Pope Francis urged Chinese Catholics to be “good citizens” and “good Christians,” a rare instance of the Holy Father publicly addressing the issue of religion in China.

Francis’ seemingly off-the-cuff comments came during his Sunday Mass in the Mongolian capital of Ulaanbaatar.

The trip has been scrutinized because of both its historic nature – it is the the first ever by a Pope to the sparsely populated Asian nation – but also because of its potential geopolitical reverberations. Mongolia is sandwiched between Russia, whose invasion of Ukraine Francis has publicly criticized, and China, an atheist state where religious practice is heavily curtailed by the government.

Officially there are about 6 million Catholics in China, but the number may be higher when counting those who practice at underground churches to avoid Beijing’s watchful eye.

At the end of Mass, Pope Francis took the hands of the current Bishop of Hong Kong, cardinal-designate Stephen Chow, and his predecessor, Cardinal John Tong, calling them “brother bishops” before addressing China’s Catholics

Francis said he wanted to take advantage of their presence at his Mass in Mongolia “to send a warm greeting to the noble Chinese people.” Hong Kong’s Catholic leaders play an important role in navigating Vatican-Beijing relations, as the territory allows its citizens greater freedom of religion than in mainland China.

“To the entire people I wish the best, go forward, always progress. And to the Chinese Catholics, I ask you to be good Christians and good citizens.”

China may be officially an atheist state, but religious practice is legal in the country – albeit under tight government supervision and surveillance.

Catholicism is one of five state-recognized faiths, but state-sanctioned Catholic churches were for decades by bishops chosen and ordained by Beijing, not the Holy See, until the two sides reached an agreement in 2018. Details of the accord have never been made public.

Francis landed in Mongolia Friday for a trip that has lacked the usual fanfare of a Papal visit.

There are only 1,500 Catholics in the entire country of 3.5 million, but that number has grown significantly in the decades following country’s transformation from communist one-party rule to multiparty democracy in the 1990s. According to Vatican News, there were only 14 Catholics in the country in 1995.

The 86-year-old Pontiff spent the first day of his trip resting. He met with Mongolian political leaders on Saturday and on Sunday attended an inter-religious meeting alongside representatives from various religious communities, including Buddhists, Shamans, Muslim, Jews, and evangelicals and Russian Orthodox Christians.

Residents in Madrid were instructed by city authorities to stay indoors Sunday with Storm Dana set to lash the Spanish capital.

The state meteorological agency, AEMET, issued a warning for Madrid, Toledo and Cadiz, where Dana is expected to bring strong rains.

According to AEMET, up to 120 liters per square meter of rain could fall over Madrid in 12 hours.

Valencia, on the Mediterrenean coast, has seen intense rainfall already, AEMAT said.

Madrid’s mayor José Luis Martínez-Almeida advised residents to stay in their houses, calling what was to come an “exceptional situation.”

“Due to the exceptional and abnormal situation, in which rainfall records will be broken, I ask the people of Madrid to stay at home today,” Martinez-Almeida wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

Madrid’s emergency services sent texts to residents warning them of flood risks and advising them against using vehicles.

Atletico Madrid wrote on X that Sunday’s LaLiga football match against Sevilla had also been postponed due to the storm.

A Saudi court has sentenced a retired teacher to death over his comments online, say his brother and advocacy group Human Rights Watch.

Muhammad al-Ghamdi, a 54-year-old retired Saudi teacher, was sentenced “following 5 tweets criticizing corruption and human rights violations,” his brother Saeed bin Nasser al-Ghamdi tweeted last week.

According to Human Rights Watch, Muhammad al-Ghamdi was arrested last year and given little access to a lawyer before his conviction in July “under article 30 of Saudi Arabia’s counterterrorism law for ‘describing the King or the Crown Prince in a way that undermines religion or justice,’ article 34 for ‘supporting a terrorist ideology,’ article 43 for ‘communication with a terrorist entity,’ and article 44 for publishing false news ‘with the intention of executing a terrorist crime.’”

“Repression in Saudi Arabia has reached a terrifying new stage when a court can hand down the death penalty for nothing more than peaceful tweets,” Joey Shea, Saudi Arabia researcher at Human Rights Watch, said in a Tuesday statement.

