Denis Mukwege, a doctor who helps victims of sexual violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Nadia Murad, a Yazidi rights activist and survivor of sexual slavery by Islamic State, won the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday. They were honoured for their efforts to end the use of sexual violence as a weapon […]
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Ultra-Orthodox Jewish men on Monday danced with scrolls of the Torah, celebrating the religious holiday of Simchat Torah (Rejoicing in the Torah) in one of Jerusalem’s oldest neighbourhoods. During the year, every Saturday in synagogue, devout Jews read a portion of the Torah, the first five books of the Hebrew Bible. Simchat Torah marks the […]
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Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan wrapped up an ill-tempered visit to Germany on Saturday with a visit to Cologne, where a security lockdown kept supporters and protesters away from a ceremony to open the country’s largest mosque. Police snipers were stationed on rooftops and the area was cordoned off after the city authorities cancelled plans for […]
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On a visit to Israel two years ago, far-right Brazilian lawmaker Jair Bolsonaro leaned back into the River Jordan in a white robe to be baptized in the arms of a fellow congressman and evangelical pastor. While still an avowed Catholic, Bolsonaro is riding a wave of support from Brazil’s evangelical Christians, who have helped […]
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President Donald Trump took his enthusiasm for his detente with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to new heights on Saturday, declaring at a rally with supporters that “we fell in love” after exchanging letters. Trump and Kim have said they want to work towards denuclearising the Korean peninsula, holding an unprecedented meeting earlier this […]
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A Copenhagen policewoman is being investigated for embracing a niqab-wearing protestor during a demonstration against a ban on face veils, the force’s complaints body said on Wednesday. The incident, in which the protester appeared to be crying, was captured by a Reuters photographer on Aug. 1 when a countrywide ban on the wearing of face […]
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A French minister on Wednesday accused Italy’s anti-immigration interior minister, Matteo Salvini, of behaving “like Pontius Pilate”, the Roman official who washed his hands of the fate of Jesus Christ. Relations between Paris and Rome have soured since Italy’s new government took office in June and immediately moved to close its ports to charity ships […]
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Pope Francis appealed to Sicily’s Mafia on Saturday to abandon a life of crime and violence, saying the island needed “men and women of love, not men and women ‘of honour,'” using the term mobsters apply to themselves. Francis, in the Sicilian capital, said organised crime members – many of whom go to church and […]
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Former Trump White House adviser Steve Bannon is helping to craft the curriculum for a leadership course at a right-wing Roman Catholic institute in Italy, stepping up his efforts to influence conservative thinking in the church. Benjamin Harnwell, director of the Dignitatis Humanae Institute based in a mountaintop monastery not far from Rome, told Reuters […]
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Jalaluddin Haqqani, founder of the militant Haqqani network, one of the most powerful and feared groups in the Afghan insurgency, has died after a long illness, the Taliban said on Tuesday. Haqqani, who founded the network in the 1970s, gave up operational leadership of the group some years ago to his son Sirajuddin, who is […]
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