Palmerston North city councillors have asked staff to “please explain” after the surprise decision to charge Ozanam House full rates. Ozanam House provides accommodation for regional cancer patients staying in the city for radiotherapy treatment at Palmerston North Hospital has previously had $18,000 a year in general rates remitted. Read more
Pope Francis is expected to make an official trip to Thailand in November ahead of an already announced visit to Japan, becoming the first pontiff in nearly four decades to go to either country, Vatican sources say. The three sources said the trip would be announced soon. The late Pope John Paul visited Japan in Read more
The University of Otago is encouraging students to come forward and report any inappropriate behaviour, on or off-campus, after reports, a religious group dubbed a cult is operating in North Dunedin. Read more
Washington DC police are on the hunt for a robber who recently broke into a Columbia Heights home and held a Catholic nun at gunpoint. “She still has the bruises on her arm where this man manhandled her on Tuesday afternoon. It was about twenty to four in the afternoon,” Paul Wagner of Fox 5 Read more
Beggars have been branded “pretty evil” organised criminals by the head of an upscale Auckland retail district’s business association. But a senior police officer has rejected Mark Knoff-Thomas’ claim, saying there was no evidence to support his assertion that beggars were connected to organised crime. Read more
Acrid gun smoke clouded the sunny entrance of a Texas church on a recent Sunday. Seven men wearing heavy vests and carrying pistols loaded with blanks ran toward the sound of the shots, stopping at the end of a long hallway. As one peeked into the foyer, the “bad guy” raised the muzzle of an Read more
Cannabis-based products will be allowed to bypass usual processes required for medicines in New Zealand and go directly onto the market without any proof of safety or effectiveness. This unprecedented proposal is contained in the government’s consultation document on giving greater access to medicinal cannabis. Read more
A woman in Texas is suing the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston and her parish claiming she suffered psychological and emotional abuse through a lay-led exorcism during a retreat. Beth Ann Andrews filed her lawsuit on July 25 after attending a “Faith in the Fire” event, which is associated with the Catholic Charismatic movement. According to its Read more
>Rosmini College schoolboy Taine Murray has bolted into the Tall Blacks’ World Cup selection frame, after being named in their 14-man squad for this month’s trip to Japan and Australia. The 17-year-old impressed so much at this week’s selection camp in Auckland, that coach Paul Henare said he had no option but to pick him, for Read more
The Archbishop of Sydney has expressed his disappointment at the passage by the lower house of the New South Wales parliament of a bill to decriminalize abortion, and the failure to pass limiting amendments. The Reproductive Health Care Reform Bill 2019 passed the Legislative Assembly on August 8 by a vote of 59 to 31. Read more