CNN
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President Donald Trump’s intense pressure on Ukraine and deference to Russia’s President Vladimir Putin is extinguishing any lingering notion that the United States is an evenhanded peace broker.

The US effort leans heavily toward Russia’s positions, even though Moscow started the war with its unprovoked invasion. This stems from Trump’s view of a war in which Kyiv “has no cards to play.”

The president forcibly denied on Thursday that he has a dog in the fight, saying he was simply motivated by a desire to end a war that has killed thousands of civilians.

“I have no allegiance to anybody. I have allegiance to saving lives, and I want to save a lot of lives, a lot of young people’s — mostly young people,” the president said.

But the unbalanced nature of the US peace effort can be seen in Trump’s deliberately unspecific language about the conflict and the strange, even bizarre ways that he’s talking about the war.

Early Thursday morning, Russia shot 70 missiles and launched 145 drones toward Ukraine. Most raced to Kyiv in the most murderous attack on the capital in nine months. At least 12 people were killed and 90 were injured as casualties were trapped under the rubble of residential buildings. The capital’s terrified residents were forced back into their air raid shelters — some taking their small kids and pets with them.

Trump’s response to this resumption of terror? A tepid posting on his Truth Social account that seemed most concerned with when the attacks took place than with the carnage wreaked on defenseless civilians. “I am not happy with the Russian strikes on KYIV. Not necessary, and very bad timing. Vladimir, STOP!” Trump wrote. “Let’s get the Peace Deal DONE!”

The president expanded on his post during an Oval Office appearance later in the day.

“I didn’t like last night. I wasn’t happy with it, and we’re in the midst of talking peace, and missiles were fired, and I was not happy with it,” Trump said, noticeably using a passive tense and not blaming Putin directly.

Another US president might have offered condolences to the victims, pointed out that deliberately targeting civilians is a war crime and threatened consequences. But Trump’s response was consistent with his long practice of refusing to connect the results of horrific attacks with the leader who ordered them.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who blasted Putin as a “thug” and a “gangster” during his 2016 presidential campaign, was on the Oval Office sofa Thursday afternoon. He adopted Trump’s obfuscatory tenses in a way that almost implied Russian missiles ended up in Kyiv all by themselves. “What happened last night with those missile strikes should remind everybody why this war needs to end,” Rubio said. “It’s horrible, those missiles landed, but what’s even worse is there are … people that were alive yesterday that are not alive today because this war continues.”

The administration’s limp language about Putin contrasted with the fierce dressing-down of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in that same Oval Office in March. Trump went after the Ukrainian president again this week after Zelensky ruled out recognizing Russia’s annexation of Crimea.

On Truth Social, Trump complained about “Inflammatory statements like Zelensky’s that makes it so difficult to settle this War. He has nothing to boast about! The situation for Ukraine is dire — He can have Peace or, he can fight for another three years before losing the whole Country.”

The contrast in the president’s tone toward the two leaders is remarkable.

“When Zelensky dares to speak the truth, Trump truly slams him,” John Herbst, the former US ambassador to Ukraine told Paula Newton on CNN International. “When Putin murders civilians with ballistic missiles he’s merely corrected. Or slightly chastised.”

Trump got defensive on Thursday, when he was asked what concessions Russia had made in the conflict, compared to his constant pressure on Ukraine.

“Stopping the war, stopping taking the whole country. Pretty big concession,” Trump said.

This answer betrays a strange misunderstanding of what happened in the war and shows just how comprehensively Trump views the war through Putin’s lens.

The reason a Russian-backed president is not running Ukraine now is that the country’s armed forces performed a heroic rearguard action that shocked the world at the start of the war and saved the capital. And years of arms and ammunition transfers from the US and its European allies kept it that way.

“It is absolutely no concession,” Oleksandr Merezhko, a member of Ukraine’s parliament, told CNN’s Jim Sciutto on “The Brief.” “From my perspective at least, it is absolutely absurd to say something like that.”

