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Pope Francis on Thursday defended freedom of speech but said there are limits and that "you can't make a toy out of the religions of others."

. He defended freedom of expression as not only a fundamental human right but a duty to speak one's mind for the sake of the common good "without offending."

"It's normal, you cannot provoke," the pope said. "You cannot insult the faith of others. You cannot make fun of the faith of others. There is a limit. Every religion has its dignity."

The number of Democratic members of Congress saying they will boycott Donald Trump's inauguration on Friday has increased to 26.

Mr Trump lashed out at Mr Lewis on Twitter on Friday after Mr Lewis said he was not a "legitimate president".

Mr Lewis was a prominent member of America's civil rights movement and is a hero to many Americans. He was among those beaten by police during the infamous Selma-Montgomery voting rights march of 1965.

 hits last night in North Charleston.

hat's not right. It's not constitutional.

Cruz followed up with his own insult, calling Obama a "child" -- which appeared to borrow from one of Christie's favorite lines that labels Obama a "petulant child."

An American woman was unceremoniously thrown in jail in Zimbabwe on Saturday because police say she is behind a Twitter account which mocks the country's president even though someone else has taken credit for it and continues to goad the leader from it. 

It labeled Mugabe, 93, a 'selfish and sick' man and suggested he was relying on a catheter. 

Her lawyers tried to have her arrest thrown out on Saturday but their motion was denied. They plan to go to the high court on Monday to appeal her jailing. 

Donald Trump sarcastically responded to North Korea's insults that described him as a "destroyer" who "begged for nuclear war" during his tour of Asia.

In a statement lashing out at Trump on Saturday, North Korea also referred to him as a "dotard," a word meaning a very old person, and one the reclusive nation has used on him in the past. Trump fired back hours later. "Why would Kim Jong-un insult me by calling me 'old,' when I would NEVER call him 'short and fat?' Oh well, I try so hard to be his friend - and maybe someday that will happen!" Trump tweeted.

"The weapons you are acquiring are not making you safer, they are putting your regime in grave danger," Trump said about North Korea during an address at South Korea's National Assembly in Seoul. "Every step you take down this dark path increases the peril you face."

Every time we allowed ourselves to be even remotely optimistic, some new reminder arrived that we, an immature electorate, had elected a child.

In eight years in the White House there had been an uninterrupted stretch of calm and decency. In eight years there has been no scandal, not even a whiff of scandal, coming from the White House. That is a profoundly difficult thing to do, especially with the two houses of Congress in Republican hands and the president’s every move or hope met with biblical opposition.

For eight years we have been able to look to the White House and see a president who thinks and acts with cool deliberation, whose every sentence is well-considered. Anyone can disagree with President Obama’s policies but it cannot be denied that the first family acted with unerring decorum and amenity.

Millions tuned in every week to hear Trump say his signature line, “You’re fired,” and cement his image as a man who played up conflict for the cameras and who never met a self-promotional product placement he didn’t like. He was a quintessential reality star — and a senior Trump campaign adviser, Paul Manafort, said this past week that the mogul is still exactly that: “This is the ultimate reality show. It’s the presidency of the United States.”

Everyone may love to watch the villains and the insult-lobbing ringmasters on reality shows, but no one ever roots for them, which, technically, should not bode well for Trump’s chances. Technically.

The people who stick around longest on competition shows aren’t always the ones with the most “skill” at whatever it is the shows make contestants do. Often, they’re the ones who stir up the most hate-watch rage

In the Face of Weighty Problems, Trump Focuses on Squabbles

The morning after North Korea launched a ballistic missile into the sea, apparently to test President Trump’s resolve in his first days in office, the new commander in chief wanted to make one thing very clear to the world: Mark Cuban, the billionaire Dallas Mavericks owner, was not smart enough to have his job.

“He backed me big-time but I wasn’t interested in taking all of his calls. He’s not smart enough to run for president!”

Over the course of conducting hundreds of interviews with key players in the Bush White House, including Cheney, and examining thousands of pages of never-released notes, memos and other internal documents, I came to see a relationship that differs substantially from the commonly accepted narrative. Even in the early days, when a young, untested president relied on the advice of his seasoned No. 2, Cheney was hardly the puppeteer that critics imagined. To the extent that the vice president exerted outsize influence in the first term, he became more marginalized over the course of the second, as Bush sought new paths to right his troubled presidency.

