In Serbian village, women fight to escape encroaching mine
Krivelj, Serbia Reuters Before dawn, 78-year-old Vukosava Radivojevic prepared breakfast for her husband then walked into her village in eastern Serbia to guard a barricade stopping trucks entering an open-pit copper mine that residents say is contaminating local land and water. Radivojevic is one of two dozen women who since January took shifts day and […]
Australian police say Sydney knife attacker may have targeted women
Sydney, Australia Reuters Australian police said on Monday the attacker who fatally stabbed six people at a busy shopping centre in Sydney’s beach suburb of Bondi may have targeted women, as the country mourned the victims and hundreds of people laid flowers near the scene. In the attack on Saturday at the Westfield Bondi Junction […]
Fight back or flee? Myanmar draft forces hard choices on youth
Reuters Weeks after Myanmar’s military government announced a nationwide draft, two young women from far-flung parts of the South-East Asian country headed to the jungles to take up arms against the junta. For two men in their 30s in Myanmar’s two largest cities, the threat of conscription after the February call-up prompted them to upend […]
Ukrainian women tell of beatings and threats under Russian occupation
Kyiv, Ukraine Reuters Alla Antonova says she suffered beatings, had a plastic bag thrust over her head and endured many other threats from Russian soldiers in occupied Ukraine who wanted to know where her son-in-law was serving in the Ukrainian army. Her mother Natalia Kucherova, 73, was made to sit in an adjacent room of […]
Vatican puts the brakes on Synod on Synodality, pushes ‘controversial’ topics to 2025
Vatican City RNS A three-year process aimed at putting the most pressing concerns of lay Catholics front and centre in the church was reshuffled on Thursday, as the Vatican announced that it plans to push discussion of “doctrinal, ethical and pastoral issues that are controversial” to June, 2025. The controversial issues include allowing women to […]
Unexpected defeat of referendums shows growing power of Ireland’s traditional Catholics
Dublin, Ireland RNS At a Mass said in Latin on Sunday, Ireland’s traditional Catholics declared political victory, days after a pair of referendums aimed at secularizing the Irish Constitution were unexpectedly and resoundingly defeated. On Friday, the Irish Government put two measures to a vote that would have extended the rights of unmarried couples in […]
Irish Government “walloped” by referendum defeats
Dublin, Ireland Reuters Irish voters have rejected proposals to replace constitutional references to the makeup of a family and a mother’s “duties in the home” in a significant defeat for the government. Prime Minister Leo Varadkar had pitched the vote, held on Friday to coincide with International Women’s Day and counted on Saturday, as a […]
Alcohol policies need sharper focus on gender, WHO says
London, UK Reuters The World Health Organization on Friday urged governments to consider gender when developing their alcohol policies, warning that industry marketing increasingly targeted women who face greater health risks than men from lower levels of drinking. The Geneva-based WHO said that there was good evidence that men, women and minority groups were affected […]
Ireland to vote on removing ‘sexist’ references to women from constitution
Dublin, Ireland Reuters Ireland is poised to vote on Friday – International Women’s Day – to replace constitutional references on the importance of a woman’s “life within the home”, the latest attempt to update its socially conservative 1937 founding document. While social change in the once deeply Catholic nation has spurred the removal of bans […]
Essay: Donkeys are unsung heroes in Ethiopia’s humanitarian crisis – and they could do even more with better support
Researcher MARTHA GEIGER, in an article first published on The Convresation, looks at the vital role donkeys are playing…