According to the European Saudi Organization for Human Rights, Saudi Arabia has executed at least 92 people this year so far. In 2022, UK-based human rights organization ALQST cataloged 148 executions in Saudi Arabia – more than twice the number of executions it recorded in 2021.

The death sentence comes amid an “escalating crackdown” on free speech in the country, said Lina Alhathloul, ALQST head of monitoring and advocacy and sister of released Saudi political prisoner Loujain al-Hathloul.

“They are sending a clear and sinister message – that nobody is safe, and even a tweet can get you killed,” she said.

Al-Ghamdi’s brother Saeed, a well-known Saudi Islamic scholar and government critic living in self-imposed exile in the United Kingdom, said he believe the severity of the sentence is designed to punish him as well.

“The Saudi authorities asked me several times to return to Saudi Arabia, but I refused to do so. It is very probable that this death sentence against my brother is in retaliation for my activity. Otherwise, his charges wouldn’t have carried such a severe penalty,” he said.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has praised the country’s women’s soccer team – and Spanish society itself – for taking a critical stance against Luis Rubiales for his unwanted kiss of World Cup winner Jennifer Hermoso.

The scandal over the kiss has triggered widespread condemnation in Spain and the rest of the world and has sparked a wider debate about patriarchal and chauvinistic attitudes in the country.

Rubiales, president of the Royal Spanish Football Federation (RFEF), has been under mounting pressure to resign since the kiss in the aftermath of the country’s historic win against England in the Women’s World Cup last month.

However, Rubiales – who has said the kiss felt “consensual” – has refused to do so.

Critics say the scandal surrounding the kiss has overshadowed what should have been a time to celebrate a monumental sporting achievement.

Speaking at an event in the city of Malaga in southern Spain on Saturday, Sanchez said he did not believe the scandal had damaged the Spanish brand abroad thanks to the Spanish women’s team.

“I really believe that the Spain brand is the reaction of the female players of our national soccer team and the spectacular reaction of the Spanish society that has joined them in saying ‘it’s over’ – and that it’s over is with all the consequences for all the leaders who have been involved in these unfortunate events,” Sanchez said.

He shared a clip of his speech on X, formerly known as Twitter, and said: “The Spain that is coming is feminist. Whether you like it or not.”

He added that “one could not aspire to represent Spain and make Spain look bad with attitudes and speeches that embarrassed… and did not represent” the country.

‘Tip of the iceberg’

Joining the debate was Vero Boquete, who captained Spain’s women’s national team at the 2015 Women’s World Cup.

She told Reuters that Rubiales’ behavior was the “tip of the iceberg” when it came to cultural and systemic problems facing the RFEF and said it was “crazy” that he was still president despite a provisional suspension by FIFA.

The Spanish government has suffered setbacks in its attempts to remove Rubiales from his post.

Spain’s Court of Arbitration in Sport (TAD) on Friday agreed to open a case against Rubiales but rejected the government’s argument that his offenses were “very serious” – preventing his immediate suspension.

Minister of Culture and Sport Miquel Iceta said he would submit a separate complaint to TAD and request Rubiales be removed from his post until the investigation was resolved.

Rubiales, 46, has said he made a mistake kissing Hermoso, 33, but has continued to defend his actions.

He said the kiss was “spontaneous, mutual, euphoric and (done) with consent.”

Hermoso has disputed this, saying that she was made to feel “vulnerable and a victim of an impulse-driven, sexist, out of place act without any consent.”

“Simply put I was not respected,” she said.

The soccer world has rallied behind Hermoso. FIFA opened disciplinary proceedings against Rubiales and provisionally suspended him from all soccer related activities while sports unions have called for “immediate disciplinary action” against Rubiales.

In defense of her son, 71-year-old Ángeles Béjar locked herself in a church on hunger strike to protest what she called an “inhumane, bloodthirsty hunt.”

It’s a steamy summer afternoon in the Japanese city of Osaka, where a group of around 60 men and women have gathered for a session of “omiai,” or matchmaking, to find true love.

They mingle away, hopping from one end of the conference room at the Sakai Chamber of Commerce building to another as they assess potential matches – and the competition.

But this is no ordinary speed-dating event.

