The Vatican "systematically" adopted policies that allowed priests to rape and molest tens of thousands of children over decades, a U.N. human rights committee said Wednesday, urging the Holy See to open its files on pedophiles and bishops who concealed their crimes.
In a devastating report hailed by abuse victims, the U.N. committee severely criticized the Holy See for its attitudes toward homosexuality, contraception and abortion and said it should change its own canon law to ensure children's rights and their access to health care are guaranteed.
UN Committee Blasts Vatican on Sex Abuse, Abortion
Israeli military whistleblower freed
Israel's prison service says a former soldier who passed hundreds of classified documents to a newspaper reporter has been freed after more than two years in jail.
Spokeswoman Sivan Weizman said Anat Kamm walked free Sunday morning.
Kamm began serving a prison term at the end of 2011 after being convicted of passing military information to a Haaretz reporter.
Report: Egyptian diplomats kidnapped in Libya
Four Egyptian embassy staff were kidnapped in Tripoli on Saturday, a day after the abduction of another Egyptian diplomat, in what Libya's government called a reaction to Egypt's arrest of a Libyan militia commander.
No group claimed responsibility for any of the abductions, but they came soon after a powerful Islamist-leaning militia group reported its commander had been arrested in Egypt and warned of a response unless he was freed.
Baghdad bomb blasts kill 26, Iraqi troops fight Sunni rebels
Seven bomb explosions killed 26 people and wounded 67 in the Iraqi capital on Monday, police and medics said, as security forces battled Sunni Muslim militants around the western cities of Falluja and Ramadi.
The bloodiest attack occurred in the mainly Shi'ite Muslim Abu Dsheer district in southern Baghdad, where a car bomb near a crowded market killed seven people and wounded 18.
The truth about Israel's secret nuclear arsenal
Deep beneath desert sands, an embattled Middle Eastern state has built a covert nuclear bomb, using technology and materials provided by friendly powers or stolen by a clandestine network of agents. It is the stuff of pulp thrillers and the sort of narrative often used to characterise the worst fears about the Iranian nuclear programme. In reality, though, neither US nor British intelligence believe Tehran has decided to build a bomb, and Iran's atomic projects are under constant international monitoring.
The exotic tale of the bomb hidden in the desert is a true story, though. It's just one that applies to another country. In an extraordinary feat of subterfuge, Israel managed to assemble an entire underground nuclear arsenal – now estimated at 80 warheads, on a par with India and Pakistan – and even tested a bomb nearly half a century ago, with a minimum of international outcry or even much public awareness of what it was doing.
Senior al-Qaida figure dies in custody in Lebanon
The leader of an al-Qaida-linked group that carried out attacks across the Middle East before shifting its focus to Syria's civil war died on Saturday while in custody in Lebanon, the army said.
In a short statement, the Lebanese army said Majid al-Majid "died this morning while undergoing treatment at the central military hospital after his health deteriorated." It did not elaborate.
Ship that aided in rescue of passengers in antarctic may be trappedJ
The Chinese ship that helped ferry 52 passengers from an ice-bound vessel indicated it may be in trouble in antarctic waters, an Australian agency said Friday.
The Australia Maritime Ship Authority said the Xue Long notified the agency it had concerns about its "ability to move through heavy ice in the area." The Australian ship Aurora Australis, which is taking the 52 passengers removed from the Akademik Shokalskiy to the Australian state of Tasmania, has been placed on standby in open water as a precaution, the agency said in a release.
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