WASHINGTON (CNS): The United States International Commission on Religious Freedom (USCIRF) singled out 28 countries for repression of religious liberty in its annual report, issued on August 29.
 
The 228-page report designated 16 countries as Tier 1—the harshest level of repression: Myanmar, Central African Republic, China, Eritrea, Iran, Nigeria, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Vietnam.
 

WARSAW (CNS): “From a Christian perspective, violence cannot be an answer to violence. An offense must not be utilized to incite anger against entire ethnic groups,” Bishop Heinrich Timmerevers of Dresden-Meissen, said on August 28, as Germany’s Catholic leaders condemned anti-immigrant riots in Chemnitz, Saxony, that erupted after a man was killed in a brawl with migrants.’
 

SYDNEY (CNS): “We are committed to the safeguarding of children and vulnerable people while maintaining the seal. We do not see safeguarding and the seal as mutually exclusive,” Australia’s Catholic bishops and religious orders, said on August 31 in response to recommendations from the Royal Commission Into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, accepted 98 per cent of its suggestions, but stressed they could not accept recommendations that would violate the seal of confession.
 

DUBLIN (CNS): Behavioural scientists and cyber-crime experts talked to families about how digital distraction, pornography and the “online echo chamber” impact their lives, during one of the first panel discussions at the international World Meeting of Families, held in Dublin Ireland, from August 21 to 26.
 
Pornography in particular has emerged as a threat to individual and family life, panelist, Thomas Lickona, said
 

NEW DEHLI (UCAN): “I want to make it clear that mob lynching is a crime, no matter the motive. No person can, under any circumstances, take the law into his or her own hands and commit violence,” said India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, In an August 11 interview with Times of India, just four days ahead of the country’s Independence Day.
 

Angeline is just one of millions of children who are scared and intimidated to run and tell that they had been raped, abused or sexually assaulted. “Telling was the hardest thing, I was frightened,” she said. “He threatened to kill my mother and burn our house down if I told, I had no one to trust, no one who could protect me from my abuser, he was my father.” 
 

JAKARTA (UCAN): More than 200 people, including religious leaders including Archbishop Ignatius Suharyo Hardjoatmodjo of Jakarta, as well as politicians, attended the August 1 launch of the Said Aqil Siroj Institute in Jakarta, Indonesia.