More than 115 cases of eye damage reported in Ontario after solar eclipse
More than 115 people who viewed the solar eclipse in Ontario earlier this month experienced eye damage after the event, according to eye doctors in the province.
Pope Francis repeated Monday that abortion is "murder," a day after the tiny republic of San Marino became the latest Catholic state to legalize the procedure, much to the cheers of women's rights groups.
An overwhelming majority -- 77 per cent of the 14,384 votes cast Sunday in the microstate surrounded by Italy -- favoured making abortion legal in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy. Abortion would also be legal beyond that if the woman's life is in danger or if her physical or psychological health is at risk because of fetal anomalies or malformations.
Only 41 per cent of eligible voters cast ballots, but no quorum was necessary and only 3,265 of San Marino's population of 33,000 voted "No."
The Catholic Church had strongly opposed the measure. The Vatican holds that human life begins at conception and that all life must be protected from conception until natural death.
Pope Francis repeated that stance Monday during a previously scheduled audience with the Vatican's bioethics academy. He decried the "throwaway" culture that makes abortion seem "normal."
"There is the waste of children that we don't want welcome," he said. "It is really a murder."
Valentina Rossi, member of the Union of Sammarinese Women and a referendum promoter, said the vote result was "far beyond the most optimistic expectations." She said it showed that individual voters were able to make a decision that the republic's politicians had refused to take for decades, even as Italy and other European countries made abortion legal.
San Marino's Parliament must now draft a bill to legalize the procedure, and proponents called for legislation that provides appropriate reproductive health services for all women.
"With this step, we succeeded in demonstrating that citizens are for the most part with us, and that finally San Marino will have to provide an adequate law," Rossi said. "At last!"
San Marino, one of the world's oldest republics, had been one of the last European states that still criminalized abortion. With Sunday's result, it now joins other predominantly Catholic states like Ireland, which legalized abortion in 2018, and Italy, where abortion has been legal since 1978. Abortion is still illegal in Malta and Andorra, and Poland introduced a near-total ban on the procedure this year.
Giacomo Volpinari, a San Marino citizen, said the vote was historic and showed the power of a referendum to change course.
"Where politics couldn't reach, it was the people who chose to get out from a medieval situation San Marino lived in for centuries," he said.
------
Winfield reported from Rome.
More than 115 people who viewed the solar eclipse in Ontario earlier this month experienced eye damage after the event, according to eye doctors in the province.
The B.C. NDP has asked the federal government to recriminalize public drug use, marking a major shift in the province's approach to addressing the deadly overdose crisis.
George Mallory is renowned for being one of the first British mountaineers to attempt to scale the dizzying heights of Mount Everest during the 1920s. Nearly a century later, newly digitized letters shed light on Mallory’s hopes and fears about ascending Everest.
An orca whale calf that has been stranded in a B.C. lagoon for weeks after her pregnant mother died swam out on her own early Friday morning.
Sophie Gregoire Trudeau says there is 'still so much love' between her and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, as they navigate their post-separation relationship co-parenting their three children.
An Ontario man who took out a loan to pay for auto repairs said his car was repossessed after he missed two payments.
Devastating tornadoes tore across parts of eastern Nebraska and northeast Texas Friday as a multi-day severe thunderstorm event ramped up in the central United States, injuring at least three people.
A Sherwood Park family says their new house is uninhabitable. The McNaughton's say they were forced to leave the house after living there for only a week because contaminants inside made it difficult to breathe.
Donald Trump's defence team attacked the credibility Friday of the prosecution's first witness in his hush money case, seeking to discredit testimony detailing a scheme between Trump and a tabloid to bury negative stories to protect the Republican's 2016 presidential campaign.
Mounties in Nanaimo, B.C., say two late-night revellers are lucky their allegedly drunken antics weren't reported to police after security cameras captured the men trying to steal a heavy sign from a downtown business.
A property tax bill is perplexing a small townhouse community in Fergus, Ont.
When identical twin sisters Kim and Michelle Krezonoski were invited to compete against some of the world’s most elite female runners at last week’s Boston Marathon, they were in disbelief.
The giant stone statues guarding the Lions Gate Bridge have been dressed in custom Vancouver Canucks jerseys as the NHL playoffs get underway.
A local Oilers fan is hoping to see his team cut through the postseason, so he can cut his hair.
A family from Laval, Que. is looking for answers... and their father's body. He died on vacation in Cuba and authorities sent someone else's body back to Canada.
A former educational assistant is calling attention to the rising violence in Alberta's classrooms.
The federal government says its plan to increase taxes on capital gains is aimed at wealthy Canadians to achieve “tax fairness.”
At 6'8" and 350 pounds, there is nothing typical about UBC offensive lineman Giovanni Manu, who was born in Tonga and went to high school in Pitt Meadows.