The Italian Senate approved on Thursday a watered-down bill allowing civil unions for same-sex and heterosexual couples, with the government using a confidence motion to ram the contested legislation through the upper house.

To overcome opposition from within his own center-left coalition, Prime Minister Matteo Renzi had to strip out the most controversial part of the text, which would have granted unmarried couples some adoption rights.

The issue split parliament down religious lines, with politicians close to the Roman Catholic Church arguing that what was dubbed a 'stepchild adoption clause' would encourage gays to have babies with surrogate mothers, which is illegal in Italy.

The motion was approved by 173 to 71. If he had lost the vote, Renzi would have had to resign. The bill will pass to the lower house of parliament later this year for final approval.

Italy is the only major Western country that has yet to recognise civil unions and Renzi hailed Thursday's vote as historic, saying he had been right to put the government's future on the line over the heated issue.

"Hope has won against fear. Courage has won against discrimination. Love has won," he wrote on his Facebook page.

But gay rights organisations expressed bitter disappointment over the dropped adoption provision, which followed months of ferocious political debate and mass rallies across Italy.

"This text once again does not take into consideration children who need definite laws and protection," said Flavio Romani, president of gay rights group Arcigay. "The law that has come out of all this is lacking its heart."

Underscoring the chasm between the opposing lobbies, Interior Minister Angelino Alfano, who leads the small New Centre Right party (NCD), said Italy had "prevented a revolution that went against nature" by denying gays scope for adoption.

Renzi took office in 2014 and promised to enact the law last year but has faced more opposition over this particular reform than for any of his other initiatives, including a contested shake up of the labour market.

The bill gives homosexual couples the right to receive a deceased partner's pension, the right to take a partner's name, inheritance rights and next-of-kin rights in medical emergencies – all allowed only in marriage so far.

Heterosexual couples are granted next-of-kin rights, but the other provisions are only obtained through traditional marriage.

In another concession to Alfano's NCD party, the government dropped language that opponents said made the civil unions comparable with marriage. As a result, couples signing up to the partnership will not be required to promise to be faithful.

(christiantoday.com)

Geneva (AFP) - One eight-year-old was repeatedly sold and raped, while another girl set herself on fire to make herself less attractive to her jihadist captors.

These are only two of the more than 1,400 horror stories German doctor Jan Ilhan Kizilhan has heard first-hand from Yazidi women and girls once enslaved by Islamic State jihadists in Iraq.

"They have been through hell," he told AFP in an interview in Geneva.

Kizilhan heads a project that has brought 1,100 women and girls to Germany to help heal their deep physical and psychological wounds.

The project, run by German state Baden-Wurttemberg, first began flying in the traumatised victims from northern Iraq last April, and brought the last group over earlier this month.

It was in 2014 that authorities in Baden-Wurttemberg decided to act.

At the time, IS jihadists were making a lightning advance in northern Iraq, massacring Yazidis in their villages, forcing tens of thousands to flee and kidnapping thousands of girls and women to force them into sexual slavery.

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Jan Ilhan Kizilhan heads a project that has brought 1,100 women and girls to Germany to help heal th …

- 'Genocide' -

The United Nations has described the IS attack on the Yazidi minority as a possible genocide.

"It is really an urgent situation," Kizilhan said, calling on other countries and states to follow Baden-Wurttemberg's example.

The southwest German state budgeted 95 million euros ($104 million) to the project and asked Kizilhan and his team to decide which of the victims could benefit most from the move.

The doctor said another 1,200 Yazidi women and girls once held by IS would also benefit from similar programmes elsewhere -- as would the estimated 3,800 believed to remain in captivity, if they make it out.

He explained that the women who managed to escape from IS found themselves back in their deeply conservative communities in northern Iraq with little or no access to psychological help to work through the unspeakable horrors they had experienced.

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Peshmerga forces from Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region and fighters from the Yazidi minority ent …

"These women really need specialised treatment. If we don't help them, who will?" he asked, speaking on the sidelines of an international conference of human rights defenders in Geneva.

As Yazidis, who follow a unique faith despised by IS, the women raped and sometimes left pregnant by the jihadists are seen by many in their community as a source of dishonour.

Those who are shunned become impoverished and risk falling into prostitution to support themselves, and a large number commit suicide, Kizilhan said.

"Over the last year, I have documented more than 20 cases of suicide, but this is surely just the tip of the iceberg," he said, adding the actual number was likely closer to 150.

Kizilhan shuddered as he recalled the case of one girl he had met in a refugee camp last August, who suffered burns to over 80 percent of her body.

"She had no nose, no ears left," he said, adding that he was even more shocked when he learned what had happened to her.

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A Yazidi man from the Sinjar mountains makes a phone call on arrival on the Greek island of Lesbos a …

IS fighters had held the girl and her sisters for weeks, raping and torturing them, before they escaped.

Then one night sleeping in her tent in the refugee camp, the girl dreamt IS fighters were outside. In a panic she poured gasoline over herself and lit a match, hoping it would make her so ugly they would not rape her again.

Kizilhan had that girl chartered out immediately for fear she might not survive. She remains in hospital in Germany after more than a dozen operations, and will still need 30 more types of skin and bone surgery.

- Raped hundreds of times -

Most of the girls and women in the programme were between 16 and 20, he said, adding that the oldest was in her 40s.

The youngest was eight.

"IS sold her eight times during the 10 months she was held hostage, and raped her hundreds of times," Kizilhan said, shaking his head in disgust.

"This is one of the cases I always have in my mind."

Due to her young age, the girl would likely benefit greatly from treatment and a new environment, he said, voicing hope that "she could still make something of her future."

It will take time though, for all of the victims now settling in Baden-Wurttemberg.

Kizilhan said psychotherapy would not start for another three to six months, for fear of retraumatising the women and girls who have been through hell.

"They need the feeling of security. That is not easy after what they have experienced."

Mysterious death of Pope Francis aide alarms Vatican

February 27, 2016 | 9:56pm

Investigators will also perform a DNA test on Wuolou’s fetus to determine the paternity of the unborn child.

Wuolou’s apartment has been sealed off; forensic teams have combed it for evidence and have even removed several personal effects for further examination, neighbors told The Daily Beast.

A funeral service for Wuolou was held on Saturday. Pope Francis visited her body prior to the memorial, laying a dozen white roses next to her casket and sprinkling the coffin with holy water before beginning a 20-minute prayer.