Today's headlines: OSCE says Erdogan had 'unfair advantage' in presidential run-off; UN special rapporteur terms Rohingya in Bangladesh are 'the new Palestinians'; Beijing deploys hundreds of police to quell the protest of the Hui Muslims in Yunnan; Nepalese experts say climate change is behind the continuing deaths in the Himalayas; Birth rate plummets in Russia down to 31% with second child.
Today's headlines: al-Sistan appeals for suffering Afghans, women in particular; In Vietnam, Dong Thap authorities pronounce child who fell into 35-meter shaft dead, recovery attempts futile; Taliban claim double killing of senior Pakistani officials; in Ukraine, Russian Wagner war cemetery fills up quickly with new burials; Armenian airline opens new connections with Moscow.
Today's headlines: Pope says China-Vatican agreement on bishops not ideal, but hopes it will be renewed; Japan develops an app for smartphones that automatically deletes images of underage nudity; Vietnamese police have arrested the famous blogger and activist Nguyen Lan Thang; a "discount war" on oil looms between Tehran and Moscow; in Sri Lanka, cooking with wood returns.
“We can hardly fail to see that these days, in addition to the pandemic, an ‘infodemic’ is spreading: a distortion of reality based on fear, which in our global society leads to an explosion of commentary on falsified if not invented news,” Francis said. “Fake news has to be refuted, but individual persons must always be respected, for they believe it often without full awareness or responsibility,” he added. “[T]ruth is never merely a concept having to do with judgment about things; no, that is only a part of what truth is. Truth regards life as a whole”.
Humility is “the one way to come to worship God in the same house, around the same altar.” The “great band of martyrs’ around Jesus, indicates “to us here below a clear way, the way of unity!”
"Our sins, our mistakes, our falls, do not frighten God, let's get that straight in our heads, but he is frightened by the closure of our hearts, by our lack of faith in His love". "It is right that those who have erred should pay for their error, but it is just as right that those who have erred should be able to redeem themselves from their error. There can be no condemnation without a window of hope." "We pray that all disciples of Christ may persevere on the path of unity."