News

February 27, 2017 By Faith Matters

Specter of xenophobic chaos looming over South Africa again

Tensions between South Africans and foreigners rose again in Pretoria and parts of Johannesburg recently. Authorities say despite government pleas for peace, damage to property, acts of violence and looting continue to be reported in Pretoria. The Home Affairs minister spoke out Thursday to respond to reports from the Nigerian government claiming that 116 of […]

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Comics and music shows in Saudi Arabia draw rebuke from clerics
February 26, 2017 By Faith Matters

Comics and music shows in Saudi Arabia draw rebuke from clerics

A comic show and a recent pop concert have drawn rebuke from powerful religious figures and social media users in Saudi Arabia this week, highlighting the sensitivity of cultural reforms underway in the conservative kingdom. Thousands of Saudis – including women – decked out in costumes and face paint attended the country’s first-ever Comic Con […]

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The power struggle behind Thailand’s temple row
February 24, 2017 By Faith Matters

The power struggle behind Thailand’s temple row

A stand-off between security forces and monks at Thailand’s biggest temple has exposed a struggle as much about power as religion in the predominantly Buddhist country, where the junta has shut down dissent since a 2014 coup. For the past week, some 4,000 police and soldiers have surrounded the Dhammakaya temple, which practices a form […]

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Stolen Nazi gate returns to concentration camp
February 23, 2017 By Faith Matters

Stolen Nazi gate returns to concentration camp

A stolen WWII gate bearing the infamous Nazi slogan. Returning after two years to its home in Dachau, a former concentration camp in Germany. It disappeared overnight in 2014 and only resurfaced in Norway in December after police followed an anonymous tip off. The words “work sets you free” cast into this Iron Gate would […]

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Pakistan says kills 100 ‘terrorists’ after suicide shrine attack
February 18, 2017 By Faith Matters

Pakistan says kills 100 ‘terrorists’ after suicide shrine attack

Pakistani security forces killed dozens of suspected militants on Friday, a day after Islamic State claimed a suicide bombing that killed more than 80 worshippers at a Sufi shrine, the biggest in a spate of attacks this week across the country. The bombing at the famed Lal Shahbaz Qalandar shrine in southern Sindh province was […]

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Trump may reinstate secret CIA ‘black site’ prisons – U.S. officials
January 26, 2017 By Faith Matters

Trump may reinstate secret CIA ‘black site’ prisons – U.S. officials

President Donald Trump may order a review that could lead to bringing back a CIA programme for holding terrorism suspects in secret overseas “black site” prisons where interrogation techniques often condemned as torture were used, two U.S. officials said on Wednesday. The black sites were used to detain suspects captured in President George W. Bush’s […]

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Trump says to host India’s Modi for U.S. visit later this year – White House
January 25, 2017 By Faith Matters

Trump says to host India’s Modi for U.S. visit later this year – White House

U.S. President Donald Trump invited Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to visit the United States later this year, during a phone call on Tuesday in which the leaders discussed economic and defence cooperation. In its readout of the conversation, the White House said the two leaders also discussed security in South and Central Asia. The […]

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Foreign powers back Syria truce deal, war erupts among rebels
January 25, 2017 By Faith Matters

Foreign powers back Syria truce deal, war erupts among rebels

Russia and regional powers Turkey and Iran backed a shaky truce between Syria’s warring parties on Tuesday and agreed to monitor its compliance, but on the ground rebels faced continued fighting on two fronts which could undermine the deal. After two days of deliberations in Astana, Kazakhstan’s Foreign Minister Kairat Abdrakhmanov said the powers had […]

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“I lost all hope of going home” – Chibok Schoolgirl
January 24, 2017 By Faith Matters

“I lost all hope of going home” – Chibok Schoolgirl

Nigeria is facing mounting pressure to find some 200 schoolgirls abducted 1,000 days ago in Boko Haram’s most infamous attack after the rescue of 24 girls raised hopes that they are alive. For more than two years there was no sign of the girls who were kidnapped by the Islamist fighters from a school in […]

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Frontline Insight: Lessons on hatred from Bosnia
January 24, 2017 By Faith Matters

Frontline Insight: Lessons on hatred from Bosnia

Kemal Pervanic grew up in a Bosnian Muslim village surrounded by Serbs. “My schoolmates were just my schoolmates and my teachers were my teachers and that’s how it was until the early 1990s,” Pervanic told the Thomson Reuters Foundation at London’s Frontline Club. But in 1992 he was in a concentration camp being interrogated and […]

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