Bhutan

| ASIA – PACIFIC

The latest data on international arms transfers over the past five years come from Sweden-based SIPRI. India is the world's top importer, while the United States, for the first time in 25 years, is Asia’s largest supplier. Driving rearmament, experts explain, is the perception of a Chinese threat (which continues to boost its war production).


Today's headlines: in Siberia, permafrost melts causing the methane-releasing Batagaika depression to sink further; Israeli army kills two teenagers in the West Bank; U.S. semiconductors in Russia despite sanctions through Maldives; Chinese youth stop at Propaganda Fide in Rome on their way to WYD.

| 22/07/2023
| ASIA TODAY

The kingdom's goal is to reach pre-pandemic visitors level while preserving nature. But this could prove in vain due to global warming. According to a new report, Himalayan glaciers are melting at an alarming rate.

| 20/06/2023
| BHUTAN

Today's headlines: Afghan Taliban against music and dancing at weddings; Burmese junta shuts down oil wells in Magway, over 300,000 workers at risk, Beijing studies a new "water network" against drought, Holland and Canada want to try Damascus in the International Court for torture; Bhutan sets its sights on Bitcoin and cryptocurrency to build a 600-megawatt power plant; Tehran ready to build an assault drone factory in Russia.

| 13/06/2023
| ASIA TODAY

“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”.

| 28/01/2022
| VATICAN

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!”

 

| 25/01/2022
| VATICAN

Today's headlines: Beijing imports four million barrels of Iranian oil; India and Pakistan tested 26 missiles last year, Pyongyang six; a human rights award goes to Vietnamese activist Pham Doan Trang; Japan bulls US soldiers 'trojan horse' for Covid entry; Isis assaults a prison in Syria. 

| 21/01/2022
| ASIA TODAY
Editor's choices
 
by Dario Salvi
Layan Nasir, a 23-year-old native of Birzeit, is the only Christian woman under "administrative detention". She was taken, blindfolded and handcuffed, overnight by a military patrol without an arrest warrant or charges against her. The Bethlehem ...
| 19/04/2024
| ISRAEL – PALESTINE
 
Chinese Human Rights Defenders released a report detailing the stories of children and young people victims of human rights violations, like He Fengmei's daughter, who was separated from her mother a month after her birth and kept in a psychiatric ...
| 16/04/2024
| CHINA
 
Currently in intensive care, the seven-year-old is the only person to be seriously wounded by Iran’s attack against Israel because her house and village were not covered by Israel’s Iron Dome defence system. Nothing is known of the fate of ...
| 15/04/2024
| ISRAEL – GAZA - IRAN
 
by Daniele Frison
The auxiliary bishop of Jerusalem and patriarchal vicar for Palestine looks at the protests in Amman. Diplomatic relations with Israel allow aid to be sent to Gaza. Some students from Gaza’s Holy Family Parish arrived in Amman thanks to the Patriarchate’s ...
| 12/04/2024
| JORDAN
 
The Holy See has officially announced the long journey to Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Timor-Leste, and Singapore. Card Goh of Singapore hopes the pope will bring to his predominantly Chinese city, “renewed fervour to all Catholics [. . .], especially ...
| 12/04/2024
| VATICAN
 
by card. Anthony Poola *
The Archbishop of Hyderabad looks at the media reaction to the declaration released by the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith on human dignity. The media are “focused on gender theory, sex change, surrogacy etc., but” people who “struggle ...
| 11/04/2024
| INDIA
 
The Vatican Secretary for Relations with States presides over Mass in the cathedral, the focal point of this historic trip for the local Church since the breaking of diplomatic relations between Hanoi and the Vatican in 1975. In the meeting with ...
| 11/04/2024
| VIETNAM
 
The Custody, a Jewish group and Tag Meir activists offered gifts to Muslims leaving al-Aqsa every Thursday at the Damascus Gate. Fr. Pari: An initiative that has been  carried out  for some time, but this year takes on special value in the context ...
| 06/04/2024
| HOLY LAND
“L’Asia: ecco il nostro comune compito per il terzo millennio!” - Giovanni Paolo II, da “Alzatevi, andiamo”