Esther Tanquintic-Misa

Pressure from the Roman Catholic spiritual pontiff to clean its coffers and get its act together had taken a toll on the 2013 profits of embattled Vatican Bank, more formally known as the Institute for Works of Religion (IOR).

What turned out to be the usual fanfare for a wedding photo shoot became monumentally worth remembering when a tornado zoomed and dropped down in the center enough for a Canadian photographer to capture it and put it side by side with a happy newly-wed.

An Australian woman has been slapped with charges of offensive language after she racially abused passengers on a train, caught on video, posted online and ultimately went viral.

The state of health of a woman during pregnancy very much determines the size of her newborn baby.

HIV home-testing kits, similar to the pregnancy tests, will soon be made available in Australia after the federal government lifted a ban restricting their manufacture and sale.

More than 8,000 children under the age of 18 years old had been accused of sexual offences against other children in the United Kingdom in the last two years alone, the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children said.

Police authorities in Victoria have cautioned residents in the area to be on high alert and keep an eye on their children after convicted Australian child rapist Andrew Darling managed to break out of a correctional facility in Ararat.

German airline Lufthansa will be entering into a joint venture with Air China that will see the two airlines share revenue on certain routes in Asia by selling each other's flight tickets. The routes are situated between China and Europe.

Had it not for the quick attention and decision of air traffic controllers at Houston's Bush Intercontinental Airport, a midair collision of two commercial airplanes could have happened on Thursday, potentially claiming dozens of lives.

Residents of Japan's Okinawa are being advised to take all necessary precautions as Neoguri has strengthened to become the world's first super typhoon of 2014.

The sharp growth in the number of earthquakes in Oklahoma, U.S., have been found not to be borne out of natural seismic causes but due to the massive injections of wastewater by oil and gas extraction.

Regulatory controls laid down by the Chinese government on gold financial deals will mostly curb the country's imports of the yellow metal, a consultant told Reuters on Thursday.

Problems in the brake lines of its cars and SUV lines have forced Subaru to recall more than 660,000 vehicles, majority of which are in the U.S. About 100,000 are in Canada.

Coral reefs in the Caribbean are rapidly degrading because of pollution and overfishing, and not due to climate change.

Institutions or individuals fond of sending spam mail to Canadian electronic mailboxes should ought to think twice sending those missives or otherwise risk getting sued in court for millions of dollars. Canada's new anti-spam law (CASL) already took effect on Tuesday.

Residents in the U.S.' North Carolina coast as well as Canada's Nova Scotia area have been advised to take necessary precautions as tropical storm Arthur continued to gain strength, potentially hitting hurricane level by Thursday.

Pope Francis has selected Filipino Archbishop Bernardito Cleopas Auza to become Vatican City's permanent representative to the United Nations in New York. Auza is the first ever Filipino to represent the Holy See at the global body.

Canada could be seeing soon on its many runways its first ultra low-cost air carrier as Canada Jetlines Ltd. announced plans of raising $10-million to be able to enlist on the TSX Venture Exchange.

A new study by St. Michael's Hospital in Toronto has found that a father's ethnic background can significantly influence a child's weight at birth, and in this case, babies born to Asian fathers were found to be underweight.

Patterns pointing to an El Niño weather phenomenon happening this year have started to emerge, the Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) said on Tuesday. At present, ongoing surface temperatures at the Pacific Ocean point to levels of a weak El Niño.

Is doomsday end of the world just lurking around? The current year 2014 is shaping up to be the year when the most number of strong earthquakes occurred, a new study found.

Rumours of an impending shakeup has forced Ernst von Freyberg, chairman of embattled Vatican Bank, to step down ahead of confirmations, Italian media reported earlier.

Although still a relatively weak storm as of Wednesday, weather forecasters have advised residents off the U.S. East Coast. and Canada's Maritimes to brace for a wet weather this coming July 4th weekend.

Increasing storm frequency, ocean temperatures and rising sea levels triggered by climate change are making U.S. military installations vulnerable and if actions aren't done to mitigate it, the country's military's readiness for combat could cave in.

Concerns of radiation from Fukushima affecting Alaskan seafood have been ruled out by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Defying odds, US space agency NASA will relaunch today a satellite that will track the global warming-inducing carbon dioxide levels and its effects around the world.

A new study released by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) has said the maddening climate change will drive the iconic emperor penguins to extinction by end of the century.

Charges of aggravated arson have been slapped against a U.S. woman for setting her house on fire to get rid of an itsy bitsy, crawling spider.

Officials from a select group of pariah states have been included into a list of "persona non grata" as Canada observes its national day on July 1.