Few of the participants are talking about their favorite hobbies, movies or restaurants, or indeed, even about themselves. They are talking about their grown-up, still single children who they are hoping to match up and marry off.

One woman, in her 60s, speaks proudly of her 34-year-old son, a public elementary school teacher. A man in his 80s talks affectionately about his career-minded son, 49, who works as a controller at an electric company.

Each of the parents has forked out 14,000 yen ($96) to attend this event, hosted by the matchmaking agency Association of Parents of Marriage Proposal Information. And they are all hoping to meet someone just like them; a parent whose still single daughter or son might be the perfect match for their own lonesome child.

It’s not that Japan, a notoriously work-obsessed nation where time is at a premium, hasn’t tried out the more direct approach to speed-dating, where the youngsters do it for themselves. It’s more that leaving the young to it doesn’t seem to be working.

With rising living costs, poor economic prospects and the demanding work culture conspiring against them, fewer Japanese today are opting to get married and have children. Their parents, alarmed at their diminishing chances of grandchildren, are stepping in.

“The idea that it is okay for parents to help their children get married in this way has become more widespread,” said the company’s director Noriko Miyagoshi, who has been organizing matchmaking events for almost two decades.

In the past people might have been ashamed of coming to these events, she added.

“But times have changed.”

Marriage crisis

The same forces that are driving these parents to the Osaka conference room have been playing havoc with the demographics of the world’s third biggest economy.

In Japan today, there are fewer marriages, fewer births and fewer people. The population has long been on a downward trajectory and in the year up to January, according to government data, it suffered a record plunge of 800,523 to 125.4 million.

Behind that plummeting population is the ever falling number of marriages and births.

In 2021, the number of newly registered marriages fell to 501,116, the fewest since the end of World War II in 1945, and just half the number recorded in the 1970s. And when people do get married, they are doing so at later stages of life, leaving less time to make babies. The median age for tying the knot in 2021 was 34 for men, up from 29 in 1990, and 31, up from 27, for women.

Alongside the drop in marriages has been a slide in the fertility rate, which last year hit a record low of 1.3, far below the 2.1 required to maintain a stable population.

All of that has left a growing headache for a government that must somehow fund the healthcare and pensions of a rapidly aging population with an ever-dwindling number of young tax payers.

Earlier this year, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida unveiled a multitrillion-yen plan aimed at boosting the birth rate, warning it was a case of “now or never.”

Among the incentives offered to parents were a monthly allowance of 15,000 yen ($100) for every child they had up to two years old and 10,000 yen for those three and above.

But James Raymo, an East Asian Studies expert at Princeton University, said trying to boost the birth rate was unlikely to work without first boosting the marriage rate.

“It’s not really an issue of married couples having fewer children. It’s about whether people are getting married in the first place,” Raymo said.

Failing to address the issue would have grave consequences, said sociologist Shigeki Matsuda, from Chukyo University in Aichi, Japan.

“Major concerns include a decline in the country’s overall economic strength and national wealth, difficulty in maintaining social security, and a loss of social capital in local communities,” he said.

Turn offs

So what’s turning people off?

Matsuda said it’s not that people no longer have the desire to get married per se – some 80% still do, according to a survey by the National Institute of Population and Social Security last year.

It’s more that they believe the obstacles in the way are insurmountable.

Young Japanese have faced poor employment prospects and flat wages since the 1990s, he pointed out. According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the average annual paycheck in Japan increased only 5% from 1991 to 2021 – compared to a rise of 34% in other G7 economies such as France and Germany.

“This has weakened their economic capacity to start marriages,” Matsuda said.

Raymo had a similar view, saying Japan’s high cost of living and notoriously long working hours made things worse.

“If you’re working 70 hours a week, then of course you won’t have a suitable partner, because you have no time to meet one,” he said.

The depth of the crisis can be glimpsed in supermarket aisles and convenience stories, where shelves are full of pre-packaged meals catering to one, or in the streets full of tiny apartments tailor-made for single life, Raymo added.

“This is a country that’s designed to make single living as easy as possible,” he said.

For women, economic costs are not the only turn off. Japan remains a highly patriarchal society in which married women are often expected to take the caregiver role, despite government efforts to get husbands more involved.

