Pope Francis, the head of the Catholic Church, is facing increasingly strong opposition inside the Vatican. The conservative clan of the Roman Curia – the powerful governing body of the Holy See – accuses him of a laxist vision of Catholic doctrine, particularly regarding the status of homosexual couples and divorced people in the Church. Our Rome correspondent Natalia Mendoza reports from the Vatican’s corridors of power on this growing conflict between tradition and modernity.

As the second anniversary of the Ukraine conflict looms, the female relatives of Russia’s mobilised men are becoming more and more outspoken in calling for their loved ones to come home, with their pickets and impassioned appeals gaining traction on social media. Their activism, despite being largely ignored by state media, remains a sensitive issue for the Kremlin, which is keen to project an image of national unity around President Vladimir Putin ahead of his inevitable re-election in a vote this March.

Turkish authorities have detained 34 people suspected of being linked to Israel’s Mossad intelligence service and of targeting Palestinians living in Turkey, the country said Tuesday. Police raided locations in eight provinces as part of an investigation carried out by the MIT intelligence agency and the Istanbul prosecutor’s counter-terrorism bureau.

Hospital doctors in England on Wednesday began their longest consecutive strike in the seven-decade history of Britain’s National Health Service (NHS).

Turkey on Tuesday detained 33 people suspected of spying for Israel’s Mossad intelligence service, Turkish media reported, without specifying the nationalities of those detained.

Russia fired scores of missiles and drones at the Ukrainian capital Kyiv and the northeastern city of Kharkiv on Tuesday, killing at least five civilians, wounding dozens and causing widespread damage, officials said.