More than $US90 million missing from AME pension funds, claim class-action lawsuits
RNS Retired African Methodist Episcopal Church pastors have filed at least three federal class-action lawsuits alleging the church mishandled tens of millions of dollars in pension funds. Last month, AME leaders stopped making payments to retirees after discovering alleged financial irregularities in the church’s pension fund. The African Methodist Episcopal Church’s annuity investment department location […]
Church schools: First Pope, now US churches face boarding school reckoning
PETER SMITH, of Associated Press, reports on how US churches are preparing for the handing down of a report looking at the loss of life and the enduring traumas of the US boarding school system…
“So many bodies piled up”: Hong Kong funeral services overwhelmed by COVID
Hong Kong, ChinaReuters Traditional wooden coffins are running short in Hong Kong as authorities scramble to add mortuary space in the global financial hub’s battle on COVID-19, which is swamping funeral parlours. “I have never seen so many bodies piled up together,” said funeral director Lok Chung, 37, who has been working round the clock, […]
Essay: Traditional land burning is declining – here’s why that’s a problem
UK-based academics CATHY SMITH, JAYALAXSHMI MISTRY and OL PERKINS – in an article published on The Conversation, say that controlled fire use is an essential part of smallholder farming, hunting and gathering…
Sri Lanka’s President will not resign, despite protests – minister
Colombo, Sri LankaReuters Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa will not resign, a minister said on Wednesday, despite demonstrations against his handling of the country’s worst economic crisis in decades and as doctors held street protests over a shortage of medicine. Rajapaksa, governing the South Asian island nation since 2019 with other family members in top […]
Sight-Seeing: Holy Week pain, Easter hope in Ukraine
US Catholic commentator THOMAS REESE pays a visit to a Ukrainian church…
Gunmen took 83-year-old nun from bed in Burkina Faso, says order
New Orleans, US AP Ten gunmen kidnapped an 83-year-old American nun from her bed in the west African nation of Burkina Faso and destroyed almost everything in the house where she lived, but left four other women unhurt, a Louisiana official for the order said Wednesday. Sister Suellen Tennyson was taken late Monday “from her room in […]