“Although Japan is legally equal between men and women, in reality, there is a deep-seated belief among men and women that women should still bear children and raise them, while men should work outside the home,” said Miyagoshi, the matchmaker.

No need for ‘awkward conversations’

Back at the Sakai Chamber of Commerce, light music plays to sooth the mood in what might otherwise seem an unlikely setting for Cupid to draw his bow.

Some of the parents have attended a few sessions already, others are first timers, and the stakes are high. Each of them has come armed with a completed questionnaire about their offspring, which asks things like whether they would be willing to relocate if things work out. The parents also carry profile pictures, many of them professionally shot, some showing young women dressed to impress in traditional kimonos.

Most of the photos are of spinsters and bachelors in their 30s and 40s; the youngest is 28 and the eldest 51, and they have a range of professions, from doctors and nurses to civil servants and secretaries.

One couple, in their 80s, say their 49-year-old son has been spending too much time at work to pay attention to his love life.

They have always wanted grandchildren so they decided to attend the matchmaking after reading about it in a newspaper.

Another couple, in their 70s, say their 42-year-old daughter doesn’t date because she wants to be free to hang out with her college friends whenever she wants. They want someone who can take care of their daughter, and say she is happy for them to do the searching.

Others have been asked by their children to attend the event. One mother, in her 60s, says her 37-year-old daughter has become anxious at seeing friends her age getting married and having children. She says she regrets not pushing her daughter to find a partner when she was younger.

The agency estimates that about 10% of those it matches up go on to get married, though it says the true figure could be higher because parents don’t necessarily let them know how their children’s relationships progress.

One mother, whose daughter married through the matchmaking service, recalled lining up to meet the parent of a popular candidate and feeling surprised when she got a call back asking if their offspring could meet.

At first sight, she said, “my daughter just started staring at him and that’s when I knew she had found her match.”

The pair are now married.

She says there are advantages to involving only the parents in the beginning; they can be more upfront in expressing what their children want and don’t want.

“[The children] don’t have the awkward conversations that would sometimes be remembered for years in a relationship,” she said.

Search for a match, hope for a grandchild

For many of the parents, it is the lure of grandchildren that draws them to the matchmaking events, says Miyagoshi.

She often comes across parents of men in their 40s who are searching for women in their late 20s and early 30s.

One father complained that he hadn’t been able to set up his 40-year-old son despite exchanging his profile with 10 other parents, she said.

On a closer look, she found out the father had turned down all the women in their mid-30s and those more educated than his son. He also rejected a candidate who did not have male siblings – women in this situation are seen as a burden in the eyes of traditional Japanese parents who believe they will be distracted by having to take care of their in-laws when they grow old.

But however great the yearning for grandchildren, Miyagoshi says she always emphasizes to parents that their children should come first.

“No matter how much the parents feel for each other, their children must be on board. No matter how much parents want grandchildren, the children must be willing to have children,” she said.

It may sound an unlikely thing for a professional matchmaker to say, but Miyagoshi believes in “go-en”, a Japanese concept referring to romance that sprouts from meeting the right person at the right time.

“No matter how much effort you put into it, sometimes it will not work out. That’s marriage,” she said.

India launched its first spacecraft dedicated to studying the sun, building on a month of historic successes for the country’s civil space efforts.

The spacecraft, called Aditya-L1, launched from Sriharikota, an island off the Bay of Bengal, at 11:50 a.m. Saturday local time (2:20 am ET). And it’s headed to a parking spot in orbit about 930,000 miles (1.5 million kilometers) from Earth.

The successful liftoff of Aditya-L1 comes less than two weeks after India’s space agency, the Indian Space Research Organization, made history by landing its Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft on the lunar surface. The achievement made India only the fourth nation in the world — and the second in the 21st century — to land a vehicle safely on the moon.

That mission is expected to conclude next week.

Meanwhile, Aditya-L1 is heading for its destination at Lagrange point 1, an area that lies between the sun and Earth where the gravitational pull of both celestial objects cancel each other out. That location will allow Aditya-L1 to remain in orbit, in a position optimal for observing the sun’s activities, with minor fuel consumption.

This position “will provide a greater advantage of observing the solar activities and its effect on space weather in real time,” according to the space agency.

