In a treaty released Wednesday, the Vatican officially recognized a Palestinian State.
“Yes, it’s a recognition that the state exists,” the Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, told reporters, according to The Associated Press.
Israeli officials said they were disappointed in the actions of the Vatican and that the Catholic Church was hurting the prospects of peace in the region with their decision.
The Vatican said that the statement “deals with essential aspects of the life and activity of the Catholic Church in Palestine.”
“We have recognized the State of Palestine ever since it was given recognition by the United Nations and it is already listed as the State of Palestine in our official yearbook,” Father Lombardi said.
An Israeli ministry official said “it was surprising to see this letter published before the government of Israel was officially established.”
The Pope has spoken of a “State of Palestine” in previous speeches including his pleading for Hamas to stop their terrorists attacks on Israel last year.
Rescuers digging through the rubble of what was once the village of Langtang have said it’s likely they will never be able to find all the victims of the earthquake and landslide.
“The entire village was wiped out by the mudslide. There were some 60 houses there, but they were all buried under rubble. It will be impossible to recover all the bodies,” government official Gautam Rimal said to CBS.
The village is only 35 miles north of the capital of Kathmandu, but because of damage to the region it now takes rescuers two days to reach the site. Helicopters can fly in but because they are in very short supply they cannot make regular relief runs to the town.
The death toll from the quake has officially passes 7,500.
Government officials say that one-third of the population of Kathmandu has left the city. While some have returned to try and find or help relatives, the bus stations are still packed with people who are trying to leave.
The population of the region with the capital city was 2.5 million at the time of the quake.
Some parts of the city are returning to normal with some markets reopening and fresh food and vegetables being made available to residents. USAID announced $11 million in emergency supplies for the region including safe drinking water.
A new report from China Aid says that Christian persecution in China significantly climbed during 2014.
The Texas-based advocacy group said that China saw a 300 percent increase in instances of religious – mostly Christian – persecution in 2014 compared to 2013. The 572 confirmed cases of persecution impacted 17,884 people, a rise of over 10,000 from the previous year.
“In 2014, the scope, depth, and intensity of persecution against religious practitioners far surpassed that of 2013,” China Aid reported. “The increase in government-sanctioned persecution against religious practitioners and human rights lawyers and advocates reflects the overall political transformation that is occurring within the Communist Party in China (CPC), namely an orchestrated effort to consolidate power and suppress dissent and any perceived threats to the Chinese government, including the growth of religion in China.”
A significant rise was seen in the detention of church leadership. In 2013, 54 church leaders had been arrested or detained by government officials. In 2014, that number jumped to 449.
The Chinese government claimed that actions taken against Christian groups, which included the destruction of churches and the removal of crosses from church buildings, were attempts to eliminate “attacking cults.” They said the “cults” were attempting to “undermine law enforcement.”
The report from China Aid backs up the earlier report from Open Doors regarding religious freedom worldwide that showed China deteriorating in freedom. China fell from 37th to 29th in the most recent Open Doors report.
The number of major earthquakes around the world has almost tripled in the last 10 years.
Eighteen earthquakes with a magnitude of 8.0 or greater has struck around the globe since 2004, compared to 71 great earthquakes during the previous 100 years.
The information was released at the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America.
“If we look at all earthquake magnitudes, the past 10 years is not unusual in terms of the rate of events; the rate increases are just seen for events with magnitudes larger than 7.5 or so,” said Thorne Lay of the University of California Santa Cruz. “This suggests that great events were ‘catching up’ on the plate boundary motions in several regions with fortuitous similar timing.”
“The last 10 years have been interesting for seismologists because we have learned that great subduction zone earthquakes occur in many different ways and there do not seem to be any simple rules to predict the kind of behavior to expect,” Peter Shearer, a professor of geophysics at the Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego, told NBC News. “Thus we can’t reliably assess at this point whether the Cascadia subduction zone will eventually break mostly in a single giant earthquake or a series of large earthquakes.”