First impressions aren’t always accurate. But in my first days here I have been struck by the extent of trauma people have experienced – and real worries that the violence that has rocked South Sudan since mid-December may not be over. The capital of Juba is calm, but it is only “outwardly” so, one of Read more
The recent events in Ukraine are not what many news sources, even respected ones, imagine them to be. First, Ukraine was not a battleground where Russia and the West were hammering it out. Indeed, 99% of what was taking place on ‘the maidan’, the central square in Kyiv, was based on issues internal to Ukraine. Read more
My heart grieved after reading the story of the young American woman who was stabbed to death by her Indian husband of five months, who subsequently killed himself. It grieves for all the young girls who are forced to remain subdued because of the threat of rape or sexual violence – abuse explained by some Read more
A Catholic bishop in the Ukraine, February 19, visited a hospital to give the sacrament of the sick to protesters who had their eyes shot out by rubber bullets, reports the National Review Online. The bishop’s pastoral visit came after at statement by Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk, the major archbishop of the Ukrainian Catholic Church, stressing that Read more
A massacre of the innocents is taking place in the heart of Africa as the world looks the other way. The humanitarian emergency in the Central African Republic (CAR), a landmass bigger than France where the average male life expectancy is 48, remains a blind spot for most of the international community. Samantha Power, the US Read more
A global study conducted by ChildFund Alliance shows that more than a third of the 1000 New Zealand children surveyed said alcohol and bad behaviour were the two main contributors to violence while just under a third said drugs were among the main causes. Professor Sally Casswell of the Whariki Research Centre at Massey University Read more
The mother of a young man who died, after being brutally assaulted in central Auckland, New Zealand, has already forgiven the man accused of causing the injury that to ended his life. Her son, 25-year-old Tarun Asthana died Monday 4 November, two days after suffering critical head injuries in an unproved attack outside a McDonald’s Read more
Religious persecution of Muslims in Burma has resulted in bloodshed and displaced entire communities. But grassroots initiatives have also emerged to counter the hatred. Ashin Issariya appears unassuming, but the quiet demeanour quickly changes when he has something to say. In the pre-dawn light of Burma’s nascent reform process the Buddhist monk and former Saffron Read more
National Party MP Alfred Ngaro allegedly punched an atheist teacher at his son’s school for not bowing his head during a prayer. Ngaro, a list MP and former chairman of the Tamaki College Board of Trustees, was last week dragged into the Employment Relations Authority dispute between Tamaki College and former art teacher Christopher Scott Read more
Pope Francis appealed before 100,000 people on Saturday to avert a widening of Syria’s conflict, urging world leaders to pull humanity out of a “spiral of sorrow and death.” The pontiff led the world’s 1.2 billion Roman Catholics in a global day of prayer and fasting for peace in Syria, the Middle East and the Read more