LONDON (Reuters) — Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said on Saturday that he would campaign for a liberalization of the country’s restrictive abortion laws ahead of a referendum in the coming months, adding that his views on the issue had evolved. Varadkar’s government plans to hold the referendum as soon as May to loosen some of […]

SEOUL (Reuters) — North Korea sent a rare announcement addressed to “all Koreans at home and abroad” on Thursday, saying they should make a “breakthrough” for unification without the help of other countries, its state media said. It said all Koreans should “promote contact, travel, cooperation between North and South Korea” while adding Pyongyang will “smash” […]

LONDON (Reuters) — Drinking alcohol produces a harmful chemical in the body which can lead to permanent genetic damage in the DNA of stem cells, increasing the risk of cancer developing, according to research published on Wednesday. Working with mice in a laboratory, British scientists used chromosome analysis and DNA sequencing to examine the genetic damage […]

BERLIN (Reuters) — Germany’s constitutional court has ruled that a 96-year-old German must go to jail over his role in mass murders committed at the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz during World War Two, refusing to overturn a lower court ruling. Oskar Groening, known as the “bookkeeper of Auschwitz” for his job counting cash taken from the […]

SEOUL (Reuters) – The South Korean president’s office said on Sunday that it will begin a review on the country’s 64-year-old law to ban abortion. The announcement came after more than 230,000 South Koreans filed a petition calling for the abolishment of the law. South Korea criminalized abortion in 1953 when its leaders wanted to […]

BEIJING (Reuters) — China’s cabinet on Thursday passed new rules to regulate religion to bolster national security, fight extremism and restrict faith practiced outside organizations approved by the state. The document passed by Premier Li Keqiang updates a version of rules put into place in 2005 to allow the regulation of religion to better reflect […]

PANCHKULA, India (Reuters) — Violent protests erupted in India’s Haryana state on Friday, killing at least 29 people, after a court convicted a self-styled “godman” of raping two women, angering thousands of his supporters who said he was innocent, the state chief minister said. Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh, the head of a social welfare and spiritual […]

OTTAWA (Reuters) — The family of a Canadian pastor serving a life sentence in North Korea is concerned for his welfare after the death of an American student who was imprisoned there. They want Canada to work harder to secure his release, a spokesperson said on Wednesday. Hyeon Soo Lim, who served at one of […]

(Reuters) — Indonesia’s anti-terrorism unit raided the home of a suspected suicide bomber on Thursday as authorities linked attacks that killed three police officers at a Jakarta bus station a day earlier to the Islamic State militant group. Six police officers and six civilians were also wounded in the twin blasts set off five minutes […]

(Reuters) — Jakarta’s Christian governor has been sentenced to two years in jail for blasphemy, a harsher-than-expected ruling critics fear will embolden hardline Islamist forces to challenge secularism in Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim-majority nation. Tuesday’s guilty verdict for Basuki Tjahaja Purnama comes amid concern about the growing influence of Islamist groups, who organized mass […]