Northern Ireland hopes to tear down 'peace lines' Northern Ireland's leaders say they want to tear down the so-called "peace lines" of Belfast - dozens of walls that divide Irish Catholic and British Protestant neighborhoods - by 2023. More
Pope is asked to make priestly celibacy optional She uses a wheelchair and carries the weight of her 87 years, but Clelia Luro feels powerful enough to make the Roman Catholic Church pay attention to her campaign to end priestly celibacy.... More
Pope Francis supports crackdown on US nuns The Vatican says Pope Francis supports the Holy See's crackdown on the largest umbrella group of U.S. nuns, who were faulted for focusing too much on social justice instead of issues such as abortion. American sisters had expressed hope that Francis, a Jesuit whose emphasis on the poor mirrored their social outreach, would take a different approach than his predecessor. More
Pope seeks decisive action against sex abuse Pope Francis has indicated that he will act against sex abuse cases in the Roman Catholic Church. The Vatican said in a statement Friday that the pope has urged the Congregation of the Doctrine of Faith to "act with determination with regard to cases of sexual abuse." The statement cited measures promoted by Benedict XVI to protect minors, helping victims of sexual violence and taking necessary action against perpetrators. More
Pope Francis at 88: Age-old wisdom, intergenerational dialogue at heart of evangelization Having instituted the World Day of Grandparents and the Elderly in 2021, the Holy Father is keeping true to his inaugural message dedicated to older Catholics. 12/17/2024 - 1:23 am | View Link
Pope Francis makes 1st papal visit to France's Corsica awash in expressions of popular piety Pope Francis on the first papal visit ever to the French island of Corsica on Sunday called for a dynamic form of laicism, promoting the kind of popular piety that distinguishes the Mediterranean ... 12/15/2024 - 7:54 am | View Link
Ukraine on Wednesday halted Russian gas supplies to European customers through its pipeline network after a prewar transit deal expired at the end of 2024 and almost three years into Moscow’s all-out invasion of its neighbor.
Even as Russian troops and tanks moved into Ukraine in February 2022, Russian natural gas kept flowing through the country’s pipeline network — set up when Ukraine and Russia were both part of the Soviet Union — to Europe, under a five-year agreement.
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Russia’s state-owned energy giant Gazprom earned money from the gas and Ukraine collected transit fees.
Ukraine’s energy minister, Herman Halushchenko, confirmed Kyiv had stopped the transit “in the interest of national security.”
“This is a historic event.
SEOUL, South Korea — South Korean officials said Monday they will conduct safety inspections of all Boeing 737-800 aircrafts operated by the country’s airlines, as they struggle to determine what caused a plane crash that killed 179 people a day earlier.
Sunday’s crash, the country’s worst aviation disaster in decades, triggered an outpouring of national sympathy.
For President Jimmy Carter, morality was a personal obligation that became a national calling. A deeply religious man, he taught Sunday school for most of his adult life until the point in 2020 when he physically couldn’t anymore, and he projected that same moral leadership from his entry into politics through his ascendance to the presidency.
Moo Deng might seem to most people like just an adorable viral baby hippo, but to the government of Thailand, where she’s from, she’s a cultural ambassador and shining example of the country’s push to boost what it calls its “soft power.”
The term soft power was coined at the height of the Cold War by American political scientist Joseph Nye, who used it to describe “when one country gets other countries to want what it wants” without the use of force, in contrast to the hard power “of ordering others to do what it wants.”
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But in the last year and a half, since the Pheu Thai party came to power in August 2023, Thailand has sought to redefine soft power instead as getting others to want what it has—with a particular emphasis on highlighting the country’s cultural prominence to attract tourists and foreign investment.
Moo Deng isn’t alone.
SEOUL, South Korea — A passenger plane burst into flames Sunday after it skidded off a runway at a South Korean airport and slammed into a concrete fence when its front landing gear apparently failed to deploy. Most of the 181 people on board died in one of the country’s worst aviation disasters.
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The Jeju Air passenger plane crashed while landing in the town of Muan, about 290 kilometers (180 miles) south of Seoul.
More illnesses and deaths reported in Democratic Republic of Congo outbreak involving malaria CNNMystery Disease In Congo Caused By Acute Respiratory Infections, Says WHO ForbesDRC: a mysterious epidemic puts Kwango on high alert SenenewsInfections, malaria, malnutrition behind DR Congo deaths: WHO Medical Xpress