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Sri Lanka in on a warpath against the dengue virus, deploying hundreds of its soldiers to destroy breeding grounds of mosquitos with the deadly dengue fever already claiming 215 people this year, officials said Sunday. Humid monsoon weather, stagnant water from recent flooding, as well as mounting piles of rotting garbage accumulating in the capital, have combined to create abundant areas for mosquitoes to breed. This has caused rates of dengue, a tropical disease that is spread by mosquitoes, to surge to over 71,000 people infected in the first six months of this year, a record figure that far surpasses last year's total of 55,000.Troops, backed by police and health officials, have launched an intensive campaign to identify dengue hotspots to be sprayed with insecticides, the military said in a statement. "Twenty five teams will separately move into the worst-affected areas in and around Colombo and search for dengue breeding spots and other vulnerable ...
"Women and families in Asia witness to the Gospel despite many challenges and difficulties they face," says Bangladesh’s cardinal. "In Asian countries such as Bangladesh, Cambodia, India, Malaysia, South Korea, Singapore, there are families and women who, in their daily lives, undergo threats and abuse but give a heroic witness to the Gospel,” Cardinal Patrick D'Rozario told the Vatican’s Fides news agency. “And there are young people who are looking for the meaning of life and who tell their joy, having found it in Christ", said the cardinal, who is Archbishop of Dhaka as well as the President of the Office for the Laity and Family of the Federation of the Asian Bishops’ Conferences (FABC). He said that “small Christian lay communities give valuable help at a pastoral level. We are confident to see the inspiration and the action of the Holy Spirit that allow Christian communities in Asia to prospe...
(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis on Monday said that the Food and Agriculture Organization – FAO - must always be in a position to intervene when people do not have enough to eat.The Pope was addressing staff and employees of the Rome-based United Nations food agency gathered for their 40th General Conference. FAO’s mission is to help eliminate hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition across the globe.Listen to the report by Linda Bordoni: In a message delivered by the Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Parolin on behalf of the Pope, Francis said that "When a country is incapable of offering adequate responses because its degree of development, conditions of poverty, climate changes or situations of insecurity do not permit this, FAO and the other intergovernmental institutions need to be able to intervene specifically and undertake an adequate solidary action."The urgency of his words echo FAO Director General José Graziano Da Silva’s ...
IMAGE: CNS/family handout, courtesy FeatureworldBy Carol GlatzVATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Pope Francis called for respectingthe wishes of a terminally ill child's parents to accompany and care for theirchild "until the end."Greg Burke, Vatican spokesman, said the pope wasfollowing "with affection and emotion" the events concerning CharlieGard, a 10-month-old infant born in England with mitochondrial DNA depletionsyndrome, which causes progressive muscle weakness, brain damage andrespiratory or liver failure; it is typically fatal.Expressing his closeness to the parents, Pope Francis saidhe was "praying for them, hoping that their desire to accompany and takecare of their own baby until the end is not disregarded," Burke's written statementsaid in Italian July 2.In London, Charlie's parents, Chris Gard and Connie Yates,crowdfunded nearly $1.7 million in four months to finance having the babytreated in the United States. However, when hospital officials wanted to stopproviding life support...
IMAGE: CNS photo/Alonso Cupul, EPABy Junno Arocho EstevesVATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Theinternational community must not remain resigned to the plight of thosesuffering hunger and malnutrition, which is often caused by indifference and selfishness,Pope Francis said.In a message to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization conference July 3, the pope saidwars, terrorism and forced displacements are not "inevitable butrather the consequence of concrete decisions" that have led to the lack of food andadequate nutrition to the helpless."We are dealing with acomplex mechanism that mainly burdens the most vulnerable, who are not onlyexcluded from the processes of production, but frequently obliged to leavetheir lands in search of refuge and hope," the pope said in the messageread to the conference by Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Vatican secretary of state.The Vatican published themessage July 3. Cardinal Parolin also toldparticipants that Pope Francis would visit the FAO headquarters in Rome Oct....
NEW YORK (AP) -- Dairy farmers want U.S. regulators to banish the term "soy milk," but documents show even government agencies haven't always agreed on what to call such drinks....
CHICAGO (AP) -- A website that hosted an "Abduction 101" forum linked to a 28-year-old suspect in the kidnapping of a Chinese scholar at the University of Illinois bills itself as the most popular sexual fetish networking site on the internet - and it has faced pressure in recent months to be clearer about not tolerating behavior that could be regarded as criminal....
CHICAGO (AP) -- On Tuesday afternoon, the crowd at Wrigley Field will be asked to stand and "gentlemen" reminded to remove their caps for the playing of "The Star-Spangled Banner." Fans who can recite the words as easily as the alphabet will sing or listen to the story of a flag that continued to wave throughout one of the most famous battles in American history....
BERLIN (AP) -- A bus carrying German senior citizens on vacation crashed into a truck Monday on a highway in Bavaria and burst into flames, killing 18 people and injuring 30 others, some seriously, officials said....
