US secretary of state’s two-day visit reportedly intended to thaw Washington’s frosty relations with Vatican and Italy
The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, will meet Pope Leo on Thursday, weeks after Donald Trump’s unprecedented broadside against the pontiff.
Rubio will meet the first US-born pope privately in the Vatican’s apostolic palace at 11.30am (10.30 GMT), the Holy See’s press office confirmed on Monday after media reports on Sunday.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Sperm re-transplant offers hope that boys left infertile by chemotherapy could have biological children one day
In a groundbreaking fertility trial, a man whose testicular tissue was frozen before he underwent chemotherapy as a child to be re-transplanted 16 years later has been able to produce sperm.
It is the first time a transplant of cryopreserved prepubertal testicular tissue has been demonstrated to restore sperm production in an adult patient. The 27-year-old man had the sample frozen when he was 10, before undergoing potent chemotherapy as part of treatment for sickle cell disease.
Continue reading...Hangings are latest in wave of near-daily killings as authorities seek to instil fear amid war with US and Israel
Iran has executed three men charged in connection with political protests this January, authorities have said, the latest in a wave of hangings against the backdrop of the war against the US and Israel.
Iranian authorities have carried out executions on a near-daily basis in recent weeks in what activists have denounced as a bid to instil fear in society at a time of international and domestic tension.
Continue reading...