Trump insisted that he’d been plenty tough on Putin — although there’s very little evidence that the Russian leader has paid any price for ignoring Trump’s ceasefire plans and for continuing attacks on civilians as peace talks drag on inconclusively.

“You don’t know what pressure I’m putting on Russia,” he told a reporter. “We’re putting a lot of pressure on Russia, and Russia knows that, and some people that are close to it know or he wouldn’t be talking right now.”

Sources familiar with the peace discussions told CNN on Thursday that Trump is privately frustrated with his failure to broker an end to the war. But so far, his impatience hasn’t prompted any efforts to coerce Russia into accepting exceedingly generous terms. Trump could, for instance, rush arms to Ukraine to increase the price of the war for Russia’s forces. He could send Patriot anti-missile systems to Kyiv or provide defense against ballistic missiles. The president could also impose secondary sanctions on nations that continue to buy Russian oil and bankroll its war effort.

But he’s done none of that. And his uneven approach threatens to further punish the war’s victim.

Rome
CNN
 — 

Pope Francis, who died on Easter Monday, is breaking with tradition when it comes to where he will be laid to rest – choosing a light-filled basilica instead of the grottoes of the Vatican.

Popes are usually buried within Vatican City, beneath St. Peter’s Basilica. But Francis will be the first pontiff in more than a century to be buried outside the Vatican, as he requested a “simple” tomb a couple of miles away in the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore – also known as St. Mary Major.

Francis’ funeral will take place on Saturday in St. Peter’s Square, before his body is taken to the basilica – on the other side of the river in central Rome – for burial.

“The tomb must be in the earth; simple, without particular decoration and with the only inscription: Franciscus,” the pontiff said in his will, released by the Vatican. He also said the costs of his burial would be covered “by a sum provided by a benefactor.”

While Francis’ tomb will be humble, the basilica above it glitters with sunlight and gold. The ceiling is covered in gilded wood, and light pours in through high-up windows to illuminate intricate mosaics that line the nave. Mourners and visitors have flocked here in the days since Francis’s death, interested to see for themselves a place that he loved.

Perched on top of one of the seven hills on which ancient Rome was built, Santa Maria Maggiore is one of four papal basilicas. Its bell tower is the tallest in the Italian capital, rising to a height of 246 feet, and its position on the hill makes it the highest point in the city.

The legend goes that the Virgin Mary came to both Pope Liberius and an Italian aristocrat asking for the church to be constructed in her honor in a place that would be miraculously revealed. Rome’s Esquiline Hill was identified as the spot after snow fell on its summit in August of 358, at the height of summer. In contemporary times, a celebration marking the “Miracle of the Snow” takes place at the basilica on August 5 every year.

The church as it stands today was commissioned by Pope Sixtus III in the year 431. The mosaics date from that time, and the interior also boasts Classical columns plundered from other buildings, although it’s encased in a Neoclassical facade built in the 1700s.

The church has long held a special significance for Pope Francis, who used to visit on Sunday mornings to honor the Virgin Mary.

He would often visit the basilica before and after foreign trips, as well as after hospital stays, to pray to the most important Marian icon, the Salus Populi Romani, to which he entrusted the protection of his apostolic journeys, in keeping with Jesuit tradition.

Clearly a spot close to his heart, it’s where Francis began his first full day as leader of the Catholic Church in 2013. It is also the first place he visited after leaving the hospital last month, offering flowers to be placed before the icon of the Virgin Mary before returning to his residence in the Vatican.

Francis revealed his plans to be buried there in December 2023, explaining that he felt a “very strong connection” with the basilica. “I want to be buried in Santa Maria Maggiore,” Francis said. “Because it is my great devotion.”

A “place is already prepared” for his burial, the pope said in 2023, adding that he had been working on streamlining papal funerals.

“We simplified them quite a bit,” Francis said. “I will premiere the new ritual,” he added with a smile at the time.

Although seven other popes are buried in Santa Maria Maggiore, Francis will be the first not to be interred in St. Peter’s Basilica since Leo XIII, who died in 1903 and was laid to rest in the Basilica di San Giovanni in Laterano. The last pope to be buried at Santa Maria Maggiore was Clement IX, back in 1669.

