THIS LIFE: DO YOU BELIEVE IN MIRACLES?
US columnist CAROL ROUND, in an article first published on ASSIST News Service, looks at the what it means to experience a miracle…
UN, Red Cross make joint appeal for an end to sexual violence in conflicts
The Red Cross and UN have issued a joint appeal for nations to take greater action to end the use of sexual violence in conflicts and provide more aid to victims. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the world was growing “ever more aware of the ubiquity of conflict-related sexual and gender-based violence”. Recounting how horrified […]
Meeting in the US, United Methodists vote pensions, ‘Traditional Plan’ as top priorities
St Louis, USRNS Delegates to a special session of the United Methodist Church decided on Sunday to start deliberations over the denomination’s future by talking about money. Then they will talk about sex. Rev Austin Adkinson, right, and members of the Queer Clergy Caucus sing and greet attendees on the first day of deliberations at […]
Future of food under ‘severe threat’ as species diversity disappears – UN
Thomson Reuters Foundation The future of food supplies is under “severe threat” because of the number of animal and plant species fast disappearing, a United Nations report said on Friday, as the world grapples with how to feed a growing population. People are depending on fewer species for food, said the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization, […]
Some 3.4 million people have now left Venezuela, says UN, with most hosted in Latin America and Caribbean
The number of Venezuelan refugees and migrants who have left the country has now reached 3.4 million, according to UN data which also shows the vast majority of them – some 2.7 million – are being hosted in other nations in Latin America and the Caribbean. The data – gathered by UNHCR, the UN refugee […]
Accused of bullying staff, top brass at Amnesty International offer to quit
Thomson Reuters Foundation Apologising for a workplace climate of bullying, harassment and public humiliation, top officials at the influential rights group Amnesty International offered to resign in a letter made public on Friday. Working conditions at Amnesty were exposed in a review, launched after the suicides of two staff members last year, that found “organizational […]
Brazilian police want to test new tactic in war against child trafficking
Thomson Reuters Foundation As part of an effort to fight human trafficking, the Brazilian state of Rio de Janeiro plans to create an alert system that can be activated whenever a child goes missing, a state secretary said last week. Mobile phones in the area surrounding where the child disappeared will receive messages with the […]
RELIGION OR REMEMBRANCE?: SUPREME COURT MULL CROSS-SHAPED WAR MEMORIAL
ADELLE M BANKS, in an article first published on Religion News Service, reports from the US on the fight over a cross-shaped war memorial and its wider ramifications in the US…
Clothes sold in Australia made by workers surviving on “poverty wages” in Bangladesh and Vietnam, according to new Oxfam research
An Oxfam investigation has found widespread payment of “poverty wages” among garment industry workers in Bangladesh with nine out of 10 workers interviewed there saying they were forced to regularly skip meals and eat inadequately or go into debt as a result. The research, presented in a report, Made in Poverty, released in Australia on […]