The spacecraft is equipped with seven scientific instruments, four of which will be trained directly on the sun while the others will study solar wind particles and magnetic fields passing through at Lagrange point 1.

The main goals of the mission include studying the sun’s upper atmosphere and various solar phenomenon, such as coronal mass ejections — or massive expulsions of plasma from the sun’s outermost layer.

The information gleaned from Aditya-L1’s experiments will provide a clearer picture of space weather, or the term used to describe the magnetic waves rippling through our solar system. Space storms can have an impact on Earth when they reach our atmosphere, occasionally affecting satellites, radio communications and even power grids, according to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

India’s Aditya-L1 will add to information gathered on other missions designed to study the sun, including NASA’s ongoing Parker Solar Probe that in 2021 became the first spacecraft to “touch” the sun.

India’s first dedicated solar mission adds to the country’s status as an emerging space superpower.

North Korea said Sunday it had simulated a nuclear missile attack to warn the United States of “nuclear war danger.”

The country launched several cruise missiles, some of them equipped with mock nuclear warheads, state media outlet KCNA said, describing the exercise as a simulation of a “tactical nuclear attack.”

The exercises were meant to “warn the enemies of the actual nuclear war danger,” KCNA reported the Central Military Commission of the Workers’ Party of Korea as saying.

It said the exercises were conducted at dawn on Saturday and involved “two long-range strategic cruise missiles with mock nuclear warheads.”

The staged nuclear attack was in response to joint military exercises conducted by the United States and South Korea, earlier in the week, KCNA added.

“The recklessness and dangerous nature of the confrontation hysteria recently betrayed by the US and gangsters of the ‘Republic of Korea’ are unprecedented in history,” KCNA said, in a reference to South Korea.

It cited a “written drill order” issued by the military commission that stressed the “importance” of the North Korean exercise.

“The missile sub-unit involved… successfully carried out its nuclear strike mission by making sure that missiles flied along the pattern ‘8’ flight track simulating the distance of 1,500 kilometers (about 1 mile) for 7.672 to 7.681 seconds respectively and warheads detonated at a preset altitude of 150 meters above the target island,” KCNA reported.

“The nuclear force of [North Korea] will bolster its responsible combat counteraction posture in every way to deter war and preserve peace and stability,” it added.

The South Korean military said that it had detected several cruise missiles fired by North Korea into the Yellow Sea between mainland China and the Korean Peninsula, at around 4 a.m. on Saturday, local time.

This week South Korea and the US began annual joint military drills aimed at improving their response to threats from Pyongyang.

North Korea has so far conducted 18 missiles tests this year, compared to only four tests carried out in 2020 and eight in 2021.

The US-South Korea live fire exercises were conducted on Wednesday. South Korean and US commanders said the drills showcased “the strongest military alliance in the world.”

The drill, based on a counterattack against invading forces, hasn’t been showcased since 2018 and comes after the US and South Korean presidents pledged to step up military cooperation following a May summit meeting in Seoul.

One of Ukraine’s most powerful oligarchs has been arrested in a fraud investigation, state media in the country are reporting.

A Kyiv court on Saturday ordered Ihor Kolomoisky, a key supporter of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s 2019 presidential campaign, to 60 days in pre-trial detention while authorities investigate fraud charges against him, reported Ukrinform.

Kolomoisky’s media and banking businesses have made him one of the richest men in Ukraine.

However, the US State Department has previously accused him of using his “political influence and power for personal benefit.”

The State Department sanctioned Kolomoisky in March 2021 for his alleged involvement in “corrupt acts that undermined rule of law and the Ukrainian public’s faith in their government’s democratic institutions and public processes.”

On Saturday, the Shevchenkivskyi District Court ordered Kolomoisky be held until October 31, Ukrinform said, and he was given the option of posting bail in excess of 500 million Ukrainian hryvnia ($14 million).

“If the businessman posts bail, he must fulfill a number of conditions – not leave the locality where he will be staying, appear for interrogations, and notify the relevant authorities of any change of residence, if any,” the Ukrinform report added.

“He is also prohibited from communicating with witnesses and other suspects in this criminal proceeding… and must also surrender his passports for traveling abroad.”

Kolomoisky is being investigated by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) as well as Ukraine’s Bureau of Economic Security under Articles 190 and 209 – for fraud and laundering of a property criminally obtained.