This is not the only time the pope has broken with tradition: Francis also refused to live in the Apostolic Palace, the official papal residence, instead choosing to live in a small apartment in the Vatican guesthouse, Santa Marta.

Throughout his life, he was known for eschewing luxuries. As a cardinal in Buenos Aires, Argentina, he was known for taking the subway instead of using a chauffeured car. Later in his career, he would travel to work at the Vatican in an unassuming blue Ford Focus.

The day after his death, Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore was far busier than usual, with mourners, worshipers and other visitors coming by the hundreds. The atmosphere was filled with sentiment but not somber, and the afternoon Mass opened with a brass quintet and bright organ music.

“It was just a remarkable experience,” Kerry Bruder, 71, from Ontario, Canada, said after seeing the vast artworks and marble sculptures inside the church. “You know that people for centuries have been going in there… and it just made you feel small, but in a good way.”

Victoria Ferreira, who traveled to Rome from Brazil for Easter, said she had already visited the basilica days before – but it felt different after the pontiff’s death, adding that “it was very emotional.”

Ferreira, 33, told CNN that as a Catholic, she hopes the next pope will direct the church down the same path as Francis.

“He filled us with love, with empathy, with hope,” she said. “And I think we need to, more than ever, have this in our mind and in our actions – to be like him.”

CNN’s Lauren Said-Moorhouse contributed to this story.

CNN
 — 

William Shakespeare’s marriage to Anne Hathaway may have been happier than previously thought, according to new research.

It has been long believed that the playwright left his wife behind when he moved to London, but new findings from the University of Bristol suggest that the couple were living together in London for some period of time between 1600 and 1610.

Shakespeare married Hathaway in 1582 and the couple shared three children. Experts have long thought that Shakespeare then moved to London from his home in Stratford-upon-Avon, leaving his family behind.

Now, a long forgotten letter may turn that theory on its head, according to Matthew Steggle, a professor of English at Bristol University.

The fragments of the letter, addressed to “good Mrs Shakspaire,” (the name’s spelling at the time) were found sewn into the binding of a 1,000-page theological book in the city of Hereford, about 50 miles from Stratford-upon-Avon.

Although the letter’s writer hasn’t been identified, they refer to a fatherless apprentice called John Butts.

Steggle found just one person by Butts’ name who fit the criteria and lived in London at that time.

“The reason you think it’s the Shakespeares is about the date and place of the letter – which you can establish largely by locating the boy at the center of it,” Steggle told CNN Thursday.

The letter writer accuses the husband of “Mrs Shakspaire” of withholding money from Butts and asks her for the funds. In what may be a reply from Hathaway herself, the recipient stands by her husband and refuses to settle the claim.

The letter also refers to a “Shakspaire” couple who lived in a place called Trinity Lane. Out of the four couples living in London with the surname, Steggle believes only the playwright and his wife could have afforded to live in the relatively prosperous area.

Steggle said the discovery opens the path to more revelations about the playwright’s life.

“We know so little about exactly where Shakespeare lives in London, so it’s another sort of data point for that,” he said. “It’s another kind of anchor on where he might have been living, how he might have been, and how he might have been living in his London career.”

As for challenging views about Shakespeare’s relationship with his wife, Steggle credits a shift in attitudes towards women and greater academic work in this area.

“There’s this narrative, like the film ‘Shakespeare in Love,’ where he’s got this wife who’s this kind of distant encumbrance in Stratford, and (Shakespeare is) having all these romantic love affairs in London separately,” he said, referring to the Oscar-winning 1998 movie.

The letter is a “game-changer” that suggests Hathaway was not absent from her husband’s London life, but present and engaged in his financial and social networks, argues Steggle.

“The reason it’s gone unnoticed for so long is that it’s not in London… where there’s been a lot of quite intensive searching for Shakespeare,” Steggle said of the letter’s discovery.

Looking outside the city – and in the binding of books printed by the Bard’s old friend – could point the way “towards the possibility of more discoveries.”