco farmers are turning to chickpeas, and Israel is buying up the American-made hummus they’re turning out.