World

A quarter century after Israeli spies, a Canadian activist, and a Syrian rabbi smuggled nine rare medieval Jewish manuscripts out of Damascus, an Israeli court decided the books will remain under the National Library’s custodianship for their preservation.

A conservative South Korean pastor who has been a bitter critic of the country’s president has tested positive for the coronavirus, health authorities said Monday (Aug. 17), two days after he participated in an anti-government protest in Seoul that drew thousands.

Zimbabwe is embroiled in an economic and political crisis marked by human rights abuses, said the country’s Roman Catholic bishops, who were then criticized by the government as “evil” and trying to promote genocide.

On Thursday (Aug. 13), U.S. President Donald Trump announced Israel and the United Arab Emirates agreed to diplomatic relations. But while many applauded the move as a step toward peace, others criticized it as another effort that undermines Palestinian hopes for sovereignty.

When the first COVID-19 cases hit Brazil in March, the government agency in charge of protecting the country’s Indigenous peoples ordered all civilians to leave the Indigenous reservations. But a new law made an exception for one group: Christian missionaries. And some people aren’t happy.

The world witnessed fleeting glimpses of the horror wrought on the Lebanese people on Aug. 4 through videos that circulated widely online, among them that dramatic footage as Rabih Thoumy celebrated Mass via livestream from Saint Maron-Baouchrieh church. He recounts the explosion and aftermath.

A court in Myanmar on Thursday sentenced the Canadian pastor of an evangelical church to three months imprisonment after finding him guilty of violating a law intended to combat the spread of the coronavirus. 

South Korean prosecutors arrested the elderly leader of a secretive religious sect Saturday as part of an investigation into allegations that the church hampered the government’s anti-virus response after thousands of worshipers were infected in February and March.

Persecuted Christians in Sudan are safer after the nation decriminalized apostasy, ended flogging and made other reforms through the new Fundamental Rights and Freedoms Act.

The president of Turkey on Friday formally reconverted Istanbul’s sixth-century Hagia Sophia into a mosque and declared it open for Muslim worship, hours after a high court annulled a 1934 decision that had made the religious landmark a museum. The decision sparked deep dismay among Orthodox Christians.