TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — Israel’s new government has taken aim at the country’s powerful religious establishment with a pair of reforms that would chip away at the tight grip of the country's chief rabbinate on many aspects of daily life.
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Conservative Republican lawmakers on Thursday revived a proposal to weaken Kansas' vaccination requirements for children enrolling in school and day care and to make it easier for people to get potentially dangerous treatments for COVID-19.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Tennessee campaign finance regulators voted Thursday to pass prosecutors their investigations surrounding a former House speaker and his then-chief of staff, who have been implicated in an alleged political consulting kickback scheme.
UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The U.N. Security Council on Thursday approved a robust mandate for its political mission in Afghanistan following the Taliban takeover last August. The new mandate authorizes the mission to promote gender equality, empowerment of women and girls, human rights of all Afghans and an inclusive and representative government.
VATICAN CITY (AP) — A once-powerful cardinal testified Thursday that he donated 125,000 euros ($140,000) of Vatican money to a Sardinian diocese for purely charitable reasons, rejecting Vatican prosecutors’ claims that the money benefitted his brother who ran the charity.
JERUSALEM (AP) — The three Christian communities that have uneasily shared their holiest site for centuries are embarking on a large-scale project to restore the ancient stone floor of the Jerusalem basilica.
ROME (AP) — Pope Francis rejected the concept of a “just war” and stressed the need for peace in a video call Wednesday with the head of the Russian Orthodox Church in the first known communication between the two Christian leaders since the start of Moscow's invasion of Ukraine.
The top leader of Ukrainian Catholics in the United States and Ukraine's ambassador to the nation made an urgent appeal to the world Tuesday for more weapons to fight against Russia's invasion and aid to address the worsening humanitarian crisis.
NEW DELHI (AP) — An Indian court Tuesday upheld a ban on wearing hijab in class in the southern state of Karnataka, saying the Muslim headscarf is not an essential religious practice of Islam in a ruling that is likely to further deepen religious tensions in the country.
WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — The lingering injuries from being shot nine times did not stop Temel Atacocugu from completing a two-week walk and bike ride for peace on Tuesday, the third anniversary of a gunman's slaughter of 51 Muslim worshippers.
BERLIN (AP) — Leon Schwarzbaum, a survivor of the Nazis' death camp at Auschwitz and a lifelong fighter for justice for the victims of the Holocaust, has died. He was 101.
Schwarzbaum died early Monday in Potsdam near Berlin, the International Auschwitz Committee reported on its website.
BEIRUT (AP) — A Lebanese judge on Monday froze the assets of five of Lebanon’s largest banks and those of their board of directors as she investigates possible transfers of billions of dollars aboard during the country’s economic meltdown.
ATHENS, Greece (AP) — Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said Monday he had tested positive for COVID-19 and would be self-isolating at home, a day after a trip to Istanbul.
PIERRE, S.D. (AP) — South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem's election-year fight with fellow Republicans in the Legislature has spurred criticism she is neglecting her job to angle for the White House, but the resistance could actually be helping her national brand rather than tarnishing it.
WASHINGTON (AP) — When the pandemic shut schools two years ago, Scott Losavio faced a problem afflicting students, administrators and communities everywhere: What happens when all the student volunteers disappear?
ISTANBUL (AP) — The leaders of Greece and Turkey held talks over lunch in Istanbul on Sunday in a rare meeting between the neighboring countries, which have been at odds over maritime and energy issues, the status of Aegean islands and migration.
WARSAW, Poland (AP) — On her first Shabbat away from the fighting in Ukraine, Rabbi Julia Gris twice led services to welcome the Jewish holy day.
A week earlier, Ukraine's only woman rabbi had been fleeing the war that scattered her Odesa congregation from Moldova to Romania and Israel.
The latest developments on the Russia-Ukraine war:
LVIV, Ukraine – Russia is trying to create new “pseudo-republics” in Ukraine to break his country apart, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his nightly address to the nation Saturday.
MEXICO CITY (AP) — The Vatican on Saturday expressed “surprise and pain” at Nicaragua's expulsion of the papal nuncio, which comes at a time of growing pressure on opposition figures in the Central American nation.
NEW YORK (AP) — When Landry Felix Uwamungu Ganza moved to New York from Rwanda last August, the Columbia University freshman searched for sanctuary, a sacred place to carry out his Sunday morning rituals just as he had back home.
The latest developments on the Russia-Ukraine war:
LVIV, Ukraine — Ukrainian officials accused Russia damaging a cancer hospital and several residential buildings in the southern city of Mykolaiv with shelling from heavy artillery.
LOS ANGELES (RNS) — Forty-five years after a right-wing death squad gunned down the Rev. Rutilio Grande along with two Catholic laymen, Manuel Solórzano and Nelson Lemus, in El Salvador, Jesús Aguilar still vividly remembers the sadness and dread of that day.
MONTREAL (AP) — Saudi Arabian blogger and activist Raif Badawi, whose conviction caused widespread international outrage, was released Friday after a decade in prison for criticizing the country's conservative religious establishment, his Quebec-based wife confirmed.
LONDON (AP) — The Northern Ireland government issued a formal apology on Friday to people who were abused in orphanages and children’s homes, telling them that “the state let you down.”
Ministers from all five political parties in the Northern Ireland Assembly read out apologies to survivors gathered at the Stormont government buildings near Belfast.
JERUSALEM (AP) — Israel's parliament has renewed a temporary law dating back to 2003 that bars Israeli citizens from extending citizenship or even residency to Palestinian spouses from the occupied West Bank and Gaza.
SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — A federal judge on Thursday sought to evaluate the mental health of a woman charged with kidnapping, firearms and terrorism-related counts — nearly four years after authorities arrested her and four other adults from an extended family at a squalid New Mexico compound and recovered the remains of a 3-year-old boy.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has prompted some of America’s most prominent evangelical leaders to raise a provocative question — asking if the world is now in the biblically prophesied “end of days” that might culminate with the apocalypse and the second coming of Christ.