SEOUL (UCAN): The International Domestic Workers Federation was awarded the 20th Bishop Tji Hak-soun Justice and Peace Award at a ceremony in Seoul in South Korea on March 14.

Myrtle Witbooi accepted the award on behalf of the union of domestic workers at Sejong Centre for Performing Arts.

MANILA (UCAN): The on-again off-again peace talks between the government and the National Democratic Front of The Philippines are now on-again, despite a pledge from the president, Rodrigo Duterte, one month ago to abandon them, because he had lost interest.

However, as an official in the Chinese Foreign Affairs Bureau noted about the president of the United States of America, it really does not matter what the president says, just listen to the public service.

MANILA (SE): The bishops of The Philippines regret that there seems to be a language gap between them and their shoot-from-the-hip president, Rodrigo Duterte, as they say they both aspire to achieving the same benefits for the country, but cannot seem to agree on anything.

There certainly is a language gap, as the president of the bishops’ conference, Archbishop Socrates Villegas, admitted some months ago.

NAYPYIDAW (UCAN): The commander-in-chief of the defence forces in the Union of Myanmar, a senior general, Min Aung Hlaing, termed Rohingya Muslims illegal immigrants and defended a bloody and vicious crackdown on the minority group in the northern part of Rakhine State.

The suppression resulted in the deaths of an estimated 1,000 people and has put more than 77,000 people on the run.

MULTAN (UCAN): A government job advertisement in Pakistan singling out Christians, Hindus and Shia Muslims for sweeper jobs have drawn the ire of the Church, as well as human rights advocates.

The advertisement for sweepers, a designation put on people who clean the streets, public areas, do waste removal and sanitation work, was placed by local government officials in Bannu district in northwestern Pakistan in a local Urdu daily on March 17.

NEW DELHI (UCAN): The sticky issue of the washing of the feet of women at the Mass of the Lord’s Supper on Holy Thursday has raised its head again, this time in the Syro-Malabar Church in India.

George Cardinal Alencherry, the major archbishop of the Church,  said in a directive that the decision of its synod is to continue with its tradition of washing only the feet of 12 men or boys.

TOKYO (AsiaNews): The Japan Federation of Bar Associations issued a written statement on February 25 challenging the government in Tokyo to conduct a full investigation into the effects of the now defunct Eugenic Protection Act, which prescribed abortions and sterilisation for people with certain disabilities and hereditary illnesses.

Adopted in 1948, the purpose of the Eugenic Protection Act was to prevent the birth of imperfect children.

TOKYO (AsiaNews): The Japan Federation of Bar Associations issued a written statement on February 25 challenging the government in Tokyo to conduct a full investigation into the effects of the now defunct Eugenic Protection Act, which prescribed abortions and sterilisation for people with certain disabilities and hereditary illnesses.

Adopted in 1948, the purpose of the Eugenic Protection Act was to prevent the birth of imperfect children.

SEOUL (UCAN): The 90th anniversary of the foundation of the diocese of Pyongyang in North Korea was marked on March 18 at a Mass celebrated in Seoul’s Myeongdong cathedral in the presence of some 500 people who had lived in the northern city prior to the division of the country by the war that ran from 1950 to 1953.

MANILA (SE): On 24 June 2006, the day that the Philippine congress removed the death penalty from its law books, the lights of the Colosseum in Rome burned brightly.

The shell is a sacred site in the Eternal City, standing as a reminder of the brutality of a bygone age, when it was an execution ground for the unwanted and a venue for the blood sport of the Roman Empire.