HANOI (UCAN): Around a dozen Sisters of St. Paul de Chartres were attacked by gangsters in Hanoi, Vietnam, while protesting the illegal construction of a house on land adjoining their convent.
 
Witnesses said gangsters employed to guard the site “insulted and attacked the sisters with batons and one was beaten to unconsciousness.” They said many policemen were present but did nothing to stop the brutal attack.
 

JAKARTA (UCAN): Christian leaders called for unity following a spate of suicide bombings that targeted three churches, an apartment building and the police headquarters in Surabaya, Indonesia’s second city, that left dozens dead and many more injured in the deadliest attacks in more than a decade.
 
Father Agustinus Ulahayanan, the executive secretary of the bishops’ Commission for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs, denounced the bombings and called on Catholics and other Christians to unite and be vigilant.
 

MANILA (UCAN): Church bells in the Archdiocese of Manila will toll at eight o’clock every evening to protest the continuing spate of killings in the Philippines.
 
Luis Cardinal Tagle, archbishop of Manila ramped up his condemnation of the killings following the shooting of Father Mark Ventura in the Archdiocese of Tuguegarao on April 29, and a broadcast journalist, Edmund Sestoso, in Dumaguete, in the province of Negros Oriental, only a day later.
 

DHAKA (UCAN): The government and aid groups in Bangladesh are preparing for disastrous flooding in the upcoming monsoon season which weather forecasters have warned will arrive early at the end of May. It usually starts in June and lasts until August.
 
Mofazzal Hossain Chowdhury, minister of the Disaster Management and Relief Ministry, told journalists that disaster preparations are in place.
 

MANILA (UCAN): The Philippine government has “no right to define and delimit the scope of our missionary and apostolate works,” said Australian Sister Patricia Fox, from the Sister of Our Lady of Sion, whose missionary visa was revoked by the Philippine government last month (Sunday Examiner, May 6). 
 
The 71-year-old Sister Fox, who has lived and worked in the Philippines for 27 years as a missionary, hit back at allegations against her by the Bureau of Immigration in a 25-page affidavit.
 

TAINAN (UCAN): The Diocese of Tainan, Taiwan, is breathing a sigh of relief now that interest in a charity run, which at first looked to be a flop out of the starting blocks, saw a sudden, upward spike that saw the number of sign-ups multiply 10-fold in just a few days.
 
The first Tobias Cup, organised by the Tobias Social Welfare Foundation, is scheduled to kick off on May 26 in Hutoupei, Xinhua town, in Tainan, with the goal of raising NT$20 million ($5.28 million).
 

VATICAN (SE): Pope Francis hailed the agreement reached at the recent inter-Korean summit regarding denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula, and expressed the hope that that their courageous commitment may achieve “a path of sincere dialogue for a Korean Peninsula that is free of nuclear weapons,” Vatican News reported 
 

SRINAGAR (UCAN): The United States (US) Commission on International Religious Freedom has accused the Indian government of doing little to prevent violence against religious minorities and socially poor Dalit people.
 
The commission’s latest report, released on April 25, said the government of prime minister, Narendra Damodardas Modi, of the pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), has not addressed the problem of sectarian violence despite government statistics showing that sectarian violence has increased sharply over the past two years.

SEOUL (UCAN): According to figures released on April 13 by the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Korea, a total of 96,794 young Catholics were baptised—representing a drop of 12.9 per cent compared to 2016.
 
It is the slowest rate of growth in the last decade, leaving Church authorities concerned about a continued wind-down as parishioners, in line with Korean society as a whole, are greying at the temples.
 

HANOI (UCAN): Father Joseph Nguyen Duc Cuong is returning to Thanh Hóa province, the region of his birth, to become bishop of a diocese considered the cradle of Catholicism in northern Vietnam.
 
Father Nguyen was appointed by the Holy See on April 25, according to a statement from Archbishop Joseph Nguyen Chi Linh, president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Vietnam. Every Church in the 86-year-old diocese rang their bells to welcome the nomination as soon as the Vatican made the announcement.