One million Nigerian children to miss school due to mass kidnappings, UNICEF says
Abuja, NigeriaReuters At least one million Nigerian children could miss school this year as the new term begins amid a rise in mass school kidnappings and insecurity, the United Nations children’s agency UNICEF said on Wednesday. Schools have become targets for mass abductions for ransom in northern Nigeria by armed groups. Such kidnappings in Nigeria […]
Flying home, Pope addresses abortion, questions vaccine sceptics
AP Pope Francis said Wednesday that Catholic bishops must minister with “compassion and tenderness,” not condemnation, to politicians who support abortion rights and warned that clerics shouldn’t let politics enter into questions about receiving Communion. Francis was asked en route home from Slovakia about the debate in the US church about whether President Joe Biden […]
US faith leaders backing Oklahoma death row inmate hail parole board’s commutation request
RNS In a decision hailed by religious leaders who have taken up his cause, an Oklahoma parole board voted to recommend commutation of the death sentence of Julius Jones, who has been on death row for two decades. Rev Cece Jones-Davis, the Justice for Julius campaign director, said she viewed the recommendation Monday of “life […]
Anglo-Saxon church found in UK rail project
Archaeologists working with Britain’s high speed rail project HS2 have discovered what they believe to be the remains of an Anglo-Saxon church. The discovery was made underneath a Norman-era church a team of more than 40 archaeologists have been excavating in Stoke Mandeville in Buckinghamshire. The team found flint walls forming a square structure underneath […]
StrangeSights: Cat sounds, cinema smells and the purpose of beards – this year’s Ig Nobel winners; a marzipan Merkel; and, ugly tomatoes…
DAVID ADAMS provides a round-up of some stories on the odder side of life…
One month after fall of Kabul, economic crisis stalks Taliban
Reuters A month after seizing Kabul, the Taliban face daunting problems as they seek to convert their lightning military victory into a durable peacetime government. After four decades of war and the deaths of tens of thousands of people, security has largely improved, but Afghanistan’s economy is in ruins despite hundreds of billions of dollars […]
Syria violence worsening, not safe for refugee return, UN investigators say
Geneva, SwitzerlandReuters Syria is still unsafe for the return of refugees a decade after its conflict began, UN war crimes investigators said on Tuesday, documenting worsening violence and rights violations including arbitrary detention by government forces. The UN Commission of Inquiry on Syria said the overall situation was increasingly bleak, noting hostilities in several areas […]
US ex-Presidents Bush, Clinton, Obama band together to aid Afghan refugees
New York City/Washington DC, USReuters Three former US presidents – Republican George W Bush and Democrats Bill Clinton and Barack Obama – have banded together behind a new group aimed at supporting refugees from Afghanistan settling in the United States following the recent American withdrawal ending 20 years of war. The former leaders and their […]
Interfaith letter campaign calls for Australian PM to take greater action on climate change
Hundreds of letters calling for greater action on climate change have been delivered to Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s office in Canberra as part of an interfaith initiative. Under the campaign coordinated by the Australian Religious Response to Climate Change, the more than 600 letters call for the Morrison Government to submit higher emissions reduction targets to […]
Automating access: Vending machines bring safe, cheap water to Nairobi slums
DOMINIC KIRUI, of Thomson Reuters Foundation, reports on how an initiative to install water-dispensing vending machines to ease the water access crisis in city slums…