Some Bush advisers objected even to the word “partnership,” since that implied equality. Cheney said he never forgot that he was the vice president, and by all accounts he made a point of showing deference to Bush. While Bush called him “Dick,” Cheney always called Bush “Mr. President” and with others referred to him as “the Man.” (Karl Rove, though, reportedly referred to Cheney as “Management” — as in, “Better check with Management” — suggesting an influence not generally associated with vice presidents.)

Cheney is just five years older than Bush, but he carried himself with the gravitas of a much more experienced man, and the president treated him with more respect than anyone else in the inner circle. In any meeting, though, it was clear who was in charge

A senior White House official has been sacked after being unmasked as the man behind a widely read Twitter account that provided an abrasive commentary on his colleagues for more than two years.

Jofi Joseph, 40, was fired from his job on the National Security Council nuclear non-proliferation team.

He apologised for his "inappropriate and mean-spirited comments".

Pope Francis has defended freedom of expression following last week's attack on French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo - but also stressed its limits.

religions had to be treated with respect, so that people's faiths were not insulted or ridiculed.

The magazine was targeted for publishing cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. It printed another cartoon of the Prophet on its front page after the attacks, angering some Muslims who say all depictions of the Prophet should be forbidden.

Many Muslims upset by the caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad published in Charlie Hebdo, the French satirical newspaper, argue that the issue is not about free speech but about the insult to a religious figure revered by roughly a quarter of the world’s population.

Less clear are the precise origins of the Muslim objection to visual depictions — insulting or otherwise — of the prophet and holy persons of any faith.

That objection, which Islamist militants have cited in justifying their deadly attack on Charlie Hebdo’s offices in Paris last week, has some roots in the Quran, which discourages image-making as a form of idol worship that demeans God.

Thursday night, Donald Trump stepped off a stage at the North Charleston Coliseum, in South Carolina,

Chances are we will be seeing more of them

Ted Cruz and Jeb Bush, who took their shots at the billionaire from New York, the other candidates seemed to have given up any hope of standing up to him.

Italy's populist Five Star Movement and anti-immigrant League parties have emerged as two major players in the latest elections - the most recent of several such results in Europe.

In political science, populism is the idea that society is separated into two groups at odds with one another - "the pure people" and "the corrupt elite", according to Cas Mudde, author of Populism: A Very Short Introduction.The term is often used as a kind of shorthand political insult. Britain's Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, has been accused of populism over his party's slogan "for the many, not the few" - but that's not quite the same thing.

Experts point to both societal changes like multiculturalism and globalism, and more concrete crises as behind the rise of populist parties in Europe.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on Wednesday dismissed Donald Trump as unqualified to deal with important international issues amid U.S. threats to potentially walk away from the landmark nuclear deal with Tehran.

"You don't have any background in politics," Reuters quoted him saying in comments directed at Trump. "You don't have any background in law. You don't have any background on international treaties.

Trump also warned that if Iran restarts its nuclear program it would "have bigger problems" than ever before.The White House has hoped to enlist European allies in new negotiations with Iran, but Europeans — including Macron — have warned that doing so would alienate Iran.

Germany became a modern, unified nation under the leadership of the “Iron Chancellor” Otto von Bismarck (1815-1898), who between 1862 and 1890 effectively ruled first Prussia and then all of Germany. A master strategist, Bismarck initiated decisive wars with Denmark, Austria and France to unite 39 independent German states under Prussian leadership.

Bismarck was educated in Berlin and after university took a series of minor diplomatic posts before retiring, at age 24, to run his family’s estate at Kneiphof. In 1847 he married and was sent to Berlin as a delegate to the new Prussian parliament, where he emerged as a reactionary voice against the liberal, anti-autocratic Revolutions of 1848.

William I became Prussia’s king in 1861 and a year later appointed Bismarck as his chief minister. Though technically deferring to William, in reality Bismarck was in charge, manipulating the king with his intellect and the occasional tantrum while using royal decrees to circumvent the power of elected officials.

Many critics have used the incident at Middlebury, as well as violent protests at the University of California Berkeley, to argue that free speech is under assault. To these critics, liberal activists who respond aggressively to ideas they dislike are hypocrites who care little about the liberal values of tolerance and free speech.

the truth is that violent demonstrations on campus are rare, and are not what the critics have primarily been railing against. Instead, they have been complaining about an atmosphere of intense pushback and protest that has made some speakers hesitant to express their views and has subjected others to a range of social pressure and backlash, from shaming and ostracism to boycotts and economic reprisal.

As Justice Louis D. Brandeis wrote in his celebrated 1927 opinion in Whitney v. California, “If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence.”