US megachurch pastor apologises for ‘white blessing’ comments
Atlanta, USAP A white pastor for an Atlanta megachurch has tearfully apologised for referring to the “blessing of slavery” and for suggesting that the phrase “white privilege” could be better understood as a “white blessing”. Louie Giglio, the founder of Passion City Church and related Christian conferences, made the comments in a recorded conversation with Christian hip-hop […]
Brother of George Floyd urges UN probe into US racism, violence
Geneva, SwitzerlandReuters The brother of the late George Floyd called on the top UN human rights body on Wednesday to investigate police brutality and racial discrimination in the United States. “The way you saw my brother tortured and murdered on camera is the way black people are treated by police in America,” Philonise Floyd, speaking […]
Australia says borders likely to stay closed until 2021; NZ assigns military to oversee quarantine after new COVID-19 case
Sydney, AustraliaReuters Australia is unlikely to reopen its border to international travellers until next year but will look to relax entry rules for students and other long-term visitors, Trade Minister Simon Birmingham said on Wednesday. Australia has been largely successful in containing the spread of the novel coronavirus, which it attributes to curbs on international […]
US emergency trafficking hotline says calls spiked under lockdown
New York, USThomson Reuters Foundation The number of people seeking emergency shelter to escape human trafficking surged in the month following US lockdown orders implemented to slow the spread of coronavirus, a leading anti-trafficking group said on Monday. The economic and social turmoil of the pandemic created conditions conducive to people falling victim to trafficking, […]
StrangeSights: $1 houses in Italy; centuries old spectacles auctioned in NZ; and, an accidental invasion…
DAVID ADAMS writes about the odder side of life…
Sudan finds mass grave thought to be linked to 1998 killings
Cairo, EgyptAP Sudanese authorities have found a mass grave believed to contain the bodies of dozens of student conscripts who were shot or beaten to death in 1998 after trying to flee a military camp, the country’s top prosecutor said this week. Taj al-Ser Ali al-Hebr told reporters that his office has launched an investigation […]
Rev Rolland Slade, first black chair of Southern Baptist executive committee, elected
RNS Rev Rolland Slade, senior pastor of Meridian Baptist Church in El Cajon, California, has been elected as the first African American chairman of the Southern Baptist Convention’s executive committee, the group that runs the business of the nation’s largest Protestant denomination outside its annual meetings. He was elected unanimously. Rev Rolland Slade in October, […]
US Supreme Court halts Texas execution over clergy question
Houston, USAP The US Supreme Court granted a reprieve Tuesday to a Texas inmate scheduled to die for fatally stabbing an 85-year-old woman more than two decades ago, continuing a more than four-month delay of executions in the nation’s busiest death penalty state during the coronavirus pandemic. The justices blocked Ruben Gutierrez’s execution about an […]
Steroid drug hailed as “breakthrough” for seriously ill COVID-19 patients
London, UKReuters A cheap and widely used steroid called dexamethasone has become the first drug shown to be able to save the lives of COVID-19 patients in what scientists said is a “major breakthrough” in the coronavirus pandemic. Trial results announced on Tuesday showed dexamethasone, which is used to reduce inflammation in other diseases such […]
“Dying of hunger”: Zimbabwe street vendors hit by coronavirus clampdown
TONDERAYI MUKEREDZI, of Thomson Reuters Foundation, reports from the capital of Harare…