A few years ago, Pope Francis told the head of the main Vatican-backed Catholic women's organization to be "brave" in pushing for change for women in the Catholic Church.

Maria Lia Zervino took his advice and in 2021 wrote Francis a letter, then made it public, saying flat out that the Catholic Church owed a big debt to half of humanity and that women deserved to be at the table where church decisions are made, not as mere "ornaments" but as protagonists.

Two scientists won the Nobel Prize in medicine on Monday for discoveries that enabled the development of mRNA vaccines against COVID-19 and could be used in the future to create other shots.

Katalin Karikó, a professor at Sagan's University in Hungary and an adjunct professor at the University of Pennsylvania, and Drew Weissman, of the University of Pennsylvania, were awarded the prize for "their groundbreaking findings, which have fundamentally changed our understanding of how mRNA interacts with our immune system," the panel that awarded the prize said.

Fall has arrived in Scandinavia, which means Nobel Prize season is here.

The start of October is when the Nobel committees get together in Stockholm and Oslo to announce the winners of the yearly awards.

Christian religious leaders in northern Iraq called for an international investigation Monday into a deadly wedding fire that killed more than 100 people last week and slammed the government's probe, which had blamed the blaze on negligence and lack of precautionary measures.

An Iraqi Syriac Catholic priest, meanwhile, said widespread corruption in the country and the influence of armed militias on the government was one of the factors that enabled the fire.

The two-week Asian Games featuring 12,500 participants from 45 nations and territories have completed their first week in China.

The opening ceremony in the packed 80,000-seat Olympic Sports Center Stadium in Hangzhou featured electronic flash, 3D animations and a virtual torchbearer.

South Korea won the women's team singles in badminton at the Asian Games, defeating China 3-0. An Seyoung and Kim Gaeun won their singles matches and Lee Sohee and Baek Hana teamed up in doubles to beat the sport's No. 1-ranked female pair, Chen Qingchen and Jia Yifan of China.

Lee said the team surprised itself.

Sanjay Chauhan witnessed monsoon rains lash down over his home and farm in the Indian Himalayas this year with a magnitude and intensity he's never experienced before.

"Buildings have collapsed, roads are broken, there were so many landslides including one that has destroyed a large part of my orchard," said the 56-year-old farmer, who lives in the town of Shimla in Himachal Pradesh. "I have not seen anything like this."

More than 300 forest and peatland fires on Indonesia's Sumatra island caused hazy skies across the region on Monday, prompting government officials to ask people to work from home.

The military, police and local government were working together to extinguish the fires, which were burning in 316 places across South Sumatra province, but their work was complicated by the extreme dry weather, said Iriansyah, the head of the South Sumatra Disaster Management Agency.

The Emirati president-designate of the upcoming United Nations COP28 climate talks called on oil and gas companies on Monday to be "central to the solution" to fighting climate change, even as the industry boosts its production to enjoy rising global energy prices.

The call by Sultan al-Jaber highlights the gap between climate activists suspicious of his industry ties and his calls to drastically slash the world's emissions by nearly half in seven years to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) compared with pre-industrial times.

A "terrorist attack" took place near Turkey's parliament in Ankara on Sunday leaving two police officers injured, the interior ministry said.

The ministry said two attackers arrived in a commercial vehicle around 9:30 am (0630 GMT) "in front of the entrance gate of the General Directorate of Security of our Ministry of the Interior, and carried out a bomb attack."