Court order to clear Delhi’s railway slums will cause “great distress”, activists warn
New Delhi, IndiaThomson Reuters Foundation India’s top court has ordered the demolition of tens of thousands of shacks alongside railway tracks in Delhi, a move that housing campaigners said could plunge nearly 230,000 poor residents into even deeper poverty. The Supreme Court, ruling in response to an affidavit filed by state-run Indian Railways, said 48,000 […]
US COVID vaccine trial includes Black Christian university presidents
RNS The presidents of two historically Black universities – one Catholic, the other Protestant – have announced that they are participating in a COVID-19 vaccine study. President C Reynold Verret of Xavier University of Louisiana and President Walter M Kimbrough of Dillard University said on Wednesday that they are taking part in the Phase 3 […]
Former Cook Islands leader dies of COVID-19 in New Zealand
Melbourne, AustraliaReuters A former Prime Minister of the Cook Islands, Joseph Williams, has died of COVID-19 in Auckland, New Zealand’s health ministry said on Saturday, taking the number of coronavirus-related deaths in the country to 24. Williams, who was in his 80s, was a well known doctor as well as a politician and author, living […]
Church in a pandemic: Under tents and with folding chairs, Catholics resume First Communions and baptisms outdoors
ALEJANDRA MOLINA, of Religion News Service, reports from LA…
Coronavirus fuels modern slavery threat for Asian garment workers
Dhaka, BangladeshThomson Reuters Foundation The risk of modern slavery in Asian manufacturing hubs has surged and is set to worsen with the economic impact of the new coronavirus, increased labour rights violations and poor law enforcement, a global index found on Friday. For the first time, India and Bangladesh were in the “extreme risk” category, […]
WHO’s Tedros says “vaccine nationalism” would prolong pandemic
Geneva, SwitzerlandReuters WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Friday that “vaccine nationalism” would only slow the effort to quash the pandemic and called for vaccines to be used fairly and effectively. Tedros said 78 high-income countries had now joined the “COVAX” global vaccine allocation plan, bringing the total to 170 countries, and the “number […]