Donned in eye-patches and a spaghetti bridal headdress, two New Zealanders have celebrated the first legally recognised ‘Pastafarian’ marriage on board a pirate ship, in a milestone of recognition for the bizarre global ‘religion’. The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, whose stated beliefs are in a god made of spaghetti, have amassed followers around […]
Continue Reading
The Pentagon has sent nine Yemeni men to Saudi Arabia from the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo, including an inmate who had been on a long-term hunger strike, U.S. officials said on Saturday, the latest step in President Barack Obama’s final push to close the facility. The group was the largest shipped out of the […]
Continue Reading
Pope Francis took three families of Syrian refugees back to Rome on Saturday after visiting the frontline of Europe’s migrant crisis at a camp in Greece where migrants wept at his feet, kissed his hand and begged for help. At a sprawling fenced complex on the Aegean island of Lesbos, adults and children broke down […]
Continue Reading
A video showing 15 of the 219 schoolgirls held by the jihadist group Boko Haram has added pressure on the Nigerian government to secure their release, after activists accused authorities of mishandling the case in the two years since their mass kidnap. Weeping parents identified the girls captured by Boko Haram fighters, who want to […]
Continue Reading
The leader of Austria’s far-right Freedom Party, Heinz-Christian Strache, visited the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem on Tuesday, laying a wreath under the engraved names of towns in Austria from where Jews were expelled by the Nazis. He said anti-Semitism had no place in his party and urged a common front against Islamists. Strache’s […]
Continue Reading
Islamic State wants to carry out attacks in Germany and the security situation is “very serious”, the head of the country’s domestic intelligence agency (BfV) told a Sunday newspaper, adding that he knew of no concrete plot to strike. The militant group released a video on Tuesday suggesting it may carry out further attacks in […]
Continue Reading
A new short produced by high school classmates of one of the Boston Marathon bombers, depicts their lives following the attack. For days after the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, Americans were glued to the news, eager to know who had planted the homemade devices that ripped through the crowd at the finish line, killing three […]
Continue Reading
Pope Francis on Friday called for a Church that was less strict and more compassionate towards “imperfect” Catholics, such as those who divorced and remarried, saying “no one can be condemned forever”. Francis said gays should be respected but firmly re-stated the Church’s position that there are “absolutely no grounds” to equate gay unions to […]
Continue ReadingRussian sappers clear historic part of Syrian Palmyra after it was re-taken from Islamic State militants by government forces. Russian Defence Ministry released a video on Wednesday (April 6) showing teams of military sappers searching for mines in the historic part of the Syrian city of Palmyra. According to the ministry, the sappers have already […]
Continue Reading
The death of a former Auschwitz guard days before his trial in Germany has dashed the hopes of two elderly Jewish survivors of Nazi rule who wanted to see justice for their parents, who perished while the guard was on duty at the death camp. Israel Loewenstein, himself a 91-year-old Holocaust survivor, and Henry Foner, […]
Continue Reading