Ukraine’s Prosecutor General’s Office is supervising the pre-trial investigation which will focus on Kolomoisky’s alleged role in laundering over half a billion Ukrainian hryvnia ($130.5 million) by transferring funds abroad between 2013 and 2020, allegedly using banks under his control.

Video and photos showed Kolomoisky being led away from the district court in Kyiv.

Corruption crackdown amid the war

According to a 2021 Transparency International report, Ukraine is the second most corrupt country in Europe after Russia and ranks 122nd globally among 180 countries.

The case against Kolomoisky is the latest in Ukraine’s anti corruption drive amid Russia’s invasion, which has targeted several high profile figures and uncovered luxury watches, cars and thousands of dollars in cash.

“Every criminal who has the audacity to harm Ukraine, especially in times of war, must clearly understand that we will handcuff his hands,” said Vasyl Maliuk, head of the SBU, in a statement issued in February.

Earlier this year Zelensky fired a slew of senior Ukrainian officials over a corruption scandal linked to the procurement of war-time supplies. It was the biggest shakeup of his government since Russia’s invasion began.

Among those caught up in corruption investigations are the acting head of the Kyiv tax authority, who was allegedly part of a scheme to overlook 45 billion Ukrainian hryvnia ($1.2 billion) in unpaid taxes, and former interior minister Arsen Avakov, who was tied to an investigation into the January 18 helicopter crash that killed 14 people. Avakov has denied any wrongdoing.

On August 11, Zelensky dismissed all officials in charge of regional military recruitment centers, citing the “iIllicit enrichment, legalization of illegally obtained funds, unlawful benefit and illegal transportation of persons liable for military service across the border.”

“Every ‘military commissioner’ against whom there is a criminal investigation will be held accountable,” he said.

“Officials who confused their shoulder straps with profit will definitely be brought to justice.”

Dozens of people were injured in Tel Aviv on Saturday as hundreds of Eritrean government supporters and opponents clashed with each other and with Israeli police, authorities in Israel said.

Israel’s Magen David Adom (MDA) emergency service said more than 114 people had been treated for injuries, including dozens of police officers. Eight of the injuries were serious, MDA said in a statement.

Israeli Police later said 49 officers had been injured and 39 people were arrested. Police who felt threatened fired live ammunition while extricating themselves from crowds, they said. It was not immediately clear if any of the day’s injuries were from the police live fire.

Videos on social media showed Eritrean government supporters clashing with anti-government protesters.

Eritreans make up the majority of African asylum seekers in Israel.

Israeli police fired stun grenades in an attempt to disperse the crowd, while some protesters hurled stones at police and set fire to trash bins.

“Large forces of the Israel Police and Border Police were prepared for the planned protest… and a location and time were allocated for the protest,” a statement from Tel Aviv Police read.

“However, the protesters arrived very early and began to disrupt public order… some of the lawbreakers engaged in severe violence and vandalism in the city streets.”

“During these difficult events, police officers who felt an immediate threat to their lives opened live fire while extricating themselves from the approaching crowd.”

“At this time, the police have restored order to southern Tel Aviv, and large police forces are preparing for further arrests and securing the safety and peace of the public in southern Tel Aviv.”

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was briefed about the disturbances on Saturday and “instructed that order be restored,” according to a statement issued by his office.

“Following the severe disturbances in Tel Aviv, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has decided to convene a special ministerial team to examine measures to be taken against illegal infiltrators who took part in the disturbances, including steps toward deportation,” the statement read.

The ministerial team will convene tomorrow at the Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem, the statement added.

Dozens of firefighters are working to put out a blaze that is burning at an oil depot in St. Petersburg, Russian authorities said.

Videos from the area posted on social media show a large plume of black smoke rising as explosions ring out.

The fire was first reported at 10:59 a.m. local time, Russia’s Ministry of Emergency Situations said. A hangar of 80 by 10 meters (262 by 33 feet) is up in flames, but the full area of the conflagration is still being determined, the ministry said. Sixty firefighters and 12 emergency vehicles were on the scene as of around 1 p.m.

Russian online news outlet Fontanka reported the fire was at the Ruchi oil depot.

The cause of the incident is not yet known. No casualties have been reported so far.