Category: Trends

Comment on this story Comment BETHLEHEM, West Bank — The biblical town of Bethlehem is gearing up for what residents hope will be a merry Christmas, with thousands of visitors expected to descend upon the traditional birthplace of Jesus as it rebounds from the coronavirus pandemic. Tourism is the economic lifeblood of this town in […]

Comment on this story Comment NICOSIA, Cyprus — Cyprus’ Orthodox Church on Saturday elected Paphos Bishop Georgios as its new leader following the death last month of Archbishop Chrysostomos II. The 73-year-old cleric received nine votes from the 16-member Holy Synod, the church’s highest decision making body, against four for runner-up Limassol Bishop Athanasios. There […]

Comment on this story Comment KYIV, Ukraine — Just a year ago, Sophia Square in Kyiv was all about the big Christmas tree and thousands of lights spreading over the plaza. These final days of 2022, in the middle of a war that has ravaged the country for 10 months, a more modest tree stands […]

A suspect in the murder of a Paraguayan anti-drug prosecutor shot dead while honeymooning on a Caribbean island has confessed to accepting $8,000 for the execution-style killing, Venezuela said Thursday. Venezuela’s Interior Minister Remigio Ceballos shared a video with journalists in which Gabriel Carlos Luis Salinas Mendoza, a Venezuelan citizen arrested in Caracas on Tuesday, […]

Comment on this story Comment PARIS — Confessed serial killer Charles Sobhraj arrived in France Saturday after being released from a life sentence in a Nepal prison. Sobhraj, a 78-year-old French citizen, had been serving time for the deaths of American and Canadian backpackers in the 1970s. He has in the past admitted killing several […]

DNA tests have confirmed that a man was taken from his mother as a baby during Argentina’s dictatorship, a human rights group said Thursday, increasing the number of this type of case to 131. Estela de Carlotto, president of the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo, said at a news conference that the man, whose name […]

Comment on this story Comment Oleksandr has not seen his mother since Russian soldiers captured the pair in Mariupol, in southern Ukraine, in April and took her away. At 12, he escaped adoption into a Russian family only because he remembered his grandmother’s phone number and called her to come and save him. Russia’s proxy […]

Seoul, South Korea — North Korea fired two short-range ballistic missiles toward its eastern waters on Friday, its latest weapons demonstration that came days after U.S. and South Korean warplanes conducted joint drills that North Korea views as an invasion rehearsal. North Korea has conducted an unprecedented number of missile tests this year in what […]

Kathmandu, Nepal — Confessed French serial killer Charles Sobhraj was freed from prison in Nepal on Friday after serving most of his sentence for the murders of American and Canadian backpackers. His nickname, “The Serpent,” stems from his reputation as a disguise and escape artist.   The country’s Supreme Court had ordered Wednesday that Sobhraj, […]

South Africa plans to carry out lie detector tests on staff working at its game reserves in a bid to fight rampant wildlife poaching, a national parks management agency said Thursday. Poachers, sometimes operating in cahoots with crooked park employees, have decimated the country’s population of endangered rhinos in recent years. To tackle the problem, […]