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- CLAIRE GIANGRAVÉ
Vatican City
RNS
Over the past 2,000 years, the Catholic Church has weathered wars, natural disasters and plagues.
As Italy faces one of its gravest challenges in recent years in the coronavirus pandemic, the church’s rich history contains lessons about how to live out the Catholic faith in
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- PRAVEEN MENON
Wellington, New Zealand
Reuters
New Zealand has passed a landmark bill that treats abortion as a health issue rather than a crime, a major reform in laws that have been unchanged for more than four decades.
The reform passed through parliament late on Wednesday by a vote of
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- EMILY MCFARLAN MILLER
The United Methodist Church has postponed its 2020 General Conference - where delegates were expected to take up legislation to split the denomination - over concerns about the spread of COVID-19, what’s commonly referred to as the coronavirus.
The quadrennial meeting of the denomination’s decision-making body was
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- ROLI SRIVASTAVA
Mumbai, India
Thomson Reuters Foundation
Millions of poor Indians may receive cash compensation for income lost to coronavirus, as officials in Uttar Pradesh state started counting the number of qualifying citizens on Wednesday.
The 200 million-strong northern state - the most populous and one of the poorest in
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- SONYA DOWSETT and RYAN WOO
Madrid, Spain/Beijing, China
Reuters
Hundreds of millions of people faced a world turned upside down on Wednesday by unprecedented emergency measures against the coronavirus pandemic that is killing the old and vulnerable and threatening prolonged economic misery.
"This is a once-in-a-hundred-year type event," said Australian Prime Minister Scott
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- David Adams
A group of Australian Christian leaders has called for Christians of all denominations to join in daily prayer for the nation and for churches to hold a National Day of Prayer on 29th March.
The prayer initiative, which is being coordinated by the Australian Prayer Network, will be
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- ANNIE BANERJI
New Delhi, India
Thomson Reuters Foundation
India's top court on Tuesday ordered the navy to treat male and female officers equally, rejecting the government's argument that women could not be sailors because there were no separate bathrooms on ships as "illusory".
The Supreme Court also instructed the government
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- SWATI PANDEY
Updated: 3.20pm
Sydney, Australia
Reuters
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Wednesday declared a "human biosecurity emergency" and said the country's citizens should abandon all overseas travel because of the coronavirus epidemic.
The formal declaration gives the government the power to close off cities or regions, impose curfews
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- FABIO TEXEIRA
Rio de Janeiro
Thomson Reuters Foundation
Brazil has put anti-slavery operations by its special mobile enforcement group on indefinite hold due to fears of coronavirus infecting its staff or rescued victims, authorities said on Tuesday.
The freeze is expected to have an impact on the number of workers
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- YONAT SHIMRON
A DC-8 aircraft carrying an emergency field hospital and a team of 32 technicians and medical personnel took off from Greensboro, North Carolina, on Tuesday for Cremona, Italy, to set up a triage operation outside a hospital there.
The massive shipment is a donation from Samaritan’s Purse,
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- EMMA BATHA
London, UK
Thomson Reuters Foundation
Female genital mutilation affects far more countries than previously thought, meaning global estimates for the number of women who have been cut are "woefully" low, researchers said on Tuesday.
FGM is traditionally associated with a swathe of African countries, but the study highlights
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- ALEJANDRA MOLINA
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- RINA CHANDRAN
Bangkok, Thailand
Thomson Reuters Foundation
Millions of homeless people and those living in informal settlements across Asia are at heightened risk of contracting the coronavirus due to their dire living conditions, housing experts said on Tuesday.
The coronavirus has infected about 180,000 people worldwide and killed more than
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- DAVID SHEPARDSON and DAVID MILLIKEN
Washington DC, US/London, UK
Reuters
The world's richest nations prepared more costly measures on Tuesday to combat the global fallout of the coronavirus that has infected tens of thousands of people, triggered social restrictions unseen since World War Two and sent economies spinning toward recession.
With the highly
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- COLIN PACKHAM
Sydney, Australia
Reuters
Australian researchers said on Tuesday they have mapped the immune responses from one of country's first coronavirus patients, findings that the health minister said were an important step in developing a vaccine and treatment.
The coronavirus has infected more than 168,000 people worldwide and killed
