Miracles, like much else in the Catholic church, aren’t what they used to be. The French shrine of Lourdes has often been likened to a religious theme park, offering package tours and souvenirs for the millions of pilgrims who arrive each year, many of them sick and desperate to experience or at least witness a miracle.
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Sudan’s government warned on Wednesday that deploying a United Nations force to the war-torn western Darfur region risks worsening conflict there and eroding the African Union’s (AU) mandate to intervene in other trouble spots in the continent.
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Southern African bishops expressed ”deep disgust” at the behaviour of some people in the vicinity of the Johannesburg High Court, where Jacob Zuma is on trial for rape. ”We therefore call on those responsible for such behaviour to desist immediately from such demeaning action,” the bishops said in a statement.
A writer who claims The Da Vinci Code copied from his work insisted in a British court on Wednesday there were specific echoes of his book in the best-selling thriller. However, Michael Baigent conceded there were many differences in detail between The Da Vinci Code and his 1982 non-fiction book.
A string of explosions on Wednesday killed at least six people — including two young boys — and injured nine in the Iraqi capital, police said. A bomb hidden under a parked car near the University of Technology exploded as police from the interior minister’s protection force were driving through central Baghdad.
North Korea may have fired two ground-to-air missiles near its border with China on Wednesday, a Japanese news report said, citing unidentified sources. Pyongyang was believed to have launched the missiles ”in the direction towards China,” Kyodo News agency reported, citing an Asian security source.
Police discovered a weapons cache in eastern Zimbabwe and linked it to a little-known group that state radio identified on Wednesday as the military wing of the main opposition party. A spokesperson for the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) rejected allegations it was linked to an armed group.
"The announcement on February 27 by the chairperson of the portfolio committee on justice and constitutional development, Fatima Chohan, that the deadline for submissions on the draft Superior Courts Bill and the draft Constitution Fourteenth Amendment Bill is being extended to May 15 provides some much-needed breathing space," writes Theunis Roux.
HIV/Aids and human rights activists have called for commercial sex work to be decriminalised as a means of tackling the spread of HIV/Aids.